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Language: en
America feels broken. Division,
distrust, massive inequality, corrupt
elites, and a debt problem that will
bankrupt us. Everyone has their
theories. Political streamer Destiny
sees the world very differently than I.
And my goal in sitting down with him is
to get his no holdsbred vision for what
it would take to actually make America
great. His answers are going to make
many people angry. But you will not want
to miss what he has to say. And be sure
to let me know in the comments if you
agree or if you have your own ideas of
how to make America really work. All
right, without further ado, I bring you
Stephen Destiny Bonell.
If you see a better path through this, I
want Americans to thrive. I don't want
Americans uh I don't need it to be my
way. I just if we can agree on the end
state, like admittedly I'm big on
freedom, liberty, like those things
matter to me a lot. If somebody can
paint a picture how we get to freedom,
liberty, uh meaning fulfillment, uh the
ability to live in a capitalist system,
ah I'm I'm all for it.
>> I feel like at the very least the thing
we can agree on, even if we might have a
disagreement on this broader macro econ
thing, is that we probably need to
reduce or eliminate the the deficit and
have a budget surplus. I feel like
Democrats historically over the past 30
years have been infinitely better at
that than Republicans.
>> Let's go then. Let's get some Democrats.
Like I literally don't care. It seems
like people either do not understand
that countries go broke, they don't
think America could go broke or they
think when you go broke it's not that
bad.
>> Sure. I the I guess the frustrating
thing then for me is if I look at so if
I look at the past three decades of
president so there's a couple things. So
one the last budget surplus was Clinton
who was a Democrat, right? We had Bush
for two terms who we spent I don't know
how many trillions in the Middle East as
a result of those wars. Um then we had
the whole like global financial crisis
in 2007. Obama came in, had to like deal
with that and clean up that our economy
is like kind of back on track although
we've had to borrow a lot. Then after
that we get Trump who even before CO is
running the largest budget deficit of
all time for conceivably no reason
because we're the economy was doing
great. Then we got CO which does a whole
bunch of horrible things. Then Biden has
to come in and then we kind of are doing
that and then getting back on track and
now we've got Trump back in again.
You had Trump and Biden both just
spending money like drunken, printing
money like drunk.
>> Biden had a good reason for it. Trump
had no reason for it. Trump did the tax
cuts and jobs act before co and his
budget deficits were larger than Obama's
before co and then after co he started
to do
>> but wait do you think that after the
initial co stimulus that we needed to
keep going because Biden did keep
>> the problem is that Biden the the most
debt that we accured under Biden was
technically from Trump. It was the tax
cuts and jobs act that were destroying
the government's ability to earn
revenue. So the only way that Biden
could have turned the clock back on that
would have been to like rescend because
those tax cuts were said to expire into
it would have been Biden's second term
into Trump's current term. Now that's
why they had to fight on the big
>> the only way. So here's what what Trump
just did with the big beautiful bills.
Inexcusable. So I've got literally not
only no defense for him on that front,
negative defense for him. Terrible. I'm
mortified. I don't see any positive
signals that came out of Trump one. I
don't see any positive signals that came
out of Biden and I obviously see no
positive sign.
>> But I'm frustrated because we're locked
in this cycle of Republicans doing the
most [ __ ] up horrible [ __ ] they can
and then a Democrat having to come in on
the back of that economy and we just
pretend that both are the same. And now
we're looking at it right now cuz right
now what's happening is we had negative
we had an economic contraction this
quarter. There's that's inexcusable. We
have an absolute lunatic right now who
is never cut a good deal I guess in his
entire history for the United States
who's running back for these crazy
tariffs. We're like going back and forth
on kind of being involved in wars and
not being involved in wars. We're
destroying our reputation, alliances
with our most important trading partners
with Canada and Mexico. And then after
all of this like shenaniganary, there's
going to be another Democrat who comes
in and has to like kind of roll off the
back of all this. And it's like say
though, what if you wanted to give
somebody a grade
>> uh for they handled the debt? Well, what
would be the KPI that you would look at?
Um, I mean it would have to be like how
is your how does your deficit look
compared to the economic pain that
you're currently suffering and what is
your what like
>> how would you measure the economic pain
though?
>> Well, sure. So, like for like I mean
there every indicator going into Trump
one was good. Our unemployment was
historically low. Our stock markets were
posting all-time highs. Um, like our GDP
was growing robustly. Everything was
going well. Why did you cut taxes? That
doesn't make any sense. You've already
got an economy that's growing 15%. year
over year cutting taxes now you're just
you're setting everything on fire. So
that would be like a really negative
indicator. When I look at Biden's terms
um his his first term when I look at
Biden's well one term the four years he
spent a lot but the deficit was going
down sequentially like after he came in
and it was on the back of like all of
the COVID [ __ ] that he had to deal
with and everything and Trump and all of
Trump's fans want to pretend that like
well we don't count 2020 that year
doesn't count so we can just ignore all
of that. But now Biden has to deal with
the fallout of not only that but also
the horrible tax cuts and jobs act which
didn't need to happen which are
annihilating government revenues. Um and
still managed to pass at least one the
uh the inflation reduction act was like
a deficit neutral piece of legislation.
At least one thing was deficit neutral.
Um and now we're back to Trump and now
we're back to spending like [ __ ]
crazy. Huge $150 billion increase in ICE
and the DoD budget. We're hurting our
economy, economic contraction, hurting
trade deals all over the entire world.
And now so whatever president comes in
and and Trump is doing it for again this
is all self-inflicted for no reason. My
biggest fear, I don't know if I said
this to you or not, my biggest fear with
Trump coming in was I bet this
[ __ ] is going to sit back and do
nothing and the economy is gonna grow
like it was and he's gonna get all the
credit for it and that would trigger me
so much. But he's not doing that. He's
like throwing everything.
>> You're going to find out whether he's uh
totally nuking it or
>> No, I'm not. He is totally nuking it.
Just like I said he'll see. Yeah, I
will. Yeah, but like the question is
like will people
appropriately ascribe I guess like the
credit for that? Like it's it was
phenomenal music. anybody complain about
running a a deficit under Biden and then
not mention the tax cuts and jobs act.
It's just like you're just setting money
on fire and it's like for what reason?
For no reason.
>> People are on the tribe which many of
the people that talk will be that you're
never going to get a satisfying answer.
Even watching people's change on the
Epstein files and I have no idea what
you think about that, but watching Mega
turn to like oh my god this is 4D chess.
I'm like get the [ __ ] out of here. Uh,
so
>> but then so then so then are we just
doomed to is it gonna be this crazy [ __ ]
for four years and then the Democrats
gonna come in and try to clean up and
then
>> No, I think they're going to be just as
crazy. So I
>> what did Biden do though is anywhere
near as crazy as what Trump has done.
>> Uh so I just look at the graph of money
printing and ask why it's happening,
right?
>> But there's there's no Biden blip.
There's no like oh it dipped during
Biden. So I'm just saying uh right now I
don't think it matters who you elect. I
don't think the people voting will vote
for someone who won't give them free
things.
>> Well, do you think do you think that the
tax cuts and jobs act would have would
have happened under Hillary Clinton?
>> I think that under Hill I don't know. I
don't when I say I woke up to politics
like
>> 24 months ago I just wasn't paying
attention.
>> Do you think the 160 billion for ICE and
the 150 billion extra to the DoD would
have happened under Kla Harris?
>> No, probably not.
>> Sure. The global tariffs probably
wouldn't have happened.
>> Definitely not. So I'm seeing the all of
this spending
>> the tariffs right now I would say we
haven't seen that play out. It's
generated whatever hundred billion
dollars or something. We'll see. It
hasn't. It has done momentary spikes in
the stock market but nothing in my
portfolio is up.
>> Sure.
>> So um
>> wouldn't have extended the tax cuts and
jobs act. Right.
>> Possible that one honestly I have no
idea.
>> So it seems so when we say like
everybody does the same it doesn't seem
like it. It seems like it's
>> well but we just had Biden. Biden did
not help the problem. So,
>> but wasn't the deficit going down? Not
the debt, but the deficits at least were
increasing under Biden. Like, wouldn't
couldn't that have continued if he if
there was another four years of a
Democrat in office?
>> Was the uh was the overall debt going
down?
>> The debt wasn't the deficit. So, the
amount we had to borrow every year that
was decreasing, but
>> uh I would consider that a good sign.
I'll go back and look like um my when I
look at how much money was printed, it
was insane. The headline that I keep
hearing about that is uh there was more
stimulus than any other time other than
war. So admittedly that headline just
fit with what I see in the graph.
Clearly I need to go look at it. Um but
my hypothesis is right now given what
history tells me in a populist moment
like this where each side is angry with
the other that they're only going to
vote for people that say the other side
is trash. I'm going to slap them around.
Uh, I'm gonna make sure you get yours
and they get nothing and that this
there's just going to be more of this.
Now, I hope that you're right and I hope
that I'm wrong and I hope that all we
have to do is get a sensible Democrat in
and that would be amazing.
>> Yeah. But I guess the issue is that it's
even if you got a sensible Democrat in,
it's going to be a roller coaster for
four years because the current guy in
right now is destroying like every part
of the United States's ability to be a
world leader economically, ignoring
everything else. So, like that's just
going to be the frustrating thing.
>> That's not my read on what's happening.
I don't know how it's going to play out
though. So it's
>> the tax cut and jobs act is solidified.
There was no match spending cut for
that. Really? We're borrowing massively
to fund now these huge ICE operations
and the Pentagon. Yep.
>> So we're not cutting any good trade
deal. Yeah.
>> BBB is absolute garbage. But what we
were talking about was the international
side.
>> Internationally like everybody in Europe
is looking in a different direction.
Canada has lost faith in us. Tourism is
down massively because nobody wants to
come to this country right now because
of how xenophobic we're coming off in a
variety of different ways. Mexico's
faith in remember keep in mind the one
deal that Trump could have taken credit
for was renegotiating NAFTA into the US
uh Mexico Canada free trade agreement or
whatever that's been completely blown up
now right because we we've just said all
these times Trump is complaining about
Canada's 145% tariffs on dairy that's
only once it reached a certain amount
and that was negotiation on his deal so
you know we have we just now he's
bragging about bombing Iran he's the one
that tore up the Iranian the JCPOA so
it's like
>> forward three and a half years
>> um what do you see on an international
stage age where will the trading
partners have formed alliances without
us? Um
>> that would be a worst case scenario. I
feel like the entire world is still kind
of like um I don't say like a malaise. I
feel like nobody wants to believe it and
people are kind of just waiting for like
America's not serious. Like I think
we're they're going to wake up. But like
watching the US president come out with
that stupid [ __ ] poster of like 145%
tariffs and it was like this it can't be
real. We're not really doing 45% tariffs
on the island of penguins, right? this
can't possibly be reality. But so I I'm
hoping people don't believe it, but like
if reality starts to settle in that the
US is no longer a reliable trading
partner and everything else,
>> try something. You might think that this
is absolutely insane, but this hits for
me. So I heard you say something
recently that I thought was so
insightful. Pulled my producer aside,
said the same thing because I, as a
personality, I think I'm always going to
struggle to get a big audience because
I'm not um bombastic.
>> Sure. and you had said um I thought for
a long time in a populist moment you
needed people that had like extreme
philosophies and I realized that's
actually not true. You can have a
moderate position you just have extreme
Yep.
>> So uh when I look at Trump that's what I
see is somebody who goes into a
negotiation like an extreme lunatic and
people are like [ __ ] I don't know what
he's going to do. So knocking people on
the back foot certainly puts him into a
more advantageous
negotiating position if you're
comfortable with real politique. So this
myth needs to be utterly and completely
destroyed because Trump has never
negotiated anything amazing for the
United States. In the first term it
didn't happen and it hasn't happened so
far. I don't know why he gets credit for
being this master negotiator. He's not.
>> Can you think of a single great thing
that was negotiated in the first Trump
term?
>> Like I said I've only been
>> I would challenge any conservative and I
put this to a challenge. There's
nothing. We have nothing to show for his
great negotiation skills. We were
supposed to get 90 deals in 90 days. And
now yesterday, Trump said in two weeks,
everybody's getting tariff. We've got
these cringey letters going out that
look like they're from my mom and dad on
Facebook with the random caps locks and
everything on different words. He's not
a good negotiator. He's not throwing
anybody off on the back foot. And you
like, I'll fight you to death on this,
okay? And I won't believe you if you
just screw with me. If you and I were to
negotiate something as a business deal
and you're selling some service for a
million dollars, if I were to come at
you and go, I'll give you $100 for that.
You're not going to look at me as
though, oh, he's put me in a challenge
negotiating spot. You're going to
[ __ ] ignore me. You're not even going
to respond to that email, and you're not
even going to do negotiations with me
because I'm so far out of what would
even be reasonable. It's not even
covering your costs. So, this idea that
you can go into any negotiation with the
equivalent of a of an explosive vest on
and be like, we're all going to die
until you come to an agreement with me.
And this is like the master negotiator.
If that was true, then my question is,
what do we have to show for it? If you
wanted to say one thing, and I would
even argue the US Mexican free trade
agreement, it was like NAFTA Junior. It
was a little bit upgraded, but not not
really significantly different. And
that's been completely and utterly
destroyed. So he can't even take credit
for that. We're we're almost at our 90
days. Where are the 90 deals? We have
zero deals. We've gotten zero deals in
all of this time. Nobody's ready to
negotiate with us. Trump has gone back
and forth on these tariffs the entire
time. I don't know if you saw, but even
the way that we calculated the tariffs
was hilariously stupid. It was just the
difference in trade deficits divided by
like total exports. And we're like, they
must have a 52% tariff on us. Like all
of the trade deficits that could be
attributed to a tariff. Uh it's just
it's insane. You listen to this Lutnik
guy talk and you think you're actually
like high on acid. and you stumbled into
like a fourth grade classroom and you're
listening to kids talk about how they
think the economy works. It's just
unreal. So I I hate that like he's a
master negotiator cuz then my question
is okay well what does he negotiate
because we have nothing. We were
promised the war in Israel would be
over. It's not. We thought that Hamas is
going to release all the hostages. They
haven't. We were promised at day zero
Ukraine Russia would be done. It's not.
We were promised no new wars. We bombed
Iran. Like nothing has come to fruition
that this guy said. But he keeps eluding
all of this is like the master
negotiate. I don't know how. The only
thing he's negotiated is his PR. I guess
I just don't. It's very frustrating.
Yeah. It's interesting. So, the way that
I take the tariffs is the tariff D-Day
for me is where are we at midterms? And
90 days, day one, all of that stuff,
whatever, that doesn't matter. If he can
actually get a deal done, if he doesn't
get it done by midterms, he's lost. It's
over. It's finished. Like, he'll be a
lame duck. He'll never be remembered. He
will go out just be absolutely thrashed.
Um, but if he can
actually get in a position where we
bring key manufacturing back to the US,
which I think is critical, if he can set
us up to actually weather a cold war
with China, which I think um I take very
seriously. That's probably the thing I
think about the economy and I think
about us and China. Like,
>> but that doesn't make like you say win a
cold war with China. Did we win the cold
war with the Soviet Union by buckling
down and getting every single thing set
up in the US and abandoning every We
didn't. We were literally couping
governments in South America. We were
literally couping governments from the
Middle East to try to get people on our
side. It was so important.
>> Yeah. But this is where I think you have
to be careful when you look at the past.
You want to understand why it worked at
that time. You don't just want to say
let's do the same thing. We are like AI
is a potential winner take all. So this
is not the one that you can play around
with. game theoretics tells you that
even if we try to chill, regulate, they
won't because if if you can win in any
substantive way, like if you have a
three-month head start or whatever, if
you hit AGI 3 months ahead of the other
side, it's game over.
>> So, um
you need to be in a race and that race
there is going to be born of energy.
It's going to be born of working with
industry. You're going to have to
deregulate some things. Uh, so
>> but then this is where I want all the
other countries to be friends with us.
If you want to come and study in the
United States and both, it should be
easy. It should be like that. The idea
that we're deporting people because and
I'm a big I'm not a big Israel guy, but
I tend to Israel more. But the fact that
we're deporting people based on being in
Palis pro Palestine protests, what like
why are we doing this? Or that we're
attacking Colombia, Harvard, like these
are our shining star or that we're
defunding all the scientific research.
like we it it's not just going to be
private capital that funds, you know,
the expansion in AI. There's a whole
bunch of other research, a whole bunch
of other like bright minds that we need
to bring here. And
>> you're talking at the university level.
>> Yeah. That like they there's a lot of
starting points there that can branch
off into other stuff that's important
and even just having those people in the
country.
>> So part of the disconnect here might be
that when I looked at the Biden
government, I did not trust them to get
anything done. like from a PR
perspective, they were, if you take me
as a uh constituency, I was mortified.
They either didn't notice that he was
scenile or didn't care that he was
scenile. Uh the people behind the
scenes, if Jake Tapper can be believed,
uh refer to themselves as the Plet
Bureau. When I hear things like that and
I see them skip a primary and I already
get massive authoritarian vibes with all
the censorship and all of that and then
the voice that has gotten the most
attention, I have no idea how you feel.
