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- [00:01]
Dave Smith
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- [01:23]
Robbie Bernstein
Doing well. How are you Mr. Smith?
- [01:25]
Dave Smith
Doing good, doing good. Can't complain. Few days away from the new year here. Counting down the end of 2024 which has been a wild one, quite, quite an incredible year. And I'm sure we'll, we'll do some type of. I was just thinking about today, the kind of part of the problem traditions. So we gotta, we'll do an end of the year episode and then you know what we've done is a before January 20th, we got to do the Legacy of Joe Biden episode where we go over his presidency, the highs and the lows. So we got some fun stuff coming up. I did. Oh and then of course we'll be on the road for all of 2025. Comic Dave Smith.com to find all of me and Rob's road dates together and Robbie the fire.com for all of Rob's solo headlining shows. All right, so I wanted to talk about today we're recording a late night episode. Wanted to talk about our boy Vivek Ram Swami setting the Internet on fire as well as Elon Musk. The, the headlines across all types of corporate and independent outlets are about this Kind of friction in the broader MAGA movement where people are fighting over H1B visas and American culture. And so I thought we would come in and kind of talk about some of that stuff because there is a lot to talk about there. I sent you Vivek Ramaswamy's tweet. Rob, I know you're a big Saved by the Bell fan. You were very offended, deeply offended by that. I did. So I saw this tweet yesterday and I did, I will say it, I thought it was interesting and it kind of made me think. I did not entirely agree with it, but I did. I was like, oh, this is kind of an interesting thought provoking conversation that Vivek is starting here. And then all day today on Twitter, I've just seen people furious about it. So I was like, good, good. I think it did its job. It started a good conversation where we all yell at each other about who's really MAGA or something like that. Any. I don't know, Rob, any. Any thoughts? We could start with the vague tweet. Or do you want to maybe start with just kind of the H1B visas and the tension between the tech world and Trump? I'll let you pick. Where do you want to dig in first?
- [03:50]
Robbie Bernstein
I have a lot on all of this, but we could start. We could start with the visas. I do think that there's something fascinating that if I'm sitting down and I'm watching a basketball game, we can understand, hey, I'd like to watch the best players in the world. And it's so important for me to be entertained and be able to watch the best players in the world that if you're the best in the world, well, we'd like to have you here. We'd like for you to be a part of our infrastructure of the NBA. We want everyone to know that we've got the best league in the world. So it seems like there's no problem getting a visa. If you're a pro athlete or an entertainer and you're in the category of best in the world, it makes no sense why for every other profession, we wouldn't extend the exact same courtesy. Why would I want the best in the world to be somewhere else working for somebody else? If the best in the world want to come here and work for our companies and participate in our economy, who on earth is saying no to that? And if you're already going to accept that it's kind of true of every single job, though there is.
- [04:50]
Dave Smith
There's no question that there is logic to that. And I think it's an important thing that there's. Look, I want to go through this because I actually. I do see several different angles to this. I agree with what you're saying, and I think it's one of the things where there is a tendency to oftentimes on the populist right, there's a tendency to, like, downplay the importance of economics. And I think that that's a really dangerous game to go down. I believe, like, as Ludwig von Mises said, that economic laws exist whether you recognize them or not. The analogy in my mind is kind of like if you were saying, hey, I don't. I'm not interested in paying attention to gravity. It's like, okay, but if you're jumping out windows, you really better factor gravity into this because it's. That force exists whether you like it or not. And it's a very important one. I think it's easy for people in the dissident right, particularly in today's environment, in, in America, with what America's been for, like, let's just say the last 10 years, but probably the last 30 or last 50. But it's very easy if you're in the dissident right to feel like, no, there's something that's more important than economics. There are things like, like culture and tradition and the nation. And because these things have been so under attack, it's easy to feel like, well, the economic stuff doesn't really matter as much. But. But my point is just don't fall into bad thinking. And I think that's the point you're kind of making too, Rob. It's like, look, if this applies here, as we can all say it does, then logically, let's just at least think about this. And I see this a lot when it comes to the arguments for protectionism. And there's kind of, I don't mean to be offensive, but there is from my perspective, a little bit of like a dumbing down of the rhetoric where it's almost given that American jobs equals good and foreign jobs equals bad. And there's never like any accounting for the fact that, look, it is true that if we outsource a steel plant, the people who worked at that steel plant have lost American jobs and those jobs go overseas or something like that. But if they are producing the steel for much cheaper and many more people are buying the steel in America than were working at the steel plant, then a lot more people have benefited from this transaction. And you can downplay that all you Want to. You can say I'd take American jobs over and live with the higher prices, but I would just say consider what higher prices have done to people over the last few years. How many families have been destroyed over the price inflation stated differently.
- [07:34]
Robbie Bernstein
If I'm in the backyard at a barbecue at some guy who's in the, let's say the pavement, construction, whatever union out of New Jersey, I'm like, man, that's awesome. You make 250 grand a year and you work nine to five. You rule. That's so cool that you have this job. And then guess what? Every time I'm on a road and it's got some pothole in it, or it's got construction that's going on for three years and causing traffic, I'm like, why the hell can't government get me better roads? And so that's kind of the unintended consequence of the protected union jobs is yes, it's great for every single person that can have one of those, but for every single person that wants to use these goods and services and it's overwhelmingly expensive, such as the subway, your education, everything that sucks. And if you just start to understand economic growth of well, if we can consume all these things for less than we'd have, I mean it's just economics one lesson. So I'd have more money to spend elsewhere, doesn't that just allow me to consume more? And I know everyone consume, consume, consume, but that's all jobs. That's all things that I want. That's called economic growth. That's called putting money where I actually want to spend it, which then indicates to someone what they should be providing. To me this is all autistic talk for economic growth.
