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- [00:02]
Narrator/Announcer
Trying to locate news sources that reliably separate fact from fiction can seem like looking for a needle in a haystack. That's why the Guardian is launching Stateside with Kai Wright and Carter Sherman, a conversation with experts who slow down the news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what's actually happening in the world. Three times a week, hosts Kai and Carter utilize all the reporting resources the Guardian has to discuss the news, international affairs, climate change, culture, sports, lifestyle, fashion and wellness. And the Guardian is not billionaire owned, meaning they're free to report the whole picture without interference. Go to theguardian.com stateside to learn more and listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube, that's theguardian.com stateside.
- [00:54]
Brandon Ewing
This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome.
- [00:56]
Aiden
You think you know a browser, but
- [00:57]
Brandon Ewing
Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything
- [01:01]
Aiden
on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article
- [01:07]
Brandon Ewing
you've had open for weeks.
- [01:08]
Aiden
Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability. Various 18 plus. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Lemonade stand. I was thinking about how to promote the show more.
- [01:24]
Doug
Okay.
- [01:25]
Aiden
You know how I've been doing web development this year? Learning it?
- [01:27]
Doug
Yep.
- [01:27]
Aiden
Yeah. I put together a little website that I thought would be cool for viewers check out or new ones. And then I was thinking about, like, how can I promote this? Right. How do I get a lot of people to click it?
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Doug
Yeah.
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Aiden
And I realized it's a custom T shirt with a QR code printed on it. So anybody during the whole episode can check it out. Invite look.
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Doug
No, I think that's awesome. Can I ask. Can I ask one question?
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Aiden
Yeah.
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Doug
By definition, if they see this QR code, they're already watching our show.
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Aiden
I mean, they could show. No, no, like clips or something. Like a TikTok.
- [01:57]
Doug
Okay. Oh, oh, no, wait. Don't click it. Please don't click it.
- [02:03]
Brandon Ewing
I don't. Don't click it.
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Aiden
And so we're thinking of selling this as don't click no merch.
- [02:08]
Brandon Ewing
No, we haven't talked about that.
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Doug
We certainly have.
- [02:11]
Brandon Ewing
We got a great show for you today.
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Aiden
We're talking about Venezuela, we're talking about Russia. We're talking about, excuse me, Crimea and Russia. We're talking about a whole bunch of other stories.
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Doug
It won't scan.
- [02:22]
Brandon Ewing
I want you to know.
- [02:24]
Doug
Is it what I think it is?
- [02:25]
Brandon Ewing
It'll go to exactly what you think it is.
- [02:27]
Aiden
I just been learning web development this year.
- [02:29]
Brandon Ewing
Guy who's been.
- [02:31]
Aiden
I've been trying to promote the show. Do you think I can wear this? No. Are we going to get in trouble?
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Doug
I don't think you can wear this.
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Brandon Ewing
What's the first. What's the first fucking topic? Put your Chinese athletic jacket back on.
- [02:46]
Doug
Yeah, put your jacket back on and a.
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Brandon Ewing
Just blur that QR code.
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Doug
Our poor editor.
- [02:56]
Aiden
All right, we're getting started with
- [03:01]
Doug
what? What are we getting started with?
- [03:02]
Brandon Ewing
Yeah, transition us with the devastating, devastating earthquakes that hit Venezuela. I didn't know that was going to be the intro.
- [03:11]
Aiden
I tossed you an alley. I gave you a perfect throw.
- [03:16]
Doug
Now delivery. And then you're throwing it in like that.
- [03:19]
Brandon Ewing
Bert, have some class.
- [03:20]
Doug
Have some tact.
- [03:21]
Brandon Ewing
For those of you who might not know, there were two enormous earthquakes that hit in Venezuela, near Caracas, primarily in this area called La Wyra. And I think if you don't know how, like, the Richter scale works, you know how, like, the power of earthquakes increases exponentially. So like a 6.0 earthquake and the difference between that and a 5 is much smaller than the difference in power between a 6 and a 7 and so on. And 2. 7.2. 7.2. And a 7.5 magnitude earthquake hit that area. And so far, 1700 people are confirmed dead, over 5000 injured, over 16,000 displaced with tons of new bodies and people like live people being discovered all the time. Yeah, being discovered every day. And that's part of the reason why the statistics are moving and changing so quickly is because the rescue effort has been ongoing and so many people have. Are currently lost. And I naturally reached out to my friends that we spoke to earlier in the year on this show because I wanted to make sure, like, hey, are you okay? Is your family okay? What's going on? And just to get their perspective on, you know, make sure they're okay, but also get their perspective on the whole year up until this point. And thankfully, everybody is okay and alive. My one friend, unfortunately, his family is homeless now, so their building didn't completely collapse, but the building is so structurally damaged that everybody in the building had to move out of it. And he sent his family basically his entire savings up until this point. He works in the Dominican Republic, and that's what's supporting them right now. For the other two, it sounds like they. Their families are uninjured, safe, still have homes, but a crazy, crazy natural disaster. And I asked up until this point, how have things been going this year, like in the wake of Maduro being removed, because a lot of them had a relatively positive outlook at the time, hoping for, you know, change and things beginning getting better. And one of them, this friend, he said, things this year unfortunately have not improved and they have arguably gotten worse. And even prior to the earthquake, water and electricity has been less stable than it was in the previous year. Often only having power for like five hours a day. Health care, wages still bad. The only positives that he can really think of is that some notably corrupt individuals within government have been put into prison and political prisoners from the Maduro times and have been freed. Like over 600 political prisoners have been freed. And this was actually a really early note from a different friend. So one of the three friends, I did not have a long conversation with him. I only know that he's okay through a mutual friend of ours. And that was one of his first positives that he gave me earlier in the year, was that soon after Maduro was removed, they were freeing political prisoners. After that time, it was interesting to me, this friend who said that things have been worse did say this at the end of the conversation. He said, I still have faith in Trump and his plans to bring about real positive change for Venezuela, which I thought was very surprising given everything he said before that. As far as the other friend, kind of a shorter perspective, the one whose family is homeless right now, but he thinks he is feeling uncomfortable with how things have been playing out so far. He especially as the, I would say the person who literally left Venezuela for like a better life, was very hopeful at the time for better change.
- [07:39]
Aiden
And he's the one in the Dominican Republic.
- [07:41]
Brandon Ewing
He's the one in the Dominican Republic. He said with Maduro, he thinks the disaster and the management around it would have been worse, however, or life in general through this year would have continued to be worse. However, he has been disappointed by the overall U.S. support and response throughout the year and it trumps his hope for like US initiated change in the region are like not living up to his expectations. He said when he needs time, he's gonna send me like a longer write up of what he thinks. But this is just two people's perspective in the midst of this disaster.
- [08:21]
Doug
And I mean, from a zoomed out perspective, the US hasn't done anything in the, in Venezuela outside of oil related
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Aiden
stuff, which will, which I'll get to. Oil companies are happy. But yes, that is a different group of people.
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Brandon Ewing
Yes.
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Doug
So we mentioned this when it first happened was like they replaced Maduro with His second in command.
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Aiden
Right.
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Doug
Nothing outside of that has really changed. The US hasn't stepped in on the government side. They haven't stepped in on the.
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Aiden
Yeah, I mean, one thing I saw is that there's more open to international aid supposedly, than Maduro was. But, you know, whether, like, the details of how that plays out are, like, unclear.
- [08:54]
Brandon Ewing
Yeah. Portions of sanctions have been lifted that allow, like, even in the instance of this earthquake, like, financial aid to be provided in a way that it wouldn't have been able to before. But keep in mind, these are also sanctions that were put into place by the US to begin with.
- [09:08]
Narrator/Announcer
Right.
- [09:10]
Brandon Ewing
The primary changes that I had read outside of this do have to do with oil. A huge shift in oil production within the country between the previous year and now. And that oil being allowed to be bought and sold to the United States as well as other allied nations. And without that oil and its profits necessarily being distributed in a new way to help citizens, you know, it's still ultimately being controlled by this, you know, corrupt institution. So I want to hear what you have to say about that.
- [09:47]
Aiden
Yeah. So if you remember in January when Maduro was kidnapped in our funny prank that we pulled, that the oil companies for decades had basically been kicked out of Venezuela, like the private American companies, and they had their assets seized. And so there was a kind of infamous quote by the ExxonMobil CEO, Darren woods, all around great guy who said, Venezuela is, quote, uninvestable during a meeting at the White House. Quote, we had our assets. We had our assets seized there twice. You can imagine to reenter a third time would require some pretty significant changes. ConocoPhillips, which is the other big one, is owed $12 billion in compensation, was, like, agreed upon, and they just haven't been paid. So in January, it was like, hey, this might not become the cornucopia of American, like, drilling again, but they're actually doing well. Like, from their perspective. Things have been going great. Oil, like, barrels per day has been going up every month. I read an article this morning. It said it's now approaching. By March, it was approaching 1 million barrels a day. And by June, it's 1.2 million barrels per day. Which I was like, is that a lot? None of them said. And then it turns out it was about 900,000 barrels per day in 2025. So it's not like some insane temperature. It is higher. But as a reminder, in the 1990s, Venezuela was producing 3.5 million barrels per day. So this is still incredibly. But Chevron who's the one private oil provider who had managed to stay in? Venezuela is producing more oil than ever. They're saying they want to increase investment. They're like, Venezuela, you do still owe us $1.5 billion, but if you pay that off, we're going to invest even more. There's a lot of conversations between the oil companies and the government of Venezuela where they're trying to get these contracts in place for securities, but oil companies are stoked. And then. Well, another thing that's interesting, America has been buying more and more oil since this has happened. China has bought none. They just cut it off completely. It has been zero since that point. But then India is filling that gap. And weirdly, because of the Iranian war, the interest in Venezuela oil has gone way up. So the Iran war has helped, like, re. Kickstart Venezuela oil, get up the amount that they're producing per day, get the amount of interest from companies up. And so in that weird way, they're benefiting. How are the rest of the people doing?
- [12:02]
Brandon Ewing
Did you see anything about. I know, for ExxonMobil and is it the Canucks? Yeah, but they, they are holding back that investment until they at least get a guarantee of like, reparations for the money they feel owed when they were initially kicked out or something like that. They don't feel like there's enough, like, stability there.
- [12:27]
Aiden
Yeah. So essentially they are negotiating with the government of Venezuela and the Venezuelan government is supposedly being extremely excited about this and working a lot with them to say, hey, you're going to get guarantees that, you know, when a new government comes around, we can't just seize all your stuff. There has to be some guarantee there. Guarantee for the amount of stuff we owed you because of what we took in the past for socialization or, excuse me, nationalization of the oil industry. So it's ongoing. But basically the one provider who's been there the whole time, Chevron is going gangbusters. And everybody.
