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- [00:00]
A
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Lemonade Stand. What the hell is going on in this crazy, mixed up world of ours, Aiden? Well, why is it our fault? Because half the comments in our last video is that the lemonade stand curse has cursed the world.
- [00:14]
B
It's gotten too far sometimes. Look, occasionally when we talk about things immediately, the world throws a gigantic bomb of some kind, and we just feel like we should spread that out a little.
- [00:24]
A
It just doesn't help, Doug, that you have an episode where you literally paid witches to do curses.
- [00:29]
B
Okay? Have you guys seen it? Doesn't help our witches thing. Okay, so somebody paid an Etsy witch to help this. The Seattle Mariners. And they immediately started going on a winning streak.
- [00:40]
A
Okay?
- [00:41]
B
And then somebody, somebody. I don't know if you guys saw this, but he cursed Charlie Kirk with a witch.
- [00:46]
A
You think it was a Charlie Kirker?
- [00:47]
B
I'm not saying it's a Charlie Kirk curse, okay? I am strongly.
- [00:50]
A
You're strong.
- [00:52]
B
All I'm saying is that has been 10% funnier for the last four episodes of the art. That is actually true. You just straight up got funnier. Okay, so there may be some sort of power here.
- [01:02]
A
Yeah, yeah, we talked about the Patreon, but Ludwig literally messaged Aiden and said, stop uploading. You're ruining the. Like, we're. They're implying that every time we upload the next day, something bad happens.
- [01:11]
C
How? You know, he listens to the show because he called me out of the blue and he's just like, you got to stop uploading lemonade again. And I thought this was just a conflict with work. Like he was worried about how much time I'm putting in or something. He's like, no, it's because. It's because you guys are causing concrete damage to society.
- [01:27]
B
Well now, once this episode releases, you have about five minutes to predict what is about to happen in the world.
- [01:31]
A
Get in the bunker.
- [01:32]
B
Yeah.
- [01:37]
C
But I think. I think aside from the obvious, because Charlie Kirk's assassination happened, I believe, minutes after we uploaded our video last week, there was. There's so much that has happened in the world in the last week. And we came each with a few different stories of how things seem to be falling apart. Just to walk. Walk you through kind of a week of world news. Yeah.
- [02:03]
A
Not all of them are terrible, but I'd say most of them are pretty wild. By the way, speaking of Charlie Kirk, just real quick, we'll say it. We talked about it pretty extensively on the Patreon. We like a 45 minute conversation between us Doug, you were doing your charity stream, which, by the way, congrats.
- [02:19]
B
Thank you.
- [02:19]
A
And you're a published author, by the way. Congrats.
- [02:21]
B
I a.m. a number one bestselling published author.
- [02:24]
A
I just want to say, not only did I buy your book, I bought the AI generated ripoff that someone made on Amazon called Doug Last the Life Story.
- [02:35]
B
Just people are aware. I did publish a book last week. It's a very good book. It did become a number one bestseller in three categories on Amazon. It became the 10th highest book on Amazon, period, beating out three books about Charlie Kirk, which is crazy. And then within two days, somebody made an AI generated ripoff of the book where my name is. It's. The book title is like Douglas Scott Colon A Life of Streaming Colon, Doug M. Dash bravely pushing against Internet norms. And it's all AI generated and it's nonsense. So apparently if you are a bestselling author on Amazon, they will just make AI rip off.
- [03:11]
A
I'm not joking about. I did buy it and I'm going to bring it on the show and we're going to.
- [03:14]
B
Okay, cool. I was going to buy it too. I wanted to see what it is.
- [03:17]
C
I gotta get a copy.
- [03:19]
A
So I'll probably talk more about that at the end because we want to get your take as well. But there's a lot of news. We all brought our stories, by the way, little caveat. There's so much happened this week. We're all bringing what we're interested in. We're just bringing stories that we thought were interesting to us and we're going to try and share them with each other. This is not.
- [03:32]
C
Yeah, this isn't your full encapsulation of news in the world from the past week.
- [03:36]
B
There's in fact, let me illustrate how much we are not qualified to cover everything on the. I was spinning it earlier, just now, the globe and I kept looking for the Bolsonaro Brazil story in africa. Took me 3 spins to get to the right continent. So.
- [03:52]
C
And that's. And that's who you're listening to.
- [03:55]
A
Geography class. Geography class. So what is going on with Bolsonaro?
- [04:01]
B
We got a little story coming out of Brazil. So Bolsonaro is the previous president of Brazil. The Brazilian government roughly works like the American government. You have the Brazil or you have the president who sort of, you know, is supposed to manage and operate the federal government. You have a roughly sort of congressional system. You have a Supreme Court. All this. So Bolsonaro is the Trump like figure who won around the same time as Trump lost the election and is now replaced with a new prime minister who is more left leaning. He was pretty, let's say more far right, more radical. Very much in the same vein as the kind of demagoguery that Trump engaged in. Okay, so in a.
- [04:42]
A
Make Brazil great again.
- [04:43]
B
Make Brazil great again. In a shockingly similar parallel to what happened, he lost the election.
- [04:49]
A
And.
- [04:50]
B
And this is a few years ago now, I don't know if from the exact number. Yeah, but he lost the election fairly recently. Replaced with Lula. Right. And then he went around and in something that has never been seen before by a leading world president, denied the election results. And not only was saying the election was. Would never happen here, was never fraud, it was fraudulent and was shouldn't be valid. And he encouraged media to talk about this. He encouraged, like, different political figures to engage with this story and really pushed this. He was removed from office. And the big story this week is that the judiciary system in Brazil convicted him to 27 years in prison for basically attempting to overturn the results of the 2022 election.
- [05:33]
A
2022 election.
- [05:35]
B
And so I'm not deeply familiar with Brazilian politics, but what I did look up a little bit was I basically read the story and was like, sounds exactly like what happened here. So I looked it up. It's just beat for beat what happened. Except they didn't even have January 6th. We had January 6th. And so Trump, I would argue, did basically all the same things. And so I was kind of trying to ask and figure out what is the difference? Why was the former President convicted of 27 years in prison in Brazil and not us? And it's just, apparently they just got the conviction. That's just what they wanted to do.
- [06:11]
A
Well, so can't dance the YMCA like Trump. That is bulletproof.
- [06:15]
B
And you know what's crazy too is Trump can and probably will pardon himself. So that opportunity is gone because he got reelected.
- [06:22]
A
Yeah.
- [06:22]
C
You mean digging through the similarities between these two countries and finding out like, Brazilian Tucker Carlson was talking about Brazilian dominion voting machines on Brazilian Fox News. Like, I, I mean, do you, do you have, like, how does someone of this position of power get drawn up on charges in a country like Brazil? Who makes the decision on his guilt? Is he arrested by the normal police? I think the idea that Trump would have even been arrested or charged for what happened seems maybe it's just because there's this feeling of him getting out of so many things over and over and over again within our system that the idea of him facing consequences for January 6 seemed very unlikely to me. Beyond.
- [07:15]
A
It seemed very real after January 6th. Yeah, it felt like Trump was going to receive consequences. And then it just stalled, got super slow, stretched out. And then like all so many people that are currently Trump allies who around January six were disavowing him like rats from a sinking ship. They were throwing him under the butt. They were like, they were ready to. Because they thought for sure. And then just nothing happened, unlike what happened here.
- [07:40]
C
What's the functional difference here? Like what, what system is Bolsonaro running into that someone like Trump isn't running into? In the US it's the.
- [07:49]
B
Just the judiciary system. So again, they have like essentially a judicial branch similar to the United States. And basically federal police acted on orders of the Supreme Court and arrested him. And so they are prosecuting him and convicting him of this and saying, you were attempting to undermine our democratic process. You were attempting to overturn the election. This is worthy of 27 years.
- [08:10]
A
Yeah, apparently like four out of five justices guilty verdicts.
- [08:14]
B
Yeah, apparently there, there were actually riots in January 8, 2023. That's shockingly similar to January 6. So, yeah, there might be some degree of, like, there's a real genuine sense of violence that was instituted, but for the most part it's, you know, it's.
- [08:27]
A
Not like he, dude, it's January 8th, 2023.
- [08:30]
B
Right.
- [08:30]
A
Like two days later. And they're saying, well, part of the charges here is that he laid the groundwork for a coup in 2021 by spreading disinformation about the voting system, basically saying the voting is fraudulent.
- [08:41]
B
That's the thing that struck out to me. It's like it stuck out to me.
- [08:44]
A
Very similar.
- [08:44]
B
It's just so simple. And so legally we could do the same thing in the United States, but it would require, again, like a strong rapid push from that, you know, and obviously the Biden administration did pursue legal action against Trump for a number of things, and a couple of them stuck. Well, he has the, the felony charges for the money laundering, I forget, or money, whatever it was, you know, the mislabeling of funds. But yeah, it's very interesting to see the difference in how this country handled this. You know, I guess one thing that is actually relevant point, it's a more, let's say, left leaning judicial branch in Brazil, whereas in America, our Supreme Court, very right leaning. And so it's an interesting also parallel of like, what happens when your Supreme Court leans one direction or the other, because it's just so unlikely in the United states that a 6 out of 9 conservative Supreme Court is going to like really actively, aggressively pursue this.
- [09:39]
A
Yeah, I looked it up for a separate reason recently and I found out that there hasn't been, you know how right now Trump's got the trifecta. He's got, he's got, he's got more. That's four. He's got the House, he's got the Senate, he's got presidency and he's got the judiciary. I looked up when the last time that happened on the other side and it was like JFK, like it hasn't been since the 60s that there hasn't been a left leaning Supreme Court plus the House, plus the Senate, plus the President. That has not happened. So it's like a, it's, it's rare, it's rare for either side to have that. They have it now. So. Yeah, it's interesting. Although I will say if this is time delayed, two years. Right. If, if ours happened in 2020, he'll be elected. He'll be elected president of Brazil.
- [10:18]
B
It does, it does appear Bolsonaro basically appears to be Trump in Brazil. And all the same parallels, just two years shifting.
- [10:24]
A
Yeah.
- [10:24]
B
So it's gonna be.
- [10:25]
A
There's a.
- [10:26]
B
It's got to be cool. Like, it's almost like the witch's powers. Like you just know what's going to happen. Damn. You think he's going to start sending ice.
- [10:34]
A
They're nicknaming him the Trump of the tropics. I did not know how close I knew Bolsonaro was. Was. I know, I knew politically where he stood and sort of what happened. I didn't realize how similar this is to what happened with Donald Trump.
- [10:46]
B
Do you think he's going to start. They call him Trump, start arresting illegal immigrants and then having them imprisoned in America.
- [10:54]
A
Send them to. Send them to Ohio like we have.
- [10:59]
B
We have the playbook. All right, Trump, Trump is writing the book. Bolsonaro just needs to read it in two years.
- [11:04]
C
In two years, we know what's going to happen.
- [11:06]
A
It's like how every Internet startup, for a while at least, they're catch. They're caught up now. But for a while, every Internet startup in America, China would just copy it and do it two years later.
- [11:13]
B
Right.
- [11:14]
A
China just watches what Trump does.
- [11:16]
C
And where is he at right now? Is he in jail? Waiting for.
- [11:22]
A
Under house arrest?
- [11:24]
C
Waiting for a sentence.
- [11:24]
A
He's under house arrest. When they had a sentence, it just came out. 27 years. That's what happened. That was the big announcement.