Uh but the voice that has gotten the
most attention on their side in the last
couple of months is Mom Donnie uh who's
literally just socialist. And um that
leaves me going, okay, well that feels
like the direction of that party. That's
I'm not expecting them to um be the
people to get us through a cold war with
China. So
>> I mean I guess I like that is a
perspective that you could have, but
then it comes down to the factual
analysis. Like I could if we were to
have an argument over who is Morsena, I
could give you so much more evidence for
Trump now than Biden. You really would
be the easiest argument.
>> This is the one where now I'm going to
say I don't believe you.
>> That's fine. The only thing that you can
give me from Biden is he sucks at
speaking and he got a lot slower in
debates. Like for Donald Trump, like I
can show you like we can watch him sign
executive orders. He he talked about the
auto so much. He doesn't even know what
he's signing. And on TV there's a guy
handing him a thing and he's like, "And
what is this?" And the guy's like, "This
is the order that you wanted, Mr.
President, in order to crack on this."
And I can show you video after video.
>> Okay, but hold on really fast because I
you've always been a person who really
says what they think even when it costs
you. So if if this is the take, it it is
uh interesting how we can look at the
same thing and see something so
different. So you really believe side by
side Trump is um way deeper in decline
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>> Um,
when you say decline, it's a comparative
analysis, which is harder. I think that
Trump's baseline for how he presented
himself intelligently, I firmly believe
that in term one, he thought that
stealth planes were invisible, like like
Wonder Woman's jet. So for that guy, is
he has he declined more? I don't know.
If you're going from 100 IQ to 85 IQ,
theoretically, that's a less significant
decline than 160 to 120, but at the end
of the day, you still want the 120 guy,
right? Trump is presents himself, there
are worse words that I could say, but we
can go through meeting after meeting
after meeting. We can go through event
after event after event that Biden would
have never like he makes dumb gas
sometimes when he speaks. But like
Donald Trump speaking to the South
African president, we he sat there with
him for 10 minutes and watched a a
Twitter video compilation on on genocide
in South Africa. He was asked a question
about and Trump doesn't know this
because he doesn't know anything which
is an easy way for him to hide his
celility about the uh the ICJ's case uh
in South Africa's involvement. Trump
doesn't know that when you talk about
the genocide case for Israel and Gaza
that was brought to the International
Court of Justice by South Africa. Trump
didn't know that and even when they said
ICJ and Trump was like ICJ the South
African president because everybody's
probably been coached. You have to make
Trump feel like he's not a [ __ ]
[ __ ] when you're next to him. He he
quickly interjects ah the international
criminal justice and then Trump's like
oh yeah and if you listen to Trump ask
answer that question anybody's free to
go back. He has no idea. He's
freeballing. He's like they you know we
it's a tough ruling and we hope that
what he had no clue that this is about
Israel and Gaza. If Biden would have
made that same gaff we'd be talking
about it for two weeks. But instead,
Trump can do gaff after gaff after gaff
and it's funny and it's um it's uh a
affable. Is that the word? Like it's
just like funny and mimi and joking and
that's it. But like he was arguing with
Zalinsky that uh the Crimea was invaded.
I think he said 2015 instead of 2014. He
didn't know the dates on that. We've got
Steve Whiter envoys in front of Tucker
Carlson doesn't even know the names of
the regions in Ukraine that were
contested and now he's our lead envoy.
Like it's a joke. Like I can ask you
like this is a challenge I've issued to
conservatives. I can continue to issue
it. Can you give me a single clip or
said a single speech where Trump seems
like he's speaking about something that
he like knows anything about like he's
like actually coherent about it? You
can't. There's not a single thing. So
then when the question is like can you
show more decline between him and Biden?
It's hard because Biden knows a lot
about government and how things work and
foreign policy and everything else and
like he definitely got slower speaking.
But if I look at the output of that
government in terms of legislation, in
terms of relationship with other
countries around the world and I compare
it to Trump, Trump loses that 10 out of
10 times. We can go through any metric,
any arena, but like all we have is like
Biden had a really bad debate
performance, but like what did Trump say
in that debate? He just repeated the
same stupid slogans verbatim and said
nothing of substance as well.
>> It's interesting. I didn't think that
Trump did well in that debate, but um
and listen, frame of reference is is
everything. And I get that two people
can look at the same thing and see
something very different, but um
>> man, that the once I started paying
attention to Biden, I was legitimately
like this is crazy. It was it for my
money, it is the craziest thing I've
ever seen in politics. I was like,
>> do you think that Trump truthing out
that he's mad that Putin isn't listening
to him and he feels like he got
>> he pulled a fast one from him? That
doesn't make you cringe. That's not like
what is this guy saying? Like obviously
Putin is not being forward with you.
That's not like a what the [ __ ] moment.
>> It does make me cringe, but it's not
like
>> when he's truththing out Israel, you
need to turn those planes back right
now. Don't bomb Iran again. Like that's
not like a
>> No, there there's an element of Trump
doing everything out in the open that I
think is awesome. I love being able to
see it now. The fact that
>> But it's stupid. I'm not talking about
it being out in the open.
>> Now, is this for you like you want
people to be presidential or
>> No, he's No, no, this is stupid to say
that I can't believe Putin lied to me.
The whole world is looking at you like
you're an idiot or to say like Israel,
you need to turn those planes back right
now. Like what the This isn't like out
in the open. He's just an idiot. He
doesn't know.
>> That's so Hey, fair enough, man. You're
super bright. Can you is there a single
issue that you've heard him talk about
like oh he's making a lot of sense there
>> yes many many times so it's I mean I
would have to go
>> when he talks about cyber or when he
talks about AI or crypto or like he
knows nothing about any of these things
right
>> when he talks about how to get things
done when he talks about the um
understanding like okay we've got
China's going to be a problem we've got
to bring back some of our manufacturing
like there are a lot of these issues
that um I feel like when you watch He's
not an eloquent speaker, but he gets the
gist. He's down in the weeds. Like he
understands like what things are in
play. And I guess because I'll forget
like the name every now and then I'll be
like, "Wait, what the [ __ ] is that
word?" So it's like I don't look at that
stuff and go, "Okay, hold on a second.
This is somebody else."
>> But even if you're looking at China,
Biden got us the chips act, which
actually like served as a massive
investment into
>> full disclosure, I don't think Biden got
us anything. That's my mental map. My
mental map is this is all politics.
>> That's fine. whoever was running the
government behind Biden. Then
>> what I'm saying is my whole beef is that
guy wasn't really that guy. Okay.
>> Now that I think from historical
conversations that's never bothered you,
>> but that bothers me a lot. Now I
>> So what do you think for Trump when
Trump has presented executive orders to
sign that he's clearly never seen
before? What does that make you feel?
>> So I have a guess. Obviously I know
nothing that isn't publicly available.
My instinct is that he's sitting down
with whoever his top advisers are and
he's saying, okay, I want to put some
together like this. I want it to be like
this. Cool. Get it. And then they'll
bring it. He's done so many of these
damn things that it's like the person's
reminding him, here are all the key
things that you had agreed to. And he
knows if this guy's bringing it to me,
this is obviously what I agreed to
previously. Cool. Sign it. Because as a
CEO, I do that kind of stuff all the
time, especially when I had 3,000
employees. Dude, you've got like, okay,
I there's a small handful of people that
I trust. We had a meeting about this a
week ago. I don't remember the
specifics, but it's like these were the
things that we agreed on. And I would
ask them, are these the things that I
specifically say? Yes, it is. Cool.
>> But you would have that you would never
have that conversation in front of your
opposition that you're signing the
contract with. You would never go to a
meeting with another guy and you're
like, "What was this again?" Like,
>> you don't like that? Cuz I I don't know
if I like it just because it's good
content or if I actually think it's
good. Admittedly, this might be terrible
for the country, but I love that I'm
able to see how this all works. Now,
keep in mind, I am wildly
disillusioned by politicians as a class,
okay? I think they are universal liars.
I think the odds of Trump being on the
Epstein list borders on 100%. Okay?
>> Uh like I people are always confused
because they think that I'm going to bat
for Trump. I'm trying to describe what I
see. Okay? So, I see somebody who um I
just assume he's a liar, but when I look
at the way that he deals on an
international stage, I think he's
somebody that he's not for play. Say
what you will, but like he once he
thinks, hey, this is the way that I
think it should be done. He's going to
see that through. You were certainly not
going to be able to push Trump around.
He's never going to be able to play the
um oh, I I you know, Netanyahu told me
and I just felt like like that's not
him.
>> But that's that's literally him, though.
This is the biggest as a pro- Israel
guy. He's the biggest Israeli dick site.
He's the only guy him and Netanyahu that
are pushing me towards like pro
Palestinian rhetoric on Twitter. He does
anything Netanyahu tells him to do.
>> But do you think he has reasons? Like
I've heard you say um
>> someone can act rationally towards an
immoral end.
>> Sure.
>> And I was like yeah that makes sense.
Now people don't like that but
nonetheless I would say that's true.
>> I think his reason is just that old
people in this country like Israel
because they grew up Israel had a cool
story growing up. if you're an older
person and he likes Israel and the voter
base like likes Israel and that's it. So
whatever Netanyahu says he's like okay.
>> Yeah. So he's pursuing his interest.
He's not doing it because he's weak or
that uh Netanyahu is pushing him around.
He's running some algorithm in his brain
that says this is a cool guy that I
really want to help and he really wants
to do it and so he really does it. I'm
just saying Trump isn't the guy that
like you're going to be able to push
around. So part of my beef like
>> well but like but if Nanyahu wanted to
push further he could and Trump wouldn't
be able to stop him because Trump is too
Trump can be played by any world leader.
Do you like you agree that every world
leader looks at Trump like a buffoon
waiting to be played egotistically
right? I think everybody has a strategy
for dealing with
>> Trump for sure and the strategy is just
their way. Probably not.
>> Like the root the is it Route guy? The
guy who used to be in um he used to be I
don't know if he's a prime minister in
the Netherlands who's like does the NATO
stuff now? Like when you look at him
talk to Trump it looks like you're
talking to um uh you ever watch Game of
Thrones?
>> Yeah.
>> Jeff Jeffrey Joffrey Joffrey, right?
He's like, "Oh, President Trump, you're
such a great guy and you were so smart
when you did this." And it's like
endless flattery because that's
>> okay. But like it's like listen,
>> you saw Zilinski tweet out 2 days ago
like we're so grateful that the United
States tells you that of course this is
how it's going to be. You
>> Well, but it's but it's sad because it's
showing you that this works for on our
world on our president that
>> it works on everybody.
>> Absolutely not.
>> The what
>> do you think there's any amount of
flattery that Putin could have done to
get like Hillary?
>> It's not always going to be flattery.
It's always going to be a thing.
>> Oh, sure. But I want the thing to be
there's good things and there's bad
things. Like if if my interest is um if
I'm negotiating on behalf of my wife for
a contract, like the way that I get this
guy is I'm going to do a lot of good
things for his wife's uh business or
whatever. Okay, that's fine. That's
good. But if my thing is like I like to
see children suffer and you're like I'm
going to give him a lot of videos of
children dying. Yeah, there's a way to
play the game, but I don't want you to
have to play the game like that's not
good.
>> The bad news. I really believe that's
how the game is played.
>> Sure. But it depends on who you're
trying to
>> who's the leader that we should admire.
who I think that I think that history
will look finally on Biden's presidency
as a shining star in the middle and
sandwiched between two unbelievably
crazy
>> Can you give me somebody else?
>> Um I think that the advancement of the
ACA under Obama and the the Iranian
nuclear deal. Yeah.
>> G give me a a leader like a person male
female like Obama.
>> Uh I mean there are things I like and
don't like about him.
>> Okay. But seems fair.
>> It's hard to say. I don't know if I'm a
big like here's a shining star person
like
>> this is my whole point because even if I
tried to give you I mean for me Nelson
Mandela is about as close as you're
going to get. Maybe I haven't looked
closely enough. Maybe there really is an
underside. I know he's I think he was
unfaithful on his wife. But anyway, I'm
I'm sure there's something bad. But holy
hell, that man acted in a way that
absolutely blows me away.
>> Uh I used to really
like Lincoln was my jam. And then the
more you learn about the Civil War, the
more you realize he actually said the
words, uh, if I could hold the Union
together without freeing a single slave,
I would. It's like, oh god. So, uh, I
think that most people aren't going to
be a shining star. So, all I'm saying is
Trump is a [ __ ] mess. A mess. And I
>> just because there's not a shining star
though, I I can still speak in in with
some granularity.
My parents are not perfect, but they're
not Hitler, right? And they're like, we
can speak with granularity, right? I
think Trump is overwhelmingly bad across
almost every domain we look. We've
talked about a lot of them today. It's
very hard for me to find any pro like if
you had to name one.
>> He's a populist leader.
>> Yeah. But if you like what is the best
thing that he's done over the past like
his presidential term right now?
>> He is on an international basis drawing
a line and making sure that everybody
understands that if he uh makes a
threat, he's going to back it up.
>> But he hasn't. That's not true though.
>> That is true.
>> We didn't invade Greenland. We didn't
invade Panland. uh um the Panama Canal.
We didn't go to war and start taking
territory from Canada.
>> Didn't say he was going to invade
Greenland. He said some unhinged [ __ ]
Trust me. Okay. The 51st state stuff I
hated. Wished he had stopped the
Greenland thing. I was like, why is he
bothering?
>> He's going back and forth on terrorists
a ton.
>> But are you saying like are we in taco
territory here? Like he literally just
dismantled the Iranian nuclear sites.
Whether you wish he would or not. He
said he was going to do it. He did it.
Uh the tariff thing, he puts tariffs on.
did that after Israel failed to do it,
right? Netanyahu asked him to do it and
said he had to and then he did it,
right? Cuz because Israel wasn't able
to.
>> But but even that's just an extension of
the failed the fact that we abandoned
the nuclear deal that we had before
under Obama because Trump just left.
>> But you're asking me why I what things
he's doing that I think are effective.
And I think
>> the mission was cool. I thought it was
cool. And I'm not a favor. I'm not a fan
of Iran having a nuclear weapon.
>> Sure.
>> That makes two of us. So uh on top of
that, he's obviously not uh he's
>> he's not suicidal. So he puts the
tariffs on China and then he is wise
enough to take them back off, but he is
unafraid to do very aggressive, very um
unconventional things. Now, I don't know
if they're going to work and so it's
entirely possible that this plays out
terribly.
>> Hold I don't understand this this I
don't understand this heristic. Okay, I
can think of a lot of people. We could
go down to any prison and find a lot of
guys who are unafraid to do, you know,
huge actions and that they pursue.
>> They're not gonna I mean, so you map him
as somebody that that world leaders
don't take seriously behind the scenes.
And I disagree if you're right and
they're all just like gawing themselves
and they're besides themselves laughing
their asses off. Uh
>> which they've been caught doing on
camera when Trudeau and others at the I
think back in his first term were
>> in his first term. I think that I I
won't even comment on first term.
>> Okay. Uh I'm talking this term now he
comes across to me as somebody who is um
making huge mistakes in the economy. So
I I because I know that people think
that I am defending him. I just don't
think that he is uh all bad and no good.
I
>> I I'm curious because when I would say
like nobody's taking me seriously around
the world, what I would point to is the
lack of any worked out trade deals. I
would point to the things everybody's
saying obviously about him. I would
point to his lack of ability to enforce
anything when it comes to conflict. So
Hamas and Russia are two great examples.
So I I don't know when we say there's
respect around the world for him, who
respects him in what way? Like what's
like a measurable way? What could I look
at if I was looking for a KPI on Trump
respect? Like what's the thing that I
would look at where oh these guys
respect Trump?
>> Yeah. So on the economic front, you're
going to have to see um what plays out
in the long run. But right now, I'd say
we're ahead on tariffs. So we've
collected over hundred billion dollars
in tariff revenue. I was like, that's
just so we just taxed our citizens $100
billion, I guess.
>> Well, that's one way to look at it, but
you just generated revenue that you
otherwise wouldn't have generated and
prices didn't go up in any meaningful
way. So, and I would say that we're very
early in the negotiations. He foolishly
said he was going to have this done in
90 days. It was [ __ ] stupid that this
is an 18-month endeavor. Period. Full
stop. End of story. Uh, it probably
would take even longer than that, but he
can't. He can't afford it. if he doesn't
make it to the midterms, he will lose on
that alone. And so to me, this has
always been a game of chicken. He's
playing a game of chicken. Cool. Like,
let's give it a shot. Let's see what
happens. Uh, he closed the border.
>> Yay. To me, which we touched on it a
little bit, I feel very strongly that
America over the next 10 years is going
to have to decide what its values are.