- [08:45]
Dave Smith
But I just part of the reason why I think it's, and by the way, even if people disagree with what we're saying here, just like hear us out. And there's, I have other thoughts on, on this matter as well. But it's also part of this, is that, that type of stuff, it's not economics. When you really think about what economics is, economics is like the study of human action or human action toward, you know, improving the, your, your quality of existence or something like that. This, it's, it's not separated from other issues that are very important. So like, even when you talk about like, like let's say you're like a real right wing dissident or something like that, or you're, you're a very, very conservative that, when you're talking about that type of Economic growth. When you're talking about making the average American richer, you're also talking about creating an environment where young men can afford to start a family. You know what I mean? Where they can afford to maybe have their wife not need to go out and work and she can stay with the kids. There are other effects that, like, the idea of taking, like, cultural issues over here and economic issues over here is always a FL way to look at the world. So it's not just like, for its own sake. We like prosperity and harmony and a conservative culture kind of. I think all go hand in hand, in my opinion. I do think that there's maybe if there was more I want to get into on this end, because there is. Okay, I'll say this right. There is. And maybe this has partially been kind of the evolution in my thinking over the years. And a lot of the stuff we're talking about, Rob, like, up till now is kind of. It is standard libertarian stuff, but I think it's important, and I still believe all of that. I will say, though, in addition, there. The H1B visa thing has become, at least in the way it's used, like a bit of a scam. And part of what that is, is that there's. It's kind of sold as, okay, these are the elite of the elite. And of course, we want to get the best in the world of that. And so they say, you think, like, okay, well, look, most people will grant that we're kind of better off if we have, like, you use the example of the NBA, but most people would probably grant, like, surgeons and engineers and, like, some very important jobs. Okay, yeah, if we can snag the absolute best guy in the world, you can see where, yeah, that's. That's better for our nation than not getting. Getting them. I think most people see that and then they kind of sell that, but then they use it to fill up a lot of, like, 80, $90,000 a year jobs. And companies get tax credits for hiring through the H1B program. And so I can understand where, like, if you're an American citizen and you're like, hey, I'm forced to fund this government organization and all of this stuff, why is it unreasonable for me to say the priority should be me over foreigners? Like, in other words, like, why would you. Why would the policy not be that we give tax credits for hiring Americans instead of tax credits for hiring H1B visa applicants? So I do think there is a point there, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, does that make Sense, Right?
- [12:16]
Robbie Bernstein
Or I had not. It shows showing my education on this one. I didn't realize that there was a tax credit scam element to this.
- [12:24]
Dave Smith
Yes.
- [12:24]
Robbie Bernstein
And so, yeah, obviously that makes zero sense whatsoever that government should be incentivizing you to hire a foreign worker. But if a foreign worker is better skilled and willing to do it, you kind of have two separate problems here. You got problem one, which is it is gloriously stupid to want to keep the elites in other places. Like, I don't know if I would you go, hey, Einstein, that guy's going to compete with an American physicist. Let's leave him in Germany. I don't know. Was he originally in Germany? I'm just coming up with an example here.
- [12:54]
Dave Smith
I think so.
- [12:54]
Robbie Bernstein
Yeah. I think so.
- [12:55]
Dave Smith
Germany. I think so, yeah.
- [12:57]
Robbie Bernstein
But the point I'm trying to make is if you have absolutely elite, brilliant people that manage to claw their way out of third world countries and show off their exceptional skills and knowledge, and they might be the key to your engineering team making breakthroughs, the idea that you wouldn't want to recruit those people makes zero sense. And then there's a separate conversation just about all foreign labor that you are like, would you just rather the jobs go to other places because manufacturing is cheaper and what that looks like of just basically having minimum wage laws, having union jobs, and outsourcing all labor to other areas because it's too expensive to do here? They're kind of, you see what I'm saying? Like, they're almost. Even though obviously we're going to go for freedom on both sides because we know it works better, but they're kind of two separate categories. But the idea of government coming in with an incentive to specifically recruit foreign labor, I mean, that makes no sense.