- [11:28]
C
Oh, sorry. I thought he was just convicted.
- [11:31]
A
70 something years old. So it's basically that's it. You, you know, unless. But again.
- [11:36]
B
Well, I've heard from Putin and Xi Jinping that people can live to 150 with organ transfers.
- [11:41]
A
Imagine he actually gets out 27 years from now.
- [11:43]
B
Damn.
- [11:43]
A
Runs and wins.
- [11:44]
C
Well, that's what bricks is all about.
- [11:46]
A
Age 97.
- [11:47]
B
Speaking of bricks, what's going on over there?
- [11:49]
A
So I guess that's the main story. What else is going on? You want about China speaking to China?
- [11:53]
C
Yeah, I do want to talk about China a little.
- [11:55]
A
I got a couple I could talk about. TikTok. It's about. Yeah, let's go.
- [11:58]
C
I mean, this is a. This is a China story, but also a, you know, a U.S. story. It has to do with the tariffs and the relationships between the two. So I thought, could one of you.
- [12:07]
B
Guys spin the globe, though? I don't feel like we've traveled across the world. Yep. Okay.
- [12:12]
A
Yeah.
- [12:12]
B
I'm going against the tax the wrong way. Okay. Now I feel like I'm really learning something about the world or in China.
- [12:20]
C
Okay. A few months ago, I listened to this New York Times piece called what an Iowa Farmer fears about the trade war. It was about this woman who is a farmer of soybeans. And the market for soybeans is really, really dominated by China. They import the most soybeans in the world, and most of the output in the United states, more than 50% of the soybeans we make has historically gone to China.
- [12:47]
A
Okay.
- [12:48]
C
And in certain areas or certain states like North Dakota, where a lot of soybean farmers are, over 70% of their. Of their crop is going to Brazil a lot, too. And Brazil. Yeah. So this ties into Brazil as well.
- [13:01]
A
We didn't plan this.
- [13:03]
C
And I listened to this a few months ago, and in that piece, she's. They're talking about the potential consequences of another trade war with China and how it'll affect their industry. Because in 2018, when tariffs got introduced the first time around, when there was a first trade war under Trump's first administration, the soybean farmers suffered a lot. Their revenues, I think, went down from I think around like 10 to 15 billion a year to a year where they made less than 4 billion in. In a span of one year. And the government had to step in and help subsidize the losses for that period of time.
- [13:41]
A
The way I recall was like, China, you know, because we buy a lot more from China than they buy from us, so the few things that they buy are their strong levers. In a trade war. And soybeans is the one they use a lot is like, that's the one. They're, they're one of their go tos.
- [13:56]
C
Yeah.
- [13:56]
A
If there's a trade war, I'm going.
- [13:58]
B
To be honest, I feel like they have a little more leverage in this situation. Like they, you know, in terms of like us having all of our manufactured goods versus them having less soybeans survive. They have a little bit more power.
- [14:09]
A
Yeah, yeah. And so they, yeah, that's what they did in the last time. And so they're doing it again, I assume. Or what's the.
- [14:15]
C
Yeah. So the issue is coming around again in the piece. This woman is explaining their long relationship over decades with China. It's really interesting because this, you know, this woman from middle America farming like working class, is talking about how they, you know, they, they have a really deep relationship with their buyers in China. They go and have traveled there, they have personal connections there. And you know, upsetting this balance in 2018 was a huge hit to this industry and they're kind of bracing for how that might play out this year. And recently we're a few weeks away from when the typical soybean harvest will be. And right now, as of right now, season nothing, none of the soybeans are being bought by China at all. In the US none of the expected crop is expected to go there because of the current tariff. They cannot price competitively compared to other countries that produce soybeans like Brazil most prominently and then also Argentina and Uruguay. And China as a mechanism of leverage is using this relationship and basically refusing to buy or because of the market refusing to buy these soybeans from the US and there's this whole farming sector that is prepared to, you know, collapse to a degree that they never have before even compared to 2018. And I thought this was, I thought this is interesting quote because it's from. One sec. So this is from a professor at a university in the area talking about the damage to the region. Because I was like, well, what's the difference between this and last time? Like, is it really that different? And he said, I've never seen as monumental of a disruption in agriculture as we're experiencing now, said Mr. Wilson, who's been teaching at the university for 43 years. These are turbulent, turbulent times. So China and these Chinese buyers would prefer to be working with the US still at an, like an individual or a company to company level. But the, the, you know, the economics just do not make any sense anymore. And I think there is A political risk or a political pressure here where this is a demographic or an area of the country, like in these pockets of North Dakota or in these pockets of Iowa that voted heavily for Trump. And will their support for him be fractured by the main source of their livelihood being taken apart? Maybe not. But that is one concern from the Trump administration's perspective of feeling pressured to solve this. And the article I was reading more recently about this threw in an interesting wrench into this as well. So Secretary of State Scott Besant is the person that's sort of charged with solving this issue or dealing with.
- [17:05]
A
They put everything on him.
- [17:06]
B
Yeah, sorry.
- [17:07]
A
He's running the.
- [17:08]
B
Besson is Secretary of State now.
- [17:10]
C
No, wait, did I miss a Besson Secretary. Treasury Secretary. My bad. Yeah, I wrote down the wrong thing.
- [17:18]
B
Jimmy. Marco Rubio.
- [17:19]
C
No, no, no, it's Bessant.
- [17:20]
A
Rubio.
- [17:20]
C
It is Bessant. Secretary of the Treasury. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Besant is.
- [17:26]
A
Tied in, but they also got him doing the irs. I don't even know that he's like, he's.
- [17:29]
C
No, he's doing a lot.
- [17:30]
A
They're making him do. Him and Rubio are like the only two people running around doing every actual job that they require.
- [17:36]
C
So one of the. This is an interesting thing that was brought up in the New York Times article that I was reading about this more recently was that Bessant has a vested interest in this all personally because he owns $25 million worth of. Of soybean and corn farmland in North Dakota, that if this continues to, if this continues to devolve, the value of these assets that he owns personally are going to. Are going to collapse. And he had to report the fact that he owned these things and his potential conflict of interest a while ago and has been facing pressure from the Office of Government Ethics that Beset has failed to fully comply with his agreement to, to divest these financial assets to get rid of his personal investment in an issue like this. And he, he has until December to, like, fully comply. But if there is.
- [18:35]
A
In this case, what he's doing is anti. You know what I'm saying? He's not helping his soybean interest.
- [18:39]
C
No, he should be motivated to figure.
- [18:40]
A
Out, figure this out because he has.
- [18:42]
C
Personal assets on the line. And right now there is no, there's, there's no conceivable scenario where this changes in the next few weeks. And I think it raises a couple questions is if, you know, if no trade deal comes to fruition that suddenly produces the Chinese demand for American soybeans again, you know, what hap. Will the government step in and relieve these farmers of the economic issues of being able to not sell their crops anymore? You know, most likely, otherwise they face a multi year problem of like, well, you don't bring any revenue from one year. Right. And you need a lot of that money to. Yeah.
- [19:27]
A
So your farm falls behind and then you can't, you could never go back to fulfilling the demand because you're already a weaker farm.
- [19:33]
C
Yeah. If anything changes next year and this were to be figured out, you're not in the economic position to even produce the crop that you're mentioning.
- [19:39]
A
It's almost like tariffs are stupid.
- [19:42]
C
So I think it begs the question, is like, you know, is this, is the suffering of this specific group of people or the specific sector worth the achievement of some grander goal that tariffs are building to accomplish? Right. I feel like that's the main line of argumentation you can take is, of course, of course this sector was going to suffer in the short term because of the tariffs going into place, but they're part of a grand. How do they grow in the long term?
- [20:12]
B
What is the, you know, how you grow? Trump starts tweeting and telling everybody to eat more soy. We bring, we bring soy consumption back to America.
- [20:22]
A
What do you make out of soybeans? Do you make out of tofu? Is that it? Like, why does China eat so many soybeans? It's just tofu. Is that really the main.
- [20:31]
B
They do eat a lot of tofu.
- [20:34]
A
What are soybeans? Soybean oil paints, plastic. Okay, there's something. Listen, I got a, I got a quote here from, from farmers affected by this. Okay. Our yields and our crops and our weather are pretty good. So they're getting a lot of soybeans farmed this year. But obviously interest from markets is right now on a low because nobody wants to buy it. And you know, these supply chains, like you said, are now being created that go around America. They're just going to buy it from Brazil or Argentina or somewhere else. And then once those relations get established, that's it. Like you're locked. Now they have multi year trade deals and there's not going back to your farmers. But anyway, the quote from the guy said they ask him. With all this economic pain, rural areas could well have turned against Trump. But that doesn't seem to be happening. Polling experts say in the countryside, he's still broadly popular. Mr. Maxwell, the farmer for this piece, look at him, he's quite a, he's got a cute smile, says he's sticking with Trump despite his own financial worries. Our president told us it was going to take time to get all these tariffs in place. I'm going to be patient. I believe in our president.
- [21:31]
C
So that's what I'm saying. So if he sees that.
- [21:34]
A
But they're in place. That's not the problem.
- [21:36]
C
I'm in the village. Excuse me, sir. Excuse me. S. I'm in the villain chair and I'm. I. As a soybean farmer who voted for Trump. You are who's. Who's. Who is yet to be able to schedule where my crop will be sold this year. I understand that change takes a long time.
- [21:52]
A
I can't think of any.
- [21:53]
C
That Trump. That Trump is on.
- [21:55]
A
Less of an advocate for soybean farmers in the Midwest than a podcaster in.
- [22:00]
C
L. A. I don't know what you talk about. I'm deeply ingrained.
- [22:04]
A
You're not deeply.
- [22:06]
C
Is this not a reflection of. What I'm saying is like there is a belief and there is a line of argumentation that this is the short term cost of some grander solution to our economic woes. And, you know, if you had to. If you had to sit down with. With this guy.
- [22:22]
A
Mr. Maxwell, which.
- [22:23]
C
Let's pretend it's me.
- [22:24]
A
Okay. Hello, Mr. Max. It's an honor to be a real hardworking American.
- [22:28]
C
Well, you got soft hands, city boy.
- [22:30]
A
Me?
- [22:30]
C
Yes.
- [22:30]
A
Meet my fellow podcasters. There's one you should meet. He's got to let go soft as it. He's in multiple podcasts, actually. It's really embarrassing. Mr. Maxwell, my response would be, even if the stated goals of these tariffs work and we bring manufacturing back to America, how does that help you, my friend, as a soybean exporter, how does that. I don't understand. Even if Donald Trump has created this great manufacturing system, are you going to become a manufacturer?
- [23:02]
C
Well, I think the president is aiming to bring back so much manufacturing to the United States and so much economic activity that because of the grander economic success of the United States, there will be an increased demand for my product locally.
- [23:16]
A
Locally. Okay.
- [23:17]
C
I don't know if he would say that.
- [23:18]
A
I see. Well, I don't think he would say that, but I could. Okay. So the idea is that America grows so much that we can consume all of the soy ourselves.
- [23:26]
C
We need to outgrow the debt.
- [23:28]
A
We could consume more than the billion people of China could ever consume.
- [23:32]
C
No. Beginning to see the issue here.
- [23:33]
A
I just, I. You know, it's funny. If you're like a local American Manufacturer. I guess you could, I could see how you could get this in your mind and go for it and be like, well, you know, the tariffs help me be more competitive.