- [12:57]
Doug
I heard Chevron's been cleaning up. The way I saw a phrase was like. Because they stuck around.
- [13:01]
Aiden
Yeah.
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Doug
They got first dibs on everything.
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Brandon Ewing
This was. This was their whole gamble.
- [13:04]
Doug
Yeah.
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Brandon Ewing
Stay until things magically become stable. Like, stable from their pov. Yeah, stable, stable again. And will reap the benefit of being the only company that stayed entrenched.
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Doug
But I heard all the profits from all this oil are like going to a bank in New York and they have us control over a big part of it. Or like, I don't know. I don't know specifics on this, but My understanding is it's not all the, all the oil they've shipped already. This is mostly like just getting oil they currently had stored in Venezuela. They were just selling it and that money is not yet returned to the government. That's my understanding. But you know, you talked about owing. I can go a bit into the debt because I think it's kind of an interesting angle on the story, right? So Chevron, all these companies, they're all saying they're owed money. Turns out a lot of people are owed money by Venezuela. So in the time since Chavez stepped down and Maduro took over, the GDP of Venezuela has basically like been cut by a like two thirds. Like the country is, you know, completely fallen. And in that time they were cut off from major western capital markets where you'd like borrow money, you know, mostly by U.S. sanctions. And so they've been borrowing from a lot, you know, like the, almost like the loan sharks of the finance world, the global finance world. They've been borrowed from all over and they've been very, very opaque, hidden about how much they owe, who they owe it to, etc. They're not publishing this stuff with the IMF or what it's not. And so now that they're like re entering the global system, they had to do a big reveal of, you know, they had to like they're trying to do a restructuring basically. They have so much debt to so many people, they're like, hey, we need to put it all together, collate it, write some of it off, figure out how much we can actually pay and like get our debt in order to, and the people expect there to be like 140, 160 billion or something. Anyway, it's closer to like 300, 260 to 300. And that's, it's double their GDP. So 200% of GDP, massive, massive amount of debt. They revealed that they had a lot more debt than they've been saying. Now obviously when it's that big you can't really pay it. Like they, they're kind of just saying, hey world, this is how much we owe. We need to figure something out. And they're going, all the creditors and it's like either you can get nothing or, or we can like take a haircut and like get you 40 cents
- [15:18]
Aiden
on the dollar, not change at all given that they have all this oil. Because, because again, in theory the concept is if you bring in all these, you know, private oil producers back, the overall output of oil in Venezuela increases back to what it was decades ago. Right. And then it's this absolutely money printer. Is that not.
- [15:33]
Doug
I think that's part of it. I think that's why people would be willing to give them some kind of leeway.
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Aiden
Okay.
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Doug
And like they want to get involved. But the idea is like right now the payments anytime in the future cannot be made.
- [15:43]
Brandon Ewing
I think you're also in a position where you might be forced to make concessions on the ownership of that oil even if the production is upticking. So like yeah, they're not going to
- [15:51]
Aiden
be able to take all the revenue.
- [15:52]
Brandon Ewing
Yeah. The private company like getting the majority of the revenue in a way that doesn't allow you to like rebuild things at home or support people in the way that you would hope to. Because that's what's happening like right now.
- [16:04]
Narrator/Announcer
Right.
- [16:05]
Brandon Ewing
We see this uptick in oil production but then don't have this change for like the average person there that they're hoping for. Although it's, you know, it's only been. Yeah, it's only been six months and
- [16:17]
Doug
obviously, you know, there's a good time for. But a truly awful time for this earthquake to go happen because they are trying, they're beginning a month long process to convince the world that. To give them a break on the debt and to like set them up for the future. Which based on the Venezuelan finance guy that was explaining this, who I learned it from, is actually a really hopeful moment. Like once this is figured out, if they can get this deal restructured and they have manageable debt payments, then they're opened up to take on new investment money a lot easier. Now they're back in the capital markets, people can invest in the country and it's also been a wave of growth could follow that.
- [16:55]
Brandon Ewing
There's. So do you know, do you know Blackwater, the like military.
- [17:00]
Doug
Military contractors?
- [17:02]
Brandon Ewing
Yeah. I think they're most famous for like this, this old case during the Iraq war where they had like private military contract and people who worked for them like killed Iraqi civilians in the square. But they were actually like tried and went to prison in the US and that was kind of the most infamous thing about the company. And the guy who ran Blackwater, Erik Prince, did this crazy. It's a really weird interview with the FT from like a week and a half ago. Very interesting read because this guy's kind of psychotic. Like even in the interview he's like, he likes. If you share, at the end of the interview he's like, if you share this information about my children, I just told you I'll find you and kill you.
- [17:43]
Aiden
I mean, you've told that to every guest of our show.
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Brandon Ewing
Me shaking Pete Buttigieg's hand on the way out. If you spill this detail about Ludwig algorithm and this guy at the end, one of the last questions he's asked in the interview is because what he does now is consulting and military contract work all over the globe. He's kind of like a movie villain, if I'm being real. And he's like, would you, what do you think of the situation in Venezuela? What would you do? Like, what do you think about investment there now in this, like, post Maduro era? And he is like, I still think from like, all my connections and what I know the region is still very unstable. I wouldn't encourage investment there for, for X and X reason. And this is from a guy that does all this, like, global work. Keep in mind, I would argue his answer also implies that you need to hire his military contracting expertise to be safe.
- [18:40]
Doug
No, but it probably, I mean, it seems to be quite unstable. Like, I was reading about the earthquake and it's just there's some implicit, you know, right after the Maduro thing, Trump was tweeting like, we run Venezuela, we own Venezuela. And. But it seems like that only extends to getting the oil, only the good parts. You know what I'm saying?
- [19:01]
Aiden
Yeah.
- [19:02]
Doug
Because right now there's no, there's a. I mean, there's a lot of pressure on Delsey Rodriguez, who's running it. A lot of discontent is what I was reading, because of the mismanagement of this earthquake rescue. And it's like some part of it's on her, but some parts on where there's got to be some aid or help if you're, if you're going to implicitly.
- [19:19]
Brandon Ewing
I mean, if I'm being real, like the most, like, cynical, the most cynical evaluation, which is what I felt like I had at the beginning of the year, was you, like, what does the US Want out of this? You, you want like a new version of the government that's just more cooperative or like subservient to you, which is like, you know, there wasn't this big institutional change. It's this new woman in charge who, like, works with you and then you want access to Venezuelan oil and you're getting that slowly.
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Aiden
Yeah.
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Brandon Ewing
And you have those two things now. You don't necessarily need anything else to change. Yeah.
- [19:55]
Doug
It still seems kind of short sighted though. Right. Because you got to imagine that the more, you know, disaster and poverty stricken the region is, the more Likely it is that there will be things that upset your ability to build a prosperous.
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Brandon Ewing
What sort of cascading consequences could there possibly be? This feels like, I feel like you're just making shit up.
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Doug
You know, if you think about like Post World War II, when America did the Marshall Plan and they're like they had to invest to rebuild everything in order to. They could buy American consumer goods like that.
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Aiden
Didn't we just. Even if it was determined,
- [20:32]
Brandon Ewing
If you redraft one of the Marshall Plan, it's
- [20:35]
Doug
like just sending Chevron, Chevron and Eric Prince.
- [20:39]
Brandon Ewing
And it's weird because Eric Prince, it was like a prophecy. Eric Prince wasn't even born yet. It was a prophecy about Eric Father.
- [20:46]
Doug
Yeah, I don't know. It does not seem like. Well, I don't know, I guess if I'm, if I'm being less cynical. It does seem like much slower than you'd like. But, but there is some positive green shoots. Like there is more money flowing into Venezuela. Their primary export oil is growing in output.
- [21:05]
Aiden
Right.
- [21:05]
Doug
If this debt is restructured, it does open up a lot of investment in other non oil things in Venezuela.
- [21:11]
Aiden
Yeah, well, like one of the big things going on over the last couple of decades is as they nationalized the private oil companies, they lost the expertise and the people to manage their own state systems. And so the overall production drops. So in theory, private investment is coming in and then they're also building up their national side and then they're able to produce a lot of money through that.
- [21:32]
Doug
Right. They also said the longer term plan is for Delsey Rodriguez to step down and they hold actual open, free and fair elections. The problem is they're just, they said that and there's been no.
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Aiden
You're just making shit up. When does that happen?
- [21:47]
Doug
There's been no follow up and it's
- [21:49]
Brandon Ewing
like, we'll get the elections going.
- [21:51]
Doug
We'll get the election, we'll get there. Give me that oil though, because. Yeah, she just shouldn't be a long term leader of the country that she's part of the regime. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. I don't.
- [22:04]
Brandon Ewing
I am interested in getting a longer response from two of my friends just to get like their opinion of, of what the experience is like right now. But I really, really hope in the short term that, you know, people, people like Knox Family can find, you know, some stability in a place to live. Cause I asked him about like the short term hopes of, you know, places getting rebuilt and he was just like, I don't think institutions are really in place right now to. To get things rebuilt.
- [22:42]
Doug
And yeah, money, instability, political, like all that stuff is required to begin the process of. So hopeful, you know, another place in a state of emergency just to transition a little bit, because across the globe, Crimea is in an official state of emergency. The, the. Here, can you pull this map just to get a little background or history? Okay, here's a map of Crimea. It's at the southern part of Ukraine. In 2014, Russia seized it. Okay. And they've been occupying it ever since before the Russia Ukraine war of 22. And it's obviously very strategically important to Putin and Russia the access to the Black Sea, as Aiden eloquently mentioned. So.
- [23:26]
Brandon Ewing
So I'm looking at this. The Black Sea's all over the thing.
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Aiden
You know, Aiden has a good point here, Brandon. Have you seen kind of what's around it?
- [23:36]
Doug
Yeah, it's the Black Sea.
- [23:37]
Aiden
Wait, do you think Putin knows how
- [23:39]
Doug
much the Black Sea.
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Brandon Ewing
I think if you're an audio listener and you're watching, wondering what's around Crimea on the map? I'm. I'm telling you, it's the Black Sea everywhere.
- [23:47]
Doug
No, he's pinpointed it. A subtle detail of Crimea is that it has access to the Black Sea. And that actually turned out to be really important. So it's been a huge, I don't know, area of fighting in the Ukraine Russia war. And recently in, you know, we talked about a few episodes back, Ukraine's been striking back with incredibly effective drone warfare. And they have been hitting Crimea like crazy. And first it was like you'd start to see gas lines at gas stations. Then Crimea cut off all non military gas access. So you cannot buy gasoline in Crimea unless you are part of the military. And then they declared an official state of emergency. So the whole place is like under full military lockdown.
- [24:31]
Aiden
That was like today, right?
- [24:32]
Doug
Yeah, it was like I read an
- [24:33]
Aiden
article like 2 days ago that said like a quote from someone in Crimea is like, it's bad, but it's not urgent. We're gonna be okay. And then literally 24 hours. Yeah.
