THE KILLING HAS JUST BEGUN w/ Andrew Heaton

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Timcast IRL – "THE KILLING HAS JUST BEGUN" w/ Andrew Heaton

Date: February 24, 2026
Guests: Andrew Heaton (Political Satirist, The Political Orphanage)
Panel: Tim Pool (Host), Phil Labonte, Ian Crossland, Carter Banks

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Episode Overview

This episode of Timcast IRL delves into the explosive cartel violence erupting in Mexico following the killing of cartel leader El Mencho—an event reportedly precipitated by pressure from the Trump administration. The panel discusses the implications for US-Mexico relations, the end of Mexican tourism, the history of US involvement with drug cartels, and a heated analysis of tariffs, automation, immigration, and American manufacturing. The conversation is lively and often philosophical, pitting a "nationalist protectionist" perspective (Tim/Phil) against deeply rooted "libertarian/free market" values (Heaton).

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Cartel Violence and US-Mexico Policy

• Explosion of Violence: In retaliation for the killing of El Mencho, Mexican cartels have unleashed chaos, attacking airports and burning vehicles, particularly in tourist hotspots. American tourists are stranded or sheltering in place.

  “Tourism may be effectively over … it’s just off. The spigot is turned off.” – Phil Labonte [08:50]

• Trump’s Hardline: Reports say Trump told Mexico: “If you don’t stop the cartels, we will.” US intelligence helped take out El Mencho; speculation arises about whether he was killed intentionally or died during attempted arrest.
• State of ‘Narco State’: Panel agrees Mexico’s government often bows to cartel power, suppressing politicians who challenge them.

  “It’s effectively a narco state because the government bends the knee…” – Phil Labonte [02:03]

• US Retaliation Possibilities: Expectation that Trump will push for or carry out US strikes if cartels retaliate further.

2. US Complicity, ‘Fast and Furious’, and Foreign Policy

• History of US Arming Enemies: The Obama administration armed Mexican cartels under "Fast and Furious," officially to track weapons but arguably out of incompetence—or deliberate malice.

  “I would have to assume that he was a functional retard.” – Phil Labonte on Obama’s handling of Fast and Furious [18:28]

• Similar Patterns in Syria: The US armed rebel groups in Syria, some of which became ISIS; accusations that this pattern is used to manipulate foreign conflicts for US interest.
• America First vs. Uniparty: Debate on whether longstanding US policy (pre-Trump) served the American people or powerful international interests.

3. Tariffs, Free Trade, and American Industry

• Tariff Debate:
  • Tim/Phil: Strongly pro-tariff, arguing that outsourcing devastates American communities, culture, and tradition.

    “America’s not just a market… America is not an economic zone.” – Carter Banks [79:12]

  • Heaton: Argues for comparative advantage, lower consumer costs, and long-run prosperity.

    “I think trade is good… The idea that there’s a fixed amount of wealth… I don’t think that’s sound.” – Andrew Heaton [35:14]

• Cultural Consequences: Tim gives the example of skateboarding's decline in the US due to cheap Chinese manufacturing, leading not only to lost jobs but the dissolution of communal support and industry-specific culture.

  “We invent it in California and we gave it away.” – Phil Labonte [42:00]

• Historical Comparison: The group debates Detroit’s collapse and the Flint water crisis as direct results of industrial flight due to free trade and lack of protectionism.

4. Automation, Labor Markets, and Social Consequences

• Job Loss from Robots: Acknowledgment that automation has outpaced offshoring as the main destroyer of American manufacturing jobs. However, the pace and “tapering” of change are crucial to social stability.
• Macroeconomics vs. Human Cost: National economic metrics (“graph go up”) are contrasted with the pain of individual job losses, broken communities, and loss of meaning.

  “Graph go up argument ignores the cultural ramifications of the world you live in.” – Phil Labonte [68:11]

• Learn to Code Fallacy: Skepticism on retraining older, displaced workers for high-skill jobs; skepticism about universal basic income or government retraining programs.

5. Immigration: Numbers, Policy, and Identity

• Border Crisis: Biden’s reversal of Trump-era asylum policies led to record numbers of arrivals, including child trafficking scandals.

  “CBP was ordered…if a child had a number with them that they knew was to a sex trafficker…to ignore it and just send them to the sex trafficker.” – Phil Labonte [73:14]

• Philosophical Split:
  • Tim/Phil/Carter: Call for moratorium (10 years) on all immigration, systematic deportation of illegal immigrants, and ending birthright citizenship.
  • Heaton: Supports “wide gates, high walls” — robust security combined with ample legal immigration focused on talent and labor market needs.
• National Identity & Integration: Extended analogy about letting strangers into your home. Fear of multicultural enclaves and splintered American identity if demographics change too quickly.

6. America’s Global Role, Petrodollar, and War

• Petrodollar Hegemony: Tim explains how forcing oil transactions to happen in dollars gives Americans privileged access to global goods and labor, but only if the US is willing to be “world police” (via wars, regime changes).

  “Just the fact that we’ll kill you if you don’t use our money…that’s a wonderful system.” – Phil Labonte [103:12]

• International Double Standards: Debate over “free trade” when military force underpins economic dominance—raising the contradiction of libertarian economics supported by imperial politics.

7. Memorable Exchanges & Quotables

• On American Manufacturing:

  “I want my country back.” – Phil Labonte [78:02]

• On Comparative Advantage:

  “Your doctor and your attorney have a trade deficit with their grocery store, and they're doing fine.” – Andrew Heaton [100:37]

• On the Soul of America:

  “If you want to live in a plastic jumpsuit shaven headed society, let’s roll baby…as what makes the soul of our nation function dies.” – Phil Labonte [55:16]

• On Libertarianism:

  “I am sick and tired of the laissez faire libertarian. I will squeeze what is left of the American way of living and watch this country become a communist woke cesspool…” – Phil Labonte [69:58]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [00:51] Headlines: Mexico explodes, Trump’s threat, tourism dies, Epstein files, US hockey wins
• [06:20] Guest intro: Andrew Heaton on political satire/agnosticism
• [08:32] Cartel violence details, impact on tourism, and US involvement
• [14:05] Trump’s “Angel Family Day,” fentanyl trafficking, US leverage, US military capability
• [18:09] Fast and Furious: debate on incompetence vs. conspiracy
• [32:13] Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, Iran risks
• [34:40] Tariff debate: Protectionism vs. Comparative Advantage
• [41:52] Skateboarding as a case study of deindustrialization/cultural decay
• [49:06] Detroit/Flint water crisis tied to industrial exodus
• [54:17] Localism, the Ithaca Hour, service economy critique
• [59:42] Housing crisis rooted in supply restriction vs. economic decline
• [73:03] Immigration: border crisis, CBP scandals, philosophical divides
• [78:02] Buying American: “I want my country back”
• [87:22] Chinese farmland ownership/food security discussion
• [103:33] Petrodollar, global dominance, and trade deficit consequences
• [109:00] Automation: economic progress vs. social fallout
• [112:58] Final macro/micro debate on the costs of offshoring vs. automation
• [117:10] Outro, Heaton plugs Political Orphanage, show wrap

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Episode Tone & Flow

The tone is energetic, combative but respectful, and unapologetically opinionated. While Phil and Tim often argue from a nationalist, protectionist, and cultural angle, Andrew Heaton is the witty, intellectually rigorous libertarian counterweight. Jokes, analogies (Scotland, France, skateboarding), and pop culture references keep the discussion lively. Major disagreements center on the long-term societal impacts of economic decisions and the fundamental definition of American identity.

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Conclusion

This Timcast IRL episode is a tour de force on the convergence of geopolitics, domestic unrest, and the philosophical debate over what kind of country America should be. It’s recommended listening for anyone trying to understand the real-world stakes of abstract economic and policy choices.

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Transcript

[Tim Pool]

Take the exit, turn right into the drive thru.

[Phil Labonte]

Nope, I'm making dinner tonight.

[Tim Pool]

You don't have time. Josh has practice.

[Phil Labonte]

Oh, that's right.

[Tim Pool]

I'll just get a salad and fries.

[Phil Labonte]

No, just the salad.

[Tim Pool]

But salad cancels. Fries.

[Phil Labonte]

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[Tim Pool]

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[Phil Labonte]

Salad, fries.

[Tim Pool]

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[Phil Labonte]

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[Tim Pool]

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[Phil Labonte]

Chaos in Mexico. US Tourists are currently trapped. Airlines are shutting down, insane videos of car bombs, explosions, fires, gunshots ringing out, People run and screaming in airports. All of this in retaliation for killing a cartel leader. That some say. Well, I should say according to some reports was at the behest of Donald Trump who continued by saying it's only just begun. 25 Mexican National Guard were killed in these attacks and it is expected to continue. Right now we're getting reports that security forces are currently still battling cartel members and and it's popping off across the country. Now I would argue it seems the cartel's retaliation is basically we have ended all tourism in Mexico. I mean there's no possibility of you flying down to driving to Tijuana, flying down to Puerto Vallarta and having any kind of relaxing day because people are being told shelter in place. It's kicking off. Donald Trump and the rest of the Trump admin are not going to back down from this. So we don't know exactly where this will go. But some have said this could effectively be some kind of civil war.

[Carter Banks]

Ha.

[Phil Labonte]

I said it, but not for the reason you thought I would. Now, I don't know if you'd call it a civil war, but the cartels control various territories. There's different cartels all over Mexico and many have argued it's effectively a narco state because the government bends the knee to these cartels anytime they demand it. We've seen all of these stories about mayors and politicians being killed when they try to stand up. Now that Trump has effectively said if you actually, I'm pretty sure we have to report Trump did say this. The Trump admin told Mexico if you don't stop the cartels, we will. So Mexico Launches an operation, they kill El Mencho. And this is kicking off like crazy. There's no reason to believe it's going to stop. And so, again, tourism may be effectively over. We're going to talk about that. But boy, oh, boy, do we have a lot of news for you, my friends. At Mar a Lago, a man with a shotgun and fuel breached the perimeter, reportedly aimed the weapon, and then was shot and killed. Now, according to tmz, his motivation may have been the Epstein files getting absolutely crazy, my friends. The UK has arrested the former ambassador to the US From Britain over the Epstein file revelations he was leaking financial information to Jeffrey Epstein. Holy crap. And then the US Beat Canada in hockey. Now, all those other stories are crazy terrifying, but the one I know most Americans care about is that we gave a thorough trouncing to Canada in their game. And there's a viral tweet where, I don't know, Trudeau or somebody was like, you know, you can try and take our country, but you'll never take a game from us. And now everyone's retweeting it, and the White House posted an image of a bald eagle crushing a Canada goose to death. So, yeah, there's that. And still, we got a lot of news in response. The US Men's team has agreed to attend the State of the Union address tomorrow, and the women's team just can't find time in their schedules to do it, sparking a major backlash. Oh, boy. We got a lot for you today. So we're gonna get into that, but before we do, we got a great sponsor tonight. We are brought to you by the Campaign for America First International Assistance. This is the cafia. They believe that a new era of America First International Assistance is underway and that President Trump has made clear the US Will act decisively while ending the practice of providing blank checks. According to cafia, the US Assistance should be strategic, accountable, and tied to measurable results that strengthen American security, including stronger borders, tougher enforcement, and real cooperation to stop illegal immigration and keep deadly drugs out of U.S. communities. CAFIA believes that America First Assistance should focus on stabilizing fragile regions before crises reach US Shores, strengthening key partners and supporting American farmers, manufacturers, and workers. It also cites data from President Trump's pollster showing that 80% of Trump voters support this approach to international assistance. The Campaign for America First International Assistance believes Trump is sending a message to Beijing stating that the use of foreign aid to buy influence and control will no longer go unchallenged and that the US Must lead with strength. Purpose and clear conditions that put American security first. You guys can check out more by going to America first intl.org again, it's America first intl.org and don't forget the new cast brew.com Vault Black is available. We got 135 delicious glass bottles of our Cast Brew cold brew concentrate. It is lightly sweetened. You do about 50 milliliters in a glass. You fill the rest with some water, maybe some cream if you like it, and you got yourself a glass of cold brew. Now, we were trying to figure out ways to sell ready to drink Cast Brew. And the shipping is really difficult when you're dealing with these cans. Research that we did found each can would cost like five bucks. Five dollars for a can. It's a can of coffee. And we were like. Because the shipping weight to and from is pretty brutal for a small company. Well, if we concentrate it, you can buy one bottle and get lots of coffee. So here's how we're able to pull it off. Check out cast brew.com, pick up your Cast Brew coffee. Don't forget, we got all the other flavors available, including Dr. Alex Stein's big Booty Latina love potion. Alex Stein is not a doctor, but don't forget to smash that like button. Share this show right now with everyone you know. Got a lot coming up to break down. Joining us tonight to talk about this and so much more, we've got Andrew Heaton.

[Andrew Heaton]

Hey, good to be back. Thanks for having me.

[Phil Labonte]

Absolutely. Who are you? What do you do?

[Andrew Heaton]

I am a political satirist. I make jokes about news and politics. I host a political. A political podcast called the Political Orphanage. So called because I don't really like teams.

[Phil Labonte]

So every. Everybody hates you then. Everybody. Everybody hates me.

[Andrew Heaton]

I am either a traitor or an infidel to everybody.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, all right. Well, should be fun then. We'll have a good time. Thanks for hanging out. We got. We got Ian here.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, it's like you leave a memorable impression because it's. I guess you said it's been four years since you've been here, but I feel like I saw you pretty free.

[Andrew Heaton]

I have thought about nothing but graphene since I last spoke to you.

[Ian Crossland]

Lighting me up, Andrew, from the inside.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, just to. I'm gonna let him know. I mean, when he got here, his hair was perfectly done. But when he saw Ian, he started just shaking and they both started freaking out. And then, you know, electricity couples.

[Ian Crossland]

And that's why you get that static shock. Hey, go to graphene movie if you haven't seen that yet. Graphene movie.

[Phil Labonte]

That's where Bill's here to bring us back to earth.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, Phil, take it home.

[Carter Banks]

Hello, everybody. My name is Phil Labonte. I'm the lead singer of the heavy metal band all that Remains. I'm an anti communist and a counter revolutionary. Carter.

[Andrew Heaton]

What's up? Card banks hanging out. Welcome back, Andrew.

[Phil Labonte]

Thank you.

[Andrew Heaton]

Into it, man.

[Phil Labonte]

Here's a story from wtop. Security forces keep up fight with cartel gunmen a day after the Mexican military killed a drug lord. From this is reported from the apa. In fact, they say tourist shops in Tapalpa were open Monday and workers were on the job. But gunshots also rang out and in the street was a dead man lying beside a bullet pocked vehicle. Meanwhile, heavily armed Mexican security forces kept up the battle with cartel gunmen following the killing that sparked a surge in violence and put the country on edge. I mean these videos that are popping up are, are just absolutely nuts. We've got this one allegedly from Tijuana. I don't know exactly. Take it all with a grain of salt. Excuse me, this, this does appear to be the Tijuana border. You can see the border fence and we don't know if this is from today, but I don't see why it would not be. In Tijuana, Mexico, the cartel are blocking roads by setting cars on fire. This is a few miles from San Diego along the border. And this area in Baja California is controlled by the. How do you pronounce it? Jalisco.

[Carter Banks]

Jalisco.

[Phil Labonte]

Jalisco. I don't know how to pronounce that stuff.

[Andrew Heaton]

The cookie manufacturer. Have I got that right? Nabisco? My bad.

[Phil Labonte]

Continue all those very close. They're smuggling cookies into the sky. You know, I mean the videos that are coming out are absolutely insane. And this is the effective end of tourism in Mexico.

[Carter Banks]

No, Costco is safe in Mexico.

[Phil Labonte]

Now listen, this is. The cartel is basically saying you hit us, we hit you back. But this is not just. This is strategic. They're. They're firing guns in airports. They're burning vehicles in the middle of the street in key tourist destinations. They want the Mexican government to look at this and think we are about to go broke. Because tourism to Puerto Vallarta, to, to Tijuana, these are very, very important for the Mexican economy. Americans love coming down there and partying. It's slightly cheap. It's less expensive for the Americans to do. So now you can't go. Your Americans are being warned to shelter in place. There was a video that Fox News had a report, some guy said that a car bomb went off and everyone said, quick, get inside. You can't even go outside now. So for the people who are trapped there, we hope that they can get out safely, but now there's no. It's just, it's just off. The spigot is turned off. No tourism right now. I imagine Trump's response to this is going to be a brutal, brutal crackdown. The reporting is that apparently Trump told Mexico, if you do not take out these guys, we are going to do it. The US Will launch strikes on Mexico. And so Sheinbaum, the president said, okay, we'll do it now. Reportedly US The US Provided the intelligence on the location of El Mencho. They went in and there's conflicting reports. I read one, one report, according to cartel members, apparently the US Went in with the intention to murder, to, to kill him, not to capture him. And I think there was something like 70 dead in the operation. The US found out that he was with romantic partner, a woman, I'm assuming. I don't know why I'm assuming they call it romantic partner because they're leftist. And me.

