We're Not Paying | Ep 008 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Summary

Podcast Summary: Lemonade Stand – "We're Not Paying | Ep 008 🍋"

Release Date: April 24, 2025

Hosts: Aiden, Atrioc, and DougDoug
Title: We're Not Paying | Ep 008 Lemonade Stand 🍋
Description: Three guys with business expertise delve into various topics, blending personal anecdotes with insightful discussions on current events and societal issues.

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1. Elon Musk’s Strategic Shift and Tesla’s Current Status

Discussion Points:

• Elon Musk’s Recent Press Conference: Aiden starts the episode by discussing Elon Musk's recent "code red" press conference addressing the negative news surrounding Tesla. Musk announced he isn't stepping down but will be focusing more on Tesla by easing out of his role at Dogecoin (Doge) by May 2025.

  Notable Quote:

  • Doug (00:23): "This is for smuggling those Nvidia H1 hundreds into my company."

• Musk’s Management Style: Doug and Chris elaborate on Musk’s tendency to juggle multiple companies, diving deep to solve urgent issues before moving on to the next venture. They highlight Musk’s unconventional approach compared to traditional CEOs.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Doug (03:02): "He's not a traditional CEO. He wakes up and works 9 to 5 at Tesla, then moves to Solar City, Neuralink, and Doge."
  • Chris (03:34): "Just having passively watched that he has stepped down from all of his positions at certain points."

• Tesla’s Performance: The hosts analyze Tesla’s recent financial struggles, including a 71% drop in profits year-over-year and declining car sales. However, they highlight the success of Tesla's Megapack batteries, which are proving to be a promising segment, especially with China’s export ban on rare earth minerals.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Aiden (05:16): "The Tesla earnings report yesterday was horrendous."
  • Doug (05:34): "Just the battery industry as a whole is super important and kind of its own thing."

2. The Predatory Nature of Student Loans

Discussion Points:

• Historical Context: Aiden introduces the topic by tracing back to March 2020 when COVID-19 led to the suspension of student loan payments. For over four years, borrowers were not required to make payments, leading to widespread delinquency behaviors.

  Notable Quote:

  • Aiden (13:02): "Over the next four years, they never brought it back. People got used to not paying."

• Implications of Resuming Payments: With payments resuming and wage garnishments starting on May 5, 2025, millions face sudden financial strain. The system has led to a significant increase in defaults, affecting credit scores and personal finances.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Aiden (14:39): "A huge impact to a huge broad swath of millennials and elders."
  • Chris (15:49): "60-80 million people have student loans in America."

• Systemic Flaws: Doug and Chris critique the student loan system for its high interest rates, compounding debt, and lack of correlation between degrees and employment. They discuss how the system incentivizes borrowing without ensuring the ability to repay, exacerbating financial instability.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Doug (26:11): "Interest not paid gets added to the total amount you owe."
  • Chris (29:45): "The system is absolute, absolutely predatory."

• Potential Solutions: The hosts debate student loan forgiveness as a temporary fix that doesn’t address underlying systemic issues. They advocate for more sustainable solutions like free or subsidized education and reforming loan structures to prevent compounding debts.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Aiden (32:42): "It feels like a big band-aid."
  • Chris (43:43): "Student loans should have loans that don't compound immediately."

3. Brightline Train: A Success Story in Private Infrastructure

Discussion Points:

• Introduction to Brightline: The conversation shifts to transportation infrastructure, specifically the Brightline train in Florida. Launched in 2018, Brightline successfully built a 235-mile train corridor from Miami to Orlando at a cost of $6 billion, significantly cheaper and faster than California’s high-speed rail project.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Doug (51:38): "Bright Line is a company that made this big train 235 miles on the eastern side of Florida."
  • Aiden (52:14): "Nine years from 2014 to 2023."

• Funding Mechanism: Brightline achieved this feat through Public Activity Bonds (PABs), which allow private companies to issue tax-free bonds with government approval, facilitating funding without government guarantees.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Chris (57:06): "Public Activity Bonds are tax-free interest bonds issued by the government on behalf of private companies."
  • Doug (59:24): "Government is not on the hook for anything."

• Expansion Plans: The hosts discuss Brightline’s expansion to Tampa and the upcoming Brightline West project from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, aiming to alleviate the congested I-15 corridor.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Doug (63:13): "Brightline West is a high-speed rail from Las Vegas to Los Angeles."
  • Aiden (64:25): "50 million annual trips occur between LA and Las Vegas."

• Advantages Over Public Projects: They highlight how Brightline’s private management and strategic use of existing infrastructure allow for faster, more cost-effective development compared to public-sector projects plagued by bureaucratic delays and cost overruns.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Doug (66:02): "Using existing transportation corridors and building alongside the freeway."
  • Chris (72:08): "Brightline’s hybrid approach is more efficient than traditional public projects."

4. Free Speech in the Digital Age

Discussion Points:

• Evolution of Free Speech: The hosts delve into the complexities of free speech online, comparing traditional free speech concepts with the modern digital landscape where algorithms and platform policies heavily influence speech dissemination.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Chris (76:43): "Free speech on the Internet has drastically changed how we communicate."
  • Aiden (78:35): "Twitter is the AR15 of speech."

• Platform Moderation vs. Free Speech: They debate the role of tech companies in moderating content, weighing the dangers of over-censorship against the harms of unchecked speech. Examples include Facebook’s handling of hate speech in the Rohingya genocide and Telegram’s lack of moderation facilitating criminal activities.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Doug (84:37): "Tech companies shouldn't unilaterally decide what speech is allowed."
  • Aiden (89:46): "One government can silence people on all major platforms."

• Impact of Deplatforming: Using examples like former President Trump and Tucker Carlson, the hosts illustrate how deplatforming can sometimes backfire, turning individuals into martyrs and fueling their followings rather than mitigating harmful speech.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Aiden (86:42): "Trump’s ban from social media didn’t stop his influence; it amplified it."
  • Doug (95:56): "Deplatforming can lead to martyrdom and increased support."

• Potential Solutions: The conversation touches on the need for more nuanced approaches to handling online speech, emphasizing open dialogue and human-driven moderation rather than blanket censorship or laissez-faire policies.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Doug (98:40): "Tech algorithms prioritize engagement over meaningful conversation."
  • Chris (102:22): "Social media amplifies existing problems by a thousandfold."

5. Inspiring Change Through Conversation: The Story of Daryl Davis

Discussion Points:

• Daryl Davis’s Approach: Doug shares the inspiring story of Daryl Davis, a black blues musician who successfully convinced numerous Ku Klux Klan members to leave the organization through genuine conversation and empathy.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Doug (105:21): "Daryl Davis befriended KKK members, leading to 200 departures from the clan."
  • Aiden (105:19): "His approach lost some of the human connection but created remarkable results."

• Contrast with Digital Platforms: The hosts contrast Davis’s personal, empathetic approach with the impersonal nature of online interactions, suggesting that meaningful change requires face-to-face conversations rather than digital engagements.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Doug (105:41): "His natural presence and perspective helped challenge their worldview."
  • Chris (108:43): "Connecting with them in person is far more effective than online."

6. Final Thoughts and Reflections

Discussion Points:

• Balancing Free Speech and Safety: The hosts reiterate the ongoing struggle to balance free speech with the need to prevent harmful content online, acknowledging the absence of a perfect solution.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Chris (100:27): "Democratic society relies on free speech, but defining its limits is challenging."
  • Aiden (99:16): "Algorithms amplify harmful speech, exacerbating polarization."

• Call for Improved Infrastructure and Policies: The episode concludes with a call for better infrastructure, both in transportation and digital communication, to foster healthier societal interactions and more effective solutions to entrenched problems.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Doug (105:17): "Public Activity Bonds enabled Brightline to succeed without government overreach."
  • Chris (109:07): "Encouraging meaningful conversations over echo chambers is essential."

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Conclusion

In this episode of Lemonade Stand, Aiden, Atrioc, and DougDoug navigate through complex topics, from the strategic maneuvers of Elon Musk and the pitfalls of the student loan system to the successes of private infrastructure projects like Brightline and the intricate challenges of maintaining free speech in the digital era. They interweave personal insights with broader societal observations, encouraging listeners to reflect on the balance between innovation, responsibility, and communication in shaping the future.

Don’t forget to subscribe to Lemonade Stand and support them on Patreon for more in-depth discussions and exclusive content!

Transcript

[Doug]

All right, fine. I'll pay.

[Aiden]

I'm keeping this. He said this is for a bit, for the opener. I'm keeping this. I need the money for a bit.

[Doug]

I owe you for the.

[Aiden]

You gave me $33.

[Chris]

Wow. That's what he's owed you that since.

[Aiden]

Before COVID This is all we've made from the Patreon so far.

[Doug]

This is for smuggling those Nvidia H1 hundreds into my company.

[Chris]

Yeah. Low margin business. Low margin business. Smuggling.

[Aiden]

High risk. Could have gone to jail.

[Chris]

You know what they don't tell you, they don't tell you about open source? Is that when they pay you for smuggling, the GPU's in. It's. You don't get very much from it. There's not. There's not much upside on the other end.

[Doug]

You just.

[Aiden]

What the deal. Rippling guy got paid for assaulting a police officer and escaping from $35.

[Doug]

And then. And then a gift game on Steam.

[Aiden]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the lemonade stand. I have a couple of things I want to talk to you guys about before we get into our main topics, which I think are pretty interesting and contentious. We got free speech.

[Doug]

Contentious. A lot of people are.

[Aiden]

You have a contentious theory on trains that you're. You're gonna bring. I don't know. I'm assuming.

[Doug]

I was like, wow, I thought it was actually.

[Aiden]

You got 400 pages of notes. That's not gonna be like a train is. There's gonna be something here. And then I'm talking about student loans. But before we get to that, there's a couple, like, little just happened stories, and I wanted to get your guys's thoughts on them. Number one, yesterday, I watched Elon Musk's code Red press conference to the world because the news has been kind of bad about Tesla lately, and he had to get everybody back on track.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And the main takeaway was that he's. He's not stepping down. But he said, hey, by May, my work at Doge is basically done. I'm easing out. I can pass it off to people, and I'm going to be focusing more on Tesla. Any thoughts on that?

[Chris]

He's going to be passing it all off to Big balls.

[Aiden]

Big balls will take it from here.

[Doug]

The balls have grown big enough. So did he say, like, is he totally done?

[Aiden]

No, no, no. I think that would have been an admission of defeat or, like.

[Doug]

Right, right.

[Aiden]

But I think he. He was trying to tell the market, like, hey, don't worry, I'm going back to Tesla.

[Doug]

The government Is fixed.

[Chris]

Did they made it so efficient? It's such a. Why did no one ever think of it?

[Aiden]

Our budget deficit is just gone, dude. We are just. We're print. We're just loaded of money. Yeah. Country Saved. I'm shocked how he did it so quickly.

[Doug]

So it is interesting. It matches how Elon does things in general. This is my understanding from interviews I've heard about Elon, of people who've worked with him, which is that he kind of bounces around to like, one thing at a time. So he's not like, he's not like a traditional CEO. He wakes up and he works 9 to 5 at Tesla. He kind of has like. Tesla has a big problem in the warehouses right now. We are. What is it? Our shipping line is like having issues at this certain bottleneck. I'm going to go in there 15 hours a day until it's fixed. And now I'm off to Solar City or whatever it's called now. And now I'm off to Neuralink. And now I'm off to Doge. And so seemingly he's been doing that with those where he just went super hardcore all in and then maybe he's done with his little, like, sprint of it and he's coming back.

[Aiden]

He's coming back.

[Doug]

Yeah. So it matches up with the way he works, supposedly. But it's still weird. It's. I think it just comes back to like, they're just not communicating what's going on in Doge. Well, and it's like nobody really knows. And the only thing they're communicating is like, we took away this, like, we took away a lollipop from a trans child. But like, but they're not like, it's just this like hyper politicized stuff. And there's nothing about like, here's what's going on broadly in the military budget and what we're cut. You know, it's like, I just. I have no idea what's going on.

[Aiden]

That lollipop cost $2.4 trillion.

[Chris]

They add it to that little spreadsheet, they're like, yep, saved it.

[Aiden]

What are you thinking?

[Chris]

I. Okay. As someone who hasn't followed super closely the way that he actually has stepped down and stepped into roles formally. I get this idea. Just, just having passively watched that he has stepped down from all of his positions at certain points. It maybe, maybe not literally losing the position, but didn't he. He, like stepped down from Twitter after a while and then he would wind up back in control. Like, he goes through a lot of versions of, hey, should I do this thing? Or should I step away from this thing? And then goes back to it and then lets it go again and then goes back to it. Kind of like what you're saying, but it feels a little more. Yeah, it feels so much more informal. And also, the fixations aren't just companies. They're like playing Diablo 4 or tweeting.

[Aiden]

He tweets.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

Hundreds of times a day sometimes.

[Doug]

Yeah, he tweets a lot.

[Aiden]

Which, you know, really could take your time. Is your shirts a global financial crisis on it? That is so sick.

[Chris]

Yeah, it says 2008 Global Financial.

[Aiden]

That's the sickest shirt I've ever seen.

[Chris]

This is a gift from slime.

[Aiden]

Wait, that's badass.