- [23:46]
C
I think you might, China, you might just have a very vague idea that the grander economic success of this is going to be good, is going to somehow relieve you of the pain in your current position.
- [23:57]
A
Yeah.
- [23:57]
C
And I'm not saying I don't think policy, policy should be solely dictated by the success or failure of a single agricultural industry in the United States. That's not what I mean to say here. It's more how, you know, if someone has this outlook, I don't really know how to push against it effectively.
- [24:17]
B
Here's, here's one which is these farmers have a system and you know, their own economy that is based around exporting internationally. Right. And the idea is to make the United States more self sufficient. Right. And part of that would mean selling products that United States wants. Like we just don't want that many soybeans. And you can make other things that you can grow other things on soybean farms. It doesn't have to be soybeans. I mean, I'm not like, so like one half of my family is all farmers, so they're all in Texas. So this is, I mean I'm actually invested in like farmland. And you can, you can rotate crops like it's, it's inconvenient. But it's not like these farmers now are fucked. Like they just have to rotate their business. And maybe the thinking is, okay, what has worked as a way of generating this profit internationally as part of the cost of us broadly as communities across the United States. Bringing manufacturing back would mean that we are not going to focus on exports to those same countries. I mean, again, I, you know, I.
- [25:11]
A
Would do things, I would say they are fucked in the short term for sure because they have a whole bunch.
- [25:15]
B
Of soybeans that they have money and yeah, they bad this. They already made soybeans are there and.
- [25:22]
A
They'Re going to have a really unprofitable season where they, you know, the lay people off and whatever. But the second thing is there's just no possible way, no matter what crop they switch to, for the United States to generate as much demand as the rest of the world in aggregate. There's just not like there's, you'll just.
- [25:40]
B
Farmers will take pain, you're saying, because we're applying tariffs on everybody. So everybody's going to retire that in general.
- [25:47]
A
But I'm just saying there's not enough. There's not a people in the United States. The amount of soybeans you can sell to China will always be more. Or crops you can sell to China plus Europe or where is always going to be more than what you can sell to 300 million people domestically. It's just. There's just no other way. I mean that. There's just a lot more people out there who wanted to buy American.
- [26:07]
B
I'm just glad the greedy farmers going to have to share their profits with.
- [26:10]
A
The working man now. So, like, yeah, what I'm saying is like, okay, you can make the argument that farmers want to take an overall amount of pain for everyone else to benefit. If that's the. I don't agree with this, the system, but it's just funny to me that the farmer himself is like, this is going to work out for me. I. Because it's not. There's just no way. If there's tariffs on all the other countries, then you will sell less and they will buy more from more competitive.
- [26:33]
B
Okay, so, so counterargument. What if the guy's like, all right, well, we're going switch to growing more corn or sorghum or whatever, and they grow more things that are desired by the American consumers. And the tariff trade war stuff means less crops are being sold, you know, internationally into the United States, so they have less competition with the crops they do grow that Americans want.
- [26:52]
A
Yeah, but I'm just saying it's just not enough people. There's just not. So what I'm saying is they're going to eventually have a smaller slice of this total. They're going to. It's going to be a smaller economic engine, which could be fine. I mean, we could. You could take that as like, from the outside. It's worth it. I just find it weird that the farmer wants it because the farmer will lose and this, that in the long term, they're going to be a. I.
- [27:14]
C
Have a. I have a question.
- [27:15]
A
Okay.
- [27:16]
C
So when I pulled. Because, like I said, my, my original interest in this story came from a podcast months ago.
- [27:23]
A
Okay.
- [27:24]
C
And in that piece, when I went to revisit, I found the piece on YouTube. The comments are very vindictive because the woman that the piece is mainly about, I would say has clear. She doesn't admit it directly, but has clearly voted for Trump, but is also bracing for the oncoming problems of his decisions. Right. She's in a very similar spot to the guy that you just brought up in this article.
- [27:47]
A
Yeah.
- [27:47]
C
Okay. And I think we live in a Time where people are hungry for that leopards ate my face moment where somebody who voted for Trump, you know, reaps the consequences of their vote. Basically. They like seeing that and then they like making fun of that person. And that's what all the comments on that piece are about. They're like just, I mean, being there, they're just being pretty heinous to this.
- [28:12]
A
Yeah, I don't fuck with that vibe at all. But.
- [28:15]
C
And I just wanted more your guys thoughts on, on that because to me this does feel like a very clear. You voted against your interests and are either in denial or like surprise. This was the outcome when it felt somewhat obvious, but it doesn't, you know, the idea of filling YouTube comments of like and making fun of these people for suffering, I don't think it helps.
- [28:40]
A
I think these people dig their heels more. But I do want to say I want to split that down the middle because I, I don't fault anyone, especially a farmer in the Midwest for voting for Trump in 2024. Whatever. Biden was not, I mean the Biden in the coma thing was already pretty unpopular and then she didn't run a great campaign. And also there was inflation. And if you don't watch the news closely, whatever you're. I get it. I totally get it. It's not. I do find it a little frustrating when you're in a moment like now when you are a soybean farmer who thought this is all going to be good for me and now you are literally unable to sell your product because decisions he's making and you are going to have to lay people off, you're going to have material economic damage and you still are like, this shit is going to work out. I find that to be a little frustrating, but I don't, I don't have any leopards in my face. I'm in the YouTube. Like, it's not. I would like someone to reach out to the guy and try to like talk to him and explain to him. Maybe, maybe we can get weird that he doesn't genuinely.
- [29:33]
C
Maybe we can give this guy a call and just ask. I would actually really like to ask this guy some questions. I think we're, you know, weeks out from when the harvest for these things start and we'll see how it plays out.
- [29:47]
A
What if we get our hands up and we go fucking harvest some of the soybeans.
- [29:51]
C
We go do a Levit State episode.
- [29:53]
A
Of the Farm in the Fields. We do that, get some crops.
- [29:56]
C
I'm really curious to see what I would like to wait for is say we wait a couple months, we see what the government reaction to the lack of demand is and see if there's like subsidies or help. And then honestly, I'd like to talk to farmers then in the situation where they have received or have not received that support from the government and see how that sways. I think like two years from now.
- [30:18]
B
Is when this is interesting because it is commute. I mean, like, if even for the tariff supporters there's acknowledgement it's going to be disruptive in the short term. Right. And so I think it'll take time for somebody like this to go, this was wrong. Whereas this is the short term pain that was clearly communicated. Whether it then turns into long term benefit. I don't think any of the three of us are very confident in that. But like I do, I think it's perfectly reasonable, again, knowing people in my family who are farmers who voted for Trump, like, I think it's perfectly reasonable for them to be like, this is what I was told is gonna happen. But there's going to be this more sustainable America first economy long term. And maybe that means soybeans pass away, but we focus more on cattle or corn and that will have higher yields because we're not competing with Brazil who's like dramatically expanding their farming production every year. Right? Like that's, I think in a year or two you can maybe call them, you know, stupid or.
- [31:08]
A
I'm not calling stupid.
- [31:09]
B
No, no, no, no. I'm saying the people in these comments, you can be like, see, but it's too early to tell. I mean, right now this is the known short term pain of tariffs. Does it turn into benefits long term?
- [31:20]
A
I don't think this was.
- [31:20]
C
No, see, that's the thing.
- [31:22]
A
I think they would, if you would have asked them at the time of the election, that they're going to flash forward and they're going to have a bunch of crops that they can't sell.
- [31:30]
C
I do not think most of these voters of these specific people, and we'd have to ask to know for sure, but my guess is that when most people put that ballot box in November and voted for this guy, they were not like, I understand that I will not be able to sell my soybean crop a year from now, but that's worth the long term gains. I do not think most people thought about.
- [31:50]
A
A lot of people say he's this. I think this is what most people thought from my understanding, because I have, I have uncles, I have. They said a lot of people Think he's just using tariffs as a bargaining chip, as a bar bluff. The idea was like the tariffs aren't really going to stick around. We're gonna.
- [32:04]
B
Okay, yeah, I get.
- [32:04]
A
We're gonna use the tariffs, we're gonna threaten, we're gonna get some things. But we're not gonna. They're not actually gonna stick around and make us be unable to sell our soybeans because that's.
- [32:12]
B
So there's still. Yeah, no, that's an interesting. Like they're still under the. The thinking of like this is just him riling things up right now and.
- [32:18]
A
They'Re gonna get a deal.
- [32:18]
B
We should handle one year of no soybean sale. Yeah, that's what I think.
- [32:22]
A
And then the. Am I blanking? I heard. Really? It was very poignant. I promise. No, whatever. Go on. I'm sorry. China news. I have no China news. If we want to keep going on.
- [32:36]
B
Yeah, I just Real quick.
- [32:37]
A
Yeah.
- [32:38]
B
We could do a sort of Opium war type strategy where we get countries hooked on our soybeans.
- [32:46]
A
China's too tough to fight, so we got to go somewhere. We have to go like Australia or something and make them all eat soybeans.
- [32:52]
C
Let me, let me briefly sidetrack this. I actually think we're in an opium war with China and we're losing for tik tok. What?
- [32:59]
B
Oh no.
- [33:00]
C
For fentanyl. For fentanyl.
- [33:04]
A
Yeah.
- [33:05]
C
We're. We're in the war and we're on the other side. We're on the losing.
- [33:10]
B
It's the same thing. Cuz they sold opium for tea and there's like fentanyl for soybeans. What else is going on?
- [33:20]
A
Okay, well, is there is digital opioid. Digital opium.
- [33:24]
B
I think that's. I think. No, I think just like that was the thing.
- [33:27]
A
It was soybeans in Brazil and that's why the world's on fire. I was about digital opium. Okay, let's talk about tick tock. Let's talk about scrolling. That's what you know all about. Gen Z. Okay.
- [33:39]
C
Makes me happy.
- [33:40]
A
Makes you. We finally had news.
- [33:44]
C
All right.
- [33:44]
A
A little refresher on TikTok. It is the first time I've seen this in my life.
- [33:48]
C
Refresher on TikTok.
- [33:49]
A
I want to do a fresh. I want to explain to you, okay. This is the first time I've seen in my lifetime where a law was gone through the House, gone through Senate, passed by Congress, signed by the president, approved by the Supreme Court. Nothing happened. We got through all the steps of the process. We Said, we're going to ban TikTok. And it just didn't nobody enforce it. Nothing happened. So we just kept extending, extending.
- [34:15]
B
And then in my somewhat limited knowledge, this appears to be the most egregious thing that Trump has done. Everything else is. No, no, no, no, no. Legally. Hold on, hold on, let me explain.
- [34:25]
C
Getting out, lawyer, my video camera, legally, everything else.
- [34:32]
B
Every other time, and maybe there is an exception I'm not aware of, but every other time Trump tries to do a crazy thing and then the judicial system says, you can't do this, he follows along and bitches and complaints. This is the one thing where every single branch of the government, including the.
- [34:46]
A
Supreme Court, including him, he signed this letter, everybody, everybody.
- [34:50]
B
And so this is the one time where he's, he's, it's not just like etiquette and what, you know, and executive orders and all this stuff. He's straight up defying the orders of the Supreme Court to ban this. Anyway, go ahead.