[Andrew Heaton]

That means mistress is what that means.

[Phil Labonte]

It could be. And apparently they went in guns blazing, just killed everybody. But I've also seen reporting, I believe the official narrative is they went in and arrested him. And when the cartel moved in to try and get him out, a gun fight ensued and he died in the conflict. Now, I don't know for sure, but what I can say is ain't no way Trump is watching this go down and thinking, I'm going to let the cartels do this.

[Ian Crossland]

No, this is the, the, this is what the left is trying to get the American right to do is to start blowing up streets and setting roadblocks. And fury. They, they provoked the cartel into flipping out. The cartel took the bait and now

[Andrew Heaton]

they're going to get wiped off.

[Carter Banks]

The victim blaming. This is, this is victim blaming. Like you're, you're saying that the cartels could.

[Ian Crossland]

They do, you know, their leader gets killed.

[Andrew Heaton]

What are they going to do, sit

[Ian Crossland]

back and take it?

[Carter Banks]

But I mean, the cartel are the ones that are actually causing the havoc. The cartel are the ones that are blowing things up. The cartel are the ones that are killing people. 75 people, 74 people in total have been killed in the operation, its aftermath. 25 security, 25 security forces of the National Guard have been killed. This is not like you don't appease the bad guys like you, you don't just sit there and say, oh, we can't put these guys in jail or go after these guys because they'll wreak havoc. Then you, that's how you end up with this situation. You end up with, with the government not controlling parts of the country because you're appeasing them. You're saying we can't go after them because they'll attack back or they'll cause havoc.

[Ian Crossland]

You have, you know, you can, you can appease them with that. What they try and do is they

[Andrew Heaton]

buy off their opponent.

[Ian Crossland]

If that doesn't work, they'll try and assassinate the guy which they just did with this guy. Then you'll do full scale invasion.

[Andrew Heaton]

I have mixed feelings on this. I used to play Dungeons and Dragons with El Mencho.

[Tim Pool]

We're lost. I'm gonna pull over and ask that man for directions.

[Ian Crossland]

Hi there.

[Tim Pool]

We're looking to get to the campground.

[Carter Banks]

Well, you're gonna take a left at

[Phil Labonte]

the old oak tree end of this here road.

[Andrew Heaton]

No, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.

[Tim Pool]

How are you getting a signal out here?

[Phil Labonte]

T Mobile and US Cellular decided to merge. So the network out here is huge. We're getting the same great signal as the city and saving a boatload with all the benefits. Oh, and a five year price guarantee. Okay, here's those directions.

[Tim Pool]

Actually, can you point us in the direction of a T Mobile store?

[Phil Labonte]

America's best network just got bigger.

[Andrew Heaton]

Switch to T Mobile today and get

[Phil Labonte]

built in benefits the other guys leave

[Andrew Heaton]

out plus our five year price guarantee.

[Phil Labonte]

And now T Mobile is available in US Cellular stores.

[Carter Banks]

Best mobile network based on analysis by

[Andrew Heaton]

Ookle of speed test intelligence data 2H 2025 bigger network.

[Carter Banks]

The combination of T Mobile's and US

[Phil Labonte]

Cellular's network footprints will enhance the T mobile network's coverage price guarantee on talk

[Carter Banks]

text and data exclusions like taxes and fees apply.

[Andrew Heaton]

See t mobile.com for details.

[Tim Pool]

Let's talk groceries. Specifically your groceries. With Instacart, you want your groceries just the way you like them, right?

[Andrew Heaton]

Right.

[Tim Pool]

Well, the Instacart app lets you do just that. They have a new preference picker that lets you pick how ripe or unripe you want your bananas. Shoppers can see your preferences upfront, helping guide their choices. Instacart get groceries just how you like.

[Andrew Heaton]

Who is a great dm And I was in a drug cartel in Mexico for about 10 years and they've got a good pension plan. Nice. But it feels like they've kind of gone off a different direction than when I was there.

[Phil Labonte]

I Don't know, non discriminatory policies.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah, that's one of them.

[Phil Labonte]

They don't harass you or kick you out for being gay or Latino.

[Ian Crossland]

But it was all those, they smoked all that pot, man.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, it was trafficking meth. Meth and fentanyl. And this is likely why Donald Trump said take him down. Oh, yeah, Just the other day, Trump had that angel. Or it was today, I think the angel moms event.

[Carter Banks]

Yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

Today he said February 22nd is going to be. Was it Angel Family Day?

[Andrew Heaton]

Yep.

[Phil Labonte]

And for those unfamiliar, this is a, a term that means if you're an angel parent, it means your child was killed by an illegal immigrant. So Trump declared yesterday as the, you know, the day to commemorate all those who are killed by illegal immigrants. And look, this is the guy. The Jalisco was responsible for the trafficking of fentanyl into the United States. I think Trump called up Mexico and said, he's done. And Mexico said, okay. Because, you know, it's funny, the cartels right now shutting down tourism are, they're, they're exacting leverage against the state. They're saying, you want to go to Trump because he's threatening pain. We're going to bring you pain. We're going to shut down your tourism. The problem is Trump can threaten so much more.

[Carter Banks]

Yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

The cartels do not have the leverage here. They can kill, they can bomb, they can fight, and they can scream. And Trump can go to the Mexican government and say, we can end Mexico. Okay. The degree to which Trump can threaten Mexico is insane. The degree to which one cartel can is scary, but nowhere near as scary as Donald Trump threatening to launch US Invasions of Mexico.

[Carter Banks]

The cartel can wreak havoc. They can cause unrest and stuff, but the US has spent 20 years building an apparatus. The past 25 years building an apparatus to find people anywhere in the world. We found Osama bin Laden hiding out in, in Pakistan, where the country was doing everything they could to help. There's no one in Mexico that can hide from the United States military apparatus.

[Ian Crossland]

So.

[Carter Banks]

And we don't have to drop a ton of bombs. We can literally send hellfires with swords on them and take out individuals without blowing up everything. Like, the United States as a military entity is beyond what anything the cartels are prepared to handle.

[Ian Crossland]

I wonder, like, of these cartel members, they're like getting bribed by the CIA right now to turn on each other. And then when they turn on each other, CIA is like, you're all dead anyway, and they kill them all anyway.

[Carter Banks]

Why would the CIA bribe them why?

[Andrew Heaton]

What?

[Carter Banks]

Why would the CIA, CIA get them

[Ian Crossland]

turn on each other? Then it's one less enemy and one

[Carter Banks]

more ally you're gonna turn.

[Andrew Heaton]

When I was in the cartel, I took a lot of kickbacks from the CIA. It was actually a big part of my job.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, it'd be like in addition to military operations, you're trying to bribe leadership to turn on each other and stuff. And it's like with a limitless amount of money with this, they're fighting tech they got.

[Carter Banks]

They're fighting each other now because the cartels are going to start fighting each other for. For dominance over territory and stuff. Now they don't need the CIA to pay them to fight each other. They want to fight each other to. To take over territory as it is.

[Phil Labonte]

And then. Yeah, but I think this is it. I think what you are seeing with Donald Trump's foreign policy is pretty dang nuts. In his first term, he crushes ISIS in his first term, the war, the conflict in Ukraine starts dying down. You get in the second term. So. So I'm going to throw it to Biden for helping kick off the Russia war with Ukraine. I blame Russia largely, but Biden's failed foreign policy with Afghanistan and Ukraine helped. Largely with Ukraine helped contribute it. Contribute to it. And then you have Donald Trump coming in with. What does he do? He's taken out the drug boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific. He again already ISIS cross. You got Abraham Accords. Trump is working on these peace deals and so it looks like his interests are substantially more in line with domestic protection.

[Carter Banks]

Yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

That being said, we have deep concerns about an escalating war with Iran. So I'm not going to say it's out of the question, but I think the cartels are cooked. I think Obama. Let me. Just one more thing. Obama wanted ISIS to exist. The US Government was funding groups that eventually became isis. And they were utilizing weapons the US had given to these people. And Barack Obama gave thousands of guns to the cartels. Fact, it was called Fast and Furious. Now the excuse they give was they were going to give the guns to the cartels, but then track them and see how the guns were being used and who got them. Yeah, yeah. You always give your enemies a bunch of automatic weapons. Ridiculous. And they actually found in the raid rocket launchers. So some are questioning just what these are. Military grade.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

To what degree The US Was actually providing support before Trump got in.

[Andrew Heaton]

Tim, do you think that that was a willful action? Like I would read Fast and Furious as just incompetency on behalf of the doj. But, like, are you inferring that they wanted to arm them rather than entrap them?

[Phil Labonte]

You know, I would, I would typically say something like Hanlon's razor. Are you familiar?

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah, yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

In this, in this capacity, if I were to assume that Barack Obama was just incompetent in handing over thousands of weapons to cartel members, I would have to assume that he was a functional retard.

[Ian Crossland]

Maybe they were.

[Phil Labonte]

Like, it's one thing to say incompetence. That's like, the dude spilled the coffee. And I'm not going to assume he did it on purpose when. What was the plan? Okay, we're going to give him a bunch of guns. They. They're going to go use them, killing a bunch of people, but then we'll know they did. No, no. What?

[Ian Crossland]

You give them the guns, then they take control from their government. Then you have no choice but to go in and quell the resistance and take the country for yourself. It's the same thing they did with isis.

[Phil Labonte]

They.

[Ian Crossland]

They armed them. Now they have an enemy to go invade and take. And now we have Afghanistan.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, let me, Let me, Let me say armed our own enemies, technically correct in some circumstances. The point of ISIS was to get Assad out of power. The reason why the US Let, under Barack Obama, ISIS expand rapidly was because it was like we couldn't. I mean, we did invade Syria, which is funny because who remember was in that. Who remembers when that happened? Does anybody remember a big declaration of an invasion of Syria?

[Ian Crossland]

They tried in 2013 and I was.

[Phil Labonte]

No, they went, he spoke.

[Ian Crossland]

No, not then. They didn't. Because Obama wouldn't do it.

[Phil Labonte]

Obama did do it officially. And Obama did do it. And it was after Trump got out of his first term. Biden sent the troops back in.

[Ian Crossland]

Declaration of war as well.

[Phil Labonte]

I know, exactly. He went and did it illegally. So anyway, the point is this. Obama was like, let's let ISIS expand because they are attacking Assad's regime and they're going to knock Assad out of power. The propaganda machine did everything to say Assad was an evil guy because he was aligned with Russia and we did not like him. We wanted to build an oil pipeline into Europe to offset Russia's gas monopoly. A lot of other factors. That's a big one. Assad said no. Then we said, we're going to knock out your government. So Obama lets ISIS happen. We. We provide materials and weapons to the, to the rebels. The Free Syrian army associates, which eventually get taken over by ISIS extremists and becomes a singular faction. And the US Is happy to let it happen. They say, we'll sit back and watch them tear each other apart. Trump gets in and he flattens isis. I don't think that, that Barack Obama gave those guns as an excuse to invade Mexico. I think he gave the guns to the cartels because the cartels are part of what they need to happen for drug trafficking and human smuggling into the United States. I think that the interests of the uniparty, like the Democratic Party, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the neocons, has never been, at least in the last 40 years, for the American people. And you can criticize Donald Trump for a lot of things. In fact, there's so many things it's hard to name. But at least you can look at his plans and what's going on and say, well, that's for the American people.

[Andrew Heaton]

Can you elaborate on the Mexico bit? Because I follow you in terms of arming isis. We have a long history of arming people that turn out to be our enemies. So, like that, that sounds plausible to me. But why would they want to build up cartels in Mexico? Like, what would the Democratic Party get from having increased drugs?

[Phil Labonte]

It's not the Democratic Party. It's the uniparty. It's, it's. The old Republicans were all the same. Neither of them were going to go in and do ambush. Didn't do anything about it. Are you familiar with the crack epidemic in the 90s? And it was how the CIA was basically facilitating all of this, and the reporter who uncovered it committed suicide with two gunshots to his head. You have to wonder about, what was that all about? Well, there's a lot of conspiracy theories, but the reporting is basically the CIA was funneling crack cocaine to black neighborhoods. Your guess is as good as mine. I guess suppress and depress minority populations, maybe. I'd have to imagine that with the flow of fentanyl and other drugs and human trafficking the Democrats have been encouraging, especially in the Biden administration, they would want these groups to be able to operate, to do what they want to do. Not only that, but it allows the US to do, I would just call it extralegal things under the, under undercover. You can't go to the Mexican government and say, we need to transport 2 million people into our country through your border, because that's public record. But you can certainly go to the cartels and say, our NGOs will take care of you. You guys provide the security. Here's a bunch of guns, here's what we want to happen.

[Andrew Heaton]

So you think it was an immigration attempt?

[Phil Labonte]

No, no, I'm saying there are, there's a multitude of factors involved in why the US has been supporting illegal activity in Mexico. If you go Back to the 90s, you know that the United States intelligence CIA largely was helping funnel crack cocaine from Mexico into the United States. And I guess one could only surmise as to the purpose, but they were flooding black neighborhoods, black communities with crack cocaine. I believe the working theory is that they were trying to suppress and depress black population perhaps. I mean, people argue that. As for why he would be giving them guns, it's because they do extra legal things that the US needs or wants them to do. So it's powerful to have these, these groups who are willing to do anything for money at your behest. I think that it's a. Largely a narco state. You take a look at Afghanistan, for instance, the United States, where we got soldiers in Afghanistan guarding poppy fields because it's a large portion of their economy pumping out heroin. I think that the governments of the United States, pre Donald Trump, post, like, you know, post World War II or probably even before that, has not been operating for the betterment of mankind, but for control. And you need, as I think Ian brings up quite a bit, the Henry Kissinger's, what is it called, limited war principle. Limited limited war principle. You want there to be a degree of chaos. That's why I said, I half agree with you when you said fund the enemy so that you can take a stand against them. It's, it's, it's, it's in that realm. I will also say if I knew exactly what their intentions were, I'd have no problem coming on say it. But the only thing I can say is I don't believe Obama is so stupid that he gave a bunch of automatic weapons to cartel members on accident.

[Andrew Heaton]

I think with the Mexico thing, I'm still on Hanlon's razor, but I share your skepticism of the kind of neocon project that's been going on in the country.

[Phil Labonte]

So entertain, would you then, sir, why give 2000 or more automatic weapons to cartel members?

[Andrew Heaton]

It's been a while since I've looked at that. Right, but that was Eric Holder with the doj. As I recall, the plan was. Which they botched and nobody was prosecuted either. So there, there are definite problems with it. But as I recall, the plan was to, to like get the guns out and then intercept them before they were actually used. It wasn't to just arm them and I don't know. Again, I'm on the side of incompetence.

[Phil Labonte]

I'm sorry, you're saying two plus two equals five. Why do you need to send guns to intercept them when you can just go as the United States government and arrest the people?

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know the detail.

[Phil Labonte]

No logic whatsoever in the plan to give automatic weapons to cartel members. You know, you don't need to. They're already buying guns from somewhere. They already have weapons, military grade rocket launchers. Trump isn't doing any of this stuff. You need only go to the Mexican government and say, shut down the cartels. Now. We know they're selling drugs, we know they're stealing avocado farms. Now, there is literally no logical plan. None whatsoever. So while I typically can look at Hanlon's razor for a lot of things, not this. Could you, like if, I'm sorry, Like if Ian gave a drug dealer 10 grand. What?

[Andrew Heaton]

Ian did give a drug dealer 10.

[Phil Labonte]

I know, I was making the point. No, no, listen. If Ian walked up to a drug dealer and handed him ten grand, do you think when they come and arrest Ian and he goes, no, no, you don't understand. I gave him the money so that later on I could catch him with the money, they'd say, what?

[Andrew Heaton]

They use entrapment regularly, Right? Like that is a thing that.

[Phil Labonte]

Why do you need to entrap the cartels when you know what they're doing and you know who they are?

[Andrew Heaton]

You might have been trying to track the people. People, I don't know the ins and outs of it.

[Phil Labonte]

See who they gave the weapons to because I'm sorry, I just find it. I find it incredibly hard to believe that Biden's government, knowing the cartels are murdering people, killing politicians, needed some kind of pretext to go in and do anything about it. So instead they hand a bunch of guns to people they know who are violent, murderer, criminals, and then go oopsie. Just like when Obama.

[Andrew Heaton]

You have to remember, I've made a career out of claiming the government's incompetence. So that is my, My general, was

[Phil Labonte]

the government incompetent when they killed Abdul Rahman Al Awlaki?

[Andrew Heaton]

Remind me of who that is.