- [24:42]
Doug
And the drone strikes from Ukraine are like, literally as we speak, over the past 48 hours, like ramping up insanely. They're hitting all throughout Russia, all these fuel depots, lines, they're hitting trucks so he can't transport. Like there's just fuel shortages all cascading across the country, but especially in Crimea. And so it is. I don't know, it's a definitely very successful tactic so far by Ukraine. I Don't know what it means in the broader picture, but that is what's happening. It's.
- [25:15]
Brandon Ewing
I thought I saw something pretty wild about how because Moscow is under threat and there's such, this limited, there's such a limited supply of anti air weaponry within Russia, they are consolidating what they have for air defenses in Moscow. They are moving that stuff towards that area of the country in order to better protect it. But that leaves areas like Crimea vulnerable in a way they haven't been in the past, which allows these attacks to happen.
- [25:49]
Doug
Yeah, I mean Moscow had this three ring air defense system that's supposed to be impenetrable. And now that it's been breached recently, it's like shattered this sense of, you know, I mean, if you take a look at Russia's economy, it's like Moscow, St. Petersburg and nothing. Those cities have so much more of the wealth and everything. And the upper class of society are all in those cities. And so them feeling oil is the rest. Those two in oil is like the economy and the people in those cities feeling under threat is dramatically decreasing the support for the war. Now again, these polls are obviously biased because they're done, you know, I'm reading here they're done door to door. And being openly critical is a dangerous thing to do in Russia. But it's dropped from like 99% to 69%, which is like a pretty big swing of support in a war where you can't really publicly, you know, like,
- [26:44]
Aiden
hey, I'm with Putin's military. What do you think about Putin?
- [26:50]
Doug
And like if I'm willing to. One third of the time. Yeah, that's wild. One third kind of a big deal. And so anyway, they're saying Crimea is becoming Putin's trap. It's too symbolic to abandon and now it's too exposed to use as he once did for access to the Black Sea. So yeah, it's. Again, I don't, we don't know. It's all under fog of war. But I have to say, just me personally reading a lot about this recently, the Ukraine vibe shift has been crazy. They've just been so successful on a number of fronts in such a short period of time. And every day I feel like you're getting more news of some crazy strike that you thought was impossible happening.
- [27:26]
Brandon Ewing
There's a really good video piece that came out, I think like 5 days ago from the Kyiv Independent, and it is a video breaking down how the drone operators and drone attacks work right now. It's like an inside look and it's crazy cause it's like this 24 year old kid with a headset and a controller and, and he goes into the like the VR shot of the drone. The little like DJI Madvik looking drone has a bomb attached to it and he flies it around in a first person perspective. And on the video you can literally watch him fly the drone. They fly it through trees with like the fiber optic like connections they use so they can navigate through like really dense forests. And then he spots a Russian troops in the trees and then flies the drone and the bomb physically into them. And then the feed cuts when the bomb explodes. And it's insane to watch. It is. And that has been like the past years of warfare. That's how it works. And I think to have this strong visual of what is actually going on, it's like this kid sitting at a desk hitting his vape and then flying the next drone into a Russian troop. Like a Russian person. Like it is surreal to watch. And honestly if you feel like you can because to be totally honest with you, you're watching someone die and it's awful. But I think if you want a real look at what this is like, I recommend going to watch it also. Yeah, this guy.
- [29:09]
Aiden
Oh God.
- [29:11]
Doug
Have you heard we talk about the show, the gamification aspect they've added to it. Yeah.
- [29:15]
Brandon Ewing
So you brought this up and I thought it was crazy. But it's funny because in the wake of saying that on the show, I saw two more reports including this video that came out within the following week about how this system works and about how you're rewarded for the number of like targets that you successfully damage people or like enemy troops that you kill. Your unit has access to better resources or drones depending on how well you're performing. And to like when you look at the. It looks like a kid playing a video game.
- [29:49]
Doug
It's insane. It's so gamified. It really is shocking. And the fact that it's effective is even crazier. I don't know, it's, it's, it's very
- [29:58]
Aiden
much feels like start of World War I when the French showed up with like colorful cavalry to a machine gun fight, you know, and that's what's happening now. And I.
- [30:08]
Doug
And like a science fiction novel, it feels in both ways like yeah, warfare advantages in the past and then also just something so weirdly black mirror. It's crazy.
- [30:18]
Brandon Ewing
I mean as far as the tide's turning, you had mentioned this change in the like Russian advance and they say they're talking about that in this video. They say like normally during this time of year they would have a lot more targets because Russia would be making an effort to advance at this time. But compared to last year, there's way fewer, there's way fewer advancements. And I think I feel the same way. Like the fog of war, like war reporting always feels like a little like vague and difficult to understand. You don't want to like jump to conclusions and just like hope that the side that you kind of want to
- [31:02]
Doug
win, I always want Ukraine to win. But isn't that biased? Right? So.
- [31:05]
Brandon Ewing
But it does feel like something significant is changing and I really, really recommend if you feel like you can watch it to go watch that piece.
- [31:17]
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Brandon Ewing
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- [32:44]
Doug
okay, let's get off a war. We've covered that one before. It's. I mean there'll be more happening next week, but let's talk about the war on wealth.
- [32:53]
Aiden
Yeah, yeah, everything's a war today. But like one of the more light hearted wars.
- [32:57]
Doug
Yeah.
- [32:57]
Aiden
So. So this is from New York City. Zoron put on VR goggles and flew a drone into Kathy Hochul's.
- [33:04]
Doug
Yes.
- [33:05]
Aiden
To deliver a Congratulatory letter saying, hey, we passed the piece, we passed the tax.
- [33:11]
Brandon Ewing
It's crazy. I miss this.
- [33:12]
Doug
Yeah, he's got all this new tech.
- [33:14]
Aiden
So we already mentioned this a couple weeks ago, but Zorin passed a. I don't know how to say it. Peter Terry tax. And so the idea is that.
- [33:22]
Doug
Holmes, you know, that's not it.
- [33:25]
Brandon Ewing
I was like, you said it right before we started.
- [33:27]
Doug
I said it right. Correctly.
- [33:29]
Aiden
You guys didn't respond. I was like, oh, if they don't say anything, I'm going to get angry comments. If they don't acknowledge that at all, people are going to be furious. Okay, so this past, this past in May, the idea is that it is taxing second homes in New York City. Like a home where somebody doesn't live there at least the majority of the year. Right. And so this was, you know, touted as, hey, I'm passing one of my things to tax the rich. Generally, people are kind of excited about it. Some numbers. If you have a home that's over $5 million, then you're going to have an additional property tax of like 0.8 to 1.3%. For condos, it's a lot lower. It's only like a million dollars. And then the percentage is higher. Turns out the valuation is kind of weird here. Homes are valued based on how much they sell for, like, how much comparable homes sell for. Condos by the Department of Finance are valued as if they are rental buildings. Like, how much value you would rent would generate. And so Ken Griffin, the big hedge fund manager, has a $238 million penthouse that's worth 15 and a half million dollars. So that's where there's like a little bit of strangeness.
- [34:36]
Doug
Tomfoolery.
- [34:38]
Aiden
Well, it's not tomfoolery. The idea is like, we value condos lower, so the tax on that is going to be a lot higher. So the tax on condos is going to be like 5%. Tax on homes is going to be like point 8.
- [34:48]
Doug
Oh, they made the tax higher.
- [34:49]
Aiden
Yeah, yeah. It's mostly just if you hear different
- [34:52]
Doug
percentages, it's a weird way to value is strange.
- [34:55]
Aiden
So they're actually to update it in 2028, I believe, the first year.
- [34:58]
Brandon Ewing
But anyway, that explains the disparity in the percent of the tax. Yeah.
- [35:01]
Aiden
That you might hear. But in the end, Pierre Debis, a lawyer, figures the charge could basically double the property taxes on a $5 million apartment. So this tax is really adding a substantial amount of revenue. And so this Bloomberg article tied MAMDANI'S new P to Tay tax leaves wealthy with few loopholes. I thought it was a fun little light hearted story because, quote, the scramble for workarounds began almost immediately. People who would be impacted by this policy are going to try to avoid this tax at any cost. And they're usually very good at doing so. And while there's a few legitimate exceptions, there's no obvious strategy to circumvent the new charge. And you have to either use it or not. So here's a couple of things that rich people are trying to get out of paying this tax. First off, they're like, what if my family lives there? Well, it doesn't. It has to be your direct family, like your kids or your spouse or your parents or your grandparents can't be your cousins. And then they have to live there full time. So you can't just be like, yo, nephew Jerry, show up, party in my apartment a little bit. That doesn't work. And so they, you know, if this is Ken Griffin's apartment, he has to have his family members living there full time confirmed. Other people are like, what if I sell it to an LLC and then a company owns it and not me? And they're basically like, look, New York City's gonna look out for that. They're gonna look and see who the actual beneficiary of the LLC is. And the penalties are very high if you're trying to hide or skirt this. They're like, okay, what if we rent it to somebody, you know, for a dollar, I rent it to like my, my, my maid or something. Again, it kind of works. But the tenants have to live there full time. If they like bail out of the lease midway through, it doesn't work. So they probably need a 12 year, 12 month guaranteed lease. And again, they have to, a person has to live there. So you can't just be like, yo, my friend, you're paying, you're renting this for me for a buck. They're going to be really strict about it. One example, broker Michelle Griffith helped the owner of a $9 million house in Tribeca list the property for $40,000 a month. So people are being forced to put these extraordinarily high rental prices. Interesting. In order, which in a way is like, if that's what happens, that's fine. Because now that house, instead of being the, you know, this super wealthy person, empty second home for a very long empty second home. Like, you know, they're, you know, if they try to go through this loophole in quotes, they're just being a landlord that is selling, you know, they're actually renting out their thing. So in the end, the more likely outcome, attorneys say, is a simple reckoning. Either a primary resident lives in the property or it'll be taxed. Yeah. And an owner of a $20 million Manhattan pita tay, who primarily lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, told Finch he's likely gonna sell his NYC apartment if he can't find a way around his estimated $210,000 second home surcharge. So little f in the chat for extremely rich people.
- [37:42]
Doug
Why do you need a second home in New York? That's my question.
- [37:44]
Brandon Ewing
What happened to this country? You can't have a fucking second home. You can't have a.
- [37:50]
Doug
Am I crazy?
- [37:51]
Brandon Ewing
Am I crazy? I should be able to have a second home? I think one they need to carve out. They need to carve out if my.
- [37:57]
Aiden
For you or for just rich?
- [37:59]
Brandon Ewing
I think. I think for the entire. If it's just for me, that's fine for starters. And then I think it makes sense if the second home is like on a lake where your family took you to when you grew up. That should be like. That should probably be right.