Uh, or because of the economically
fragile situation that we're in, we will
fall apart. So like when I start talking
about the next 10 years, I have an image
in my mind of America becoming
Argentina. And so I don't know if we
share that sense of like how much this
matters. And so the fact that somebody
at some point has to like stop certain
things, but once he signed the big
beautiful bill, I was like, well, okay,
I'm not sure that this could possibly
play out well at this point. So we'll
see. But the the things that I look at
and I go, these are the positive things.
drawing lines, enforcing boundaries,
putting up borders, like that had to be
done. Now, this comes down to where you
and I look at the same thing and we end
up with these really different
conclusions cuz I'm like, um, we really
have to balance the budget. Like, we
have to balance the budget. And some of
that is going to be the increasing of
the taxes for sure, but some of that is
going to be austerity. Some of that is
going to be, yeah, you're going to have
to retire later. some of that is going
to be there. Uh you're going to have to
qualify for some of the um entitlements
and it just I'm not gleeful about it. It
just is what it is. Like the reality
money has physics and so we are headed
towards a cliff.
>> Okay. I guess um
so what are your predictions I guess on
the way to midterms? What do you think
is going to happen when you look at the
country and things that will happen? 60%
chance that he has cocked everything up
and um alienates allies. They drag their
feet enough because they're not dumb.
They know we're going into midterms. Um
he's not able to get the economy going
and uh people just go, "Yeah, they got
to go." And he loses the house and it's
game over. As a guy who's like tech
invested, does the massive Trump
Melaniacoin scam stuff bother you at all
or Okay, because that's another thing
where I feel like if Biden had a
cryptocurrency where he could take
anonymous donations and nobody
>> Oh, it's so gnarly.
>> All right. Does the targeting of people
with executive orders and announcing
investigations and people he just
doesn't like for no clear reason? Does
that
>> is that like a signal?
>> Yes.
>> Okay.
>> Like this stuff is nuts to me.
>> Okay.
>> If people try to map me as somebody
who's like, "But Trump is amazing."
They're going to be
>> that the thing I'm hitting on is not
that is that I think there's a
meaningful difference between the prior
administration like they'll say lawfare
and then the example will be like the
Mara Lago Trump case where he's
literally on camera saying I should have
declassified these but I didn't here
they are and then they'll compare that
and say well you know both sides do it
and then I look at the Republican side
and we had four or five years of an
investigation into Hunter Biden that
turned out nothing except for him lying
on a 4473 about being high when he
bought a gun. That was what that whole
thing turned out. And the initial
informant that alleged all the Berezema
stuff lied to the FBI and he said as
much and he's convicted for it now. So
it's like when I look at the two sides
and now Trump is writing executive
orders saying I'm going after this law
firm because they helped Hillary Clinton
and that's it. It's just like open and
blatant. I just I I guess I'm
uncomfortable with the comparison of
like oh both sides are corrupt. And it's
like if if the Biden administration was
even remotely similar to the Trump
lawfare stuff, Trump would have been in
jail a long time. We would have had four
years of
>> Garland. I think this comes down to like
what are the things that we fear have
the biggest negative consequences. So
when I think about the um the Democratic
party and where it was headed at the
time that we were casting votes and I
worry that it's actually even getting
worse now, but maybe I'm wrong. Uh they
were actively censoring people, which is
like if you want to put me into the red
immediately, like that's one that puts
me in the red.
>> Okay. But like so the worst year for
censorship was 2020. That was under
Trump. After like once Biden came into
office, a lot of those policies by
corporations started to turn around.
Facebook eased up on a lot of [ __ ]
YouTube got rid of the hardcore
restrictions and instead just would put
like a note or whatever. Affirmative
action went away from the Supreme Court.
>> Those guys can be believed. They were
coming from the departments that sure
Trump was overseeing, but they were
coming from those departments requesting
the censorship. But once it got to
Biden, it was like the Biden White House
was directly calling them. Uh, so
>> the Biden White House from, if we are to
believe the Twitter files, the only
things that were ever requested by that
White House be taken down were pictures
of Hunter Biden's [ __ ] There was the
only time I saw something come directly
from the White House that was on a
politically related speech was when um I
don't remember her name, but some lady
made fun of Trump and he said he wanted
that tweet taken down and Twitter didn't
act on it cuz they're like, "This is
dumb." You know the way you felt when I
was talking about the economy and you're
like if I just do a little bit of
research I would love to deep dive on
any of these topics but this is how I
feel because like even if you look at
like Tyy's posted tweets when it came to
like the Hunter Biden laptop story like
Tybee said there was no evidence of FBI
intrusion on any of the talk at Twitter
about whether or not to censor the
story.
>> Yeah. But you can we agree that there
was uh a excessive amount of
right-leaning content that was being
censored, silenced, made to sound crazy
during the Biden administration.
>> Yeah. And a lot of people that die of
cancer were also in like a radiology
department getting chemotherapy or
whatever. Like yeah, but like
conservatives push like I'm sorry but
like they most conservatives in this
country still believe the 2020 election
was rigged. Uh they believe
>> but they should be able to say that
>> that's well you can argue
>> whether they're crazy or not. That's
irrelevant. This is what I'm saying. You
got to protect yourself against that.
You've got to let people say the crazy
[ __ ]
>> That doesn't work though. And you would
never give that advice in any other if
somebody came to you.
>> Have you seen your Twitter feed?
>> Sure.
>> You say the craziest [ __ ]
>> I don't Hold on. We're talking about
meaningfully different things. If
somebody wants to say crazy [ __ ] that's
different than just pushing a lie. If I
want to say something crazy that's like
like
>> But if they believe it, are you fine
with it?
>> Well, I think that the question that we
have to ask is like where are the
boundaries of this? Because in my
opinion, that's the most that more than
inflation, more than the trade deficit,
more than anything else. Our inability
to agree on one reality, I think is the
number one hurtful thing to this country
at the moment. We live in completely
separate worlds. It's bad.
>> Yeah. But like on for Care County, the
people that um just recently had the
flood, for instance, you can go back
three years and the all of the
transcripts are there. You can watch on
the video. These guys have $5 million of
funds that are sitting in a bank account
from the American Rescue Plan. And none
of these citizens, they're going up
giving testimony over and over again. I
don't want to spend this money because
if we do, Biden is going to steal our
homes. I don't want to spend this money
because if we do, he's going to force us
to get vaccinated. I don't want like And
it's like insane. And to say that, well,
if we just have even more people on
Facebook and Twitter saying crazy [ __ ]
that'll fix it. Like, there's no other
world where we would apply that heristic
ever. You've never ever ever been
getting conflicting advice from two
people on how to like run your business
and you're like, if I just bring in like
a hundred random [ __ ] people and have
them say whatever, maybe the truth will
rise without you. Never ever do that.
>> The the Here's where I come down on all
of that.
>> Sure. Um, I I am willing to live in the
world, whatever comes of it, where
anybody can say what they want. I like
the Supreme Court ruling so far. Let's
keep it that. No direct calls for
violence, that kind of stuff. Um, and
yeah, that it's going to put onus on
people to triangulate what's really
true. Um, it's going to let some people
get rich saying the most hateful [ __ ]
ever. Uh, it is what it is and I
understand that it forces the two sides
to battle their ideas, but I I have no
interest in living in a world where I'm
not allowed to say what I believe to be
true. That somebody else got to tell me
what's true. Uh, that that is quite
honestly, it's what I call uh a second
amendment problem because that's where
I'm like, "Oh, that one I'd actually
fight for." So that's the degree to
which um I have bought into the idea
that that is tyrannical and you've got
to fight back against tyranny. So that
one is and look that's me and I'm not
going to be out here in the streets
trying to get people to join in arms
with me. But that one is I really
believe innovation is a promise of a
better tomorrow. we should want people
to innovate but to innovate you have to
like clumsily fumble through bad
assumptions and like I think it's this
but you end up being wrong but if people
can stop you from pursuing that thinking
those ideas talking about them um then
you get semolise and for anybody that
doesn't know he's a Hungarian doctor who
was in a hospital where uh one hospital
had five times the death rate of the
other and he's like there's got to be
we're in the same building like what's
going on and uh he goes, "I think it's
because these guys aren't washing their
hands after they do an autopsy and then
they're giving birth and the mothers are
dying of um bed death or whatever they
call it." And so he comes up with a
concoction that we would now call a
sanitizing solution and he forces
himself and the other doctors to wash
their hands and he just absolutely
obliterates the death rate on his side.
He tells everybody this is what it is.
It's now known as germ theory. Nobody
believed him. Uh they mocked him, kicked
him out of his profession. he can no
longer be a doctor, dies alone in an
insane asylum because they literally
driven him crazy. And I'm like, that's
what happens when your colleagues turn
against you. It's a thousand times worse
when the state says, "No, you can't say
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And now, let's get back to the show.
Okay, like I it doesn't have to come
from the state, but I know that our
current system right now for social
media is not working. We believe in the
craziest stuff than we've ever believed
in in the history of all of uh my
lifetime, at least in the United States,
if not longer. We've got kids dying of
measles for literally no reason now in
the US and people not trusting like so
many different institutions or layers of
government or layers of research or
layers of whatever just because of crazy
stuff on social media. And it's
definitely not getting any better. You
think that doing a top down thing is the
right way or do we rebuild institutions
that we find a way for them to sit
outside of the I got to get clicks cess
poolool of it all?
>> No. Right now the institutions have to
go into that cesspool because they can't
defend themselves on numbers alone
because people just lie about the
numbers. Look at RFK Jr. This guy
doesn't believe in in half the [ __ ]
that's been validated by medical science
and he's now put like these frauds like
Dr. for Robert Malone on these boards
and kicked out everybody else to to come
and do whatever crazy [ __ ] he wants to
do with our medical system in the United
States. But like what like what is like
it's not enough actually that's been one
of my biggest complaints is it's not
enough for the scientific institutions
to sit on the sidelines now. They need
to start actively participating more. We
need to see more of them, I guess, going
on Joe Rogan and [ __ ] because otherwise
these crackpots just go up in a
completely unchallenged way and then
this stuff becomes believed by the
majority of Americans and that the more
free speech is not making anybody
understand anything any better. I guess
>> uh
>> I'm not saying it necessarily has to be
like like the government has to make a
law saying no more lying. I'm just
saying at the very least I wish
culturally we pushed like there's a
reason like once you get out of the
social media fantasy land you talked
about entrepreneurs. There is no world
where an entrepreneur, you know, goes
into a room and he's like, I want a 100
people to scream at me all of your ideas
and the best one will float to the
surface. He's going to people with track
records. He's going to people with
histories of being successful. He's
going to people that are expertise in
the industry. He's looking for
gatekeepers, right? Because when you're
an entrepreneur, you've got limited time
and limited capital. You can't just
invest in everything and see what works.
>> I'll say that isn't what I do. Um, so
the way that I do it, and take me as but
one. Uh, the way that I do it is I go
way way way way way out of my way to
make sure that everybody in the company
knows that if you think you have a
better idea, if you think I'm doing
something wrong, we have a systems
called dots and you can give me or
anybody else in the company and anybody
can give you dots on like 34 different
criteria. So, if you think that um I
have a strategic idea that's absolutely
terrible, you can go give me a one. This
is terrible. You can leave me a reason
why you think it's terrible.
>> Sure. Uh, and
>> but to be clear though, there's already
a huge selection filter there, which is
employees at your company.
>> Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And so, but I use
the same internet that everybody else
uses. I've got all the same madmen
screaming at me. But, uh, I have a very
simple algorithm that I run, which is
something has to have predictive
validity. And so, I'm going to try to
triangulate this through other people
that I think are looking at the problem
sincerely. But ultimately, my job isn't
to pair it back what they say. My job is
to figure out if what the what
conclusion they've come to actually has
a chain of logic. And once I can follow
the chain of logic, then I'm like, cool,
I can deploy this. Now, I I understand
that um interest and intellect are both
bell curves. And so, a lot of people,
they're just they're too busy. They're
trying to love their kids and enjoy
themselves and they don't have time to
like go deep on all this stuff. I
totally understand that. And I love the
idea of having institutions that have
earned our credibility, but they have to
earn our credibility. And it has to be
from the bottom up.
>> They absolutely have.
>> You want evidence of it? All of these
conservatives that didn't believe in the
vaccines or thought mRNA was poisonous,
all this stuff. Look at how look how
many pounds Alex Jones has lost because
of big pharma and ompic, right? All of
these people that didn't trust any of
that uh around co time are now thirsting
for for ampic because it's something
that's more up their alley of interest
and more something that they can
directly see.
>> Right. But are you saying that we
haven't ever had uh we haven't been lied
to about a drug or like I'll give you an
example that
>> it doesn't matter what the example is.
Okay.
>> The idea that you see one bad thing and
then you jump immediately.
>> Is that what you think? We've seen one
bad thing.
>> I'm saying that that I'm saying that it
doesn't matter how many mistakes on the
aggregate our pharmaceutical industry
has made. It is as a whole more
trustworthy than Alex Jones. Even if you
point out 10 big mistakes.
>> Yeah. Him I'll agree with. Why wouldn't
you want people uh even if you get Alex
Joneses, don't you want people to be
able to speak up and say what they think
is true?
>> I I want people to have arguments over
meaningful stuff that can produce
meaningful outcomes. But you know that
unless you put unless someone becomes
the gatekeeper of who gets to talk that
you're going to have a lot of people
saying a lot of crazy ass [ __ ] and
somebody I think push it down to the
individual. the individual has to decide
who they're going to listen to. And if
people are sucked into Jones's like
crazy world, then that's on them and
they're on a dead end and they're not
going to be able to innovate or do
things because they believe things that
are just not true. And
>> yeah, I guess it's just there's just
this infinite availability doesn't work
in any other part of our lives. We
gatekeep everything for good reason. We
don't make heroin available to 18y olds.
We don't make pornography available to
5-year-olds. foundationally to the
country. We said, "Hey, there's this one
thing, freedom of speech, that's so
important because it's basically freedom
to think and it's freedom to like say a
thing and have your ideas challenged and
to get smarter because somebody tells
you that's really stupid." But if you
couldn't even say it out loud, you'd
never be able to sharpen the idea. And I
get it. When you give that tool to
everybody, especially with social media,
you get a whole lot of people saying a
whole lot of crazy [ __ ] But dude, I
don't know about you, but I feel like I
am able to learn so much faster now than
I've ever been because there's so much
information and there's so many amazing
people that put their stuff out. I
consider you to be pretty intelligent. I
consider myself to be pretty
intelligent. I think that the chasm that
we have between our understanding of the
world is really problematic. I think
that for somebody that I consider to be
very intelligent and I consider myself
to be pretty intelligent. I feel like
our arguments should be way more like we
agree on level 1 2 3 4 and five and
we're like really fighting on level six
but we disagree on like level one or
two. And I don't know how a system that
produces stuff like that um not to uh be
too um not not to you know blow my own
ego up too much or or your head up too
much that if we have diametrically
opposed beliefs on everything despite
agreeing conceptually on some you know
like epistemic heristic grounds or
whatever. The average person is not
going to spend any amount of time
reading about anything related to
anything because most people just want
to you know you work your job you go
home you have fun and then maybe you
like listen to some stuff on the side.
Let me try an idea. You tell me if this
makes things worse or makes things
better.
>> I think a big part of the reason that
people disagree is not because of social
media. It is because we do not perceive
the world as it actually is.
>> That we don't have the receptors for it.
We see 0.0035%
of the electromagnetic spectrum. Uh
there's a big blind spot in the middle
of both of our eyes where the optic
nerve connects, but we don't see it. Uh
color doesn't exist in the world. Is our
brain interpreting it? Uh, anybody
that's ever seen a optical illusion
understands that your brain is
constructing the reality, not your eyes.
So, uh, the matrix is probably not
literally real, but your brain is
constructing a matrix for you. You're
not seeing objective reality. Objective
reality is the number of photons in a
given wavelength that are bouncing off
of you and hitting my eye. But I don't
count photons. I don't see wavelength.
my brain just aggregates all that
information, condenses it down in the
most aggressive way possible, and hands
me this thing that I think is the real
world.
>> Now, given that all of this stuff are
like these insane shortcuts, what ends
up happening is um because none of us
actually see the world the way that it
is, we're all going to see like these
slight changes, slight variations. And
then on top of that, we then do an
interpretation of this already
ridiculously crushed down reality. So,
it's almost a miracle that we can get as
close to each other as we can.
>> I think we we I think we used to be a
lot closer. I guess the issue is that um
like more if you step outside of the
social media world, there's no part of
life, I think, where we say more voices
are better. I think we always gravitate
towards expertise voices and we would
hope that there is a system that is
producing those good expertised voices
and that system is not random people or
bots screaming at each other on social
media. That's not where any of the
innovation has come from. That's not
where any of our successful
entrepreneurs have come from where some
guy was arguing on Twitter and then
Mecca Hitler told him that actually the
Holocaust wasn't real and he's like, you
know what, god damn it, I'm going to
create a new electro spinography gram
technology and do like it's just Yeah. I
don't know. Like
>> do you think this will be innovated away
or do you think this is just sorry tough
break?
>> Um I mean like the the optimistic way to
look at it that I've heard said but I
haven't dug enough to know is that like
every time a new form of information
distribution, the printing press, the
radio, the TV comes out, it's always
crazy in the beginning and then it kind
of gets honed in. So maybe we're some
years from as bad as all the bots and
everything are, maybe some AI thing is
able to hone in a lot of that bad stuff.