[Chris]

I. Yeah, I think this is sick. I don't even know where to get it. I can't even tell people. Just cross it out. Like, you're like your T1 tattoo. Damn, that's cool as hell. Yeah, I mean, I. I don't have any. I don't think I have any thoughts beyond that. Like, it doesn't fall out of expectations of what I expect from him. I don't. I also don't feel like he wouldn't be somebody that I would expect him to say in a few months that he's coming back to doge or something.

[Aiden]

Soft counterpoint is that, you know, the Tesla earnings report yesterday was horrendous. It was. It was bad. Like, sale car sales way down. Profit down 71% year over year, generally just declining on all measures. Except for. And you've told me about this was the megapack batteries. That was.

[Doug]

The batteries are doing.

[Aiden]

Which is cool.

[Doug]

They're doing great.

[Chris]

And the good part about the batteries, if you don't mind me jumping in, is that you can use those things for, like, I could attach them to my house for my solar panels. You can use them in a bunch of different cases.

[Doug]

Just the battery industry as a whole is like super important and kind of its own thing. And so arguably that's its own business within Tesla, which is kind of different from the cars, just obviously super related.

[Aiden]

And it does seem more important. I mean, I don't know if you guys know, but China has banned the export of rare earth minerals out of China at all. And they control like 90% of the supply. And Tesla is like, they don't have this built yet. And they. They are a big overpromiser in general.

[Chris]

No, you stop that.

[Aiden]

But they have been talking about and are maybe the closest to building a lithium refinery. In Austin, Texas. And we, we can't refine lithium anywhere outside of China really. So they might. This battery thing might be a possible success area of Tesla, I'm not going to deny that. But everything else is down. The car company is doing pretty poorly. And so I think when he's sitting back from Doge, it's like not a normal, like, I lost my fixation. It's like, hey, I have to reassure the people that have valued my company at nearly $1 trillion that like I'm going to be here setting this ship. Right.

[Doug]

Well, okay, because it's worth reminding, like the existential thing coming up for Tesla is, which we've talked about is do they get full self driving, right? Is can they release full self driving vehicles into America and have them work properly and then if so, they have this giant fleet that already exists and they just dominate the market immediately. Right. And that's the entire premise of their valuation. Like they're going to become the player.

[Aiden]

That and robots.

[Doug]

That and robots, yes. Robots is a little more of a moonshot without much detail, but at least with the full self driving, it's like it's out there right now. People have an idea of what it is and then the main thing is this year they're trying to launch it in Austin. Right? That's what he said on the thing.

[Aiden]

Yeah, he said in the call, June it'll be available.

[Doug]

So my suspicion is the reason he's stepping away from Doge is cause he has this pattern again of he has like six companies that he leads, right? And with each one of them, he like goes to one and gets obsessed with it for a period to fix whatever is the most urgent thing and then he moves to the next one, right? So he's kind of like focused on whatever he thinks is most important. So him coming back to Tesla, it could be, oh shit, I need to save stock. But it could also be, okay, this launch in June arguably is the make or break for Tesla, right? Because if this totally flops and it sets the company back three years of doing full self driving and Waymo comes in and eats their lunch, right? That's the end of Tesla, at least as a gigantically valid company. Right? So I would guess, I mean that's, that's soon, that's in two months, right? So from his perspective, if he's like, there is an existential threat coming to my company, Tesla in two months. Because if this launch fails badly, like, we are just screwed overall. That would explain the shift away from Doge, Right?

[Aiden]

Yeah. I think you said that so well. Yeah, I agree. I think if this flops, if, if the June thing is just a mirage or there's a bunch of accidents or it's a big flop.

[Doug]

Yeah. The damage Tesla will be catastrophe in June. Their plan is to release a whole bunch of cars into the wild that don't have drivers. And right now this isn't tested anywhere. Like this isn't a thing that they have approval for anywhere else. It hasn't.

[Chris]

So, so wait, they do, they don't have approval to do this. How does the rollout work?

[Doug]

I guess I don't know specifically. They're starting in Austin. This is gonna be the first city they try to operate as Waymo is currently doing. So the point is this is going to be the first time anywhere where they are allowed to have cars driving around without people in them, without somebody at the wheel. So that's, that's the big jump and that's going from L2 to L4, which is like the categories of self driving. So it's this big deal to go up to that point. You have to have a certain level of redundancy and security and it working and all that stuff. Right. So this is the big test. It's in two months. They're going to put all these cars without people in them into the road. And then if they go kill a bunch of people in a week, if.

[Aiden]

Day one, there is a phone video of this thing hitting a wall.

[Doug]

Right?

[Aiden]

No.

[Doug]

Tesla will crash crater. Yeah, like, like 80% will drop.

[Chris]

I have a question.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Chris]

The. Why, why would that be the case? Because, you know, not to be too doomer about it, but I feel like there are videos of cases of automated driving making mistakes or taking control of the car and then hitting somebody or getting in some type of accident already. Like those videos exist of Tesla's stock hasn't. You know, that's not the reason the stock is going down, because they have.

[Doug]

They have plausible deniability of saying we are. So, so there's categories of self driving and basically they are, they're saying we're at the point where they're still a driver and that gives them a degree of leeway. Right. So even if the car then go hits a person, it's like, well, the person was there should have supervised it. Right. The instant you jump to unsupervised, Tesla is fully responsible for it. Right. Like it's like when we talked about the Mark Rober thing. There's this argument that it's not clear if this is what's going on. But that Tesla deactivates the self driving right before a crash so they can technically say like wasn't us.

[Aiden]

Yeah, exactly.

[Doug]

We weren't. We technically weren't in control. They don't have that argument. The instant that there is no driver. So the stakes are much higher. And then there's, you know, so a company you might have heard of that does self driving is called Cruise. And they were maybe the dominant player and they were in.

[Chris]

We're both thinking of the same thing. We both know somebody who worked there.

[Doug]

Okay, okay.

[Chris]

So.

[Doug]

So they were in San Francisco and they were doing well. And then there was this one really prominent accident where it just one time it drove over. It just drove over a pedestrian and wouldn't move.

[Chris]

Drove over a gun. Now to be fair, that didn't get off of her. Dude, I think. Yeah, I know about this.

[Doug]

Yeah, yeah. So there is actually additional context. That sounds really bad. It is really bad. But that person was hit by a different per. A human driving a car who like hit this pedestrian who then was like on the ground and a Cruise, a self driving car came by and was like, I'll help this situation and like drove onto the pedestrian. So it didn't cause the situation, it just made it way worse.

[Aiden]

This is the Cruise PR represent at the scene. Like yeah. Talking to the pedestrian. This is not our fault.

[Doug]

Yeah. You were laying there from car accident.

[Aiden]

Yeah, we had a friend.

[Chris]

I mean to be fair, if I was the person that was hit, I would be more mad at the first guy. I would be if I was picking. If I was picking.

[Doug]

It's like when your friend like you get pushed and your friend's like holding you back and he's like let me.

[Aiden]

Go, I got him.

[Doug]

You know, like the Cruise is there to keep him down. Make sure he doesn't do anything rash.

[Chris]

Don't do anything rash.

[Doug]

Right.

[Aiden]

Assault anybody.

[Doug]

The conclusion of this, this happened in San Francisco. I forget if it was like last year or the year before that. Got Cruise's license to operate driverless cars in San Francisco revoked. Since then the CEO has left and GM has shut down Cruise entirely. So there's technically there's still some piece of it Cruise as it was which was like this self driving fleet that was in San Francisco is gone and GM is not pursuing single high profile accident ruin. I mean not entirely, but rapidly facilitated the end of this self driving car.

[Aiden]

CEO of Cruise is not best buds with the president. And in all the regular.

[Doug]

No, it's different. Oh no, it's different.

[Aiden]

Yeah, he's got a little more power to not get shut down.

[Doug]

You know, it's not coincidence. They're lost. They're launching in Austin. Right. Where it's like in Texas and it's a blue city, but still, you know.

[Aiden]

But yeah. So that big moment is on saying big, big moment for Tesla. And clearly he's seen some impact from Doge. We don't really talk about the political backlash, but I think that's part of it. The sales are down, clearly, in, in blue states, especially in Europe, especially. So we'll see how it bangs up. But anyway, things that are also down or up are your student loan bills. And I'm gonna talk about this because.

[Doug]

Good transition.

[Aiden]

Thank you. I get paid the big bucks. I, I want to bring this up because it's a brand new, very interesting story, and I guess brand new is interesting way to put it, because it's been a crisis building for four and a half years.

[Chris]

Oh, yeah.

[Aiden]

Basically in March 2020. I don't know if you guys remember, there's a thing called Covid. Fake, fake, fake.

[Chris]

So we're saying it didn't even app.

[Aiden]

Didn't even happen. But because of all the fake hoopla about it, they canceled student loan payments. Essentially. You can't default on a student loan. You don't have to pay. There's no default, there's no credit check. There's nothing. And over the next four years, they never brought it back. And so people got very used to not paying. And then about a year ago, under Biden, he's like, they lost the court case to basically try to cancel all student loan debt. So he's like, hey, do you got to pay your debt? But if you don't, we're not going to do anything. That was essentially, we say we're not going to. We're not going to report it to credit agencies. So there's no.

[Doug]

So they, they came out and said, we will not, like, persecute this.

[Aiden]

That was the way. It wasn't phrased so directly that. But that was the idea, like, we're not going to change anything around how reporting is done. So if you don't pay, the consequences are not really there. And so people didn't pay. Payments did resume. But only, I think 38% of borrowers got back to current. They started back to paying their, their parents. So. So we end up where majority, you know, 62% or whatever are not paying their student loans still now, under Trump and the administration, they are really like, no you have to pay like it's back. And so a month or two ago, they started default reporting again. So you get your credit. Credit score hit. And I have an editor who just said that, yeah, like out of the blue, I got a huge credit score hit because he was defaulting. Like, you're just.

[Doug]

Did he know he was defaulting?

[Aiden]

I think he just didn't think about he was paying. You know what I'm saying?

[Doug]

It's like, it's just been years.

[Aiden]

It's been four years of no consequence. So they just kept on not doing it and now big credit score hit. So that's happening to a lot of people right now. You can see the. I looked at Google trends of people Googling like credit score hit or student loans. It's like spiking. It's like people are like wondering what's going on. Then as of May 5, which is coming up, they're going to start garnishing wages. Like, you're going to actually get a hit with official collections in default. And so when that starts becoming part of it, people are suddenly in an oh, shit moment where they have to pay. And over the last four and a half years, people have again, most people in America live paycheck to paycheck. They have planned their budgets around not paying 2, 300, 400 extra a month. This is going to be, I think, a really big shocker impact to a huge broad swath of like, millennials, elders, like people who are in that, that student loan range who are going to have their budgets hit pretty hard.

[Chris]

So, yeah, I forget the number, but I was following up on this story this week too, and I think it's either it's between like 60 and 80 million people have student loans in America. It's a giant portion of people.

[Doug]

That's a lot.

[Chris]

You want to fact check me?

[Aiden]

Yeah, I'm going to fact check you in that. It's. I think there's 5 million who are going to be hit by this.

[Chris]

Oh, by this specific issue.

[Aiden]

Who I.

[Chris]

By the garnishing, by the garnish.

[Aiden]

5 million borrowers. And of those 38% are current. So I don't know how many have student loans.

[Chris]

In total.

[Aiden]

In total. But these are the people who are, like, in trouble.

[Chris]

Can we get a Perry fact check on.

[Aiden]

Maybe we can get a fact check.

[Doug]

On number of borrowers in the country.

[Aiden]

43 million.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Chris]

I was like, dude, it's way more than five.

[Aiden]

I'm sorry, you are actually correct. It is five million borrowers in default.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

So five million are affected who will be have to wealth.

[Doug]

Okay, so there's like 40ish million who have loans out.

[Aiden]

Yes.

[Doug]

5 million of them are becoming.

[Aiden]

And default means over 90 days past, like unpaid nothing.

[Doug]

Yeah, yeah, that's not even. They like aren't paying at all. It's just not in the most recent 90 days. It's like. Yeah, okay.

[Chris]

So this payment, this change is happening at one of the worst times that it could be happening at. Because outside of the general, I think economic stress that is going on for a lot of people at, at this specific moment, this is also happening at a time when the Department of Education is being gutted and they are the inflection point for all the communication to do with these loans. So that department, although not necessarily the holder of the debt, is responsible for communicating to borrowers how they make their payments. Maybe. Or maybe the. How your loan may have changed. Like if it changed owners.

[Aiden]

This is the big providers.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Chris]

Over the, over the four year wait period. And now because the department has been gutted and there's way less employees to deal with, all the incoming tickets, basically, like if you call, you're on hold for way longer. It's really difficult to get answers about your specific loan or the situation that your balance even stands in. And this is all happening at once because of the delays that have led to this point.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Chris]

And I mean, even in my personal life, like my girlfriend is still paying off of her student loans and she just realized recently that she has to fit this into her monthly budget.

[Aiden]

Absolutely.

[Chris]

I don't. Do you guys have student loans? I did have mine, but I like, I dumped like all of my money into paying them off in like the first two years out of college.