- [13:51]
Dave Smith
Right. And there is something where I do think when you look at all of these things, all of these different areas, whether we're talking about, you know, factories going overseas, jobs going overseas, immigrants coming in and taking jobs, any of these topics, one of the things that just is always overlooked, and I do think to some degree this is why Vivek's tweet, which we'll get into in a second, drew such criticism from some people and why it was, it really wasn't well received among a lot, a large group of people. And I think part of that is that there's just, in all of these examples, the American worker is just constantly like carrying the weight of our government on their back. It's just like they have to carry the weight of the entire goddamn world empire all those 730 bases that we have all around the world, every proxy war we're fighting, every entitlement program, everything that the largest government in the history of the world and you know, demands is on the back of the American people. They're carrying this whole corrupt mess on their back. And then people come along and go, okay, and we're going to subsidize someone else over you. And our concern is someone else over you. And you know what I mean? And like, there's just like snapback reaction. But you know, when you think about the jobs being outsourced, the government has made it so enormously expensive to produce and hire in America. You know, it's like the American worker doesn't even have a fair competition against any of these guys. And that's another factor in all of this. And you know, I do understand where people look at a system and go, like, why wouldn't the thought have been to have huge tax credits for hiring American workers? Why would the thought of, you know, and by the way, I also think in some of this stuff a lot of the people are talking past each other because I actually, I'm not sure that Vivek Ramaswamy or Elon Musk would disagree with that. I know Vivek has said several times he thinks the H1B program should be gutted and totally remodeled and stuff like that. And he is big on meritocracy. That's what he's been pushing that, that to me, there's a lot of, there's fair points all around there and there's competing interests, but we shouldn't pretend like any of them don't exist. I don't think we should pretend that like there is no that. That it's so clearly self evident that it's better if there's like some freaking genius and they don't come to America. Like when we're talking, okay, that, that's, you know what I mean, something worth. Now if you're talking about the fact that these companies are manipulating the way this thing is sold in order to like make it cheaper for them to hire someone foreign than hire an American. And that does seem to be the case quite often with these H1B visas, that is a totally reasonable thing to be appalled by and to wish to abolish one of the other interesting angles here. Okay, there's a couple of things. Number one, there's also been a fair amount of investigative reporting and research that's been done on big tech companies discriminating against conservatives over the years and turning away people for different reasons. So in other words, like this. Their line of like, well, we just need this work and we can't get it anywhere else, so we have to import it, is seems kind of like a dubious claim. But there's also this weird dynamic in the tech world where the tech world was obviously, as we all know, in. In many ways over the last few years. Rob has not just been mortal enemies of everybody who was critical of the regime, but also, in many ways, are our most devastating foe. You know, like, the big concern for people in our world over the last few years has been like, tech censorship. And the fact that all these big tech companies that of rely on in order to spread our. Our, you know, our content, all of these companies were kind of against us. And then something dramatically new happened where Elon Musk came in, bought Twitter. All of a sudden, supporting Donald Trump became like, the cool thing to do. And a lot of these tech guys now, even, you know, Zuckerberg's over there being like, no, I want to be part of it now. And so it's this weird dynamic where you now have a movement, broadly speaking, the MAGA movement, where there are kind of like, okay, they just allied with these tech guys, Donald Trump, for whatever reason. And some people have some wild conspiracy theories about this, but Donald Trump, his supporters were not really silenced en masse during this election. That's a huge part of what allowed him to win, is that they didn't have anything like the Hunter Biden story where it was suppressed and people were shut down or any of the stuff through Covid. And now you kind of have this group of people who. They want their little pet thing, and their pet thing is this H1B visa program, and they like that they can hire a whole bunch of people that aren't American who. Who will do the job for cheaper. And they. They like this thing that they've got. It also involves, you know, it's kind of inherently in conflict with the MAGA movement because it's a kind of like, oh, we want people from other countries to have these jobs, not America. And that doesn't jive very well with the America first mindset. And then you've also got a dynamic, personally, where a lot of these people in MAGA world know some of these people in the tech world, and they're like, oh, you ruined my friend's life a few years ago over some bullshit. So it's just interesting to see that whole dynamic, like, in the background of all of this. All right? Guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show which is Small Batch Cigars. If you have a guy or a gal in your life who is a cigar enthusiast, you have to check out Small Batch Cigar. It's the place for cigar lovers to go online. You get free shipping on every order. Almost every order arrives within two to three days in the continental United States of America. Boveda pouches in every single purchase, the most thorough packaging in the industry and they have an amazing selection of rare, limited and hard to find cigars. Plus you earn 5% reward points instantly. This is the place if you're a cigar lover. 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- [21:17]
Robbie Bernstein
I do have a. I was just thinking this as you were talking and this is not libertarian, but I just, I'd be curious to know if I guess they were forced to hire more Americans, if they could make that work. Is it really that Americans don't have the skill set or that there's no price point at which it's profitable to be hiring these people. I'd love to hear a little bit more information about why exactly it is that foreign workers when it comes to these engineering jobs are such better fits or why they need them in order to be globally competitive or as to why, Because I've had jobs that I wasn't qualified for when I got there. But there was actually good training and I learned and they needed to staff people and so I ended up with a job there. So there is, I guess there's also a slightly missing storyline here to me of what's wrong. I mean, kids are spending 50 grand a year to get college educations. I think there's kids every single year that are leaving colleges without, you know, without jobs. I mean, you're telling me that the entire tech industry can't build a single college or post college two year training system that gets these kids ready for the jobs that you're looking to staff. There also just seems to be something slightly missing in the storyline here of why are people from abroad so much more competitive in these positions or Americans so unwilling to work? There seems just to be something missing in this storyline here which could just be same as foreign labor when it comes to, you know, building a little Chotchka or whatever else. They're just willing to work for so much less than what we're willing to accept here.
- [22:56]
Dave Smith
Yeah, well, that's, that's a good transition into Vivek's tweet because he kind of, I mean, he, he gives some ideas about what he thinks some issues in American culture are, and I don't agree with all of them, but I think it's an interesting conversation and I think you just raised some of those kind of important questions. But so here, let me, let's pull up the Vivek tweet. I'll read it. Hold on one second. Okay. Vivek Ramaswamy writes, the reason top tech companies often hire foreign born and first generation engineers over Native Americans isn't because of an innate American IQ deficit, a lazy and wrong explanation. A key part of it comes down to the C word culture. Tough questions demand tough answers. And if we're really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the truth. Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long. At least since the 90s, and likely longer. That doesn't start in college. It starts young. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the Math Olympiad champ or the jock over the valedictorian will not produce the best engineers. A culture that venerates Corey from Boy Meets World or Zach and Slater over Screech and Saved by the Bell or Stefan over Steve Urkel in Family Matters will not produce the best engineers. Fact. I know multiple sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates. More.
- [24:37]
Robbie Bernstein
Can we pause for a second?