[Phil Labonte]

16 year old American citizen visiting Yemen was at a civilian restaurant and Obama ordered a drone strike, blowing the restaurant up.

[Andrew Heaton]

No, I'd say that's illegal and unconstitutional.

[Phil Labonte]

He claimed it was an accident. He said, whoops, we were targeting a terror leader. We didn't realize that it was the wrong target. I don't believe for a second that Obama, when he's listen, they come to him and they say, okay, President, we want to blow up. We want, we have a target to blow up. And Obama goes, okay, where is it at? And he goes, Yemen. And Obama goes, okay, and are we at war with Yemen? No, sir. Okay, what's the target? It's a restaurant.

[Ian Crossland]

Okay.

[Phil Labonte]

Is it a military restaurant? No sir, it's a civilian restaurant. Uh huh. So a civilian restaurant in a country we're not at war with and you want to blow it up? Yes, sir. Why is terrorists in it? Okay, go ahead and do it. At bare minimum, Obama was like, massacre a bunch of civilians in a country now, not at war.

[Andrew Heaton]

You are arguing that the Obama administration was very competent then?

[Phil Labonte]

Absolutely. The Obama administration was competent. There are so many things one could argue about incompetence with Obama, but Obama is not a moron. Obama was a very, very sharp, very charismatic, cunning individual. Look at the Russiagate hoax. I mean, Obama's meeting with Comey Sally Yates, who was Biden there, and they're effectively planning to go after Donald Trump with this, this whole nonsense. These people were cold, calculating, and you know what? The only thing I can give for him in incompetence is that they couldn't get Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton across the finish line. But again, so I look at what the Obama administration does and I think it's silly to say that giving thousands of guns to cartel members was just an oopsie daisy, because Trump doesn't need any of that pretext. He goes to Sheinbaum and says, do it or we will. And she does it.

[Andrew Heaton]

Can you flush out for me what you see Trump's foreign policy as? What I mean by that is when he was running in 2016, I was hanging out with lots of libertarians. The pro Trump argument amongst the libertarian.

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[Andrew Heaton]

Results may vary in crowd was Hillary's a known war hawk. Trump is an isolationist. Vote for Trump, you're going to get peace. But I wouldn't describe this term as isolationist, but at the same Time we're not going into full blown war. So I'm trying to figure out what's going on.

[Phil Labonte]

How do you say America first easy way to explain it. The, the priorities of the, of the, of the Donald Trump administration as it comes to foreign issues and military issues is about what is going to benefit the United States the most. That being said, he's far from perfect. I don't, I don't want to see a war with Iran. I have a general idea of why he's doing it. No, it's not because Israel controls the United States with puppet strings, but some people are just whackaloons. And I would argue that Trump is, is largely imperfect. But look at the, the, what would describe it, the fervor over Trump striking these drug boats. I mean, we see, we see videos of boats carrying drugs blown up. And then there's an argument that some of them are not, they're just fishing boats and they're civilians. And I say, okay, well, that's bad, right? Let's take a look into that. Let's get a full report, let's get an investigation and make a determination if there was military action that was taken against civilians, for which we will make an attempt to determine what the penalties of that will be. Barack Obama murdered people. He murdered children. He murdered innocent civilians, he killed American citizens. No one cares there. And I know the left always says, what about ism? And I say, no, no, no, no. It's about actions speaking louder than words. When Donald Trump targets boats shuttling drugs to the US or largely to Europe in the Caribbean, they lose their minds over it, but they don't say a damn thing when Barack Obama was murdering Americans. So I don't believe for two seconds they actually get. Anyway, real quick, your point about Trump's foreign policy is. Well, he tried not to be involved in the Ukraine, Russia stuff, but, oh, boy, he can't figure that one out. The Iran stuff is troubling, but Iran is basically shutting down the Red Sea. They're funding these terror groups, Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Houthis are then firing on ships in the Red Sea. And the Red Sea, of course, is a Suez Canal. There are three major trade vectors from, for global trade. You've got Panama, which Trump is trying to regain control of the Suez, which we do control. And Trump, the conflict of Iran is largely around whether or not we can maintain security in that region. And then of course, Greenland and Canada, which is the Northwest Passage. So Trump is, I would argue, retracted on liberal economic order. Worldview but not abandoning of it, and largely focused on securing American national benefits. So the cartels are shuttling fentanyl and drugs in the United States. Trump says, shut it down. These boats are transporting drugs, funding these operations. Shut it down. Venezuela stole billions of dollars of US oil assets in 2009. Trump says, no, we're shutting that down. So I would argue maybe it's 60, 65%, it's going to be a direct repercussion or the direct depression is going to be the benefit to the American people, like tariffs. I would argue that the perspective on Ukraine and Iran largely is will it ultimately benefit America. But that's where you're starting to stretch it into global security for the betterment of America. I can understand why my libertarian friends are largely challenging of that notion, but I would also say the libertarians that are critical of it, I respect the libertarians that are isolationist, have no idea what's going on in the world.

[Andrew Heaton]

I'm an intervention skeptic. So that is to say, like, the default is. No, you might be able to talk me into it. Where I struggle with that analysis of Trump is it does sound like it requires me to sign off an intentionality of looking at what were the intentions of the Obama administration? What are the intentions of the Trump administration? I don't really like either. And so it's harder for me to put that into a rubric that I can follow. But the basic idea would just be whatever's strategically the best thing for America.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, yes, tariffs, for instance. Any, any. Anybody who.

[Andrew Heaton]

Oh, good, we can fight on tariffs. Good.

[Phil Labonte]

Anybody who's interested in. Well, let's, let's, let's pull up the latest tariff. Trump said, we ain't, we ain't backing down.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

So let me, let me, let me, let me, let me grab a.

[Andrew Heaton]

He's doing a 10% tariff for 150 days as authorized by the 1975 NEA act that preceded IPA.

[Phil Labonte]

Let me. Where's that? I thought I had that post pulled up where Trump is like, we're going to do it anyway. But all the, all the. I want to, I want to get the, the. Here we go. Here we go. Trump threatens. Pull this up. All right, everybody, we got the story from the ap. Following the Supreme Court's decision that Trump cannot enact emergency tariffs under this one particular law. Donald Trump has come out and said he's going to increase tariffs anyway. Citing three other laws from the 70s, he's now warning countries to abide by tariff deals despite the Supreme Court decision. Any country that wants to play games, the Supreme Court decision Trump posted will be met with a much higher tariff and worse and than that which they just recently agreed to. He said Saturday that that he wants a global tariff of 15%, up from 10, he announced immediately after the ruling. The court decision struck down tariffs Trump had imposed on nearly every country using an emergency powers law. But the Republican president won't let go of his favorite, albeit now more limited, tool for rewriting the rules of global commerce and applying international pressure. So I am of the opinion that the tariffs are quite possibly the best thing for the United States. I am a huge, huge fan and I believe that anybody who is truly interested in the betterment of the United States would support this. And anybody who either wants to extract value from the system to its decay would oppose it. The people that I view that are there's two groups of people that I believe are in opposition to the tariffs, those that want to extract the value from this country to its demise and those who don't understand why what is going on in this country.

[Andrew Heaton]

I suppose I'd be in the latter

[Phil Labonte]

camp then, because you don't understand what's going on in the country.

[Andrew Heaton]

If I have to pick one of those two, I think comparative advantage is a thing. I think trade is good. The best argument that I've heard in terms of the Trump tariffs is that there are situations where we need to use leverage to compel other countries to quit doing bad things and it would be better to use tariffs than to do military intervention.

[Phil Labonte]

Completely disagree with tariffs as a means of military.

[Andrew Heaton]

Oh no, like as a way of avoiding military stuff. Right. This is the best argument I've heard is that like China is doing,

[Phil Labonte]

they've

[Andrew Heaton]

got a predatory IP system, other countries have tariffs. We could use punitive tariffs to try to lower it. So if you're using tariffs as a temporary leverage to try to get a policy goal, that makes sense to me. The idea that we have a kind of zero sum fixed amount of wealth and that if we are buying things from other countries, they're extracting wealth, I don't think that that's sound.

[Phil Labonte]

Is your argument graph go up?

[Andrew Heaton]

My argument graph? What do you mean?

[Phil Labonte]

Is your argument comma, graph go up?

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

So the typical libertarian arguments is described by a lot of people as graph go up. And liberals have adopted this recently as well. It means that on the macro we can see a general economic improvement in the short term. So it's worth doing.

[Andrew Heaton]

I would say. My argument is that comparative advantage is real. And that.

[Phil Labonte]

So I have a. I have a company that manufactures products. How do I compete with Chinese slaves?

[Andrew Heaton]

If we've actually got a supply line that's got slavery in it, I'd be fine with abolishing that.

[Phil Labonte]

It's all of it, 100%.

[Andrew Heaton]

All things that we get from.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, I mean, like, is 25 cents an hour not slave labor because they choose to work for that much?

[Andrew Heaton]

No, there's a difference between how do

[Phil Labonte]

my employees, my manufacturing employees compete with a guy who makes 25 cents an hour?

[Andrew Heaton]

They got to find a way to compete.

[Phil Labonte]

So when my industry dies because we are spending 10 times as much to ship lumber to. To China to manufacture it with slave labor, sorry, peasant labor, and send it back to the United States, how is that good for us, our country, and our children?

[Andrew Heaton]

So two things. First, I want to go ahead and hit the slave labor thing, right? If there's actual involuntary servitude going on, that's immoral.

[Phil Labonte]

I'm being hyperbolic. I'm talking about people who would otherwise work for better wages with health care, but instead are getting paid 50 cents an hour to do. To do this work.

[Andrew Heaton]

If we're not. If we're removing actual slavery from the equation.

[Carter Banks]

Right.

[Phil Labonte]

Peasant labor.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah, peasant labor. Right. The one thing they can compete on, lower labor, lower wages. We end up being able to import things cheaper. It makes everybody better off in the long run.

[Phil Labonte]

That's completely incorrect. You're flat out wrong when you look

[Andrew Heaton]

at, like, American manufacturing. We've got intermediate parts that come in from other countries. So if, like, you want to have cars in America, you need to be able to get parts from other countries.

[Phil Labonte]

Why?

[Andrew Heaton]

Because if you raise the prices on that, you raise the price on the consumer, and everything costs more.

[Phil Labonte]

And if everything costs. So are you familiar with the old apocryphal legend of Henry Ford and the Ford factory?

[Andrew Heaton]

Yes, I'm familiar with the Apocrypha. Yeah. Where he had to pay people enough.

[Phil Labonte]

Argued that if I pay a higher rate, then the employees actually buy the cars from me on a loan, and then they're paying me back the money I'm paying them and then earning a percentage off the excess cars we produce.

[Andrew Heaton]

I hadn't heard the loan bit, but I do think it's a pocket.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, it's. It's their financing. They can't afford to buy the car outright, but they're paid enough to where they can say, okay, I can save up for this. And then a portion of them, they're buying the product back from the guy where they're making.

[Andrew Heaton]

But, like, like, you're familiar with comparative advantage, right? Like, you know the basic premise behind that. May I enlighten people? Enlighten might be everybody with it. So, like, let's say I'm Scotland and you're France. I, as Scotland, am very good at making sheep. I'm not very good at making wine. Like, Scottish wine would, like, presumably, be very sweet. You'd probably fry it. It wouldn't be particularly good. Meanwhile.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, that could be great.

[Andrew Heaton]

You know what? Actually, I got to give it, like, we're going to call it Scottish prison wine. I would. I would try it. Scottish prison, but they're probably not going to produce very much of it because it's not very good for making grapes. Right. But they're very good at making sheep. Meanwhile, France, really good at making grapes. Large amount of grapes. Very bad at making sheep, comparatively. Right. They probably have some sheep. If the Scots go, well, we want to protect our nascent wine industry, so we're going to put tariffs on the French wine industry. Then France is going to respond by putting tariffs on wool coming in from Scotland. The result is you're going to get more wine in Scotland, but you're going to get less wine overall in the equation. You're going to get more sheep in France, you're going to have less sheep overall. Everybody gets less wine and less sheep.

[Phil Labonte]

Now, you said that the Scottish wine was just no good. Right.

[Andrew Heaton]

It's, you know, we could. We could just focus on, like, quantity. They're not going to be able to produce as much of it. So you're going to use both. Both countries in a less productive manner.

[Phil Labonte]

Is it better for the people of Scotland and the generational wine farmers to have their industry destroyed because you, as a consumer want to save $3 on your wine? Or is it fair to say that the bustling wine industry in Scotland, which is storied and has legacy, deserves a chance to survive for its community, for its culture?

[Andrew Heaton]

They should absolutely be.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, how do they compete for that?

[Andrew Heaton]

Well, like. Like, you might want to get Scottish wine, but if it's something that they can't produce, that people want.

[Phil Labonte]

France. France has got Chinese peasants working 25 cents an hour producing garbage wine that Scotland can't compete against.

[Andrew Heaton]

Mm.

[Phil Labonte]

The wine is actually no good.

[Andrew Heaton]

And now what's going to happen is the Scots are going to put more of that effort into sheep and they're going to produce more sheep. They're going to.

[Phil Labonte]

This is just not correct.

[Andrew Heaton]

Shift their economics to something that's more productive.

[Phil Labonte]

So I'll give you an example that I often give to most people, which is it's personal. Skateboarding is dead. It's an Olympic sport, but it's completely dead. I sold, we sold something like 500 boards, boards in a month. Shocking industry experts asking me, tim, how did you sell 500 skateboards? And I said, I went on my show and said, go to boonieshq.com and buy the skateboards. The pros are now working for Ubereats. They are doing delivery driving for Amazon. They no longer have the time or ability for the most part to be professionals in their own sport. There's videos popping up of some of the best professional skateboarders who Olympic contenders who now work for Home Depot making minimum wage. You know why? Because the factories that produce skateboards, instead of employing Americans and marketing a product to Americans, offshored all the manufacturing to China, where we cut down wood in Canada, import the United States, send it to China. Chinese peasants make the boards for pennies on the dollar, send back cheap Chinese crap. And now there's no factories, no employees and no pro skateboarders. If you go to Japan and China, they have skateboarding up the wazoo. Every new Pro is some 15 year old Japanese kid. And the country that invented the Olympic global phenomenon has lost control of it because we gave it away. Because we told people in this country, which would you rather buy, the $50American made skateboard or the $30 Chinese made skateboard? And to be honest, when the people walked into the shop to buy a board, they didn't know the difference. And they said 30 bucks sounds good to me if it works. Well, guess what happened? Every American worker who grew up whose dad owned a wood shop lost their job and now they don't skate anymore. Their kids, the Gen Z. And this is across the board. Skateboarding is personal for me. I know people probably don't care about it, but it's the perfect example of how we are willing to spend 10 times as much on the energy to send our raw materials to China so peasants can do it and Americans lose their jobs. And then when no American has the job, what company is going to promote and market the new product to kids? It doesn't exist anymore. It's in China. So when you go to China, what do you find? Thousands of kids at their skate parks. When you go to Japan, what do you find? They're opening new skate parks like crazy. They're launching TV shows about skateboarding. We invent it in California and we gave it away and it's not coming back.

[Andrew Heaton]

I lament that there's been a dearth of professional skating and that it's something that's near and dear to you.

[Phil Labonte]

So why? Why?

[Andrew Heaton]

What is stopping the professional skateboarders from just buying the skateboards that they have in China and Japan?

[Phil Labonte]

There's no one skateboarding anymore because the

[Andrew Heaton]

skateboards have declined in quality.

[Phil Labonte]

The companies used to go to parks and they'd say, look at this skateboard we made down the street. Why don't you try it there, Sonny? And the kid would then try it. And the factory had five to 10 employees. And those employees would come home and give the extra boards to their kids. And the company would say, we're gonna put together a skate team to market this. That company's in China now. So that guy going to the park, he's Chinese. There's no American. There's very few American manufacturers. It takes us weeks to produce because we're desperately trying to rebuild an industry while we're competing with China. And they tell me on the phone, tim, if you get the Chinese to do it, we'll get your boards $5 cheaper. And I say, I don't want a $5 cheaper board. I want skateboarding back. I want the sport.

[Andrew Heaton]

Can you not just compete on quality? I mean, wouldn't people pay a better

[Phil Labonte]

price for quality Is fantastic.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah, well, I mean, like, I think that's.

[Phil Labonte]

Chinese boards are good.

[Andrew Heaton]

You might want a cheap board or a high quality board. Maybe we compete on quality.