- [38:11]
Doug
Carve out for that.
- [38:12]
Brandon Ewing
Yeah.
- [38:13]
Aiden
Rhode island and Montana are doing the same thing, Peter. Pay taxes. And one of the reasons Rhode Islands is called the Taylor Swift, like, casual because she has like some giant mansion in an island on Rhode island. And. And people are basically like this. Look, this fucking sucks.
- [38:28]
Doug
Like, oh, okay, I understand now. You could have your primary residence in an entirely different state and your secondary ones New York. And that's taxed.
- [38:36]
Aiden
Yes.
- [38:37]
Doug
Okay. I thought it was. You have two homes in New York City. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. How could you possibly need to. Okay, if it's.
- [38:43]
Aiden
No, no, no. So I mean, that's that.
- [38:44]
Brandon Ewing
So if you have a second somewhere
- [38:46]
Doug
else, if you know what taxes.
- [38:49]
Aiden
Yeah. So yeah, I should just super clarify this whole tax. The entire premise. What a PT is, is saying this is a second home that you do not live in as your primary residence.
- [38:59]
Doug
I got you.
- [39:00]
Aiden
And it is basically saying if you are going to purchase living space in our city and you aren't going to live there, you need to pay extra taxes to have that. Which I think is totally reasonable. Perfectly. Personally, and what I thought was really interesting in this Bloomberg article is that part of the reason that this is palatable, right? Like getting taxes raised, like property taxes, most people do not go for that. That is horribly politically untenable most of the time. But if you're passing a P2T tax. By definition. You're taxing people who don't vote in your city.
- [39:32]
Doug
Yeah, they're not gonna.
- [39:32]
Aiden
Isn't that awesome? So it's actually way easier to pass this. And then as much as, you know, rich people are awesome. Like, this really feels like, dude, if you're buying a second home, like you're so rich that you're buying a second
- [39:45]
Doug
home in New York.
- [39:47]
Aiden
You don't like, rent a nice studio or something when you happen to, you have to have an entire home in another city, dude, pay more taxes. Like you're so rich.
- [39:55]
Brandon Ewing
Isn't it funny? Like, you can't even use the well, I'm going to leave the city argument.
- [40:02]
Doug
You don't live.
- [40:02]
Brandon Ewing
You know what I mean? You know, you don't live there.
- [40:05]
Aiden
Yeah.
- [40:06]
Brandon Ewing
You already don't live there.
- [40:07]
Doug
Yeah, I guess my, my interesting thing now would be if they can't find the loopholes and they just fucking dump on the market. Does the, does the tax just not raise any money though? Is my, is my, is my question.
- [40:24]
Aiden
Yeah, you know, they're. The worst case scenario is that all the people holding these homes say the having the second home in New York isn't worth it anymore and they dump it onto the market and they don't sell. But presumably if a big supply of new homes comes in and the prices drop, like already prices are dropping, that's good. Because of this.
- [40:41]
Doug
That's a good outcome regardless. I'm just, I remember when I first talked about this, it was a good chunk of the new budget is the amount of money they were going to raise from this tax.
- [40:51]
Aiden
It's like 600 million, right?
- [40:52]
Doug
Yeah, it's not, I mean, I wouldn't say a good chunk then, but it was, it was one of the biggest new tax increases.
- [40:57]
Aiden
Yeah. Yeah.
- [40:58]
Doug
And so other than just the one
- [40:59]
Aiden
time thing from Hoka, and there's also a weird thing like now, now they're even trying to drop their prices. So there was a condo owner that dropped their list price from 5.8 million down to 4.7 because they're literally just trying to sell underneath this $5 million threshold. But then even because of that, you know, the problem from their perspective is they can say, oh yeah, this is, this isn't worth enough to be covered under this tax. You can buy it as a second home, but if the value goes up again, as soon as the value hits 5 million, they're paying it again. So it seems good. I mean, it's just nice to see that, you know, a tax on wealthy is actually being paid seemingly and kind of cathartic.
- [41:39]
Doug
Yeah. The thing I like about this story is that all of the obvious workarounds were tried and failed. That's like a nice. Usually you think, oh, there's this new law. They immediately think of a way around it and everyone just moves out of their business.
- [41:51]
Aiden
And there's a world where they did figure it out. And they've been very good at convincing journalists that they have not figured it out. And they paid Bloomberg to say, oh, we're totally got us. We're fuddled, dude.
- [42:03]
Brandon Ewing
I wonder how this applies to like corporate ownership over buildings. Like if you're a company that owns say like 10 or 20 apartments in New York, how that applies to you?
- [42:15]
Doug
Yeah, like a wework or something. And I'm on a bunch of buildings. How does that.
- [42:18]
Brandon Ewing
Yeah, I'm not saying you have the answer right now.
- [42:20]
Aiden
Yeah, I don't. I believe it's only for homes. This is not a corporate or like.
- [42:24]
Brandon Ewing
Yeah, I guess you're, you're less likely to like, oh, if you're a corporate landlord, you're less likely to be owning a ton of $5 million plus properties because your approach is to rent things out too.
- [42:35]
Doug
Okay, we're on the east coast, we figured out how to.
- [42:40]
Aiden
But on the west coast there's a war brewing.
- [42:42]
Doug
But on the west coast.
- [42:44]
Brandon Ewing
On the west coast there was Ken, and then on the east coast there was as. And they were kind of on a collision course.
- [42:48]
Aiden
Such a deep cut dance with 10 people are pumping their fist right now.
- [42:52]
Brandon Ewing
Sorry, myself, yeah, myself.
- [42:56]
Doug
And I do think Gavin Newsom is kind of like the. As in or the Ken, I guess of this situation.
- [43:01]
Aiden
And he has put on a Vera headset and is driving a drone directly. No, metaphorically, he is proposing a federal billionaire wealth tax. So I'll keep this super brief. This is just another wealth tax update going on over this last year in California, people have put forth a proposal to have a one time billionaire wealth tax. This would be a 5% tax on all net worth over a billion dollars in California. So this is very unusual because, you know, the reason billionaires don't pay much taxes is because it's all on their assets, which they don't sell. So it's not marked as income. And there's, you know, many nuances to this that we can obviously get into. There's like 200 people in California who this would even apply to who have over a billion dollars. And this is unique in that it would basically force them to sell their assets to produce the money for this tax, which is a huge departure from really any tax that we have in America. This is going to generate, in theory, if it happens, anywhere from tens of billions to hundreds of billions. Although that depends a lot based on, again, like, what are the mechanics of billionaires even being forced to sell assets, which is part of the criticism of it. And it's basically going to go all to health care, 90% to healthcare, which is particularly relevant for California because of federal Medicaid cuts. And it's 10% to education and food. So this debate has been going on for a while. If you, you know, read the all in podcast guys on Twitter, they have been frothing over the mouth at this for many months.
- [44:30]
Doug
This is a nuclear bomb.
- [44:30]
Aiden
This is a nuclear bomb. So obviously, billionaires are not stoked about this. People in favor are many different groups. Folks who want progressive taxation. Bernie Sanders has explicitly supported this.
- [44:41]
Brandon Ewing
It's gonna be a tough time for all in. You got wealth taxes, you got the Sharia second home tax. It's rough all around for these guys.
- [44:50]
Aiden
The world's crumbling and David Sacks isn't allowed to work in the White House anymore. You only get like 100. Your voluntary government advisor or whatever. So he's not even.
- [45:00]
Doug
Oh, really? They checked that?
- [45:01]
Aiden
Yeah. I can't imagine anyone would have cared. He could go into the mustache.
- [45:07]
Doug
So, okay, this is the California proposal.
- [45:10]
Aiden
So this has been the California proposal. It is officially going to go on the ballot. So this is happening. And this is potentially a really, really big thing. Gavin Newsom, who I've heard rumors he's going to run for president next, and people suspect that he is trying to navigate this in a way where he can position himself kind of the middle so that he can get through this. So not super surprisingly, he has been vocally opposing this billionaire wealth tax in California. And he has a really, really easy excuse, which is if we only implement this in California, the billionaires will just leave. This is already happening. Billionaires are leaving. There's like five of them who've left.
- [45:44]
Brandon Ewing
Could I give the genuine. A couple genuine arguments against the. I mean, this is, from what I've read, basically the arguments against the implementation of the California tax.
- [45:53]
Aiden
I mean, let's just broaden it out because they're basically the same thing. So this last Friday, Gavin Newsom broke a little bit for being, you know, down the line Democrat and said in a substack called it's time for a national billionaires tax and a new social compact. He basically argued, I want to implement a national billionaire tax, not just a California one. The California one is people are just gonna flee the state and it's not helping our teachers enough, it's only helping Medicare. That's not fair. And basically suggested I wanna increase tax rates. Trickle down economics has been an explicit failure. We need higher corporate stock, we need higher corporate taxes. And suggested building a national public equity fund with AI and automation. So this is not him. He's not suddenly, you know, AOC here, but he is, I think changed his tune a little bit to say, hey, I want to substantially change the wealth code or the tax code and push for higher taxes, push them on AI and whatever else.
- [46:51]
Brandon Ewing
And I, I think one of the other arguments against the California one is that it's one time and by not being something that's implemented continuously, you're mitigating a large point of the reason in doing it at all. And some alternative suggestions were like a more consistent tax that like every time a billionaire leverages their assets as collateral for loans, you're basically pricing out the value of that asset and then you have to pay tax against that to try and like close that loophole. That is, that's one of the. No, no, no, that's like a counter argument against the California one is like, this is one time is implemented poorly. There's better ways of doing this. And, and on top of the idea
- [47:42]
Aiden
that like, there's a lot of organizations that are like progressive organizations that are against the California one. And I think the more interesting question is kind of is there substantial movement to do something like this at a national level?
- [47:54]
Brandon Ewing
I think he's in a weird spot, right? Because for the largely like progressive audience that is very critical of him, they don't. The reaction to his substack was not good. They were like, Gavin, you're just trying to like shift your perspective or position yourself for your present presidential run. Like you're just going to walk this back. Like you've walked back other things of that criticism from like the further left audience and then the right wing audience that hates Gavin Newsom already isn't one. They hate the wealth tax to begin with and they just hate Gavin Newsom. I like, it's interesting because I do think that a national wealth tax is a huge solution to the problem of a state implemented one. Like, I think this is a, a good move personally with, you know, with a bunch of stipulations about the details. But he's trying to like win back a crowd that already hates him so much.
- [48:56]
Aiden
That's what's so, that's what's so interesting about this is like it's partially about the tax system and it's partially about Gavin Newsom trying to get his foot into camps. Yeah, you. You hung out with him. Yeah, I think just for fun.