[Aiden]

So I paid mine off, but we did not pay off my wife's because we thought Biden would cancel it. We were, yeah, we've been waiting and waiting and so we paid it off. Two days ago after I started reading the story, I was like, we'll just. We don't want any trouble.

[Chris]

That was kind of the other big part of this along the way. Right. Is there was all these news stories about the debt cancellation or changes in the way they would be paid or maybe the amount they could be reduced by. And I think anybody who was paying attention to the news over the past few years was basically hoping that significant changes to the debt that they hold would would happen.

[Aiden]

I mean now.

[Chris]

And now we've arrived at a point where very little has actually changed. We just added a bunch of time and then a Bunch of people forgot that this is a thing that they have to pay for in their life. And now we're arriving at the worst possible moment to add this expense onto everybody.

[Doug]

At the same time, it's really bizarre to cut the Department of Education while the Department of Education says starts demanding you all need to repay your loans.

[Aiden]

It just feels shitty. Right, Elon?

[Chris]

Elon, why did you make these cuts if they feel like they're having it at a bad time? Sorry, he's not on doji. The car company. The car company needs my help. I'll come back to this as soon as possible. I do. I think ultimately is because a lot of these changes, like, were not executed with any sort of plan from what we can tell, right? Like the community, you. You bringing up. The communication point at the beginning is representative of that, to me is like the communication around the way that this was approached, the purpose of the agency. It doesn't seem like the messaging or the intent matches the action or results really at all.

[Doug]

Right. I'm on board with like, modernizing government infrastructure and software. I think that's. That's clearly overdue. When you hear about how a lot of these things are done. I can't speak specifically to the Department of Education, but so I read a Bloomberg article about this where a woman was told that she's like, behind payment. She's like, what? I didn't know that I was. Because they had shifted loan. The loan had shifted to a different company and then is trying to call the Department of Education. The hold times are 11 hours, which is like, even if you call first thing in the morning, you can't. You literally don't get taken care of that day. And it's like, so she can't do anything.

[Aiden]

11 hour hold time is.

[Chris]

There was a. There was a bit I was listening to earlier in the week about this, about how from the other side of the perspective, for the people that do remain at the Department of Education, for the people that pick up the phones and read the emails and are dealing with this, they don't have the information, the time, or the tools to answer all of the questions. Like, there's the remaining employees who want to help people or they want to do their job, but they're in a situation where they have to deal with thousands and thousands of people, way more people that they are not necessarily equipped to answer.

[Doug]

There's a world where they do a major infrastructure refresh so that they can handle this without as many people. And that obviously didn't happen. Right. They just like, axed every. And the idea that you're going to axe what is a call center. Yeah, it's very, very ridiculous.

[Chris]

We talked about this in passing after we recorded the last episode. And a story I want to cover another time is I think when people have this idea of making the government more efficient, it does feel very vague. It feels ambiguous. It's like, okay, we agree that it's efficient in some way. It means. It means to different people, but it means different things to different people. What does efficiency actually mean? And I think an example of what Doug's talking about is there's. In Estonia, they spent a bunch of time basically digitizing the entire state. Everything to do with government bureaucracy and operations is something done over the computer or digitized. And a lot of the layers of getting something done from a bureaucratic perspective are just very much simplified by the fact that they have a very strong digital infrastructure. For example, if me and my fiance want to get married, the process to get married is like, literally clicking something on, like, a government website. And that is, like, what verifies and registers our marriage, like, within the. Within the context of the state. And I think there's a lot of, like, basic changes like that, that, like, oh, we could work on the underlying tech infrastructure of this agency to make the incoming tickets for all of the people that are going to have to start paying their student loans more efficient and easy to navigate. And also, like, from, you know, from a borrower's perspective, you know, I got my student loans when I was 18. I really didn't know how they work. I couldn't name the company that I was paying, like, owned my debt. Like, the way I interacted with that process at that age, even applying for them in the first place was very ambiguous and confusing. And I had to, like, make multiple accounts over the course of my. The duration I held that debt to, like, be able to view and make the payments on it. I moved a bunch because I was a young person at the time. So, like, the letters going to the correct address of where I lived at the time, like, wasn't handled well, you know, partially on me for not updating my address with, like, the loan provider. But none of this process is simple or easy. And it comes at a pro at a time in your life. For most people, when you're young and don't know how to navigate responsibility in the first place and also don't have a lot of knowledge. And then this process is also extremely complex or a lot of money.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I mean, a huge, you mentioned this, but this is like one of the biggest complaints is that a lot of this student loan debt is passed around. It is sell sold between companies at different companies who are all have their own individual ways of trying to contact you or collect or send mail and nobody can keep track of it. You're often getting a letter informing you that you've got a new provider for your student or a payment for your student loan debt. And if you're not checking your mail or if you're someone who's not, who's mostly digital, that stuff is coming at a, at a time where you can't keep track of it. So the rollout's pretty bad. I mean, I think the, the takeaway regardless of just fixing it, is that there's going to be a bit of an economic shock though is that $304 a month in which is the average student loan payment is a huge hit to your budget. It's like your rent going up 340, you know, it's insane and people are not able to factor that in. So there's gonna be knock on effects like there's gonna be downturns in spending or people are not, I mean we already saw people are. 60% of young people going to Coachella are using Buy now, pay Later. They're using Klarna. Like there's just not the, the, the math is no longer mathing on a regular person's budget and loans.

[Chris]

I, I think a, a really basic example I can think of is if you're not paying for years and you signed maybe a lease that has your rent on a spending on a budget that you can afford. Well, you can't change. You're in the middle of your lease. You just can't change that. You've literally built an aspect of your life around the lack of that expense. And I think some people would swoop in and say, well, these people like lack personal responsibility or something like that. I don't think like policy decisions should be made on that, on that basis. Especially when you're talking about 5 million people being affected by, by this change.

[Doug]

But also even just in the broader economy, if 40, there's 40 million people in the US with student loans, right? So that's 40 million people who suddenly are not spending what, a hundred, a couple hundred dollars every month on other parts of the economy. Right? That's like a huge, in the context of we're going into a maybe recession with all the craziness going on, it's not great to have an eighth of the country suddenly not spending nearly as.

[Aiden]

Much money, spending money on debt services.

[Doug]

Right. I'm paying loans. Like it's not good. You want them taking out loans to go to Coachella so that we stimulate the economy. You don't want them paying. This is. You don't want them being responsible.

[Chris]

I want the. I want the young people to make bad decisions in different ways.

[Aiden]

Different ways. In ways that benefit someone.

[Doug]

I think what would be interesting at some point, and probably it's too broad of a topic right now, is just the, the obvious issues with student loans in general, which is like predatory loans and all that, and the fact that like once, Once stat. I saw. Sorry, go ahead.

[Chris]

Yeah, I was going to say, I think this is. Can you. Don't be afraid to dive into that. I think that's a great part of this topic and I think you should talk about it.

[Doug]

Sure. I mean, it's not beyond. I mean, this is. I'm just given the most, like lukewarm takes here. Like giving predatory loans to students is bad. And then, so I think that, you know, I'm not like an expert on these things, but the key element that I understand that makes these brutal is if you are a student and you take out a loan, right. And the interest rate, like 8% or 6, right now it's 6.5, I think. So you get a 6.5% if you're an undergrad. And so if you get a hundred thousand dollars loan, you're paying six and a half thousand every year in interest. Right. But then if you don't pay that, that interest that you didn't pay gets added to the total amount you owe. And now the interest is recalculated based on that new amount. Right. So for every year that you don't pay off the interest, which might be a lot of money, the amount that you owe is growing. Right. And this is why you hear those horror stories of people who are paying their debt, but it never actually goes down because it keeps compounding. So that, in theory could be okay if the people taking out these loans were consistently being compensated well and immediately out of college, they can actually start paying these things off. The stat I saw right now, 40% of college grads in the US right now are underemployed. And what that means is they make less money than they're, than they should with their degree. So if they get a degree and it's, you know, the expectation is with this, whatever, you know, economics degree, you should have this amount of earnings, 40% of college grads are making less than that. And maybe it's some entry level job or it's a job that doesn't require college degree or whatever.

[Aiden]

But they still have the massive student loans.

[Doug]

But they still have a loan that is set up with a structure that assumes you are paying off the interest immediately. Because if you wait to pay it off, it keeps growing and you are just fucked long term. Right? And so this thing just makes, to me, it makes no sense in general for, for students, but also in particularly, particularly in a world that we now live in where a college education doesn't guarantee you some awesome job. And it feels like. I know my parents, certainly my dad would always like say to me like, oh well, once you go to college, like you're going to be set. I don't know about you guys, but when I went to college at my orientation they were like, you are here now and you have made it. You're one of the elites and you're going to be great. I'm not kidding.

[Aiden]

They did not tell it to me at Arizona State, okay?

[Doug]

They did.

[Chris]

So things were different.

[Doug]

So, so at Berkeley, right, which is a high end school, Their, their attitude to the students is like, you made it. That's literally the orientation of like, you are one of the elites you've made. And it's like first off, it's not that good of a school. And then secondly, there was no follow up at all. That's like, hey, here's what you should do in college to make sure it's worth it, right? There wasn't any indication of like, hey, just so you're aware, if you study history, that's really cool. But the amount of job opportunity is going to be different than another. There was none of that. And I think private schools have more resources, my understanding, to support students and give them that kind of guidance. Not at public schools. We didn't get shit. So at no point were my friends, for example, who are like studying English, you know, some of them were like, wanted to go be a history teacher and that's great. And they're doing that and they're having, they love it. And there's other people who thought, oh well, I'll just get a degree in whatever kind of interests me. And they were really confused coming out of college when they were not showered with job offers. And I feel like I've heard that story from a lot of people in a lot of different colleges. And so I think we can't have a student loan system that puts compounding interest and assumes that Just by having a degree, you will automatically be making this huge amount of money.

[Chris]

I do like the old person advice of like, go to college, get your degree and then walk up to where you want to work and hand them.

[Aiden]

A resume down a resume.

[Chris]

You went, I'd like to work for.

[Doug]

You went to college, young man. You're the VP of sales. Yeah. Welcome to Google.

[Chris]

Can I say, like it used to.

[Doug]

Be a huge deal and it's really not now. It's the, it's the entry point. But if it's the entry point for most jobs now, it's like, then, then you can't justify having a loan with the interest compounding every year and just growing out of. Yeah, it's insane. If anything it should be like reverse compounded, like later it grows bigger when you presumably are farther in your career. But to do it at the beginning is insane.

[Aiden]

And what's wild is over the past 20, 30 years, you could say that the value of college at best has been even like the education is not radically better, you know, but the cost.

[Doug]

Is radically triple to quadruple in the last 40 years.

[Aiden]

The school is, yeah, yeah, four to five times more expensive. And yet the schooling, the value of the schooling is not four times better. In fact, if anything, it's like you're saying it's worse. Like the value in the market worse.

[Doug]

Straight up, like, yeah, I mean the.

[Aiden]

Value of the degree on the market is like less valuable, but you're paying more for it. So like I think a lot of young people, when talking to old people in their life, parents in their life, there's a huge disconnect between what they're seeing around schooling, where schooling is becoming very marginally a good idea. Like it, you, you do have an earnings potential increase. There is a benefit to it, but it's like you're paying so much more for that tiny privilege and the risks of it going wrong are so much higher. Schooling has become a way less certain bet.

[Doug]

And then if you want, if you are like, you know, you want to go into teaching, like that's, you're not going to be able to pay off the frigging interest.

[Aiden]

Right? Yeah.

[Doug]

Like the loans are even in that case where you are really sure you want to go into an industry that isn't as well paid, but you're passionate about it, that's great. But then you can't justify this anymore. It doesn't, it makes sense. So I think what I am concerned about is like with student loan forgiveness, that was a big thing during The Biden administration. Right. That was discussed and now pretty clearly the Trump administration is not going to be doing that now. They seem to have a vendetta against students. I mean you will see there's their woke.

[Aiden]

I have an honest theory because again, Trump with his tariffs a lot of things, he has a lot of tough talk and then a bit of a back down whenever the consequences come. I seriously think there may be he might a return to like no, no collections or something. Something back to the status quo. Because the reaction is going to be such a negative one. There's going to be such a negative backlash to when these start. The wages started getting garnished, the credit scores are already falling. Millions of people feeling negative effects immediately and they're going to be angry about it and the economy is going to take a tumble. You know, I think he could back down. I could see that happening. But either way, yeah, we're in a. I don't know where you guys stand on student loan forgiveness. I have a tough time. I think we should do it, but I have a tough time of like, it feels like it's definitely a big band aid. Yeah. One generation gets a nice out and then what the next person was buying another $80,000. Agree. Is like, yeah, they're going to expect the same thing.

[Chris]

It has no effect on the underlying problem.

[Aiden]

Yeah, there's a bigger problem.

[Chris]

I think the main problem.

[Aiden]

Yes.

[Doug]

What I was alluding to and is very much the issue of like this is clearly not working as a system. Student loan forgiveness is just like these select people are getting reprieve from this shitty system and let's just keep the system going. It's like, dude, no.

[Aiden]

And almost worse because if you're someone who follows that forgiveness and you're like, well, okay, I'm going to take out this big loan, but it will get forgiven because we know what happened last time. So now everybody's taking out even larger loans, making the problem even bigger. Expecting, you know, at that point you just. Free education is something where you can go, which would be an interesting way countries have done that. But you have to. I think it's better to announce that up front and do it than try to like pay piggyback with these loans. Gamble, gamble on your financial future, which.

