Everyone Is Gerrymandering Now | Lemonade Stand 🍋

Summary

Lemonade Stand Podcast Summary

Episode: Everyone Is Gerrymandering Now | Lemonade Stand 🍋
Hosts: Aiden, Atrioc, DougDoug
Date: September 3, 2025

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Overview

This episode is a humorous yet insightful exploration into the mechanics of gerrymandering, its influence on U.S. politics, and how strategic redistricting impacts elections at every level. Using their signature satirical style, Aiden, Atrioc, and DougDoug break down how a small, organized minority can secure outsized political power, all while discussing recent real-world developments involving Texas, California, and the broader national landscape. The trio also touches on broader themes of voter disenfranchisement, the increasing polarization of American politics, and the systemic quirks of U.S. representative democracy—with some wild hypotheticals and banter along the way.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Opening Banter & Satire of Political Rumors

• The episode kicks off with a satirical riff on viral rumors about Donald Trump’s health and supposed "death," quickly pivoting into the real subject: political power grabs and election mechanics.
  • [00:00] Doug: “Donald Trump is dead. Over that. I read a tweet about it. Apparently he's dead.”

2. The Lemonade Stand’s Secret Political Ambitions

• The hosts jokingly confess their “real” aim: to use the podcast as a stepping stone for political power, positioning Aiden as their candidate.
  • [01:09] Atrion: “You guys know that the lemonade stand's secret goal this entire time was to get political power.”

3. Introduction to Gerrymandering: Explaining the Basics

• Doug explains how district-based elections can be manipulated. Through hypothetical city “Lemonville,” he demonstrates that with smart redistricting, a minority can control a majority of districts.
  • [03:17] Doug: "Let's imagine a hypothetical city called Lemonville and you break it up into five districts... you only need three of those five."
  • [05:36] Doug: “Using the power of gerrymandering, you can really control what each district ends up as, regardless of the number of people who are actually... interested in your party.”

Notable Quotes

• [03:19] Doug: "We want a... Who's a chiller? That's long been America's..."
• [05:00] Aiden: "The people love me."
• [06:12] Doug: “Introducing the Aiden 2028 plan.”

Core Insight

• Gerrymandering allows manipulation so that even a party or candidate with a minority of total votes can win a majority of seats (or all seats) by stacking districts.

4. Scaling Up: From Lemonville to Los Angeles, California, and the Nation

• Doug scales the math:
  • Los Angeles: With just 33% of the vote, strategic distribution across 8 of 15 districts would yield majority control.
  • California: Only 25% of the vote, properly distributed, could control the state assembly.
  • Nationally: By focusing voters in the right states, a presidential candidate could theoretically win with around 21.9% of the nation's vote, highlighting the impact of the Electoral College bias toward small states.
    • [09:44] Doug: "...in a presidential election... it's about 26% of the population."
    • [11:15] Doug: "Turns out with 21.9%, you can win the presidency."

Notable Moment

• [11:19] Atrion: “Mr. Beast might fucking win, dude. One video and he gets two thirds of those to vote.”

5. Real-World Application: House of Representatives and the “Kingmaker” Scenario

• Doug unveils a plan: If the Lemonade Stand Party wins just four small House districts, they can become kingmakers, deciding national policy by swinging tight majorities.
  • [13:38] Doug: “With our four votes, we could get the Democrats to win, or we could get the Republicans to win.”
• The math suggests 280,000 people could control four districts (0.08% of the U.S. population).
  • [16:07] Doug: “We could win four seats and take control of the House...”

Notable Quotes

• [17:05] Atrion: “99.9% of the country could vote against us, hate us. We can still control it.”
• [17:24] Atrion: “Mr. Beast could do... Last one to leave the Rhode island polling station wins a Ferrari... This is a shockingly small number.”

6. Current Events: Redistricting “Arms Race” in Texas and California

• Texas (pressured by Trump) and California (responding with Newsom) are both engaged in aggressive mid-cycle redistricting to secure 2026 House seats.
  • [21:12] Atrion: “Trump put some pressure on Texas Governor Greg Abbott to find him. Five more seats was the idea.”
  • [21:30] Atrion: “[California is] doing the same thing and redistricting.”

Explanation of Norm-Breaking

• Traditionally, districts are redrawn only after the decennial census, but this new wave is motivated by the existential stakes of partisan advantage.
  • [23:38] Atrion: “States do it... but they’re trying to push... a 2025, you know, middle of the 10 years [census].”

Notable Moment

• [25:41] Doug: “I don't like this argument you're making. I'm leaving the party.”

7. Systemic Impact: Erosion of Voter Power and Growing Polarization

• Both parties’ gerrymandering erodes individual power, turning elections into zero-sum games.

  • [32:52] Doug: “It blows. It fucking blows is I think, the obvious answer here.”

• Polarization & Legislative Paralysis:
  As bipartisanship ossifies, gridlock pushes both sides toward norm-flouting and hardball tactics.

  • [39:41] Atrion: Displays a graph showing bipartisan cooperation in Congress plummeting over decades.
  • [40:44] Aiden: “...nothing through our congressional process gets done right now. And that's very frustrating to the average person.”

Public Sentiment

• Voters, feeling powerless, are more willing to “look the other way” at undemocratic tactics if it means something finally gets done.
  • [43:22] Aiden: “People are just happy to see action taken for action's sake.”

8. History & Etymology: Where “Gerrymander” Comes From

• [44:23] Atrion: “There was a man named Elbridge Gerry... he creates a district... looks like a salamander... A newspaper calls it gerrymandering.”

9. The Systemic “Death Spiral”: Will It Ever End?

• The hosts lament that once norm-violating gerrymandering is unleashed, parties must “fight fire with fire,” making comprehensive reform or rollback nearly impossible.
  • [35:02] Atrion: “Do you see any way that this stops? I don't see any way that this stops.”
  • [35:05] Atrion: “They almost have to do it... You know, the responsible to not do it.”

10. Exploring Representative Democracy: Is There an Alternative?

• The group speculates about direct democracy, referencing the Roman Republic’s collapse due to “mob rule” and why the U.S. founders chose representative systems.
  • [37:01] Doug: “James Madison... in the Federalist Papers... says, ‘We don't want a mob... so we represent, we vote for representatives.’”
  • [37:48] Aiden: “Everybody votes.”
  • [37:51] Atrion: “Since 2001... why can't I just get nationwide voting for American Idol?”

11. Further Political Developments: National Guard, Presidential Power, and the Aging Political Class

• Recap of Trump’s use of the National Guard and federal court rulings limiting executive authority to deploy them against protest.
  • [47:14] Atrion: “A court struck down the right of the President to have sent a National Guard into California without the governor's will.”
• Light-hearted discussion of the geriatric nature of U.S. leadership.
  • [50:41] Atrion: “We keep getting older. Our presidents say the same age.”

12. Policy Interlude: Trump Tariffs & Budgeting Gimmicks

• Tariffs as "budget neutralizer": Revenue from tariffs touted to offset spending, but hosts debate whether tariffs simply tax consumers rather than other countries.
  • [54:05] Atrion: “Tariffs are paid for by your own citizens... or will it be paid by the other countries?... At the end of the day, that's the only core argument.”
• Potential constitutional challenges to tariffs—if struck down, hundreds of billions could be refunded.
  • [52:23] Aiden: “If it doesn’t [hold up in SCOTUS], the result will be pretty wild because everyone that paid a tariff will get a refund.”

13. Wealth, Zoning, and Social Engineering: Tales from Nantucket

• Aiden recounts a trip to wealthy Nantucket—where local rules and zoning maintain an aura and lifestyle for the wealthy, but may exacerbate social stratification, pushing low-income/seasonal workers into precarious situations.
  • [64:44] Aiden: “It’s a lot of rich people... my understanding of it... like the Hamptons.”
  • [67:05] Aiden: “Every home has to have, like, a nice name, like, on a plaque out front of it... choosing your gamertag.”
• Discussion of zoning reform and Texas’ recent move to allow housing on all commercial lots in cities over 150k.
  • [72:59] Atrion: “The Texas Senate just passed SB840 making it legal to build housing on every commercially zoned lot...”

14. Healthcare Deep Dive: Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) as Cost Drivers

• Doug explains PBMs—middlemen who inflate drug prices through opaque rebates and kickbacks, resulting in huge markups and higher out-of-pocket costs for the uninsured.
  • [88:45] Doug: “PBMs... grown in power substantially... their role... you want to get the drug on an insurance formulary, you go to PBM, who says ‘We’ll stock it if you give a 50% rebate.’”
  • [94:14] Doug: “...the price now doubled... if you're not insured, the price now doubled.”

Eye-Opening Math

• Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs can sell a chemo drug for $22 that retails for $2,000 in the current U.S. system, illustrating the scale of PBM-driven distortion.
  • [98:11] Doug: “He has a drug that sells for $22. It's a chemotherapy drug and on the market it sells for two grand.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|-----------|---------| | 03:11 | Doug | “You need to look like you don't even care. People think that's really chill.” | | 11:19 | Atrion | “Mr. Beast might fucking win, dude. One video and he gets two thirds of those to vote.” | | 17:05 | Atrion | “99.9% of the country could vote against us, hate us. We can still control it.” | | 32:52 | Doug | “It blows. It fucking blows is I think, the obvious answer here.” | | 39:41 | Atrion | “This is how often the blue DOT would be Democrat, reds Republican, how often they collabed or voted on the same thing. So the gray is good.” | | 44:19 | Atrion | “Do you know where the word gerrymandering comes from?... a district... looks like a salamander... a newspaper draws this political cartoon and calls it gerrymandering.” | | 94:37 | Doug | “If you've ever seen people online be like, I was charged... $30,000 to give birth at a hospital... if you're uninsured, we have a rate of $4,000. And they were like, why, why would you charge 30,000 to begin with? Because this is how the system works. At every stage, there are these middlemen...” | | 98:11 | Doug | “He has a drug that sells for $22. It's a chemotherapy drug and on the market it sells for two grand.” | | 100:14 | Atrion | “Jack it up 20 times... You've increased the GDP by that much.” |

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:00–01:10]—Political banter, Trump “death,” podcast’s real mission.
• [02:10–06:12]—Gerrymandering explained; hypothetical Lemonville, strategy set-up.
• [06:30–12:53]—Scaling up gerrymandering math to LA, California, the presidency.
• [13:12–17:00]—Kingmaker scenario: how a tiny party can control the House.
• [20:18–25:30]—Texas/California’s redistricting arms race & breaking the census norm.
• [32:52–35:17]—The “it blows” section: emotional/psychological impacts of representation.
• [39:41–42:09]—Graph: collapse of bipartisanship in Congress.
• [44:19–45:16]—Origin story: where “gerrymander” comes from.
• [47:14–50:54]—National Guard, power of presidency, and “old” political class.
• [54:05–57:34]—Tariff debates, constitutional challenge, budget neutrality.
• [64:44–71:38]—Nantucket, zoning, and how rules benefit the wealthy.
• [72:59–76:14]—Texas’ SB840 upzoning: potential for expanded housing.
• [88:45–100:26]—PBMs and drug pricing: how middlemen drive up costs.

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Tone & Language

The tone is irreverent and comedic but deeply informed, with the hosts bouncing between mathematical breakdowns, real-world analysis, and offbeat hypotheticals (“Mr. Beast wins the presidency”). Their banter makes heavy topics engaging while never losing sight of the underlying seriousness—for example, expressing real concern about the erosion of voting power and the potential for systemic breakdown.

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a rich, accessible explanation of how gerrymandering and districting shape political outcomes, amplified by real-life news from Texas and California’s current redistricting battles. The hosts bring together mathematical clarity, historical context, and policy commentary, balancing humor with a clear-eyed critique of American democracy’s vulnerabilities.

For those who haven’t listened:
Expect to learn not only “what gerrymandering is,” but also why it keeps getting worse and what it could mean for the future of U.S. politics—from national gridlock all the way down to the price of chemotherapy drugs.

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(Episode ignores ads, intros, outros, and focuses strictly on the substantive discussions.)

Transcript

[Doug]

Donald Trump is dead. Over that. I read a tweet about it. Apparently he's dead.

[Aiden]

You. Well, well, Donald Trump is dead.

[Doug]

Oh, I did think that was better.

[Aiden]

Okay, well, he had a dark spot. He had a dark spot on his.

[Doug]

Tweet for two days.

[Aiden]

For two days. Which I've never seen an old person have before.

[Atrion]

He had thick cankles.

[Aiden]

He's had thick cankles. God forbid an American have those.

[Atrion]

He had thick cankles.

[Doug]

D. Vance is wearing a Trump suit. Okay.

[Aiden]

That could be the best theory.

[Atrion]

He had an emergency meeting today and I had people that were just. They were on their knees praying and then when he showed up, pretty normal, they were.

[Doug]

We opening with Trump is dark guy. What do I know you want to do?

[Atrion]

Okay, okay.

[Doug]

Donald Trump is dead as of right now, September 2nd, 3:30pm and that's why.

[Aiden]

We need a new president.

[Atrion]

That's why we had to do an.

[Aiden]

Emergency, and that's why we need a new president.

[Atrion]

Ok, ladies and gentlemen, you guys know that the lemonade stand's secret goal this entire time was to get political power. We didn't care about this low limit podcast shit.