- [49:09]
Doug
And then it happened to be recorded for a second. I mean the disregarding who wrote it. Right. Because I think there's a certain aspect of like this guy really wants to be president. So he's doing. But the core principle of like hey, if you put this in California only and it's a one time tax, they will flee it. I think it's true. I believe that. I mean Jeff Bezos fled the Seattle one and went to Florida. Like they're all. They do do this. A national tax sounds better to me. Whether he's the guy to follow through on that. It's entirely different question. But I think the core purpose of the substack is true. So I don't want to be like hating on it for that. As written, I agree with it. I agree with the idea that we should have a national one. I agree with the idea that using all of the money on Medicaid is in my mind one of the worst ways to use it. In general, I think, I think the mass majority of our budget going to elder people. Health care is poor. I disagree with it as a, as a point of principle.
- [50:04]
Brandon Ewing
Yeah, it sucks because I feel like the base principle of this is tax the wealthy more close loopholes that allow them to continue to dodge paying taxes. I want that.
- [50:18]
Doug
Yeah.
- [50:18]
Brandon Ewing
And it is so difficult to get progress that effectively taxes the wealthy that I feel like I'm like I'll fucking take anything I can get. Give me a hint. Just give me a little. Just give me a little tear. But for all the reasons we've explored on this show, the California one sucks for like XX and X reason. I want like an effective, better version of this implemented at the national level. But will I ever get that right? Is it worth. Do I have to like fight another X years to even have a hope of something like that moving into place? Do I just have to take the cookie of the California one in the meantime? It feels shitty that this is the truth choice.
- [51:00]
Aiden
Well, well, well. Aiden. A little tiny. I don't know if he's. Representative Dan Goldman introduced a new act to Congress in December 2025 called the Robin Hood Act. Okay, so here's the problem, right? Taxing billionaires sounds good, but as you said A criticism of like a one time 5% tax. Again, billionaires do not just have cash sitting around. That means they need to sell a ton of assets and that causes a cascade of problems for them. And potentially their own wealth like just plummets downwards as you start trying to sell massive quantities of it.
- [51:31]
Doug
Also, the long term effect, like I don't even if I don't give a shit about current billionaires, I do think this would have a cooling effect on people starting companies in California, which I do think is good for this state. I think they would start it in Austin. They would.
- [51:42]
Aiden
So let's just say even if the
- [51:43]
Doug
chance of becoming a billionaire.
- [51:45]
Aiden
No, but just nationally. Let's say the idea.
- [51:46]
Doug
It was nationally. Okay.
- [51:47]
Aiden
Different, but so, okay, so there's like some. Bernie, for example, is very explicitly in support of the California one. And the California one is you just have to like liquidate 5% of your assets basically and sell them. But as we talked about on a Patreon, if you start selling your stocks at a massive quantity, the stock value plummets because you are introducing a massive amount of supply into the market. It is hard to actually realize asset like money when you are at that scale. Would be the argument on the other side. How do billionaires get away with not paying taxes? Well, they get loans, right. Using their assets as collateral. And then they basically just borrow repeatedly. And that doesn't count as income. It's a loan. It's not technically income. And they do that forever using their unrealized assets to get out loans, which gives them cash and then they die and they just give it to their, you know, heirs or whatever. And it doesn't get taxed. Yeah. So the new Robinhood act is basically tackling the loans specifically. So it's saying a 20, it's proposing a 20% excise tax on loans that are backed by capital assets for people who make over 400,000 a year. So I really like this one.
- [52:56]
Brandon Ewing
Right.
- [52:56]
Aiden
I feel like this is really smart, which is saying, hey, if you are a billionaire or somebody who's just, you know, egregiously wealthy and you try to use, you don't sell anything you have, you know, appreciated over time, you can't go use that as collateral to just get a ton of cash from a bank or whoever without paying taxes because essentially you are making that money at this point. So this bill seems really great and I'm really excited for it to be shut down by corporate interests.
- [53:23]
Doug
No, that'd be a cool idea.
- [53:24]
Brandon Ewing
I think my last thing I wanted to say about this was I think the one time part is one of the biggest weaknesses of it and it comes back to something we talked about on the Patreon like over a year ago. And I think the principle of why a wealth tax is important is not just because you're trying to raise tax revenue, but you're trying to like curtail the amount of wealth that is able to consolidate at a tier where it like damages the rest of society. So if you take a one time wealth tax of 5% and even, even if there's no way of dodging it and all these people pay it, they're at a tier of wealth where the money they have remaining just continues to build up and fuel a lot of the same problems that already exist now. It's like very important that these laws in the long term like curtail the long term consolidation of wealth in a way that fixes the ways it damages the rest of society. And the fact that this is one time makes it like borderline, borderline useless for that long term goal. It is great for like short, maybe it's great for short term tax revenue purposes or maybe it's like a proof of concept for what can be passed later down the line that's more effective. But that to me is like one of the biggest weaknesses is like you can the max effectiveness of this if it is implemented correctly and nobody dodges it, does nothing to fix that longer problem which is the like virus eating away in so many aspects of society.
- [55:03]
Aiden
Massive wealth inequality. We have to do something. I, I, I agree. We have to do something. There needs something needs to be done.
- [55:09]
Doug
That idea, if you just take the stock, you know, like if you have 10 million shares and you have to get taxed 10%.
- [55:15]
Brandon Ewing
Yeah.
- [55:16]
Doug
And you know, you're like I can't sell a million shares, it'll fuck up everything.
- [55:18]
Aiden
Yeah.
- [55:19]
Doug
The government just, just takes the shares and puts them in a. Yeah, wealth fund. That's it.
- [55:24]
Brandon Ewing
I mean that seems interesting.
- [55:25]
Doug
Like the idea of like everything that can be sold or can't be sold, it just gets tokenized or whatever gets like, and they just get that percentage and they can sell on their own time. Like over a long period of time potentially.
- [55:37]
Aiden
Same thing with inheritance, right? Which is I'm dumping $100 million of assets onto my kid and hey, that kid has to actually just give a portion to the government. Something like that.
- [55:46]
Doug
I do think the argument of like I can't possibly get an accurate value on this to tax it is a little foolish because we do that with property tax. That's how property taxes work. And so they should be able to work on other forms of. Of.
- [56:00]
Brandon Ewing
They do it when they value it to get the fucking loans. Yeah, they do it when it works for them.
- [56:06]
Doug
Yeah.
- [56:06]
Brandon Ewing
We can't do it when we need to tax it.
- [56:08]
Doug
Yeah. It just feels like a pretty weak argument when you look under the hood.
- [56:13]
Aiden
Anyway, you know, to the billionaires in our audience, let us know your perspective.
- [56:17]
Doug
Most of you guys are billionaires, so it's like I.
- [56:20]
Brandon Ewing
It is a bit of a billionaires club around here.
- [56:26]
Doug
And some of those billionaires are Saudi. And that's why we introduced a brand new segment called the Saudi Zone. What?
- [56:32]
Brandon Ewing
The Saudi Zone. What?
- [56:33]
Doug
What do they own, Aiden?
- [56:35]
Brandon Ewing
What? Well, this week on the Saudi Zone. What? Yeah, it's the first time I have an amazing. I have an amazing story. We could also call this Gaming is back.
- [56:43]
Aiden
Is it related to the Nordics at all?
- [56:47]
Brandon Ewing
It's not really.
- [56:47]
Aiden
Audience, skip ahead five minutes.
- [56:50]
Doug
Don't worry audience, I got you covered. We'll get to that.
- [56:53]
Brandon Ewing
I, I thought because evo, the largest fighting game tournament in the world, was this past weekend in Vegas. And there is a special game that is at Evo and it is called Fatal Fury. Are either of you familiar with this game? So there is a famous, at least within the fighting game community, a game developer, snk that made the Kings of Fighters series for a long time. An established old fighting game series that began fading out, didn't manage to stay relevant in the way that a series like Street Fighter would. And as this developer was failing and the Saudi government was stepping into a lot of investments around esports, they decided to buy out that studio and gave them a bunch of funding to make a new fighting game which became the Fatal Fury. What's interesting about Fatal Fury is that it is a competitive game, a fighting game that they could immediately integrate into the broader Saudi owned esports environment. And if you haven't been keeping up with this, Saudi owned or Saudi backed companies have become the owners of large portions of the esports industry. This is companies like ESL FaceIt, which you and our producer actually used to work at. There are companies like the holding company that owns EVO itself. Now the tournament is Saudi owned and the Esports World cup is this gigantic event across a bunch of different games with huge prize pools for participating teams, participating developers as sort of the esports arm of the broader, you could say Saudi sports washing initiative that they'd taken across a bunch of different things, things like golf, things like F1, finding ways to like integrate culturally into the world in ways they hadn't before. And the Nordic update of the week is now.
- [58:58]
Doug
We'll get to that.
- [59:02]
Brandon Ewing
So this game, Fatal Fury immediately commands a premium space in, in esports. It's integrated into the esports World cup with a million dollar prize pool. And this game has, I checked this morning, this game has like half of the concurrent players that Rivals of Aether 2 has, which is like 500, like 400 to 500 concurrence on at any given time. And of those limited pool of people playing like a huge portion of the active player base are like really high level professional fighting game players that were good at other games who solely play this game. Not because it's good, because of the extraordinary amount of prize money that is available through all the tournaments for Fatal Fury, most prominently the Esports World cup which is that million dollar prize pool. So these old fighting game players like Go Goichi or Go1 or like NY Chris G. These recognizable names from like fighting game history, if, if you're a fighting game guy by chance, these people have moved on in the late stages of their career and the FGC is like famously broke. They. You're it. It is a. Compared to like the PC gaming scenes, like it comes from an era of, of just having. Having less money going to garages, going to laundromats and playing at the arcades. That is kind of the vibe that permeates the fgc. And as a result a lot of the money in fighting games previously has been small, especially compared to other larger esports. And now this is the game and the opportunity to cash in. Even though this game has like no real player base. And I just thought this was so interesting. This game has been around for, I think it's been over a year. And they also have weird inserts. So because of the Saudi Football League, Cristiano. Cristiano Ronaldo is a playable character in this fighting game.
- [61:05]
Aiden
What?
- [61:06]
Brandon Ewing
And then also also a. I forget his name there. One of the characters in this game is a. Is a real life Swedish DJ who is just. Who just happens to be friends with like one of the Saudi crown princes and they put him in the game.
- [61:24]
Aiden
You can just beat the shit out of Cristiano Ronaldo.
- [61:27]
Brandon Ewing
I think what's also crazy is his character, he doesn't look like Ronaldo in the game. You know, and to be fair, like LeBron's in Fortnite. It's not that crazy.
- [61:37]
Doug
LeBron being in Fortnite. Fortnite's one of those popular games in the world. Fatal Fury's not far behind 400 players. You said on any given day, every
- [61:45]
Aiden
IP known to man. It's different. It's not the same as having Christiana randomly in this game if they have
- [61:51]
Doug
nobody else in, just Ronaldo.