[Phil Labonte]

What you are missing is that the culture around this industry is gone because there's no economic support. There's no factories, there's no dads, there's. There's no marketing endeavor. It doesn't exist anymore. It's in China. So in China, skateboarding is exploding like crazy. In Japan, they're launching TV shows for skateboarding. And today in the United States, we don't even have the big skateboard contests anymore. They're failing and falling apart. And all the top pros are just little Japanese kids. Now, I got no beef with the Japanese kids. Some of the best skateboarders, they're all Japanese. I'm pissed off that the country that made this, that invented it, that inspired the world, gave it all away. And now where I live in my home country, I, for the life of me. Well, actually, I'll say this. One of the advantages to it is that I can go to a pro skateboarder and give them 500, and they'll come and they'll produce content because they're so desperate for money. And what I tell all these guys, we, when we were doing, we stopped doing our Games of Skate events because of security issues. We're working on trying to figure out how to do them again. We, we told the Pros, you get $3,000 if you win and you get a guarantee just for showing up. And they all show up and they beg to come and compete because these guys are working at Home Depot, they're working for UberEats, they're driving cars. There is no. This is an Olympic sport now. There's very few people left.

[Andrew Heaton]

Would you want to have government support for this industry where they get subsidies?

[Phil Labonte]

I would like, I would like the government to say, if you tell. If you move your factory to China, we will charge you 30% on the way back in so that you will not be competitive in the marketplace.

[Ian Crossland]

I think it's two different things. The, the competitiveness of the skateboard itself and then the industry of skateboarding. It's similar to like, are bikes cheap to make? Are they Chinese bikes? But then the cycling community and the cycling industry and cycling for the Olympics and stuff. Is it necessarily. It's not a direct relationship. It's more of a correlationary relationship.

[Phil Labonte]

It's a direct relationship. There's a famous photo of a man in a suit in the 1960s. I believe it was riding a little fishboard, one of the OG skateboards in Central Park. It's a great mystery to figure out who this man is. And no one really knows. That event that became iconic where there's. It's like a guy in a suit and he's like, cruising was because a company that made skateboards announced they were having an event in Central park and encouraged everyone to come. They told families, they told kids. They went and promoted it in New York City. And then everyone showed up. Well, not everyone, but a lot of people showed up. And skateboarding started to get more and more popular in the United States. The factories and the companies are gone. And one of the things I want

[Andrew Heaton]

to make sure I understand this. So they were like $50 boards here. They're $35 in China. And because the boards are cheaper in China, the industry's just imploded here.

[Phil Labonte]

Yes.

[Andrew Heaton]

And no one. But. But people can still buy it because you don't have to make your own

[Phil Labonte]

board so you can order your Chinese made board owned by what I would call a vapor brand. So some of the biggest brands in skateboarding have collapsed. All the skateboard companies are going out of business because I Would refer to them as vapor companies. They slap a logo on a board made in China and then tell people to order it on the Internet. The only problem is there's no one. Okay, you have a factory, right? It's 1960. You have a wood shop, and you make skateboards. You say, how can we sell more of these? You got to get kids to skate. So what do you do? You go to the park, you pop up some tents, you give up free lemonade and ice cream, and you say, try the skateboard. The kids are all excited and ecstatic, and the parents go, I think I'll get some of these for my kids. And so they buy a bunch. Well, now you don't have any factories. You don't have any shops.

[Andrew Heaton]

They can still. I mean, like. So the boards are cheaper now than they were when it was made in America.

[Phil Labonte]

Indeed.

[Andrew Heaton]

And the result is there's fewer people skateboarding.

[Phil Labonte]

Yes. See, this is. This is what I was saying about people who don't understand the economic chain. They simply look at the numbers improve. So what's the problem? The problem is when a guy shows up to a wood shop and says, I don't know nothing about skateboarding. You say, well, we need someone who knows what. I certainly know wood. How would you like a job at a wood shop? I'd love one. Then he goes home with some samples, and he gives them to his kids, and his kids go to their friends, and their friends say, wow, I like this. Let's do more. Now. Now this man working at the factory starts talking to his neighbors. I work in a wood shop. We do skateboarding. Hey, it's an olympic sport. We're actually sponsoring some of the olympic athletes. It's big. Then a rival company pops up and says, the kids can't get enough of these things. We need a new factory. All those factories are gone. There's no longer a guy going to his kid. There's no longer a company going to the park. The demos don't exist, and one of the biggest brands in American skateboard history moved to Japan.

[Andrew Heaton]

My guess would be that if you were to buy a keyboard today, like a piano keyboard, you're probably going to get a casio or something like that. I don't think we've had, like, a limited amount of people learning piano, or to use the wood shop example, like, guitars are still abundant. People are still playing guitar. I don't know where they come from. It wouldn't surprise me if they're not from the United States.

[Phil Labonte]

I think the. The. The. The issue around something like skateboarding is that it's decently new relative to, say, like, piano, which has been around and is global, and there's tremendous opportunity. What I would still argue, though, is as someone who is not a pianist, I can only refer to the things in which I'm involved in. And I can stress the same thing is happening in other industries. So I can cite surfing, snowboarding, and skiing as being massively impacted by foreign. Foreign manufacturing.

[Andrew Heaton]

And it's because the boards are lesser quality, so people aren't skating as much.

[Phil Labonte]

It's because there's no culture anymore. Okay, so do you know culture works?

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah, but I don't. I don't want the government propping up culture. Like, I think. I think, like, I don't want the government punishing other people for making economic choices.

[Phil Labonte]

Why is it. What do you mean punishing other people?

[Andrew Heaton]

Because you're taxing me for buying a cheaper skateboard.

[Phil Labonte]

Yep.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah. I don't think you should do that. And I like to back up a little bit. I question this whole idea that it's a lack of tariffs and protectionism that's resulted in lack of American manufacturing. So, like, you look at, like, no one does this with farmers. Like, if you go back to, like, 1880, 90% of the American workforce was farmers. Like, it's not because we started importing food that we do. It's because we got really, really good at making food. So, like, my uncle's a farmer. He's basically like an acronym. Excuse me.

[Phil Labonte]

Let's go macro. Let's go macro. Yeah, tell me about Detroit.

[Andrew Heaton]

Detroit, with manufacturing, I'd say, has more to do with unions and with just the cost of manufacturing cars in general.

[Phil Labonte]

Why are people. Right. So agreed. So if we stopped allowing companies to move their factories to Mexico or Indonesia or other countries, it would be a little bit more expensive, but there would be a bustling auto industry in Michigan.

[Andrew Heaton]

So let's kind of stick with that for a minute. Like steel, for example. Steel is one of the things Trump talks about regularly. We export more steel now than we did in the 1980s. The difference is we need fewer people to do the steel. We came up with better innovations for it, and therefore we have fewer people working in it. But the actual exports are fine with cars. Most of the cars we get in the United States, even if they're foreign, like Kia, Toyota, whatever, they're manufactured here in the United States by American workers. You can buy stocks.

[Phil Labonte]

No, no, I mean, we. Donald Trump's famous. Well, I should say Michael Moore's famous speech of Donald Trump in his 2016 campaign was that he went to the auto manufacturers and said, if you move your factories to Mexico or China, I will slap a 30% tariff on your vehicle and no one will buy it. And it was the first time someone stood up for the workers. We have watched Michigan deteriorate in psychotic ways. Flint, Michigan being an amazing example of what happens when you gut the manufacturing base when. So yes, one could argue with innovations in travel and transport and cheap fuel. Specifically, we've been able to move manufacturing to other countries through these free trade agreements. So what ends up happening is if you're a family who lives in Michigan. Hey, it's like that movie Tommy Boy, remember that one? The brake pad factory goes. The whole town goes. I like to go to cities. Or I could say this. When I go to cities, I like to ask the locals what is the basis of their economy? For what purpose does this town actually exist? And you'll find out really interesting things. You know, in Seattle, for instance, a lot of timber people don't know that. But what is the economic driver of the Pacific Northwest? All the lumber work that gets done gets spent in these states setting up shop. So for example, if I go to, if I go to a. If I find a gold in the ground and then I'm like I need to hire 100 people to get the gold out of the ground. You get a pop up city. Well, what happens? Someone says these people are hungry, opens a restaurant and so then towns form. In Michigan, something really interesting happens. You're familiar with the Flint water crisis? Yeah, that's a direct result of sending our auto manufacturing to Mexico and other and other countries and importing cheap vehicles.

[Andrew Heaton]

I'm unfamiliar with that.

[Phil Labonte]

So what happens is in, in Michigan you have a, you have a water distribution apparatus, the city water supply of Detroit. When you divide the fixed cost of water distribution among say a million people, I'm going to use, I'm going to use vague numbers because actual numbers get wonky. Let's say you have a million people and it costs everybody 100 bucks a month for their water bills in their homes. That's not so bad, right? I mean it can be heavy for your house, but it's just 100 bucks. So if the economy is stable, you're able to afford it. Well, the manufacturing leaves and this means we begin to see a mass exodus from Michigan. Something like I think in the 2000 it was like 11 families per minute were leaving the state. This means the tax base is eroded. But the fixed cost of the water delivery system remains static. Overnight. An individual receives double the water bill. That's. That's something you just can't afford. It's a shock charge. Especially when as the auto manufacturing leaves, there's less money coming into your city, state or town. Less tax revenue for social services and public roads, and less money in general being spent on restaurants and toys, whatever it might be that drives them.

[Andrew Heaton]

They gotta shut off parts of town they gotta. Like they can't now services.

[Phil Labonte]

You get a water bill you can't afford. So what did Flint say? Why are we paying the most expensive water bill in the country for Detroit water when we can use Flint river water, which was contaminated with Legionnaires disease and started running water through pipes which got everybody super sick? It is unfortunate.

[Andrew Heaton]

If they'd wanted to relocate their factory to Louisiana, should that have been legal?

[Phil Labonte]

Yes.

[Andrew Heaton]

Okay. It would have caused the same problem though, right? Like Flint would have had the same issue.

[Phil Labonte]

Not necessarily.

[Andrew Heaton]

Why not?

[Phil Labonte]

The issue with Mexico is you have to compete with no. With no union wages. You have to compete with no minimum wages, you have to compete with no health care. And you have to compete with cartels running a lot of sweat shops, or I should just say illegal activities. Easy way to explain it. At least Louisiana would have to present to the auto manufacturer legal and justified competition, to which Michigan.

[Andrew Heaton]

My point is just. If they were to relocate elsewhere in America, you'd still have that kind of collapse of services because you'd have fewer

[Phil Labonte]

people ignoring the fat. No. Wrong. Because in the United States we have federal laws on manufacturing and distribution. So Mexico, there's lots of businesses that leave for.

[Andrew Heaton]

From California to Texas. Certainly they do the Northeast to the Sunbelt.

[Phil Labonte]

And I have no problem with states in a stable system trying to be competitive with one another.

[Andrew Heaton]

Do you think it would be preferential if they all had tariffs between each other? I mean, if it's a group talking about build up the local economy, wouldn't it be beneficial to have.

[Phil Labonte]

And there have been. And there have been arguments made, such as in Ithaca, New York, if you're familiar with the Ithaca Hour, largely fallen into disuse, but they created a local currency which lasted for about 20 years that could only be used in Ithaca. And it was called the Ithaca Hour, representing an hour of labor. And people could be choose to be paid in hours or in US dollars. And in fact it actually helped boost the economy.

[Andrew Heaton]

I would be fine with that. If you wanted to have alternate currencies.

[Phil Labonte]

And the point of the currency is that it can't leave the jurisdiction. So you can make the argument that Louisiana can offer to compete by going to an auto manufacturer and saying we're going to cut you 5% in taxes. Michigan can then say we will too. But the one thing you can't, can't compete on is peasant labor, which is impossible, especially with unions. So of course these factories want to generate profits. You move the auto manufacturing out of the state, the economy gets depressed. This idea that we would be a service sector economy is insane. Or even worse, that we would be a cultural economy when we're literally bleeding our culture out across the planet and doing nothing to protect it.

[Andrew Heaton]

We're not a service economy or only a service economy. We're still a manufacturing powerhouse. We have been. It never went away. The difference is that we shifted from like low wage stuff, the peasant labor that you're talking about, to high end stuff like building airplanes, computer parts, things like that. I would rather have a high end manufacturing industry than a low end manufacturing industry.

[Phil Labonte]

This is all macro graphed go up argument that ignores the fact that cultures, families, traditions and our country is gutted and eroded. By all means, if you want to live in a plastic jumpsuit shaven headed society, let's roll baby. We'll all see short term gains as what makes the soul of our nation function dies.

[Andrew Heaton]

What I want to do is maximize people being able to make free choices and not have top down command economies. So I am fine with you if you find a better deal, I'm fine with you taking that deal again. We'll carve out slave labor and things like that. But in terms of just being able to have a competitive economy, be as competitive as you like.

[Phil Labonte]

Do you know where our aluminum comes from?

[Andrew Heaton]

No.

[Phil Labonte]

Comes from Canada.

[Andrew Heaton]

Okay.

[Phil Labonte]

Canada has no bauxite mines. They have, they have cheap labor.

[Andrew Heaton]

Okay.

[Phil Labonte]

And so instead of building our own aluminum refineries, being more energy efficient, we, we import aluminum from Canada who imports their raw materials, bauxite, which refines into alumina and then aluminum in Canada. When the United States very well could have their own very cheap aluminum produced in country. We have bauxite mines in Louisiana.

[Andrew Heaton]

Why don't we just do that then if it's, I mean, if it's cheaper from Canada, buy it.

[Phil Labonte]

Because the world view that you espouse, why just buy, why buy it from Canada? It's cheaper.

[Andrew Heaton]

If it's cheaper, get it? Yeah. Like spend the money on something here.

[Phil Labonte]

This is, we have gutted our refineries. We have got our manufacturing base for a fake Argument. That is instead of building nuclear reactors and hydroelectric plants so that we can do it here cheap.

[Andrew Heaton]

I'm with you there.

[Phil Labonte]

We're actually spending more for Canada to do it.

[Andrew Heaton]

Hey, I'm all in favor.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah, but it's cheaper.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah, if, look, look, I'm on Team Consumer. If you can get a cheaper thing, go for it. You can.

[Phil Labonte]

If we lock down some tariffs and block out these countries and start doing it ourselves, everything will be cheaper.

[Andrew Heaton]

Why don't we just do that? Do you think the country would be better if instead of the commerce clause, all the states could enact tariffs? Do you think we would be more economically viable?

[Phil Labonte]

No.

[Andrew Heaton]

Okay, there you are. Like, like, I don't think that that would benefit. I think it's more beneficial when you can get cheap parts from various places, you can get cheap labor from various places. It ends up making everything less costly and it allows different regions to focus on what they're productive at. And you're going to take that excess money put into other things.

[Phil Labonte]

They're not asking about what the long term end result of that is going to be. I am talking about the spirit of our country, what it means to believe in constitutional republicanism. And you are saying, but we'll make money.

[Andrew Heaton]

Well, I think part of that Republicanism right there is the idea of doing whatever you want as long as you don't hurt anybody else.

[Phil Labonte]

Oh, that's classical liberalism.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah. And that's what the country was founded on, was classical liberalism and the idea that you are a free citizen, you can engage in free activities, whether they're sexual or corporate, with whoever you want as long as you're not hurting anybody else.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, there is a debate long term over imports and exports and tariffs. And more importantly, if we want to get into an argument over what the founding fathers thought when the country had 4 million people in it, 13 colonies, and imports were substantially limited due to the difficulty of travel. We're talking about something entirely different from gigantic cargo vessels traveling the whole world and undercutting the economies and cultures of the countries for which they are.

[Andrew Heaton]

You know what, I'm, I'm, I'm always open to arguments of scaling, but like that did take place place at a backdrop of mercantilism. The idea of mercantilism was well known. What you're describing as mercantilism. What Trump is, is a mercantilist. Like that was well known at the time.

[Phil Labonte]

So the point I'm bringing up is with a subculture, particularly like skateboarding, and this is again, there's also snowboarding, there's surfing. Everyone's complaining about very similar things. The United States is hollowing itself out. It's pumping out money to foreign countries because they will always have cheaper labor. We now have houses people can't afford. We are not producing enough. We never were ever since the petrodollar got got kicked into gear after with the liberal economic order you've got, you've got Gen Z that can't buy anything. There's no low skill labor for which a young man or woman can get a job to actually be competitive. And at the same time we're opening the borders to non citizens who are effectively taking a lot of our low skill labor. This is the end if this continues. And hey, hey, hey, I mean those of us that are rich are going to enjoy it all the way down until we invest in China and gtfo.

[Andrew Heaton]

All right, there's a bunch of things to unpack there. Okay. So in, in terms of the rising housing costs, I would say the principal reason that housing are getting housing is getting more expensive is that we restrict supply. Like the America doesn't have a housing policy of an investment policy where we want everybody's house to raise in value forever.

[Phil Labonte]

Housing sales, housing prices just went down for the first time in a long time and sales have actually. That's great.

[Andrew Heaton]

No, it's terrific. And there's going to be, there's going to be variation day to day.

[Carter Banks]

Right.