[Doug]

It's a stepping stone. It's a stepping stone, just like San Francisco.

[Atrion]

We're glad with Gavin Newsom where we're moving up. Okay. And we've decided that our best chance at getting someone in is this clean cut guy right here, Aiden. Okay?

[Doug]

We're too old. People are too old.

[Aiden]

We need the youth, they need a young face.

[Atrion]

And we want to get Gavin Newsom out onto podcasting and you into politics. So that's been our plan. However, we've run into a couple challenges, all right? And the first challenge is that people don't want to vote for Aiden. We don't really like him that much. Well, hold on.

[Doug]

I've come up with a plan. You see, it turns out you don't really need that many people to vote for you to win an election, which is why I've volunteered to be your campaign manager, Aiden. And if you can pull this up, I want to teach everybody what gerrymandering is real quick, if you haven't heard of it, because we're going to be using gerrymandering for our plan to get you elected. And this is what everybody's doing right now in California and Texas, so I.

[Aiden]

Can become what Ted Cruz always wanted to be the first Canadian born U.S. president.

[Atrion]

Oh, that's.

[Doug]

Yes, nice. What's your.

[Atrion]

And instead of fleeing to Cancun, you can flee to Sweden.

[Aiden]

Whenever anything goes I mean, like, me and my White House staff will probably be on like, slack.

[Doug]

Yeah, your Mar A Lago is Sweden. Like four days a week. You're going to be Sweden.

[Aiden]

Every like.

[Doug]

But it's him fleeing to another country.

[Atrion]

You're barely here.

[Doug]

Okay, so.

[Atrion]

So, yeah. Okay. So, Doug, you have been hired as his campaign manager. Aiden got desperate. I was kind of making fun of him. And you apparently thought about this for a while, watched the news recently and realized you found a way to. To make this pot, this impossible into possible.

[Doug]

Aiden, we don't actually need the majority of people to want you in power.

[Atrion]

Because you're not going to get them.

[Aiden]

That's great.

[Atrion]

This guy's policies are not popular.

[Aiden]

I think if I tried hard enough, I could have gotten.

[Atrion]

No, I don't think so.

[Aiden]

If I like tried it.

[Atrion]

I think the more you try, the more it's like, yuck.

[Doug]

If we unleash, you need to look like you don't even care. People think that's really chill.

[Atrion]

Yeah.

[Doug]

They're like, damn, the guy's a total chiller.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Doug]

I would vote for him.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I'm a chiller.

[Atrion]

We want a. Who's a chiller?

[Doug]

That's.

[Atrion]

That's long been America's.

[Doug]

Okay, let's imagine a hypothetical city called Lemonville and you break it up into five districts. Unfortunately, we do not do voting where every person does a single vote. There are good reasons for that. We do representative voting. So if you take a state or a city or a country, you divide it into different districts and then each district votes for one person who's going to represent them. Okay, so in this theoretical example, if five districts are made up, Lemonville is five districts. If you want to have voting power in Lemonville, you only need three of those. Five. Right, that makes sense. Just imagine there are 15 aidens in Lemonville and there's 10 ducks.

[Atrion]

You've got worst blunt rotation of all.

[Doug]

Two people.

[Atrion]

No, there's 15 and 10.

[Doug]

Oh, it's going between.

[Atrion]

It would be Sweden and AI in my ears, just nonstop like Sweden AI.

[Doug]

So in this example, you have 60% of the vote, right? You are the majority. It's an say you kind of evenly distributed people. Let's say 15 are in three of the districts. 10. My 10 are in the other. Then that would naturally align like this. 60% of the districts would be yours. You would have won them. And 40% would be mine.

[Aiden]

32. So I win.

[Doug]

So you.

[Aiden]

We settled it. I am more popular.

[Doug]

Yes, in this case, yes. But let's Say you rearrange it. Theoretically, if you have 15, you could put three of your people in each of the five districts, and I only have two in each district. And in that case, you win all five of them because all you need is the majority in. You just need a slight majority in each district.

[Aiden]

The people love me.

[Doug]

Yeah. We're going to get to the real world shortly. This is setting up for our plan. And then the inverse is true as well. Again, I only have 10% or 40% of the vote in this theoretical scenario, but if I stacked two of the districts with just your voters and then the other three districts, I kind of spread myself out. Well, with 40% of the vote, I can actually get 60% of the representatives if I group people correctly in a way where I just have slim majority majorities within each group.

[Aiden]

Doug, that doesn't make any sense.

[Doug]

No, it makes sense. Democracy.

[Aiden]

I don't like that I'm losing now, even though I have the same amount of aids.

[Atrion]

Dude, those first two districts are a nightmare.

[Aiden]

Yeah, yeah.

[Doug]

All right.

[Aiden]

You got some baggage. You wanna.

[Doug]

And we know this would turn into three districts because they would leave and go to Sweden.

[Atrion]

Yeah.

[Doug]

So, ladies and gentlemen, using the power of gerrymandering, you can really control one what each district ends up as, regardless of the number of people who are actually rep. Overall interested in your party. Introducing the Aidan Party plan. Aiden, I think we can get you to president.

[Aiden]

This is the. This is. This is my path that you forged for me.

[Doug]

And we've gotten you merch. I don't aid in 2028.

[Atrion]

You know, I don't know. It'd be more embarrassing to wear this around the city than a MAGA hat or.

[Doug]

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the Aiden 2028 plan.

[Aiden]

Okay, so I'm gonna be real. I'm pumped about this because this is what I paid you to do. I was like, doug, find me a way. Yeah, and then you're. I'm getting no energy from you, Atrion. Like. No, I just reciprocation.

[Atrion]

I'm skeptical. I want to hear your plan. How are you going to make this country better? It seems like all you figured out is how to steal an election. I haven't seen anything.

[Doug]

Well, no, hold on. It's not stealing.

[Aiden]

I'm using the legal available processing.

[Doug]

This is literally democracy. Now, let's scale up. Let's start at Los Angeles. Los Angeles has 15 districts for city council. So if you have eight of those 15 districts, you have a voting majority. Right. There's 3.9 million people. In Los Angeles. So if you do the math on this, even if everybody else, me in this case has 2.86 million people and you only have 1.4. If you spread your 1.4 across the eight districts, only with having 33% of the vote, you would actually win the majority voting power in Los Angeles.

[Atrion]

Is that real?

[Doug]

This is real. Right now with 33% of Los Angeles, if you slice it so that you just go for eight districts and a slim majority in each one.

[Atrion]

Yeah.

[Doug]

You're going to win a 33%. Dude, that's.

[Atrion]

That's wild. I guess that does require you to have people who you can are rock solid Aiden voters, right?

[Doug]

Yes.

[Atrion]

You can know. Yeah.

[Doug]

Yes, yes.

[Aiden]

And God knows I have some rock solid voters.

[Doug]

Yeah. And just to be clear, like 2/3 of people would. Dougs here would vote against you and you would still have complete voting control in the city of Los Angeles with a million people.

[Aiden]

Well, we thought of verify.

[Doug]

Well, hold on. I think we got to go big.

[Atrion]

Yeah. I mean that's just L. A.

[Doug]

We got to go to California. L. A. California has about 39 million people and there's 80 districts in the state house. Right. So if we were to spread, there's about 487,000 people in each district.

[Atrion]

Okay.

[Doug]

So if we win 41 of the 80 districts, we would have voting majority. So it turns out even If I have 29 million out of the 40 million people in California, we just need you to get 10 million. Only 25% of the total population of California. We spread them across the 41 districts and you can win voting majority in California with only 25%.

[Atrion]

I like that. 30 million vote for Doug and he's completely locked out of so upset. If you've run the greatest campaign of.

[Aiden]

All time, I could have been running this campaign instead of doing this podcast.

[Doug]

It's not that hard. 10 million. That's not that hard.

[Atrion]

Smirking face with a backwards hat and 25% of your vote making all the laws.

[Aiden]

I'm running this year with like one really conference. Actually, not even that many of you need to vote for me. And I still don't even care.

[Doug]

You just need. Yeah. One quarter of people. Now. It important thing that we're going to be talking about when we get to what is actually going on in the country right now, which is that what if the Doug side wants to win every single vote? Well, all you technically need is 51%. Right. So if there's 80 districts and in every single district, I have just one more voter than half. I would win every single one with 50%. So the inverse is true. You can abuse the majority votes as well if you spread yourself out evenly amongst the district.

[Atrion]

This is important for when these seats would be used nationally. Right. So, okay.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Atrion]

So if you want to get as many as you can out of one state.

[Doug]

Right.

[Atrion]

And you have a slight majority.

[Doug]

Yes, you can.

[Aiden]

You're aiming to do something like this.

[Doug]

Yeah. So we're going to come back to this, but let's talk about the President. 340 million people in the United States of America. There are 50 districts which are the states. And let's assume it's evenly spread. That's a big assumption.

[Aiden]

I guess we assume we're all. They're all voters to.

[Doug]

Yeah. And so we'll get to the voting thing as well. But, you know, this is just total people. 6.8 million per state is what it would average out to you. So how many people, in theory do you actually need to vote for you in a presidential election to win? It's about. It's about 26% of the population. So I have 251 million people and you have 88.4. But you spread yourself out just amongst 26 of the states. You completely ignore 24. They hate you in 24 of the states and you win a slim majority of 26. You win.

[Aiden]

If I were. Okay. So if I'm an omnipotent being and I'm playing my game of, you know, civilization 9, where I'm running simulations here, this is the absolute minimum that I could win the minority could win the election with. Is that what you're laying out here?

[Doug]

That's even worse because CGP Grey did a video because of the Electoral College where each state automatically gets two votes for the elections on top of the basically number of representatives they have. There's actually the smaller states in America have more voting power for president proportionally than the big ones do. Right?

[Atrion]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

Yes.

[Doug]

It turns out if you were to just focus on the smallest states of the fewest people, you have an outsized advantage. Basically, for every voter, they're going to have more influence in the overall number of electoral college college votes. Ignore the big states. So you ignore the big states. You just focus on the smallest ones. You just get a 51% majority. Turns out with 21.9%, you can win the presidency. Almost 80% of the.

[Atrion]

Less than a Mr. Beast video.

[Aiden]

70.

[Atrion]

He might win. Mr. Beast might fucking win, dude. One video and he gets two thirds of those to vote.

[Doug]

For you.

[Aiden]

So this is. This is the, like, the worst version of how this system could possibly be abused, assuming you have the free pressure of, like, moving people around how you want. Because there is something here and you've explored this more than I have, where you do have to redistrict and plan things around the realities of where people live and exist. That's like the main inhibitor to you, like doing something like this, which is sort of like pouring different colored jelly beans in each jar and saying, like, this is how extreme it could be.

[Doug]

Right. And at the same time, this is exactly what we're going to talk about, which is California and Texas right now are planning on doing this, and this has been going on. So this is all to illustrate how incredibly impactful it is of how you group people together. So let's talk about the House of Representatives, which is what this really comes down to. So in this case, there's 340 million people in the U.S. there's 435 districts or representatives. So 435 people get elected to go represent, you know, the states, the people in Congress. That means there's about 780,000 people per district. So in the worst case, you could have control of the House of representatives with only 25% of the population. Again, it's basically the same as the presidential election numbers. So the grouping matters immensely. Now all of this is kind of theoretical. And now what I realized as I was researching this.

[Atrion]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Is there is a real plan here. Okay. How could we abuse this system? I'm introducing the Aidan Party plan, part two. This is real. And back. Okay. Right now in the House of Representatives in the United states, there are 212 Democrats and there's 219 Republicans.

[Atrion]

Close.

[Doug]

Okay. There's a 7.7 seat difference.

[Aiden]

I'm in the lead.

[Doug]

Yeah. Currently Aiden is in the lead. So for something like the big beautiful bill, the Republicans only were able to pass it because they have a majority. There's just two parties, basically. Right. So what if we. The Lemonade Stand Party.

[Atrion]

The Lemon Party.

[Doug]

The Lemon Party, if you will, took four seats from the Republicans. Just four.

[Atrion]

Okay.

[Doug]

Okay. So the Democrats would have 212.

[Atrion]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Republicans have 215. We have four. If you look at the numbers now, with our four votes, we could get the Democrats to win, or we could get the Republicans to win. We are a kingmaker with four seats out of 435. Okay.

[Atrion]

They both have to come begging us.

[Doug]

They have to come begging us and we can go, hey, we'll pass a big, beautiful bill, but you have to increase taxes. You have to give us free lemon trees. You have to do all this stuff. Okay, all right, all right. Ajax, slowly in.

[Atrion]

Okay. All right.

[Doug]

No, no, no.

[Aiden]

Holy.

[Doug]

Guys, this gets better. This gets better.

[Atrion]

I'm not getting left out of this.