- [61:52]
Aiden
It's like if you put Messi and get to work, it's like, it's just weird.
- [61:56]
Doug
That's coming.
- [61:56]
Aiden
We're working on that. That's the only feature of the sequel.
- [62:01]
Brandon Ewing
So I thought in this like broader time of Saudi sports World cup, my
- [62:06]
Doug
grand larger theory is that Saudi Arabia is a teenage boy wasting a bunch of money. They have infinite oil wealth and they are dumping it on esports. World cups that make no money and sports washing that makes no money and golf that makes no money and the line that makes no money and they're just dumping money on Zoopla and it's not working. There's no way this has any return. This is not like, oh my God, this is improving the standing of Saudi Arabia and the. They just bought a developer to make a game that made no money and now they're making a World Cup. It's going to lose a million in prize pool.
- [62:34]
Aiden
I wonder if the professional players, because they're primarily playing other games, right. And they're just going like part time to this, this one to try to make a whole bunch of money. We should have some sort of pita tay tax on their winnings.
- [62:45]
Doug
You can't be a second game player, right?
- [62:47]
Aiden
To be have a fucking primary residence.
- [62:49]
Doug
Primary main game. Yeah, I don't.
- [62:53]
Brandon Ewing
Sorry, I can't play Street Fighter anymore. I've been paying too much tax on my Fatal Fury winning.
- [62:59]
Aiden
Has it even, has it ever worked where someone comes in with infinite money and says, I will make a game successful?
- [63:05]
Doug
I don't think so.
- [63:06]
Aiden
I mean other than like there's a million story. Like Jason Schreier's written a million stories about how that doesn't work.
- [63:11]
Doug
Yeah.
- [63:11]
Aiden
Does it ever work?
- [63:12]
Doug
Especially with esports, like if you're gonna dump your money, dump it on new features for the game or something. But like the idea of like, like we're going to make the tournament so big.
- [63:21]
Brandon Ewing
Esports is a famously good place to spend money. You take that back.
- [63:24]
Doug
You know, there's all these guys waiting. Like, I don't want to play this game because it only has a million prize, but if it's a million and a half, me and my friends are jumping on Fatal Fury.
- [63:33]
Brandon Ewing
Yeah. All it does is pull like these top very capable players in already five
- [63:37]
Doug
minutes and they take your money and they leave.
- [63:39]
Brandon Ewing
I thought this was just crazy because, like, almost no so few people know this game exists. And it's just, it has a slot at like this huge esports tournament now, massive prize bowl. And like, like at that one tournament, I think Goichi won 300 grand for first place. It's like more money than he's ever won from anything ever. Like, multi. I think he's played fighting games for like 20 years.
- [64:02]
Narrator/Announcer
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- [64:33]
Brandon Ewing
1, 2, 3. I'm stand up comedian John Marco Cerese.
- [64:37]
Doug
And I'm actor penis model Russell Daniels.
- [64:40]
Brandon Ewing
The downside is our podcast where we bring on guests to talk about how miserable their lives are. Because, let's face it, things are not getting better. Every episode, we talk about what's wrong with our lives. Our guests lives the world, but in a fun way. Bottom line is you're gonna walk away feeling better about your life. We've had so many cool guests. Caleb Huron, Busy Phillips, Stavros Halkias, Laverne
- [65:04]
Aiden
Cochrane, Hassan Piker, Alana Glaser.
- [65:08]
Brandon Ewing
I promise you're gonna have a good time. Now on the Vox Media podcast network,
- [65:12]
Doug
this is the downside.
- [65:16]
Narrator/Announcer
The average American spends $1,700 a year on clothes, and a lot of us are spending way more than that. But this week on Net Worth and Chill, I'm breaking down exactly how to stop overpaying for your wardrobe without sacrificing your style. Because between the tracking pixels following you around the Internet, the FOMO drops and the influencer hauls, someone is always trying to get your money. I'm sharing my best kept secrets for scoring designer pieces for less. Why second hand shopping is having its biggest moment ever and the one rule I use before buying anything new. Plus, I'm answering your questions, including how to dress well when you have $0 to spend, how to upgrade your wardrobe for as little as possible, and what signs actually give away that someone is truly wealthy? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com YourRichBFF okay, well, your
- [66:04]
Doug
new segment was not the Nordic Fun Fact. And it turns out that people have been demanding the Nordic fun Fact. I saw that two weeks in a row you hadn't filled our Nordic Fun Fact, so I decided I would do it. Okay. I'll take the mantle upon myself.
- [66:16]
Aiden
Thank you. All right, thank you.
- [66:17]
Doug
Because at the end of the day, our show is just a vehicle for delivering Nordic Fun Fact.
- [66:20]
Aiden
Can I speak for the audience here? Thank you, Brandon Ewing.
- [66:22]
Doug
I know. I just realized that, like, everything else is kind of a wrapper on our core purpose and you're ignoring it. It's crazy. You built this up and then you just abandoned it for Saudi Arabia.
- [66:32]
Brandon Ewing
So I included something about Sweden in that. If you think about it, hey, do
- [66:36]
Aiden
you think there's some dark money flying around here? Suddenly he's talking about Saudi Arabia.
- [66:40]
Doug
I do think there's some dark money. I'm glad you brought that up. So I have a Nordic fun fact, and it's related to the World Cup. The first one is that Sweden lost right now, right as we were speaking, they lost three out of France, which is just funny.
- [66:52]
Brandon Ewing
It was one. Oh. When we started the episode and I
- [66:54]
Doug
was like, don't worry, don't worry, they'll come back. But I thought I saw a funnier Nordic fun fact. And that is, have you guys seen the Viking roe that is taken the social media world by storm, where all the Norwegian fans do a collective row. And it's been there it is. And it's, you know, it's charmed people and it's pretty cool. But there is one group of people who are not charmed by this, and it turns out it's other Nordics. The Scandinavian neighbors are irked by this celebration. And there are many Swedes quoted in this saying it's just a bit much and they keep overdoing it.
- [67:38]
Brandon Ewing
I've been saying that, and I'm just
- [67:39]
Doug
wondering why the fuck Sweden is such a party pooper on this seemingly fun celebration. I would love to get bottom out of this.
- [67:47]
Brandon Ewing
I stand with them whenever they're. And to the Sweden Migration Agency, whatever you think is what I think for
- [67:55]
Doug
the Swedes, their neighbor's celebration is more of a nuisance than a novelty, with some finding the rowing simulation too reminiscent of the thunderclap made famous by Iceland fans. They think they stole it from Iceland. They can't just have a fun can't
- [68:08]
Aiden
a country celebrate hundreds of years of plundering and slaughtering their neighbors. Jesus, can't they do it anymore?
- [68:16]
Doug
That's that one friend who's too.
- [68:17]
Brandon Ewing
Well,
- [68:22]
Aiden
Dude, there's, there's, there's no way that they looked at Twitter or something and they found a couple angry comments.
- [68:30]
Doug
I always say that because it's Reuters. I was like, that they're not Reuters posted.
- [68:34]
Brandon Ewing
Yeah, that's the only thing that changed. I saw who published this and I
- [68:37]
Doug
was like, wait, it's not like just, you know, a clickbait on MSN or whatever. And then people on the Swedish squad were denigrating it, which is just crazy to do in the middle of the
- [68:47]
Aiden
tournament, get paid off by the Saudis.
- [68:49]
Doug
Yeah, I think it's part of it. The Nordic fun fact is that right now only the nor part is fun and the rest of it just have facts. Next topic immediately.
- [69:02]
Brandon Ewing
Well, I've got a good vibe story for you guys. If you could picture an ideal sponsor for this show. A company we would love to work with who just refuses to contact us.
- [69:13]
Doug
Oh, I don't know. Where you going with this?
- [69:15]
Brandon Ewing
Like a company that would let you bet on like anything.
- [69:17]
Doug
Oh, yeah, please, please. Prediction markets.
- [69:23]
Aiden
We did right? Haven't we been offered by. Yeah, we already declined it. Yeah, we've been offered a plan. I don't know if it's by themselves
- [69:28]
Doug
only because the offer wasn't big enough. We're waiting for the big cash.
- [69:31]
Brandon Ewing
I said polymarket. You think I'll compromise my values for
- [69:34]
Doug
that one more zero, buddy.
- [69:38]
Brandon Ewing
I do, I do want to say this is one of the things that makes me the most pessimistic right now. For those of you watching the World cup, at least in the US you may be seeing this Rick Rubin ad where it's filmed all nice and he's asking like, like profound questions flashing across the screen. And it's a fucking. I can't remember if it's Polymarket or Kalsheet because it makes me see so
- [70:00]
Doug
much Timothy Chalamet one too. There's, there's back to back different prediction market ads as you're watching the World cup everywhere.
- [70:07]
Brandon Ewing
And one of the worst things about prediction markets as it's being discovered is the betting on military events over the course of this year. And 60 Minutes just did an interesting piece where they go and speak to a few different companies that analyze poly market data and they saw the rate at which military US military actions have been bet on, like against the odds and the rates of success. By certain users. And one person actually in the US who was a soldier, I can't remember what his position was, but he's, he's being prosecuted for, for insider trading on.
- [70:46]
Doug
That's crazy because you probably just watched Lemonade Stand and gets up to the minute information on war through the fog of war and knows exactly what to bet on. That's nice.
- [70:54]
Brandon Ewing
We see things that nobody sees.
- [70:55]
Doug
We have the foresight. And so I don't think it's a
- [70:57]
Brandon Ewing
insider trick, but one company's evaluation stood out to me. They saw that a specific group of people that was making bets across a bunch of US military actions made two and a half million dollars with a 98% success rate across betting on different US military actions, primarily in the Iran war. And, and another person saw that any long shot bet things that had less than 35% chance of success had a very high rate of success from specific users with a 60 plus percent win rate across a group of users on long shot US military bets. The point being that the scale at which insider trading on war is making people money is kind of this new facet of war war existing at all.
- [72:00]
Doug
As prediction markets get bigger, basically any information that you have that someone else doesn't have becomes profitable. And so the incentives start to make everybody an insider or become or like they're the somebody in every group becomes insider trader on anything that you can trade on. Which is like a crazy. It hits militaries, corporations, earnings before they come out. It's entire trading. Everything, everything you can insider trade on is now like there's a direct monetizable line that isn't enforced. Like very few crackdowns, very few. The big one that I saw is a kind of a pivot, but it just is. Reality TV shows, they're filmed in advance and every single one has now been spoiled. Like if you, if you went to episode one of Survivor and said who will win already they knew who won.
- [72:47]
Aiden
Oh my God.
- [72:48]
Narrator/Announcer
Wow.
- [72:49]
Doug
Because it had already been filmed and they can't crack down on the hundreds of people that worked in the show. They just can't. They can all sign NDAs, but. And so it's also wild.