- [24:38]
Dave Smith
Sure, sure, sure. Go ahead.
- [24:40]
Robbie Bernstein
There's just two interesting things about this. First is, and I think it's something we're all aware of, there used to be an old saying of like something about be careful bullying the nerds cuz they'll end up being your bosses. And I think there's something that every American's somewhat aware of and what he's describing only exists through high school because those kids that don't necessarily fit in your high school, cuz they're particularly bright, they'll go on to Harvard, they'll go on to mit, and then once you're in college, they're kind of admits other people who want to be excellent. And so what he's describing is kind of grade school and high school and I think people are aware of it and the kids that do want to excel go on to those places and then they exit from the stupidity of American high school culture, of which I was a participant. I spent most of my high school not showing up, drinking and smoking. And it was a lot of fun at the time. And I somewhat regret it now because I could have learned a little bit more. With that said, I can only speak for the Jewish culture I was raised in. And I can tell you that my peer group definitely outperforms culturally. If I were to list my 10 synagogue friends and I mean of my 10 synagogue friends, I think there's four multimillionaires and the rest of them are, you know, high performing CPAs. I can't tell you how much cultural pressure there was to work hard, which is in part because we get married at age 24, 25. Once again, I got to be that age and that wasn't in the cards for me. So I stopped keep. I was like, I'm out of this, I'm done with this virgin shit and I'm not getting myself a good job. But if you wanted to exit, like kids didn't fuck around in college in the same way. It was a different culture that you were trying to have a job and get married. That was the way that that worked. And our parents worked incredibly hard and education was really important. And there was kind of a hey, we're not fucking around type attitude that when I mingle with people from other demographics, they did not have the same pressure from their parents to work their asses off or a fear of money or a fear of being unsuccessful. And what the consequences of that, of what that looks like.
- [26:53]
Dave Smith
Yeah, I mean those things are, look, they're enormously important. And I, I don't exactly agree with Vivek here. I, in my opinion, I think he's missing the mark a little bit when he talks about these TV shows. And I don't. And I mean that. It's not like I'm like, I really am offended by the Saved by the Bell stuff, but I actually, I don't think there's anything wrong with like kind of lionizing A.C. slater or Kelly Kapowski or something like that. It's like they were like the beautiful and successful athletes. And that's also a meritocracy of its, of its own. And I think that one of the things that people kind of got to remember with this is that, look, obviously Vivek is talking about these things from his perspective, and Vivek is. And I mean this. I really like the guy. I consider him a friend. So I just. But Vivek is like an Indian nerd, brilliant guy, you know what I mean? Like, that's his perspective who's like, literally been like, wildly successful and is like, got a crate. Like a. Just like a gifted child who probably, my guess is, had like fairly strict parents who kind of, you know, like, I mean, look, we all. What he's talking about in the 90s as he mentions there, you know, knowing people from these immigrant backgrounds, I mean, I know I knew some, like, Indian and other Asian cultures. Korean, a couple Asian, a couple other Asians, I think. And I knew a couple Indian kids who, yeah, had. I mean, like, they just, you know, they live in a different type of culture, even much different than what you're talking about, Rob. You know, it's like Tiger Mom. Like, it's. You know what I mean? Like, they are like, they are getting straight A's in school. Anything less than straight A's is unacceptable. They're doing every extracurricular activity. They're playing violin. They're doing all of this and they're like, for their. For fun, maybe they're like allowed to read fiction or something like that. But they don't hang out with the other kids. They're not out at night. They're not. Do they come now? Personally, I would never push my kids like that. It's just not my values. It's not my culture. It's. I don't agree with that. I don't think it's. It actually. It certainly produces very successful kids a lot of times, I think. I don't know that it produces, like, critical thinkers and genuinely at peace kind of joyful people. And personally, I very much believe in, like, really just loving your kid. I'm like a hippie when it comes to parenting. Like a right wing hippie, a good right wing hippie. But I'm like a hippie when it comes to this shit. I really, I believe in peaceful parenting. I believe in showering kids with love and just giving them like a childhood, a nice foundation. But. Okay. I do also believe in, like, really trying to stimulate them intellectually. I really do believe in, like, you know, Reading and play based, like interactive education. I really do. And so, look, I'm not saying that anyway, long way, long rant, short. I guess I don't necessarily agree with Vivek's examples and I don't think the answer is necessarily that we need to embrace like Orthodox Jewish culture or Asian or Indian culture, any type of Tiger mom shit. But I think almost anyone, if we're being honest, you'd at least have to admit that like, yeah, no, there are major problems in American culture. And if we at least, like, maybe there's a happy medium, medium between like not having Saved by the Bell and having kids who could read at grade proficiency, that might be a. You know what I mean? Like, that is a reasonable thing to expect and there's certainly at least truth to the fact that just in our own American culture, you know, Like, I feel like almost if Vivek didn't say it this way and he just said something about participation trophies, a lot of right wingers would have agreed with him because that's just like their buzzword. And they'd have been like, yeah, that's the side we're on. But like, okay, that's just one example. But yeah, a nation of participation trophies. This is like totally, like become the norm in this country. And that's not good. We're not at all encouraging the idea in, in young people that you should strive to be great. By the way, I, I much less of a problem with the shows, you know, putting the head cheerleader and the star jock out there than I do, you know, having putting like the disabled obese trans person out there or something like that. So I'm okay with some traditional standards of beauty, but I don't know. Any other. Anything else you want to add, Rob, or should I go back to, to read the end of the tweet?
