The Hidden Agenda Behind DOGE’s Demise And The Cliff We’re Headed For | Tom Bilyeu Deepdive
NoI5mHU0X2U • 2025-06-02
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You've been told waste, fraud, and abuse
are the enemy. But what if they're
actually the glue that holds the whole
system together? I'm going to make that
case today. Even though Elon has pulled
back and it looks like Doge is already
on life support, it is critical that we
reckon with what just happened and where
we go from here. If you think you
understand Doge and the threat it
represents, you ain't heard nothing yet.
Follow me down the rabbit hole of why
the Department of Governmental
Efficiency had to be killed. While I'm
not a believer, I believe the Bible is
the original self-help book. It's full
of timeless wisdom that really will make
your life better. And one quote above
all others is going to guide our
discussion today. It comes from your
favorite carpenter and mine, Jesus of
Nazareth. By their fruit, you will know
them. Do people pick grapes from thorn
bushes or figs from thistles? Likewise,
every good tree bears good fruit, but a
bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree
cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree
cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that
does not bear good fruit is cut down and
thrown into the fire. Thus, by their
fruit, you will know them. Okay? By
their fruit, you will know them. In the
world of business, we call that steering
by results. In science, it's the
scientific method. But in politics, it's
something else entirely. And that's what
we're going to discuss today. Politics
is a game of power, control, and
reelection. It is by its very nature a
mchavelian game. Who's in office? Who's
out? Who's popular? Who's got the vote?
Who has the mandate and the will of the
people? Who has a secret that can be
used or exploited? It's a different
tree, but it bears fruit just the same.
And our job is to figure out whether the
fruit that it bears is good or bad.
Before we can decipher Doge, though, we
have to first come to an agreement on
terms. My final argument is going to
hinge on a few base assumptions, but the
most important one is that politics is a
game of power and control. That is the
essence of the thing. But since
politicians have to fiercely control
narrative to maintain power, they are
best understood as a magician who is
desperate to misdirect and hide the
illusion. So the essence of the game is
power and control. And the illusion is
that they're just doing it all to make
your life better. But just like the
magician doesn't want you to see the
smoke and mirrors, the politicians
really don't want you to see that
politics is all about getting reelected.
So remember, job number one is to get in
power. Therefore, accumulating power is
the essence of the thing. Before we go
any further, I want to be really clear
about what I'm doing here. I'm going to
prove that Doge is a threat to the
entire US economy and political system.
All of the screaming over Doge lacking
transparency or giving Elon access to
personal data or even cutting critical
services for the most vulnerable
Americans is merely political theater
and/or the nonsensical lamentations of
people who do not understand how the
monetary system is actually rigged
against them. To be clear, deficit
spending hurts the poor the most.
Despite that, politicians want more,
more, more. And I'm going to show you
why. I'm going to walk you through how
the United States Congress passed
legislation in 1913 that created an
economic system that requires fraud,
waste, and abuse. Our current system
requires, yes, requires
everinccreasing debt to remain stable
for reasons that are going to absolutely
shock you. By the end of this video,
you're going to wish I was lying, but
I'm going to take you step by step
through how it all works in three simple
parts. Part one, Doge ignored Mchaveli.
The first thing to understand if you
want to know why Doge had to be killed
for our current economy and political
system to survive is that politics is a
Mchavellian game of power. I don't need
you to believe that politicians are
ruthless, but politics certainly are by
nature, and it takes what it takes to
survive in the jungle. That is what
Mchaveli has tried to teach the world,
but many of us seem to insist on
ignoring his lessons. The book written
in 1513 was called The Prince, and it's
largely considered to be the first book
on political science. It was written
specifically to advise Lorenzo D. Medici
and it outlined the ruthless pragmatic
tactics for rulers to gain and retain
power. It offered revolutionary ideas
about politics and morality famously
suggesting the idea that the ends
justify the means. Mchaveli's blunt but
honest talk about human nature and real
politique stirred controversy and
outrage among moralists and religious
leaders of his time. He became
synonymous with cunning, deceit,
manipulation, and amorality, which
eventually turned his name into the
adjective that we all know today,
Mchavelian. But I don't think the right
question to ask is, was Mchaveli
immoral? I think the right question to
ask is, was he right about man as
political animal? And I think he was.