[Andrew Heaton]

But like the principal reason houses are expensive is not because of free trade. It's because we restrict how much houses can be built. Like that's the main thing. It's restriction of supply.

[Phil Labonte]

How does that make sense when you have a plethora of houses for sale today and people aren't buying them?

[Andrew Heaton]

You've got about 2% of the housing

[Tim Pool]

market emoji moment from Sadie who writes I'm not crying, you're crying. This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi because I didn't have to convince him I needed a GLP one. He understood and I felt supported, not judged. I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy. Thanks Sadie. I'm Mayra Amit, founder of Mochi Health. To find your mochi moment visit joinmochi.com Sadie is a Mochi member, compensated for

[Andrew Heaton]

her story right now of like multiple houses that people own that nobody's living in. But when you look at any map of any major city in the United States, 80% of it is zoned for single family occupancy and so it's illegal to build a duplex.

[Phil Labonte]

There are houses for sale that are not moving right now.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah, well, we still got high interest rates. And then on top of that, like, you're, you're maintaining a property that you think is going to increase in value you may not want to leave in it. Right. So like, like, I'm not. This is sort of a side argument. But housing, I think, like, fairly indisputably is going up largely because of supply problems. We need more houses.

[Phil Labonte]

Completely disagree with that.

[Andrew Heaton]

No, there's.

[Phil Labonte]

There's so many houses for sale right now. It's a buyer's market, but we've got a lot. One, I think one of the principal arguments as to why houses cost too much, that people are living longer and boomers who own, on average, I think they own like 1.7 houses or something, Whatever the number is, you've got a small 80% of boomers own homes and then a small percentage own multiple homes and then a small percentage own quite a few. Gen Xers, around 72% own a single home. Millennials 50% and gen Z, it's something like 17% or less. Why can't gen Z, in their 20s have a house and have a family?

[Andrew Heaton]

When you look at wages, wages have increased since the 1970s, but prices have increased for health care, college and housing. Those are the three things that have gone up. Everything else has gone down. Food's gone down, consumers, consumer goods, gadgets, they've all gone down.

[Carter Banks]

Right.

[Andrew Heaton]

So people are actually earning more than they did in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, across age cohorts. But prices for those three things have increased. So, like, because of restriction of supply with housing, with health care, healthcare is a complicated issue. I would say that it's a combination of regulatory malfeasance, combined with the fact that we have sort of state by state monopolies that we allow rather than competition to exist. And it's this huge morass of regulations that are in there. In terms of college, I would say that colleges, because we went from a college degree, is a nice thing to have, and some people are going to have it. In 1950, like 2% of people had a graduate degree, maybe 6% had an undergraduate degree. But in the 1980s we went, everybody has to get a college degree. If you don't get a college degree, you're a loser and you don't get to be part of the social pyramid. Right. With a college degree, if it's a positional good that's predicated on the value Being other people don't have it, you can't equalize it. The value can't be egalitarian. So we pushed everybody into that system. You also have a limited amount of college spots that are available, but you have people coming in and you have. Excuse me, you have money coming in, capital coming in. Too much money chasing too few goods is going to increase the price. You're going to cause inflation there. So college, we pump too much money into it in terms of student loans and things like that. The federal government has.

[Phil Labonte]

We agree on that one.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah. Okay, great.

[Phil Labonte]

So college, there, college is a waste of time and nobody should go.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah. So wait, why are you thinking that housing has got more expensive because of free trade?

[Phil Labonte]

Because like what I said was Gen Z can't afford to buy a house or have a family. The question of why houses are getting more expensive is because we're living longer and boomers have investment properties. We don't want it to go down.

[Andrew Heaton]

That's a supply issue, right?

[Phil Labonte]

Well, technically, yes, but I mean, it's largely based on. I'm not, I'm not paying the blame on anybody over the fact that in order to actually get houses to lower cost, which I wouldn't necessarily call a supply issue, it's more of a. It's a question of can Gen Z make enough money to compete with the interest of boomers? The answer is no.

[Andrew Heaton]

No.

[Phil Labonte]

And I think the reason is we've destroyed the jobs that they would normally get. They don't exist anymore. And we tell women, you want to be rich, get naked and have sex on camera and a bunch of girls are trying. It doesn't work for them. And now the worst thing about that, I just knocked all them out of a job.

[Andrew Heaton]

Well, I'm happy to talk about only fans.

[Phil Labonte]

Cyber industrialization.

[Andrew Heaton]

I'd say the main problem with housing is we don't have a housing policy. We have an investment policy. We want to treat houses as the principal investment vehicle of the entire country. The problem with that is if you want all houses to increase in value forever, which is what we want, then you can't have cheap houses like it's.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, they will though, because land is finite and population grows. But when population retracts, these houses will implode and nothing can stop it.

[Andrew Heaton]

That probably will happen to America.

[Phil Labonte]

So I guess my question for you is ultimately there is one simple disagreement between us. Regardless of what our view on economic policy is. I have a vision of America that is rooted in the American tradition and you don't. I'm not saying it's an insult saying you don't.

[Andrew Heaton]

I agree to disagree on that one. No, I think individual liberty, free trade and comparative advantage are pretty rooted in the American experience too.

[Phil Labonte]

Yes, but that's all money. I mean, it'd be great if a Chinese guy got those advantages, right? Then he can have a Communist party that externally is doing those things you describe. That's not what I'm talking about and that's the point I'm making. My view of American tradition is not we have a fiscal policy that the founding fathers agreed with. It's that I wake up in the morning with snow falling around open Christmas presents and we have apple pie baking sitting on a windowsill and I go outside and I watch people playing baseball.

[Andrew Heaton]

Those are nice. They're spiritual and emotional arguments.

[Phil Labonte]

They're spiritual.

[Andrew Heaton]

I think the government should be protecting you from crime and should be enforcing contracts. It should be stopping fraud, negative externalities like pollution. But I don't think the government should protect you from competition.

[Ian Crossland]

What about Monopoly?

[Phil Labonte]

Oh, no, no, no. We're not Monopoly. Again, again, I'm not. I'm advancing this to the soul of a nation, not the fiscal policy. The fiscal policy is a. Is a component of the argument. But my point is this.

[Andrew Heaton]

We're now switching from policy to. To sort of.

[Phil Labonte]

Which is why I said ideology. The key distinction between us is that I have a view of what makes America America based on its American tradition. And you argued for policies based on American policy tradition. So I have no interest in the United States becoming an Islamic nation where women have to wear the cob.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yes, me neither.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, go to Dearborn, Michigan and tell me what you see.

[Andrew Heaton]

I don't. Female genital mutilation germane to the free trade thing.

[Phil Labonte]

The point is, why did we have 20 million people on the high estimate? You know what? I'm going to pause and go low estimate. Why did we have 10 million people be allowed to enter this country illegally under the Biden administration?

[Andrew Heaton]

Biden screwed up where he decided that there were. Hold on real quick. We'll talk about immigration in a moment. In terms of the spiritual defending things thing, let's say that there's an industry that, like, I work in entertainment. Like you're a journalist, but we're kind of broadly in the same media family. Right. Like, if stand up comedy became less popular, I wouldn't want the government to prop it up and like. And I do stand up comedy. Right, agreed.

[Phil Labonte]

I would. I would question what you have done with your industry and why you couldn't make it more popular.

[Andrew Heaton]

Right. And if they're. Same thing. If there are manufacturers that are making buggy whips or are making saddles and people don't want to ride horses as much, I don't think that there's any onus on the government that's not tech, those industries.

[Phil Labonte]

And so what I see is a willingness of libertarians short term gains burning the country down. I mean, let me.

[Andrew Heaton]

I don't think they're short term. I mean, like.

[Phil Labonte]

No, hold on, let me ask you this.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

What if Americans stopped listening to American comedy because the Chinese comics were just funnier. Now the thing is great, we get more comedy and then all the people start adopting Chinese communist views, they start voting for communism and then they have you arrested because 10 years ago you said something naughty.

[Andrew Heaton]

I feel like we're getting into civil liberties now. I would very much stand with you in First Amendment protection.

[Phil Labonte]

This is the problem I have with libertarians.

[Andrew Heaton]

I mean, as podcasters, one plus one equals two. Tim, as podcasters, we're already in competition with the entire planet. You and I are in competition with porn any minute.

[Phil Labonte]

Indeed. But largely those who speak English and care about these issues, which means Australia,

[Andrew Heaton]

Canada and Britain and everything else. And like that's part of it.

[Phil Labonte]

The short term benefits you're looking at ignore the cultural ramifications of the world you live in. I are in a country right now where you have competing ideologies within our own borders. You've got the multicultural democracy largely represented by progressives in the Democratic Party and constitutional Republican Republicanism largely represented by. Not even Republicans, just the MAGA point a part of it. What we end up seeing then is when you, when you go to Dearborn, Michigan, for instance, you have an enclave of Islam and Sharia patrol. You have Chinese communist police departments opening across the United States because the graph go up argument ignores what makes a people. What a constitution is, is the views of the world that constitute its people. And when we open our borders because we say economically it's great, competition is no big deal. Fifty years later, you have no free speech, you have no sovereignty, and you now have to contend with a, with a, with a voting bloc that wants your country eroded and destroyed, notably New York, with Zoran Mandani, who explicitly stated in his campaign he will advocate for illegal immigrants against federal law. This country will not exist if we maintain your description of how things should be running. We have to have borders and we have to have a working body that is able to, to exist without having to compete with Peasants in other countries. There is a. There is a, an enclave. Irania, I believe it's called in South Africa. Are you familiar with it? No, I believe it's called Irania. It is a white private land mass that no one can live there. It's private unless you, you come to them and they approve you to live there. And they said we don't allow any hiring of labor from outside the community. Because what ended up happening was the money started leaving and the trade started slowing down. So they realized it may be more expensive to hire a neighbor to do the work, but they have to, otherwise it all starts falling apart. I am sick and tired of the laissez faire libertarian. I will squeeze what is left of the American way of living and watch this country become a communist woke cesspool by importing people who don't care for our values and displace our voting blocs. Because in the short term the graph goes up.

[Andrew Heaton]

So I take umbrage with the idea that me promoting freedom is a communist plot. I'm very much.

[Phil Labonte]

I'm not saying that. I'm saying that you are shortsighted and you are ignorant of the ramifications of how.

[Andrew Heaton]

Let's go back. So like a lot of people would like, would hark in the 1950s as sort of the high water mark of American manufacturing.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, that's only because we blew up Germany and Japan.

[Andrew Heaton]

It is. And if you were to compare us to the 1950s, we're more prosperous than we were in the 1950s. If the 1950s existed now and it was a separate country we could visit. We would view it like Poland right after the Soviet Union came down. We'd become far more prosperous.

[Phil Labonte]

Prosperous. Let me ask you a question. How would you state, how would you describe the state of political affairs in the United States?

[Andrew Heaton]

Political affairs? Yeah. As in like romantic trysts or just like politics in general?

[Phil Labonte]

Like how would you describe the political state of the United States right now?

[Andrew Heaton]

Very bad.

[Phil Labonte]

Very, very bad. Why?

[Andrew Heaton]

Great question, Tim. I actually wrote a book on this called Tribalism is Dumb. I'll be happy to give you a copy of it when we leave. That is a salient question. That's something that has been going on in the United states now for 20 or 30 years. It's been going on in other countries as well. It's been going on in Europe, the countries that have a pre distributionist economic model which is kind of what you're advocating for of let's keep wages higher at the base floor through higher minimum wage things. Like that they're going through the same thing as well. So I would infer that that's not an economic.

[Phil Labonte]

I'd advocate for a minimum wage.

[Andrew Heaton]

Forgive me, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it's market

[Phil Labonte]

competition within our borders and an expected standard of living for an American. So we have eliminated that.

[Andrew Heaton]

When I, when I say pre distributive, what I mean is trying to force corporations on the front end to pay more through some method or stopping competition, cultural enforcement rather than redistribution.

[Carter Banks]

Right.

[Andrew Heaton]

So like France and Germany and Spain have pre distributed models which are also going through these things. So I would infer that it's not primarily economic. I think it's largely technological. I think the period that we're living in is probably more similar to largely agree. Yeah, so that's the main thing. But let's talk about immigrants for a minute. So I stand by my position. I think free trade's been good. I think it's been great for the planet. I think it's been good for America. But I don't want to hijack your show and only talk about that. Let's talk about immigrants for a minute. You brought up Biden. Biden made a horrible mistake during his presidency where prior to Biden, if you wanted to seek asylum in the United States, you would come to the United States. They would go, thank you very much. Here's your number. We'll call you when you're up for asylum status. Go back to the last safe port of entry. He reversed that and said, you can come into the United States and then just hang out until we call you. That opened up the floodgates. That's why there was a ton of people that came in under Biden.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, I mean, it's more than that. CBP was ordered to bring anybody in. They were ordered that if a child had a number with them that they knew was to a sex trafficker to ignore it and just send them to the sex trafficker.

[Andrew Heaton]

Sorry, can you repeat that?

[Phil Labonte]

CBP was ordered that if they knew a child was brought across the border for sex slavery to deliver them to the sex slavery.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah, I'm not, I'm not here stumping

[Phil Labonte]

for what Biden did was not an accident where he said, oopsie, I made a thing go wrong. It was an intentional plan where they were ferrying illegally trafficked children on planes into various red states for years. Tennessee. This, this erupted a major scandal when a U.S. plane loaded a bunch of child trafficking victims onto a plane and flew them into Tennessee. They were. There was one plane that landed in Westchester, New York, and a journalist filmed it coming out and interviewed one of the guys and he's like, they're making us do it. Biden was assisting. So we can go back to the cartels. Biden was bringing these trafficking victims into this country intentionally. Now, I think the obvious answer is that there are a series of economic faults that are affecting the United states ever since 2008. In the liberal worldview, the numbers improving is better than anything else. And this is a disease for which all political factions find themselves afflicted. Even Donald Trump talks about affordability and how we've conquered it, and he's completely wrong. But it's because you can't win political power unless the people feel comfortable. So the Democrats play is graph must go up. In the short term, we'll win. In the long term, this country will burn down. And a great example of it is since the ICE operations kicked off the Republican Party, the polling has shown Latino voters are bleeding from support for Republicans because many of these voters have family and friends who are here illegally. And they would advocate by vote for people who are not citizens of this country who are going to receive benefits or at least contribute to the cost of running a nation that comes from the public coffers. You will not survive if you have someone in your home voting to give away what you have to people outside. That has never made sense and it won't. And it's going to keep getting worse because we are a nation of graph go up, give ware manufacturing jobs, open up our borders to illegal immigrants. Slowly but surely, you end up with enclaves and voting blocks that say fuck America. Zoran Mamdani being an example of a man who ran for mayor and explicitly stated, I will protect the criminals who broke your this country's laws from those in the federal government who seek to enforce these nation's laws. When you get to the point where our largest and most prosperous city is now voting for a man who explicitly states we are de facto outside of the federal government, your country is breaking apart. So I would describe the political state of affairs in this country as civil strife with the political assassinations and murder. I would describe what we're talking about with tariffs and immigration as components of the erosion. I do believe that the Internet plays a role in that. It keeps the masses ignorant and hateful. The left, I believe, is substantially more hateful while believing they're not, while screaming in people's faces and beating and murdering people. And it's only going to get worse. And unfortunately we have liberals and libertarians who could stand up and say, and that's why I like the Mises caucus guys, because they outright say, close the borders.

[Andrew Heaton]

And that's like, I mean, Milton Friedman, peace be upon him, said years ago, you can't, you can't have a, a welfare state and an immigration state. Right? And so like, like, I, I don't.

[Phil Labonte]

But the liberal mindset is, as you're describing it, we need the short term gains to make money today. I don't care what happens tomorrow. And I could go to the American people and say, the world that you live in will cease to exist. But boy, will it be fun riding that bomb straight out of the Enola Gay.

[Andrew Heaton]

Or we do disagree on this. I mean, I don't think it's short term to buy something cheaper. Like an attorney that buys things from a grocery store has a trade deficit with his grocery store, but the attorney's still making more money than the grocery store.

[Phil Labonte]

The difference between the grocery stores is minimal. You're talking about other countries that have peasant labor we cannot compete with. And, and, and listen, I, as a company owner, we, when we launched our, our previous boonie skateboard, it was the, I think it was the beasts. It was. No, no, it was the weapons. Weapons. Was, was the last one. 50 BMG Tim Pool Blueprint model. The Cody Mack single action Revolver. We made $30,000 in two hours selling those skateboards. American made. American pressed.

[Andrew Heaton]

Great.

[Phil Labonte]

To the people who ordered them. I apologize it's taking so long, but you paid American and be patient because you know you're doing the right thing. I could have made $40,000 if I went to China. Instead, an extra ten grand, I could have bought myself a gold necklace.