- [31:34]
Robbie Bernstein
I also just kind of feel like not all the jobs are going to go the way of the math nerds. Maybe that's somewhat trendy right now, but I don't know, there's something for everyone else to do. I'm just saying there's a winning spirit to the people that aren't the fucking math nerds. They'll end up in sales jobs, they end up in management positions. They end up like, there's a lot of other jobs out there that the cooler kids can find. I don't think the fact that some people don't gravitate towards the math and science is necessarily indication that they'll permanently be without employment or that trying to gear I just can only speak for myself. School was not a very rewarding environment for me. I certainly did not enjoy my time there, and I didn't make good use of it because I felt like I was forced to be there. And I wasn't able to control my day, my schedule, or follow what I find interesting. There wasn't a lot of opportunity to grow what I'm good at and what I like to do. So the school was a very punishing environment that for 24 years I thought I was an idiot and I was pretty miserable. So, you know, I also just don't really know that championing more math or making that cool and trying to make that the thing that we all compete in is necessarily in 20 years where all the jobs are gonna be and what's gonna help people.
- [32:58]
Dave Smith
Yeah, I mean, what I would say is that we need in many ways, like a reimagination of education in general. This is something I've been saying for. For many years, but I really do, you know, I. If you. If you're very conscious of this stuff and you make money and you have a bit of money, you can, you know, get your kids good educations in this country. I don't mean to say you can't, but there is something where, like, we really do. And I think the whole school system was designed to do this and, you know, get into my whole, you know, the whole rant about how it's adopt the Prussian system that we adopted, but I'll skip that. But the kids are naturally very curious and into learning. And I do think that school in general ends up suppressing that much more often than it encourages it, and particularly for people who are not conformists. And there's something about the schooling system, which, again is. What it was designed to do was to create conformists that, you know, if you're very good at memorizing and regurgitating and reading the thing that you didn't really want to read, but that was assigned to you, and that's. And, you know, answering back what the teacher wants to hear from you, you end up doing very well in school. But if you're kind of like an outside the box person, you tend not to.
- [34:20]
Robbie Bernstein
Not to mention just sitting still. I'm an adult. I'm 36. I sit down for the show. I sit down when I'm on a plane. I literally have a standing desk and I'm moving around constantly. Yeah, the idea that when I was eight years old, I had to sit in a seat, or at 13, I had to Sit in a seat.
- [34:37]
Dave Smith
Oh, no, that's a great point, dude. Just that, just that bias alone, that like, you're biased against people who maybe just don't want to sit still for. It's a great point. And the fact. Yeah, and the fact that you'd be expected to do that when you were seven is just insane. Yeah, an excellent, excellent point. All right, let me read the rest of post here. Okay. He says, wait, sorry. More movies like Whiplash. Fewer reruns of Friends. More math tutoring. Fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions. Fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less tv. More creating, less chillin. More extracurriculars, less hanging out at the mall. Most normal American parents look skeptically at those kind of parents. More normal American kids view. View such those kinds of kids with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve. Now close your eyes and visualize which families you knew in the 90s or even now, who raised their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest, normalcy doesn't cut it in a hyper competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we'll have our asses handed to us by China. This can be our Sputnik moment. We've awakened from slumber before and we can do it again. Trump's election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy. Excellent. Over mediocrity, nerdiness over conformity, hard work over laziness. That's the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood and just wishing or legislating alternative hiring practices into existence. I'm confident we can do it. So look, there were a lot of people who objected to what Vivek was saying to, to be clear, I do think that he, he kind of answered back with some people who were like, oh, well, we used to have that in America, why can't we have that now? And he's like, yeah, I totally agree. That's my point. We should have that now. So I do think there were some people who were kind of, they were missing his point or kind of talking past him, but to his final, to his final point there, my, my whole thing with this is, and I would say when he does connect it there to hiring practices, although again, it's not as if he said that's why we shouldn't touch H1B visas or something like that. And he's gone on to clarify that that's not his position. So, actually, let me. Let me say this and then get back to the system. This. I will say that I think a lot of people also, because Vivek is Indian. He's American, but he's Indian American. I think a lot of people did take this kind of, like, as an outsider, criticizing our culture or something like that. I don't know if that's fair. I mean, Vivek was born here. He grew up here. I think he's talking about the country he lives in. He ran for president. He's a very influential, very successful American. He has a right to give his opinion. And I don't think it's fair to view him as an outsider. Look, I'm not saying I completely agree with him. It. You have to admit, Rob, it's hard, at least from my perspective, it's hard to take too much offense to someone being like, yeah, if kids were spending a little bit more time reading and a little less time hanging out at the mall, that's probably better. Okay, I can't really argue with that. Now, that being said, I do think. I think there's actually quite a bit of a balance to life. I do believe in, like, that kids enjoying their childhood, particularly early childhood. But there's. There's a point there for sure.