- [35:02]
A
So that is the context going in. And we all know that TikTok was officially banned. Everyone freaked out and then nothing happened. Nothing happened. And, and it keeps getting extended. Nothing happened. So finally you have an update. As of today, there is again, he always calls them deals, but it's like a framework of a deal with the United States and China on how to handle TikTok, which is, and this is my understanding is they are going to. Because here's China's goals, right? China does not want the algorithm to leave China.
- [35:29]
C
Yeah.
- [35:29]
A
That is the most important part. That is the TikTok key thing.
- [35:33]
C
That is, it's the Krabby Patty secret.
- [35:35]
A
It's the Krabby Patty secret formula. And that was the big thing. And, and China was going to blow the whole. They were just going to not. They would rather have TikTok die in America than release the algorithm. So what they're going to do is they're going to lease, they're going to, they're going to license the algorithm to American TikTok, which will be a new company, US TikTok, that licenses the algorithm by paying a part of their revenue, I think 20% of their revenue to China. So it's like almost no different than what it is now, really.
- [36:04]
C
But this is so much work to do. Am I crazy? So it says the guy with the Huawei laptop, but Deep State agent, is this not. It's, it's just feels like so much work to get.
- [36:19]
A
So basically American TikTok will be, I think co owned by some of the investors that are currently in TikTok, which is like, I don't know, Sequoia and some of the, some of the VCs, and then also Oracle is going to be a major owner. I think Blackstone was one of them. The Oracle's lean one, which is interesting. So, so Oracle, which has already put out some incredible stock numbers on the back of hosting some of the data for TikTok in America, is, is now going to. He's owned by Larry Ellison. Right. He's the CEO. His son also owns the Paramount Skydance merger that owns CBS News. And it is now in the same day making a bid to buy Warner Brothers discovery, which on CNN. So if this were true, TikTok, CNN and CBS News would be owned by the same billionaire Ellison family that, you know, is very Trump friendly. So there is a, there's a, there's something unique to that. Although I will say, based on my understanding, they will not have control of the algorithm to be able to change it. It's just licensed through China.
- [37:31]
C
You have to license it as it is.
- [37:33]
A
Yeah. So I'm, I'm, I'm a little skeptical. It's still a framework deal.
- [37:39]
C
So if we were to. The. The goal of this was to protect American data from the Chinese government. That was the original reason why this cropped up at all. Right. It was the idea that the amount of data TikTok is collecting from American citizens can be used against the US by the Chinese government because of their connections to. I mean, because they're.
- [38:05]
B
There's multiple things. It's what. So there's what the US Government says. That's what they say it's about.
- [38:11]
C
Yeah. The security reason.
- [38:11]
B
It's the security reason. And then there's what everybody assumes to be the real one, which is the algorithm determines what topics are seen and promoted. Right?
- [38:19]
C
Yeah.
- [38:20]
B
And so there is a lot of evidence to show that certain topics just magically don't get shown by the algorithm. Right.
- [38:26]
C
Hold on, hold on. Let me mute the mic on my laptop. Sorry.
- [38:31]
A
Gigi being perked up at his desk.
- [38:34]
B
He's like, so, so good.
- [38:35]
C
Idiot.
- [38:36]
B
Tiananmen Square is a topic that China really, really doesn't want anybody talking about. And conveniently, videos about Tiananmen Square just don't get shown. Videos about the Uyghur genocide or crackdown or however you want to call that situation, conveniently doesn't get shown. Hong Kong protests conveniently doesn't get shown. And so there is like very strong evidence that they are willing to use the algorithm to basically promote Whatever content they want. And maybe they're pushing certain subjects.
- [39:05]
A
Right.
- [39:06]
B
And the most egregious example is when it was threatened to be banned. They post, they updated the app to basically say, TikTok is threatened to be banned. You should reach out to your congressman. And that like really freaked people out because this is a foreign government, the Chinese government, who's using an app to reach 100 million Americans and tell them you should go bother your congressperson to pass a law. So it is, it is multiple. I think there are real, genuine concerns around TikTok and the idea that an adversarial government, government that has, you know, an extremely bad track record with free speech and human rights. And obviously the United States government is not, you know, absolved of things here as well, but they use the algorithm to push certain things and to bring down certain.
- [39:49]
C
So let's say, let's say all of the things, all of those concerns, right? Just say they're 100% true. Let's. If that is a given, how much does this license change those security concerns? That was my question.
- [40:07]
B
Yeah.
- [40:08]
C
It was like, does this actually resolve the original reasons or fears that this existed?
- [40:13]
A
No, it doesn't.
- [40:14]
C
Oh.
- [40:14]
A
The algorithm remains in China and remains licensed from TikTok. So yeah, I don't think it.
- [40:20]
C
Oh, good.
- [40:21]
A
I don't think this does anything. This is a. There's, there's.
- [40:24]
B
So again, there's two big ones. One is the data and one is the algorithm's influence on discussion, let's say. Yeah, the data is now going to be safer if that's, if that's held entirely within the US Systems and if the, the algorithm is licensed, they can, you know, have more scrutiny over whether any data is leaving the United States. Like it'd be easier to self contain it. So the data privacy concerns is the one, but who gives a shit about data privacy? Like, honestly, is there anybody who's like, man, I really care if the Chinese government knows about what type of TikToks I'm watching. I mean, maybe, but.
- [40:55]
A
So that data steal my dance move.
- [40:57]
B
I don't know, maybe I'm unique in this. I just don't give a shit. The government knows stuff about. I don't know.
- [41:01]
C
I mean, they know, they know what I put into notion. You know, I'm not too concerned.
- [41:08]
A
Every episode of this podcast airs because you're live streaming it to Ji Jinping's house.
- [41:12]
C
Yeah, well, but if you had the technology to do it like I did, you would do it.
- [41:19]
A
Once I get my Chinese ev And I'm driving around talking about Tiananmen Square and hard breaks.
- [41:27]
C
All right, do we want to hop on over to something else?
- [41:30]
A
Is there anything else on this? I don't know. It's kind of dumb. But I think the funniest part is that we just ignored the law. What are we doing?
- [41:38]
B
It's like, what are we doing? It's like, TikTok is popular, so just nobody really cares.
- [41:42]
A
You know, what's funny is I think, you know, there's a big. I think there's a big fear among lawmakers and probably Trump in general, that he has a lot of fans on TikTok. That would be really mad.
- [41:52]
B
Yeah.
- [41:52]
A
If you were banned. But my guess is, much like what happened in India, if they actually banned TikTok, there would be a new TikTok very quickly made in America or. Or in a friendly country, and would. Would be popular within. You know, it's not irreplaceable. The algorithm's good, but someone else can do it.
- [42:10]
C
And what happened in India.
- [42:12]
A
India was TikTok. And then a bunch of TikTok competitors popped up, and that's what they use. They just. They watch more YouTube shorts, they watch more Instagram reels, and they like it because India was concerned with the same thing. China's so close. They have. They don't want the control of the narrative to be within an adversary's hands, I think.
- [42:29]
B
I mean, I agree. I think it is very concerning to have an adversarial government with this much influence over how people discuss news. That being said, our own tech companies do this. Yeah.
- [42:41]
A
I will say, like, every country in Europe probably feels that. Right, right.
- [42:44]
B
Like YouTube and every other country, in fact, that leads into Nepal very well.
- [42:48]
A
Oh, yeah, Some of that. That's a good one. Yeah.
- [42:50]
C
All right.
- [42:51]
A
This is a. This is a very interesting.
- [42:52]
C
You got to stop spinning in the wrong way.
- [42:53]
A
I will say I want Nepal riots.
- [42:57]
C
You guys are both bad at spinning the glove.
- [43:00]
B
Now, I was particularly interested in this because I lived in Nepal for three months right after high school, so I have spent a lot of time in Nepal in various. In various parts of there. People are not aware about DePaul. Tiny country in between China and India. It is most known for being heavily in the Himalayas. So it is one side of Mount Everest.
- [43:18]
C
They got a. They got a fire flag, too. It's not. It's not a rectangle.
- [43:22]
A
Not a rectangle.
- [43:23]
C
It's not a rectangle.
- [43:24]
A
So beast to have a flag that is triangular.
- [43:27]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Flag is cool. So this is a country that is nestled in between China and India. And over the last, like, decade or two, it's been kind of been an interesting. Like, they're kind of fighting for, vying for influence. When I was there, it was extraordinarily influenced by India. And in fact, it's. While Nepal is considered, you know, people think of it as this, like, Buddhist sort of haven. And you go there for the Buddhist temples. Like, 90% of people there were, like, practicing Hinduism. So it's. It's very, very influenced by India. And then when I was there, insanely poor, like one of the poorest countries in the world. So they essentially. It's a small country. They now have 30 million people, and Kathmandu is the capital city. Kathmandu is basically the only city. This is not like a giant bustling country. It's like a lot of hills and fields that people are spread out and then there's like one capital city.
- [44:19]
A
Yeah.
- [44:20]
B
So this last week, on September 8th, people started protesting, particularly led by Gen Z. And the quick summary is people were frustrated with what? Government corruption, with inequality. People are particularly annoyed with government officials, their kids having these lavish, like, tiktoks showing off their wealth and whatnot. And so this isn't that dissimilar from a lot of the kind of protesting and whatnot that's going around the world. I think a couple things that are particularly notable. So on September 8, tens of thousands of people go into the streets of Kathmandu. They start protesting intensely, they start burning down government buildings, they burn the parliament building, the Prime Minister and president, Private addresses get burned down media buildings and hotels, and they break into the prime minister's office and essentially force him to resign. And so this is all instigated when the Nepalese government was threatening social media companies and saying, you have to register with the government and allow us to have control, otherwise you cannot exist in Nepal. So they did this. They tried to enact this law. They were temporarily banned, including Facebook X, YouTube Discord. And this was perceived to be by the youth.
- [45:25]
A
They got LinkedIn, dude. They got LinkedIn.
- [45:26]
B
They get LinkedIn.
- [45:27]
A
They got LinkedIn. They got of rid Reddit.
- [45:28]
B
Yeah.
- [45:29]
A
And so imagine writing because you can't access LinkedIn.
- [45:32]
C
It's just. That's where I really. That's where I really hang these days.
- [45:36]
A
Yeah.
- [45:37]
B
So they. So that really instigated this feeling of like, our government has been serving us, there's been corruption, we are struggling as a youth. We have like 22% youth unemployment. 20% of the country is still in poverty. Which is actually a huge improvement from 15 years ago. And so they're like, this is, this is crossing the line with the social media ban. This is basically an attempt to, you know, enact even more authoritarianism and stop us from being able.
- [46:00]
A
Yeah, the timing is so suspect because it's right as these massive online hashtag Nepo kid online protests are happening where they're like saying all the friends and family of these government officials are living lavish lifestyles. We're living in poverty. It's fucked up. And that's when they decide we're going to crack down on social media.
- [46:19]
C
Right.
- [46:19]
A
People, people draw the connection.
- [46:21]
B
So two really notable things for this that I thought was interesting. The first is so Gen Z collectively is really kind organizing around this and they do this from a discord group called Youth Against Corruption which has like 160,000 members. So this starts to be where people who are participating in these protests and really organizing them. It's happening in this discord channel. So for the first two days of the protest they're going around burning buildings. The military come out. There's like 70, 50 people die in the first two days. A couple police as well as protesters being shot by police. Eventually the military comes out and assumes control. And now the protesters are sort of in control of things because of how much influence they have. They've literally burnt down the, the Prime Minister's house and the Prime Minister has resigned.