- [72:57]
Aiden
Cause like most of those shows are, I mean not scripted entirely, but you know, heavily influenced by production anyway. So it's not even, it's not like you're watching like a completely organic match
- [73:07]
Doug
between the people, like the journey of.
- [73:09]
Aiden
It's like you're betting on what the writers are gonna write and then the writer, God, what a.
- [73:12]
Doug
But they know the writers are ones betting on it.
- [73:15]
Aiden
Right. Or anybody working on the show obviously.
- [73:16]
Brandon Ewing
I saw something crazy about the. The military bets is if you move past the general discomfort of insider trading, the dystopian idea of making bets on like war decisions to begin with and making money this way. Like the way these data Companies in the 60 Minutes piece are like evaluating anonymous accounts to see who's likely insider trading in order to predict the outcome events. They're like we're doing this as independent data analytics companies. But people like say you were in a war with Iran. It's the US and Iran. Both sides can be doing the same thing within their military to analyze the upcoming decisions of the opposing.
- [74:01]
Doug
What do you think is an insider trader? So then track their bets.
- [74:06]
Brandon Ewing
It compromises military operations and then like puts the additional lives at risk because people can analyze the decisions you're going to make because of the people breaking from planning to insider trade. I thought that aspect. This is insane.
- [74:22]
Doug
No, there was people, there was a guy inside Google who was insider trading on every. They had so many bets on who will be the most searched person of the year or whatever. And then people were able to use some of his bets to figure out how Google's earnings would do because he was clearly a Google insider. Like yeah, it's just weird knock on effects.
- [74:43]
Brandon Ewing
I do. The one thing that is kind of funny to me is like the general premise of prediction markets which is like you're using the. The power of the public guessing to predict the most accurate income out accurate outcomes in a way.
- [75:02]
Doug
No, it kind of works in a way.
- [75:04]
Brandon Ewing
You're getting closer because you have all the insider traders participating like from an outside.
- [75:08]
Doug
If I have somebody who doesn't have an account on there, it's like there is some value to me of the insider traders moving it towards more accurate. It's just that everybody using it is playing a rigged game where you will lose money almost certainly unless you have insider trading.
- [75:21]
Brandon Ewing
Yeah, there's no incentive to use.
- [75:23]
Doug
It's just it's farming dumb people to take their money.
- [75:27]
Aiden
But you should ban everybody except insider traders.
- [75:30]
Doug
Almost. Yeah. That's what I was getting.
- [75:33]
Aiden
Right. You have to prove that you work on the show before you're allowed to bet.
- [75:37]
Doug
Yeah. Then you can bet they will know it's accurate.
- [75:39]
Aiden
Honestly that could bring back competitiveness to reality tv because then you have a whole group that's trying to get a different outcome and they're fighting for it till the very last episode.
- [75:48]
Doug
Dude, I saw someone, one of those super, super Prediction markets, tech pill, people on Twitter who is like, we should get rid of Uber Eats and instead make a prediction market where you say, food won't arrive at my doorstep, and then someone could take the counter on that and then deliver you a burrito. And that's how they get paid.
- [76:07]
Aiden
There's no. Every human interaction can be reframed as a polymarket bag.
- [76:11]
Brandon Ewing
It's just so disgusting. It's just so disgusting. I, I what? Have you seen that interview? It's their. I think it's polymarket. The owner or like the founder is being asked about why Donald Trump Jr. Is on the board.
- [76:28]
Doug
Yeah, I saw that. And here's one answer.
- [76:31]
Brandon Ewing
Donald Trump Jr. On the board right now of Cal State. And then they're. The interviewer is like, so why is he on the board? And it was like, well, we have a lot of advisors. And then she's like, yeah, but that's the president's son. That's a pretty, like, special guy. And he's like, like, again, we have a lot. It's like. And they all provide insight. And she's like, but this is special insight.
- [76:51]
Doug
What insight does he provide? What does he do? And he's like, you know, it's. He won't answer.
- [76:55]
Brandon Ewing
I think this is one of the proliferation of these things is one of the things that I think just makes me the most upset right now. Maybe it's not the most important issue in the world. Like, I understand that, but when I see these ads on tv, it just, it genuinely disgusts me.
- [77:11]
Doug
I think the funniest part to me is that everything we're talking about, like, military, Google, reality tv and the ads with all this stuff is just a rounding on. What it really is, though, is sports betting. Like, all of the money is sports betting. Everything about it is just a sports betting website. And they've added all this extra stuff, which is weird and has problems, but the core of the business is a, is a fancier DraftKings. It's just wild. Like, it's this. They've made all these externalities terrible just to also shoehorn in gambling. Well, I have a small story that I just want to throw in because I think it's really funny. And I just heard about it today. Do you guys know that the winner of a recent, I think, $38 million Powerball is the store Circle K? And I'll explain why. And I just thought, this is so funny.
- [78:02]
Aiden
You mean the people who sell the lottery tickets?
- [78:05]
Doug
They sold the lottery ticket and they won it, and that's because a woman came up to buy lottery tickets. She said, I want $80 worth of lottery tickets. Then when they printed out the tickets, she said, I only have $65. So she only bought. So, like, we'll have to keep some of them back here. They kept them behind the counter and they fell to the floor or whatever. Later, the cashier looked at the ones on the floor, like this one, and so she told her manager. Then her manager clocked out, put on a different outfit, came in and bought the ticket from her behind the counter, exchanging it. Then he tried to cash it. And then it was immediately found out, as you're an employee of C, you legally can't buy a ticket. And it went into this limbo. The person who did the original $80 bet said, okay, well, it's mine, right? That's my ticket. I should win. And they said, no, you didn't pay for it. And so it went up in the air, and they're like, well, I guess it belongs to Circle K, because they take a loss when they printed it and didn't give it to anybody.
- [79:00]
Aiden
Heartwarming. A win for Circle K. And so
- [79:03]
Doug
it seems like Circle K may actually win the fucking lottery.
- [79:06]
Aiden
Willy Wonka won the Chocolate Factory tour.
- [79:10]
Doug
I thought it was so crazy. That can't be the rule there.
- [79:14]
Aiden
Must.
- [79:14]
Doug
Just do it again. You can't give it to Circle fucking
- [79:17]
Aiden
K. That's so funny.
- [79:18]
Doug
But that's seemingly the way it's going now. There's ongoing lawsuits.
- [79:22]
Aiden
Can we bet on it on Polymart?
- [79:28]
Doug
Yeah. All right. So I just threw that story in.
- [79:30]
Brandon Ewing
That's funny.
- [79:31]
Aiden
All right. You wanna get serious?
- [79:33]
Doug
Yeah, get serious for a second.
- [79:34]
Aiden
It's good. It's a good thing.
- [79:36]
Doug
Get serious.
- [79:37]
Aiden
Okay. As of what this morning, right, The Supreme Court announced that they have ruled against Donald Trump and reinforced the idea that birthright citizenship is enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. So this is pretty big. This is one of the things that Trump did literally within hours of inauguration. And he wrote day one, day one, and he wrote an executive order that basically says that your parents have to be a lawful, permanent resident of the United States in order to get citizenship. So if you are, you know, an undocumented immigrant, if you are here on a temporary visa, like a tourist or student or even H1B, someone who is, like, living here for years, you would no longer get automatic citizenship for your kids. So, quick, backup. Historical context of why this amendment exists. Before the Civil War, the Supreme Court and the Dred Scott decision had actually legally said that black Americans can't be citizens. And so then after the Civil War, Congress passed the 14th Amendment and it said anybody born in the United States, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside. So right after Civil War, we very definitively defined, enlarged part in response to that court ruling to say if you're born here, you are a citizen. And then this was reinforced in 1898. There was a ruling, the Wong Kim Ark case, where basically two Chinese immigrants, their kids were born here. And in that case affirmed. It doesn't matter that you guys are immigrants. Your children, because they're born here, are citizens. The only exceptions are going to be if invading militaries give birth on, on in America, their kids don't get to be American citizens. I think that's fair. Foreign ambassadors, right. If you're like a diplomat from Sweden or whatever and you have kids here, that doesn't count. You're representing Sweden and Native Americans for some reason, just to kick them while they're down, I guess. I don't know why that was the case.
- [81:39]
Doug
They carved that out. They said Native American.
- [81:41]
Aiden
Yes, that's part of the 1898. It's those three groups.
- [81:44]
Brandon Ewing
I wonder what the explanation.
- [81:45]
Aiden
Yeah, I didn't, I did not dive into that deeply because that's, that's the type of thing that takes a lot of.
- [81:51]
Doug
Yeah, it takes a lot of.
- [81:52]
Aiden
I imagine there's a lot of nuance there. But yes. So this has been established for a long time. Right. Every American person learned about this in school, like a lot. And so then it was a little bit of a surprise to hear that Trump was pushing for the idea of repealing this because it's, it very explicitly states any persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens. And so the sort of anti immigration, more right leaning, right wing crowd, the argument is somebody who is here illegally is not actually subject to the jurisdiction of America and therefore they should not qualify. And really what they're upset about is the idea that there is, you know, someone from, let's say Mexico crosses the border illegally and they give birth here and it incentivizes people to try to come here and just basically give birth and they're sort of getting around the normal citizenship process. So Trump did this executive order, right when he came into office, the Supreme Court, it went all the way to the Supreme Court. And today they ruled six, three, that that is still withheld it doesn't matter if you are undocumented, if you are born in America, no matter what. Except again, for a couple carve outs, you are a citizen. So that's cool. I actually, what I was a little. I was wondering, like, how many people are born in this? How many immigrants? Like, how much is even happening? So per Bloomberg, which they didn't quote a source. And so I went and it's from the center of Immigration Studies. There were 250,000 kids born to undocumented immigrants and temporary visas in 2023, which was nearly 7% of all U.S. births.
- [83:28]
Narrator/Announcer
Oh, wow.
- [83:28]
Aiden
Which is crazy. And that's a lot. And then looked at it a little more. This is from the center of Immigration Studies, who are like a right wing think tank. And I'm like, okay, all right, maybe a little disclaimer here. But those are the best numbers that people seem to be quoting. That's also during Biden's years where there was like a lot of border.
- [83:44]
Doug
There's a big surge of immigration.
- [83:45]
Aiden
Yeah, 2022 and 2023 were like the biggest ever. It was like 2 million a year, something like that. So to make the argument, they're kind of quoting the worst, you know, the most immigration. They're quoting that year with a seemingly pretty biased think tank. And so who knows? You know, ironically, now that Trump has made the border very intense, arguably this is not even nearly as relevant. Um, but anyway, so as you can imagine, Democrats, moderate, most people are happy that this is the outcome and they're saying, yes, this is great. So what did Donnie T. Say? He said the sport Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship, which is too bad for our country. But we can easily make it up in Congress through legislation with the support of the President. No long and unwieldy constitutional amendment is necessary. This is not really true. Kind of. But actually we'll get to it. He also followed up and said, I would like to congratulate President Xi and the great country of China on the massive birthright citizenship win, implying that President Xi Jinping is benefiting from Chinese immigrants having kids here and getting citizenship, I think, which is not where the majority
- [84:53]
Narrator/Announcer
of people come from.