[Doug]

So genuinely right now, if we were to get four people elected to the House of Representatives, us, a third party, we would essentially have control of the. Of the House. We could, like, massively influence the direction of the country. So. So how would we do that? We need to. We need to win in four districts. Right? Got to win in four districts. Well, it turns out not every district is the same size, because let's say you have. The districts are supposed to be about 780,000 each if you split them evenly. But states get the districts. They don't go across state bounds. So let's say you have Wyoming or Rhode Island. They have about a million people. That's a kind of awkward number. Should they get one or two districts? Well, they get two. So that means each district only actually has about 550,000 people. So the four smallest or four of these smallest districts in the country have 563,000 people on average. Okay, so we have our four targets that we're going for. But as you pointed out, not everybody votes. Only about 70%, 75% of people are actually of voting age and eligibility. So we knock that number down by 75% and then. Or by 25%. And then of that, only 50% of people actually vote in midterms. Okay, so it has it again, which means in these actual four districts in the United States, there's about 211,000 midterm voters. That's it. We would just need to get a majority there. But it gets better because it's also first past the post voting. Okay, so you don't actually need to get 51%. You just need more than the other candidates. So if we went in there with a third party and we got the Republicans and the Democratic candidates to split votes with us, we're each One third. One third, one third.

[Atrion]

Yeah.

[Doug]

We only need 34% of the votes to win the district. Okay. And if you do the math on that, that is, like, in this world.

[Aiden]

Our platform needs to be equally appealing to people who are currently voting for both parties.

[Doug]

We have to pull from both.

[Aiden]

Have to pull from both.

[Doug]

Yeah. That is just 72,000 voters per district in these four districts. And what that means we, right now, even if we only had 0.28 million people. 280,000 people. We could win four seats and take control of the House of Representatives. With 0.08% of the United States population, this is a real thing we could do. And I want to point out, between this show, we get about that many people listening to this show. If we move them to Rhode island and Wyoming, if We tap all three of our YouTube channels in the yard, we actually could get control of the House of Representatives right now.

[Atrion]

If you upload the right Mario Kart Wii footage targeted towards Rhode island, we can get.

[Aiden]

I can pull in. I mean, that's. That's a few.

[Atrion]

That's. That's. That's a percentage. That's a big. This is crazy, dude.

[Doug]

Guys, 99.9% of the country could vote.

[Atrion]

Against us, hate us. We can still control it. The king, maker of legislation.

[Aiden]

And every time they try to look up our party online, they're just flashbanged.

[Atrion]

By naked old men.

[Aiden]

It's tough. It's tough. There's no way to combat the Lemon Party. We have them covered on every front.

[Atrion]

Yeah, dude. You know, this fucking scares me for literally, Mr. Beast could do. Last one to leave the Rhode island polling station wins a Ferrari or whatever. Yeah, that's. He has enough. This is not that many people.

[Doug]

This is not that many people.

[Atrion]

This is a shockingly small number.

[Doug]

280,000 people or Elon Musk.

[Atrion]

And I was just thinking about Elon Musk's America Party. How much money if you just flipped four seats? I'm just realizing you really are kingmaker.

[Doug]

Just. You just.

[Atrion]

You legitimately are like the person that could make.

[Doug]

This is specifically Elon Musk's plan with the America Party. He is not trying to beat the Republicans or Democrats. He is trying to do this. He's trying to get like, three or four seats so he can control the.

[Aiden]

Voting, I guess, because my first thought with that was, well, you're king. Making an existing party that maybe you don't have that much control or influence over because they're still the majority, but because you get to choose between the two and you wield so much of the consequence, I guess you. You have the ability to influence way beyond the actual number of representatives that you have.

[Atrion]

Yeah. Because Democrats, Republicans are now so polarized, they don't vote the same on anything. They literally. It's.

[Aiden]

Yeah, you have to.

[Atrion]

You have to have a majority to get anything passed. So you'd have to come begging to the Lemon Party with the big, beautiful bill.

[Doug]

We could be like, you have to Lemon Party would come in there and just, like, suck up all the power, if you will.

[Atrion]

Come in and suck in. I promise you that. I promise you that there's two old.

[Doug]

Parties, and we're going to be a new old party getting in there. All three of us are just going to be grappling together.

[Atrion]

That's what America's wanting in the bed of power.

[Doug]

That's the Lemon Party promotion.

[Aiden]

There's three guys in that picture of Lemon Party, and then it's like, I'm.

[Doug]

The fourth, and those are the four.

[Aiden]

Representatives eating a lemon. This is. I mean, yeah, it is a very, very extreme thing. Right. But to just see what the bare minimum math could be. Ludwig made a joke about this on our show years ago on the Yard, where he talked about moving enough people to, like, a small town in Nebraska that you could get. You could conceivably acquire a district.

[Atrion]

Get political power.

[Aiden]

Yeah, get enough political power as an influencer.

[Doug]

It's not only possible, it's, like, shockingly possible. Cause again, it's not even that you need to go take over a whole district. You need to take over, like, a percentage that's just more than the two other candidates. I mean, it's crazy. Like, that's not to say this is easy. We're probably not gonna get 280,000 people to move to Wyoming right now. But this is crazy looking at you, and it's not.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I think maybe a good way of saying it is. It's not actually easy to do this in the sense that I feel like if powers that be really were intent on doing something like this, maybe they would have done it already. But I think it's the idea that it's way easier than you have in your head. It's not like you need to convince 51% of the country to get behind you. You actually can manipulate the system in such more achievable ways.

[Atrion]

So is there more of this? Because I want. I want to tie it into what's going on.

[Doug]

So. So this is a general about the power of districting, which leads into what is going on right now in the country, which is both Texas and California are major redistricting specifically to try to utilize this power.

[Atrion]

Do you go back to the. The split. The. The Doug and Aiden split city. So, yeah, if you guys want to know that the reason this is sort of coming up in the news is that the 2026 midterms are coming up for the House of Representatives, and the House Representatives is pretty important to have a majority in because you Set the agenda for what's going on. You control budget and spending. It's where all tax and spending starts. You control a lot of oversight and investigation panels. Like, a lot of budgets are set there. Like, it's just a really important thing to control. And, and so both the Democrats and Republicans really want to control it. Especially Focus currently have the lead. They don't want to lose it. So Trump put some pressure on Texas Governor Greg Abbott to find him. Five more seats was the idea. He needs to get five.

[Doug]

Such a. God, that's such a good euphemism. Just find me five.

[Atrion]

Five more seats because Texas has enough Republicans, they can slice this.

[Doug]

Do they have. Let me, let me look up the number while you're doing that.

[Aiden]

It's like when he called the Georgia secretary and he was like, just. Can you just find me the votes?

[Doug]

So sick. What a good euphemism.

[Atrion]

Okay, so. So that pressure kicked off, and now Abbott is looking to again redistrict Texas, to slice it in a different way to where they end up with five more. If the vote goes the way they expect. And the Republicans, they end up with five more House representative seats for Texas in the next election, 2026. And so in response, California and Gavin Newsom are firing back and basically doing the same thing and redistricting and try to get five seats of their own. I think it is five, right? Yeah, five seats. So if they both fully accomplish their goals, it'll net out even. But a lot of other states are now jumping on the fray. It's becoming like this. I think the main takeaway is that both sides really are starting to see elections as existential more than they used to. It's been ramping up. But this midterm, you can clearly see that, like, nobody's willing to. There's nothing off the table to, like, get it done, to do whatever it takes to get back a majority.

[Aiden]

I think there's sort of an arms race here. Right. Where normally the way redistricting works at this level is every 10 years, the US collects and publishes the census. So, like the 2020 census, the 2010 census, and that information about our population, our demographics is used to set the districts as they are in each of these states. It's a process that each of these states handle. And in general, it is very. It's breaking form or decorum to start redistricting during a period that is this far away from the last census. It's like, in general, you would try and wait until the next 10 year mark to do this, and that is one of the things that's being criticized about these changes is that you're clearly taking action for the midterms. And this is something that is not common or not something you're supposed to do. I think with how heavy that narrative has been perpetuated, I had an idea that this must barely happen ever. But there are cases in a number of states over the last in this century of states choosing to redistrict in the in between terms of those census censees.

[Atrion]

Yeah, states do it. But I think the idea, my understanding is that, you know, the national census happens every 10 years. That's, that's it. And, and they're trying to push, or at least Trump's trying to push for a 2025, you know, middle of the 10 years. We're just going to do it early. We're going to do a national, just right before 2026, basically.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Atrion]

And then redraw everything. Now, do you know anything more about that? Is that, is there a reason or a rationale? I mean, the reason is like to get more seats. Right.

[Aiden]

But what is the, oh, so this is from my understanding, let's say the villain chair argument here is that the census data that we collect, similar to the jobs data that we had referenced a while ago, and maybe the argument for hiring the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics was this census data is wildly inaccurate, is not reflective of the population as it stands now, especially because that census data was collected during and through Covid and the pandemic, which was such a tumultuous time and too much has changed about population and demographics since then. And we need to a update the census and push forward a new effort to collect a new national census data at a time when we wouldn't otherwise be doing one, at least at that level. And then also because that data is a inaccurate or balance. Perhaps you think that because the data was finalized and published under the Biden administration, that data is inaccurate and being used and weaponized against Trump and the Republicans in power right now. My understanding is the data was collected during the Biden administrator or the previous Trump administration during COVID as best as possible, and then was finalized and published during the, the Biden administration.

[Atrion]

Okay.

[Aiden]

So it's like, well, maybe the data is inaccurate. Maybe this is reflective of a process that isn't working for us anymore and we need to step up and take these actions now. And it's not all about winning the midterms.

[Doug]

I don't like this argument you're making. I'M leaving the party.

[Atrion]

You've already lost one.

[Aiden]

Well, there's a lot, I think, what.

[Atrion]

We don't think about, right. If you have such thin margins, if you lose like eight people, you go to zero percent of the guy who's.

[Doug]

Like, I want free candy too. We got to keep you, man.

[Aiden]

What we don't think about here, we.

[Doug]

Would have the same problem. There could be like five kingmakers in our party who like demand shit from us.

[Atrion]

It's all the way down. So one guy in Rhode island is just determining the fucking.

[Aiden]

Since the collection, I would argue that since the pandemic happened, a skyrocketing number of Ayden and Lemon party supporters that just were not account previously. So we have to weird that we wouldn't do it again.

[Atrion]

I see. Well, I can show you this graph. Can you pull this up? Perry? This is, this is a bipartisan estimate of how many seats each individual state has gained from gerrymandering. Now, many, many states don't have a conclusive bias in gerrymandering or gerrymandered stuff, but these are the key examples. So Illinois for the Democrats is clearly drawn in such a way to where they're getting more seats than they probably would if it was perfectly aligned. And the same is true for Republicans in Texas and Florida and then a bunch of other like, southern southeastern states. So here's the thing. Both parties have been doing this, but the current net advantage from what I can find is 17 seats in total for Republicans in the, in the last House election, in the last House elections, Republicans got probably 17 more seats than the voting percentages overall for the country would indicate that they should get.

[Doug]

Well, so, okay, that's, that's what I thought too. But I think even this is about like, really blatant Januarymandering because I read an article by the AP that basically 41 out of the 44 states with more than one congressional district, the, the winning presidential candidate had a larger share of the state's congressional seat than the presidential vote. Basically. That means that most basically no states can get this perfectly right. It's incredibly hard to district in a way that's fair. And you know, are people distribute, you know, the population is distributed in a certain way. And the idea with gerrymandering is you make these weird shapes to try to include however many people you want, but ultimately you can only influence that so much. Like in the desert area of California, very, very Republican, you're not going to be able to like, you know, really.

[Aiden]

Like there are some really Good in depth explanations about this stuff. I think the example I actually saw from a long time ago was in Chicago, where when you're talking about how you draw these districts in what is supposed to be a representative democracy, what are the lines that these things should actually be drawn around? That's not to say that there's no abuse in the system, but if you're trying to do it as honestly as possible, you know what is more reflective of groups, opinions. Right. Do I draw it in like a distribution of equal area? That seems like a fair place to start, but actually communities congregate in much different ways than that. Right. There might be a group of people of the same immigrant background or the same working class background that are in a weird shape in a city and are around a very different type of minority group in that same city. And what is the fairest way to separate those groups of people? Because assigned housing and in Singapore they simply would have. So I think that's, that's an important thing to keep in mind is even when you're trying to do this as genuinely as possible, the arguments for how you put these people together are not super straightforward.

[Doug]

Yeah. So here, here's the example I want to use, which is California. The districting is decided by an independent commission. So in theory it's unbiased. Right. Versus some of the other states where.

[Atrion]

Like they did a vote to change. Right. That's the point. Right.

[Doug]

No, they're, they're. Well, I know it's like coming up, but just like right now. So 60% of California voted for Kamala Harris. So 40% voted for Trump in California. But Democrats have 83% of the House seats. So it's not that California is gerrymandered necessarily, but it is districted in a way where the Republicans in California get about half the voting power that they should. So even in that graph that's like California isn't gerrymandered their way to more stuff. The reality is the Democrats in California right now have far more voting power than they should at a national level compared to the actual representation of California, which just gets the whole problem. It's so.

[Atrion]

And it'll be exponentially worse after that.

[Aiden]

Yeah, this only worsens the issue. So to tie it into like directly where we're at right now is Texas was the first state by Trump to be pressured to make these changes. California stepping up to counter it, and now a variety. And after that was brought into play, a bunch of other Republican states were also getting Illinois. And you know, everyone's Jumping in to make the changes. And besides them. Now there's a bit of a decision lag, but other Democratic states like New York are trying to step up to see if they can make these changes in time for the midterms as well. But because they're on the back foot responding, it's unclear whether the votes or the policy changes at a state level are going to come in time for the midterms in order for those changes to be made at all.