- [47:03]
C
So they fled, right?
- [47:05]
B
Yeah. So they start debating about who should be the next leader in this Discord group. And so they start having livestream debates. There was a live stream debate with about 16,000 people watching on their own platform as well as YouTube. They pick sort of frontrunners and then they do a vote on Discord where people voted on which person they want to be the next Prime Minister of Nepal and Chief justice or former Chief Justice Shushila Kharki is chosen. So the first thing that's crazy, everybody's just arguing about it on Discord and like that's where there's apparently like all these different debates. There's like fake news going around. So there's subgroups around, you know, going against the fake news.
- [47:44]
A
I'm in there, I'm in the discord.
- [47:45]
B
I tried to get in. It's blocked.
- [47:47]
A
They blocked it now. Yeah, I'm in there and I was reading stuff and it's so Gen Z, it's crazy. Like it'll be memes and someone being like, you guys should like Joe Biden as president. And then it'll Be like real serious paragraphs of discussion and it'll be memes. And it was. It's wild seeing it happen in real time. It's like Lord of the Flies. I mean, it's like there's real beautiful stuff, but also it's mixed in with so much meme.
- [48:09]
B
Right. And I think that's what's worth just acknowledging is like, while this sounds cool on paper, this is. It's a. It's almost inspiring of like, the youth has managed to, like, overthrow what is perceived to be this, you know, inactive, unresponsive, corrupt government. And at the same time, it's tens of thousands of people in Discord who are anonymous, who might not be Nepalese citizens. The fact that you're in there is a little bit scary. People are spreading fake news. People are, for example, trying to bring back the monarchy. Like they want the king back, which is, you know, if they vote on that, on discord, I guess that's legit. They use discord to revote the king in. But it is.
- [48:48]
A
I want to counterpoint slightly only that I think what's inspiring about it is who they ended up choosing because this guy. Gone.
- [48:54]
B
Yeah.
- [48:54]
A
This is like an incredible choice, all things considered.
- [48:57]
B
Yeah.
- [48:57]
A
She has this history of anti corruption. She's what? She's not Gen z. She's like 70 years old.
- [49:03]
B
Yeah.
- [49:03]
A
She's. She's not from the political party. She's independent. She's got, you know, she's like, pretty well respected and agreed upon. They picked somebody who's not just from their group.
- [49:13]
B
Yeah.
- [49:13]
A
And it's funny because the second place in the poll, I saw the poll in Discord. Second place for poll is Random Nepali, which I thought meant a random person. I looked it up. Random Nepali is a YouTuber who's popular in Nepal. And that was their second choice. So it could have been Gen Z, Alexa YouTuber. And it's instead that they overwhelmingly pick, like the right, I think seemingly the right person who, like, took this mantle, didn't understand discord.
- [49:37]
B
Yeah.
- [49:37]
A
I don't know. Like, that's. That's cool.
- [49:39]
B
Yeah. What stood out to me. So she's notable again. The youth is frustrated with corruption. The feeling the government isn't serving them, things aren't getting better. And so this. This woman that they chose to elect as the interim prime minister, she's 73, but she worked on the Supreme Court as a judge in the 2010s. So in 2012, she and another Supreme Court judge jailed a serving minister for corruption. So she like, aggressively Pushed on corruption. She became the first chief justice, pushed against corruption even more. And then some lawmakers tried to impeach her in 2017 because they're like, oh, you're biased. And so she's considered a champion against corruption. And to me, felt like Lina Khan, to be honest, like this very, like, outside political figure who comes in and is pushing back against a very established system that eventually, you know, gets removed of power. And so, again, if this is like a kind of two year after America situation, in two years, Lina Khan will be elected president via discord.
- [50:31]
A
Don't get my hopes up. Hey, by the way, can we do a smite interruption now after this? One more thing after this. Go back to that. Okay, Actually, I want to remember right now, very small guys. We got featured in the New York Times for our Lena Khan interview. And they framed it entirely around your question, Doug. And it pissed me off. They put us in there and they were like, lemonade stand collectively pressed Lena Khan hard on her.
- [51:00]
B
Yeah, all three of us agree.
- [51:01]
A
Yeah, that's very funny because it was true, true. Like, we wanted to ask that question, but the way that it's phrased, like, these three gamers all. Yeah, I was like, damn, damn. I got New York Times, bro. They, they, they misrepresented. Anyway. That's funny. Sorry. It's small outside.
- [51:18]
B
I mean, to be fair, they represented me very well.
- [51:22]
A
It should be included. But it was just like, it was funny because. Yeah, yeah.
- [51:26]
B
That two of the biggest Lena Khan glazers were told.
- [51:29]
A
Were like, told.
- [51:31]
B
The one sentence is they pushed Lina Khan. That was like, what, five minutes out of every 90?
- [51:37]
A
I don't know. I thought that was funny.
- [51:40]
B
Yep. So Nepal, crazy situation right now. Basically, they have an inner interim government from this woman who was elected by discord. To be clear is, that's not an official election. So there's a little bit of weirdness around. While everybody's like, yeah, this is cool. There is a sense of, like, what's going on. And it is worth reminding people. Again, like, as cool as this is, if you go around Nepal, the vast majority of people do not have Internet. They don't have electricity.
- [52:05]
A
Right.
- [52:05]
B
Like, even when I was, when I was there, you had Internet maybe like an hour a day in the capital. Right. The capital is a small percentage of the actual country. So you now have the prime minister of the country chosen via discord. And so if you're the person in the hills of, you know, two hours outside of Kathmandu, that feels a little weird to me. Like, the places I went are like there's no way these people at any part of this process. So it's cool and I think inspiring a lot of ways.
- [52:31]
A
And also a little concern. What she said when she stepped out, I watched an interview is like she's going to take this, this honor from Gen Z.
- [52:39]
B
Right?
- [52:40]
A
And then she's going to do it. But it's only for six months. Six to eight months.
- [52:43]
B
Yes.
- [52:43]
A
To set up real elections which I think is, I mean I'm more worried that like there's a long history of countries being in interim governments that collect because there's so much instability and other like again I want to say historically both India and China have a strong interest and also the United States, we just love the metal, want to meddle in Nepal. They want to have more influence and control over Nepal because it's a buffer state between the two. And so the chances of this going badly are still really high. Of course, very uncertain situation. But I, you know, maybe I'm more hopeful than you on this one. But it's like, no, no, this could have gone way worse.
- [53:19]
B
I think this is the best way this could have gone.
- [53:22]
A
Yeah, exactly right.
- [53:23]
B
And I just, and at the same time I just want to, you know, remind people that 160,000 people in a Discord have voted the interim prime minister of a country. And one of those guys is of 30 million people.
- [53:38]
C
And that.
- [53:38]
B
And I'm in there causing chaos and that's dropping sick as hell if you're in there. And that's by definition not the majority of the country. And it's just, it's, it's not. I don't think it's the incredible amazing restoration of democracy that maybe sounds like.
- [53:53]
C
Even though it's adriock in this Discord guys, I think MODI is a leading example. You just, you're just working on behalf of the Indian government.
- [54:04]
B
I saw a tweet that was like a week ago Discord announced that they were going to up the maximum number of people in a discord server from 2.5 million to 25 million. And people were like what is the possible? A few days later Nepal overthrows their government.
- [54:20]
C
I did have this thought with this story, is there is an interesting trend of noticing Discord more in high stakes political media or situations like here or Charlie Kirk Shooter like confessing on Discord or talking on Discord or I think it was a year or two ago when that kid, he was like 21, he was in the US military and he just dropped a document files Right. He just dropped some files about the Russian Ukraine war on Discord to like his boys and then got arrested for it. But this theme of discord becoming relevant enough to have these sorts of things take place.
- [55:08]
A
People like getting messages from their parents, like, were you in it? I heard. I know you're on discord all the time. Are you in a chat with this guy they think of Discord is like one.
- [55:16]
C
It's one place where everybody. All of these things happening in one server. And it's just like there's one channel where like this vote is happening, but also one channel where it's same service planning where the guy is planning the Charlie Kirk assassination.
- [55:31]
B
Yeah, it's like valorant scrims and then.
- [55:34]
C
You got Valerie Terex Pro Cigars on the bottom.
- [55:40]
A
It's all in the one big discord.
- [55:44]
C
I.
- [55:46]
B
Speaking of government collapse, though, France.
- [55:48]
A
Oh, I can talk about France a little bit. I do want to say one final thing on this is like, we're not going to go deep on Indonesia as well, but all over Asia. There's an article here. Gen Z protests are rattling governments all over Asia, from Nepal to Indonesia. This is happening not just in Nepal. And by the way, I'll say outside of Nepal, it's not going as well. It's not going as. And I will say a big part of that in my understanding of the situation is like, how incredibly handled this was by the Nepal military. Like, for me, that was like one of the big stories of this. They did not seize power when they could have. They tried to find a civilian authority to go above them. Yeah, they. They quieted the riots down, they regained order, got peace, but didn't seize power. Like, it's like almost unheard of in a lot of countries for that happening. And I looked into it and the Nepalese military is like, so deeply respected by its people, by other countries. There's one quote I just want to say I've said in my video. But, like, they have these elite units called the Gurkhas, and they're like, if anyone tells you they fear death, they're either lying or a Gurkha. That's like, badass.
- [56:55]
B
So I don't know, I just thought they don't fear.
- [56:56]
C
They don't.
- [56:57]
A
Sorry, sorry. Don't fear death.
- [56:58]
C
You know, it's crazy. You said that the exact same way in your YouTube video twice.
- [57:01]
A
And a lot of people gave death. I'm trying to get. They don't fear death. Yeah, all.
- [57:07]
B
All this, like, I know this is this Pandria, right? But Nepal is an absolutely beautiful, incredible country with amazing people and I would rank them s tier above every other country.
- [57:20]
C
You heard it on the Dug Dug country rankings.
- [57:23]
B
It is cool to read this and be like, damn, this went so well. Like that's. Anyway, this is how some American politics. I wish him, wish him the best.
- [57:32]
C
Tell me what's happening in France.
- [57:33]
A
Okay. Very quick on France looking. It's actually so up our alley, it's crazy. I don't want to go too into it because we'll. I'll at least need to change my pants.
- [57:41]
C
Talk about before you get into it. Here's, here's my.
- [57:44]
A
Give your understanding.
- [57:45]
C
It's. It's.
- [57:46]
A
I'll yell wrong loudly.
- [57:47]
C
Every two weeks. Every two weeks these guys are in the streets burning cars. The every two weeks it could be about the bread, it could be about the debt. I don't know. So you tell me what it is this time.
- [57:58]
A
I'll say people say that, but it really. If you had. If you graft number of protests or riots in France per year. It's an uptrend, okay. They're getting more and more upset and more angry. What is happening is that they are gone through their fourth prime minister in a year because nobody can agree on what to. On what budget to pass. Really?
- [58:19]
C
Yeah.
- [58:19]
A
The first thing a Prime minister does when they come in, they have to decide what they're going to spend money on, what they're going to cut, what they're going to raise taxes. Nobody can agree on that. I will say all these prime ministers are nominated by the centrist Macron who is trying to hold it all together. And nobody agrees with. He's not very well liked and so. But everyone he nominates comes in, tries to pass a bill. Doesn't get passed, things get more radicalized. Nothing like the government is not able to govern. They can't do anything. They can't pass any budget. And so now it's becoming more and more of an issue.