- [84:53]
Doug
I don't know how to read this. Is he trying to say that China has a different policy?
- [84:57]
Aiden
Look, I literally looked up and I was like, did China just also pass an immigration. No, he's referring to our ruling.
- [85:04]
Brandon Ewing
Okay, I'm glad you guys were confused in the same ways that I was.
- [85:09]
Aiden
Yeah. So I think he's making your toes. That's what I look about China, which it really is not. But one thing that I thought was interesting is that Brett Kavanaugh, one of the Supreme Court justices, he ruled in favor of birthright citizenship, that it should be guaranteed for all people. But he's.
- [85:25]
Doug
Well, it's like written directly in the Constitution. Right? It's like, not ambiguous.
- [85:30]
Aiden
Yes. It's just that the subject to the jurisdiction is a little vague.
- [85:36]
Doug
Okay.
- [85:36]
Aiden
And then the second. You could argue. And then the second argument is that is clearly not the intention of the law. The intention. This is the argument. Right. I'm not saying it was clearly intended to ensure that black Americans post slavery or anybody post slavery was like, had guaranteed rights. And the idea that somebody could jump over the border for two days, give birth and then leave and their child is guaranteed citizenship is probably not what the Constitution was meant to represent. And as a reminder, the vast majority of the world does not have birthright citizenship. I would not expect to be. Have my. If I go to Japan and have a kid while I'm on a tourist visa, I wouldn't expect my child to be Japanese.
- [86:18]
Brandon Ewing
I'm gonna preempt the last time we said that on the show, a bunch of people got in the comments and were like, so many countries have birthright citizenship. Da, da, da, da, da. If you look at it, the number of countries that have birthright citizenship in the same capacity that the US has is very low. Like the larger. There's a bunch of more countries with like birthright citizenship, but with like some more clauses on, like, how it works and things like that. Yeah, I'm just preemptively sure trying to read those comments.
- [86:48]
Aiden
So, you know, I think it's probably fairly obvious that the majority of the pushback for this is people just upset about non white immigration. Right. Like, let's. Like, that's obviously I think the main draw here, but I think there's a valid argument of, like, most countries in the world don't have this, where somebody, I mean, even like one of our World cup stars, right. His Nigerian parents, while living in England, came to visit America and they were gonna fly home to England, but they. But his mother was too pregnant, gave birth here, and he's an American citizen and she was now playing for America.
- [87:22]
Doug
Well, now he's.
- [87:23]
Brandon Ewing
Which is why I'd argue this is based. Because we need it.
- [87:27]
Doug
It's a benefit.
- [87:28]
Brandon Ewing
That guy scored two goals against Paraguay. That's.
- [87:32]
Aiden
And you could argue it's a little bit silly that his Nigerian parents, who lived in London, who came here for A vacation and tried to go home but couldn't because she was too pregnant. And they gave birth here and then immediately went home to England. And he never grew up here or spent any time here. Is not American citizen. You could argue that's a little wonky. Do I care? No, I think it's.
- [87:50]
Doug
You should add a clause if you're really American. I don't know if you're really good at sports.
- [87:54]
Aiden
If you're really good at sports. Yeah. You know, I think probably for all of us, it's like, one, this is not a massively influential thing. And two, it's like it's part of the spirit of America. You know, it's like, I like the idea that, you know, we're kind of pro immigration, even if there's like some weird edge cases. The most strict counter argument would be you are encouraging a sort of like birth tourism. Or for example, you encourage the cartel to basically black market traffic people and say, hey, when you're in late stage pregnancy, we're gonna sneak across the US Border, you're gonna give birth in the borders and your kid's gonna get American citizenship. But it's extremely dangerous for all involved and you're incentivizing this kind of perverse market. That would be the strongest counter. I think that's fair.
- [88:35]
Brandon Ewing
Yeah. Yeah. I think that the argument is,
- [88:40]
Doug
I
- [88:40]
Brandon Ewing
don't know, I think the scale you'd have to show. Am I wrong? I feel like I'd have to be shown more large scale abuse of the system. Maybe that's already been showcased and I'm ignoring it. I think from my perspective of somebody who is naturalized and does not have birthright citizenship. I like my thing with the ruling was always. It feels so clear cut in the way that it's written. But if we went through the arduous process of amending that to fit some sort of modern version of what the country broadly agrees on, like two thirds of the country agrees on and we want to change it, then go through that process.
- [89:26]
Aiden
I guess the weird battle to fight. It's stupid. I don't know, it just feels.
- [89:32]
Brandon Ewing
I feel like the narrative of it at this time feels primarily abused or on the back of this anti immigrant narrative that exists. That exists broadly rather than the actual, like foundational issues that it presents. Like somebody could be building the case in the, in the way that you've described. Right. Like that is the argument that I'm reading online too. And I think that maybe it needs to be articulated to me better. Like it could be Fair. But then you have to go through the process of like changing the Constitution in order to.
- [90:07]
Aiden
All right, real quick aside, because you audience or you guys might hear about this, Brett Kavanaugh, who's one of the people who voted to support this decision, said that the problem he has with it is actually not the 14th amendment. There's the 14th amendment and then there's a statute by Congress that was started in, to oversimplify a bit, 1940, that basically repeats the 14th Amendment and gives additional information that says things like, okay, what if you don't know who your parents are? What if you were born in a US Territory, blah, blah, blah. So there's actually two kind of things we have regarding this. We have the constitutional amendment itself and then you have this statute. And Brett Kavanaugh's argument is the statute, which is just something Congress can pass. If Congress goes and updates that, that can have a carve out for somebody who does, you know, birth tourism, as they are calling it. And that could work, but that would still have to go back to the Supreme Court. So.
- [91:02]
Brandon Ewing
But then he would change his position in that case if that legislation, I
- [91:06]
Aiden
mean, he's implying that who knows if the other five justices who voted in favor of shutting down the executive order. So if you hear Trump or Brett Kavanaugh or other people talk about how this can now go to Congress without a constitutional amendment, that is the idea.
- [91:22]
Doug
But.
- [91:22]
Aiden
But it seems to not hold a lot of weight. And then again, even if Congress changes it, it has to go get approved by the Supreme Court. Again, five out of the nine justices said clearly today that they are going to be in support of birthright citizenship. So most likely this is done. It's closed book.
- [91:39]
Brandon Ewing
I think it's interesting to see, not that this hasn't happened a couple times already. I think the general narrative that the court is ruling heavily in Trump's favor because of the way it's politically stacked right now, is true. But House, a lot of these decisions, more prominent ones, are not going in the way that he's hoping, like to see a conservative, a holy, like conservative court ultimately decide against this in a way that he's publicly unhappy with. Is. Is really interesting.
- [92:07]
Doug
Yeah. On the tariffs, too. There's a couple of big things where he's been hit. But I will say under the radar today there was, you know, Kavanaugh sided with him pretty strongly on a thing that I didn't even get reported very much, which is that spending limits on campaigns, a law that has existed since Watergate, completely got Removed today. All political parties can now spend unlimited amounts on any candidate. And it's like a bonus on top of Citizens United in 2010, which is a law that I think has been pretty negative on America. And so this is a follow up that has just happened and I feel like it's kind of of went under the radar. It's the tail end of JD Vance coming out on stage and saying that Watergate would be a 12 hour story today. And now the laws they pass after that are getting undermined. And I do think
- [93:02]
Brandon Ewing
there's another big ruling too, that I don't know if we have the time to fully explain, but the right for the executive to fire heads of agencies or at will. But with a carve out for the Fed, the Fed still is fully independent and cannot be fired by the executive. But everybody or fired without cause. But I want to come. I think this stuff is worth coming back to at a time when we've have more time to talk about it because I think there's some been. There have been some really big Supreme Court decisions very recently that are worth covering more. And over the course of the entire year, I think Perry actually had a really good suggestion for an episode where we can come back and do that. But I think this is the end of this episode. Thank you for joining us for another week of Lemonade Stand. And if you'd like to join us for an extra hour of the show on patreon.com lemonade stand. Feel free to pop over there. We're trying something new this week.
- [94:02]
Doug
Week. We're doing a bit of a game show.
- [94:04]
Brandon Ewing
We're doing a bit of a game show this week. So if you want to check that out or the other bonus episodes we do, you can hop on over there. Let's go. Go north, young man for 200.
- [94:15]
Doug
I hate this category.
- [94:16]
Aiden
Go north young man for 200. Founded in 1943, this Swedish company is. You're kidding me.
- [94:21]
Doug
He's got a. He's got a faster fiber wire. He's like those companies that built it. One frame closer.
- [94:29]
Aiden
Founded in 1943, this Swedish company has grown to become the largest furniture company in the world.
- [94:34]
Doug
What is it, Doug?
- [94:35]
Aiden
What is ikea?
- [94:35]
Brandon Ewing
What is Lego? This is crazy.
- [94:40]
Aiden
All right, Doug, you get bored again? Okay, let's go. All aboard for 600. All aboard for 600. Initially used to jump start 600 million in funding for the Bright Lines Florida project.
- [94:53]
Doug
I clicked it 100 hundred times over. I clicked it.
- [94:57]
Brandon Ewing
All right.
- [94:57]
Aiden
Initially used to jumpstart 600 million in funding for Brightlands Florida project.
- [95:01]
Doug
This is.
- [95:01]
Aiden
What is the name of the tax exempt investment vehicle? I actually don't remember if this exactly what is public debt bond?
- [95:09]
Doug
That is incorrect.
- [95:12]
Brandon Ewing
I'm buzzing.
- [95:13]
Doug
I'm buzzing.
- [95:14]
Brandon Ewing
How does it.
- [95:15]
Doug
I'm literally buzzing.
- [95:18]
Brandon Ewing
What are private activity bonds?
- [95:21]
Aiden
That is correct.
- [95:22]
Brandon Ewing
Myself. You were gonna say public activity bonds.
- [95:25]
Doug
I was not.
- [95:26]
Brandon Ewing
And I loser. And let's go. I would love to see. Gaming is back for 200.
- [95:33]
Aiden
Gaming is back for 200. With long blue twin braids.
- [95:36]
Doug
This League of Legends character is. Yay. Who is Jinx?
- [95:40]
Brandon Ewing
Oh, my God.
- [95:41]
Doug
With the long blue twin braids.
- [95:43]
Aiden
This League of Legends character carries an arsenal of weapons, including a rare rocket launcher. It is Jinx.
- [95:47]
Doug
Nice fucking game. Really fast there. You should play League of Legends.