That's why Robert Green's the 48 laws of
power, a modernization of the same
concepts, continues to be a perennial
bestseller that you can find in any
bookstore. These books may say something
ugly about human nature, but I believe
what they say is inescapably true. And
if you fail to understand it, the whole
world is going to confuse you forever.
Does anyone really believe that
politicians are selfless actors who just
want to make the world a better place? I
don't think so. I hope not. That may be
what we want to be true. But to confuse
is for ought is a terrible mistake that
will leave you confused. The idea with
the highest predictive validity is that
left unchecked, people will lie, cheat,
steal, spin, manipulate, and coersse in
order to get in power and stay there.
And nothing gets you in power faster or
keeps you there longer than promising to
give voters things that seem free. It
makes the voters reliant on you and it
creates a neverending need for more
money, which provides the needed
justification for modern monetary
theory. Part two, modern monetary
theory, aka the inflation monster.
Modern monetary theory, known as MMT for
short, is just a fancy way of saying
magic money. Magic money that isn't tied
to anything real like gold. Used to be,
but it's not anymore. And it's a huge
problem that dictates basically
everything in your life. I'm going to
make the case. I'm telling you right
now, this impacts more of your life than
people understand. MMT is a bit like a
cortisol injection for pain. got a joint
hurts a bit. You get the injection, it
makes the pain go away, at least for a
while, but it also destroys your bones,
muscles, and immune system in the
process. Plus, it's only masking the
symptoms. It's not actually addressing
the thing that's causing the pain.
Whether you're in America, China, or
16th century Italy, when people are
flush with cash, they're chill. China is
literally an authoritarian government.
But when people have food in their
bellies and housing prices are going up,
no one says a peep. But break the
housing market and you've got riots in
the streets. The revolutionary war in
America kicked off over taxes. And now
that housing is out of reach for most,
the middle class is getting eaten alive
and the wealth divide is growing faster
than Ozic sales. Suddenly, America also
feels unstable. Actually, the entire
West feels unstable. The wellspring from
which every other problem arises is tied
to modern monetary theory. If you want
to know why families have fallen apart,
follow the money. If you want to know
why the average job doesn't buy what it
used to, MMT. If you want to know why
we're so polarized, MMT. If you want to
know why DEI, talk to a central banker.
And modern monetary theory sounds like a
great way to solve a natural problem.
When you view the economy as a force of
nature that needs to be tamed and
resisted like floods or hurricanes, I
get why you'd want to create a system
that is under direct individual human
control. The economy is better
understood as an earthquake. You don't
want to fight against this force. You
will lose. You want to build in a way
that's flexible enough to move with the
shaking without breaking. So why did
Doge have to die if it wasn't for the
reasons coming from the left? Simple.
Doge had to die because the current
monetary system is built on debt. Like
the whole system is made of debt. If
you've ever seen one of those AI videos
where everything is made of cheese, but
you can still see that it's supposed to
be the buildings or whatever, but
they're all made of cheese. That's what
the economy is like. But instead of
cheese, it's debt. Everything is debt.
And because everything is debt, if you
don't have waste, fraud, abuse in the
system, you don't have a deficit. And
therefore, you don't need more money.
I'm going to prove this out in a minute.
Deficit spending is the point. And waste
gets you to the point the fastest. Hear
me when I say you must have a deficit to
make the current modern monetary system
work. You must have a deficit. Must.
Remember the whole system is made of
cheese. So anyone who says get rid of
the cheese aka the debt, they're saying
get rid of everything. Without waste,
you could balance your budget and that
would be a catastrophe for the current
system. I can't believe this is true.
But it is because the system requires
debt to function. Whatever you're doing,
pause. Hear this. That is why both sides
of the aisle want to deficit spend. They
just want to do it at different rates.
If you don't believe me or you're not
sure yet, here's a quick breakdown of
how it works in five easy steps. One,
money is created through debt. This is a
fact no one disputes. They might not
understand it, but no one disputes it
that does understand it. Well, um the uh
so the I mean again some of this stuff
gets the government definitely prints
money and it definitely lends that
money. The government definitely prints
money and then it lends that money by uh
by selling bonds. Uh is that what they
do?
They they um that guy was the chair of
Biden's economic advisory committee. He
doesn't understand how the system works.
He's not evil. Fine. But he's still one
of the many useful idiots driving at
full speed towards a cliff. The
fundamental truth is that modern money
isn't backed by commodities like gold or
silver or even glass beads for the love
of God. Instead, money is lent into
existence by central banks. It didn't
exist. Somebody wants to borrow it.