[Atrion]

I heard it described as, you know, in a normal democracy, the voters should choose the. The. Their. Their candidates or their, their representatives. And in this, in gerrymandering, the representatives choose the voters. Like you're just. You're picking the ones that will give you the result you want and slicing it in a way. And I find it to be, I mean, it. You know, we can throw around. I do think it looks like the Republicans are doing it or at least getting more of an advantage. They've done it more successfully, but it feels like for the all voters, it just means our vote is getting thrown out. It doesn't matter as much in every state that we live in, like, it's getting so widespread that we're getting to the point where the elections are being drawn ahead of time. Like, we're not.

[Aiden]

So what I wanted to ask you guys is I think there's a big. The reason why Gavin Newsom is stepping up to challenge this in California, right, is because of a political goal at a national level. Whether it's selfish and he sees this as his opportunity to push himself as like the next candidate for the Democratic Party at a national level, or whether it's genuine in this is the most important way we need to combat, you know, fight fire with fire and make sure that they can't gain all these seats and we just sit here and do nothing. And what I wanted to ask you guys is how does this process make you feel at an individual level? Because part of me is like, yes, I want this to happen in California because it's necessary to engage in this battle of national politics. And I don't want to be put on the back foot, at least in this Democrat versus Republican fight. But, but also, as an individual voter, I don't think it's really fair or good that the system works this way at all and that we're pushing further and further down a way that reduces the power of individuals voting in states where they're the political minority.

[Doug]

Right. It blows. It fucking blows is I think, the obvious answer here. Yeah, I mean, so I mean, speaking from personal experience, like, I at multiple times have not voted for president in California. Cause I know my vote doesn't matter. It's like, why? And I know that's. I'm sure people would have issue with that. But, you know, there's been a few elections that I've been a part of where, despite what that one guy in the YouTube comments thinks, I vote Democratic. But then in California, it doesn't matter. Like, and that feels bad that, like, because of the way that we're grouped together, which is all of California goes to a single group. It doesn't matter. Like, my vote for the president doesn't matter. And then that, you know, that same thing you can apply at all these different scales, like we talked about. And then the thing when I was doing this research that really made me feel weird about it is less about the funny scenario where with 0.08% of the vote, we get control. That is very funny. And we could do that. But it's actually this one, which is that in the theoretical Lemonville, where you have 60% of the vote, if you district correctly, you can take 100% of the representation. So it's much more likely that the group in charge can district. Not only would they have the voting power to start the redistricting process, they are much more capable of, like, outsizing their advantage. And the fact that California right now is like 83% represented by Democrats. Florida is now 72%. Texas is trying to get to 79%. Like, it's just swinging, like, way out of whack with how people actually vote.

[Atrion]

Yeah. I mean, if there's 10 seats. But I think everyone alive would say the fair thing is you get around six seats if you had 60% of the vote, and if you're going to get 10, then every state that doesn't do gerrymandering is. Is becoming less relevant.

[Doug]

Like, they're falling behind.

[Atrion]

Or.

[Doug]

Do you see any way that this stops? I don't see any way that this stops. Now that the Pandora's box is open, any blue state who has control of their House and is like, we can start a redistricting vote. We can. We can literally find three more seats. Everybody's going to do it. This is really pretty depressing to me.

[Atrion]

Not only that they could do it, they almost have to do it without.

[Doug]

Right.

[Atrion]

You know, the responsible to not do it. Yeah. That's the situation we find ourselves in where, you know, we have to almost pray that it evens out. It's like five from Texas five from California.

[Aiden]

Yeah, but your vote feeling so useless. I agree. I remember when, I think it was the 2016 election and I lived in Washington state and I think I voted in the primary and then my ballot got mailed to like my parents house instead of where I was living in Seattle at the time. And then I just didn't vote that year and it was the first election I could vote in and you know, Hillary, surprise Hillary won in Washington.

[Atrion]

It.

[Aiden]

Right. It's like me not voting didn't feel like this huge difference maker at the time. Especially because I was fucking 18 and I didn't think about my vote much belong beyond the president.

[Doug]

Right. Yeah. To be clear, it was also when I was younger is when I was younger.

[Aiden]

Yeah. But it's, it's, I think it's got to be frustrating both ways. If you're a Republican in California, you feel like it's basically a wash, like what can I realistically win on at a national level? Kind of feels like nothing. But if also if I'm a Democrat, the idea that like I can kind of tell myself I don't even have to show up today and it doesn't matter. And I'm not saying that either of those perspectives are true in the sense that, you know, voting is important at so much more like local levels as well. When you show up, you, you vote on so many more things that affect your like state or district at a more personal level. But I think a lot of people forget about the things that aren't headlines. It's why people vote less in the midterms to begin with. They just, it doesn't attract all of the same political attention from voters.

[Doug]

So this is why I've been thinking we go back to the Roman system of we all meet in the forum and you can beat people's clubs, right? Yeah. Cash it out is a good way of putting it. Yeah.

[Atrion]

You say Roman Forum because I was literally thinking of that book we read about the polarization in Rome where.

[Doug]

So I looked into this, I was like, why the fuck do we have a representative democracy? Why doesn't everybody just put in a vote for what they want? So not only was it logistical reasons, when the country was started, you couldn't have the pony express fucking mailing in every vote. But on top of that, so like James Madison talked about it in the Federalist Papers and he's like, we don't want a mob. If you have, you know, 10,000 people show up to vote and 6,000 of them are voting on one side they can just physically intimidate the other side and completely control. And that is what happened in Rome. And they specifically called that out. And we're like, we don't want to be like that. That. So what will this system where we represent, where we vote for representatives, they will have a mature, stable government and they will be able to have the nuance that a mob would not be able to. So they, they thought of this and they're like, this is the. But now in modern day, it's like, maybe we should just.

[Aiden]

Everybody votes.

[Doug]

You know, everybody's. Everybody just.

[Atrion]

I mean, I've thought about this for. Since the year 2001 when they were doing nationwide voting for American Idol. And it seemed to run like, why can't I just get.

[Doug]

I was born then. I don't even know.

[Atrion]

You were 30.

[Aiden]

All right. Villain, chair, villager. Like, you know, I don't think Russia or like China is thinking about hacking the American Idol voting system. Right. I feel like that's the digital, the argument against digitizing.

[Atrion]

They wanted Reuben Sutter to win.

[Doug]

Putin wanted Ruben. I want big balls to code our democratic voting system.

[Aiden]

But that's. Isn't that the argument behind, you know, this, I guess is the argument behind mail in ballots. And it's not. Not really. It's not true either. But the argument about any of these things that would make voting more efficient or more easily accessible is you're sacrificing the security of the election.

[Doug]

Well, I saw a tweet that they're stuffing the ballots.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I saw.

[Atrion]

I don't even know what president say that. This morning.

[Doug]

I saw a blurry video on Twitter where a guy is stuffing papers into a box. Checkmate.

[Atrion]

It was. It was a press conference about like moving space force from Colorado to Alabama. And he spent a good chunk of it talking about how Colorado sucks because they have mail in voting and it's all fraudulent. I guess this is all part of this push for 2026 of doing whatever is possible to stack the deck to make sure. Because. Because the stakes are so high. So he wants to ban mail in voting because it favors Democrats and he wants to. They both want to redistrict because they favor each other. And then, you know, there's the National Guard appearing in blue cities as possible, you know, intimidation. And it's all just to win this. I want to show one more thing, though, because. Because this is, I think, a really cool graph if you can pull it up and it ends before it even gets super bad. This is how often the blue DOT would be Democrat, reds, Republican, how often they collabed or voted on the same thing. So the gray is good. Basically. The gray is like a bipartisan bill.

[Doug]

So it means the two parties came together and collaborated.

[Atrion]

If there's a gray dot, that means they connected on something. And so you can see in the 40s and 50s, there's a lot of gray. I mean, they're pretty big overlap. They often would find some sort of common ground to get something pass. Keep going, keep going. By the 80s, they've sort of started to split apart. By the 90s, it's entirely apart. By the 2000s, there is almost no gray at all. By 2011, it's, I mean, by, you see in 2007, there's like literally one line, and this stops at 2011. But my understanding is it has become essentially non existent. It's two completely divided parties and you cannot get something passed in this country unless you have a majority, which has caused everything to slow down. Which has caused, I mean, Trump is the most extreme example. But executives, the President has been taking more and more power because nothing gets done the other way. So they're just grabbing it. They're just grabbing it and doing things. And the American public, I don't think is pushing back as much as they should because our normal representative system is not able to make progress.

[Aiden]

Well, I think the broader argument, the pro argument for these types of actions being taken, like this sort of redistricting, or you could take it to other actions Trump's having right now, but other executives in the past too, is that nothing through our congressional process gets done right now. And that's very frustrating to the average person. They want to see action taken and results from that action as soon as possible. People are, I would say, understandably impatient, maybe not reasonably so, but, but understandably so. And it's like if I want the executive to take action because this polarization exists, I want the redistricting to happen because it enables the part, even though it sacrifices something about our democratic process, it enables the party in power that I voted for to finally fucking take action, which is something that I've been waiting 10, 20 years for. How do you, you know, how do you argue with that person? Because like you said, you don't see a version of how this issue with gerrymandering gets fixed. And does that mean we just sit and wallow in a system that produces no results forever? Does it mean I finally get to admit that I'm happy with the executive taking action because it's even on The Democratic side.

[Atrion]

Like, I want to say, like, so my head and my heart have a different. Like, I. As we had said before, like, I. Personally, I prefer not to have any jam. I prefer to try to get it as fair as possible. But in this moment where I am really unhappy with, like, the big, beautiful bill and things the House has been passing, I. I can see myself, like, giving credit to Newsom for doing. For just doing action. I think there's a bias towards action and. But I can see why. I can see why someone would hate it on the other side. Like, I get it, but I just. I'm understanding why a frustration, a tectonic plate frustration in this country is causing people to, like, support things they wouldn't normally support, like act. Just movements, just making some action versus, like, I don't know, like a strongly worded letter from Hakeem Jeffries or something. I want to see, like, something being done to try and counter it.

[Aiden]

Yeah. And, yeah, if your main way of interacting with politics for the last two decades is gazing at gridlock and feeling like nothing is done, then maybe you're just happy to see, except for war.

[Doug]

They're pretty down for war still.

[Aiden]

Yeah, yeah, but that doesn't count.

[Atrion]

That doesn't count.

[Aiden]

That doesn't count. People are just happy to see action taken for action's sake. You know, like, they're willing to look the other way or, you know, the cognitive dissonance necessary to look the other way on these infringements of, like, due process or rights or the status quo is fine, because at least something is getting done.

[Doug]

If somebody at your office isn't doing their job, are you okay with your boss just maybe you slide over to his desk and you start doing his work? Like, at some point you just want to get done, Right.

[Atrion]

Are you taking on your boss's work for free because he's not doing it?

[Doug]

No. Trump is taking on his employees. Word. He's doing the homework of the Congress. Yeah, this analogy makes sense.

[Atrion]

Okay, pop quiz for you guys. Do you know where the word gerrymandering comes from? This is a factoid that you will be able to take. Do you know where the word gerrymandering comes from? Aiden? Tick, tock, tick, tock. If you don't know it, you have to say, I'm a little stupid boy.

[Aiden]

I'm a little stupid boy. Because I don't remember. I don't remember.

[Atrion]

There was a man named Elbridge Jerry. He's one of the least known founding fathers, but he is a founding father. And in I don't know, the 1800s, I don't remember the exact act. Here he's decides to redistrict to help the Federalist Party and he creates a district. Can you show my screen that looks like a salamander? I guess. Oh, it's so long and narrow and it helps all the Federalists get a majority. And so a newspaper, a local newspaper draws this political cartoon and calls it gerrymandering. Because of salamander.

[Doug]

Oh, because it looks like it's okay. Wow.

[Atrion]

Because like so after Aiden's though we'll call it Calvin Snaking or something. Yeah, Calvin Lemoning. Yeah. But that's where it comes from. So. Yeah, I, I think we all agree it kind of sucks. But it's happening and it's going to be hard to reverse. It's going to be a weird.

[Doug]

Yeah. By, by definition. Because yeah. Once you redistrict, you get control. You have the ability to prevent any vote to undo it.

[Atrion]

One little thing I saw that was interesting, I was reading into it, was that states that have, that don't have control of the judiciary, like almost what I found is almost everybody tries to gerrymander, but if you don't have control, like solid control, judiciary, usually your gerrymandering gets undone. Like later on they'll strike it down or redo it. So that is one of the main things that has made Republican states more effective at it, is that they both put in their gerrymandering plans and the Republican ones can keep it because their, their courts don't overturn it. Is what I, what is what I saw in the research. So that's where we find ourselves. I mean, I don't know if we have any larger stuff about 2026 or, or, or DJT. He did his press conference this morning.

[Doug]

He's dead.

[Atrion]

That's what they said. So the whole weekend everybody was saying he was dead. Cause he had fat cankles and he had a big, a big weird looking bruise on his hand.

[Aiden]

Popped vein in his hand or something and.