[Andrew Heaton]

Hey, I applaud that, man.

[Phil Labonte]

I don't want a gold necklace. I want my country back.

[Andrew Heaton]

That's terrific. I don't want you to restrict other people's rights, but if you want to do that, that's fine. And I applaud that you want to hire American workers for it.

[Phil Labonte]

It's a, so it's a right. Explain what you mean by that.

[Andrew Heaton]

I think you should be able to have a voluntary relationship with anybody unless you are actively hurting them. So, like, if I want to marry five people, I'm fine with that. I don't care. If I want to have a economic relationship with somebody, that's also fine. The government shouldn't be stopping me from having economic relationships. So if you want to hire only Americans and only have your product made in America, I applaud that. And there are a lot of people, as you just pointed out, who would purchase that. I mean, like, you just made a case that people will buy American even if it costs more, that you're able to compete within that market despite having cheaper boards. That's great. And that, to me, indicates we sell

[Phil Labonte]

our boards cheaper than the big companies do. Despite making their boards cheaper, they sell them for more money.

[Carter Banks]

I think that. But I think the point is, like, America is not just a market. Whereas I understand property rights and I understand, you know, freedom of interaction, freedom of association and stuff. America's not a market. America's not, you know, the United States isn't an economic zone.

[Phil Labonte]

And I think it's. It's. I gotta be completely honest. I think what you're describing in some circumstances is treasonous. Okay, so. And I know you'll want to clarify, of course, and you will present the caveats because any reasonable person would, but certainly not an American could have a voluntary relationship with a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

[Andrew Heaton]

Could somebody date a member of the

[Phil Labonte]

Chinese Communist Party about an economic relationship with an American and a CCP member? There are some caveats. Would you not agree?

[Andrew Heaton]

Maybe. But like, by that same token, if an American wants to visit Cuba, I'm fine with it. If an American wants to.

[Phil Labonte]

Let me try this again. Because you're going to apologize and say you were wrong. You believe that? Is there any circumstance in which an American can't engage in a voluntary exchange with a CCP member?

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah, there could be some circumstances. Right. If we were at war, if. If there were. If there were specific elements that, like, I wouldn't allow somebody to buy, like rape drugs or something like that.

[Phil Labonte]

Like, would you allow, like, a publicly funded university to give away trade secrets that was paid for by the American public to the ccp?

[Andrew Heaton]

Probably not.

[Phil Labonte]

Why not? It's voluntary. Why are you restricting the right of the individual with knowledge to simply have a conversation?

[Andrew Heaton]

Well, I think in that case you're talking about public funding, though. Right?

[Phil Labonte]

But if you're a. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. If a private university professor knows in his brain something they had a study at a university, he read the reports that said he just knows it. It's not confident or classified. Why can't he go to China and take payment from these Chinese people so that the government of China can have access to the same rules?

[Andrew Heaton]

For the same reason that a governor or a member of the executive branch couldn't sell American secrets to the CC BE despite the Fact that they're an individual.

[Phil Labonte]

See, now what you've described is you are for trade protectionism only when you think so.

[Andrew Heaton]

No, if there were a private individual that came up with some kind of IP and they wanted to sell it, that would be fine. Like if, I don't know, Elon Musk wanted to sell something to China, we could run it through cfius. Like there are ways to go through in terms of looking at national security. But if an individual within a corporation, within a private part of the sphere wanted to do trade relations with a communist.

[Phil Labonte]

Agreed. So you think there are certain instances where the government should stop a person from voluntary, voluntarily exchanging with another person?

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah, but the default state is going to be. You're allowed to do.

[Phil Labonte]

All you've just said to me and everyone else is my ideological worldview. Worldview supersedes yours. And I respect that you believe that because I think mine supersedes yours. I believe I'm correct.

[Andrew Heaton]

I think we both think we're correct.

[Phil Labonte]

If you would assert the government has the authority to stop someone from doing trade, I would agree with you.

[Andrew Heaton]

You. If you want to put restrictions in place on what the government can do with other governments or even other corporations, I'm fine with that. But like, yeah, unless you've got a

[Phil Labonte]

specific American auto manufacturers can't go and cut deals with foreign manufacturers to hire cheap slave labor. You and I agree you are for trade protectionism for the private sphere.

[Andrew Heaton]

I'm all in favor of that. Like. Like where I got hung up was,

[Phil Labonte]

if we're talking a Raytheon employee can go to the CCP and say, I know how to build a nuclear weapon launched from a hellfire drone. Let me give that to you. You're going to say no. My point is this. You are simply asserting, if it benefits me, it should be allowed. But there are certain things where the government should stop voluntary exchange.

[Andrew Heaton]

Tim, in all honesty, in all complete sincerity, do you think that is what I'm saying?

[Phil Labonte]

Yes.

[Andrew Heaton]

You think that I'm saying that there's no appreciable difference between saying you can't have a tariff versus clear secrets to the ccb.

[Phil Labonte]

What you are missing is that you have in your mind the limiters on when you believe the government should stop voluntary exchange. You have already explained scenarios in which the government should stop and even punish voluntary exchange. You have made the argument that you disagree on where that line should be. In some areas where I agree the line should be a little bit further. Yet at the same time you've argued the government should not do it. So you are wrong. You do believe the government should. You just want to get cheaper stuff where I think the cheaper stuff you're getting hurts us.

[Andrew Heaton]

I don't think I have to be an anarchist to oppose to not have any kind of government regulation, like let's just say some government.

[Phil Labonte]

We agree there are instances where the government should stop and even punish individuals who engage in certain economic exchanges.

[Andrew Heaton]

If they're selling nuclear secrets, sure. Drugs if there's, I mean, you know, going back to the cartel thing, if you really want to know the cartels, like I would like figure out a way to decriminalize most drugs that.

[Phil Labonte]

So the answer is yes. Right. In terms of you believe the government should stop some economic exchanges.

[Andrew Heaton]

Of some economic exchanges. But like, but just pointing out that I want the government occasionally to do things doesn't justify every instance of government interaction.

[Phil Labonte]

My point is, you said previously you think people should be free to do these things, but you of course don't mean it. You just think that you should be able to engage in economic behaviors that'll benefit you and how you see the world. And I think you are destroying this country by doing so. Now again, we would both agree an individual taking a state secret or general information that would benefit China in destroying this country, the government should stop that. Right?

[Andrew Heaton]

Hey Tim, let's back up. I don't want to do any character attacks here. I don't want to hurt anybody in America. Like I'm a guy in a three piece suit. If Trump does 10%, 15% tariffs, the reality is it's probably not going to impact, impact me. I can take that on the chin. I think that it's actually going to hurt manufacturing in the long run because it's going to hurt intermediate parts. It's going to affect how much stuff costs for people that are poor. I'm concerned about them in the short term. I can make a good faith argument and I would hope you could concede to me that while I might be wrong, I'm still operating in good faith.

[Phil Labonte]

Yes, and you are wrong. Because again, my point is simply the premise of your argument is government shouldn't restrict voluntary exchange.

[Andrew Heaton]

That should be the default state.

[Phil Labonte]

You don't actually, they're going to be

[Andrew Heaton]

exceptions to that in the same way that the government shouldn't kill people. But there are instances where it's going to have to kill people. That doesn't mean, I think that the sheriff can gun down anybody.

[Phil Labonte]

The only real argument is the sectors in which you believe you should be allowed to trade with foreign countries. And I disagree with you on that. I believe that in the short term giving away our manufacturing. I'm sorry, I believe that in giving away our manufacturing to Mexico or China or other countries, will benefits benefit us in the short term as consumers now get a cheaper product and the company gets a higher profit margin. In the long term, you eliminate the jobs, you eliminate the culture. Cities begin to dry up, families stop happening because they can't buy food and they can't seek shelter anymore. And now we are looking at a population collapse, a financial crisis, an ideology, ideological conflict. Long term with tariffs, people start to rebuild factories. Begrudgingly, they start to bring back these jobs. Now young people who didn't have a job before make one start generating these jobs. Interest and culture starts to rebuild and is within a confine that short term it may get a little bit more expensive. Long term you will have a self sustaining ecosystem, an economy, household management. The argument that we had was simply based on where you want to draw the line and where I want to draw the line. Yeah, you said something about that if

[Ian Crossland]

it's cheaper then that's good or something like that.

[Andrew Heaton]

I'm very much on the side of the consumer.

[Ian Crossland]

I run on cheaper. At what cost? Because it's not all fiscal. You know, something might be very cheap to order from the barbarian leader, but then the barbarian leader gets money and he poisons your DNA and kills you. You know, in seven years, because you funded a danger that you didn't just because it was cheaper, you were actually funding a negative that you didn't let me.

[Andrew Heaton]

So you have to.

[Phil Labonte]

This is a great point. Let me ask you, is it good that China is buying up our farmland?

[Andrew Heaton]

I'm not terribly bothered by that. Like so. So there is a thing we've got called cfius, which is the Committee on International. I can't remember what it is, but basically the Senate has a committee where if there's going to be a foreign entity buying some American industry, some kind of company, it has to go through approval for them. So for example, there was a big kerfuffle a few years ago where a Saudi company wanted to buy, I think the Port of Los Angeles. What that basically meant was they were just going to be the company in charge of logistics for it. They weren't in charge of security. CFIUS looked at it and went, this does not pose a threat to American security because American security is still handed by America.

[Phil Labonte]

Sort of like a farmland. You're not bothered by China owning land?

[Andrew Heaton]

No, because that would be the easiest thing to seize. If we ever got into a con like, let's say we go to war over Taiwan, we could immediately appropriate that. Now if they started like poisoning the land or something, sure. Absolutely. Ban them from doing that.

[Phil Labonte]

How would you know?

[Carter Banks]

Well, what about,

[Phil Labonte]

hold on, you've given control of your food supply to a foreign country or a large portion of it. If.

[Andrew Heaton]

What, what percentage are we talking about here? Because I'm guessing It's less than 1% of American food that's owned by China.

[Phil Labonte]

Let's pull up the number so we

[Andrew Heaton]

can, we're talking about 20. We can talk. But if we're talking about like 1%, that's probably just like investment diversity for the Chinese in which case they're spending money over here and we're getting more money.

[Ian Crossland]

Can you, what does that say?

[Phil Labonte]

What does that money. What do you mean by we get more money?

[Andrew Heaton]

Means somebody went, I can make more money having this.

[Phil Labonte]

3.6% of US agricultural land is. Canada owns one. Wait, what? Canada owns one third of our land.

[Andrew Heaton]

What?

[Carter Banks]

Wow.

[Andrew Heaton]

I think that's right.

[Phil Labonte]

Canada holding the largest share, about one third of foreign. No, no. A foreign owned land.

[Andrew Heaton]

Right. Okay, that sounds more right to me. Yeah, yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

I, if, if you can find China, China owns 0.2 of all land.

[Andrew Heaton]

I'm not bothered by point two. I mean, I am.

[Phil Labonte]

I'll tell you why. What, so they are producing food in our food supply.

[Andrew Heaton]

You.

[Phil Labonte]

So the way the food chain works, most people, I assume that's the farmland is going to be the bottom, which means small amounts of that are going to spread out to a much larger amount of our food supply. It theoretically could be greater than depending on what they're growing. You don't know for sure, but let's say that point 0.02% actually is. It's hard to know. Some of the agriculture will be for things that are, you know, animal feed or whatever. Actually, you know what, I'll say this. It didn't matter if China begins genetically engineering or infecting food with something not intended to kill a person overnight, but to say lower their ability to reproduce by 1%. China's on the hundred year thousand year plan. Why would we allow a foreign adversary? We're not at war. But they are an adversary. They're listed in federal law as an adversary. They're in, in codified as one. Why would we allow them any degree of control in our food production?

[Andrew Heaton]

You know, if you could find any evidence that they were doing anything untowards, I would Be happy.

[Carter Banks]

They released. They've released multiple lights in the US that have attacked our.

[Phil Labonte]

They were shipping viruses, they're running illegal biolabs.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

They've caught numerous Chinese CCP members transporting drugs through airports.

[Andrew Heaton]

Viruses, sure, but like, like just focusing on the agriculture. If Phil, to your point, if they are bringing blights that are affecting farm and crops and things, then sure, stop them. But just the idea that like foreigners can own farmland doesn't bother me. But if there's some additional.

[Carter Banks]

I think that who the foreigner is matters. I think that China's an adversary. Right. We're not. They're not. They're not rivals, we're not partners. China is an adversary of the.

[Andrew Heaton]

Maybe we should sell in debt to him then.

[Phil Labonte]

Let me. Yes, so, so again, the bigger picture here that I see is you're sitting in your rocking chair sipping your delicious sun tea as the Chinese peasant comes over and asks you, so what would you like to eat? And you're like, this is great. And behind you they're cutting, they're tearing down the walls of your home. They're pissing and crapping all over the place. And you're like, I don't care because I'm getting it good right now. And then there's a 17 year old guy watching it happen, going, bro, why are you doing this right now? And you're like, who cares? It's great. So an example of that is China, for instance, has birth tourism, so I forgot the number. There's a story recently there are companies in China that fly women to the United States to give, give birth and immediately fly back. Yeah, there's something like 30,000 in the past couple of years. These are US citizens now exploiting our laws for one purpose. In 20 years and 30 years they're going to come back as full fledged citizens, but loyal to the Chinese Communist Party. They are building up control in our country and their strategy is we can conquer these bloated gluttons because they love it. Right now they are more than happy to sell out this country for a short term gain. Thirty years from now, they will be our servants.

[Andrew Heaton]

I would be happy to have a constitutional amendment that restricts citizenship to people that are descended from a citizen.

[Phil Labonte]

And that's all well and great and we agree, except the issue is that right now that's not the case.

[Andrew Heaton]

I'm not, I'm okay. I mean if we're talking about 0.2% of farmland, like that is a small enough thing that you could maybe compel

[Carter Banks]

me to go, okay, the location matters, what land.

[Phil Labonte]

They're out, they're outside military bases.

[Andrew Heaton]

Okay, so like, like, if you can make a compelling argument that it's going to impel national security there, you might

[Phil Labonte]

let any of it happen at all.

[Andrew Heaton]

You know, like, I'm just. So I do care about comparative advantage, because I think that that's kind of.

[Phil Labonte]

How many refugees do you have in your house?

[Andrew Heaton]

Just to finish comparative advantage, we're getting kind of to the root of economics. Right. That's why I'm big on that. We don't live in a zero sum world. I don't want to go back to a zero sum world. We tried that for 2000 years. It's bad.

[Phil Labonte]

Okay, I got a question for you.

[Andrew Heaton]

But with like 0.2%. If I'm like an 8 on comparative advantage in terms of how much I care, I'm like a three on this 0.2% farmland thing. So if, like, I could concede that, I'm not as bothered by that one.

[Phil Labonte]

All right, I got a question for you. What do you. How big is your house?

[Andrew Heaton]

I don't know. I've got two bedrooms.

[Phil Labonte]

Two bedrooms?

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

Using both of them?

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah. I use one to sleep in. I use one to film in.

[Phil Labonte]

Oh, so you got extra space. It would economically benefit you if I could get one of my friends from Guadalajara to come and stay in your place. We're going to do that whether you want it to or not.

[Andrew Heaton]

And they're going to stay in my place against my will, on my private property.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, that's what happening in the United States is the United States, not of the American people.

[Andrew Heaton]

So if we're talking about immigration, here's what I want. I want wide gates and high walls. I want there to be good security to make sure that bad actors don't come into the United States, that there aren't gangs coming in, there aren't criminals coming in. But I do want there to be a lot of immigration.

[Phil Labonte]

I got a question. It's a blizzard outside, terrible blizzard. And there's a woman as a knock on your door, as a pregnant woman, and she says, can I please come in and shelter from this terrible storm? Would you let her in?

[Andrew Heaton]

Probably.

[Phil Labonte]

All right, so you let her in. And then she goes, oh, I'm going into labor. I'm having my baby right now. Should that child be allowed to own a piece of your house 20 years later?

[Andrew Heaton]

No, but again, like, I would say, like, I'm. I'm happy. Like, I think the. The basic idea of take the exit,

[Tim Pool]

turn Right into the drive through.

[Phil Labonte]

Nope, I'm making dinner tonight.

[Tim Pool]

You don't have time. Josh has practice.

[Phil Labonte]

Oh, that's right.

[Tim Pool]

I'll just get a salad and fries.

[Phil Labonte]

No, no, just the salad.

[Tim Pool]

But salad cancels. Fries.

[Phil Labonte]

Salad only. Fries. Salad, fries.

[Tim Pool]

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[Phil Labonte]

Hey, can I get the fries?

[Andrew Heaton]

Salad?

[Phil Labonte]

Sorry.

[Tim Pool]

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[Andrew Heaton]

Birthright citizenship based on soil was a bad idea.