But the thing that we are not willing to
accept as people because we so identify
with our opinions and our brains is we
are not willing to accept a reality that
our brain might not be suitably evolved
to navigate some information
environment. We accept it in every other
environment. For instance, we would say
that um giving humans like nine sugary
items to choose from and one healthy
item to choose from. If you do that, the
vast majority of people will end up fat.
Period. Um, most people accept that that
limiting choices to some regards in in
that way is good, right? That's why
conservatives are trying to ban porn and
abortion everywhere, right? Um, if you
but but if but it could be that a human
given an unlimited inflow of information
actually doesn't have the algorithms
because like you said, we're not
designed to see absolute truth. We're
designed to survive and make babies.
That's at the end of the day. That's all
we do. Now, generally, knowing what's
real and true helps us do that. But um
in the cases where we've divorced
ourselves or removed ourselves from the
ability um to see the direct
consequences of believing crazy stuff
and there's no corrective mechanism uh I
don't know it's just hard to I guess
it's hard to fight for the idea that
maybe there should be some restriction
on social media because it requires
people to make this admission that maybe
I can't look at an unlimited amount of
information and arrive at what is true
or real without some kind of external
guidance.
>> All right. Uh, I would be remiss if I
didn't ask you about Israel. So, there
is a deep dive that I can feel that I'm
going to have to do because I feel so,
uh, outside of whatever this thing is
that's happening right now. So, um, tell
me if you agree with this statement.
Uh,
Israel and Jews are separate. you can
dislike Israel and not be an
anti-semite.
Um,
but there is a rise of anti-semitism.
So, in addition to the number of people
that are unhappy with Israel, I think
there's just a weird like pop in uh
anti-semitism.
Do we agree so far or am I already off
base?
>> I think we agree so far. Like you can be
anti-Israel without being anti- um Jew.
That is strictly speaking true, but
oftentimes the crossover is so high that
the difference is either imperceptible
or meaningless, but I I agree in theory
that that's possible. Yeah.
>> Okay. Um,
do you have a sense of what is going on?
Like the uh obviously I'm sort of
tangentially aware at the headline level
of like Jews control everything, which
where I'm at today just strikes me as
patently absurd. Uh, because of my
obsession with economies. I've read a
lot about the Rothschild banking empire.
Uh, and that just feels so like
straightforward. Like there's nothing
crazy. Like you read it and you're like,
I get how this gets twisted into
something. But like the cold reality of
however many like a thousand pages of
this, you're just like, look, it was
just family. They did weird [ __ ] and
they did interbreed and that is weird,
but by today's standards. Um, but like
what's actually happening? What's going
on? Have your opinions changed on
Israel? like are you moving based on
what's going
>> more like explicitly like
>> um I want you to orient me to what's
happening right now in culture with
Israel and anti-semitism. That's really
what like this I'm asking you to do me a
favor cuz I don't I don't even know what
string to start pulling on.
>> Um well I'm going to these are takes
that literally nobody else will give you
so I'm completely alone on this. So what
it is is what it is. Um, I think that
people assume that Israel was very good
at propaganda and making people kind of
fall in line with the things that they
believe when in reality Israel has
sucked at that horribly. It's just the
founding of Israel was an inspiring
story. Liter it like legitimately was.
It was cold wartime. The Soviet Union
was backing a lot of the Arab states,
you know, eventually. And people think
that we backed Israel from the
beginning. We didn't. It was like 73 is
when we really started backing Israel.
But like they fought wars against all of
these surrounding Arab states. Um in the
beginning of Israel, a lot of the
immigrants there were um Europeans. Now
later on it was a lot more Middle
Easterners. So we look at them so they
kind of look like us. They have a
similar value system. They're alone in
the Middle East fighting all these other
states. Um we just kind of like like
them because of that reason. And then as
time has gone on um older generations
still kind of harbor that goodwill
towards Israel, but it is not a thing
that Israel worked at explicitly. And
now we're in this world where
everybody's saying like Israel did
propaganda in the past, but they're not.
They suck at propaganda. If you look at
the recent war, the best propaganda
that's been produced for Israel was made
by Hamas. It was that girl, I think, in
the back of the truck, the that they
like that was the most powerful piece of
media that was made. Um, Israel created
like this whole, I think, hour and a
half video about October 7th that they
didn't even show the public. Only
Knesset members and some people that are
allowed into a room can watch it. You
can't copy or take it anywhere. So, as a
result of this, Palestinians have
learned the language of the West really
well and a lot of their propaganda
systems, um, states like Qar that fund a
lot of like foreign education
initiatives and stuff, people have done
a really good job at communicating their
plight to the people in the West and
especially younger people through
platforms like Tik Tok and everything
else. So, there's a lot of sympathy
there. It looks like Israel is
conducting itself like a madman. You
know, Israel's like, we're fighting
against the whole Middle East, but
everybody else today looks at like,
well, it doesn't really look that. It
kind of looks like you're just fighting
against the Palestinians and maybe Iran.
Um so that so as a result of that Israel
looks indefensible. Um people say that
Zionism and Judaism is different but the
reality is like 90% of Jews are in favor
of Israel existing um as a as like a
Jewish protected state. So it it just
Israel just hasn't done itself any
favors. They've done really well at
winning like the ground war and the
immediate regional war and stuff, but
they can't speak the language of the
West at all and they've utterly failed.
And I think as time goes on and the
older generations die off, we'll
probably start to lean away from Israel
unless they relearn how to how to speak,
I guess, our language.
>> What do you think about the Jews control
the world? Like is there are they they
are disproportionately represented in
places like media? Um,
is there anything to them trying to have
this outsized reached in reach in the
world or is that all
>> I mean I think that there are like for a
variety of reasons historically like
Jews being outcast in society having
religious access to certain things that
other people didn't like lending money
with interest um and then they have like
a particular culture of being very
protective like they don't proitize they
don't try to like recruit a bunch of
people they're kind of like very like
inward seeking
>> um and then through a lot of historical
maneuver maneuvering luck, political
mindedness, and military might manage to
have their own country. Um, they look
successful in that regard. There's a lot
of Jewish people because of, I think, a
lot of cultural stuff. They and they
probably favor, you know, their own
people. Everybody does to some extent
whether they, you know, say it or not.
Um, like there are a lot of Jews in
really powerful positions, but I think
that Jewish interest is like very
clearly not aligned anywhere remotely
like people think it is. If you like,
and it's funny, like if you go to
Israel, these [ __ ] hate Jews
that won't live in their country. That's
like the whole point is to come back.
like you have to come back, you need to
make a Leah, you need to come back to
Israel, you need to be a Jew here and we
need to fight for ourselves here. Um,
and the values of people outside of
Israel are quite a bit different. Like
if you go to Israel, most of these
[ __ ] love Donald Trump because
there's a blank check to do anything.
Most Jews in the United States, even in
the last election, like still voted
pretty progressive, like pretty
left-leing because that's like the
culture of Jewish people here. So this
idea that like like there are a lot of
Jews in high positions. They definitely
don't have any cohesive like plan to
control anything because if they did we
would have seen a lot of stuff with the
most recent war go a lot differently and
it didn't.
>> What do you think about Apac? An undo
amount of money, undo influence.
>> Um I don't know. I like the problem when
it comes to like lobbying stuff. I have
again I have really unpopular takes on
this. I think lobbying is way way way
less influential than a lot of people
say that it is. Um generally generally
when people are giving money to
politicians it's people that they
already support that they think are
probably going to win anyway. It's like
people look at like Apac's donation
success rate as like 96% elected and in
their mind they think, "Holy [ __ ]
you're going into all of these 50-50
elections or worse and tossing them or
or like flipping the coin in favor." And
it's like, "No, they just back a lot of
establishment people that already
support Israel in general." Um, I don't
think Apac has like undue influence. If
it did, I I think that the media
environment around Israel would have
looked a lot different because there's a
lot of crazy stuff reported about um
Israel and there has continued to be
throughout the entire war. Um, I think
that the support for Israel just comes
from the fact that just talk to any
[ __ ] old person in the US and they
they love Israel. They all just do, but
the younger people definitely don't. And
I feel like younger people are
propagandized to easier than older
people to some extent depending on I
guess what platforms are on. So
>> yeah, I always try to map things from
the level of cause and effect. So it's
like I know where I'm trying to get to
and then I just look at knowing what I
know about humans, the physics of
economies and things like that. Here are
the moves I think we would have to make
in order to get us there. Um, one, where
do you want to see America get to? So,
what does, like, if we were going to
make America great, what would that look
like in your eyes? I think our
institutions make us really good. I
think we have really strong foundations
when it comes to like education and
scientific research. I think we have a
really good mode of economy. I think
that capitalism and liberalism have
thrived here. The ability for people to
invest in, you know, whatever they want.
Um, you know, when it comes to
scientific research, we still lead the
world
we were leading the world when it comes
to like medical research and everything.
Um, when it comes to like investment in
capital, regardless of how I feel about
Elon Musk now, there's a reason why he
chose the United States to start Tesla
and SpaceX in.
>> Um, and I think that our like our form
of government, we as of today, we have
the oldest surviving constitution that
is still in use, founding document of
any country. And I think that speaks to
the strength and the flexibility and
adaptability of our kind of
constitutional framework for how our
government works. Um, yeah, I just say I
think there's a lot of like cool things
that America has as part of its history
that have endured up to this point of
time. And despite all of the crazy
curveballs that have been thrown at us,
uh, you know, I think as a 36-year-old,
I've lived through like three once in
a-lifetime events between 2007 financial
crash, between COVID, between 9/11, like
everything else. Um, yeah, I I think
we're still holding on and there must be
reason for that. I think our I think a
lot of our institutional backbones are
are really good at that. I feel like
people like Trump represent a lot of bad
stuff directionally, but I feel like
we're very lucky in that I view Trump as
being very politically incompetent. So,
I think that we're getting like a taste
of what that could look like. And I'm
hoping that the rejection kind of works
as a form of inoculation, like rather
than having a real politically minded,
like a JD Vance type character with the
charisma of Trump coming in and, you
know, taking over, we're kind of getting
a taste of it now. And I'm hoping that
when the midterms roll around, those
look pretty blue. when 2028 rolls
around, the Republicans, I think, are
going to feel pretty abandoned because I
think Trump is going to check out
completely because he's not invested in
the future of the Republican party and I
hope that we kind of course correct from
there. So, I view it as like a bumpy
road right now, but I hope that we're on
like the right path afterwards,
>> right?
>> Okay. So if those things are in the
abstract what allow us to be great now
what like if you were going to define
the grounded things about our day-to-day
lives that make it great such that we
could point to this system and say it
outputs a thing that we think is pretty
awesome. What is the thing if you had to
describe what we see now? So I think the
thing that sucks the most about stuff
that works reminds me of that Futurama
quote and I'm sure this came from
somebody else before but there's an
episode where I think at the end I don't
remember the episode completely but I
think God is either the universe or
something and there's the the stars are
glowing at the end and he's like the
nice thing about um when you do
something right is nobody knows you've
done anything at all. So I think that
when everything is functioning well we
tend to just not think about it. So like
an example of this would be scientific
research done by foreign people that
come to our country because they are
attracted by our you know our research
institutions our our schools. Um I think
I want to say it was like 15 years ago
there's like research on these I'm going
to get all wrong. There's like a fish or
barracuda shark or some some random
thing that they were able to like
extract some substance and they're like
oh this looks like it emulates uh you
know like a certain hormone in the human
body. add there was just like a bunch of
like research in that direction and that
materialized into a drug that also was
pretty good for diabetes uh these GLP-1
agonists and then that's materialized
into the actual holy grail drug that
might be the most important
pharmaceutical discovery since I don't
know insulin or penicellin which is kind
of all the uh people call it ompic but
the GPL1 agonist derivatives and
everything so like that's an example of
you can point to a thing for this drug
has been discovered and I would argue
that it was off the back of American
innovation, capital investment, um,
attracting talent from all over the
world, you know, institutional
government and and science investments
and everything. Um, that would be a
thing I would point to, but it's hard to
see kind of everything in the back. You
just see the one thing that ends up
working. So, it's kind of like you get
you get Christmas presents on the 25th
and you're like, "Oh, it must have been
Santa Claus." And meanwhile, mom and dad
are struggling in the background to make
sure that you Yeah. putting it on
layaway, wrapping it, hiding it from
you. Yeah. Fair. Um so if you were to um
try to confine that to a sentiment that
you could say all right the thing that
gave birth to this is uh freedom a focus
on innovation uh we just have a better
economy like because and where I'm going
to move us to is you've got USV China
and I see two very different systems
that are both outputting pretty
incredible things along the lines of
innovation but I think that tactally to
live there would be very different.
>> Um, so if you before we get to China, if
you just had to sum up the thing that we
have built around, what would you call
that?
>> I would say liberal capitalism. Like
liberalism and capitalism in the
broadest sense.
>> Liberalism. Define that for me. So you
have a government that exists to kind of
protect your ability in life to explore
and pursue a variety of different things
whether that comes to like educational
opportunities, job opportunities, just
cultural personal stuff. It seems like
that form of cultural arrangement has
made us leaders when it comes to
outputting uh productive workers. It
matters what policies a country has. it
matters what culture uh a country has
because ultimately hopefully what people
are arguing about is the call the soil
in which we're going to try to plant the
garden and all of us citizens are the
things that are either going to grow or
fail to grow. Um okay that makes sense
to me. So I hear
>> I will say that that requires an
alignment on what do we even consider
success and these are things that we
talked about um a bit more abstractly
like 15 years ago actually maybe even
longer. I remember in high school like
what does it mean to be successful? And
we have these default assumptions of
like you know the the the you know the
the lowest distance between transistors
on a you know in a CPU diode or whatever
or it could be uh the amount of medicine
available. Um, but nobody ever asks like
cultural questions about how many
friends can you keep or how long do your
relationships last? Like we don't think
about that in terms of success, right?
And I think that the mega movement
especially and then people's like
general discontent have really
challenged like what does it mean to be
successful and you had the attacks
before of like it's not just GDP which
is fair although GDP is correlated with
a whole bunch of good things in a
country
>> who pushes back on GDP. I mean, I would
argue
>> people who don't like the results of the
current GDP, like that's the only
>> Yeah, I would say the whole MAGA
movement is okay with um and populists
in general. You could argue
>> switching to match whatever the moment
requires
>> kind of. Yeah. So, it's like it's not
about GDP, it's about manufacturing
everything here or it's not about
growing the economy, it's about making
sure that we only buy from ourselves.
Like there are things that are and there
there's not a right or wrong answer
here. You can have a preference.
>> I have a feeling they're shifting their
value system, which could be fine, but
my beef with people that talk politics
is often they don't even know what their
value system is.
>> It's a revealed versus an expressed
preference. And often times people don't
realize it, but there are a lot more
invisible qualifiers on their statements
than they'd like to admit. And sometimes
what's perceived as, you're basically
saying this, what's perceived as a
change in values has actually just been
uh like elucidating people's values.
Like somebody might say, "You should
never use violence to achieve some end."
But what they really mean is you should
never use violence to achieve an end
that I don't like. Right? Like I've had
people ask me when it comes to, you
know, political violence or whatever
else. It's like, do you think that
political violence is ever justified?
And I think it's a funny question
because I'm an American and our country
was born from a rebellion against
political violent like actual violence.
So yes, it's
>> yeah, identifying that like what are you
actually saying is a very challenging
thing for a lot of people.
>> Yeah, that's why as you were talking I
was like, okay, this feels like a very
uh American frame of reference. I'm
wildly pro-American. I too think that
this country is great. I think that at
the beginning it's going to seem like,
and you and I have talked before, so we
know there's some overlap. There's a lot
of disagreement, but um I feel like in
that sort of general explanation that
you gave, there's nothing that I would
really push back and say that I have a
beef with that.
>> I don't even think that we have a beef
with the outcome. And so part of the
reason that I want to interview, and by
the way, I thank you for every now and
then covering my content. Obviously, it
means the world to me is I go down that
path. perfectly fine that a lot of times
you think I'm just completely out of my
mind. Sure. Uh
>> which is fine, but just as a clear
because my chat watch is like I'll see
something if somebody says something
like, "Oh my god, this is so dumb." But
like I don't hate the person. I don't
think the person is dumb. No, you're
always
love it. Um so but what I do like is I
like that you are excruciatingly good at
being able to follow a chain of logic.
And so when there's weakness in my logic
or anybody else's, you become a very
useful tool to find out like where those
points are. And so, uh, it's a big part
of what I hope we figure out here today.
>> So, uh, as I've gone into politics, I
become literally, um, completely drawn
in emotionally
>> because I feel like we're in a
transitional moment. And the more that
I've tried to look back into history and
find the cause and effect to why we see
certain things loop, uh, for me the, and
it's admittedly oversimplified, but it's
a very useful simplification, is to
focus on economics. And so then as I
look at the economic loop that we're in,
um the passing of the big beautiful bill
is essentially a guarantee that we're
going to go bankrupt. And when you look
back at this loop and what happens when
the country goes bankrupt, it gets
violent. And so now I'm like, okay, uh I
started going down this road originally
when COVID kicked off because I thought
people are going to get eaten alive by
losing their jobs. It's going to be a
blood bath. Like what do we do? I need
to make like basic save your money kind
of dollars and cents content for people
cuz uh I've known so many people that
grew up poor. So I was like, "Okay,
that's going to be how I can help in
this moment." Uh and then money printing
happened and nobody like struggled. And
I was like, "Wait, what's going on?" So
that led me down that insane rabbit
hole. But now I see that we're sort of
at this natural conclusion of uh you
can't count on Republicans to be
fiscally responsible. You can't count on
Democrats to be fiscally responsible.
like there's a political reality that um
have you read James Burnham?