[Atrion]

But it turns out he was fine. He's golfed and came out today to show everybody he was healthy and talked about moving Space Force to Alabama. So he was fine. It's actually kind of a nothing burger. But he did talk a lot about again 2026 and how they need to get National Guard. Oh, I'll say this, the National Guard. So we talked about this a few months ago, two months ago, when there was the ICE protests in la.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Atrion]

And the National Guard was sent to break Them up.

[Doug]

Could you pull up this presentation? A truck made. Sorry, continue.

[Atrion]

You think that was the takeaway from what I said?

[Aiden]

Audio listeners, it says in quotes, donald Trump is dead. End quote. Atriot 2025.

[Doug]

Technically, he did say that. Technically, he did say that. I don't know if it was on the podcast, but at some point you did say those words.

[Atrion]

There's still a few months for this to be true. Not that that's.

[Doug]

All fun and games. Hypothetical even.

[Aiden]

Give it a timeline.

[Atrion]

You said you killed J.D. vance.

[Aiden]

Oh, I wouldn't say that.

[Atrion]

He said that.

[Aiden]

Oh.

[Atrion]

So the court struck it down. A court struck down the right of the President to have sent a National Guard into California without the governor's will. His. The line from the. The. That is, I'll actually have it if I want, if I can pull it up. But he basically says that the President cannot use the National Guard as a personal police force.

[Doug]

You mean because he's dead?

[Atrion]

That's right. If you were living, you could do it.

[Aiden]

He's incapable. J.D.

[Atrion]

Vance can do it. Vance can do it. Yeah. The goal of what was done in California seemed to be to create a national police force with the President as its chief. There was no. Because it was said because there was a rebellion. That was the emergency. But the judge said there was no rebellion. Nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond the protests and enforce the law, which was my experience on the ground. I think the civilian law enforcement had it handled.

[Doug]

I got tear gassed by.

[Atrion]

You were crazy, though. That was like four days after you just going.

[Aiden]

Doug was there for the love of the game, actually.

[Atrion]

You just do that every weekend. You just.

[Doug]

Yeah, I'm not kidding, by the way. They were there and they did tear gas me amongst other people.

[Atrion]

I got. I got mini stampeded really well. I was. Because somebody. Somebody just said, ah. And then they all started moving back and I was in the middle of a crowd. Nothing happened. There was nothing that caused the ruckus, but everyone moved back.

[Aiden]

So is this a. Is this a California court or a national, like a federal court?

[Atrion]

That's a great question. Where was this judge based and was he based?

[Aiden]

Presumably each state that California judge.

[Atrion]

Liberal judge woke judge.

[Aiden]

The National Guard, I take it back, is moving into more than California now or attempting to be moved into more than California. And each state will have to raise their concerns individually, like through similar means. I imagine this is happening first because this happened much earlier than the other recent efforts. I'm sorry, Like Trump is moving the National Guard or announced that he is moving the National Guard into more cities and states.

[Atrion]

That's right, yeah. This morning he says he's going to move it into Chicago. He said Chicago is a war zone and people are dying. And even though Governor J.B. pritzker does not want the National Guard there, he is going to do it anyway. And it'll set up another court battle. But that's for a different state. This is only for California. It doesn't. It's not. It's not even enacted yet because the rules were changed. Like, you can no longer. A judge in one state cannot hold a stay on a president's actions nationwide. They can only switch them out. I like his bow tie. I will say that he does look like he's a.

[Aiden]

He's got that going.

[Atrion]

He's got. He's got a little bit of freshness.

[Doug]

He's older than Trump looks like.

[Atrion]

Is he good? I like that A lot of our representatives are old.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Atrion]

I've been really scared that we're going to get anybody done. It keeps me up at night, Doug. Honestly, I'm fucking petrified.

[Doug]

When you're a little scared of politics and you see somebody comes in to save the day, who's also 84.

[Atrion]

Dude, I saw today because people were making the joke about Trump dead, and I was like, well, how old is he? Well, he's.

[Doug]

Trump's dead.

[Atrion]

You heard it in my presentation.

[Doug]

Very slide.

[Atrion]

Trump is 79. So he's younger than Biden is now, but older than Biden was at this time in his term. He's the oldest president ever inaugurated. Which is. Which is Trump now? Do you know how old Bill Clinton is?

[Aiden]

Bill Clinton's like now, like right now. 83, 84.

[Atrion]

Give a guess.

[Doug]

He seems pretty old.

[Atrion]

79. Same age.

[Doug]

Oh, my God.

[Aiden]

Oh, my gosh.

[Atrion]

You know, old. George W. Bush is 85, 79. Same age. We keep getting older. Our presidents say the same age.

[Doug]

It's the same people.

[Atrion]

And they're all born in 1946. We have been ruled by the same year of boomers right after the war for our entire lives. Except for Obama, who's a little bit younger. But like that. That's crazy, dude. Yeah, it's just boomer into boomer into boomer, even as they get older and older and older. That's wild to me. Okay. I mean, this is all. I don't have any more politics stuff. Is there anything?

[Aiden]

Yeah. So I have one more follow up similar. A ruling from a federal court recently. I believe that the Trump tariffs are being struck down or The Trump tariffs are unconstitutional.

[Atrion]

Yeah, I mean, you know, the Constitution gives the power of the purse and the power to levy tariffs to Congress. And Trump has declared an emergency, which is that we're being ripped off by all our partners to impose tariffs at will, like on a handshake on any moment he wants. He's putting up 50% tariffs taken away 20%. We've all been through it, and a judge struck that down. It's going to go all the way to the Supreme Court. They're actually having an early ruling. I think Trump is going directly to appeal to them. That's what he said this morning. I don't know if it's him personally, but. And so we're going to find out whether that holds up with the Supreme Court. If it doesn't, the result will be pretty wild because everyone that paid a tariff will get a refund. The government will have to refund hundreds of billions of dollars.

[Aiden]

Hi, Mr. Steelman here. Yeah, Mr. Steelman, who loved. Who actually was in love with the tariffs the whole time.

[Atrion]

Yes.

[Aiden]

And while. And Mr. Steelman can acknowledge that the rollout of the tariffs and the enforcement of the tariffs initially was a little confusing. It got your party platform. We're getting them out there, and we were pulling them back. But that was a part of the negotiations, that was a part of the art of the deal. And now we've arrived at the point where we have seemingly more stable tariffs. And the early revenue brought in from these things seems pretty substantial.

[Doug]

How much are we talking? How many smackaroos?

[Aiden]

Isn't it. I mean, isn't it like 100 billion?

[Atrion]

No, no, I don't have these anymore on me.

[Aiden]

But yeah, it was 100 in June. It was 100 billion for the first few months of tariffs or something. But from here on out, the expected amount, like if you just projected the same amount of tariffs out into the future, is that over the next 10 years there will be 3 trillion in tariff revenue. Brought it. Which is pretty crazy, right? That is expected to offset the cost of the big beautiful bill that was just passed, which is estimated to cost 3 trillion over that same period of 10 years. And if I were taking the argument of, look, the tariffs were messy in their rollout, but finally accomplishing some of what we wanted. We haven't seen these giant fluctuations in prices that we thought we'd see for the majority of goods. Can we say that they were a good thing, especially since they match up with the expenditure of that bill we pushed through, ignoring the fact that the deficit is Even offset the deficit is growing with, you know, we could set that upside.

[Atrion]

Well, I don't want to ignore that.

[Doug]

No, what if we just ignore.

[Aiden]

But what if we just ignore that? You know, what if we just ignore that? And I'm, I'm. But imagine, imagine I'm. I'm Mr. Steel man here. Mr. Man.

[Atrion]

Mr. Man.

[Aiden]

And I, I'm happy, like I said, with the executive action that's been taken. It seems like a substantially good move that is bringing in revenue to the country. You know why, you know, why should I be happy about this judge interrupting someone finally taking action and creating.

[Doug]

And to back up Mr. Steele here, I have more tax revenue because they cut my taxes or more money because they cut my taxes. I can spend it on my favorite things like tariffs. So it evens out.

[Atrion]

So what you're saying is Aiden28's platform is more tariffs? That's your plan? You decided that?

[Aiden]

Well, I was. It's an unlimited quantity of money. I think we could just juice them all, like 200.

[Doug]

Free money. Right. It's just kind of appearing at the ports.

[Aiden]

When you looked at the charts from earlier of the year, did you not have a fleeting thought to yourself that small bard was squeaking by with it?

[Atrion]

They were ripping us off.

[Aiden]

The seed vault on small bard was ripping us off. No, but the genuine version of this argument is that the income like this is creating a substantial amount of income. I understand it's a consumption tax. It's hard to project out into the future.

[Atrion]

Well, okay, that's the key argument here. I think this is what tariff debates come down to. To is, you know, all the theory and what economics will tell you is that tariffs are paid for by your own citizens, as in the cost of, of selling the goods here will go up and, and maybe not immediately because we're in a kind of flux area where everyone's kind of holding off. The cost will be passed on to the consumer. Things will get more expensive. That is the core idea. And then the other side of that is nuh. And so I can't, like, if, if you're telling me no, that won't happen. Tariffs are just free money out of thin air that's coming from the other people. Then, then we have to just wait and see. Like that. At the end of the day, that's the only core argument is like, will it get paid by our citizens and thus be a tax on the poorest Americans that are consuming more, or will it be paid for by the other countries? And in which case this is A free money printer.

[Aiden]

So you admit it. It could be free money.

[Atrion]

We're going to find out.

[Doug]

It could be like where the Spanish, you know, empire hundreds of years ago. Gallons, galleons full gallons of gold just arrive at our shores every week. Maybe that's what's going on, Atrioc.

[Atrion]

Maybe that's what's happening and we're gonna have to wait and see. Again, there is tariff money being in, but I, for me, it's almost more important to say that like, even if there's tariff money coming in, it is still so small. I know you're saying 3 trillion, but I just want to be so clear, like so dramatically clear that the amount of debt we have this year will be higher than last year. Next year is going to be higher than this year. That 27, we have 26. Like the debt is increasing every year. We are not making a debt, we're not turning it around. And so it all just feels like circle jerky. It feels like a lemon party. We keep saying tariff revenue or this.

[Aiden]

You know, tackling something as huge as the national debt is something that is challenging and we cannot make a dime a turn on a dime on an issue that is that big in such a short period of time. And this tariff revenue and the big beautiful bill, the fact that these things are seemingly canceling each other out in the short term and hopefully the long term is a reflection of the budget consciousness of the administration which is going to better approach these problems.

[Doug]

I want to hone in on that point.

[Aiden]

Look, I'm the villager.

[Atrion]

He's got the right language.

[Aiden]

He's got the right language.

[Atrion]

I'm the villager, I like the villager. But I want to hone in on that is because you said even in the this best ideal situation, the big beautiful bill is budget neutral. So we are in a bad deficit. We're spending way more than we make. 2024 is like one of the worst years ever. 25 you're saying at best it's the same. At best we've like, we've given tax cuts to the wealthy, we've cut Medicare, we've balanced it all. Actually saves money. But taxes to the wealthy, tax cut, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime. And then to make up for that, we're doing the tariffs and that's going to balance it out. But it's not getting us any closer. Even if everything you're saying is true, we're not getting any closer.

[Aiden]

I guess what I'm arguing is like, because these things balance out in this. It's a reflection of budget conscientiousness that will surely fuel policy in the coming.

[Doug]

Years that will attack the rest of the budget.

[Aiden]

Is that not so ridiculous?

[Doug]

And if we gerrymandered correctly, we can get the representatives to do it.

[Aiden]

I've kicked the can for the last time.

[Atrion]

Yes.

[Doug]

This is the last one. You got to spend money to make money, Right?

[Atrion]

Let's give Texas 100 seats. Let's do this. I, I swear to.

[Doug]

I have a question. I always hear that phrase, how much money do we have to spend to finally make money? Because it's been 36 trillion.

[Atrion]

It's 38.

[Doug]

Oh, it's 38.

[Atrion]

We're the guy with the diamonds. We're the guy with diamonds. Next year's going to. If we get there, then all of a sudden it starts flowing.

[Doug]

A lot of profit coming. We do make money.

[Atrion]

It's a. We're a rich country. We have a lot of money coming in. We just spend so much more and we ignore everybody though, man.

[Aiden]

I'm a big spender.

[Atrion]

I did want to say, you guys know Howard Lutnick. You ever.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I heard of that guy.

[Atrion]

We get a picture of his love. Howard Ludnick. He's like the used car salesman.

[Doug]

That is a good way of putting it. Yes.

[Atrion]

He's just very.

[Aiden]

Look at that smile.

[Atrion]

He's just sleazy, man. The way he talks is so like. But Howard Lutnick maybe disagrees with you secretly, because Howard Lutnick, despite being on air all the time pumping and promoting the tariffs, has been making, or at least his firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, has been making massive, massive bets. And it's run by his son. So they're in contact. Massive metabolism. Basically against the tariffs, remaining legal. Here's how it would work. So let's say you import wine from Italy and sell it in America and you have a big tariff bill that.

[Aiden]

You have to pay.