Poof. They create it typically through
the purchase of government bonds or
securities. Every new dollar, every
dollar, forget new, every dollar that
exists full stop entered circulation as
interestbearing debt. Two, interest
requires constant debt expansion.
Because every dollar created is attached
to debt and therefore an interest
obligation, society must always repay
more money than was originally created.
This is a key point. The amount of
currency needed to repay debt, principal
plus interest, by its nature, will
always exceed the amount of currency
that currently exists. This creates an
ongoing need for new debt to create
additional currency to cover the
shortfall. Let me give you an example.
If $1 trillion is loaned into existence
at 5% interest, then
$1.05 trillion is due back, but only $1
trillion was actually created. To pay
the additional $50 billion in interest,
society must borrow more so that more
money comes into the system.
perpetuating the debt cycle because if
you create that money, it also has an
interest obligation and you're gonna
have to pay interest on that. I and all
of history scream from the void to be
heard. There is only debt, interest, and
the cliff in MMT. It is the only
outcome. Point number three, without
continuous deficit spending, the money
supply contracts. If governments stopped
borrowing, i.e. they stopped deficit
spending. If Doge actually balanced the
budget, the source of new debt and
therefore new currency would dry up.
When loans get repaid without new ones
taking their place, the currency in
circulation shrinks. This happens
because repaid money disappears from
existence because it was only debt in
the first place, reducing the available
currency. There's consequences to that.
Namely, there's less currency available
to service the existing debt
obligations. There's also increasing
difficulty for businesses and
individuals to repay their loans.
There's potential defaults and economic
contraction that will follow quickly.
Point four, a deflationary spiral would
begin. Halting debt creation leads
rapidly to a deflationary spiral because
shrinking money supply leads to default
on debts which leads to asset values
collapsing which leads to economic
activity contracting further which leads
to an increasing number of defaults
which leads to an increase in the
likelihood of systemwide collapse and
that is the cliff that we are being
driven off of. Without ongoing deficit
spending in the current system, which is
not the only plausible system, but it is
the one that we have. Without ongoing
deficit spending in the current system,
existing debts become impossible to
service at scale, causing widespread
defaults and systemic failures. Point
five, political and social chaos
obviously would ensue. Central banks and
governments clearly understand this
mechanism. Thus, they deliberately
promote constant deficit spending to
avoid systemic collapse. Ever wonder why
we're always going to war? They have
high financial needs, lots of debt.
That's why wars are an inevitable
outcome of the current system that we
have. Because without this continual
injection of new debtbacked currency,
fraud, waste, abuse, war, etc., etc.,
the economic, financial, and political
structures themselves risk severe
instability. Once you see the cause and
effect, once you can follow those jumps,
all of a sudden the political theater
becomes far easier to see through.
Before we dive into what's really
happening with Doge, I want to tell you
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clicking the link below. Now, here's
what is really going on with Doge. Let's
bring it all back to 1913 when Congress
passed the Federal Reserve Act that gave
birth to central banking and what has
become modern monetary theory. It's a
system perfectly designed for
politicians that want to gain control in
the easiest way possible, promise people
free things. And the problem, of course,
is that there's no such thing as a free
lunch. MMT creates a need for
everinccreasing amounts of debt, which
means new money has to be created
constantly, which creates inflation.
According to True Flation, we've
experienced more than
25% inflation in the last 5 years alone.
That means every single thing got 25%
more expensive. The Doge mentality could
slow it down. And that would be very,
very good, but it's clearly not going to
stop. And to make matters worse,
inflation steals from everyone, but only
gives to the people who own assets,
which is another way of saying that it
takes from the poor and gives to the
rich. I'm one of the rich people winning
in this system. And I'm telling you now,
it is a terrible idea. Remember when
Trump said, "I know all about the
rigging the system cuz I had the system
rigged on me." Well, I'm telling you,
you need to change the system. If we
drive off the cliff, we all go together.
The only thing I could do with my money
at that point is flee. And I love this
place. So, let's talk about part three.
Part three. And now what? Where do we go
from here? This whole debate started
when Doge went into high gear,
threatening us all with a good time,
namely a balanced budget. At best, they
were just trying to slow the car headed
towards the cliff. At worst, it's simply
political theater or a ploy to move
money out of the public coffers and into
private oligarchs. It's not real unless
someone is talking about changing the
whole system. And you'll know when
they're talking about that because
they're going to need to say words like
abolish the Fed. Hi, Ron Paul.