[Chris]

Administration will be in charge by the time I'm done with school. And also you have to coin flip on who's.

[Aiden]

Who's president when you graduate to see whether or not you are in debt.

[Chris]

For life or dude, coming out of college. Every, every class of every Year spinning a roulette wheel on whether or not.

[Aiden]

People getting purposely held back.

[Chris]

Where did, where did you go to school?

[Aiden]

Did.

[Chris]

You said you went to a public school, you went to Berkeley?

[Doug]

Berkeley, yeah.

[Chris]

Were you an out of state student?

[Doug]

No, no, I was in state. So in state was like 10 grand a year. So it's like very affordable comparatively. And then out of state's like 35 or something like that.

[Chris]

We're all public school success. All in state. Public school success, yes.

[Doug]

One of the rare Berkeley success stories.

[Chris]

And there's so few. There's so few. Well, Doug, I'll have you know they didn't let me into Berkeley. I applied. This is.

[Doug]

Yeah, I, I would also just at some point like to hear you guys experience with student loans. I was fortunate my parents were able to pay for my college education, so I didn't have to do student loans. I know a lot of friends who have. Do you guys feel, do you feel like the system was predatory for you? Do you feel like it was worthwhile and you're glad the system is in place?

[Chris]

The system is absolute, absolutely predatory. And I have a great example, I think so. For me personally, I applied through fafsa, I think to get assistance with paying for school. My parents said they weren't going to pay for my school. They also couldn't straight up.

[Doug]

What is fafsa?

[Chris]

FAFSA is the federal student aid program for just for all people applying for college. The idea being that if you are low enough income, this program also enables you to pay for school basically through a grant, I want to say, or a scholarship rather. So if you fall below a certain level of income but you're able to like get into a school, then it will, it will give you money outright that isn't a loan. But most of the time, FAFSA is a way to get loans if you fall in a more like middle income, like up, like upper, lower to like middle class background, basically. And that's what I would call my family at the time is middle class. So my parents did not have enough money to pay for my school. But according to the FAFSA application, the government said they had enough money to pay for school, which means that they'll offer you loans. And what they do is at a personal level, because you don't have much of a credit history at that age, they offer you a small amount of loans individually and then if you need more, your parents can be the guarantor for like a way higher additional loan. And then I took, I maxed out the loans that I could get personally basically. And that is what allowed me to pay for most of my tuition both years that I was at university. Because my state in Washington there's a program where you can go to community college during high school. So I finished two years and that was like basically free, which is sick. And I finished two years of college in high school, graduated and then only had to go to university for two years.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Chris]

And so that was how I saved enough money to go to school. It's like I got my two years of student loans for that. That the problem with that system is I didn't really know and I think I had a better idea than most of my peers did at the time that how much money that was and like how I would pay it back and it wasn't even in the grand scheme was not that much. I had $15,000 in student loans and that was basically, that was three quarters of my tuition each of those years. I want to say my tuition each year was like 11 or 12K. And then you have all of your like living expenses on top of that. And, and the issue is that one, that was a really like limited amount of loans and my parents weren't even willing to like sign for additional loans anyway if I recall. And I looking at all the students around me, I picked an affordable in state option with a limited amount of like loans that I could take out as an individual. And I still like had to work, I had to work in college to, to pay off like the rest of my living expenses as well.

[Doug]

Right.

[Aiden]

Because you had a smaller loan.

[Chris]

Yeah. Whereas most of the people around me, a lot of them applying to out of state schools, which is cost way more even if you're going to like a public institution. Right. Like if I had gotten into Berkeley, which I didn't, I would have had to pay I think 35 or 40k a year in tuition as an out of state.

[Aiden]

So wild.

[Chris]

Yeah. Which is, which is crazy.

[Aiden]

18, you know, to be signing up for 120,000 plus in loans.

[Chris]

Yeah. And it's such a huge financial commitment that you have very little ability to understand the scope of what you're signing at the time.

[Aiden]

You all think you're going to know.

[Doug]

What they're going to do. Like you're supposed to figure out what you want to do. So you don't know whether you're going to be going into, if you are, you know, if you're going into, I don't know, physics or something where you're likely to be Able to pay that off?

[Chris]

Yeah, sure.

[Doug]

But most people don't know until they get there.

[Chris]

I think you're just pressured. You're most. A lot of people are pressured their entire life that they have to go to college. College is your, like, way to success. Get into college by any means, do all these things to get into a good college, and then you spend whatever money it takes to go there. And oftentimes that can be an extraordinary amount of money. The particularly predatory thing that I saw was a lot of those people looking at out of state schools or private schools, one were down to pay for that amount of tuition somehow. And those tuition amounts are way, way too high to begin with. It doesn't make any sense that school costs that much. And it's only gotten more expensive since I was applying right then. To top it off, I think this is. I remember my girlfriend at the time, she was getting accepted into all these private schools in, like, the Pacific Northwest that had these expensive tuitions, right? But those private schools, they hand out. They hand out scholarships like it's no business. So imagine you got into some private school that costs 40, $50,000 a year in tuition, but then they tell you, hey, we're giving you a scholarship for $20,000 a year. What does that mean? It means your tuition is still $30,000 a year. And I remember her and a bunch of people around me being so excited by the scholarships they were getting.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Chris]

And even at 18, I was like, this makes no sense. You are getting. It's like they are. They. It's like, I mean, maybe respectfully, I was looking at a lot of kids who I knew academically were, like, fine, basically. Like, they're not putting in that. It's not like I'm give us names and GPAs, and. And they're getting massive scholarships to go to private schools that set their bar for tuition so high to begin with.

[Aiden]

It's like a fake discount.

[Chris]

It's like giving that coupon Black Friday sale. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sale. And I think that's the misleading part is, like, there's all these mechanisms in place to, like, sell kids on the experience of college and sign off on this giant number that they don't deal with until a later part of their life. Because you have no way to understand the scope of that decision at the time, Namely, not only in the money, but, like, not knowing what you actually want to do with your life.

[Doug]

Right.

[Chris]

And. But all of these, like, societal pressures are, like, pushing you in that direction at the same time.

[Doug]

And then it's the, it's the type of loan with the compounding interest that is the worst possible loan if you aren't able to pay it off early and like, consistently be hitting interest. So the whole thing is, I do.

[Aiden]

Want to bring one little nugget of this that is worth talking about, which is that a part of this comes from policies that were at least good in theory, that may have backlash, which is the idea. It's similar to the housing crisis, which is, you know, the idea that everyone needs to go to college. It's a really good thing. If you're back in the 60s and 70s, college tuition was relatively cheap. And it's because nobody would give a student this kind of loan because they don't think they'll pay it back unless they had a, you know, a clear plan for what they were going to do. But then the idea was we need to get more people to go to college. So we're going to make student loans federally guaranteed. We're going to back it up. We're going to basically give a loan to anyone who wants one. And what that did was it allowed anyone with any plan to go to college and take out as basically as much money as they wanted. And schools respond to that by saying, okay, well, if all of our counterparties in this negotiation have an infinite bank and they're 18 and they're dumb, we can just keep raising prices on everything. It doesn't matter. And that's what they did. And so we've had 30 years of, again, price appreciation. And as the amount goes higher, people just borrow more and more and more because it's been guaranteed. So I want, you know, I, I think there is a, a part of this where I think an idea that was made in good spirit and good theory with good idea, yeah, has, has had a pretty profound negative consequence on every student later. And I would, I don't even have thoughts on that.

[Doug]

I, I, the one thing I, I come back to a lot, and I know that there's talks about this and, and so, so maybe this has already been pushed or considered in some way I'm not aware of. But the thing that fundamentally feels important to me is that colleges should have some degree of accountability for whether the degree they offer is going to be able to cover the loan in any way. And like, they can't be fully responsible for the life of a student that comes through their college. But the idea that a college is say, hey, we'll charge you $200,000 to come to this private university and we'll happily sell you a degree that there's no real evidence you're going to be able to pay that back in any way, shape or form with no due diligence of like no due diligence of. Is this person like is their family able to cover this in any way? Like is there any way. And you're just setting them up in this horrible situation and the university is just like sure man, come on through. We'll take 200k from your loans and just we'll ship you off. And they have no responsibility at all. I don't know how that works. The mechanics of that would be extremely difficult and, and maybe overly burdensome on, on universities.

[Aiden]

I mean they're selling it to the government. Like who's giving the 200k? It's usually the government system program that's like, that's giving you your guaranteed loans. No bank would give you that 200k because they don't think you'll pay it back. Yeah is the idea. Or they'll give it to an exorbitant interest rate you probably wouldn't take.

[Chris]

So it's, I feel like any subsidy system like that, I don't know if you demand alone demand subsidy is you're you, you just participate in all the colleges like raising the prices at the same time. That's why I feel like you need to push towards something that is basically near free or like taxpayer funded.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Chris]

But even a move to a system like I think Australia's student loans basically work with. I think schooling there is cheaper to begin with, at least cheaper than the U.S. but their loans don't. The interest doesn't build until you have a job post college like the interest is frozen and then you don't have to make payments until you have a job of a certain income threshold either. So a system in place that like doesn't the loans still need to be paid back eventually but only until the economic conditions of your situation post college actually meet like a certain threshold which I think is. Would be an improvement on this system.

[Doug]

Yeah, no that, that sounds way better because that at least alleviates the doom scenario where a person comes out of college, they don't know what they want to do or can't find a job in those first couple years and then they're just building debt that whole time. Yeah, I mean that sounds way better.

[Aiden]

Or college is free and paid for the government but it's at a certain, you know even if the government said hey we're going to give everyone a chance to go to College a chance. We're going to give you 20 grand or whatever it is. If it's a flat fee, then some colleges will adapt to that and keep that their price.

[Doug]

Right.

[Aiden]

But if you make it so you can take out any loan at any amount will guarantee it then of course the other party in that negotiation is going to just raise their price every year constantly because there's no. They have nothing to lose. They don't care that you're in debt.

[Doug]

Yeah, I wish there was. So I don't know the mechanics but I wish there was some kind of pressure on universities to bring down prices because right now there's no incentive for.

[Chris]

Them to do that. I think, I think public universities or at the very least like community colleges need to be free basically. They need to be at near no cost for you to and offer all of the same like, you know, facility. I went to a, like, I'm sure you guys feel this way. Maybe not, but when you go to a big state school like I went to the University of Washington, my school was incredible in terms of resources available to me and I, I really liked it there. I think if those types of institutions are basically free and are taxpayer funded, then you create something that is super competitive in the rest of the space for all the remaining like private schools. Kind of what we were talking about last time. Like it forces all of the remaining private institutions to offer something particularly valuable in order to pay to go there. And I think that's really important. I think also something. I'm not going to pretend that my university experience was on par with my community college experience. But I do think there's an issue in the US of, in the culture of pushing everyone to go to college. There is kind of a stigma around going to something like a community college or a technical college or into trades or programs. There's this cultural shift that I'm not really sure how you start to create. I think it's kind of happening now when you talk to people. That's what I heard of understanding that college isn't the be all, end all fits everybody scenario. I do think it is really, really important for everybody to have some type of additional education in their lives and make that widely available. But coming in the form of what university usually presents itself as is maybe the bad part because I don't think it's bad or shameful to go to a community college, especially considering how much cheaper it was. Yeah, like I basically got the first two years of my post high school education basically for free because of a State program. And it saved me literally like if we did the math, it saved me, the 18 year old Aiden, $40,000. That's what it saved me. Life changing. Not in loans, not in like grants or scholarships or whatever. I just did not have to pay that $40,000. It was a huge part of why I'm here, where I'm at now because I was two years, I was just two years further in my education because of that. So I'd, I'd look to things like that. And then the remaining, you know, private universities, whatever value they can present are like forced to price themselves at something more agreeable. And I think more programs and money encouraging people to go into like technical or like trade programs are, is really important too. There was another, there was a video, I was watching it about this, I want to say like six months ago from Polymatter has a view like a breakdown of like US education over the decades. And somebody, I mean please dig into this more. Don't just take me at face value here. But there's a site that, there's a stat that's been cited a lot, not in this video, but in general I'm sure you've heard that your lifetime earnings with a college degree compared to lifetime earnings of people who just have a high school education. Right. And you can see the difference in the graph. And this is supposed to be the proof of how a college education is so valuable. But what this accounts for is all of the people that have their college degree like completed it and got into their career and compares against it completely forgoes the population of people that go into college, pay for a few years and then drop out, which is a huge amount of people. It's like an incredible portion of everybody that goes to college is people who just don't finish. And those people actually are financially worse off than people who just started working after high school. Which is interesting. And I think we have a, we have a problem in the US where so many people are flooding into like traditional four year institutions with like no plan, paying all this money when there's so many more avenues for success we could encourage. And to top it all off, all of them should be more like affordable and encourage encouraged options. Not even affordable like I would advocate for for free but like using Australia as an example, that's a step in the right direction to like policy changes to loans like that.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I mean if you in the comments have your own, especially if you're in a different country student loan system. I would love to hear more about what you think works and doesn't around the world. Yeah, I think something I want to dig more into and then also last thing you said and we should go to the next topic, but I have heard, I've seen this in my chat and I've seen this from articles I've read is that there's a stigma changing especially among Gen Z men towards trades in that it's becoming more socially almost acceptable or cool or something to talk about going into other than the call. I think the college thing, people are waking up at least in some, you know, 18 year old way. Yeah, this is, this is kind of a raw deal. Like there's people are starting to realize they're seeing older siblings, people that have graduated and can't find a job that are spaying these student loans. It is a greater awakening that like many of these are not great deals that guaranteed success in the way they thought they were. And so there is a social shift happening and I want to hear more about that. So if you have thoughts, however you have a topic that's about government actually maybe doing something good. Oh, there we go. We need that in our lives. So I want to hear about this.