[Atrion]

You're importing it. So you pay, I don't know, $15 million to import all this wine. And now you've paid your tariff and you're good. You're going to sell it, make a profit. If they're struck down, if they're illegal, you are owed 15 million dollar refund. But you're not sure that's going to happen and you need cash. Now you can sell the rights to that refund at pennies on the dollar. Let's say you sell it to me for 1 million or whatever. So I give you a million dollars, but now I have the rights to Your refund. Now, if they get struck down, I can go cash in that 50 million and make huge profits. His firm is making these massive, massive bets against tariffs. Like, if tariffs are struck down by the Supreme Court, he stands to make millions, like, hundreds of millions dollars on all these debts he's bought. And does he.

[Aiden]

Does he even work there anymore?

[Atrion]

Only his sons run the company, so he probably. Maybe, maybe they. It's possible. I will just say it's odd that this is the firm he left to join this job is now directly making bets in opposition to what he's been preaching publicly. And if it does get struck down, they're going to make a ton of money.

[Doug]

He wins the other way.

[Atrion]

Maybe he's just hedging.

[Doug]

This is brilliant.

[Atrion]

It's like when you sports bet on the team you don't like.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Atrion]

So it's like, either way, I can't.

[Doug]

Lose Howard, but cannot lose here.

[Atrion]

He can't. He's been winning. I thought it was worth bringing up because I was kind of shocked by that deviousness of that play. You know what sucks, though, is in my heart of hearts, I'm like. It's like parents not wanting to fight in front of the kids or something. Like, I think the tariffs are a bad idea, and I think they should be struck down, but I almost don't want it to happen because it makes the country look so bad. In the middle of all these negotiations with other countries, we've been like, promising Japan we're going to do this to the tariffs, and you give us this, and all these deals immediately all collapse. And it's, like, so embarrassing. It's so embarrassing that everything we've been working on with every country is suddenly not allowed by the Supreme Court. So it's. It's weird. I have this weird. Like, it's not my majority opinion. I wouldn't agree with it, but a small part of me is like, he's already doing it. Just keep it going.

[Doug]

There's a part of me that wants.

[Atrion]

To also see it in action through.

[Doug]

It's like, you know, it's.

[Atrion]

It.

[Doug]

Because everybody talks about, oh, this is what will happen with tariffs. And it's like, as long as we've, you know, introduce this much chaos into the ecosystem, we may as well get some data and see. And I know that's easy for me to say, but. But, man, it's like, that way we can at least talk about tariffs with some degree of knowledge about what happens in the real world versus it all being so theoretical.

[Atrion]

I think that's part of it too, is I agree with you, but more from like, Like, I'm of the, you know, unemployment is rising, it's slowly taking up. If it gets bad enough, if inflation is like, if the economy is really bad by the 2026 midterms, people will likely blame tariffs and what's been happening. But if they are struck down, then Trump has a really good argument, which is like, they were just about to work. It got struck down and now we're in chaos and now it's the problem. And that would be a very annoying line of thought to me. So actually I kind of do want to just, just go with it. We'll see what happens. You know, reap what you sow. If it works out great, then it's great. If it doesn't, then bear the consequences.

[Aiden]

You want to see action?

[Atrion]

I want to see action. I want you to get into power and do 500% tariffs on every country he builds.

[Aiden]

So much money. We would get so much money if we did that.

[Doug]

The ships full of gold arriving in port nonstop.

[Atrion]

Yeah, I don't know. Let me think.

[Aiden]

No, this is super. I mean, that just, that alone is really interesting. It's like betting against his own play, potentially, provided he has a spot on relationship with his sons.

[Doug]

We should, hey, let's dig into that.

[Atrion]

We should. We should befriend his son.

[Doug]

Let's get him on this show.

[Atrion]

Try to get in the fucking Lutnick family tree, dude. Try to fucking.

[Aiden]

This weekend. This weekend I went somewhere for the first time. I went to Nantucket in Massachusetts, which is an island off the coast near another island called Martha's Vineyard. It's kind of like my understanding of it. And I learned the reason I went there is my, you know, one of my girlfriend's best friends has like a family home there. We got invited to go. And this place is kind of like maybe the Hamptons. Like Nantucket feels like a step down from the Hamptons, but they're basically the same thing. And it's a lot of rich people that, you know, a lot of older money that has accumulated there over time. A lot of like wealthy island life and where, you know, where the Lutniks of the world might be hanging out, if you will. And it's not uncommon to like, you know, you'd be. It's definitely one of those places where I'm hanging out at places and I'm like, I'm, you know, I'm not rich compared to these people. This is crazy.

[Atrion]

It's like Real old money.

[Aiden]

Yeah. And one thing I thought was really, really interesting about the island there is. It's.

[Atrion]

I looked at a. $4 million is the median home price.

[Aiden]

Oh, God.

[Atrion]

In Nantucket. $4 million for the one.

[Aiden]

That's what I did.

[Atrion]

I just want to tell you.

[Aiden]

No, I know. Dude.

[Doug]

Wait, how many people do we need to send to Nantucky it to take over la?

[Aiden]

I. I'm telling you, it'd be so much money. And those people in Nantucket, by the way, is like, not that I had a bad time by. By any means. Did a bunch of cool stuff, but I was at a brewery. It's places where, like, I saw a woman with, like, a Gulf of America hat on, and I'm like, all right.

[Atrion]

I got an 8 and 28 hat.

[Doug]

Don't judge me. Wait, so it's pretty Republican?

[Aiden]

Almost certainly. I think it's the. It's the biggest. You know, it's. It's really, really white, and it's really, really rich. So just based off of those demographics, we. We. And based off of the outfits that some of them would wear, which, you.

[Atrion]

Know, you could be a lot of 8 and 28.

[Aiden]

You could be a Gulf of America hat guy.

[Atrion]

You were doing a voting rally. You're doing a little. You're going for your base.

[Aiden]

Anyway, while I was on the island, I found out a lot of things that, like, 70% of the island is kept undeveloped and cannot be developed for any purpose because it's nature conservation. There's a bunch of, like, beautiful parks, bike lanes, trails. It's actually pretty easy to get around the island. I feel like if you don't have a vehicle, a lot of people have their cars there. But I was surprised by, like, town center areas are pretty walkable. You can run and bike to, like, most things you need to get to, unless you're going for, like, you know, one end of the island to the other. And they also have rules around the types of businesses that can be there. So there's a rule on no food chains. So there's no, like, fast food chains there at all. No chain restaurants. They all have to be, like, their own individual thing. This also applies to, like, retail stores, at least with some more restrictions. Like, there's a couple chain retail stores that have made it there, but they have to go through some sort of scrutinizing process. All the homes have to have a certain style and color of shingle on the outside of them, so they all look. No matter their size or shape, they all look very similar. In the way they present themselves.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Aiden]

And every home has to have, like, a nice name, like, on a plaque out front of it. So everybody's house on the island has its own, like, it's like choosing your gamertag, if you will. Those are for the.

[Atrion]

My rich narrator grandfather trying to, like, gamers out there.

[Aiden]

And I noticed, I noticed. And there was more things along the way as I asked questions. I was spending time there. And it's a beautiful place that has a lot of rules that keep it beautiful and don't allow businesses to have free reign over. Over the development of the island and the community. And I was like, oh, that's so interesting that this place of ridiculously high income per capita has all of these rules and regulations around how their community can be developed in order to maintain its look, culture, and feel. And I was like, oh, that's two interesting ideas. Because I wonder. I wonder a lot of the wealth and money that has been accumulated in a place like that and also has a lot of political connections. I wonder if those actions are reflected in perhaps the districts that they live in or are represented. It was interesting to see that such a tangible way the community had benefited from these rules. But in such a place that is.

[Atrion]

So I would argue that they're not. I mean, the rich are benefiting. I saw the same thing about the Hamptons. I saw a documentary on it which is like, the regular people just can't afford a house because they completely focus on making it as appealing and undeveloped for the wealthy super rich that live there. The working class of the place, people that do all the jobs and the gardening, cannot afford to live nearby. So they have to commute very far into the.

[Aiden]

Yeah. So I don't know how this works for Nantucket specifically. Right. You could be totally, totally right about that. And I think that's a part of this equation. My understanding is that there's an explosion in the seasonal population of the place. Right. Only like 3,000 or 4,000 people live there year round, but then that, like 10X's over, like the summer period. And a lot of the people that come to the island are the businesses and workers that, like, open up for the summer season. Almost like the opposite of like a ski resort.

[Atrion]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And a lot of the businesses that operate have to offer or do offer housing and places for their workers to live for the summer that is, like, affordable or, like, easy to use for that time period. I didn't explore this dynamic fully, so I don't know all the ins and outs.

[Atrion]

I'm Just showing you the captain's example is like, people would. When this. When a seasonal rush of old, wealthy people come in at a certain time of year, there would be a lot of opportunity and jobs, but obviously you couldn't afford to live there.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Atrion]

So you'd have people that come in, work these gardening jobs or work these food service jobs or whatever, and then in the off season, are literally going into the forest and living, like, in homeless encampments and coming back out.

[Aiden]

It might be exactly the same.

[Atrion]

Right.

[Aiden]

I was just talking to seasonal workers who had been out there. They usually had some type of housing provided to them through their job. I don't know if that's common. Maybe I just talked to, like, a. A few exceptions. I like, talk to, like, three people about this.

[Atrion]

Okay.

[Aiden]

But you could totally be right about that. And there's something to be said about the rules and way things are up set up, only benefiting the people that are rich enough to afford all those things. Like ski resorts have the exact, this exact same problem that you're talking about is like, all these seasonal workers that need to be there, cannot afford the food is the most common thing. It's like, you can't go out to, like, any restaurants or grocery stores because it's not reasonable for your low ski instructor salary to, like, afford what's available.

[Atrion]

In the Hamptons example, they showed a tower. You know, like, you could make frozen chicken nuggets and fries, and it would probably cost you $3, $2. They. They made a circle of it and then a tiered circle of it and then a tiered circle of it. So it was like a cake tower of chicken nuggets. So in total, maybe $6 of frozen cost $120. It was $120 for a chicken nugget tower.

[Doug]

But it's in a tower. It's a tower.

[Atrion]

It was.

[Doug]

You could take a picture on Instagram.

[Aiden]

Is the tower, like, pretty cool? Like, would you say it took a lot of time?

[Atrion]

It didn't take a lot of skill. It's just three bowls that are like. But it was cooler. I got. I don't know if it was 120 cooler, but I can see that. I can see exactly what you're saying, which is like, if that's chicken nuggets, what is grocery. What is, like, fresh fruit? What is. You know, I'm saying that the food has got to be insanely expensive.

[Aiden]

Yeah. In those areas, I think that's the. There are certainly trade offs. I guess the people, you know, I'd be curious to like learn more about it.

[Atrion]

Yeah, I mean, I'm reading an article on realtor.com that does say that some people are living in their car in the off season. Some people are in the. Into the woods.

[Aiden]

Are those the people living there like permanently? Are there a lot of people doing that?

[Atrion]

I assume they're working most of the year and then when there's no work to be had, they are staying in their car until the world.

[Aiden]

I see.

[Doug]

If we lemon partied to Nantucket. Right. We got control with a small percentage of people and became king makers.

[Atrion]

Yeah.

[Doug]

I think what the first thing we should do, we upzone everything. No more zoning. And then we just see what happens. Oh, and we just. We just let it ride and we just watched the super rich people get upset.

[Atrion]

Yeah, we'd be super upset. But in the real world, outside of just the Lemon Party's glorious utopia which we're gonna create.

[Doug]

Right? Right.

[Atrion]

This just happened. I want to talk.

[Doug]

What's important by the end of this episode is we decide where our Lemon Party is going to be established. Because we could, we could take over the House representative, but we could just focus on Nantucket.

[Aiden]

Well, we could get. It's like once we've established the location, we could like just disperse the party location on like partiful and like invite. Invite a bunch of guys everybody to party Rhode island. And like. And then we'd all get optional, you know. Well, I want things to stay loose.

[Doug]

You don't want it to be uptight. We don't want to be an uptight party.

[Aiden]

So you'd hate to be uptight because then nobody would vote for us.

[Doug]

I'll get some elderly people too, because.

[Atrion]

We want to make sure elderly said it, you geriatric fuckers. The Texas senate just passed SB 840 making it legal to build housing on every commercially zoned lot in Texas on any city at the population over 150k. That means any area zoned for like a mall or industry or factory or whatever, you can build homes on that. Now it is no longer restricted only to commerce. So people can turn a lot of, you know, things like it could be a dying mall or anything, but you could turn any of this area into as much multifamily housing as you want to build.

[Doug]

How much do you understand housing in the scale of it? Like a little bit. Okay, well, let me just post this. Here's what I'd be curious. Yeah, that sounds awesome. And I also don't have a sense of how much land and Opportunity that opens up because in my brain I think of where I grew up in Sacramento and if Arden Fair Mall shut down, they're like, we can build housing here now. You know, you'd get a couple thousand people and that's great. And that would not, that would not solve affordability of housing. Right. If you applied the same thing to San Francisco or whatever else. So I'm curious, like, how much impact does that actually have? I saw the same thing. I saw, it's like, oh, now this mall can be converted into housing. And that's great. But are we talking like, you know, I'm curious how much of an impact this stuff will actually.