>> No.
>> Okay. Fascinating. I'd be so interested
to see your take on it. But he wrote a
book called the Makavevelians, the
Defenders of Freedom, and it's all about
what he calls the iron law of oligarchy.
And he's like, you're always going to
have a small group of elites. There's
just no way around that. Uh whether you
have a communist party or you have a
democracy, you're still going to have a
group of elites that run it. And so uh I
just realized yeah the to get elected
people are going to promise free things
and so here we are. Uh and so for the
first time in my life this just feels
and this being world affairs politics um
policy
it's really going to matter and I think
it's going to matter dramatically over
the next 10 years. And so what I'm
hoping that we can do is um I want to
understand your world view because the
conclusions that you draw when I listen
to your content are like that's like
diametrically opposed to where I end up.
But I think you're good faith and then I
want to give you where I think like for
real for real like this is what I
actually believe we have to do.
>> Uh and then hopefully you can help
sharpen my thinking if nothing else.
>> Sure.
>> Okay. So uh I feel like I have a basic
understanding of where you want to get
us to. Um,
contrast that with China for me. So,
China is outputting some incredible
things. China is outputting amazing
technology. Uh, I would say, and I've
never been to China, so this is me
looking at video and things like that,
but uh, it does seem from an
infrastructure standpoint that they're
just beating us. And so, when I look at
somebody that's positioning themselves
for the future, I look really at three
things. infrastructure, technology, most
particularly AI, uh, and energy because
AI is going to be so energy hungry. And
in those three arenas, China's either
right on our ass or they're in the case
of energy, they're like blowing past us.
But yet, I find myself being totally
turned off by the way in which they got
there. And so, to your point about what
I call invisible goals, I obviously have
an invisible goal where I'm like, "Okay,
they're outputting some of these things,
some better than us, and I still don't
want to do it." So why don't I want to
do it?
>> Have you ever read Just Kid? Do you
remember The Giver?
>> Oh, okay. This is a book you read like
in high school, but it's just funny
because they have like I think like a
perfect society, but then the kid
realizes like, oh, it's cuz at like 60
years old they send all these people off
to die basically, so they don't drag him
down. So it's like they have the good
output, but you're like I don't know
actually. But yeah. Yeah.
>> So do you think about China or is that
like not on your radar?
>> Um kind of. Uh but it's like uh it's
such an external problem from what we
have right now. I think one of the
issues that I have that I've gotten to
is
>> because you feel us like getting pulled
apart by something completely internal
>> a Yes. Right now absolutely the a house
divided against itself cannot stand
basically.
>> All right. So walk me through what are
our problems. I think the biggest issue
that we have right now is there's a lot
of like factual information that has
like just like just empirical stuff like
what are the things that are true what
are facts that are true and these go to
informing like a worldview and it's easy
to have all of this like conceptual
level stuff like we should have a lower
debter deficit but it's not easy to
figure out how to do that when there's
not a lot of kind of attention paid to a
lot of the underlying facts of the
matter. So, um, if you ever host
debates, by the way, I'd be super
fascinated. I haven't read the book of
the one guy, but the guy you brought up,
um,
>> James Burnham.
>> James Burnham. So, this, so there are a
couple of truisms that are given that I
feel like have been radically challenged
and have exposed them as being not true.
And one is the idea that like elites or
oligarchies were on our system. Um, in
specific one is like the
military-industrial complex. I think the
military-industrial complex had the hold
on our country that people thought it
did in the past. We would be funding
Ukraine, you know, completely out the
ass. There would never have been a delay
in shipments. we would be sending them
all sorts of weapons. Clearly, there's
not the power there that people had
thought there was. And then when people
think of like, well, think of the money
and everything else. I mean, like you've
been a business owner. You look at like
market capitalization. Like who's
commanding like these huge revenues?
Like Apple alone is like I think 2x the
value of like all of our military
contractors combined in terms of
revenues and market capitalization. Like
let's let's assume there's like a world
where the elites are running society. My
guess is like Apple would be putting out
the hits on, you know, Rathon and
Lockheed execs if it's like you guys are
going to go to war. The bottom the
decrease in revenue that we're going to
have will exceed the market
capitalization of all of your companies.
This isn't happening. We're going to
kill. You know, that would be my
>> I don't know that I want to derail us on
that, but I think I could convince you
that um the oligarchy not being the
people we thought it was or that there
are competing factions within the
oligarchy is not the same as there isn't
an oligarchy.
>> Sure, that might be a thing. I would say
that another concern is um there's this
phrase that gets used a lot like getting
into the weeds or derailing. It feels
like a derail, but the boring truth is
that a lot of those underlying facts are
actually the most important things
because like you said, you and I agree
conceptually a lot of stuff. The only
difference that you and I based on what
I've heard you say, probably the only
difference we have is which facts we've
ascertained are true or not, you know,
>> or not even necessarily which ones we
think are true, which one what do we
think that means?
>> Sure. And then um you said something
that I thought is pretty interesting.
And when I see say derail in this
situation, what I mean is I first want
to get your whole sense of like what's
broken. Yeah. Sure.
>> Because um uh I for better or worse, my
mind is simple enough I to understand
something and engage with the topic. I
must follow it through a chain of cause
and effect or I'll forget it. Like I
can't hold it as a
>> Yeah. So to return broadly um I think
there were three things that you brought
up. You said infrastructure, energy and
uh technology. technology. So, one of
the frustrating things for me as I've
watched kind of a lot of the tech world
walk um I guess in the shadow of Elon
Musk into the kind of Trump MAGA stuff
is MAGA speaks a certain language, but
it's not it's a it's a populist uh
language that doesn't I don't think map
it doesn't really map on to what you
would want it to map on to if you cared
about the things that I say I care about
or I feel like the things that you say I
care about. So when we talk about like
energy for instance I obviously and I
think most you know neoliberal type
people will agree for transitioning to
things like green energy it has to be
like a meaningful transition. Yeah you
have to do this in a way that makes
sense economically. It can't just be
like a valuedriven I'm a climate change
person and I'm going to shut all the
natural energy off right
>> but the issue is that like for MAGA for
instance when I think of future of
energy I'm thinking a lot in green
energy and that sounds kind of like a
cucked position of like ew you want to
like save the trees but it's like the
sun is a big provider of energy to this
planet and being able to harness energy
is really important and things like
nuclear energy and harvesting other
forms of solar energy like wind energy
and hydro energy these are really
important steps into the future for a
large variety reasons, not just because
of pollution, although pollution is part
of it, but just because it it gives you
the ability to generate a variety of
energies that aren't as reliant on
global markets on oil and all these
things, but right now we can't have that
conversation because the political party
in office wants to fight against that
because they have like moral problems
with green energy. So, we've got, you
know, while we're trying to compete with
>> Do you really think it's moral or do you
think it's tribal?
>> Like the same thing. I I like they have
like a feeling a revulsion. Like if I
say like, "Don't you think it' be good
if we would start like solar and wind?"
They're like, "Oh, no. Those are the
people that want to take your cars away
from you. And it's like this is what are
we talking about right now, right? Like
we want to compete with China when it
comes to energy. And we've had a
president saying clean coal, clean coal.
And it's like that's not where China's
going. China's not going towards clean
coal. Like why why is that our
direction? Or you bring up like uh
technology. You know, it's not like
China is screaming at the United States.
Stop stealing all of our patents. Stop
stealing all of our intellectual
property. We're screaming that at China.
Um but at the same time, while our
leaders are telling us we need to bring
back manufacturing and we need to go
back to the, you know, the mines with
pickaxes. Uh, China's like, I want more
of your computer scientists. Like, I
want your AI. I want your like last
stage development. So, we're like going
backwards because we think that there's
more like moral value in real work.
Like, um, is it Mike Row, the guy who
did? Um,
>> he is a guy. I'm not sure where you're
headed.
>> Um, yeah, like we like these are real
jobs. Like, yeah, blue collar, you're
making real stuff, not not gay stuff
like AI or computer stuff or whatever.
Like those are like thick jobs, service
jobs, but it's like that's this is the
future. like yeah but can so on that I
would say um I think what's really
happening is two things one everybody
thinks in heruristics
>> so everybody has to simplify the world
now some people don't realize they're
simplifying the world and that that sets
us up for the second thing which is
Michael Malice has this idea of a mouse
trap in somebody's mind I think that's
an echo of a heristic so they've
narrowed the world down to a thing that
they can say back so that they can feel
confident when they speak that heristic
gives them uh this is right, this is how
I move and that removes a lot of
anxiety. Sure.
>> And so I get why people I think all
humans do it. Maybe some do it more than
others and maybe some don't even realize
that it's happened and so they just like
the way that it feels and it becomes
that mousetrap where you bring it up,
they don't even want to think through
it. They've already made that decision
from a heristic standpoint. Close the
door, you say the words, mouse trap goes
off and you're like what the [ __ ] And
it it just you completely derail. But if
we can go, okay, I get what they're
after, which in the bluecollar jobs is
all right, uh, so much of my family are
bluecollar. And so when you watch them
get super anxious or you have a couple
die from opioid addiction, you start
going, we do need to do something about
this problem. So they might have a
terrible solution, but if that's the
place that it's coming from and you can
go, okay, look, they they're over um
they're coming up with too many
shortcuts. So then it's like I feel like
I better know how to deal with that. I
understand the mousetrap that's gone
off. I'm sympathetic to that. The issue
that we run into then is like what is
the most compassionate way, I guess, to
move forward where you're accounting for
these people's anxieties, but you're not
throwing the country back into the dark
ages. And instead of having that
conversation, which I think is a
fascinating conversation to have,
instead we have, you know, the party on
the right is basically saying, you hate
blue collar workers, you hate these
people, you just want everybody to go to
college and you hate all these people
that are, you know, doing the real jobs.
And then on the left, it's like, okay,
well, I guess the debate is going to be
on whether or not I hate blue collar
workers. That's the whole debate now.
So, we're not actually going to have a
meaningful conversation about moving
anything forward. Um, you know, you say
heruristics and I say it's not even
that. It's just it's been sloganering
from from MAGA. It's just been slogans
of like we need to bring back
manufacturing and it's like what does
that mean?
>> Do you think slogans are unique to the
right?
>> I think the stupidity of them is unique
to the right. Yeah.
>> Interesting. I think slogans what and
I'll stick with heristics but I get why
you call them slogans. I think
heruristics are baked into the
architecture of the human mind. I think
it is the only way for us to navigate.
Yeah.
>> And so that's the first thing I would
say that uh I don't think that's going
to allow you to map the right. Well,
>> I think I think this the reason why I
say slogans is because they've reduced
every there are some problems that
>> are just not easily solvable in one
sentence. So like a really great example
of this and there's not a single person
in the country that's having this
conversation are is the cost of housing.
Okay, this is an undeniable reality.
>> Preach. When you talk about people that
are looking for housing and you talk
about people that are have that have
housing, their interests are
diametrically opposed to each other. And
nobody wants to talk about that because
if you're going to fight to push down
the price of housing, you are hurting
>> everybody that owns a home, which 70% of
the people in the United States live in
a home where there's a home owner.
>> And then if you're trying to bring uh
you know, and if you're trying to make
those homes more valuable and push up,
you're hurting everybody that wants to
buy something, right?
>> This is like a uh these are
counterveailing forces. It is incredibly
difficult to navigate that. But when the
conversation is just like landlords are
evil or billionaires are evil or the
government wants to steal your homes
because of fear or whatever, like what
do you do at that point? Like the these
slogans have destroyed people's ability
to even engage in the conversation. Like
you can't even have a reasonable back
and forth because it just comes down to
whether or not you think billionaires
are trying to steal everything or not.
And like that's it. And it's like okay.
>> Yeah. So now you're on to my exact thing
and I have no idea if this is going to
be a sysopusion thing and and one day I
just give up because I realize, oh, this
isn't going to work. Uh is I'm trying to
uh when I go live, when I do uh one of
my normal episodes that isn't an
interview, I'm just trying to map cause
and effect. Cause and effect. I pick a
topic and we just go cause and effect.
What what actually makes this thing
transpire? Let's look back in history
and see if we if hey, if I say this is
the cause and effect sequence, does it
predict what we saw? because if it
doesn't then I know it's wrong. And so
um getting people to understand housing
like this is how I um I find I can avoid
getting trapped in my own beliefs
because I'm like well does it actually
lead predictably down a chain of cause
and effect. Uh obviously that's not
going to be accessible to everybody.
There's some people won't take the time.
There's some people that just
intellectually are not going to be able
to understand it. But I feel like that
is the only path forward. like there is
only one path forward and that is to say
this is where we want to go and this is
the chain of cause and effect that will
get us there and then we can argue about
whether we want to go there or not. We
can argue about the efficiency of the
moves to get there but at least if
everybody gets off sloganering if that
becomes super cringe and everybody hates
that and we just go okay wait but give
me your chain of cause and effect um
we're not going to get anywhere unless
we do that.
>> This is I agree with you. Um, you just
have to be careful when you're looking
back and when you're looking forward
because sometimes people can misidentify
how cause and effect works. So, for
example, if I tell you I know a guy uh
and he has $200,000 in his bank account,
do you think that guy is successful or
not successful?
>> Yeah, you won't know.
>> You have no idea, right? Because if I
tell you the guy's like 85 with 20
dependents or whatever and this is his
life savings and you know he's about to
retire, it's like if I say the kid's
like 19
>> or if he started with six billion and
then he didn't give it away. Exactly.
Yeah. But if I tell you it's a kid who's
like, you know, 20 21, he's been working
side jobs and saving every penny of his
whole life and he's got like a six
figure bank account. It's like, yeah,
that's this kid is doing really well.
Um, when it comes to cause and effect,
people will say things like, um, people
will say things like the economy used to
be better when this was happening. And
like I can say that America, you know,
had had a good intervention and helped a
lot in winning World War I and we didn't
have to use or have nuclear weapons at
all. But, you know, why is that? Well,
because nobody else had nuclear weapons,
right? We lived in a different world. So
when people say things like well when we
were manufacturing we were doing this or
that you know the economy was so much
better it's like true but we weren't
competing with other people who were you
know trying to figure out how to
optimize AI or trying to figure out all
of these service or higher level you
know final stage of manufacturing jobs
when we were making cars in America it
wasn't like the whole world was making
cars and we just made the best people
like leading the industry here.
>> Yeah. Well, I think what what I hear you
mapping is, yeah, there's a surface
level cause and effect that you can
trick yourself, but then there's
actually getting down to the level of
the real cause and effect. And then if
you have some way to test your
hypothesis way better, um, this is why
I'm always drawn to economics, looking
at history through an economic lens, and
then actually saying, okay, I'm going to
do that here in today, and am I winning
or not financially? Um but if in fact
let me ask directly is cause and effect
knowable to say 80 85% accuracy
>> as a hardcore determinist and
materialist I would say yeah everything
is cause and effect in the universe it's
just it's like you said you honed in on
you have to identify what actually is
the cause and effect because sometimes
we can look at how a thing happened and
people who are successful are sometimes
the worst at this we can look at how a
thing happened and say well that
happened so that's the cause and that's
the effect when they're strictly
speaking they're right but they picked a
correlated thing and they didn't
actually pick the reason why there was a
successful cause and effect there like
they didn't hone in on what was going on
so somebody might say going back to my
example like when America manufactured
that you know helped us lead the world
in so many different things economically
and they're right but it wasn't because
it was America manufacturing it's
because America was leading the world in
technology and the technology at the
time happened to be manufacturing right
so so they're so when they look at it
incorrectly they might into the future
like okay well we need to go back to
that I guess cuz that's where we were
the most successful like that only
worked then because of these conditions
then the world is different now and we
have to adapt the conditions now
>> yeah so I think you've put your finger
on um the real issue which is you're
able to identify I would say somewhere
to 80 85% enough that you've got so much
predictive validity that it's going to
allow you at least have hypotheses that
make sense they will be very informed
they may not work but boy you're not
like throwing random darts which often
feels like the political discussion
becomes either things that have been
tried in the past and obviously don't
work or uh just like oh we've never
tried this let's give it a shot. Um in
business I always teach entrepreneurs if
you're ever about to try something ask
has anybody already done this well and
if they have go look at it you're you'll
be able to learn from it. I I'll say
like I'm often asked how we built Quest
into a billion dollar company and I'll
say I could tell you literally minute by
minute and if you tried it today it
wouldn't work which goes to your thing
which is either uh you've oversimplified
or that we live in a different world and
so it worked then because nobody had
done it. We were the only person with a
nuclear bomb. Uh so it's not necessarily
going to work now, but if you can
abstract it out to principles of if you
have um destructive capability that is
orders of magnitude greater than your
opponent, then it puts you in this
situation and this will be the likely
outcome.