[Doug]

Ladies and gentlemen, for the next topic we're going to talk about the Bright Line train in Florida. That's right.

[Aiden]

What is that word you said? Truck. Truck. What is that word?

[Doug]

Train.

[Chris]

Truck.

[Doug]

It's a truck.

[Aiden]

Truck. He said Ford F150.

[Chris]

Truck.

[Aiden]

We have trucks all over this great country.

[Chris]

They have all, all of the states have trucks.

[Doug]

Imagine instead of having to get in your Tesla full self driving car, you get into a big box on a track and it drives and you don't have to do anything.

[Aiden]

Sounds dangerous. Sounds European.

[Chris]

I would like it.

[Aiden]

I would like European. I don't like it.

[Doug]

For the first time in like 10, 20 years America built a new train corridor. It's along the eastern side of Florida. It goes from Miami down the south up to Orlando at the top. It's this incredible service and it was made entirely by a private company. Thus proving once and for all that the free market is better than government program. Thank you everybody for watching.

[Chris]

Lemonade stand.

[Doug]

We'll see you next time. Have a great, have a great time. Everybody.

[Aiden]

Rolling in his grave at the Bright Line train.

[Doug]

So this is, this is the story. Bright Line is a company that made this big train 235 miles on the eastern side of Florida going basically up and down the whole state. It costs $6 billion. That is not that much by comparison. Good chicken change it's estimated California high speed rail is going to cost 128 billion. Jesus. So you can do the math there. It's about a 20th of the cost and about like half of the distance.

[Aiden]

I have a big question.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

How long it take to build? That's where. That's my big fucking question.

[Doug]

They started it in 2013. They started building in 2014. Done by 2023. Nine years.

[Aiden]

Nine years.

[Doug]

By comparison, California high speed rail funding started in 2008. I believe that's when the bill was passed that we were going to pay for it as California residents. And it's 2025 and we built no functioning track. Okay.

[Aiden]

So compared to California, that is great. Compared to China, I think they built longer than that. While we're speaking. That's cool.

[Doug]

That' so there's. There's a couple interesting things about it. One is just to be like, yeah, we did a thing. You know, it's like, it's like when you have a, like a really, I don't know, like a really earnest but dumb dog who finally like picks up the toy that you've been throwing and you're like, good job. Right. It's not the most impressive thing, but you're proud of them. So proud of America. We built a train. But the really notable thing is that it's from a private company. So it's bright line and you can look it up and in fact, I. You don't have to. I'm going to do it right for you. So it's this company in Florida. I don't know if they're headquartered there, but again, this is this huge.

[Aiden]

So is this live now? Like you can ride this train or is it.

[Chris]

Apparently. It's awesome.

[Doug]

Yeah, you can go. Really?

[Aiden]

That's awesome.

[Doug]

Yeah, it is. Like from everything I've seen, people are really happy with. It's really high quality. It is not stuff when it exists in their life. So, you know, website has a little bit to go. Oh, well, it's got complimentary wi fi. Yeah. So the. It, it seems really great and it's getting a ton of usage. So you know, a little bit of like numbers here. Launched in 2018, like the first leg started, they had yearly ridership of 580,000 people. By 2023, 2 million. By 2024, 2.7 million. So it's like rapidly increasing. And this is, you know, Florida is a main, a huge state. It's growing rapidly. They're also now going to expand it from Orlando, which is kind of, let's say, Roughly in the north of Florida, if you don't really know, over to the western side to Tampa. So it's going to connect all the major cities or most of them. So this is this really incredible success case. It costs them 6 billion. And so then the question is, wait, they're a private company. How did they do that? That's sort of unheard of almost anywhere. Because the investment, the investment that is required to build something like a train is so obscenely high up front that nobody is able to do it with private market. Brennan is struggling.

[Aiden]

Dude, I didn't want you to say a damn thing.

[Doug]

You took the iPad from me.

[Chris]

Almost unfathomable. It is, it is because it was working fine and Doug was using it.

[Doug]

You grabbed it, you took it, you took it away.

[Chris]

Presentation.

[Doug]

Let's talk about trends too, too.

[Aiden]

I grabbed this iPad and I had no issues with it. And that's not why we are discussing things. And I checked the price going Boca Raton to Orlando in a short trip, $80 a guest. That's not bad at all.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

If you had, if you want to make a Disney trip and you're in Florida, you can get on this train and it's way, way cheap. Yeah, $44 a guess. If you leave at 8pm that's crazy, right?

[Doug]

So like Disney World and Universal are one of like the premier travel destinations of the world.

[Aiden]

Right.

[Doug]

And now it's like you can get there and then you can, you can take a train down to Miami. It's like this is, this is really incredible stuff. And then there's also cool stuff of like. But they're also, this company is making additional revenue by basically building cool infrastructure around the stations. That's partially how they're able to do this in a way that's sustainable is they're saying, okay, at each one of these stations, these are going to be in places that weren't necessarily super high end before. So for example, in Miami, it ends in this section of Miami that's like, of downtown Miami. That is. There wasn't a lot going on there. And oh yeah, it was formerly a drab corner of downtown. And so now they have this station there and there's all these towers around it that are really high end that they're developing with like 800 rental units and all these commodities. From Alice Robertson, a city agency, Miami Downtown Development Authority is like, the private sector can move things faster sometimes than government. The station went up like magic. It seems like they were just breaking ground and now it's beautiful and they're talking about the architecture. Pretty soon we're going to have a service here unlike anything we've ever seen. So a lot to like laud of this company that has actually done a lot. Well so then the question is how did they do this as a private company? Because trains are, you know, insanely expensive. $6 billion, as much as that doesn't sound like a lot compared to California high speed rail. That is an insane amount of money. There's no private company that's just going to drop that willy nilly like sure that there's going to be a return. And so the secret here is that they didn't actually do this all private. Really what they did. Yeah. Is they did public activity bonds. Do you know what these are? No business Aiden. And I got to teach Mr. Business here. Tell me about bond is when you take out a loan.

[Chris]

Pussy ass, bitchy ass bitch. Like when you use the iPad.

[Aiden]

If you know what a PAB is, let's hear you explain it. You're big a big talker. What's a pab?

[Chris]

It's a public activity bond. We call it.

[Aiden]

Let him speak. Because I think you are teaming up here.

[Chris]

Or private. Private activity bond. The idea though is that in order to raise money as a private company you have a bunch of ways of doing it normally. Right. You could take investors that take like ownership shares in the company and they, they give you money that way. You could issue stuff like I guess that's basically selling stock is going shark tank. You could have a, have an IPO and have the public buy your stock potentially. Or you could issue bonds that you promise to pay interest back to people on. You could do that. However, why would they buy those bonds if they could just buy secure government bonds instead? With that they don't have to pay tax on the interest rates. Yeah, but you do a higher rate in some cases. But you don't want to pay a higher rate because it would be more expensive. That would be. You wouldn't want to do that, would you if you were the company.

[Aiden]

How do you get this low rate?

[Chris]

So the government has the ability to basically stamp this sticker of approval on the bonds issued by a private company and say these bonds, our interest are tax free.

[Aiden]

Like your parents being a guarantor to your student loan.

[Chris]

No, no, no, they're not a guarantor. At least not at least not on paper.

[Aiden]

Oh, he's got the notes. Let me see what's the correct you. So let's see what we got.

[Doug]

Well okay. So, so Very explicitly they're not and that's why they're cool. So the government is not on the hook. So let's do the scenario. I am bright line. I want to raise $6 billion for a train.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Crazy amount of money. So I'm going to sell bonds. What that means is I am offering people the opportunity to loan me money and in return I'm going to pay you back your money and every year you'll get some percentage back. Right? Typical bond loan stuff.

[Aiden]

Yes.

[Doug]

If you are interested in buying a bond for me, typically when I'm paying back interest every year and you're making that profit from the bond, you have to pay taxes on it. So you're getting a cut, you know, some cut of whatever money you would have made on the bond. But if a government issues a public activity bond, the government says, look, we'll issue the bonds. We're not guaranteeing it. Okay. But when you get interest payments adriock, you don't have to pay taxes, it's tax free. So what's critically important here is the government just issues these bonds on behalf of the private company and basically says whoever buys these bonds, you don't have to pay tax.

[Aiden]

So if this company fails, goes belly up.

[Doug]

I still lose my money, you still lose your money. The government is not on the hook for anything.

[Aiden]

Yeah, but it's tax free.

[Doug]

It's tax free. So the only cost to the government is that they are going to lose out on the tax revenue that they would have made from these bonds. Right. So it is, there is tax revenue that is being lost. But then the hope is if this allows a company like Brightline to get to raise $6 billion that they probably wouldn't have otherwise, but they're basically being encouraged by this government forgiveness of the, of taxes on the interest. Then you as an investor are like, oh, I actually would invest in that. That allows the project to get built and now long term is generating way more money, more activity, more tax revenue for everybody. So in theory it is a win, win, win.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Chris]

So there's a, there's also an asterisk on this in that the, this idea rests heavily on the idea of the government picking partners that are expected to fulfill the project. Right? Yeah. And in the case of Brightline, great success story. It worked out. Right. There is an issue where in the past the government has not selected the best private partner. Right. It's not really in the government's interest to let the bond fail, which is part of the, It's a bad Look.

[Aiden]

Right, yeah.

[Chris]

So there have been cases and I had a specific example that I didn't write down. I'm sorry. But there was another infrastructure project in the country a few years ago where the underlying project failed. The company was unable to pay off the bonds, and the government still stepped in, even though they weren't the guarantor. Because if they didn't step in, then the value of the perceived projects down the line would be lower and the likelihood of the projects that they stamp in the future being funded by the private sector would be. Would be lower. So if there's no faith in the performance of those bonds, then the, then the utility of this falls off.

[Aiden]

It's kind of fucked up, though.

[Chris]

I understand that it's a risk.

[Aiden]

You know, that's like now everyone in the future when they invest are calculating the fact that they'll probably get bailed out by the government.

[Chris]

I agree. And I don't know. I don't know how often that happens. I'm just saying there's examples of that being the case for those reasons, but in theory, the government is not supposed to be on the hook.

[Aiden]

Okay, Can I bring up the big question that I have about this public private thing though?

[Doug]

Yes.

[Aiden]

This is awesome. And it was built. And I do think if it was easy, ish. To build a train, the cost of it is not so much the problem and that many private companies would step in and build trains in America. The problem is that how did Florida get past the NIMBYS without a government telling you that you can imminent domain this land or whatever and put a train down? That's why we can't build the train. The train gets blocked. And the reason the California one is blocked at every stage is like somebody sues or there's some, there's some area you can't go through or you can't. You have to build it like in a weird zigzag or you. So I. What I understand, I don't understand how this, this solved that problem. That is, that is why usually you need a government for a train. Because they're the only ones who have the authority to be like, we're going to build a train here. You can't. I don't know. That's my.

[Doug]

So there's a few things. The majority of the stories that I've read about Bright Line, looking into it are largely, aren't we fucking awesome? We made a train. It's like government and Bright Line and people talking about the fact that train got built. So there's Not a ton of criticism of it. And then the follow up to this, which is what is exciting right now. Actually let me get to that first. So the follow up is like they are now doing Bright Line West. And let me actually take the iPad back. So this, real quick, if you look at the screen, this is what the map looks like right now in Florida. You can see it goes from Orlando all the way down to Miami with a bunch of different stops. And it's also going to go west over to Tampa, which is another main city. So like this is a really, really incredible infrastructure for Florida which is this huge growing state for America.

[Aiden]

We don't have this for America.

[Doug]

Right.

[Aiden]

A European fan watching is like, this is a cute thing, right? Yeah. Or whatever, like.

[Doug]

And so they are now doing Brightline West. So the same company is making a actually high speed rail. The one in Florida is not technically high speed. You have to go, I think it's above 124 miles per hour. I have this written somewhere. But they are going to make a train from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. For people who don't live in the Southwest like we do Las Vegas, I'm sure you're aware of huge destination city and Los Angeles. Massive, massive, massive city in the U.S. you know, 15, 20 million people, whatever it is, in the greater area. It is an incredibly popular travel route to go from Los Angeles to Vegas. People go all the time. They go for parties, they go for events, they go for conventions nonstop. This is. And there's basically one highway which is the 15, which if you've ever done this route, you know, it's this long strip of desert. And then if there's an event or anything going on, tens or hundreds of thousands of other people are also driving into Vegas. And you just get stuck for like six hours in the middle of desert on this two lane road. It is a truly miserable experience.