[Atrion]

Well, I would just say I'll push back. I did look into this specific bill because I, I, I did a response to it and asked if it was what was the catch? I was like, what's the catch here? This seems, this is like a really good bill. So here's what I looked into. The, the, you know, a city might be districted into single family housing, multifamily housing and, and commercial, like the big three major things you might district the city into. Commercial takes up a pretty huge chunk. It's not just mall, it's like it's like 20, a 20% of a city realistically. And that's a low example. Like I'm talking about the worst examples which probably are these cities where it's mostly single family housing, 80 single family housing. It's a big chunk of the city that is now you can just buy land on that area and build an apartment building or whatever. You're completely zoned for that. And they included in the bill a lot of things that stop building usually, which is like parking space requirements over a certain amount or you know. So I wouldn't say this is a catch all, especially because it only applies to cities over 150k, which is only like 4 major cities in tech. Like it's not actually all over, but it's, it is. I like to see what happens because it seems actually kind of cool and, and could lead to like more freedom to build apartment buildings and move forward with supply. So I think it's, it's not a bad thing. It's not like the utopia catch all, but it's like a good sip of progress.

[Doug]

I will give this the Lemon party stamp of approval. I think that the old men over there are really doing something spicy and I appreciate it. I mean what would be great is this type of thing, if this goes well and then it puts pressure on other states yeah. California, Gavin Newsom to be like, we should also do this because boy would love more housing.

[Atrion]

Yeah. More upzoning would be awesome. I think it'd be really cool. So I don't know, I thought it was, I thought it was a nice piece of good news and hopefully it goes well. And if it doesn't, then it's all Texas's fault and problem. You know what I'm saying?

[Aiden]

We can, there's guinea pig. I mean this is the type of thing that probably takes a few, at least a few years to see any of the reality of, you know, what direction positive or negative that it pushes in.

[Atrion]

I know that's true. It's funny. Wait, we're just so slow because you know, China builds things in eight months and you see the impact relatively quickly. Yeah, we just build so slow. Like even with the zoning in the right spot, it'd be interesting to try. I don't know if there was a world where we could.

[Aiden]

Yeah, this is an interesting thing on the daily recently and they were talking about the difficulty of building in America in general, just across the whole country. And construction is one of the few areas of the economy that in the past like 50 years has not really increased in its productivity at all. Like there's been no significant changes in the output relative to like time and money put in. And that's, you know, and they're trying to like identify, you know, why is that the case, you know, why do we struggle compared to all of these other countries? And then also reasons that, you know, building homes in a custom capacity can only be, can only be put on an assembly line in so many ways. Right, right. Like a car, we can kind of pump them out. But in, in the case of this, any attempts to create really replicable assembly line esque housing is, has not actually had a lot of success like literally building homes in America or in the world, in the US at least because.

[Atrion]

Like Korea's making nuclear reactors on the assembly line. They're like, they've modularized it and they're so I'm surprised that we, we can't crack that nut. I feel like we used like America used to put down a suburb.

[Doug]

Lemon party will nut.

[Aiden]

Yeah. I couldn't tell you like what all the, you know, I could take a guess from like other things we've learned, but I, I can't remember from this specific report what the like interlocking things, the examples that it brings up is. Over the past 10 years there have been a bunch of hyped up companies to invest in that are basically like, let's take smaller homes and like build them in factories at a scale that makes them widely available.

[Atrion]

Home type thing.

[Aiden]

Yeah. But none of these companies have ever found a significant amount of success. People don't really want to buy these type of homes at the scale that they say their company is going to be able to sell it.

[Doug]

I also wonder how much of that is just cities don't allow it. Right. Most cities, based on how they currently vote right now, they shut down new housing in general and probably even more. So the idea of, okay, let's get in a bunch of cheap identical homes.

[Aiden]

Right? Yeah.

[Doug]

To, you know, the homeowner association, that's like the nightmare scenario, right. To the average boomer, that is the nightmare scenario. If they come in and put the like LEGO bricks in a big grid on their city that they've invested into and taken over.

[Aiden]

I feel like that's so much of suburbs though, right away is. And like copy and pasted homes in neighborhoods like that.

[Doug]

I just. With how hard it is to build any houses, I imagine the resistance is even higher. Like this is maybe slightly above like, you know, housing for drug addicts to get off the street or something, which is the most vociferously opposed. But, you know, I can't imagine people are open to this.

[Atrion]

Yeah, I saw in the Hamptons thing, I was talking about where I was. I was looking it up to verify what I was seeing in this video. And a. A 600 square foot, one bed, one bath house went for $2.8 million.

[Aiden]

Where Monaco in.

[Atrion]

In. In the Hamptons in New York. And the HOA fee was 2.2 K a month to have an HOA. I mean, that's crazy.

[Aiden]

Do you guys have HOA fees?

[Doug]

No, I don't.

[Aiden]

Mine is high. Oh yeah, mine is. Yeah. Apparently it's like low.

[Atrion]

Have they flagged you?

[Aiden]

But I. Mine is like, you keep that big.

[Atrion]

8 and 28 flag.

[Aiden]

Mine is 700. Holy.

[Doug]

What is the justification for what are they doing?

[Aiden]

Pretty low for that neighborhood, which.

[Doug]

Oh my God.

[Aiden]

Okay, the justification off.

[Doug]

What do they do with the money?

[Atrion]

What do they do? Do they have like.

[Aiden]

They buy a lot of weed? They just. The board smokes a lot of weed, dude.

[Atrion]

Person smoking a fat blunt in your face with your money.

[Aiden]

This month, how.

[Doug]

Many people are gonna.

[Atrion]

Landlord?

[Aiden]

No, I. I mean, I couldn't.

[Atrion]

That's crazy, bro.

[Aiden]

There it pays for. It pays for a bunch of different stuff. It pays for like the vents getting like repaired and cleaned. It plays. Pays for like stuff related to the piping ever pays.

[Doug]

Oh, so they're like, they're like working on your home building?

[Aiden]

Yeah. I mean, technically. Technically, yes.

[Doug]

Oh, okay. Okay. I was imagining like a neighborhood where you're just like in your plot of land or something.

[Aiden]

No, no, no, no. I think, I mean, this is, is. This is in like an apartment complex.

[Doug]

Got it. Okay. Okay. That. That's a little different.

[Aiden]

Yeah, there's like, like paying people to like, like, come in and clean and like, work at the facility and.

[Doug]

Okay, yeah, that's kind of different. That's kind of different versus, you know, some suburb place.

[Atrion]

I had a little tech update. So the tech guy on the podcast, you guys know, recently Google was ruled a monopoly by a federal court judge. And the threat was they would break up Chrome and Chrome would be its own separate business from. From Google. The ruling came in today. That is not the case. That is not the punishment. Chrome will remain with Google. Google stock popped 8, 10% on the news. Apple stock pop. Because they now there's precedent that they won't have to. They don't have to split off AirPods even though it'd be bigger than Nike. And so I guess good news for Google investors. I thought that was a little updated, but I don't know what the punishment is now. That's the thing is like, maybe if a judge tells me that that's not the right case, that you shouldn't break off Chrome. Fine, but you already did agree that they're a monopoly is the solution. Nothing. Like what. What is the. That is what I want to know. And there's no answer to that yet. I.

[Aiden]

It needs to be something substantial enough to dissuade otherwise from becoming a monopoly. Otherwise it doesn't matter.

[Doug]

Yeah. To be fair, I would argue that of Google's incredibly influential products, they have Chrome is not the most influential. Like, I think Android is much more.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I mean, we're all switching over to Opera gx.

[Doug]

So, you know, Chrome is. Is not the reason that they are so dominant in search. I mean, the. The real monopoly around Google is the fact that they are used for search and ads across the entire Internet. So they just have this total dominance in that field. Chrome, it makes it easy for people just immediately go into that ecosystem. But nobody is using Bing. Like they're not, you know, and so.

[Atrion]

It'S Bingers rise up.

[Aiden]

Isn't Bing. Bing's strength is that it's still the default search engine across like a couple things. Right. Like nobody's going to Bing.com, but it has some devices.

[Doug]

Yeah, I mean they can default their way into usage. Yeah. Is like the primary use. So you know, in theory they can default their way into more stuff maybe, but it's just, you know, people are choosing to. So I just, I feel like Chrome is Alphabet without Chrome is still going to dominate. They're still going to be obscenely powerful. And so, you know, if this turns into a different type of, you know, like divestment, I think that's probably a good thing. If it turns into nothing, that's probably not a good thing.

[Atrion]

I just, it looks like they're not going to be required to divest anything. They're not even required because one of the things that was a big part of the case was that Google pays $20 billion a year to make their search default on Apple.

[Doug]

Right.

[Atrion]

And that was a big thing. It was like Apple's a huge chunk of American phones and Google's the default on it. And no one else can match that. That is still allowed. They just can only make it one year at a time. You can't make a 10 year deal value. So I don't know, I just don't know what the punishment is. Like they, they have agreed in the court of law that this is a monopoly. They have an undue advantage that crowds out competitors and the punishment seems to be fucking nothing. I can't, I'm sorry, I'm the mic. But. So I find that frustrating. Even though I do agree with you probably that Chrome is not the core of the issue and wouldn't like.

[Doug]

Yes, yes it is. Tactically there, that's monopolistic. It's just, it's just not the piece that's gonna make an impact.

[Atrion]

The Village.

[Aiden]

Speak up, villain. Perhaps, perhaps it is not enough to dissuade the continuation of the monopoly. But, but if the contract happens in one year at a time, doesn't that leave room for any competitor to come in and potentially offer something?

[Atrion]

Yeah, I mean maybe Bing could or.

[Aiden]

Whatever I guess for that new contract.

[Atrion]

The thing that frustrates me is like in the best case scenario and all this stuff, it's just the other big tech company gets it. It's never like the scrappy startup making a great new search engine or like it's never that. It's always like, okay, Microsoft, we're gonna let Amazon throw their weight around and it's like, okay, then it's YouTube. But it, it doesn't.

[Doug]

Yeah, but it's not that Apple will go like pick a little guy it's not definitely. It's not gonna happen. I just really feel part of that is users.

[Atrion]

I mean, users. Here's the thing. The tough thing with Google as a monopoly is that users overwhelmingly like using Google. Like, if they. If there was no dark pattern pushing into it. But you know, it's funny, like, the number one thing used on Edge browser is to download Chrome. Like, yeah. So it's tough to say.

[Doug]

But even that, I feel like people are maybe taking away the wrong thing. Google is not a monopoly because of the site google.com, right? It's a monopoly because of ads. And that is largely from across the entire Internet. Like, you know, ad search is everything. Like, most of the Internet is drawing its revenue through ad search. So that's where they're incredibly powerful is advertising network. Yes, they have an advantage when people use Google, but that's not. That's not like people going to google.com is where they're generating the revenue. And this is part of the argument around. So right now, when you Google something, there's this AI summary, right? And part of the concern there is, like, if you give people the answer at the top, they won't scroll down and have to go back through a bunch of ads. So it's potentially really threatening their core business. But the fact that they're even doing that to me indicates that clearly that's them literally being on google.com specifically is not the. Is not the power. It's the fact that any website on the Internet, basically the website you have open right now is using Google Ads to source Google, like, to source ads. Like they are. They are the like flow. They're the river through which all advertising dollars which powers the Internet goes through. That's. That's the monopoly.

[Atrion]

Yeah, I mean, I agree. Their monopoly was in digital advertising, not. Not in search.

[Doug]

So, yeah, if 10% of people go from Chrome to binge, that's not. It's not. 10% of Google is lost. Not even remotely. It's like a tiny, tiny, tiny bit. Look, let's end this on a high, epic note, okay? Pharmacy benefit managers for health insurance.

[Atrion]

Oh, yeah, you've been with us for a while.

[Doug]

Okay, I'm interested. This is. All right. I would say this is, on the surface, gonna sound very uninteresting, and it's actually kind of wild. So as I was looking Up Our Future 2028 President, Mark Cuban and his company.

[Aiden]

What the fuck happened to me?

[Doug]

Cost plus drugs.

[Atrion]

You're wearing an 8 and 28 shirt.

[Doug]

All right, I just Know I told you we have to split the vote. Cuban's going to take a third of the vote. Republicans will take a third of vote. You take 34% and we take lemonade part.

[Aiden]

Doug's like, no, honey, that's not. Don't even worry about her like that.

[Atrion]

Like, it's.

[Doug]

Mark Cuban and I are friends. Okay. We've been getting. I mean, we hang out a lot at work. Yeah. So. And I'm going to be home late tonight, by the way.

[Aiden]

Okay. Okay. All right. All right.

[Doug]

So in the various research I've done about health care and insurance and costs and all this stuff that we've done over the last six months, one of the things I've come back to is like, why, why the fuck are drugs so expensive in this country? Right? And one of the things that people come back to a lot, or the expansion is PBMs or pharmacy benefit managers, which I had never heard of before. Normally, people think of insurance companies are the reasons why it's so high. The drug manufacturers and profit and all this stuff. But when you talk to, when you hear people talk about the health insurance industry, many of them will say, the real problem is the pharmacy benefit managers. Mark Cuban talks about this.

[Atrion]

These middlemen, These are like, yes.