- [38:11]
Robbie Bernstein
I think fear and humility forces people to level up. And I. I know my most successful friend was a. Was a stupid goofball, same as I am. And he realized at one point that his dad, he didn't have a dad. His dad is out of the picture. And he realized he didn't have the same safety net as. As the rest of us. And so he outworked all of us, and he's more successful because of it. And I know sometimes in my own life when I'm getting. It's like the old boxer thing. It's hard to get up and train when you're in your fine linen sheets or whatever. I think in America, we've got a lot of socialism here. There's a lot of protection, and there is a culture of, hey, I'm just supposed to have a bunch of things, even if they're unearned. And I think having. You know what I mean? I feel like there's almost not enough realization for, hey, it might not be that easy to get a job. Hey, like, you know what I mean? I think if already, by high school, you're realizing how hard you're gonna have to work in order to maybe have a house and Maybe and start really working towards those goals as opposed to drinking through college or whatever else and thinking things are magically gonna work out. I do think the fear. I think fear is what kind of drives people to be more responsible. I know in my life I was a dumb person for a really long time and I did a lot of drinking. Not that I don't drink now, but I definitely did a lot. And I didn't think there was going to be any consequence. And then when you get to consequence of, oh, I don't have a job and I have no employable skills and I don't know where to go from here, I had to start living a more disciplined life because I confronted the consequence of that. So I think where he's not wrong, and I know that this was true of at least the Jews I was around. There were people that survived the Holocaust and they came here and they realized they had the fear of the universe, of, holy shit, I better be successful. Life is scary. And I know of my grandfather, he survived the Great Depression and being poor was the scariest thing in the world. And he got into. I'm sorry, he got into Brown and Yale against Jewish quotas at the time. And he created a different life and he lived a very disciplined lifestyle. Cuz he was afraid. And so I think there is a lacking for the fear of, oh, there aren't just gonna be jobs for me. Unless I'm like, globalization's here. We're competing against the rest of the world for jobs. You got more and more people that are gonna. And like there could be economic growth, you know what I mean? So there's new opportunities down the line that don't exist now. But I, I do think we probably are culturally too lackadaisical. And I do think he's, he, he's hitting on something here.
- [40:50]
Dave Smith
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Sheath Underwear, the most comfortable pair of boxer briefs you will ever wear in your entire life. The only underwear that I ever wear. You gotta check out Sheath Underwear. Great guys who run this company, they've been sponsoring us for many years now, and I still have the first pairs that they ever sent me. And they feel as good as new quality stuff. Over at Sheath Underwear and longtime sponsor of this podcast, go to sheathunderwear.com, use the promo code PROBLEM20. That will get you 20% off your entire order. They ship anywhere in the world. Once more, Sheath Underwear dotcom promo code problem20 for 20% off your order. Yeah, I mean, look, I think there's, as probably most people know, there's always a balancing act with a lot of these things. Right? And so, so any, whether you're, you know, a socialist and you kind of like blame things on capitalism or if you're even, I've seen this with libertarians and you blame things on the government or if you blame things on the Jews or you blame things on whoever it is, there's always a risk when you're doing that that you're gonna fall into kind of like a victimhood mentality and start blaming your problems on other people. And sometimes that might be true. You know, like there's, I, I've seen it a lot like of, on socialists online where they'll kind of be like, you know, they'll just be like these like, kind of like democratic socialist guys who, you know, have like a little bit of a following and they're like asking to borrow money from a friend, they're I, I need 200 bucks or blah blah, blah, I can't get to work tomorrow because this goddamn capitalist pig is going to fire me if I don't do blah, blah, blah. And you're, you know, and you're like, look, maybe it is like you could be kind of correct in some sense. Maybe your boss is really a jerk and maybe like you do have a legitimate gripe with someone, but it's also hard to not sit there and be like, hey, you're an adult. How do you not have 200 put aside? You know, like how you, there's your, your part of this equation. If you're an able bodied man who's in his 30s and you don't have $200 put aside, you're at least. And so you could see where it's just, just, it's a dangerous thing to fall into that like victimhood mentality. That also doesn't mean you might be, not be right, like your boss might be a dick or something like that. So I would just say, I think my advice is, I think people should be, you want to find a way where you're not too fragile to be able to hear something like this from Vivek and shut down. This is a reasonable point that he's making. It's a reasonable topic and I think kind of an interesting topic to approach. And the people who are coming in pretty hard. Like from my perspective, Vivek's earned the right to like give his opinion on some fucking things. And so I, I don't have anything against that. I would Say that when it comes to his last point about the hiring practices, I think it's reasonable for Americans to go, okay, we hear your point. There are certainly ways that our culture has been degraded, particularly over the last 20, 30 years. Also, let's take a look at this system and make sure it's not rigged against the American people. I don't think it's too much to ask that the American people who have to fund this entire system ask that it's not rigged against them. And it seems like in almost every single system that you could think of in the United States of America today, it's, like, rigged against average Americans. And so I do also understand that. And I do also understand Americans having a little bit of a feeling of, like, hey, look, you know, like, there's a fair counterpoint to, like, the tiger mom argument. And the counterpoint might be something like, yeah, well, the thing about our country is that our unifying principle here is liberty. That's been the idea of America from the beginning. And when you have liberty, it does produce a little bit of a different characteristic. Or you could argue the characteristic produces the liberty, or the culture produces the liberty, or the people produce it or whatever. But maybe we don't. Maybe even in America in the 1950s or 1960s, maybe we didn't push our kids quite as hard as, like, the tiger moms did, but it also did kind of create the society that you guys are immigrating to now. Like, we're not the ones trying to go over to your society. You know what I'm saying? Like, there is something to be said for, like, well, maybe this cult, this culture of freedom and all of that is why you want to now come over in this culture of, like, economic development and growth is why you want to come over now and push your kid to go be an engineer in America rather than stay in your country.
- [45:38]
Robbie Bernstein
And for what I understand we're not as lazy as the Europeans. You always hear about their, I've been told, coffee in the afternoons and just shutting down their stores and all their stupid horseshit.
- [45:48]
Dave Smith
So we don't go. We don't go on no siesta. We fill up a triple X tub of soda and take it to our cubicle power right through lunch.