[Chris]

It's awful.

[Doug]

Yeah. And so, you know, a lot of people have done this. There's some crazy number. Okay, yeah, here we go. Nearly 50 million annual trips occur between LA and Las Vegas, 85% of them by car.

[Chris]

Oh my God.

[Doug]

This is an insane number of people doing this drive from LA to Vegas, which without traffic it's like four or five hours. With traffic it's like eight.

[Aiden]

Too bad. There's no better way than driving. Yeah, that's it.

[Doug]

And so as a society, Bright Line has said, like, we think there's an opportunity for a train there. The fact that they've had success in Florida really helps them out. They're going to be doing all electric zero emission trains. It's going to be proper high speed with up to 200 miles per hour. It's going to be like a two hour, 10 minute drive train ride. Instead of this, you know, four to six hour, there's going to be 10 again. This is from them. $10 billion in economic impact, thousand permanent jobs. For me as a California resident, I'm going to use this. They started building in 2024. They're aiming to get it done by 2028, by the Olympics. This is happening now and it's going to be done soon. Incredible. And so then the question is like, how are they doing this? Because California high speed rail has utterly failed and has been, you know, literally like 20 times more expensive.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Doug]

So a couple of things they're doing. Well, one is they're doing, they're using existing transportation quarters as much as possible. So one, this is a major advantage to their credit versus California high speed rail. California was trying to build a new train system through the whole country, through the whole state. Right. And that was going to use some portion of track that's already built, but also lay a whole lot of new stuff in Florida. And then particularly here, they're basically going to use the median of the highway. They're going to build trains that go alongside or basically next to the freeway that's already there. So it's not, they're not doing like 1800s. People are like mining through the mountain with pickaxes. This is like they're using the existing infrastructure and they're building the train tracks there.

[Chris]

Being stuck in Coachella traffic and watching the Las Vegas Shinkansen go by.

[Doug]

Just so they says they're going to do this on the median. So my understanding is you are literally going to be like on the way to Vegas for EDC and you're stuck in stop and go traffic and you're going to see a train shoot by 200 miles an hour and all the people in there are drinking because they don't have to drive. So that's one thing. They're also, they've just been smart around which routes to pick. So the California high speed rail project, massively ambitious this one. Their quote is they're going for routes that are too far to drive but too short to fly. So specifically trying to get these like more narrow things. And then the other piece is that they're private. And so to some degree they are deeply incentivized to just make sure things are moving at all.

[Aiden]

They can work and get done.

[Doug]

Because if, if they aren't getting things done, the project stops. Right. It's done. Whereas California high speed rail, it's like is cost balloon. The state, the federal government will just try to shore more and more money in. And so there's kind of no hard stop to, you know, how they deal with restrictions. But, you know, ultimately it's hard to know. The fact is they've operated, operated really well in Florida. It seems like they're going to do that.

[Aiden]

I mean, this is really cool. I'm glad you brought this story. This is very interesting. Yeah, I like their strategy of going for, you know, relatively small wins to get like, to get momentum. Yeah.

[Doug]

And what's so cool about. So I think what's really valuable about them doing this and trying to do it in a very achievable way is then that addresses the PAB concern you were talking about, Aidan, which is. So this public activity bond, what is so great about it is the US Government isn't on the hook. So with this one Bright Line west, this is a mix basically of It's I believe, 6 billion right now. It's a mix of public activity bonds, that type of bond we talked about earlier, and the federal government just giving the money. So the, the during the Biden administration, Department of Transportation gave the Nevada Department of Transportation, who's like spearheading this, 3 billion for the project. So this is a mix of these public things, but it's still going to be privately operated and run. It's basically the funding is coming from these things. And so this, if you are California or the federal government, you're like, this is great. We have a company, Brightline, who succeeded in Florida. We're going to do these public activity bonds where we issue the bonds on behalf of them. But even if they completely fail and fuck this up, the government does not have to pay. It's simply Brightline who's on the hook. And now there's even collateral they can say of their existing train line. And then the more that this works, you know, hopefully this train, it seems like it's going well. The more that they build this and it keeps expanding, the more credit they have with, oh, we're actually going to deliver. We're good at this on the public activity bonds. And so right now, I mean, supposedly according to them, they're like, we have up to 10 billion more public activity bonds we can issue. They're rationed by the government, so we have up to 10 billion more. And it's like, so they're Just cruising. They're, they're doing incredible at this. And I think this is a really interesting mechanism of government basically facilitating private companies to do a lot. Because this, to be clear, this wouldn't have happened without government support. The private, the Public Activity bonds were what allowed Brightline to create the Florida stretch, and it's what's allowing them to create this stretch. But then the private company gets to run this in a way that is beneficial to all parties. Right. And even if they fail, the government, the taxpayer is not on the hook. So I think it's a really, really interesting system and one I like a lot. There's obviously situations where you want the government to just fully fund a project, but ones like this where they can come in and basically unlock the ability for a private company to get started and then they run it from there and they're responsible, I think is, is incredibly valuable. So I, I just think this is, this is really.

[Aiden]

I want to look more into the, the, the land that they got for the Florida one. It seems like this one, it makes. There's like a lot of desert land. They're just, they're building right along the highway. It seems like easy to get to. No one's in the way.

[Chris]

They're actually releasing it all from Disney.

[Aiden]

Disney owns it all. Disney benefits, I guess. I mean, that's, I just made Orlando easy. I'm.

[Doug]

They're picking easy wins. And also, it's worth, it's worth clarifying here. If you look at the map, it's not going from Las Vegas to la. It's going from Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga, which is about an hour east of L. A.

[Aiden]

So it's funny, half the trip would be drive if you were in west la.

[Chris]

I was going to say half the.

[Aiden]

Trip is driving to Rancho and then on a train to Vegas.

[Chris]

The drive to Rancho is so long, dude.

[Doug]

So it sounds like it's from la, but it's not really. And if you're wondering why, it's because, well, it suddenly gets a lot harder to make a train if you're going. That's what I'm saying, from Ranch Cucamonga, which is like you're getting into actual city, it's not a desert, into the heart of la. They're talking about potentially extending it to Union Station. So LA does have a train from Union Station in downtown to Rancho Cucamonga. So in theory, you can drive from west LA to downtown, which is like 30 or 40 minutes. Then you get on a train there to the Bright Line Station which would be another, I don't know, 30 minutes and then you take a two high speed. Yeah. And then you take the high speed to Vegas. So. So this is actually a good example of like it's not like they're going for the most ambitious things where they have to get a bunch of land rights.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Doug]

They're going for the easy wins. But I would much rather this happen than nothing.

[Aiden]

This is really cool actually.

[Doug]

We made a thing and I think.

[Aiden]

Americans experiencing the benefit of trains is so good to get momentum for trains. But I just, I, and I'm usually the guy that's like, you know, let's get some more competition, private sectors up in there. I think for trains if the government is not deeply involved for the high density areas, you can't get it done.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

They have to override the ability of everyone to sue you at every station.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

When you're otherwise you can't or they don't.

[Doug]

And then the thing doesn't get built. California high speed rail. So and then one, one final thing before we move on is just the numbers on this in terms of cost is just truly mind boggling. So Brightline Florida, they built the whole thing for $6 billion and it's 235 miles, that's about 25 million per mile. So per mile of track light about $25 million it cost. Okay, so then Brightline west, this one, it is more expensive. So it's going to be $12 billion in total for 218 miles, it's about 55 million per mile. California high speed rail is going to be $256 million per mile because it's better.

[Chris]

So it'll be the best damn train.

[Doug]

This state's ever seen. Which and again just to remind people.

[Chris]

So I do think, I do think one thing to note on this, at least as far as the Florida project goes, is that they didn't they. And part of the reason why it's not high speed rail is they used a lot of existing train infrastructure there and built on top of it. So there was like rail in places that was used again. I think part of the reason why this project is more expensive because they're building out new track to support it. The other thing that's interesting here is a part of this success story is, I mean depending on how you look at it is that the stigma around public rail in the country and funding public rail projects oftentimes because you'd need to go to the public to vote on it or to find a way to fund it. The I think people have very low expectations for the government's ability to execute a project like that. I think pointing to something like California high speed rail as an example, people look at that, people look at the inefficiencies of something like Amtrak and they're like, this feels like a waste of money. I don't really believe in this. I'm not willing to vote on it. But the beauty of this project is that it kind of cuts through that by utilizing a public, like a public action through these incentive public activity bonds and to greenlight a privately operated project that allows a lot of people to see it in a new light, that ultimately results in a new train being produced. And I do think the pushback there could be, oh well, the government should just be able to do this. The government should be able to build trains and high speed rail effectively in this country like governments do in a lot of other places. But the argument against this is that we have tried that for decades. It is in America so far. And not because it wouldn't be successful or that it couldn't be successful in some way. It's just that we have tried for so long. And rather than continuing to ram our head into the wall, hoping we figure it out, let's try something this way and build something hybrid approach, which I do think is cool. I would rather, it's like, I would rather see the best version of this done a different way. But I'm wrestling with the reality of what those projects have looked like in the United States. And I rather have something like this, even if it goes to Rancho Cucamonga. I will say one big knock to this project that I admittedly was excited about until this moment is if I'm being honest, if I'm in like West LA or like North LA, I could buy like a $70, like Southwest flight out of like Burbank to go to Vegas. Like driving a Rancho and getting on this train is not, if you live in Rancho, you got this, you have this in Ontario Airport, you're living the dream. But the problem is, for people who don't know LA very well, Rancho Cucamonga, as somebody who used to live there a long time ago, is far away. It is, this would not be a convenient thing to get to. And I think that is the one letdown. And it sucks that even for Bright Line, this company that is managing to navigate this so successfully, they can't find a way to like make this project get further into the city. Not blaming them. I wonder what the barriers Are. Because that makes me sad as someone who would love to like more consistently use this.

[Aiden]

I mean, I can imagine every inch you go deeper into the city from Rancho, the lawsuits would just skyrocket. Skyrocket every single inch. So this is so cool. I think this is really cool. And the fact that people in Florida are getting on a fucking train at an affordable price and using it and enjoying it and perhaps changing their views on trains is awesome.

[Doug]

I hope it's a cultural shift. Yeah. Of some. You know, even if this thing only goes to Rancho Cucamonga, it's like there's going to be some percentage of people who go, this is fucking awesome. And are hopefully will be more receptive to other train projects.

[Chris]

I mean, you said it only takes two hours. That's what the finish, two hours. That's amazing.

[Doug]

Yeah, I would still do that. I, you know, I would drive because I love trains.

[Aiden]

Go gamble in, figure this out.

[Doug]

I'm a big train fan, so.

[Chris]

No, this is, this is really cool to see though, the way it's working out though.

[Aiden]

Well, you've been speaking your mind, Aiden especially, and that segues us perfectly into your topic, which is free speech.

[Doug]

You've been saying you don't think we should hear about this. Aiden's got a lot of dangerous opinions.

[Chris]

I do, I do. You know, and he's been trying to. Silence.

[Aiden]

Silence. We've all been trying to silence you. But I want to hear you speak loud and proud about free speech because you want to say it.

[Chris]

Time to shut this whole show down.

[Doug]

Be funny if in the YouTube edit for this your mic is muted the entire rest of the show.

[Chris]

Okay.

[Aiden]

There's a loud bleep.

[Chris]

I don't have as much to. I want this conversation to be somewhat open ended and I was thinking about a way to introduce this for a while, but we exist. I think in general, I think most people have this idea that free speech is very important. It's something that we all value. I think regardless of whether you are in the political spectrum, most people that would argue that free speech is important, I think the way people employ that value somewhat selectively in certain situations is people take it in different directions depending on maybe how they feel about certain things or like what they believe. But in general, people, people like having that as a baseline. There's not a lot of like, let's repeal the First Amendment people, you know. Sure. But we live in a time where the Internet exists and I think this has magnified the use of speech and the way we view speech in in many, many different ways. It doesn't. What I would point to is like an argument that I've heard against guns or like the. The Second amendment is they wrote this when the musket had to be reloaded and it took, you know, two minutes. And now we have, like, automatic rifles. And obviously they weren't writing about that. And I would kind of argue that in the context of writing the First Amendment, the way speech exists in society has just changed a lot. I'm not saying that's bad or good. I'm not telling you guys which. Which way to fall on that. It's more like we kind of have the machine gun equivalent of speech. In terms of how you.

[Aiden]

Twitter is the AR15 of speech.

[Chris]

Kind of, yeah. The way you can wield and distribute speech online is drastically different than the way you were able to communicate with people hundreds of years ago.

[Aiden]

So when I tweeted a picture of Jack Black in a Lakers outfit yesterday saying chicken jockey, I want you to.

[Chris]

Think about how much. How much time and effort it would have taken to distribute that same piece of information. Ben Franklin, chicken jockey distributed on horseback with the picture of Jack Black at the Lakers game.

[Aiden]

It would have been quite an undertaking. You're correct.