- [58:52]
B
Real quick. So Macron, understanding he's president, right? He elects the Prime Minister, but the Prime Minister has to be from the majority coalition, right?
- [59:00]
A
Such a good question. I'm so glad you asked. Okay, so here's how I wish I could draw it. But imagine there's three basic groups that he could draw from. There's the centrist party that he is the head of. There is the right wing party called the rn, that's head by Le Pen. That is the single biggest individual party.
- [59:17]
B
Okay.
- [59:17]
A
And then the biggest group is what you would call the Left wing group, the New Popular Front. Okay. They got, they got more than the other two groups. Not a majority, but like more. It would be like, I don't know if they got 34% or something like that.
- [59:30]
C
Yeah.
- [59:31]
A
But this group is made up of 20 individual parties in a trench coat. Yeah. All of whom do not agree basically on almost anything, except they don't like the other two parties. So for example, like there's a, there's a socialist party in there and you think maybe that's more left wing, but actually they're pretty centrist and they really don't like the Melon, Sean's biggest party, left wing party. So like they, they can't agree on who to nominate as a prime minister.
- [59:56]
B
It sounds like American left politics too.
- [59:58]
A
Yeah. So there's a lot of infighting.
- [59:59]
B
Yeah.
- [60:00]
A
And, but there is like a big support. So it's, it's just like nobody can nominate somebody that other people will agree. Enough people agree with to get a majority. So he keeps putting in these interest guys that are trying to get the bill passed. But what I'm saying is the debt in France, the bigger story here is like, is it, it's all going to old people. And we've talked about this before, but it's more extreme than almost anywhere. I looked it up. There's a really good piece on it in the FDA deep dive and they showed that the average French old pensioner is living a better, like they have a better income than like the working age person in almost all of Europe and in America. Like they are living, they are living relatively lavishly on. They have one of the most generous pension packages. They have one of the longest pension times. So like the average French retiree is, is getting like 27 years or something after retirement that they're getting paid for and like the government's income cannot support it. They are, they are borrowing to make that happen. And so one thing you could do is raise taxes, which I'm sure that's a proposition on the left. And one thing you can do is cut benefits. But the truth is nobody wants to do either of those bad things enough to get a majority. Like anyone suggesting raising taxes cannot get a majority. Anyone just in cutting spending, can I get a majority? One of those riots you talked about this whatever was because they Macron tried to raise the retirement age two years, I think it was from 60 to 62 to where you can start getting the free retirement. That caused a massive protest.
- [61:31]
C
Yeah, 60 might be 62 to 64.
- [61:34]
A
Maybe that's right. Maybe that's right. You're correct. So anyway, that, that, I'm not saying I'm giving a solution, I'm just saying like this is, this is, it's such a, I think such a clusterfucking phrase right now. And it doesn't seem like there's any near term solution because the, the Macron doesn't get replaced until 2027.
- [61:50]
C
Yeah, we had talked about this a little bit a couple months ago when the budget proposal by the previous prime minister now had been, because he already been kicked out, had, had proposed something and they were getting, he was getting that negative feedback from both parties on either side. Right. And I think the, the underlying thing is that the situation as it exists cannot continue in this fashion. Something needs to give in one direction. Nobody can get anything done to exit the current trajectory that they're on.
- [62:24]
A
Yeah. And I think the problem is there is an upside to people for not playing along, which is that this fraying centrist party of Macron, as things don't get done, they bleed. Users bleed like users. Whatever. They bleed voters. They have speaking like a fucking. They bleed voters to either the right wing or left wing parties. They just. So neither of them have much interest in compromising because the longer they wait, the more they gain politically.
- [62:56]
B
But let me, let me propose a different angle. The reason that we talked about this last week, the largest voting bloc in human history is the Boomer generation. This is true of every country. It's true of the French country, where again, right now they're in retirement and they are benefiting, as you just said, they are receiving these incredible government benefits, even though the government can't support this long term. And so they are incentivized to not change, because until they die, the government will probably continue to function and then their kids will have to deal with it totally. That is what is going on in our country. To be clear, it's not old people.
- [63:32]
A
Rioting, which is I find funny. They. Everyone is mad about these changes, but most of what is like. So I looked at the French government budget and it's like the vast way more than education, military, roads, administrate, everything combined does not add up to what they spend on direct checks to old people. That is the function of the French government is to give comfortable life to old people. That is what it does in practice, if not in name. So I. And people should, all people should have comfortable lives. I don't disagree with that. But it's like the math is so egregious in this situation. And I think there's a very strong case that like one thing Macron has done is cut taxes on the wealthy, which has made it even more impossible to fund. I think that's totally fine. But man, the budget shortfall is big and France's debt situation is now worse than like Greece. Like Greece, borrowing costs are lower than France, people. The market thinks that Greece is more trustworthy to pay their debt back than France. So I don't know. Again, we just want to update on it. That's not much more to say. And France is still a wealthy first world country. I'm not trying to. But it's just wild that like they're just functionally stuck. The government as it's written cannot make progress on these problems.
- [64:47]
C
I feel like I'm watching the same cycle play out online over and over again in the last couple of years. Like when I look at this issue from the outside as an American, pretty much every piece of news about France is some attempted change. People go to the streets to protest and resist. Neither party will cooperate. And it's just this. Basically the same story echoed again and again every few months for the last couple.
- [65:11]
A
So realistically what will happen is enough people will bleed out from the center to the sides that one of them gets enough power to make a move or like wins big or just takes. Jesus. Control or whatever. Like that's that, you know, there's going to be an election in 27. The RN is the most favored party right now, which is the right wing one. But something will happen. I mean, that's what's going to be lifted.
- [65:30]
B
So anyway, I mean there's a whole issue.
- [65:32]
A
Yeah, she's banned from running, but the party is still leading the polls with the second in command.
- [65:36]
B
Okay, so she. Okay.
- [65:37]
A
She can't run, but.
- [65:39]
C
Okay, well, well this is, this is very tied to something else I wanted to talk about which was the Norwegian, Norwegian election that just happened.
- [65:48]
B
Antarctica, Dude, I would love for you.
- [65:50]
A
To tell me one. This is a bad news episode, Aiden. Yeah, you better tell me one bad thing about Norway. I know because you've never done this on this podcast in your entire life or in your real world.
- [65:59]
C
We got some bad things about Norway, thank God. Or some problems that they're dealing with that are, are somewhat similar, except maybe more.
- [66:07]
B
If this is bad, I wouldn't want any one of my friends even moving near there.
- [66:11]
A
I wouldn't allow them to.
- [66:12]
B
I, I would, would. It would be my personal threat at.
- [66:15]
A
The airport, whatever it is, leave. Because that would be a good Friend thing to do.
- [66:21]
B
To be clear, I am inciting violence right now.
- [66:23]
C
He's not inciting. It's still a joke. Joke. It's still facetious and. Okay, so if we say this enough.
- [66:29]
A
We could get you banned.
- [66:30]
C
I know, I know. Norway.
- [66:35]
B
And they're going to look online, they're going to be like, oh, well, all they do, they go antagonize Lena Clark.
- [66:39]
A
Con.
- [66:39]
B
They, they don't trust press Norway.
- [66:44]
C
Norway just had an election last week and the results came in at the beginning.
- [66:51]
B
Discord, minions. What are we talking about?
- [66:54]
C
They made, they didn't do this one. It was actually all on WhatsApp. It's crazy. They, they did. The results, I think were locked in, I think as of this morning, if I'm correct. But basically the Labour Party, which was the existing party in power, which is a more left leaning party, maybe left center, depending on how you view it, within Norwegian politics, won with 28% of the vote, which was up from 26% in 2021, which is the last time they had an election.
- [67:23]
A
What was the party? I'm sorry?
- [67:25]
C
The Labor Party.
- [67:26]
A
Labor Party, yeah.
- [67:27]
C
The other party that won big in this election was the Progress Party, which is a more right wing populist party that for the first time ever has become the leading opposition party within Norwegian politics. And they had a huge jump from 11% of the vote to almost 24% of the vote this time. And this is a fairly right wing party, especially within Norwegian politics. They are outpacing the former more right party that had the, the biggest portion of the opposition Conservative Party before them.
- [68:01]
A
I mean, I would just say for Europe, it has, I don't know about Norway at all, but like the European trend has been, and it's happened in America already is that the center right is just getting obliterated and there's a more populous right that is like surging.
- [68:14]
C
Yeah.
- [68:14]
A
That is happening all over Europe and in heaven here already.
- [68:16]
C
And I think what's interesting is Norway is a country that, you know, even with the joke that you introduced this through, is a country that we see as separate from, from a lot of the struggles and consequences that the rest of the world is going through.
- [68:30]
A
Like number one happiness or whatever. They have good fish.
- [68:33]
C
They're up there in all the stats.
- [68:34]
A
They have all the stats.
- [68:35]
C
They're one of the most equal countries in the world. They're one of the richest countries in the world. They have a lot of success. They have a high quality of life. Right. They, they define all of these metrics. In a lot of ways. But this party, the Progress Party, the big points behind them is that they want to reduce. Yeah, yeah.
- [68:53]
A
Immigration number one, two and three.
- [68:59]
C
All right. I'd say that's, you know, maybe number one or two for them. They want to reduce taxes, reduce bureaucracy and government intervention. And guess you guessed it, they're anti immigrant.
- [69:12]
A
That order really.
- [69:14]
C
Well, I think it depends on who you talk to. Anti immigrant, anti immigration, broadly, I feel like is their number one. But within the context of this specific election, I felt like it might have been a little different. I think Norwegians could speak to that better. I think their big win here was seen as a huge victory for this party. Cause it's an enormous jump to go from 11% to almost 24% in this leadership in the opposition. They're angling for a chance at being the majority party in 2029. And that's the hope from them. But one specific note with this was at the center of this election that became a huge issue is the Norwegian wealth tax, which is a wealth tax that they have had in place in some form since 1892. And they are one of three countries in Europe that still applies a net wealth tax in this way. How does a wealth tax like this actually work? What it means is you're being taxed to some degree on all of the, like all of the value of all of the assets you own. That could be like stocks, property, etc. And you don't have to sell and realize the gain of those assets to be tax on it. So how does this actually work? It doesn't apply to you at all. If you have assets below $180,000 USD.
- [70:36]
A
That'S not that high.