>> Yeah.
>> Uh and so you can get enough information
that you can then use it. Um, I think
the more terrifying problem is just as
you have done multiple times now where
you'll give like a very common
assessment only to then show us that
there's another layer that will cause
you to go in a totally different
direction.
>> You can do that and do do that and have
been online doing that for a very long
time. And yet it's either hey just keep
going and maybe one day like you amass
enough people that really can start to
think like that and and it becomes a
ground swell and it works or that we're
bumping up against that I would and this
is definitely an oversimplification but
I would round it to people think in
heruristics they need heristics so badly
that they will join a team especially in
times of strife when clear thinking is
most necessary. Clear thinking is the
thing we have the least of. And so I
look at this and go first principles are
easy enough to think from. We can map
all of these problems from first
principles. If we know where we want to
go, we at least know what things to try.
Again, they might not work, but we have
a very logical set of things to try. But
if my YouTube comments are anything to
go by, you just you get to a point where
it's like the words you're saying do not
line up with what my tribe says is okay.
And they're just
>> that's gone. Yeah. Yeah. I think
heristics are fine like you said. I mean
we all everybody we me we included
everybody uses heruristics on on
everything. Um it's just a matter of
like what the heristics are. Um so like
for example when when I'm doing when the
Trump tariffs were coming down and
everything and there were a lot of
people asking me like what do I do with
my investments like should I sell
everything and you know how do I you
know like my advice at the time was
listen okay heristically okay the
markets are definitely going to tank.
they are. But um there's a lot of people
who are chasing the exact, you know,
peaks and the exact valleys. I can't
give you the advice on that. You're not
going to be able to figure it out except
by random chance. And that means
statistically most of you are going to
be losers. So if you have money in your
investment accounts, you just leave it
sit and you ride out the storm. And
that's how investing works. It's dollar
cost averaging. That's all of these like
heruristic basic investment principles.
Um and if you were one of the people
that tried to time, you know, those
peaks and valleys, you probably lost a
lot of money. And if you just sat with
your account, you're probably doing okay
right now, you know. So heruristics are
fine, but it's just which heristics are
we going by? Like do we trust in times
of uh you know fear? It's always in I
feel like we see so many movies about
this where it's like oh my god like the
strong man has come up in the time of
fear and it's always the worst person to
follow and then all of the rational
people are kind of pushed to the side. I
was like oh no maybe we should have
followed those people. I feel like we
are there's just a lot of boring try
like previously tread ground that we
don't need to do this anymore and it's
frustrating because I don't even want to
have the debate. Um I guys I'm curious
personally on your thought on this. I
feel very strongly I will never ever
ever make a business decision based on
who I hire fire or how I expend based on
what my personal like tax rate is ever.
Like if you want to tax me at 45% fine.
If you cut it to 39% I'm not going to
hire anybody else. I'm not doing
anything with that money. It's going
right in my bank account or my
investment account. That's it. So when I
have conservatives who are talking about
like we need to cut, you know, the
income tax and meanwhile the one promise
that we had from them was we're going to
do something about the debt and deficit.
Well, that's completely blown the [ __ ]
out now to to do what? To help me save
an extra $50,000 on my taxes. I'm not
doing anything with that. Like why? Why?
What's the point? And this like
conversation about like supply side
trickle down. Why are we still having
this debate? There's no empirical
evidence that this has ever stimulated
the economy in any meaningful way.
There's so many different ways you could
have allocated money. And I don't even
know business people who say like,
"Thank God they cut my personal income
tax rate a little bit. Now I can finally
do this thing with my business that I've
always I've never heard this before." I
don't know, maybe you have or
>> I'd have to look at the data. That's one
of those ones that is seems so
self-evidently true that I've never gone
to look at the data. So I'm I guess the
exact opposite. So my entire career at
uh Building Quest, Impact Theory, I
wasn't extracting money out of the
company in operations. We used to always
there's no money in operations. You have
to sell if you want to make money.
>> And so we were doing hundreds of
millions of dollars in revenue and just
plowing it all back into the company.
And so we thought, okay, one day we
might sell. So it's like for us,
>> when I say plowing it back into the
company, I mean making strategic
investments. Um we were building exotic
equipment when everybody thought that
was insane. Uh we built custommade
facilities so that we could make
products that nobody else had made. Like
I mean we we really were like, "Hey, if
you cut our taxes, that money just means
that we've got more to pour back into
the company."
>> Well, but for a lot of this, like this
wasn't you were reinvesting. It's not
even tax money, right? This is these
aren't these are revenues, not profits.
>> It's capex. So, sure, you can dodge some
of that, but you find yourself in a
situation where it's like, okay, um how
do I want to allocate the funds of my
company? And if I know that I'm going to
have a uh some of this depends on the
structure of the company. So, it's like
if the dollars are flowing out to you,
then you're going to it's going to
affect everyone differently. And I don't
want anybody to think that this is like
a uh one-sizefits-all. In fact, we need
to talk about the four levers of what I
think we actually have to do to fix this
problem. And some of it is tax people.
Um, but it is my understanding that the
data backs up that if you want to get
people to reinvest in their companies,
allowing them to hold on to more of
their profits allows them to do that.
Now, whether that's because you're
right, if you can justify it internally
as a business expense, you can do it
before it becomes a taxable event
anyway. Um, so
>> I think on that end, I think there might
be um you can talk about like corporate
tax structure. I think it's legitimate.
But for personal income tax, the only
thing I could ever see you doing if
you're dropping your personal tax
brackets is incentivizing people to
invest less, right? Because at some
point it might be, well, if I can
withdraw this money at only a, you know,
30% hit, uh, then screw it. Why would I
reinvest in my company trying to grow it
now? All of a sudden, my, you know, my
NPV plus, you know, you know, where am
I, what are my good future investments?
It actually just makes sense to pull the
money out now because I know I'm not
going to get the tax on hardly at all
versus like if you're trying to build a
company most of the reinvestment that's
happening like you said before you guys
were re and every startup is like this.
You're constantly reinvesting revenue.
That's that has nothing to do with your
personal impact at all.
>> I think I now get why the data would
move in that way if the data really does
move that way. Uh is for the very simple
reason that if
>> if you make that money, the money is
either going to come to you if you're
pulling money out of the company. It's
either going to come to you or it's
going to go to the government. Now, if
it comes to you in the system that we
live in, you would be a fool to put that
into your bank account.
>> Sure.
>> So, you're going to put it into a
productive asset. Now, it could be
government debt, in which case they get
it anyway, at least temporarily, but you
get something in exchange. Um but
certainly investing into VC um angel
investing, starting another company,
buying uh physical assets, all of that
stuff puts some money back in the
economy into a productive way.
>> And so if you look at the certainly
there is a class of person for whom when
they aggregate capital themselves, they
always go refund the next business.
given how much of America's ingenuity is
tied to that. Um I can certainly see
that that's actually the loop that's at
play is that you've got people that
they're taking their own gains. They're
reinvesting into the next product and
now you get that sort of American
ingenuity.
>> Yeah. And I think going capital
investment is important. Um I'm not
going to take the like the majority
report lefty line of we need to have 90%
marginal tax rates again. But if we are
facing huge deficits, budget deficits of
which we are, if we think the debt is a
problem, which a lot of people seem to
think it is, I feel like the last place
in the world we would be looking to eat
into our budget is just doing more tax
cuts for wealthy people by like 2 to 3
percentage points. I just I don't
believe if you have wealthy friends I'd
be curious to hear them say I just don't
believe that there is some guy out there
who is you know you know his his his
below the line his AGI is like 2.5
million and he's like god if it was just
if I just saved like another $100,000 on
my taxes I would do so much more with I
just don't believe that and I feel like
>> yeah I think so I think
>> it's so it's just so much money that
we're leaving on the table and then we
try to find it in other ways where it's
not even remotely close like Doge was
never going to find that 2 trillion they
were never going to find 1 trillion in
the endm found like 9 billion and
>> yes, but god we should all want him to
win that one. I have a particular bone
to pick with anybody. So, we'll get to
that. Okay, we'll get that.
>> But first, let's start with the uh the
investment. So,
>> if anybody thinks that when you lower
the tax rate that you you've now done
something that's going to trigger like
this altruism of like, oh my god, I got
more money and therefore I'm going to do
something nice. No, you go, oh my god, I
have more money and I have to put this
to work. And so from a purely selfish
stance, I want to make I want to turn
the whatever 5 billion that I got, I
want to turn it into 50 billion. And so
that person's going to go try to do a
thing. And this is where I think, and I
know this isn't you, but I think the
vast majority of people just do not
understand assets. Even if they own some
of the S&P 500, they don't understand
assets. Like they don't understand what
they do. They certainly don't understand
the history of how they came into
existence and what they're for and what
they unlocked and ah uh and then
something like 40% of Americans don't
own any assets whatsoever. And so uh you
trigger a very selfish thing by allowing
people to take their money out. But that
selfish thing puts money back into the
economy, creates the money velocity.
They're either buying things or they're
investing in things, but it doesn't just
sit in the bank. Yeah. And so anyway,
that's the proposition. Sure. And I was
I'll say like I agree with you. That
just needs to be the conversation that
we have. If we want more investment, if
we want more capex, then tax cuts
theoretically could incentivize that.
But you can't say this is like for
instance like good for workers because
that's it's too broad of a statement and
it doesn't even strictly make sense. Not
to sound mean, but from a business
perspective, workers are always that's a
cost of doing business. Your goal is
always to minimize cost. You're never
arbitrarily increasing that.
>> I heard somebody argue with you on that.
I was like, what?
>> Yeah. you have an adversarial
relationship or I shouldn't say
adversarial but like an employes goal is
I want to get as much money as I can for
as little work as possible and the boss
goals I want to extract as much labor
from you as I can while paying you as
little as possible that's adversarial
goal if you give money to one side and
not the other um the idea that these
people are going to help each other is
just not true um and that yeah that's
the only thing so like if like so what
you're saying if you want to have more
investment and you think that cutting
taxes will get you there that's almost
certainly true because the money is not
going in a bank account but if your goal
is to like help the average man and
worker whatever and you're cutting taxes
that's just not going to happen So, I
just wish people on that one. On that
one, it might be purely psychological,
but um cutting like I would expect
cutting taxes for the wealthy to be
hotly contested and I get why. Cutting
the taxes for the middle class, I don't
know. It's interesting. I could be
totally on emotion on this one. I do not
know the data about what they do with
their money and they probably either
spend it on something that is not a
productive asset or they put it in the
bank, both of which are suicide. Uh but
setting that aside for a second, um let
me lay out the the problem that I think
that we have the like just major thing
that is holding us back right now. Um
we're
36 trillion in debt is the easy number
to point at. Uh but it's actually only
part of the picture. I think when you
take in government debt, corporate debt,
and individual debt, I think it's
something like $170 trillion in debt.
So, we are in we're in so deep. There's
no way to get out gracefully anymore.
There's only uh either civil war or
revolution or what Ray Dallio calls a
beautiful deleveraging. But you have to
you have to get out from under the debt.
And getting out from under the debt is
um I mean Ray Ray Dallio as far as I'm
concerned just he has this mapped out.
Nobody's made more money by
understanding these cycles. and Ray uh
he's bet in the markets and has won
showing that oh every country goes
through it. This is exactly it goes in
six stages. You bet in each stage just
like this and he's made god knows how
many billions of dollars. Uh so the you
have four levers that you can pull to
get out from under this debt. They're
all painful and you what he calls doing
it in a beautiful way is to like balance
all of them. So the four levers are uh
you have basically wealth
redistribution. So uh I think everybody
understands that one. You've got um
austerity. So sorry we have to move
towards balancing the budget. You're not
going to do it instantaneously. Uh you
have printing money and you have debt
forgiveness or debt restructuring and
that's it. Now, the problem is debt
restructuring is um you're just telling
some people, "Sorry, you're not going to
get paid back or you're going to get
paid back some small amount." And so,
that person just lost God knows how much
of their wealth. So, they're going to be
traumatized. You have to be very
careful. Um obviously, wealth
redistribution,
getting confiscatory makes people pretty
uh unhappy. So, you're only going to be
able to do that for so long before
people bail. Uh, and anybody that's read
Ein Rand, no matter how cringey you
think it is, she's got her finger on
something, which is there are certain
people in society that make and uh, the
only way the government has taxable
revenue is if entrepreneurs build things
and amazing people work for those
entrepreneurs to help build those
things. And that generates tax revenue
and yay. Um, and then obviously you're
going to have to raise taxes. you're not
going to be able to. The only way that
you could ever hope is that if you slash
taxes and you see an immediate increase
in um GDP growth and the odds of that
happening are effectively zero. It might
happen over time. And so in times of
plenty, great. But in a situation like
this, you're going to have to tax people
more, the wealthy, you're going to have
to tax the wealthy more to be very
specific. And so um if I'm right about
or I should say Reik, I am very much uh
just repeating what he's laid out. If he
is correct about that, the one thing
that nobody's doing is pulling any of
those levers except for money printing.
All people do is money print.
>> If we ever want to have an argument, I'd
love to argue with them. Um, please.
>> The
>> the way that I see it is if you want to
have a serious conversation about the
debt, there are a couple of very easy
things that you can do first. And until
people do those, it's not even worth
talking about anything else because
everything else is way more exotic.
Yeah. the I'm sure you've had somebody
talks about like I need to minmax um
like what is my optimal anabolic timing
window for eating after the gym and this
guy goes to gym like once a month and
it's like bro you literally go and do
anything for 30 minutes a day and then
we'll talk because everything else is a
waste of time. Um the first thing uh and
this is inarguable
you have to fund your IRS. Okay, before
that happens nothing else matters. The
IRS has told us on its own that there's
like 400 to 600 billion with a B dollars
every single year that is legitimately
owed money to the federal government
that they just don't have the resources
to go after. So if you're not serious
about your revenue collection center,
nothing else matters. Nothing else that
anybody says is relevant. And they I
just think it's a kind of a joke. It's a
mean conversation at that point. So the
first thing is whatever money is owed to
the government, you have to fund the IRS
to get it. That's number one. Number two
is you look at your huge impact. I'm
sure in business you do you call it the
8020 thing or something where where
you're going
>> like 20% of things you can do in a
business have 80% of the impact
principle.
>> Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Focus on those
first, right? Um there are some things
you can do that have a huge impact on
the budget. Okay. One is nobody will
ever do this when we're talking about
this. We need to expand our tax base in
the United States. I'm sorry, but middle
class and working-class people don't
really pay that much in taxes in the US
despite what they think. They have no
concept of it. People will talk about
how nice these European countries are.
you know, people on the left, if you
work in one of these European countries,
if you make 30, 40, 50,000 euro pounds,
whatever a year, you pay a decent chunk
of taxes. In the United States, the
bottom 50%, the effective tax rate is
like 1.3%
u because of FICA. And that's because of
all our refundable tax credits and and
the standard deduction is now like
$20,000, I think, for American
tax base. That's a huge revenue
increase. And we probably need to bump
up some of our rates just like a couple
points. Bump up a couple of our rates a
couple points. So all of our So those
Trump tax cuts should have never been
extended. It's not going to hurt
anybody. You can probably bump your
capital gains rate a few points. These
are things that will have a very small
impact across most people and it will be
massive. Hundreds of billions or
trillions depending on the time scale
you're looking at
>> and that you feel like what I just said
is that runs contrary to that?
>> Not necessarily, but I'm saying like
these are the
>> IRS but sure. Yeah. The idea is you have
to collect more tax.
>> Yeah. So these are the two things that
need to happen first. Y
when it comes to dealing with debt and
deficit, we need to convert
it zero because that doesn't make sense
because there's certainly there is some
way that the United States government
can productively allocate money that's
more efficient than just sitting at no
debt. It can't be 500% of GDP because
that's probably not sustainable and
eventually our interest payments are
going to dwarf everything else we pay
for in our budget. So we need to figure
out what that debt should be and that
needs to be a moving target.
I'm pretty sure that it would be
impossible to get to 500% of GDP.
>> What are we at? Is it 140?
>> 98% of all countries that have gone
north of 130 end in civil war. So, I
just don't think you get there. I think
the country tears itself apart first.
But anyway, whatever.
>> Possible. Um the So, so IRS has to be
funded. We have to probably bump taxes
up. Um we need to look at if you want to
make spending cuts, then you need to be
a big boy and you need to make real
spending cuts, not whatever Doge does.
If you want to reduce the size of if you
want to do something about Medicare or
if you want to do something about like
Medicaid or the federal um like the DoD,
if you want to do something about your
huge line items, then let's have that
conversation.
>> You have to. There's no way around.
>> But right now, people want to nibble
around the edges at the smallest
reductions that are going to do nothing.