[Chris]

And I think with the way we view speech online, the way, like, the way people choose to wield it, a lot of companies that operate the platforms that we talk on or governments have chosen to moderate and look at speech in different ways. So even within one company, like Facebook, right, years ago, they were in the direction of like, fact checking, direct content moderation, and even with all those things, massive issues within the way that Facebook handled speech. A famous example, I would say, is the Rohingya genocide, if you guys don't know about that. Where I think it was in Myanmar, there's an ongoing genocide of Muslims in the country that is primarily, or like, largely, sorry, largely linked to hate speech towards that ethnic group spread on Facebook. And it was a huge thing that came up during Mark Zuckerberg's first set of congressional trials or like interviews he did, like years ago where. And then now they. They have gone in a completely different direction where Mark Zuckerberg announced that they're getting rid of those fact checkers in America and content moderation. And they're moving in the direction Twitter did with community notes and choosing to moderate speech in very different ways. They're pulling back a lot of the moderation and saying we're going to allow a lot more. And that's also the direction Twitter moved in in terms of how much they allow on the platform. Right. And then there's also messaging apps that have taken very different approaches to this. So one app I would call out is because Telegram very famously does not really moderate any of the messages or content being sent on that platform. A lot of the appeal of the platform is that you're sending private encrypted messages to only the people you intend to send them to. And that security is part of the appeal of the platform. But the trade off when you start having something like that is, oh, well, surprise. Who has groups and like message boards on Telegram or who's distributing information via Telegram? Well, Isis, you know, criminals, drug traffickers, child traffickers, the. All of these like criminal enterprises that have taken advantage of the fact that there's no moderation using this tool. Right. So I with. And part of that, an interesting case in France recently that I kind of wanted to sign this off on is Pavel Durov, who's a Russian guy, who's this guy who made Telegram, who originally made like the Russian version of Facebook, basically. Then he made Telegram later he was arrested in France in 2024 on the charges of basically lack of. Not by choosing to not moderate Telegram, they charged him as liable for a lot of facilitating that content on the platform. Right. There's a lot of directions this conversation can go, but I want your guys's opinion on general, you know, first thought opinions on free speech online. Not free speech in general necessarily, but free speech on the Internet and how you guys think that should or should not be moderated. I know, that's super.

[Doug]

Five minutes. I think we can solve this. We might have to go a little over.

[Aiden]

Don't get it. We'll solve it, but it might take.

[Doug]

Solve it in five minutes and have a couple bonus minutes at the end.

[Aiden]

And then a beer because it'll be easy.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

What do you think?

[Doug]

So I think first off, there's probably a distinction that's worth mentioning between legal and illegal speech. Right. So illegal speech is, you know, if you're planning a terrorist attack, like that's from my understanding that's. You can't do that in the U.S. right? You can't. So there's a difference between saying like criticizing a political figure in a distasteful way versus saying we are planning to blow up an embassy. Right. So there is a distinction there. So I think the Telegram thing is probably more about are you facilitating people doing illegal activity versus somebody, you know, saying a bunch of slurs on Twitter or Facebook or whatever it is, or like or criticizing a race, like with the example you said that's not illegal is my understanding is to criticize at least I don't know in that country. But in the US I mean that's.

[Chris]

One of the questions to answer here, right? In that country it's, it's not right. The idea of like spewing hate speech about one particular race and then that resulting in violence later on towards that group. Maybe the speech might not necessarily have been illegal. And then on the other end, right. States could choose to be way heavier in what they treat as illegal. Like China has a way more strict policy around what you can post on the Internet there.

[Doug]

Right. So yeah. So then obviously the question is within the bounds of legal speech if for example, you are criticized, I don't know if you're saying bunch of racist shit all day long and then that. And then there's a bunch of action and hate and illegal action by individuals against that racial group. Are you responsible for it? Right. And that then is where it gets really murky of like that's legal speech. But then should it be allowed because it's, you know, dangerous or has knock on consequences or whatever. So I think it's, there's an obvious separation of like I don't think ISIS should be allowed to plan terrorist attacks using American infrastructure or software or anything like that. Within league.

[Chris]

I actually think ISIS should get on WhatsApp. It's weird that they're on Telegram.

[Doug]

That is true. Yeah.

[Aiden]

She get on Instagram, dude, let's be.

[Chris]

On a more available platform.

[Doug]

It's confusing to sign up for Telegram. It'll be a lot easier for requests.

[Aiden]

Pipeline into ISIS if they're having fun on Instagram, like if they're sipping a martini or something in a well shot, well lit environment.

[Doug]

So, so I have a couple core points.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Doug]

So the one thing I mean, I think really the question is like should tech companies and, or the government stop certain viewpoints from being expressed on these platforms? So we've seen examples of this, right, where that did happen during what Trump administration and Biden, right, where there was some degree of like Twitter saying we're gonna. What was the thing they did? They like marked it as like this is sensitive with COVID right? Yeah, it was like so multiple social media platforms said, okay, this isn't, this isn't a legal speech saying you're questioning Covid or whatever, but we're gonna mark this and de. Reach it. Right. Like reduce the amount of reach. My concern, I tend to be more of a free speech Absolutist. My concern is that if you're deciding that certain viewpoints are dangerous and need to be censored, a human being has to make that decision. And that means in most cases, either an unelected person running a tech company like Mark Zuckerberg, I'm not a fan of that. Personally. I don't like the idea that, that that guy just gets to decide what everybody is saying and thinking, particularly given that they've been illustrated to just kind of like flip flop back and forth with whatever the political wins are. Mark Zuckerberg has very explicitly done that. Or somebody like Elon who's just, you know, extremely political. Right. Then like having that be the viewpoint that he's doing everything, or you have politicians doing it, deciding what is allowed or what should be, what should be censored. And in either case, it's like that, that sounds great. If your team is in charge. Like, if you feel like, okay, there's a really dangerous section of speech going on right now, let's say, about race, and your team is currently in charge of the government, you're like, we should take action to go against this, at least in our political system, where we are not a dictatorship, at some point that changes to the other political party and then they just start persecuting against whatever your team wanted. Right. And we see that right now that's currently happening. Right. Over the last four years. Like, like things the government facilitated, the censorship or encouraged of things like Covid or let's say trans rights, things like that, where those type of subjects had diminished reach on a number of social media platforms. Unclear exactly how involved the government was, but that was the case. Right.

[Chris]

I mean, my understanding is that for the specific issues you're citing at least, I would say at least the COVID one. Basically, during the, I don't know about the Trump administration, during the Biden administration, there was pressure to remove disinformation from these sites under. And I think this is part of the conversation is it can be taken the action and inaction can be interpreted in bad faith, like both ways. Right. The issue is that they're trying to do their job, which I would argue, which is save as many lives as possible, prevent this disinformation about something like Ivermectin spreading, which is. I. If you're listening to this podcast right now and you think Ivermectin was a adequate response to Covid, I promise you.

[Doug]

At 5K patrons, the underlying is going to do Ivermectin.

[Chris]

The underlying study. I know what you're thinking, even if you looked at the studies. I know what study you're talking about. You're talking about it all started with the study in Egypt. All the data was debunked. I promise you, I promise you you're wrong about that specific thing. I can't spend a bunch of time on that right now. But, but they basically asked for disinformation about COVID The COVID vaccine and like remedy like unproven remedies to Covid to be removed from the site. They couldn't legally demand that they do that from my understanding. But they pressured them to do so and then, I mean loosely understand that they complied. Like they basically complied with the pressure to do so. And there's a question of like whether or not it's ethical for the government to do that. And if it feels so, I don't know, it's weird. It does come down to the person in charge or like what your viewpoint is about things. I would argue.

[Doug]

So real quick, just to follow this up, just example, right now, Trump is now in charge. Right. And that admin is administration is in theory also free speech. But they are cracking down on your ability to criticize Israel. Right. Like that's now it's like if you're a university and you're allowing this type of protest on campus, we're going to remove federal funding. Right. So they are like, like they're doing their own sort of like we want to stop certain types of free speech and we're going to take these actions against it. And I'm not a big. I would rather we just say look, we got to do free speech and improve this through conversation which we can get to more of. Why I think that's, that's better. Rather than saying whoever is currently in charge gets to decide what's allowed or not. That feels like a really bad slippery slope. And I have a hard time imagining how you trust people in charge to do this over the long term.

[Aiden]

I tend to agree with you. But I think it is interesting that we are in such a challenging time digitally in that it's not just people in good faith saying their opinions on what they want.

[Doug]

Yes.

[Aiden]

But that you can create at scale now with AI, yes. Realistic sounding bots to push any narrative.

[Doug]

More easy to influence many, many, many.

[Aiden]

Many people at scale. And so it's such an. I don't know the answer is when.

[Doug]

I really don't have an answer.

[Aiden]

A thought out solution to it.

[Doug]

I think the YouTube comments will determine whatever most upvoted Comment is of this episode is the answer.

[Chris]

I think if you actually think this issue through there it's borderline impossible to answer at least right now, basically fully accounting for this principle that we all value. But in this Internet landscape, with everything in the future coming towards us, how can you really like think the issue through and come to a solution that we're all happy with? I mean there's not. I think that's the simple way of putting it is like there is no perfect solution to this problem. One big thing that I think about if I go back to my machine gun analogy is even if you're communicating in something in good faith online and it's not a message that is meant to be nefarious, it's not something be expanded on upon upon by bots, you still things being able to spread through an algorithm and delivered to people like selectively or the way content can spread online is so much different than writing a book or a pamphlet or speaking to somebody like it was back in the, back in the old day. And I think that's the danger to me. And I realized that who is the arbiter of what is dangerous is and it is kind of the impossible question.

[Aiden]

I want to bring up this. Grab the issue because then have to.

[Doug]

Assign a person to make that call.

[Aiden]

This is Anastasia Maria Lupus. I don't know who she is. I actually think she's got pretty wild views. But let's just. This is her views on X. As you can see there's you know, hundreds of thousands per day. And then right around here, December, she has a fee with Elon Musk. And then that's her views now they just instantly drop. And so there's a very clear. If you look at this chart, just draw some random line drawing that penis I was trying to drop. Yeah. And so you can see with this line.

[Doug]

Oh yeah. Oh, we're finally using the telestrator.

[Aiden]

That shit looked like the plummeted first Khalifa instantly. And it feels like there's a back end thing there where this guy now has the power if not to eliminate this person's freedom of speech than their freedom of reach.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

To where they cannot. And again, I probably don't agree with anything she said, but I just think it's an interesting thing from a free speech absolutist to be able to cut someone's ability to get an audience.

[Chris]

Yeah, he's not a free speech. Absolutely.

[Aiden]

Yes, of course.

[Chris]

I mean this is.

[Aiden]

But this is a problem. The algorithm is another layer on top of free speech.

[Chris]

Where is it fair to ask the question? Is it fair to ask the question? What right does she have to that platform? This didn't even exist 30 years ago. Free speech was written like free speech. The constitutional amendment was written so long before. To what degree is this.

[Aiden]

That's a great question.

[Chris]

Are you entitled to this?

[Aiden]

Again, it's a private company. They can do what they want with it. Right. I think that's a fair point. The probably the problem is as we enter into a more digital era, it's like saying if the government cuts off your access to your phone, if you don't have access to a phone or Internet, that's fine, you don't need that. But it's like in modern society you do.

[Chris]

I kind of. I see the direct. I think for me this is. Right. I'm coming at this personally. Phone and Internet, not akin to Twitter.

[Aiden]

Maybe not Twitter, but I'm saying if there's only three major social platforms on which all of our town square has become.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

Your ability to not speak on those is suddenly a major limiting factor in your ability to get your, your voice heard.

[Doug]

Yes. And then all. I mean, I think we have a very interesting case study of this, which is Trump, which is that after January 6, he was banned from all the major social media websites and we all had this exact same conversation. Right. So one of the, I think that whole experience actually made me feel more strongly about the importance of free speech because it felt great in the moment of, ok, Trump isn't on Twitter saying these, saying this kind of rhetoric anymore, and then over the next four years he comes with this absolutely unbelievable political comeback and is now in control of like the entire government and doing crazy shit. Right. So he is an example of where deplatforming utterly fails because you don't stop his speech from happening. You just sort of make him a martyr and then just like festers in other areas. Right. And so I'm not convinced based on that case that we've saw and the unbelievable level of bounce back that happened after that, that deplatforming somebody from these tech things is even a way to stop those views. It reaffirmed the, you know, admittedly, probably very naive belief and hope that the way to solve these things is more conversation, not less. Again, I acknowledge that's probably very optimistic. But it's when you see something like this, it's like, dude, even in this example where you had Trump and, you know, let's say you think he's. This was, you know, this was critical to Saving America from what he was saying. It didn't work at all. Right. It completely flipped this and got him so much momentum. Same with Tucker Carlson. Tucker was like, you know, the most influential Fox host. They deplatformed him or they fired him. AOC had a tweet that said it was something along the lines of deplatforming works. We got Tucker removed, and I was like, okay, let's see what happens. And now he's this wildly successful podcast host with no. With no bars on what he's doing. There's no, like, limits anymore. So he goes and interviews Putin. Right. And so that's another example to me where, like, it's viewed as, like, this person is dangerous. Let's shut him off from this sort of mainstay digital town squares, let's say. And that doesn't seem to stop them at all. If anything, it does the opposite. That's, again, what affirms for me, like, I think it's got to be more conversation, not this thing right here where you can see on the telestrator, it went down. If you look very carefully.

[Aiden]

Yeah, yeah.