- [70:37]
C
Which isn't. Which isn't super high. Right. So a lot of people do pay this. But the tax is, is for what it's worth, the tax is only 1%. Once it applies to you, it's 1%. And then past 2.1 million USD, pass your assets. Beyond that, they tack on another point 1%. And then also some. Some things to understand here is they don't tax all your assets at their full market value. So for example, your primary residence, like the main home that you live in, they only take 25% of that home's market value. Or for example, stocks, if you had equity in a company that's at 80% of that market value, so nothing is taken at its full market value. And then also any debt you have, the full hundred percent value of the debt you have can be written off against the tax that you would owe for this. So it's not as crazy as like, I think this could seem at first, even at a 1% could seem really unreasonable. If you're like in the U.S. right, you could just be a homeowner and own a home in like, you know, maybe you own a home in like San Francisco or Oakland or Los Angeles. Right. High value real estate areas where your home has exploded in value and then all of a sudden you have to figure out a way to like pay this tax. Well, there's, there's protections and acknowledgement in the way this law is written to have people, you know, pay a reasonable amount basically. And only 760,000 citizens in a, you know, in a country of almost 6 million people pay this tax at all, in any amount. So the pros behind this, like why, why is there such an advocacy for the rid of this wealth tax from this party? The idea is that the, that previously in 2021, there was a change to this law that added that little 0.1% to the 1% before. So for the wealthiest individuals in the country, they were going to tax them a tiny bit more that additional 0.1%. And in the wake of that, 30 millionaires and billionaires left to relocate outside of Norway, primarily in Switzerland, because of the difference in tax loss. And it was estimated that because of that flight of those people, there was a loss of 500 million USD in tax revenue. And that loss in tax revenue is something that the trade off basically wasn't worth it. Like people, people say that. The other arguments are that the tax on these unrealized gains deter people from setting up businesses in Norway. So relative to its neighbors, Norway, which was doing really, really well, say like 10, 15 years ago, compared to its neighbors like Denmark, Denmark or Sweden or Switzerland is relatively declining in like, productivity, the number of like new companies created. And also I went to go look at the largest companies in Norway, Sweden and Denmark and just this is, this is solely by the eye test. So if you really want to dig into this, I encourage you to. But when I was going through the list of companies from all of these places, I recognized basically nothing on Norway's list except companies involved in energy or oil. And Sweden and Denmark have way more recognizable large companies.
- [73:54]
A
Is Maersk Norwegian?
- [73:56]
C
I think so.
- [73:57]
A
Largest Norway.
- [73:59]
B
I mean Norway is like largely driven by oil, right?
- [74:03]
C
It is, yeah. Yeah. So this is, and this, this couples into this, that stagnation and reliance, I.
- [74:10]
A
Don'T know any of these.
- [74:10]
C
Oil and its sovereign wealth fund are criticisms of combined with this wealth tax are criticisms of why new innovative businesses and industries aren't cropping up in Norway like they have in their Nordic neighbors in comparison. And also lastly, for those concerned about wealth inequality, wealth inequality, regardless of this tax's implementation, has been increasing in Norway pretty significantly over the past 15 years. And so if this law is like, meant to combat that significantly, it doesn't seem like it's doing a particularly good job. So all of these things are part of the argument of like, why this is becoming a topic of contention within Norway. But the pushback from a lot of people within Norway addresses a lot of these concerns. The, the, the weird thing is that it became a prominent issue within the scope of this election specifically. And a lot of the fears around capital flight or like the, the losses that we're going to see if we continue to have this tax in place seem a little weird because this election wasn't a referendum on this law changing or increasing the tax. The tax is staying the exact same as it has been over the last few years. So why would anyone leave that hasn't already left during that first year where those people made the decision? It doesn't seem likely to dramatically increase the number of people leaving in the.
- [75:42]
A
Next few years when they leave after the first election afterwards because they know it's not going to get changed now. That's the idea.
- [75:49]
C
Yeah. I mean, if you wanted to wait another, you were willing to wait four years the first time and now you're not willing to wait another rich person.
- [75:55]
A
You're in there, this vlog, it's probably passed. You're like, this sucks. And then you try to like, so maybe advocate for someone to change it. Then you lose the election. It's like it's not getting changed. I'm out.
- [76:04]
C
Maybe. So we have to, we have to, we have to wait and see. But the argument that comes alongside that is even if the flight does happen, wealth taxes are such a low percent of overall revenue that, that how much, how much does this matter in the first place? Like if we're losing out on a few people leaving the system because of the way that this law works, how much does that matter to us when it has such a relatively small amount of our overall budget? So like last year in 2024, they brought in about $3 billion USD in overall tax revenue, which is about 3% of the revenue that they brought in brought in overall. And that 3% is higher than like the previous two years. Like it, it had climbed up a bit. Okay, the.
- [76:56]
A
What's your stance? What's your takeaway? What's your.
- [76:58]
C
My take?
- [76:59]
A
Yeah.
- [77:04]
C
I think, I think my take. My take is.
- [77:11]
A
Remember you're going to be a Swedish citizen, so you need to kind of dig.
- [77:14]
C
Okay, so different country, different.
- [77:16]
A
That's what I'm saying. Sweden would.
- [77:17]
B
You have to show that you're.
- [77:18]
A
You have to kind of look down.
- [77:20]
C
I have to, I have to make. Make fun of them.
- [77:22]
A
You have to make fun of them?
- [77:22]
C
Yeah. I don't. Yeah, they should keep the wealth tax so that I can move to Sweden and not have it. So. And I can say I'm better. No, I think the other couple things that I did agree with were the issue and how riled up people are about it, especially with young men seems very disconnected from the reality of how many people this law prominently affects. Is like there's a very limited, limited pool, less than 2,000 people that this law significantly taxes. And the reason it taxes those people is because they also people who have the most wealth in Norway also have their wealth and income structured in ways that make it so they actually don't pay a lot via other means of tax payment. Right. And the big thing with this wealth tax that they really hate is that it's very, very. There are very few loopholes with it. It's a very sure fire way to get this group of people, especially with the changes they made in 2021, to escape the tax bill that you owe to Norway versus the other ways when you're at that level of wealth, have ways for you to structure the way you make your money around paying taxes and this is the way to keep those people accountable. I think the thing that I am most aligned with is when an issue that seems to affect so few people, specifically the ultra, ultra wealthy, and the primary argument against it, which is like spurring innovation and new companies in Norway, also has large other likely reasons as to like why that's the case and not this wealth tax specifically. It feels like a wolf in sheep's clothing of a few small, very wealthy people demanding the lift of a tax that affects them and trying to sell it as an issue that seems important to everybody. That's what I, that's what I feel like when I read this. But, but that being said, Norway is one of the only countries that still has this net wealth tax in place. And a lot of other countries in Europe, including some of their Scandinavian neighbors, have over the past 100 years gotten rid of the wealth taxes that they used to have. And many of which are, you know, are still pretty successful countries. Like. So I think there's an argument either that kind of. In either direction. Hold on, let me.
- [79:53]
B
I have a question.
- [79:53]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [79:54]
B
Capital gain, unrealized capital gains tax is fucking stupid. Sorry, Stupid. Yeah, no, no, I say, I mean, you think that.
- [80:04]
C
But okay, this is the issue, right. Is like the. If I'm. If I'm Elon Musk and my fortune has increased from, you know, 50 billion to 100 billion to 400 billion.
- [80:18]
B
Yeah.
- [80:19]
C
Primarily because of the growth of a specific asset. Right, right. At that level of income, when I wield hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, I don't function as a normal person in society anymore. I don't have a W2 income that I take in and like pay taxes on. What I do is I take out loans that use the assets I own as the underlying, like collateral for, you know, essentially spending cash that I, that I have. Right. I interact with the world financially in a very, very different way. And just because this person sits on an asset that explodes in value, that enables them to access a portion of the financial system that none of normal people can access, interact with. Should they be able to escape the burden of taxes on assets, become a means to escape being taxed. If that's the case. And so there comes a point at which I think you have to push against that. I think there are maybe better solutions than a wealth tax. I think that's one of the. But that's not what the Progress Party is advocating for. They just want to get rid of the wealth tax entirely.
- [81:29]
B
Yeah, I get what you're saying. I, I feel like cap unrealized capital gains tax is extremely flawed. And just to illustrate the point for people, Elon Musk is. Has in quotes, whatever, at $400 billion. But if Tesla crashes tomorrow, he doesn't have that money anymore. He now has 200 billion. It's not that much money isn't sitting around in cash. Right. So the way the current system works for America and most countries is he has to actually sell the stock. And at that point he does pay taxes. Now I would argue for increased capital gains tax. It's lower than normal income tax for some reason. You might know the exact numbers.
- [82:02]
A
50%. If you hold it for a year.
- [82:04]
B
50 or 15, isn't it?
- [82:06]
C
It's 40, 40 within the year.
- [82:08]
A
And then like, no, it's your normal income, whatever that is. So maybe it's really high. So it'll be high.
- [82:11]
B
Yeah.
- [82:12]
A
So. But he has it all for over a year. So it would be 15%, right.
- [82:14]
B
So weirdly low for. Right. It's like, why, why would you pay lower taxes for something like that? Feels weird. There's justifications, but still feels weird to me. And then what you said, people, incredibly rich people, basically leverage the fact that they have these stocks to get loans and get this other stuff. And that feels like a workaround around taxes. I think that should be addressed. But yeah, like what inherently? Just saying your stuff is worth this much even though you don't actually have that much money, therefore going to tax you as though you have that much money feels deeply flawed to me. I haven't seen an argument that. That convinces me on that. But, you know, replacing that with another tax like we're talking about. Yeah, I mean, I know what the fuck up. I just.
- [82:52]
A
No, no, no, I agree with you. I want to say one of the fucked up things we do is you guys know what step up basis is for like inheritance tax. So it's like if I, if I get a stock at $10 and it goes to 100, if I were to sell that, I pay tax on the $90 I made, right?
- [83:08]
B
Yeah.
- [83:08]
A
But if I hold it till I die by just borrowing against it, and then I pass it on to my kids, they get a new basis of 100, whatever it is now, so. So if they sold it, they would pay zero taxes. It's.
- [83:19]
B
They got anything.
- [83:20]
A
Yeah.
- [83:21]
B
So nobody ever paid to the gain.
- [83:22]
A
Exactly. It's this whole, this whole buy borrow die strategy, like how it's done to keep this generational wealth going. And I think for me, one of the biggest things is inheritance tax because, like, that's what allows this stuff to become metastasized cancer in a society. Like, even if Elon Musk invents something great, which. Okay, whatever. Yeah, whatever. He's got some Tesla's cars are cool and makes a lot more money than me. The real danger is when his fucking kids and grandkids who haven't done anything have way more opportunities than my kids and grandkids forever. Because it just goes down. Like, I really think inheritance tax is like so good for a functioning society. Just like, all right, you, you get your shit. But now we're going to. If you're over a certain amount, if you're over $10 million, we're going to take a lot of that and use it to make society better for everybody. Like your kids don't. The fact that like the great, great, great grand nephew of Sam Walton is a fucking billionaire. Like 14 of them or 28 of them. To me, it feels crazy. Like they all. And someone will tell me, like, well, that's the point of working hard so you can have your family. To me, that the generational wealth stuff.
- [84:25]
B
Is like, you don't have to send 100%. I mean, it shouldn't be.
- [84:27]
A
Yeah, maybe it's not 100%, but like.
- [84:29]
B
No, no, no, that's the. Yeah, it's like you. I don't think you should be able to give 100% of what you made to your kids. Like, there, There needs to be some at some point attacks on what you've earned.
- [84:40]
A
And.
- [84:40]
C
Yeah, I think there needs to be.
- [84:42]
B
And that's the point of earning it. Quote is if you're giving your kids. I think, you know, it's like in.
- [84:46]
C
This situation, it feels like ideally you would be working on some sort of better system to be taxing these people. But in its place, I don't think you need to get rid of this, especially because. Because the actual amount is so low.
- [85:04]
B
Like it's 1%, it's inconsequential. It's probably fine. But it does feel like that's our stupid way of taxing people. And they. I mean, in the same way that we in America should close these essentially loopholes that rich people are getting, I mean, we should tax leveraging your unrealized assets for loans. Like, that's ridiculous. They're just acting like their, Their assets are money when they're. Anyway, so to be fair.