[Phil Labonte]

Agreed. So considering the fact that it is still in place and we are experiencing this attack from an adversary, should this woman come to your house and say, let me in so I can give

[Andrew Heaton]

birth, would you want to cut off all immigration? I would.

[Phil Labonte]

I wouldn't.

[Carter Banks]

A decade at least.

[Andrew Heaton]

You would cut off all immigration for, like, in every sector for, for.

[Carter Banks]

For at least 10 years? Yeah, I would say The. The only. We don't need. We don't need to have any more immigration. We've got, you know, we had, what, 20 million or so people that came to the country. We have to sort out who can stay and who can go or who needs to go. I personally think that there's no problem with having a 10 year moratorium on immigration and we deport all people that are illegal.

[Phil Labonte]

What is America?

[Andrew Heaton]

Be more specific.

[Phil Labonte]

What. How I could define the country Very, very easily. Okay, I'm asking you. When. When someone asks you what America is,

[Andrew Heaton]

what would you say the United States of America is? A sovereign state in North America based on classical liberalism.

[Phil Labonte]

I would say that America, the description is that what is it, that a nation is a people and a country is its borders or something that affects. So I would argue that the United States of America is a people with a long standing history and tradition and unified culture that was built from rejecting one tyrant 3,000 miles away in exchange for 3,000 tyrants one mile away. Just to quote the Patriot, Brilliant. We have an American tradition built on the wars that we fought. The things that we've built, these things are deeply rooted in a variety of sports and foods. We are told now by a large faction of people that we have no culture, and that is rooted in what the left describes as multiculturalism. So what I'm seeing happen right now is when I look at this picture of Donald Trump talking about tariffs, he represents the nation of America. We are two distinct worldviews. A multicultural democracy which does not believe in classical liberalism or. Or American tradition. And we are a constitutional republic that does. Libertarians occupy a weird space where I believe that. And I'm not saying you're libertarian. I'm saying libertarians because they. Because they swing the vote. A few, a point or two exist in the space of it should be legal for me to do and I'll vote for it. That like the principal moral foundation of libertarianism is my right to liberty.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah. So what we emerge in pot. Good.

[Phil Labonte]

What we have and Right. So I think gamma is a game. Marriage is a really great example. Support for gay marriage is dropping for the first among Gen Z. It's the first generation where we see an inversion because boomers were opposed. Gen X was kind of okay. Millennials were largely okay. Gen Z went the other direction. And interestingly, Gen Z dropped dramatically from like 2020 to 2022, which is indicative of a couple of things. One, that there was a cultural shift among Gen Z, which is much harder to accomplish and less likely. Or two, younger Gen Z moving into adulthood already held anti gay marriage views. The gay marriage is a great example because the liberals said, let two guys or two women get married and do their thing. What's the worst that's going to happen? I mean, it's not like they're going to be teaching what's sodomy in schools. Narrator. They started teaching what's sodomy in schools. So the conservative argument has largely been, okay, we got to get rid of all of this because we can see that the slippery slope wasn't a fallacy, it was a fact. The actual American traditional, the constitutional, Republicanist, American liberal view is gay marriage is fine. We just have to ban the sodomy stuff in the schools. Conservatives go back and say, no, no, no, reverse it because it was proven bad. The left says, you're all fascist. We're going to keep doing more. The question is, how do you end up with a voting bloc in your country that wants to do away with your own way of life? These people are not America to back

[Andrew Heaton]

up a little bit. So, Phil, you would have a 10 year moratorium. You want some amount of immigrants, is that right?

[Phil Labonte]

Indeed, yes.

[Andrew Heaton]

So. So like I don't want unlimited immigrants. I do want more immigrants. I think part of the re. Part of the reason pre Biden that we had a big influx of immigration over the last 20 years is we basically set the speed limit too low and we're surprised that people are spending.

[Phil Labonte]

You want more immigrants than we have now?

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah, but I want them legal. And I want to focus it on ways that are going to be productive in America.

[Phil Labonte]

There's an estimate of 50 million non citizens currently in the United States that are either permanent residents or illegal immigrants. So I would love to get 30 million.

[Andrew Heaton]

I'd love to get more H1B visas in. I also, like. I flew down to the border.

[Phil Labonte]

So, like Dunkin Donuts and stuff. Like dunkin donuts for H1B. That's what they're doing. Yeah. I don't know if I don't want to. I don't want to besmirch the good name of Dunkin Donuts, but there were store clerks for donut shops and bank clerks that were H1B.

[Andrew Heaton]

I would love to be a brain drain on the rest of the world and have the smartest people in other places come over.

[Phil Labonte]

That's not. That's not H1B. You're talking about O1. You're talking about like 0102. You're talking about K visas.

[Andrew Heaton]

Okay.

[Phil Labonte]

H1Bs are not.

[Andrew Heaton]

Then. Then I digress in the H1B specifically. But I would love to be a brain drain on the rest of the world.

[Phil Labonte]

H1B's are. We can't find anybody in this country, so we'll look somewhere else.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah, I think they do that a lot with software and things like that,

[Phil Labonte]

which is all fake. It's all a lie. And then you have the other.

[Andrew Heaton]

I flew down to the border two, three years ago. I hung out with the border patrol. I hung out with people down there. I talked to farm. Farmers are an incredible disadvantage if they want to be legal at the moment because it's incredibly difficult to hire people legally through the process. One of the things that we've got in the country is we require, if you have legal immigrant labor, it has to be so high as to try to make it competitive for Americans doing it. And they still suffer for it. They still can't get people in.

[Carter Banks]

Right.

[Andrew Heaton]

We actually don't have enough people that would do basic agricultural stuff in the United States.

[Phil Labonte]

Let me ask you a question. How do you feel about war with Iran?

[Andrew Heaton]

I don't want to go to war with Iran.

[Phil Labonte]

Do you know why we are going to war with Iran?

[Andrew Heaton]

We've wanted to get rid of the ayatollah since the 1980s. I don't know. What do you think?

[Phil Labonte]

The. The Ayatollahs largely object to the liberal economic order, the petrodollar system. They want to trade oil in other currencies. And they are not letting up on threatening the Red Sea, which of course our Access to the Suez, the United States global hegemonic hegemony is largely preface the fact that we control all trade. We police the seas, we are the world police. The problem with the United States and the petrodollar system is that we don't produce enough, we don't export enough in order to maintain a strong economy. There's a bunch of factors, but one simple component is you need to produce more than you import. You need to make more stuff than you're buying.

[Andrew Heaton]

I see that goes back to that zero. Something like an attorney and a doctor have a trade deficit with their grocery store and they're doing fine. So aren't we the second largest exporter?

[Phil Labonte]

So let's just, just make it real simple for you. If you make 100 bucks a week and you're spending 120, what happens to you? Yeah, go bankrupt.

[Andrew Heaton]

That's not a trade deficit though, that's a spending deficit.

[Phil Labonte]

So back to the point I was making. Irrespective, I don't know what point you're trying to make in order for a simple component of when an economy is strong is when it is selling more than it's buying. Like anyone else, you are making more money than you are spending. You then have more money to invest. And the another easy way to explain it is they estimate that you know this today you need like $150,000 a year to live what was once described as middle class median. So you get two weeks of vacation, you got clean clothes, you got health care, you got a place to live, you can have a family. Well, if you make $150,000 a year, you're not really saving. If you are living comfortably, you're going to cut back on some things you, you might think you need, but you'll save a little bit. If you're making $250,000 a year after taxes, you're going to have probably like 50k to invest, allowing you to grow your wealth. This is why it's important for countries to sell more than they buy. The US is the exception. The reason for it is we don't do that. But we will kill you if you don't spend our money for oil. So for, let's just say like Russia back when it was solely the petrodollar system, they would have to use rubles to buy dollars so they could use the dollars to buy oil and the United States exported. Just the fact that we'll kill you if you don't lose our money. That is a wonderful, a wonderful system. If you believe in free trade, open borders, it works perfectly so long as you are willing to blow up other countries and assassinate world leaders who try to build a global order outside of the US dollar. As the BRICS nations begin expanding and Iran seeks admittance, I think they may have gotten it with brics. The US largely is getting pissed off. The war in Syria largely is about the Qatar Turkey pipeline, where the US said, we want to build this oil pipeline from Qatar through, through Syria, Turkey into Europe because Russia is charging too much money. They control about 20% of natural gas through Gazprom. Syria responded that Vladimir Putin is our ally and for this we won't allow you to do it. So the US said, then we will kill you. At first they negotiated, then they refused. Simply put, I believe it is fair to say the liberal economic order system, swift payment, imf, big banks, all of that is built around the United States is the world police, the police of the oceans and international trade. And for this reason, Americans will live like those in Capital City, the Hunger Games, so long as we're willing to drop bombs on the people who try to break that system. Notably Muammar Gaddafi, who wanted to create an African union and trade gold dinars for oil and Saddam Hussein who wanted to trade oil for euro. And so the US said, now you're going to die. And then they did.

[Andrew Heaton]

So I think we have, we have growing degrees of overlap now. I'm unabashed free trader. I'm very much free trader, which cannot

[Phil Labonte]

exist without a strong economy that produces more than it's buying.

[Andrew Heaton]

Immigration. I'm not for open borders. I do want more immigrants to come in legally. But it sounds like you also want legal immigration. So we're talking about a question of degree there. Yeah, I'm an intervention skeptic. So, like, I don't want to be bombing other countries if they're socialist or

[Phil Labonte]

if you want to maintain a strong American economy that engages in the trade practices that you believe in. It requires us to blow up anybody who would oppose the petrodollar system.

[Andrew Heaton]

In order for me to be in favor of free trade, I have to blow up anybody that is not using dollars. That's the position.

[Phil Labonte]

So let's elaborate.

[Andrew Heaton]

I agree with you.

[Phil Labonte]

I want to give our manufacturing to a foreign country so it will become an import nation. We are not producing enough to sell to the rest of the world. How do we maintain an economy when we are spending more than we generate?

[Andrew Heaton]

Right, okay, so here I think you've got a point in terms of deficit spending we're spending way more money than

[Phil Labonte]

we have, and we survive because we will kill anybody who tries to break that system. So the debt doesn't matter if we've got guns pointed at everyone's head. Right. Like, I'll put it this way. Let's say you take 100 bucks from your buddy and you go and blow it on cocaine. And then he comes to you and says, where's my money? And you pull out a gun and say, your money's gone. What's he gonna do? He's gonna put his hands up, turn on, and walk away and your debt's cleared. Right. That's America.

[Andrew Heaton]

I. I don't. So I'm worried about the national debt. We might have some commonality there. The national debt's separate than a trade deficit. They're not the same thing. Indeed, with the national debt, like, most of the debt is held by Americans. And so that is something that could happen. It's not like we can hold the world hostage.

[Phil Labonte]

If oil is produced in the Middle east, they have to purchase US Dollars

[Andrew Heaton]

first because we're the international reserve currency. Yeah.

[Phil Labonte]

What does that mean?

[Andrew Heaton]

It means that whenever anybody's doing an international transaction, they're using dollars to do it.

[Phil Labonte]

Indeed.

[Andrew Heaton]

So if China's purchasing something, China has

[Phil Labonte]

to give us money. Right? Right.

[Andrew Heaton]

It's also part of why we're able to get away with so much deficit spending because we can inflate it away to other people.

[Phil Labonte]

That's exactly the point. The only way we maintain an export, I'm sorry, an import economy, is by forcing everybody to give us their currency.

[Andrew Heaton]

So I think.

[Phil Labonte]

And then what do we do with their currency? We. We buy their labor and resources from just the fact that we. Listen, we don't produce the oil. Right. Like, we do produce a lot of oil, but let's say a barrel of oil is made in Saudi Arabia. Let's say, what's China? Easy example. Wants to buy that. Okay. Up until recently, they started trading in Juan and. And the Saudi Arabia got off the petrodollar contract. But historically, China wants to buy that oil from Saudi Arabia, for which we have no involvement whatsoever. What does China have to do? First they come to the United States and say, we want to buy this barrel of oil. We need dollars to do it. Right. So we're going to give you Chinese currency for literally no reason, and then we're going to get dollars in exchange to buy the oil with.

[Andrew Heaton]

It's a really good gig.

[Phil Labonte]

And so what happens is the US now has access to Chinese labor for nothing. When you do that, you can maintain an import economy.

[Andrew Heaton]

I think that again, I think you're right in terms of the deficit. Because if we've got a spending deficit and other people are using our currency, when we inflate it, they bear part of that burden.

[Phil Labonte]

So we're able to do that again, I'm not talking about that.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah, but like with the trade deficit, though, like I'm saying, you've got a doctor.

[Phil Labonte]

I'm not talking about any of that. I am saying that China has to tithe to the United States in order to buy oil. We get access to Chinese labor in exchange for nothing. We do not give China anything other than we print a dollar and say, we'll give you a dollar for your yuan. Which means when you want, it's. You want to buy that scarf off Ian, and I have a gun pointed at you, and I say, you've got it. First give me something of yours before I'll let you trade with Ian. And you say, but you haven't done anything. I say, I don't care. I got the gun.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah, I'm not for bombing other countries if they want to.

[Phil Labonte]

This is how we maintain an import economy. Sending our jobs overseas. We tell everybody, use the dollar or die. That means we get access to your labor. If you want to buy oil from someone else and they do it. And that's why we've got. How many aircraft carriers do we have? 17 or I think 11. 11.

[Andrew Heaton]

Aren't we the second largest export economy? Have I got that wrong?

[Phil Labonte]

We might be a very large. My point is sending our factories overseas and the jobs happening somewhere else means we don't have workers that are going to be producing things and trading amongst themselves. So how do we provide a laptop to a person who is providing very little to the rest of the world?

[Andrew Heaton]

Would you oppose companies that can automate on those same grounds? Like they can have a thousand employees, they can replace half of them with robots.

[Phil Labonte]

Would you stop that, by law, depends on the. Depends on the circumstances of which company and where.

[Andrew Heaton]

Most manufacturing in the United States went away through automation.

[Phil Labonte]

Indeed, compared to.

[Andrew Heaton]

Compared to trade, like trade is minimal.

[Phil Labonte]

First, it would entirely depend on which company, which factory, the degree of necessity for the product, and it would also the sector of the economy and how much it would be damaged. So the easy answer is usually automation is great. It's got to be tapered. So if we've got little robots that are going to come and make shoes from now on, then we have to have some kind of Tapering process by which when a company brings. So, yes, government must intervene. Otherwise, what you end up with is shantytown slums and depressions. So a great example of this is the accusations against Tom's Shoes. Are you familiar with Tom's Shoes?

[Andrew Heaton]

I've heard of them, but you're gonna have to fill me in on this.

[Phil Labonte]

The accusation is the story was that they said, for every shoe of ours you buy, we donate a pair of shoes to someone in Africa.

[Andrew Heaton]

I know that much.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah. Destroyed their economy because what happened was these small towns had shoemakers, cobblers. And one day the cobbler had no job. People stopped coming and buying from him because the people all had clean American cheap shoes. And so the economy was destroyed by free. When you. When a factory says, we're going to fire 100 people and we're going to bring in robots to do the job, you now have 100 people who no longer have customers. The customer was the factory who said, we'll pay you in exchange for your labor. Now you have a whole bunch of people who can't feed their families. They end up becoming homeless. Some of them may get drug addicted. A lot of bad things happen from that. We don't want economic destabilization to happen overnight. So we don't want companies to be able to just fire 100 workers and bring in a bunch of robots.

[Andrew Heaton]

In this instance, you're concerned with the speed of the transition rather than the transition itself. So, okay, so like what normally happens with automation is somebody does a job, a robot is made, the job goes away, but more jobs are created and there are people that are kept in the past. In what way?

[Phil Labonte]

So what jobs? Coding, Coding jobs.

[Andrew Heaton]

Farming, for example.

[Phil Labonte]

So, so a factory assembly worker knows

[Andrew Heaton]

how to farm to finish. What I'm saying is you, you on net, automation produces more jobs than it gets rid of.

[Phil Labonte]

I mean, like, it doesn't. See, this is again graph got macroeconomic

[Andrew Heaton]

Ignoring Tim to let me finish this factory farm.

[Phil Labonte]

I answer that or your point means that makes no sense.

[Andrew Heaton]

I am acknowledging that there are people that are in the pinch and we need to have things for people in the pinch. But what I'm saying is universal basic income, maybe, I don't know, job retraining, something.

[Phil Labonte]

But like job retraining is fake.

[Andrew Heaton]

But in terms of automation, Automation in general, I shouldn't say in general on the macro, over time produces more jobs than it gets rid of and it creates better jobs in the process.

[Phil Labonte]

This is all macro argument nonsense that just manipulates people not understanding what is actually going on in our system. So the question is, it would be

[Andrew Heaton]

horrible if we all go back to being farmers. And how old are 90% of the population?