[Doug]

I. I'm. Yeah, this is this, obviously.

[Aiden]

So it's tough because I nuanced. Yeah. The nuances that a lot of the speech I hate and wish didn't exist.

[Doug]

Right, Right.

[Aiden]

But I also. I really have a visceral, like, gut reaction of distrust or distaste when one person or one government can silence me or someone. Like, I don't like the idea of having any limit. I don't like the idea if. If I said Buck Trump or Elon on Twitter that I could be deplatformed or silenced or have my reach decrease. I don't like that idea. It makes me uncomfortable. And I wish no one had that power to unilaterally except Mark Zuckerberg. And Zuckerberg should have it because he's got cool hair.

[Chris]

Now, only. I was going to say only Mark with his new look, though.

[Aiden]

Well, yeah, only if he's got the chain and the windsurfing.

[Chris]

I don't want PAB Mark Zuckerberg telling me what to not say. Okay, I have. I have a couple responses. The first thing is that the argument you're making can be made both ways. And I think that is what makes this problem so difficult to deal with. With is that if you. If you ban speech or you deplatform people, you immediately feed into the conspiratorial narrative that you're subjugating information. You're pushing one side down and not Allowing them to like have the time to talk. And you create a martyr out of a figure you've de platformed and you.

[Doug]

Prevent other people from, from involving, engaging with them and helping suppress that growth.

[Chris]

And you potentially fuel the movement of whatever it is that way. But the other problem is if you don't do anything and you don't moderate the way the platforms are structured does not do anything to allow the discussion you're asking for to happen, in my opinion. And we can see that the example I gave you was the Rohingya genocide, which is this, this devastating genocide in Myanmar. And, and that was on the other scenario where basically no moderation was happening. Facebook's big problem was outside of English speaking Facebook, the moderation was very poor for a very long time. So none of the hate speech that helped fuel that genocide was being looked at or moderated for a very long period of time and was what allowed that situation to spiral and build out of control or a huge part of why that was. And I think you can point to a lot of other. Like if I were to use the COVID example, I would say if they didn't do anything and you didn't take any action at all. Well, are you letting the algorithm feed and build these conversations about this topic and this bad advice that like harms people so directly? I think there, there, it's why it's so difficult. There's no win in either of these situations. Both of them allow the problem to fester and build in different ways. And I do think that ideally talking about things over extended period of periods of time is how you gain understanding.

[Doug]

And like you can almost say that podcasting is how to change the problem.

[Chris]

Exactly so.

[Aiden]

And well said, Doug.

[Chris]

So don't listen to any other media, just listen to us. And the issue with that is the way the platforms are structured, the way the incentive structures work. Work doesn't feed into that at all. I think it feeds into way more polarized opinions and arguing and existing within the echo chamber you already exist within. It does not promote long winded.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I mean you could say the deeper problem is social media itself. You could say that.

[Doug]

That, yeah, they design on a software level how conversations get.

[Aiden]

And then the deeper problem in that is the human brain, you know, and then yeah, we're fucked up. Monkey brain. When you get angry, you get interested.

[Chris]

In your and these situations. Like they don't. It's not that removing the Internet necessarily solves the underlying problems. I think human monkey brain is like at and like terrible people have Been able to push their agenda forward and move create movements with thousands or millions of people at many times throughout history. They didn't need Twitter to fucking do it. I'm not.

[Aiden]

I'm not ignoring pot had Twitter. I'm not 100 sure, but I think he was mobilized. He was way ahead of me. I think he was dank memes on Twitter.

[Doug]

That was Justin tv. It was before.

[Chris]

I. I just think I there it. I almost want to loop it back to the authoritarian, benevolent authoritarian conversation from like one of the first episodes where part of me is like, dude, the. The best solution is like the right guy. The right guy, you know, but nobody ever will ever agree on, like, who the right guy is or whether or not the right guy can be corrupted.

[Doug]

You just want to be subjugated. We get it, dude.

[Chris]

I just want to Lee Kuan Yew to come back.

[Aiden]

I just want to say.

[Chris]

But that's. It's kind of. It's a silly conclusion to come to, right?

[Doug]

We give him a trump gold card, we get him over to America, we get him to start taking over easy.

[Aiden]

Bring back to life.

[Chris]

And then I don't know. Obviously this is like a. It's like a core tenant of like, democratic society and like getting along with your neighbor and voting on things and figuring things out. Like that is any communal society that is dependent on the other people around you. I think deals will have to deal with this problem in some way. Right? There's just. It's so big.

[Aiden]

You know what shocked me? Have you seen that? If you go on, let's say, for example, Instagram or TikTok, and you see a viral. First of all, your feed is already algorithmic, so you're seeing things that you most likely will agree with.

[Doug]

Right.

[Aiden]

But what I found out is if you click on. Let's say there's a viral video of a guy playing a video game, I think, and the girlfriend, like, takes the controller away or whatever. Yeah, this is a viral video. And then some girl was explaining how she saw the same video on her app and then on her boyfriend's app, not only were they getting the video for different reasons, but the top comments were algorithmically generated. So he scrolls to the top comments and it's all saying, wow, what a bitch. Or what, you know, whatever. Like it's already feeding him, and so he feels like that's the opinion of the world, like, that's the top of the cons. She looks into it and it's like, wow, this guy's another loser or whatever. Like she was getting different top over the comments. So not only are we not able in a town square on what we see, but we're also being fed the idea that the entire world is behind us in these opinions. You don't even see dissenting opinions on your. That's crazy. I mean that. That is a recipe and that's what we're in of complete polarization and disaster. I don't that that's the deeper problem I think of all this, whether or.

[Chris]

Not it exacerbates all the existing problems that, you know, all of these problems with free speech exist no matter what. Yeah, but it's. Social media amplifies by like a thousand.

[Aiden]

It's it. It really is like kerosene on the. On the small match.

[Chris]

And that's kind of what I mean is like what. What I was alluding to with my question here is what I'm not saying Elon should be doing that I don't like it. But what right does she have to that platform in the sense that maybe we shouldn't have social media at all? I don't know to be honest. And I know that's not going to happen anytime soon. And I know I'm on a podcast that utilizes the Internet to like publish itself and make money.

[Aiden]

It's a little different.

[Chris]

I do think that. I do think that social media is maybe low. Like maybe we just all should now it. And that should be the agreement.

[Doug]

I think we've discussed it. But just to explicitly tie it to the way they're made. The algorithm that runs a social media platform is a machine learning algorithm that is trying to optimize for keeping people on the site and engaged. Right. So every time it over time is trained on how people are behaving on the website and every time somebody clicks certain types of content or engages with it, they'll be like, oh, that's what this person wants. That gets more people. That is a good. We reward the algorithm. And then what human beings get triggered and titillated by is angry conversations and tribalism and things that you already agree with that hits you against another group. And so if you are a tech company and you're like, we want people to use our software, you're going to let the AI algorithm push everybody in that direction because that will make your app bigger. And then listen, the reason the title.

[Aiden]

And thumb of this episode is something about us freaking out over student loans or something and not a nuanced discussion about trains and free speech is because of algorithm.

[Doug]

Can we try that? Can we try these discussions on trains. Multi thumbnails. Okay. Can we. Okay.

[Aiden]

10 out of like 10.

[Doug]

Give me an hour. Okay. On like Saturday where we change it to a nuanced discussion about trains and we see how it goes.

[Chris]

We just see how it goes.

[Doug]

We see how it goes.

[Chris]

Wait, I this actually I have a solution. I think I can wrap up this.

[Aiden]

Whole thing because we are a little late.

[Doug]

You know what's discussing about trains where we're all going train.

[Chris]

We scrap Mr.

[Aiden]

Beast in the window.

[Chris]

We scrap all of this. We get rid of all the social media platforms. They're all gone. All of these private companies are gone. We get the government runs social media and they give it to one institution. Amtrak. Amtrak runs our social media platform.

[Aiden]

Gets on trains every day. 7:45 New arrival.

[Chris]

And it like doesn't work most of the time.

[Doug]

And it's the only discussion happens at the comments. So everybody the comments on like the. The northeast quarter train is running 20 minutes to like you.

[Chris]

You can only communicate in the comment section of updates about rail delays.

[Aiden]

We solved it.

[Doug]

Or if we're ending social media. We did solve it. It's like to communicate with another person you got to put a letter onto the train and it gets taken to their house.

[Chris]

You have to utilize the network of trains to send written letters. Okay.

[Doug]

Yeah. An Amtrak run train based postal service instead of social media.

[Aiden]

Yeah, that solved it.

[Doug]

All right, well can I end with one?

[Aiden]

Yeah, yeah.

[Doug]

Sappy story and person I like that makes. I think it is informed. My hope for more conversation being good is have you guys heard of Daryl Davis? He's this black blues musician who is famous for con for having a bunch of Ku Klux Klan members leave the Klan because of him. You like might have seen, there's like, there's videos about it.

[Chris]

I do know about this guy.

[Doug]

So he is I think just incredible. And so he's. He basically has, you know, over this career of like doing music started to interact with Ku Klux Klan members and I believe the southeast of the country and then started to just be friends with them. And it was, he literally just was like let me come to my place. Like let's just meet my family, let's talk out or let's talk this out. And just. And just has had these long conversations and over the course of many years there's. When I last heard of this a couple years ago, it was 200 people had left the clan because after months or years of talking to him, being friends with him, they were like, this doesn't make sense. My racist worldview does not line up with what I am seeing and engaging.

[Aiden]

With lived experience with this.

[Doug]

With his lived experience with this guy. And if you listen to him talk, he's done various interviews and stuff, he's just like, the key is to. You can't go into these conversations trying to change their mind. You have to be genuinely interested and listen to them and understand. And then over time, your natural presence and your natural perspective will help challenge their point of view. But it takes the willingness to just truly empathize with them and try to understand their point of view. And it's the absolute antithesis of social media. Right.

[Aiden]

In every way.

[Chris]

It is one of those things where it's like, you hear about this guy and it's something that you could never, like, ask of somebody or recommend that they do, but the fact that he's doing it is so truly heroic, admirable. And then he has the. It's funny because he probably doesn't look at it in this way, but, like, such crazy results. It's like, okay, well, you changed these, like, 200 people's minds and, like, took them out.

[Doug]

There was, like, there's like, notable. A clan leader that left and left a vacuum in this one area of the United States of Leadership for the Ku Klux Klan because the leadership was leaving because they were friends with Daryl and were like, this doesn't make sense. And he has these robes that they've given him. So he keeps the robes. Yeah, he collects the robes. Like Pokemon cards.

[Chris]

Like fucking scalps.

[Doug]

KKK scouts kill, dude. I mean, his KD ratio is crazy on the kkk.

[Aiden]

His K convert ratio is crazy.

[Doug]

So I think it's a. It's like a heart story. It's beautiful. And it's one of those things I come back to of, like, I. It's probably naive and oversimplified, but I just. I hope and believe that increased conversation with people, even who you deeply disagree with, even who have horrible views like the kkk, it's like. Like, hopefully that's the best way because I don't. I don't know of any other success story like that of changing people's minds. I don't think social media is necessarily going to change that guy's mind in some rural part of Georgia who joined the kk.

[Chris]

Yeah, I don't think social media is. I don't think social media is the way. If I think that the only way you can, like, change people's minds about anything is, like, connecting with them. Very, very mean.

[Aiden]

Like a really effective we.

[Doug]

We create a Daryl Davis AI and send it to every KKK member on an Optimus Tesla robot.

[Aiden]

Hey, I'm Darryl.

[Chris]

Wait, I have a question. I have a question. In the episode briefly, when they did the big announcement, when they had the big event and they had the robots serving the dream, those were just people in the robot costumes.

[Doug]

They weren't people in the robot costumes. They were people remotely controlling the robot.

[Aiden]

Controlling them.

[Chris]

Okay, so it was a real robot.

[Aiden]

It was a real robot. But there's a guy.

[Chris]

Okay, paying the guy $15 an hour to operate the barista room.

[Doug]

We paid.

[Chris]

We are automating it.

[Doug]

Daryl Davis is remotely controlling the robotics clan member.

[Aiden]

I feel like it loses some of that human connection.

[Doug]

Yeah, no, I think. I think we can commoditize this for.

[Aiden]

Sure. That's a good idea.

[Chris]

I think on that note, with the student loans and the free speech thing, because those are like, I think deeply personal topics to everybody. Also, you know, if you have a really nice anecdote about Bright Line too, to be honest.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Chris]

Deeply personal, feel free to share it with us because I would love to hear people's opinions about one free speech. This topic. Which one is one that's so dynamic? I think one about your student loans, because I know a ton of people are in the prime, like, age demographic where you're dealing with that right now and what your personal stories with that are, and if you've been on any cool trains recently. So.

[Doug]

Oh, and a real quick plug for the Patreon as a reminder, that still exists and it's growing and there's a bunch of extra stuff there and more stuff coming. We're doing an extra thing every month. I mean, every week. Excuse me.

[Aiden]

Yeah, last episode we had a really good talk about Steam as a platform and gaming monopolies, and the guy I worked in the game with dropped in, left a huge comment, thinking his thoughts. It was pretty cool.

[Doug]

Nice. Yes. Good stuff.

[Aiden]

All right, see you guys.

[Doug]

Problem solved.

[Aiden]

Bye.