Yeah. And then nobody really wants to
talk about increasing the taxable
revenue. Um Oh, and then there's another
thing that you can do, and I don't know
if it was in those four levers, but
growing your economy will will help
everything. It's not in the Ford levers
cuz that's not going to get that's not
like an active thing you can do to get
yourself out of debt. It's a thing that
you do and if it works, holy [ __ ] it
will get you out of debt
>> because as the economy grows, assuming
the government budget is increasing at a
lower rate than the growth of the
economy, then your tax receipts and
everything grow along with it, which is
also good, too.
>> Yeah, for sure. And look, I think right
now Trump's whole playbook is don't
worry, we're going to grow our way out
of this. And I don't want to deny that
that's not amazing. And God, I hope that
we pull it off. And I hope that by
deregulating and reducing taxes, that's
exactly what helps. But these are not
the playbook for getting yourself out
from under $36 trillion in debt.
>> Yeah. So I would say that the big
problem that we have right now is the
thing that I talked about earlier where
people are they're picking positions
that like morally or normatively seem
like oh my god like I remember when we
mined coal and they think that's like
good for the economy but Trump is making
some of the worst moves for getting us
out of debt. So for instance,
>> horrible depending on where you want to
go, this concept of like tariffing all
these other countries on the planet. One
of the nice things, we kind of argued, I
think we talked about this maybe the
last time um I talked to you when it
comes to trade deficits is people think
that if you have a trade deficit with a
country, you're losing. There are things
that we gain though by everybody in the
planet holding USD. One of those things
we've gained uniquely is that we can
actually do a lot of debt in our country
in a way that no one has before because
every country on the planet wants to buy
uh Treasury bonds. The only thing that
managed to shake Trump off of his
ridiculous tariff position was when
those Treasury yields started to
increase when it costs more for the
United States government to issue debt
for the Treasury to issue debt. And that
was because other countries for the
first for the first time looking at the
US like I don't know if I want actually
want to be a US dollar holder or if I
want to buy US Treasury bonds now. I
don't know what this is going to be
worth. So we have the ability to issue
debt largely because of the deficits and
because of the way that we trade with
other countries. Um and so because of
that we can fund our government for
longer than I think historically other
empires have been able to. And if we
take the other moves necessary like real
moves to increase our tax base so it's
not popular on the left but you have to
expand your tax base. It's not popular
on the right. Wealthier people can
probably pay a couple percentage points
more on capital gains or on uh on
ordinary income and be okay. Right? If
you do these things, you continue to
grow your economy and then you
capitalize on what you're good at. We
have to stop demonizing like service
work or demonizing last stage of
manufacturing or demonizing, you know,
like people that autistic people sitting
in front of computers because these are
your most productive workers, right? We
need to throw everything in that
direction and we need to not Trump is
like attacking all of the fundamental
things that make us so successful as a
country like attacking schools. But like
regardless of how you feel about the
United States, nobody in Uganda, nobody
in France, nobody in Indonesia has been
like, "Oh, you know, Harvard and Yale,
these are like the worst things about
the United States." Why would you attack
your your most successful institutions
are bringing the the brightest and
smartest people to conduct research and
everything else. Um, just all of those
steps seem like they're economically
minded, but they're in the worst
direction. And we we had an economic
contraction last quarter. Why? That
shouldn't have happened. they're just
they're yeah they're going in the wrong
direction under under the guise of this
is supposed to be the guy that cares
about the debt and it's like what is
happening? What happened there? Yeah.
>> Yeah. That one was uh really distressing
for me just as you look back in history
and you see how bloody it is when a
country goes bankrupt. And I think I
don't think people think it can happen
in America. Not only can it, it is a
mathematical certainty as of right now
unless you have a sudden dramatic
reversal of policy or AI takes off and
just absolutely crushes it. Uh but right
now you're at roughly somewhere between
6.2 and 6.5%.
Uh your deficit spending is 6.2 to 6.5%
of your GDP. Uh so that's basically your
debt is expanding uh at twice the rate
of your economic growth. So it's like yo
you can't do that. That's that's
insanity. So um but all the things we're
doing deporting a ton of people. The ICE
budget is like 160 billion. The DoD
budget increased 150 billion. Like all
of these are steps that are hurting our
ability to address the debt. Like we
need more workers. We need labor is your
most important supply for your economy.
like we need more talent from around the
world. We need more scientific research
and innovation. We need more of the the
boring autistic white collar computer,
but all of those things are under attack
by the party that was supposed to be the
one to reduce our debt and deficit. It's
like and we're setting ourselves up for
like long-term pain here when it comes
to this. And that's I guess is very
frustrating for me to look at. So,
here's how I would read economic
situation. Um,
this moment in history got really wild
because over the last four years so many
people came in that were not hand
selected. And I believe that that
creates a twofold problem. uh one you
are driving the cost of labor down um in
sectors where people that are least
likely to be mobile the learn to code
people for whom that's like the most
absurd statement ever like hey bro just
start something up with AI like these
are the people that are least likely uh
to be able to do that and you're icing
them out of meaning purpose and an
income that that has massive
ramifications
uh also and honestly that to me is a a
minor point I think we can deal with
that in other ways bringing high-end
manufacturing back will help uh to some
degree. But uh the thing that worries me
the most is right now you look at what's
going on in Europe. And in Europe they
are they've they're years ahead of us
maybe five years maybe 10 years ahead of
us in terms of importing people um on
mass that don't make an attempt to
assimilate that don't share values and
you will get a collision of values. And
when you get that collision of values
maybe we're all perfectly fine with
that. the Native Americans found out
real fast they had a collision of values
with us and we won and I'm certainly not
crying about it. Uh but as the person
that's here, I'm like, we have a set of
values. Certainly, I have a set of
values that I believe America stands
for. We started this by essentially
outlining at least what the two of us
think are roughly the values that we're
trying to build a system around. And
when you import people that on mass with
effectively no check on that, you're
going to have a problem. So even if you
separate it from the economic
conversation, I think there's still a
massive problem. And then I haven't
looked at the data close enough, but I
have a sense from headline reading that
there's also some level of economic draw
from people that have come. They're not
contributing, but they still do have
access to certain resources. Even if
it's only emergency, there's just still
some pull on the resource base. So now
for people that are already like why
isn't my healthcare better? You're like
you've got another thing chipping away
at the edges of that problem. It is by
far not the only thing nor do I think
it's the reason. I'm just saying to me
the immigration conversation is more
about values and what happens to a
country. But there's also the economic
tangle.
>> Sure. So we can have that conversation
about values. But before when it came to
the debt you told me civil war. So it's
hard to say like well is there going to
be some value clash that is worth
fighting for such that now we have a
civil war and we all kill each other.
Yes. So I think that that's a
conversation that has to happen.
>> Well so let's because confused but that
of all the things I've said today that I
am uh most able to point at the data and
just be like this is what always happens
over the last 500 years. It's a cycle
that repeats over and over and over and
over and over across a whole bunch of
different countries. Uh, anybody that
crosses the 130% debt to GDP ratio for
too long, I'm talking like 18 months to
two years. Sure. They end up tearing
themselves apart.
>> Sure. So, the first issue I have is I
think comparing the immigration problems
in Europe to the immigration problems in
the United States. I think these are
different, meaningfully different in
terms of what's happened. So, the Syrian
refugee crisis, there was a certain type
of um refugee even that was going into
Europe. Um, the issues that European
economies have, funnily enough, resemble
a lot of issues we would have if we were
more manufacturing based. Like you have
economies that we view as being very
successful, like Germany. Germany views
itself as being a little bit trapped in
the manufacturing stage and they're
having problems outputting these more
productive, higher level positions.
European countries have a lot more
welfare stuff that the United States
doesn't really have. Like in Europe, you
legitimately do have problems in some
countries, especially Sweden, where
people can go not learn the language,
not get a job, and be a leech on the
system forever. In the United States,
there's a reason why ICE isn't rating,
you know, uh food stamp offices. They're
rating Home Depot. They're rating places
of employment. You know, um we're hungry
for workers in the United States. We
could legalize uh the 13 million people
that were here before all of the asylum
[ __ ] We could legalize those people
tomorrow and half of them are already
working. you know, we would be able to
put these [ __ ] to work and we
assimilate people like crazy in the
United States. We just for a variety of
reasons, I think a lot that goes back to
that Reagan speech. Um, like I I could
never go to France and feel French or go
to Japan and feel Japanese. Anybody can
come to America and truly feel American.
And you know, some of the most
xenophobic racist people we have here,
God bless them, are immigrants, some
even illegal that have made it here, you
know. Uh, so I I think that comparing
the United States to to European
immigration problems is a bit of a folly
because our unemployment is still very
low. we don't have a high welfare state.
And when you think about the type of
person that comes to the United States,
you're already selecting for even if
it's illegal, you're already selecting
for an exceptional person. They were
willing to leave their country and go
somewhere else sometimes on these
perilous journeys to go and work
somewhere because
>> yeah, I'll bump up against that one. So
if you look at the same would be true of
the systems in Europe and that just
hasn't been the outcome. It's not like
systems in the open borders forces
people to like, oh my god, I'm going to
take a risk. I'm going to go do the
thing and I get there and ah uh so you
would think oh I've just attracted
somebody who's really like got their
head screwed on straight. They know what
they want. They're willing to go after
it. They're taking that risk. But they
still they're people are going to
exploit whatever the system makes
exploitable. Like that's just human
nature.
>> I agree with that. Those systems don't
really exist in the United States. We
don't have a blossoming welfare state
where it's like I'm going to go to the
US and survive off welfare. That's a
pretty hard
>> It's interesting. I love that you um
like I right now is I would say I
probably but it's just emotion. It's
just in intuition. I've not spent time
looking at this. I want to be very
clear.
>> Uh I have a feeling that there's ways to
exploit the system that we haven't even
thought about. I have a feeling if I
looked at it, but anyway, I don't expect
that to gain any ground. But um when I
look at where we going and I can feel
the shift,
>> I think the uh economic freak show that
we live in right now has created
populism in a hyperpredictable way
that's pushing us uh pushing younger
generations most importantly towards
something that looks like socialism. And
that is a call for giving more things
away, making more things available to
everybody. And so, um, one of the
reasons Quest was successful was we
understood a new type of marketing that
we now call social marketing, uh, at the
same time that the world woke up to the
fact that sugar was the problem. And
that's a big reason that we took off.
And so, I think we're about to have a
very unique problem, which is populism
is pushing us towards socialism right at
a time where we open the borders to
everybody for four years. And so, that
is not without its consequences. Now,
honestly, I think we'll bounce back from
this. Um Obama showed that you can
deport people well and that you don't
have to have a whole country like up in
arms and fighting itself over it. Um I
certainly don't think Trump is doing any
favors to himself. There seems like a
ton of political theater like making it
seem as Gestapo like as humanly possible
>> marching through.
Yeah.
>> Stupid. But I think that this is one
while I don't love it because I don't
like the way that it makes me feel in
terms of I want like America to be
welcoming and all of that and I love the
identity that America has as being a
nation of immigrants. But I think at
this point um in the history cycle,
we're going to have to be way more
thoughtful about immigration as snipers,
finding the right people that we want to
bring in that we think will both
assimilate and be able to um create the
jobs of the future, fill the jobs of the
future. like this is we need to make
ourselves the place that everybody wants
to be. Um, and not just open our doors
and and say to everybody we're at least
a little better than the country you're
leaving. That's not the position we
want.
>> I don't disagree with that. I mean,
Trump is attacking all of the reasons
why we want people to be here, right?
Attacking the visa system for shipping
international students, attacking our
huge universities, um, attacking a lot
of our
>> Trump differently. And I'm certainly
happy to break that down. I don't want
to [ __ ] up your flow, but
>> yeah, I mean, we can get into that if
you want. I'm just saying that if we
want to have a realistic conversation
about illegal immigration, right? I
think that borders are important. I
think illegal immigration is bad. I
think that people should be tracked
here. Like, these are all things that I
I can agree on. But I think like if I
was the emperor, God emperor for one
year and I wanted to fix this problem in
the United States in a way that like
let's actually [ __ ] let's actually
for real for real fix this problem, it
would be here's a path to amnesty for
everybody in this country, okay? go to a
[ __ ] office, fill out your [ __ ]
depending on how long you've been here,
maybe we can, you know, have them do a
fine on their future 10 years of income.
If it makes some people, you know, feel
good about themselves, whatever, here's
a path to amnesty. Um, if you've [ __ ]
up too much, so felonies, big
misdemeanor, whatever, maybe they get
the boot. And then from there, you crank
up uh finders fees or rewards and then
punishments on people that are here
legally. If you have a path to amnesty,
it's relatively easy to take that path.
There's not the 30-year [ __ ] wait
list that there is right now to
immigrate here from some countries. If
you figure all that out, okay, so
amnesty, you know, 10 15 million people,
huge rewards, big punishments for
kicking people out that are here
illegally, and then you start from
there. I think that's like a reasonable
path forward to figuring out the
problem. And then we don't have to think
about it and talk about it. And now the
people that are here legally can be
tracked. We'll know if they're
committing crimes, they're paying taxes,
you know, in a more legal manner. Like,
and then we move on to the next thing.
This like we're going to deport 20
million people is delusional. It's a
waste of [ __ ] time. No matter what
you care about, it's bad. Unless you
just like the cruelty on TV because it's
not helping your economy. It's not
helping the government budget. It's not
helping people trust the government more
and it's not fixing any of the problems
of culture clash or anything else
because it's make people even more
resentful. Um it that there has to be
like it probably has to start with the
path to amnesty and then from there uh
increase the the penalties for illegal
immigration, increase finer fees for
legal immigrants and then work from
there. If you're not willing to have the
conversation, it's like the one with the
budget. If you're not even funding your
IRS, we're not serious about the debt.
That's that's how I feel. So when I see
people fixated on so much of the other
enforcement mechanisms like what's what
is even the point it's like the war on
drugs like how did that go you know how
did the war on terror go you know it's
like let's like let's have a real
conversation about this thing is my
frustration
>> uh okay so uh that seems like a
perfectly reasonable plan I like
somebody that can uh look at it and just
these are the outcomes that I would
expect to get from something like that
we're not wasting time with uh political
theater uh Humvees and horses
>> like I can like I'll predict like right
And I'll be right in 4 years. We're not
meaningfully deporting any number of
people from this country. We are wasting
money on ICE. That budget has been
increased to the size of the what the
17th largest military in the world.
>> Do you think they stop doing it because
it's so unpopular?
>> It's just hard. It's a lot of resources
and money and there's a lot of people
that are invested in it not happening.
If you're a landlord, you've got like
seven people that rent in your building
and they don't cause trouble, whatever,
and they work. You don't want those
people kicked out. The job that employs
them doesn't want these people kicked
out. Like what? Like you're hurting
everybody involved in this transaction.
Like it's just a lot of money and a lot
of work and a lot of theory.
>> Why do you think people are so pro boot
the illegals?
>> Cuz if it's a feel-good message that you
don't have to think about and it's just
like a nice like this is a person I can
blame for my problems and then we can
kick him out. Like when you have people
in Pennsylvania that are obsessed about
illegal immigration, clearly there's
some disconnect from reality there. Like
>> I think it's pointing to something very
simple which is you mentioned earlier
the unemployment rate. I always get a
little um like the hairs on the back of
my neck stand up when people talk about
the unemployment rate because I want to
know how many people have checked out.
How many people would normally be
considered looking for work and they've
just decided I'm out. I mean those
numbers are all tracked. You can find
it. We talk about the unemployment rate.
That's the ordinary one is the U3
unemployment. There's U6 unemployment
which includes I think discouraged
workers and you've got labor force
participation rate. All these numbers
are about where you'd expect them to be.
It's not like there's been this huge
divergence from the U3 and like the U5
and the U6 or like the U3 and labor
force participation has changed a little
bit but that's cuz a lot of people have
like legitimately retired because our
population is
>> so if I look at the numbers you're
saying it's going to be same as it ever
was a unique
>> we don't that's a lie sometimes people
will give this as a truism like you
don't know the real unemployment rate
because you don't know how many because
U3 doesn't include they'll say
unemployment rate doesn't include
discouraged workers we have other
numbers that track that but there's a
reason why we don't use those
>> but there's no incre no meaningful
increase in
>> divergence from where they've been
>> interesting man I'm very surp surprise.
Total intuition. So, hey, it is what it
is. But,
>> uh, that's interesting. Okay. So, then,
uh, I'll chalk that up to
>> let me do a quick layout of my economic
thesis about why I think people feel the
way that they feel. And if that one is
just people feeling emotional, wouldn't
be too surprised. Okay. So, uh, the
economy has physics. And once you
understand the physics of the economy,
it becomes very easy to understand why
people are so pissed off right now. Uh
the way that the economy works is we
have a total fiat system. Every dollar
that comes into existence comes in as
interestbearing debt. It didn't exist
and then it magically exists uh based on
a semi-private company known as the
Federal Reserve. Uh they do it uh
oversimplifying, but they do it by
buying debt from the government. And so
government issues debt, they buy it up,
they try to sell it to citizens first,
but if they can't then buyer of last
resort, as is known. Uh and when they do
that, they're making money out of thin
air. The banking system does the same
thing. Uh right now they are not legally
required to keep even a penny of every
dollar that they intake. So if they
intake $100, they can loan out $100. And
so now you just doubled that $100. So
every dollar that goes into a bank, it
doesn't end up being exactly doubled,
but legally it could be exactly doubled.