[Phil Labonte]

No one is saying that. How old are you?

[Andrew Heaton]

I'm 42.

[Phil Labonte]

42. Will you ever be as good at writing music as Phil Labonte?

[Andrew Heaton]

No.

[Phil Labonte]

So when you lose your job to automation, what job retraining can you get if the only job available is rock star? Now, obviously it's not rock star, but the point is this. A 50 year old assembly line worker who gets fired because a robot came in is not going to learn to code. It's never going to happen. So what do we say for that person? In this economy, there's going to have to be some protectionism.

[Andrew Heaton]

My point, Tim, was not that there's going to be any problems with it. It was just that overall, you still want progress, automation, dynamic dynamicism to happen. You want to make sure that it's slow so that people can adjust. Am I reading?

[Phil Labonte]

And what I am sick of is the manipulation that we experience. Learn to code is a great example. Hashtag, learn to code. And this is what I think largely motivates maga. The people who understand this. Someone says to you, no, no, if we bring in the robots, we create more jobs in the long run. And that sounds really good to someone who doesn't know what you just said. What you said is 1,000 people will become homeless, destitute, their families will starve, but 1000 Indians on H1BS will get coding jobs.

[Andrew Heaton]

So I'm open to the idea that we need to have things in place to make sure that the transition doesn't happen so rapidly. If you were to automate all cars tomorrow, you would have a lot of problems, right? The driver's the most common job in America. My point was not that, you know, screw them. That's not what I'm saying here. What I'm saying is that overall, you do want to have that dynamic dynamism and innovation, right?

[Phil Labonte]

And so the issue, it's overall, right

[Andrew Heaton]

now, me being 42, I'm from Oklahoma, it's good that I'm able to podcast and talk with you. It's good that we're all doing this. If you were living 100 years ago, we'd all be farmers. It's a good thing that we've been able to make those jobs more efficient. And I see that as a corollary to the free trade issue, where we're able to get more money, we're able to specialize more, we're more productive.

[Phil Labonte]

I think we hit the nail on the head with this point and it kind of exemplifies everything in that when you give away a job, a factory, what you are saying is 1,000, when that factory decides to close down, a thousand people to the factory will now be destitute. But don't worry, 1000 Chinese laborers will make one tenth of what they were making and China will be very happy to receive that.

[Andrew Heaton]

Is it okay for companies to go bankrupt? Is it okay? Okay. So you're all right with that?

[Phil Labonte]

Well, I mean that's a natural element of failure and it happens.

[Andrew Heaton]

Okay.

[Phil Labonte]

And so the difference here is sometimes businesses fail and that's sad. A business choosing to lay off a thousand people to hire a thousand Chinese at a tenth of the price or robots or robots is evil.

[Andrew Heaton]

What would you do to stop the automation?

[Phil Labonte]

You don't stop the automation but you have to have a tapering plan in place. Not just for the sake of the individual whose life would be ruined for the sake of your own country so your economy doesn't collapse.

[Andrew Heaton]

Pitch me on this because I like if you get laid off at 50 and your job no longer exists, it's going to be very difficult to find a job with a comparable income to get training. I don't disagree on this. Right. What would that policy wise, what would you do to taper it? What would that look like?

[Phil Labonte]

Like you're saying if we have a bunch of optimist robots that can make cars, how will we taper it off? Yeah, and you can hide. You can, you can only bring on 10% of the Optimus bots per year or something.

[Andrew Heaton]

Okay. So.

[Phil Labonte]

Or every two years there would be

[Andrew Heaton]

like an automation law of you can only, you can only replace X amount of your workforce over.

[Ian Crossland]

That won't work because the Chinese are going up 0 to 100 a when

[Phil Labonte]

you have free trade and no protection is. I'm exactly correct.

[Ian Crossland]

Sea Dance they're just said IP Law. They don't care about any of they're going to all the way disrupting the entire planet.

[Phil Labonte]

And this is why if the US does not find a way to stabilize itself and rely on itself, we are cooked. IP law is gone because China doesn't care and there's no restrictions.

[Carter Banks]

They had a massive attack on OpenAI just today. OpenAI announced it. The three China. Yeah, three of the biggest Chinese AIs basically were just pinging it millions of times basically stealing the, the, the code and that.

[Phil Labonte]

And then, and then I'm sorry but you're like, I don't care if China owns our land.

[Ian Crossland]

General problem.

[Phil Labonte]

And it's bad that they're having birthright citizenship, but it's happening.

[Ian Crossland]

My general problem with this whole thing is that if it's just like free trade, kind of laissez faire like path of least resistance, that insidious machines within government will take advantage of that.

[Andrew Heaton]

Easy.

[Ian Crossland]

Like, yeah, we're just going along to get along and literally the Chinese will just buy us out and then own us with like, yeah, short term gain, long term losses.

[Phil Labonte]

Let me ask you this question and it's like this part of our machine. If the Chinese Communist Party came to you and said I'll give you $10 million today to sell out your country. No, but this is what so many people are doing that that's the whole point. If we're looking at the Automation is a great point and, and Ian's point is great. If we have free trade at the same time as automation, we're basically saying to the American worker, you'll be left holding an empty bag overnight. Learn to code. Good luck. The only problem is the H1BS are bringing in, are bringing in the coders because Americans don't know how I can

[Carter Banks]

code better than a human AI can.

[Phil Labonte]

Now we're vibe coding.

[Ian Crossland]

Andrew, like you define what you mean when you say free trade. Also it's a very common word. I'd love to hear quick definition.

[Andrew Heaton]

It just means you can, you can freely purchase goods from other countries and that you're not impeded with tariffs. So if, if you're going to sell watermelons for $2, I can import the watermelons for $2 minus the logistics of getting it from Udemy.

[Ian Crossland]

My concern is about corporate corporatocracy and a corporation taking control in a country and then serving as the de facto government like Amazon. And if, if Amazon can do whatever it wants and sell to anyone on the planet, because that's my right, that they'll just make it cheaper and more robotic and less human and then all of a sudden they'll own the food

[Andrew Heaton]

supplies and they'll own, I mean I'm glad Amazon's around. Like Amazon's made my life far easier and it provides tons of jobs.

[Carter Banks]

I'm pretty pro.

[Andrew Heaton]

They, they I think start at a pretty high, high rate compared to a lot of other jobs. It's above minimum wage. So like I, I don't think like maybe, maybe there are other examples you could give. But like Amazon to me is Alphabet

[Ian Crossland]

taking control of the we should we,

[Phil Labonte]

we absolutely got to grab super chats and rumble rants.

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah we do.

[Phil Labonte]

But this was a lot of fun. So you know, I get wrapped up in it. But let's grab this because we can continue in the uncensored.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, the after show. Go to the rumble after show because

[Andrew Heaton]

we going to keep going.

[Phil Labonte]

All right, let's grab some of your your comments as well. It's already 953. We only got a few minutes. I apologize. Andre Tuchel Escu says Hanlon's razor is the psyop to cover for other psyops.

[Ian Crossland]

What is that one? Hamlin's razor.

[Andrew Heaton]

Can I jump in? Because I know this one. Hanlon's okay, so Occam's razor is the idea that the simplest solutions are the simplest explanations. Probably the most likely. Hanlon's razor is do not attribute to malice or conspiracy that which can be understood by sloth or incompetency. So basically if there's ambiguity and it might be a conspiracy or it might be an idiot, assume it's probably an idiot.

[Phil Labonte]

Indeed. Wolf says no, no, it had nothing to do with you. Wolf says, can we get the British guy with Tourette's to attend the State of the Union, please? Everybody knows what happened.

[Andrew Heaton]

No, I'll take you.

[Phil Labonte]

Of course not profanity with what happened. What do you mean?

[Andrew Heaton]

I don't know.

[Ian Crossland]

I didn't look into it.

[Phil Labonte]

Is it. Was it BAFTA or something? What was it?

[Carter Banks]

I'm not sure what it was but real like nasty.

[Phil Labonte]

What he screamed or something, you know. Sorry.

[Carter Banks]

No, no words came out.

[Phil Labonte]

All right. Omega says for the anti tariff people, tariffs are why Japan and Korea built plants in the U.S. instead of floating cars to the U.S. i say we need to tariff Apple by 300% until domestic consumption equals 70% of production.

[Andrew Heaton]

I appreciate the the kind feedback to your listener. If you were to look at how much it would cost to manufacture an ipod in the United States, I think it would increase by something like 10,000 or not iPod iPhone. It increased by like $10,000 or so. So I think it would be prohibitive if you tried to do that just here.

[Phil Labonte]

Here's the best part. If we didn't have the petrodollar it would cost the exact same thing made by made in Korea or China or at Foxconn and without maintaining a balanced economy and proper spending. I'll put it like this. If the petrodollar system collapses, your laptop is going to cost you ten grand. Like the fact that we get laptops for a thousand bucks is like a stable bro. I went to Best Buy last week and there's a 90 inch TV for like 300. Just like, geez, man, you know, sometimes I question whether or not we should go to war with Iran. But then I see these TVs and I'm just like, well, you know, we can bomb some of them, right? I'm kidding. But that's how we do it, baby. That's how we do it. Mason says, this is why I hate libertarians. How many jobs can be sent to foreign countries before there is no more country? And when you would argue against it, the graft kept going up. I think the argument, an interesting argument would be what if 100% of jobs were done elsewhere?

[Andrew Heaton]

That wouldn't work.

[Phil Labonte]

Why not?

[Andrew Heaton]

Because then you wouldn't have any income at all.

[Phil Labonte]

Okay, so what percent of income do you need to maintain your job is going to foreign countries?

[Andrew Heaton]

Again, I go back to the example here. Your doctor and your attorney have a trade deficit with their grocery store. It doesn't mean that they're imperiled. We're still a gigantic manufacturing economy. The difference between us now versus us in the 50s is that we do high end stuff. We still make things in the country. We export a tremendous amount.

[Phil Labonte]

We export, but what percent of jobs

[Ian Crossland]

are the second largest exporter?

[Phil Labonte]

What percent of American jobs could we give away before we collapse?

[Andrew Heaton]

I don't know, but there is a number, sure.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, right, because you said if we gave away all our jobs, there's no country anymore.

[Andrew Heaton]

So to, to give away the jobs would imply that we're being able. We're doing it because we're purchasing things. We need money to purchase the things to begin with. So I don't think you could get to that point.

[Phil Labonte]

Well, why not?

[Carter Banks]

Government prints the money.

[Phil Labonte]

I mean, look, the cars manufactured in China are sold in other places. Yeah, cars made in Mexico get sold

[Andrew Heaton]

in other places in the same way that you can automate jobs and you're going to destroy job, but you're going to create more jobs in the process by getting cheaper parts and having places

[Phil Labonte]

created in the process of automation.

[Andrew Heaton]

Oh, I mean like what we're doing right now. I mean like, like again, if we were to go Back to like 1940. More like 1 of us would be a farmer in the room. One of us would probably be doing like ledger sheets that don't exist anymore. I definitely wouldn't be able to do my job like a social media manager.

[Phil Labonte]

I question whether or not any of that is a good thing.

[Andrew Heaton]

I don't want to go back to 1900. I think it's good that people can operate in all sorts of different careers that didn't exist 100 years ago.

[Phil Labonte]

Largely disagree.

[Andrew Heaton]

Where would you want to go back to?

[Phil Labonte]

I don't know about going back anywhere, but I think it's a problem that people are fat, lazy, slothful, locked in their houses and don't have anything to do. They've become listless and without passion. They've sought ideological addiction to fill the holes in their world, and they've become violent psychopaths. I saw a video of a guy went to a ice protest stand in Minnesota where they were giving away hand warmers, gloves, coats, food, hot chocolate. And I thought to myself, how incredible that we have such tremendous abundance that people literally don't have to work and can get free food and clothing just for saying an idea outside. That's a bad thing. I think people should actually have to have some attachment to their lives in reality in order to exist. But the, the country right now is at this inflection point where I would argue it's massively detrimental to get to. Let me, let me do this because we're talking about Star Trek. We got, we got to go in two minutes. I'll say one thing real quick. If we had Replicators, civil war erupt in two seconds, and then this country would become just like the whole world would just erode. But we'll save that. I do want to grab at least a couple of the super chats here. I don't want to leave people hanging out because we don't have a minute left. Let's see. Dave the devil Chicken says Tim. The reason we let Fast and Furious happen is to let the 21st century version of Manifest Destiny happen when we where we go in and take over. So you're making a similar argument that it was to like that Ian said to create an enemy that we could then say, oh no, now we have no choice.

[Ian Crossland]

It was the first day I ever thought of that in regards to the cartel.

[Phil Labonte]

But yeah, I mean, I think it's because they're. They're running illicit activities for intelligence organizations.

[Ian Crossland]

Yeah, I thought it was they were just trying to track the guns and find who the who the higher ups were in the org. But now I'm starting to think like, geez, they create the enemy.

[Andrew Heaton]

Now if they can go, go conquer.

[Phil Labonte]

Essay Federale says every low T neck beard who properly pronounces every foreign word has been steadily screaming, but my Mexican food, it's glorious. Yay. Yo hasn't been good since 09 anyway. Wow.

[Carter Banks]

Hurts Mexican foods best at Taco Bell.

[Phil Labonte]

Yeah, avoid that white Americo's. That's not Mexican food, dude. All right, let's see human up in you. TT says people like this is why everyone is betting on AI to replace everyone's job. If no one has a job, there are no customers to pay for your AI slop. They kill their golden goose. They are only focused on short term gain. It's a, it's, it's a really interesting example I brought up on the show because they've started to automate fast food restaurants. And the response that I get in these arguments is yes, but AI is going to make it easier and cheaper for everyone to get these things. And I said, who is going to. AI can't buy the tacos if you don't have customers. If there's no people, then what are you gonna do? The argument was there's no, there's a population collapse. There's going to be a lot of lost vacant jobs and they're not gonna be able to fill them. And the argument is we'll get AI and machines to automate these things. And then I said, who's going to buy from, from your Taco Bell if there's no people to eat it? You can't have robots come in and do it. But in fact that's the plot to that video game about the cat. You play that one about the cat. He plays a cat in the future. And there's robots everywhere that were created by humans to serve humans, but humans all died off. So now the robots just kind of facilitate the non existence of whatever they're looking for. And you're a cat run around. We're gonna go to the uncensored portion of the show so we can talk about Star Trek as it relates to communism and free trade. So smash that like button. Share the show with every person in your life, even if you don't like them. You can follow me on X and Instagram Timcast. Andrew, do you want to shout anything out?

[Andrew Heaton]

Yeah. I host a program called the Political Orphanage. I welcome your listeners and viewers going over to to do that. Tim, it was a pleasure to be back. Ian, Phil and Carter, nice to see you again.

[Phil Labonte]

Thank you.

[Andrew Heaton]

You as well.

[Ian Crossland]

The mighty Heaton, ladies and gentlemen. Heaton is mightier than the sword. I like that your last name is a noun.

[Andrew Heaton]

Thanks, Ian.

[Ian Crossland]

My pleasure. And as always, follow me at Ian Crossland. Go to Grasshopper Graphene Movie and check out the new documentary that I've been building with six, seven, Kevin and Andreas. Exertus Graphene movie.

[Andrew Heaton]

It's hot.

[Ian Crossland]

And sign up with your mailing list. You'll get notified when the movie's live. The trailer's live now, but before. Before the show wraps, I want to give it to Carter Banks.

[Andrew Heaton]

Oh, thank you. Yeah. But first, let's. Okay.

[Phil Labonte]

What's up?

[Ian Crossland]

Carter Banks Everywhere.

[Andrew Heaton]

I was out of order.

[Phil Labonte]

I did it because I want to go. Phil's last. Okay. Yeah. But also there's, like, some weird guy sitting behind car. Are you. This is Brandon.

[Ian Crossland]

Look at that.

[Phil Labonte]

Anyway, yeah, follow me at Carter Banks Everywhere.

[Andrew Heaton]

Phil. What's up?

[Carter Banks]

I am Phil. That Remains on Twix. The band is all that remains. You can check the band out at all that remains online.com. we are going on tour this spring. We start April 29th in Albany. You can get tickets at all that Remains Online Dot com. You can check out our music at Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, YouTube, Spotify, and Deezer. Don't forget, the left lane is for crime.

[Phil Labonte]

Brandon's actually the. He's the real CEO of the company, Brandon. And he. This is like a. He's come in to make sure everyone's doing their jobs properly. Watch. You gotta. You gotta watch out, Ian, because he's been watching.

[Andrew Heaton]

All right, everybody, I think I'm winning.

[Phil Labonte]

He's left. We're gonna see you all [e-mail], timcast IRL. We're gonna complain about Star Trek, but largely just as an excuse to talk about communism. So thanks for hanging out.