[Doug]

But in a weird way, RFK Jr said that PBMs are the main problem. And the reason, he thinks, for everybody who remembers several months ago when they made an executive order to lower prices for America, the reason RFK was like, we think we can actually do this is because now people don't have to go through PVMs. So here's what it is. Say I make a drug that, you know, helps with Alzheimer's or something. Okay. Okay. Or balding hair. Okay.

[Aiden]

Mine would be Molly, but, like, three times better.

[Doug]

Okay. I, I, we make lemon molly. Okay. So I make Lemon Molly 3x Molly, and it helps your, your baldness and you feel great at the same time. I cures baldness, and it cures baldness.

[Atrion]

Because we do need that.

[Aiden]

Yeah, yeah.

[Atrion]

So it's great for raves because you're gonna look good.

[Aiden]

You got a head full of air in that rave.

[Doug]

It is extremely rapid. It's like bamboo rate. Like, it's within an hour. So I create this drug, and I want to sell it for, let's say, 100 bucks.

[Atrion]

Okay?

[Doug]

So what you would normally think of is I go to, you know, let's say a pharmacy or a CVS or whatever, and I say, hey, will you guys buy, Will you stock this? I'll sell you a Bunch of my drug. You guys can sell it for 100 bucks. I'm selling it to you for 100 bucks so you can do profit with it. Okay? That's how it would work, except with insurance. Most people in America are insured. And so most people are not going to buy my drug unless it's covered by their insurance.

[Atrion]

Right?

[Doug]

Right. So if I'm trying to convince you to buy it, you'll only buy it if it's actually insured.

[Atrion]

You got to be my plan.

[Doug]

So I, instead of going to the pharmacies directly, I go to your insurance. I go to one of the big insurance companies and I say, hey, I'm putting this new drug on the market. Can you guys add it to your formulary, your list of stuff that you cover? And they say, talk to our pharmacy benefit manager. Pharmacy benefit managers are a new middleman that have appeared the last couple of decades and grown in power substantially. And their role, let's say Europe. Pbm. I go to you and I'm like, okay, hey, I wanna. I wanna sell you my drug. It's really cool. It makes you feel great, gives you hair, 100 bucks. Now you are representing the insurance companies and your whole thing is you want.

[Aiden]

To get a giant Mr. Kaiser, you're. Get a load of this.

[Doug]

Okay? Yeah. So this is what you do. You go to Kaiser and you say, look, all right, we got this new drug. And so what would be really sick for you as a middleman, it would be to go to Kaiser and say, I'm getting you a 70% discount on this. Okay? We're going to put. We're going to get the drug. We're going to buy it from this stuff. You guys are going to cover it. And I'm getting a promise from them, the drug, the Doug Dug drug, drug manufacturer, to get a 70% rebate. Okay, let's see what I say. 50%. All right, so. So you come to me and say, we'll only stock it if you give a 50% rebate. You got to give that back. Okay, what would I do in this scenario? I would double the price of my product. So the idea is I sell the drug.

[Aiden]

Wait, does that. I'm the pharmacy benefit manager.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

Does you. Doubling the price and not matter to me? All I care about is the rebate and the optics of that to my boss.

[Doug]

So what you are trying to do is you're trying to go to the insurance company, your client, and say, hey, we got you this great deal in these drugs. Drugs.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Okay, He's Trying to sell. Doug's trying to sell for all this money. But we're gonna get you a 50% rebate on it. You'll get 50% of the money back.

[Aiden]

I know. 50% of the money back. And it makes you three times. Three times.

[Atrion]

Three times better than Molly. Mr. Kaiser, you do a lot of molly. This is gonna save you.

[Aiden]

Mr. Kaiser, I know you do a.

[Doug]

Ton of molly, so you're a little. Your incentive is just to get as big of a rebate as possible because then it looks really good to the client.

[Aiden]

Okay, I see.

[Doug]

Yeah. So that's your only incentive. You also get a fee percentage based on the cost of the drug.

[Atrion]

You got to wet your beak.

[Aiden]

Of course.

[Doug]

I made this drug I want to sell for 100 bucks. You come to me, you say, we're only going to buy it if you give us a 50% rebate. All right? You got to give us 50%.

[Atrion]

That's a $200 drug.

[Doug]

What I'm going to do is sell it for $200, and then I give you $100 back later. The pricing has not really changed. I still make the same amount. But then this money is flowing through you to the insurance company to make it. The insurance company appear to have made a bunch of savings, Right? Basically, all appearances, it doesn't really make a difference. But what's actually going on here? Okay, well, now I'm putting my drug onto market for 200 bucks. If you're not insured, the price now doubled. This is, like, on the low end. Okay? Not only that, you get a percentage as a PBM of profit from the total price of the drug. So if you can get this price.

[Atrion]

To go up, you want you to double it.

[Doug]

He. You want to go.

[Atrion]

Everybody wants you to jack. You want to jack it up. He wants you to jack it up.

[Doug]

If you convince me to jack up the price.

[Aiden]

We're all jacking.

[Atrion]

We're all jacking. We're all on Molly.

[Aiden]

And we're all. I'm going to be honest with you. This sounds awesome so far.

[Doug]

Okay, so from our perspectives, you, me, and the insurance company. Okay, what's going on? I want to make a 100 bucks. So I'm going to sell for 200 bucks. You want to get a rebate for 50%? I give the 100 back to you. You take part of that. The insurance company has to only buy for 100.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Everybody wins. Except for the patient, because anybody who isn't insured has to buy it for a higher price.

[Aiden]

Okay, wait. This Is, hold on, hold on. So my, my, I think I broke the analogy slightly by making it 3x Molly. That also gives back your hair because ultimately that's, you know, consumers don't really need that. But in most. Speak for yourself, in most circumstances this is going to be some type of necessary, perhaps life saving medication that the end user doesn't really have a choice in whether they need to take or not.

[Doug]

I mean, yes or no.

[Aiden]

So we can kind of. Because in any normal market we couldn't freely jack up the price in this way because it's, you know, if it was just a consumer good, the person at the end of the line could just be like, well I'm not gonna fucking buy it. But now, now in this case, because it's pharmaceutical, the end user pretty much has to get it if they need it.

[Doug]

Yeah, there's much more stickiness to them being forced to buy this thing. So then you go to the pharmacy and they're like, hey, this pill you're buying, this is fifteen hundred dollars, but you only have to pay twenty bucks. Have you ever wondered like, why the fuck is this happening? It's because, well, it doesn't cost them any remotely close to 1500. But every chain in the healthcare system, everybody jacks the prices up, they all get percentages of the feeds and everybody is rebating these discounts to each other.

[Aiden]

Other, they're all jagged.

[Atrion]

Everyone's jacking. There's fees going left and right. And this is why it's a fee orgy.

[Doug]

Yeah. If you've ever seen people online be like, I was charged. I saw this recently, somebody said I was charged $30,000 to give birth at a hospital. And I told them I'm not insured. This is unbelievable. We can't afford to pay this. And they say, oh, if you're uninsured, we have a rate of $4,000. And they were like, why, why would you charge 30,000 to begin with? Because this is how the system works. At every stage there are these middlemen who basically say, okay, you increase your, your price, I'll give a discount back to you. We all get middlemen fees in the meantime. And it all sort of evens out. The problem is that the list price just keeps going up and up and up. At each stage of this, if you're uninsured, you're completely fucked because then you have to pay these things. And then on top of that, the insurance companies are also fine with the prices going up because then they can have a percentage of the, they can Have a percentage of the cost go to the client, to the customer, to the. The patient. Right. And so they can say, look, we, as an insurance company, we're covering 95% of the cost of the drug. You just got to cover 5%.

[Atrion]

Interesting. But much of their cost coming out of rebate.

[Doug]

Right. It's massively inflated. Not only this. All of this PBM stuff is completely opaque. There's no publicity around any of it that's so good. No one knows if a drug is on Market for $2,000. You have no idea how much the insurance company is. Is actually paying for that. What's probably going on is they pay $2,000 in quotes, and then all these rebates flow around where they only actually pay, say, 100 bucks or 50. Right, right. So everything gets massively inflated.

[Atrion]

You pay what, you know, 5%?

[Doug]

Yeah. If you say 5% of 2,000 bucks, 100 bucks, it's like, oh, well, that's a great deal.

[Atrion]

We covered 95. But they paid almost nothing on their end.

[Doug]

So the insurance company companies, everybody is happy with the price going up, except.

[Atrion]

Are you telling me that American health care is bad?

[Doug]

God.

[Atrion]

Are you trying to get to the. Because that's a lie.

[Doug]

And one of the things as I was thinking about this is like, okay, these p. These pharmacy benefit managers, they are basically making everybody inflate what's going on. This is true of, like, all major pharmaceutical. Apparently. These are ridiculously influential. There's three giant ones that are. That basically control all this stuff. Nobody has any idea what they do, but they are part of public companies. For example, CVS has one, and they make. Because they're. They're public companies, they make billions in profit a year. So just the middleman fees from the pharmacy benefit managers makes billions of dollars in fees. Like, that means that the amount of.

[Aiden]

Profit, you balance it out with, like, the deodorant that's getting stolen every year. And it's.

[Atrion]

It's.

[Aiden]

I think it probably comes out dead.

[Atrion]

Even comes out even in the wash.

[Doug]

I always felt bad for CVS because, like, man, it seems like you guys are struggling. And I realized they. They're. They're just these middlemen.

[Atrion]

Felt bad for cvs.

[Doug]

I, like, go into stores and I'm just like, how are you guys afloat? It just feels very sad. And a lot of CVS and a lot of them, you know, shut down and whatnot. I'm like, and now that I've realized what's going on, which is these pharmacy benefit managers jacking things up insanely. One of the examples I saw for Mark, Mark Cuban said this, he's like, so his whole thing with cost plus drugs is they're not negotiating with PBMs at all. They're not negotiating with insurance at all. They're just making drugs at the lowest cost. They had a 15% margin and that's it. And that's the promise. That's why it's so, so much cheaper. And one of the examples of how much of a difference his system versus all of the people doing these markups and all these middlemen's and PBMs is he has a drug that sells for 22 bucks. It's a chemotherapy drug and on the market it sells for two grand.

[Atrion]

That's wild. So obviously he's the cheap version. You know, I want the two grand one in my body.

[Doug]

Yeah, I like the brand. I want the brand quality.

[Atrion]

I'm not buying off brand dove soap, you know, I want the real stuff.

[Doug]

So it's just, this is, you know.

[Atrion]

There'S a knock on effect.

[Doug]

My last page of notes is just one line. It says they are blood sucking parasites.

[Aiden]

Hold on, hold on.

[Doug]

I'm pretty, I got is the villain back.

[Aiden]

But the shareholder value, it's exploded the dog.

[Atrion]

You're not going to win this election. You are not going to win. There's not one person in Rhode island is going to vote for the guy twirling his mustache of value.

[Doug]

We need 280,000 people. It's not enough. We 280,000 crazy people.

[Aiden]

Okay, look, I would like, I, I. Because this is one where I, I have heard about this before and I've talked to, you know, talk to people that are doctors or like in other parts of the medical industry about how they feel about this system becoming so pervasive.

[Doug]

Right.

[Aiden]

And I've never heard anything good about it ever. It's the only, the only, the only plus is like, yeah, well some of these guys are making buttloads of money.

[Atrion]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And, and then, but it, that's it. That is it.

[Doug]

They're making a ton of money.

[Atrion]

I'll give you a upside. I'll give you a good.

[Doug]

I tried to steal, man. And I got nothing, man.

[Atrion]

I got a. So the list price of these drugs is what is, you know, GDP is calculated on goods and services moving in America. Okay.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Atrion]

The list price of these drugs is what goes into the GDP calculation.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Atrion]

Which is why among all developed countries we have the highest percent of our GDP spent on quote unquote, health care.

[Doug]

Let's Go.

[Atrion]

So, in fact, in a country that is, number one, only getting less than 2% growth, a large part of that is just, just way marked up. Drugs being shuffled left and right around through insurance.

[Doug]

You're telling me that if I sold my drug, instead of 100 bucks, which, to be clear, was my initial idea, through all these middlemen and negotiatings, we're all like, wait, let's just jack this up. Let's jack this up more.

[Atrion]

Jack it up 20 times.

[Doug]

We sell it 10, we sell for $10,000. That's just 10. That's 100 times the GDP.

[Atrion]

You've increased the GDP by that much.

[Doug]

Have we considered using this to solve the debt? Does this fix the debt?

[Aiden]

This is a good. It's actually. If you read the book we're reading right now, how Countries Go Broke, he talks about, this is why debt to GDP is bad.

[Doug]

How much do we need to increase the drugs?

[Atrion]

I might have a different copy of the book because I'm reading How Countries Go Broke and it's just one page and it says they went woke up.

[Aiden]

All right, well, if you want to continue jacking it up with us on the Patreon, you can go to Patreon.

[Doug]

Join the lemon party. Patreon.com 10,000subs we are going to Rhode Island. We're going to take it over. We're going to get a seat. We actually change.

[Aiden]

I don't want to go to China anymore. I was thinking just Rhode Island.

[Atrion]

Rhode island at 10,000 to start the campaign. Vote 8 and 28. Let's go.

[Aiden]

See you guys.

[Atrion]

Thanks for watching.