- [85:29]
C
So perfect world.
- [85:29]
B
They. They fix the core problem.
- [85:31]
C
You know, that where I kind of land on this, why I think this is so hard is I kind of see there's. To me, there was like two. Two. Two sides or two answers to this, which I know that sounds silly. Keep.
- [85:48]
B
Stop being a centrist. Pick a side. Jesus Christ.
- [85:51]
C
Okay, so I think Norway is an.
- [85:53]
A
Americans lead a con, for one.
- [85:54]
B
Yeah.
- [85:55]
C
Norway is very.
- [85:58]
B
We push back on people.
- [85:59]
C
Norway is in a very unique position because it is sort of backstopped by their oil industry. They have this massive sovereign wealth fund that exists because of a nationalized oil industry. And it's some. It's a system that a lot of countries do not have, like safeguarding their economy in a lot of ways.
- [86:18]
A
So I agree the same way.
- [86:19]
C
And you could argue there's sort of consequences in the long term because of a reliance on that specific commodity. Right. In the short term, I think you can afford to keep this wealth tax because largely it doesn't affect normal people very much and it affects these wealthy people that are threatening to flee, maybe because since the last change, it doesn't seem like there's been an influx of people or outflux of people fleeing. And if you're willing to like gamble on the, how relevant oil will be for a long time, it doesn't really matter if those people leave because of the safety net of the oil industry. This is a tax that produces relatively low income. So you can deal with the consequences of those people maybe leaving. You don't even know if they really will and you can keep this tax in place. The big trade off I see is this revenue could become way more relevant or people having the capital to stir up new industries or businesses in your country could be way more relevant if the value of oil starts to collapse and you need other industries to pick up the slack within your economy. Because that's the big gap in Norway right now is that since like 2013, the productivity of their non oil based economy has been declining relative to the other countries around them. And that's the, I think that's the long term versus short term argument you really have to make here. That's how I felt after I read through all this. I'd like to hear from normal, normal Norwegian guys and girls about what they think about this. The general thing that I got from like young people when I heard them being interviewed is like, this is like a non issue. The Progress Party has turned this into a talking point. We want to focus on other real problems like immigrants. Yeah, I was going to say, I.
- [88:22]
A
Can'T imagine this is a big voting issue.
- [88:25]
C
I think they. That's the thing. The criticism is that this got stirred into a big voting issue when it doesn't make sense.
- [88:32]
A
But I think even Progress Party voters, if you ask them, would probably put immigration as their number one. Like, I probably, I have not heard of this being like such a. At least in other countries.
- [88:42]
C
Such a. I mean, it's because they.
- [88:44]
A
Don'T have it, but even the countries that had it. Like, was it something that the regular people were pushing for, like demanding to get rid of?
- [88:51]
C
Like in this case, apparently yes, at least from the articles that I've read. But people who are boots on the ground, perhaps participating in the Norwegian election can like weigh in and see how, you know, accurate that reporting is. But I was, I was surprised by every single article I went to about this election. The wealth tax was like at the forefront of it. Yeah, that's. So that's a, you know, compared to, you know, what other people are dealing with. It's, you know, maybe not that big of a deal. They're like, like essentially.
- [89:18]
B
It's so rich.
- [89:19]
C
If you, if you spin the globe.
- [89:21]
A
If you.
- [89:22]
C
The globe, it's like, oh, oh, Norway's arguing about the 0.1% they added to their wealth tax, you know, and, and do we. And. And people talking about, oh, do we have too much oil money? Yeah. I hope Norway falls off the map.
- [89:37]
A
There we go.
- [89:38]
B
There we go. Finally putting a foot on one side. We. We're almost out of time. Hr, you want to hit the story about Australia. I know you mentioned you wanted.
- [89:45]
A
Yeah, it was really important. Thank you for bringing this up. I think. Really. I think I read about this in your book, actually.
- [89:50]
B
Yeah, Yeah.
- [89:50]
A
I was talking about geopolitical deal. Koalas. Doug. They killed the Prime Minister.
- [89:57]
B
Wow.
- [89:57]
A
Tell me more. Paul Be was visiting a koala factory. They work. They do a lot of work down there.
- [90:04]
C
Hold on. Do the people work at the qualifact.
- [90:06]
A
Don't ask questions while I'm giving a presentation. The koalas were working hard to create the Australian economy and they were. He was trying to tax them. There he goes again, the taxes. And it was a wealth tax on the koalas. Bamboo. And they rioted and they killed him.
- [90:20]
B
And that's unrealized bamboo. It hadn't grown.
- [90:25]
C
Eucalyptus. Eucalyptus.
- [90:26]
A
You'd think that, but not these ones. Yeah, they're hungry for bamboo, Aiden.
- [90:31]
B
That's part of the issues that are.
- [90:32]
A
Going on my story. This is my story. The one that I brought.
- [90:34]
C
Yeah, it's my fault.
- [90:35]
A
Guys, we are out of time and we have like 15 more stories. We didn't get to. We didn't plan.
- [90:39]
B
Nope. That's it.
- [90:40]
A
That's. No, that's all happened in the world.
- [90:42]
B
In the world.
- [90:42]
A
We'll do more on the Patreon and I appreciate you guys listening. What else do you want to say? Anything about the.
- [90:48]
B
Yeah, I guess just final note on Charlie Kirk stuff.
- [90:50]
A
So you didn't get to be in the.
- [90:51]
B
Yeah, we're not going to chat. Obviously. It's a big story with a lot, a lot of impact. And if you're interested in a longer discussion. Last week I was unable to attend because of the charity streams I was doing. But there's like 40 minute discussion on Patreon, so if you want to hear in a lot of depth about that, that'd be the place to do it. That was requested. Recorded what, like a day or two right after.
- [91:11]
C
Yeah, it was basically right.
- [91:12]
B
Much more fresh and with a lot of depth.
- [91:14]
C
I think we wanted to dive into it just because. Yeah. I mean, it was right after it happened. And I know that's when I was thinking about. I. Even over the weekend I've been thinking about it so much. So I, I think if you're interested in listening to that, it's like, I really enjoyed it. It's like 40 minutes of a 70 minute episode.
- [91:29]
A
So it like helped me. Yeah, it helped me get my thoughts together on it. We. We just really hashed it out. I thought it was a good. Yeah.
- [91:35]
B
And then. Plus, Adri, you have videos on your own channel. Yeah.
- [91:38]
A
Which I have a note I want to give after you.
- [91:40]
B
Okay. I. I'm just gonna. This is probably obvious and I'm just gonna say it anyway to say it. Political violence is really, really bad. And I am, I'm. I'm real concerned about this and I'm concerned at how many people seem to celebrate it. I think it's fine to abhor Charlie Kirk's views and I, I disagree with him, as far as I can tell, on almost every. I don't deeply know his stuff, but the idea that apparently millions of people will go on social media to celebrate the like, murder of a person for the views that they expressed verbally is super deeply concerning to me. The fact that any portion of our society seems to think that's an okay or should be celebrated in any way is. This is a extremely worrying trend that if you just think for an instant on if this applies to both sides and everybody starts doing this. This is a fundamental breakdown of democratic process, of nobody being able to speak their mind any. On anything because you just get shot or you're gunned down. This is the path to totalitarianism. This is like the core tenet of fascism. This type of shit is abhorrent to me. I'm really disturbed by it and it's been very sad to see how many people are like celebrating it or seem to think it's. I don't know, man. And I know, I'm sure you guys went on a long, long thing we.
- [92:54]
A
Talked about a lot, I think.
- [92:56]
B
And again, to say, to clarify, just because you guys misunderstood, misheard maybe. My point, I. It's not that you have to feel bad for Charlie specifically, but the idea that this is a. That shooting people who say things you disagree with, that. That's anywhere near on the level of saying things is fucking crazy to me. And it's so incredibly dangerous. And like, how do we have a functioning democracy? How do people talk about issues? I really. It's been Kind of disturbing to me. So I think the vast majority of people are on the same page, which is like, whoa, not cool. You should not fucking murder people who say things you disagree with. But I, I just wanted to really also vehemently express that view and I.
- [93:37]
A
Yeah, we landed on pretty much the same spot.
- [93:39]
C
Yeah.
- [93:39]
A
One thing we said was like, you know, give it. Imagine an example of somebody who is. Is deeply against abortion. Right. And so they believe that an abortion doctor is killing babies. In their mind, they are now based on this logic of like this guy said or did things like they should be able to go firebomb that place or kill that guy. It's just not work that way. We have laws for a reason. We make them. I get it, I get it. I agree with you on, on generally that I want to say something a little more lighthearted after your speech, which is inappropriately times.
- [94:10]
B
But I have to bring it up again.
- [94:11]
A
I have to do it on the pod so that you guys are on camera and you can't get mad at me. This is about. I made that video about Charlie Kirk. Kevin Newsom saw it.
- [94:23]
C
What?
- [94:23]
A
Gavin Newsom or his team saw that video and then reached out and wants to do a one on one interview with me about. I'm just telling. This happened this morning. I got called this morning by Gavin Newsom's team and so I have now cut you. So it's just me and Gavin.
- [94:41]
C
No, it's cool.
- [94:42]
B
Can I.
- [94:43]
C
No, it's good.
- [94:43]
A
But what's weird is though I was telling you ahead of time, the way they phrased it was like we want to see. I think they want me to explain like what discord is or like what. Like what gamers think. They're like, what's going on with gamers?
- [94:54]
C
What are the gamers.
- [94:55]
A
Why are gamers getting so radical? Whatever. That's the idea.
- [94:58]
B
When Aiden moves to Sweden. Can I still be a guest on your and Gavin's podcast?
- [95:04]
C
You guys. Dude, I can't believe this.
- [95:06]
B
I'd still like to hang out some time.
- [95:09]
A
The hat. It's a.
- [95:10]
C
We can hash it out.
- [95:11]
A
I'm just going to send you my stand, bro. You show up, you say Rachel, what.
- [95:14]
C
Do I need to.
- [95:15]
A
What do we need to do to.
- [95:16]
B
Start getting this love from Gavin?
- [95:17]
A
Right. I. Now he's on your side, I guess.
- [95:21]
C
Yeah. Now he knows what it's like.
- [95:22]
A
Changed quickly. I don't know if you guys have final thoughts.
- [95:27]
B
Yo, you guys see what happened in Antarctica?
- [95:30]
A
The penguins, bro.
- [95:30]
B
Damn.
- [95:31]
C
They're doing. They're doing song.
- [95:32]
B
No, no, no, no. Let's save that for the Patreon.
- [95:34]
A
Yeah, that's for the Patreon. You guys will, you know, blow your mind.
- [95:36]
C
We'll see you guys on the Patreon. You go to go patreon.com lemonade stand. We're almost at 10,000 paid patrons for our trip to China.
- [95:43]
A
Our trip to China, where we are.
- [95:45]
B
Deporting Aiden to China.
- [95:46]
A
Yeah, we're going there.
- [95:50]
C
I'm getting to feel a little bullied.
- [95:51]
A
We're going to leave you at the hallway factory. You'll get a new phone and a laptop.
- [95:56]
B
At 11,000 patrons, Gavin Newsom's joining.
- [96:00]
A
In China.
- [96:00]
B
In China.
- [96:01]
A
Thanks for watching. Bye, everybody. Bye.