- [45:57]
Robbie Bernstein
We still got some hard workers here and a winning in a winning spirit. I always think it's funny sometimes in the Olympics where you see, like. I don't know, it's like. I almost call it, like, cowboy attitude, where you see. You see more like in the winter sports with like the American, like skiers and snowboarders and they just seem like a bunch of lazy, uncaring goofballs. And then they're against these in what seem to be like highly disciplined samurai, Japanese people. And then a lot of times we completely kick their ass. But then you see the way that these people train and, you know, they're putting their work in. So I don't know, I feel like we still got a winning spirit, but like, we're a little bit, a little bit wilder with it, which I think comes with risk taking and that's also why we win.
- [46:42]
Dave Smith
Yeah, no, I mean, I agree and I think that there's, I'd like to see a world where like, look, I should say it like this, okay? The. As. As me and you have both been pretty clear for many years at this point now, the immigration policy in this country is just, it's disgraceful and borderline suicidal. I mean, it's just been particularly during the Biden years, but for many years before that. It's just, it is, it is insane to have a country where the dominant cultural ideology is essentially one that condemns it. The their own nation as essentially what we are is a history of slavery and segregation and racism and patriarchy and bigotry and stokes racial grievances. Meanwhile, you're bringing in a million legal immigrants a year. Vast. The vast disproportionate majority of them being, you know, not white. So essentially changing very drastically the, the cultural and racial makeup of the country, while at the same time you have woke progressives constantly trying to stoke racial and tribal flames. Then on top of that, you have a giant welfare state. This is totally like the, the people of the country have never gotten a say in this, never gotten a vote in this. The property owners of the country are completely disenfranchised. And then on top of that, you have just hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants coming in every single year. We really have no idea exactly how many. There's no accounting for them. We don't know how many are here. There's. There's an insane immigration system currently. And it's of course, policy wise the primary reason why Donald Trump has been elected twice. But there is. So I've said for a while that I think it's crazy that the American people have no way of exercising any type of influence or control over this immigration system. And, but this is something different. I mean, when you're Talking about the H1B visas, again, granting that it's a total scam and it's totally sold as one thing and then used in a different way. And it is. The system is pitted against the American people, and that's totally unfair and it should be changed. But you are Talking about like 80,000, I think people a year come in from this. It's. It is kind of small peanuts in the larger immigration conversation. Just saying, like, just the numbers of it. And there is, at least when we're talking about, like, skilled immigrant labor, there's a much different debate that should be happened. That's, that's a totally different thing than like, like just 100,000 migrants pouring into your country who are all going to be on welfare immediately. That is like a different conversation to have. And even for people like us who recognize that open borders are insane, that this current immigration system is unsustainable and dangerous, and as I said, somewhat suicidal, you can still understand where I would want, like, I want in America where there can be a sane immigration system and we don't have anything like this. And I'm even open to arguments because I have heard some fairly persuasive ones, that we should essentially have very, very limited, even legal immigration at this point, that it should be super, super legal. We've taken in so many people that we kind of have to close for a while and allow for, like, a bit of a melting pot, and then we'll see what can happen in terms of deportations. And. But that, that's, that's very messy and going to be very difficult logistically to implement, at least on. On large levels. But I've. I can even get that argument. I can get all of that. But I would want to live in a world where we could have a sane immigration system, maybe even a very restrictive immigration system, but also the American workers wouldn't be so insecure that they'd be real worried about foreigners coming and taking their jobs. That also, we. We would just be killing it so much that you'd be like, I'd like to see one of these guys from this third world country even try to come take my job because I'm so skilled and I'm so competent. And so at least part of this conversation, like, we could rail against the immigration stuff too. But then part of this conversation should be like, why have the American people also been so failed by this system that they're not in that position, that they're not like, in that position where they are just so competent and so good at their job and we have such a, like, a positive and prosperous culture that we are just out competing the world at all of this stuff, because that should be, I think, what we strive for anyway, probably comes down.
- [51:39]
Robbie Bernstein
To the Fed and that the larger companies have more access to capital. And so it's too hard to just, you know, get in there and compete. And so maybe that's why, I guess, the workers of the world are going, hey, you guys have rigged this and we're gonna need those jobs. So, you know, you're not giving them to foreigners.
- [51:55]
Dave Smith
Well, I will say the other thing that I would just kind of caution people to be skeptical about is that I caution them to be skeptical. I just, I would kind of ask people, like, think about all of this stuff and think about everything that's going on here. And even if you're kind of like on the other side of this issue from Vivek or from Elon Musk or something like that, there's. Look, there's been obviously a tremendous concerted effort over the last few weeks to try to get from, and I mean, from the corporate media, from the powers that be, to try to drive a wedge between Elon Musk and Donald Trump. This is. It's been reported in all of the major newspapers that Elon Musk is the real president and they know what they're doing. And they're. This one was actually a little bit clever. I think they got Trump to respond to it a few times. Like that is. Rob, what you do if you want to drive a wedge between Trump and somebody is you start publishing that, you know, he's got the biggest dick in the room, not Donald Trump, because, you know, Donald Trump is going to have to come back and be like, mine's bigger. It's actually pretty tiny. It's average at best, you know, and like, so it, like. And then that is a way to. Because all these guys are kind of alpha guys in their own way. And so then that causes Elon Musk to be like, oh, why is he up there saying I got a tiny dick when I gave him $100 million? You know, this is. I've seen this movie before. I know how this goes in general. I've predicted this since well before Donald Trump won. I've said, if he gets back in there. Here's the issue is that you go in there, you end up getting a handful of decent people around you. Then you get a lot more just establishment guys. That's already been true in the Trump administration and his appointments and stuff like that. And then what happens is they start targeting the good people one by one by one and start Kind of edging them out, getting them out of the way. And all I'm saying is that you got these two guys, Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, these two very intelligent, very capable guys who have been put in charge of this brand new thing which is like designed to kind of attack the power source of the entire corruption in this country. Like you want to, you want to really make some enemies in Washington D.C. start talking about cutting $2 trillion out of the budget. That's, that's how you make some enemies. And the biggest factor in the, the whole system being pitted against the American people is how giant the government is. That's the whole thing, is that economically the American people have to carry the weight of the global empire and frankly, entitlement programs for boomers who wrecked this whole thing. That's quite frankly, that's really the, the most of it is that the boomers set up a system where they just extracted all the wealth out of the most powerful history of the world.