>> Um
>> if you're googling, this is like kind of
difference between like M1, M2, M3 money
supply. Investopedia have like an
article on all this, but
>> Right. Exactly. So uh your money supply
is inflating to high heaven. There's a
relationship that I don't normally
bother uh trying to explain to people
between entrepreneurs are constantly
innovating. Innovation actually uh
drives prices down. It is deflationary
which people think is automatically bad.
It is not. People have to differentiate
between crisisled deflation and
innovationled deflation. The government
simply money prints over the innovation
deflation so that you never realize that
it's happening. So that 2% is actually
more than it
>> would otherwise I will say very quickly,
some people don't realize this. When
innovation drives cost down, it kind of
does, but it kind of doesn't because
consumer standard of living doesn't buy
things cheaper. They just buy more of
the things. So, for instance, innovation
has absolutely driven down the cost of
manufacturing GameBoys, but when the
cost of manufacturing Game Boy gets
cheap enough, people want a Game Boy
Advance. Or the cost of manufacturing a
PS4 gets cheap enough, people want a
PS5. So, innovation will drive those
costs down. Insulin is a really great
example that everybody cries about now.
If you want to go buy that cheap
[ __ ] pig insulin, you can go to
Walmart and buy it. You're probably
going to die using it. But there is much
better synthetic analoges available that
costs more. But as the innovation drives
the cost of some things down, the final
product that's produced is usually
better. So people end up spending the
same. So in a way, we don't we don't get
to see the innovation driving stuff
down. People unironically say stuff
today like, "Well, my life isn't any
cheaper than my, you know,
great-grandfather's." And it's like,
"No, it's not, but that's because you
have a [ __ ] cell phone with 5G
internet connection and an apartment and
a, you know, in a car and everything
else." like you've got it way more
available in your life now than somebody
had available, you know, like 30, 40, 50
years ago. But
>> there's no doubt there's hyonic
adaptation. I think about that a lot
with video game development. It's like
there's never going to be a time where
your game loads faster because people
will always build games at the absolute
max of what the machine can hold. Uh
having said that though, you can now get
a PlayStation one for, you know, like
pennies on the dollar. You can get
emulators and all that stuff. M
>> um so
the reason that the Fed can't just go 2%
is the target and nail it is because uh
there is this complex interplay between
the innovation uh where there is going
to be a time where it's just getting
cheaper and cheaper and cheaper before
they build the next thing always and
forever but they're still going to
inflate and eat up all of that. Now, the
reason I don't normally go into that is
because it is so complex and it's hard
to tell like where are we getting
benefit? Where did we just add more
features? So on and so forth. But
anyway, it there's a complex interplay.
Uh but because you have a fiat money
system, the only way to pay your debt is
to print more money. Every dollar that
you print inflates the money supply.
Close enough. I am that is very much a
heruristic. But
>> and then just the counterbalance to that
is inflating the money supply versus
also like having a growing economy,
right? We don't want to have. It's not
that inflating is necessarily bad. It's
a balance of
>> inflating is bad.
>> Full stop period, end of story.
Inflation.
>> When you say full stop, period end of
story. Just to be clear, every single
central bank in every single major
economist on the planet disagrees and no
country has ran successfully on a 0%
inflation policy.
>> That's false. So who who has?
>> You're saying who's doing it now? No
one's doing it now. But we didn't uh
from a historical standpoint, the reason
that you would make the tradeoff because
it's very much a trade-off. If you have
a hard money system, it becomes very
hard to smooth out the lumps in the
system. So when something breaks, you
are [ __ ]
>> Sure. Like great depression and
everything. Right.
>> Right. The government can't come in and
be like, "Ah, it's it's fine. You really
are do have your money. It's a
psychological game because they are just
still stealing money and spreading it
around." But it does have a huge
psychological W. And that's why people
need to I people need to understand it.
While I will argue that from a moral
perspective, people should have a hard
currency option that they can completely
divorce themselves out of the fiat
system and then force the fiat system to
compete with the hard money system. But
anyway, I don't expect to get anywhere
on that. I know that that's like a a big
one, but I really think that there is a
moral argument to be made uh for hard
money.
>> Okay, you can buy gold now if you want
and you can always trade it back to USD
before you buy things, right? You can,
but it's been seized historically. And
gold doesn't inflate a lot, but it
inflates by about 2% a year.
>> How can gold inflate because more is
being dug out or
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like metal inflation.
This is part of the discovery of the new
world technically Mexico. But when they
discovered Mexico, they flooded Spain
with gold and it was wildly
inflationary. So, uh, anyway, gold is
better than your alternatives. I don't
want to over pitch crypto, but that's
like the promise of Bitcoin is that
this, hey, it's truly uninflatable. Uh,
but it's also assailed and it has its
own problems. But anyway, uh, I'm trying
to lay all that out so that people
understand you're in a fiat system
because every dollar that's created has
a debt obligation. If you print a
trillion dollars, you owe a trillion50
billion if 5%. So, how are you going to
pay back the 50 billion? It doesn't
exist. And so now you have a system
where you're forced to print more money
and the bank has no cost of goods, the
central bank that makes the money. So
they have every incentive to want to put
more money into the system because they
make the interest. Now, it also creates
a system where they're loaning you money
and they don't care if you ever pay back
the principal. They had no cost in the
principal. All they care about is the
interest payments. And so they'll milk
that for as long as they can until the
system effectively collapses, which is
exactly what you see. You see these six
cycles where in the beginning uh
governments are very judicious with
their debt. They're very cautious. It
grows like crazy. You were talking
earlier, you don't want zero debt.
That's true. Uh so if you could stay in
that phase one and be judicious with
your debt, you'd be fine. But nobody
ever does. Literally in the last 500
years, every single country ever has
started going crazy like we're doing
where they just start printing a little
bit more, a little bit more, a little
bit more. You can look at the graphs,
they're just absolutely bananas. Uh, and
so when you do that, all of a sudden you
have inflation and the inflation hurts.
It's inflation is money printing is
where you socialize losses across
everybody. So you it's an invisible tax
that goes to everybody, billionaires and
poor people alike, but it only gets
given back to people who own assets. And
it's literally directly given back to
people that own government debt and
asset prices go up because people flee
the dollar and into the assets. And now
>> this is a clarifying question. Doesn't
it technically hurt people that own
government debt?
>> Because if you're if the money like
let's assume tomorrow the USD inflates a
trillion%. Well, now my treasury bond is
worthless because it's locked in on that
dollar amount that
>> that's very fair in the sense that
anybody that owns
>> government debt like it's denominated in
dollars and so that's going to go down
in value. Uh what I mean that it helps
them is it they do it specifically to
stop the bond market from collapsing. So
instead of you losing your money, you're
now like, "Hey, I'm protected. I know
that the government is never going to
default on it." This is how it becomes
known as the risk-free rate of return.
Now, you accept that if your interest
rate doesn't match the inflation rate,
then you actually are losing. It's what
they talk about when it's uh negative
real yields. And so, yes, if you're in a
negative real yield situation, you're in
a bad situation. But, you know, that if
you put in $1,000, your $1,000 might be
worth less when you get it, but you're
still going to get the $1,000. And as
long as the interest was more than the
inflation, you should come out ahead.
Now, when it when it uh what they call a
crack in the bond market happens, now
you're starting to get into, oo, it was
negative yield. I've got to get out of
this. There are no buyers. And that's
where you find yourself in trouble.
That's when the government starts
seizing wealth because they realize they
can't raise funds through government
debt anymore. And given that this is all
a house of cards, it's just complete
chaos.
>> Okay. I feel like negative yield is not
the worst thing in the world. What
you're really trying to beat is just
holding on to dollars, right? So if I
buy a Treasury bond and the printed, you
know, bond is 2 or 3% return and the
inflation ends up being higher, I've
lost money, but it's still not as bad as
just holding on to raw USD, right?
>> Correct. Because you're getting paid an
interest payment. But really what you're
trying to hold on to is purchasing
power.
>> And but generally investments are done
when you buy when you're buying bonds,
it's because you're I imagine it's
because your risk profile is such that
you don't want to embark on any level of
volatility. You need some kind of like
guaranteed risk, you know, free rate of
return or something. But an ordinary
person, I'm I'm going to guess you
probably don't own much in bonds, right?
>> I own a ton of bonds,
>> but now for the first time ever, I'm
starting to pull all my money out of
bonds because I don't trust that over
the next 10 years, the government will
actually be able to pay.
>> What's the What's the incentive to buy
bonds versus just like ETFs or any broad
market or even VTS?
>> So, I have all of that as well. Um, my
thing is that I am extremely riskaverse
because I've already made my money. So,
>> Oh, sure. Okay. Well, in that case, then
it still fits, right? So you so you're
buying bonds because you don't need to
make any more money and you just want to
park it in a place that's like
>> relative. So I've got some that's risk-
free. Uh I've got some that's risk-f
free. I've got some that's sort of
medium risk. I have a lot tied up in my
own company that's my ultra high risk
investments.
>> Um so but I am in a just much more
defensive phase of my life because I've
generated wealth.
>> Sure. Can I ask a question? I'm just
curious for because I always hear this
given as like these hard rules of
inflation is always bad, money printing
is always bad, this is sub-optimal. Why
is it that no other country on the
planet seems to be pursuing that
supposedly obviously superior fiscal
strategy of just having like a hard
currency that has no central banking
manipulation involved because of human
psychology. So there is uh there are
trade-offs on both sides. So when you
print money you guarantee that
ultimately your country is going to go
bankrupt. Again uh only only one country
Japan has avoided the fate. So they've
climbed over 130% and been able to stay
there because of um unique cultural
reasons to Japan. Be interested to see
if that holds now that the Japan carry
trade has fallen or the yen carry trade
has fallen apart um or is cracking, I
should say. So don't know what Japan's
future is. They they may have run out of
time and they may fall uh into that
bucket, but I'm optimistic that they
won't. Okay. So why do they do this? I
think we uh ended up bumping over this
last time. So, the reason that people
would choose to do a fiat money scenario
is if you did a fiat money scenario and
you just stayed in phase one, you'd be
great. It's just that nobody ever stays
in phase one. Phase one is where you
only loan money that you can easily pay
back. So, Warren Buffett summed it up.
The easiest way to fix the US's deficit
problem is to say that if the US's
deficit is more than 3% of GDP, that
none of the um Congress or Senate are
avail uh available for reelection. And
he was like, suddenly people are going
to balance that budget really fast. And
all that basically says, as we talked
about at the top of the show, is that
you're saying one year you could you
could be in debt up to one year of your
uh econ your economic growth. Mhm.
>> So economy grows roughly on a long
enough timeline by 2 to 3%. So cool 3%.
Um and
everybody does it because it allows
people to get elected and you once you
have fiat money and you can create the
illusion that everything is fine. Hey,
your bank just collapsed. No worries.
We've we've uh still got all your money
for you. Um the stock market crash,
don't worry. Like you're going to be
fine. even it was about to ripple out to
the banks but we stopped it and all the
banks are back stop there's no run in
the bank you're all good but if they're
doing all of that by money printing
they're everybody's dollar buys less and
you still feel okay though and so you
can take in tax a lot more from people
that way than you can by just openly
saying I'm going to have to tax you and
so what ends up happening is because
they can do that because the economy is
so difficult to get right they will keep
borrowing and borrowing borrowing which
they are structurally they they must
because the only way to pay back that
debt remember because only a trillion
dollars came into existence but a
trillion and 50 billion was owed. So
it's like all the incentives are there
so they just keep borrowing keep
borrowing keep borrowing to service the
previous debt that they took on and it
then gets totally out of hand. People's
purchasing power is going down and so
now you find yourself in a moment like
today where young people are freaking
out because they can't afford a house.
Now why can't they afford a house? uh
partly because of regulation. We're just
not letting people make enough because
of what you were talking about with
nimiism where it's like, well, I don't
want my property value to go down. I
don't even want it to stay still. I want
my property value to go up. That's the
promise. And so, we overtighten the
ability to build rent controls, things
like that. But the real one is asset
prices go up as you money print. And so,
it just makes things out of reach. Now,
I think homes fall into a unique
category, which is it's the only asset
that the average person understands
intuitively. You don't have to explain
it to them. They know, uh, I'm going to
buy a house because you can live inside
of it. Hard to live inside of a piece of
art, hard to live inside your crypto,
um, hard to live inside your stocks and
bonds, but you can actually live inside
your house. And so, people get that one.
So once they become out of reach, that's
how 40% end up not owning any assets,
which means the poorest among us are
going to be the least likely to own
assets, which means they're the most
likely to get destroyed by inflation
and that creates populism because it
creates this runaway inequality. It
drives the rich richer and the poor
poorer.
>> We could do a we could do a whole
episode on fighting, I guess, on on
macro econ stuff.
>> Yeah, please. Because if there's
something I'm missing, I actually want
to know. Like I'm not trying to win. So,
if you see something here that I'm
missing, I really want to know.
>> Sure. I would have to read up a lot more
on this to
>> Fair, man. I hope you do. Look, you're
so sharp at this stuff because my my
>> Can I Can I ask one thing? Why? So, like
right now, couldn't we theoretically pay
off the debt completely without having
to lend more money?
>> You wouldn't be able to in the system
that we have because there isn't enough
money. So, you have a system that
guarantees you'll never be debtree.
That's not why
>> because you are the money doesn't exist.
So every dollar that comes into
existence comes into existence as
interestbearing debt. You will always
need to print more money to pay the
interest.
>> Okay. So walk me through that in a
reason that the government were to run a
budget surplus for the next you know 15
years or whatever of whatever it would
have to be. Uh it would have to be like
a trillion dollars or something. like
let's say they were to run this massive
budget surplus. Um as the government
collects money, it doesn't pay it back
out in the form of whatever [ __ ]
>> So like if we pay off the debt
>> basically. Yeah. Because the government
is just cuz as Treasury bonds expire um
and then they're not issuing more bonds
to people because they don't have to
like
>> if we paid off every dollar in debt, how
many dollars would exist?
>> Um well, why is explain why dollars
wouldn't continue to circulate to some
extent?
>> They would be zero. They're there every
dollar in existence came into existence
as interestbearing debt.
>> So is there is the maximum amount of
like USD that is in circulation in the
world is less than $35 trillion or
whatever.
>> 36. Yeah, correct. So well that actually
might not be correct. It's every every
dollar owed is more than every dollar in
existence. Sure. That's the right way to
say it.
>> Okay. Um, so then if that was the case,
you're saying that it's bad if we even
if the deficit even if the deficit
stabilizes or we get to some debt to GDP
ratio, even if we maintain that ratio in
your eyes, that would still be a subpar
way to run the economy or are you saying
that would be like your luck in phase
one and that would be good, but nobody
stays there? That would be awesome.
Nobody stays there.
>> Okay. But yeah, if you could stabilize
it, this is why like when I heard that
Buffett quote, I was like, "Oh my god,
if we actually did that, you could live
in a fiat system and odds are that you
would never have a problem." Because
there would the what ends up happening,
the like weird psychological thing that
keeps this flywheel spinning is that
politicians will say and do whatever
they need to say and do in order to get
elected and reelected. The easiest thing
to say and do is to say, "I'm going to
give you free stuff."
And so once they say I'm going to give
you free stuff, they're saying I'm going
to money print. So like when Trump sent
out the tweet that was like, "Hey, to
all those fiscal conservatives of which
I am one, remember we have to get
reelected. Don't go too crazy." And I
was out of my mind angry. I was like,
"What the actual fuck?" Like this is the
problem that you're like, "Yeah, we're
going to make promises to you guys and
we're going to make sure that people get
their free stuff." And in a populous
moment, everybody is fighting. I just
want my piece of the pie. I get it.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. It's all
corrupt. Who the [ __ ] cares? Just give
me my piece. And so now people are like,
I want a big bad man who's going to go
slap the other team in the face, who's
going to get me my stuff, and as long as
I've got my stuff, I don't give a [ __ ]
And so you've got all these Congress
people, senators, everybody just, well,
as long as I've got the thing for my
constituents, I'm fine. It's insane. I
also like the way out seems to violate
what I know about people. But
>> okay, right now we're doing lab leak.
Once I'm done with all my co stuff,
maybe my next thing will be
>> Dude, this would be dope. Please hit me
up. Like you're finding stuff because
I'm I'm not I just don't get attached to
the way that I uh what I've said or what
I believe. I care about cause and
effect. Stephen, man, thank you so much
for the time. Where can people connect
with you?
>> YouTube.com/destiny
or kick.com/destiny. Or if you want a
really wild ride, the omni liberal on
Twitter.
>> Let's go. Yes, I have followed your
Twitter. It is a wild ride. All right,
everybody. If you haven't already, be
sure to subscribe. And until next time,
my friends, be legendary. Take care.
Peace. If you like this conversation,
check out this episode to learn more.
Jeffrey Epstein's story was never about
sex. It was an illusion. Like the dress
some see as blue and others see as gold.
Intelligence agencies exploit the same
trick. They shape what you notice and
distort what it means. Enter compromat.