Ultimately, we will have to fix the
system. As the economist Lwig von Ms
wrote, there is no means of avoiding the
final collapse of a boom brought about
by credit expansion. The alternative is
only whether the crisis should come
sooner as a result of a voluntary
abandonment of further credit expansion
or later as a final and total
catastrophe of the currency system
involved. Set another way, there's two
ways to fix the economy, but from where
we are now, both suck. One just sucks a
lot worse than the other. Lewig is
right. Inevitably, option two leads to a
total catastrophe of the currency
system. But that is what we're currently
doing. Now remember, if you want to know
why this is a Mchavelian game,
politicians must get reelected. That is
literally job number one. That is the
essence of government. That is the
essence of politics. The slide of hand,
the smoke screen is to pretend to make
the world better. And people are going
to vote for the policies that put the
most money in their pockets right now
today, not the system with the best
long-term health prognosis. So
politicians do literally the rational
thing. And they make big promises which
serve to both get them elected and to
create the deficit that is needed to
justify easing the pains of the current
system we have with another cortisol
shot, another injection of debt. Even
though everyone in the system that we
have chosen pays a massive price via
inflation, it does smooth out the spikes
of temporary short-term recessions. But
people don't want a short-term
recession. They want to know that
somebody's in control. They want to know
that we can overcome nature itself. And
instead of treating this like an
earthquake, we've got to be flexible
enough to move with that energy, we get
rigid and we try to resist. And we get
into these insane boom and bust cycles
where we have to inflate everyone into
oblivion as a way to try to smooth
everything out. And ultimately, everyone
just hopes they're not the ones left
holding the bag when the economic body
shuts down from all the cortisol
injections or the economic body breaks
under the movement of the earthquake.
Humans are just terrible at long-term
planning. This is why pre-ozympic so
many people were obese. P.S. odds are
ompic is also going to create long-term
health problems, but that's a problem
for another day. And my entire point,
people want the easy path. No one wants
to be chased by a lion, even though
that's what's necessary to stay sharp.
We need hard things. We need danger. We
need to prove merit. Abolish the Fed.
Stop printing money. Balance the budget.
Think about the kids and the kids' kids.
Don't saddle them with debt. Don't build
a system that is predicated entirely on
creating money through debt. Make money
scarce again. Make people earn it by
doing valuable things. God, that sounds
awful. I know. And even though it would
work, the fact that it sounds awful is
why only the rarest among you are going
to fight for that option. Everyone else
is going to fight about the tea. They're
going to argue about whether the Doge
cuts are as big as Trump and Elon claim.
They're going to worry about who gets
the money instead of worrying about the
fact that in the current system it will
always always only go to the very small
group of elites that actually understand
and control the system. It's exactly why
the rich get richer and the poor get
poorer. So yes, Doge must die. But it's
important that we understand the real
reason why Doge must die because of the
system we have chosen, not because it
has bad aims. at least at the level of
what they message. But because in the
current system, the only thing you can
do is hope to slow down. And if they
don't have a real plan for getting us to
a new system, it will ultimately all be
for not. But I will admit, slowing a car
down is better than speeding up and
racing off the cliff as fast as we can.
Now, it's not because Elon is using his
position to get extra contracts for his
companies, even though he probably is.
It's just that the real problem is so
much bigger. The real problem is that we
have a monetary system that requires
debt expansion because the system isn't
based on anything real or scarce. It's
based on the creation of debt itself.
And that requires endless money
printing. It is a system that steals
from everyone but only gives to a few.
And that's why you can feel the gap
widening between the rich and the poor.
Right? If you made it this far, I love
you to death. You're either hate
watching, which I'll take, or hoping to
make things better. Either way, I
appreciate the chance to make my case. I
really do. I really want people to
understand the cause and effect of all
this. And if you want to join me as I
explore topics like this live, join me
for my live streams every week on
YouTube. Till then, my friends, be
legendary. Take care. Peace. If you like
this conversation, check out this
episode to learn more. Life is awesome,
but every aspect of your life is a lie.
That's the great paradox of the human
condition. We strive for truth but are
ultimately incapable of seeing it
clearly. And that blindness leaves us
vulnerable to manipulation by narrative,
by stories, beautiful, wonderful
stories.
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