- [54:55]
Robbie Bernstein
We had golden spoons in our mouths.
- [54:57]
Dave Smith
Yeah. Told the next generations that they were so privileged that they got to live in their parents house that went up by 800 or something like that and made, you know, left a system where they handed the next generation nothing but debt and war and chaos. And yet somehow they've worked it out where their Social Security and Medicare will be covered by everybody else. And they're just, they're all retired on their pensions now and the American worker has to carry this whole. So then you have Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy come around and they're talking about cutting massive amounts out of the, the budget. They've also said things about how the Pentagon isn't off limits. You want to really make some enemies in D.C. that's what you start talking about, cutting the Pentagon. And now all of a sudden there's a major campaign to like remove these guys. Screw these guys. It's like, you know, a lot, I see a lot of MAGA people being like, we don't need them, they need us type attitude. And it's like, listen, that is just not entirely fair to say about Elon Musk. Elon Musk played a vital role in getting Donald Trump elected. Vital financially in terms of communication. There's no one bigger than him buying Twitter and account in there. The ripple effect that, that. And also just culturally it's like been a huge force. So I would, you know, I'd be pretty hesitant to like throw these guys under the bus over this, over Them having. Look, there's, there's obviously going to be, I think in this world, in this alliance with like the Tech Bros. And Donald Trump, there's going to be some conflicts of interest and this quite possibly is one. And so I don't think they should get a fair system, an unfair system that rigs it against the Americans and lets them hire, gives them tax credits to hire cheaper foreign labor. I'm not saying I support that, but at the same time it's kind of like, yeah, that's, that's the way it's going to be. Anytime you align with some businessmen, there might be things that are in their interest that they're going to be like, well, we do kind of like this one car about. I'm just saying, I, again, I think a lot of people are disagreeing with the vague and Elon in good faith. I'm just saying like, I, I'm not ready to throw the two people who are like, really making the issue of cutting government spending at the central focus. Again, I'm not ready to cut those guys loose. And I don't think the rest of MAGA should be either, if they're smart about this. That's, that's my opinion.
- [57:33]
Robbie Bernstein
With all that said, the optics aren't great. I mean, if you're Elon Musk, you should have played it. As for the next two years, I need more foreign workers, but I'm opening up this university and I'm hoping to staff this many Americans by this point in time or we're gonna do this to get the Americans prepared for the jobs I need to staff or if you give me this, I'm gonna do this much amount of American labor. But I think American first and American jobs are kind of top of mind. So particularly before Trump even gets in, having a conversation of, hey, I need for my industry foreign workers, which, by the way, I think the reality of the situation is that every American corporation would probably prefer cheaper foreign labor and if they could staff up the illegals that came over the border and there's a conversation to be had there of the wealth that could be generated if every corporation ends up with cheaper foreign labor and that maybe we all win from it. But yeah, the optics of America first and then giving out a piece of the pie to foreign workers for just the guy who helped you get in is not great.
- [58:41]
Dave Smith
It's not great. I think. And there was a real problem with the optics of Vivek's tweet also. And I think that's part of the reason why it wasn't well received with a lot of people. However, I do think that, like, all of these, all of these issues are things we're going to have to grapple with. And I do think that much like, you know, much like with the, the fight over the woke right kind of, this, this fight, there's, this is just like, there's something about it that's human nature where the, you know, the, the woke left just took such a shellacking, you know, like they just got beat so bad that they're kind of like demoralized and down and out. And then it, it's almost, it's such a human nature thing that the next thing to happen is that this coalition that came together to beat them starts finding things to argue about with themselves. And I don't think that's necessarily an unhealthy thing. I don't like, I always think that. And maybe this is like the old school liberal in me talking, but I always think that, like, it's a good sign if a lot of these, like, issues are being hotly debated. And it's a bad sign when people are kind of shrieking and talking past each other and just lobbing insults without grappling with people's arguments. So it's, I just think, like, these things should be debated and they should be talked about. The, the, you know, support for Israel should be something that's like, hotly contested on the right wing in America and support for H1B visas is something that should be hotly contested. Like, all of these things are, you know, obviously I, my feelings are pretty known on most of these things, but, like, these are, like, important fights to be had. They're not meaningless things. And so I do think it's like, like it's not the worst thing in the world that these topics are being brought up. And I do think, even while I don't completely agree with Vivek's tweet, I do think he certainly brought up something that's a very important topic for people to think about. All right, we're going to wrap up there. Rob, any final thoughts? Anything you want to plug?
- [60:55]
Robbie Bernstein
Let the people check out. Run your mouth. Probably going to do a long New Year's episode. So next episode, next week, Wednesday. I don't even remember what I did this past week, but, but check out run your mouth. No live dates at the moment, but, you know, porch door season's come just around the corner.
- [61:09]
Dave Smith
There you go. All right, guys. And comic Dave Smith, of course, for all of me and Rob's 20, 25 dates. All right, catch you guys later. Peace.