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Tom
There is a rise of like ethical capitalism reimagining the capitalist system to include more. The income inequality is too great now. We can't just go on business as usual. We tried in the 80s, during the Reagan era to kind of cut the regulation and grow our way out of this through business friendly environments and it
Drew
worked and it was magically delicious.
Tom
I feel like that's a subjective because it's not working as good as it is now.
Drew
But I think, bro, go look at the stats. So if what people want is in America where there are no classes, you're never going to get that because that's not the game. The game is to have classes. But you want high class mobility. So America used to rank much higher in the 80s in class mobility than we do now. What I'm saying is the things that broke are. You can point directly to them, you don't have to be vague. What broke was we started printing money, we started deficit spending and we bought into modern monetary theory which says you can print money and it won't be problematic. There was a guy today, he was on a show called Bankless, which by the way, Bankless is a great show, but this guy, at least the clip they posted, was so fucking stupid. I was like, I cannot believe. Leave. So he's basically saying, just reprice gold, bro. Like separate them, come back and gold's like 20,000, 40,000, bro. Do you understand why Marie Antoinette lost her head? He doesn't get it. Like people are so trapped inside of. But that would work economically, Tom. Sort of like if you don't mind the mobs coming to your house. I guess so. Oh man. It's like, dude, you can't have wealth inequality at the levels that we have it. You can't do it. You can't do it. Now you can say that that's a flaw of the architecture of the human mind. Great. But we have the human mind that we have. And people will not look around and see that, oh, my life is getting more expensive by the day. And then there's this tiny percentage of people for whom their life is just getting better and better and better. And by the way, because I don't understand the economy, I can't figure out how to get out of this fucking trap so it feels permanent. I am permanently here. And they can tell you're the billionaire class, the political class. You are doing this to me. I know you're doing it to me. I don't know what you're doing, but I know you're doing it to me. You are actively putting your boot on my neck and I won't stand for it. And I'm just going to lash out. And because I don't understand it, I can't even beat you at your own game. So I am going to shoot you, stab you, guillotine you, whatever. And dude, it's already happening. Like, what the fuck? People need to wake up to this is what's going on.
Tom
I'm going to, I'm going to channel some of the energy of the chat and I'm going to kind of reflect it because something that woke in my eyes to it was this SNAP conversation that's been happening over the weekend. People lost their SNAP benefits as of November 1st. Some independent governors in different states have been using emergency funds, reallocating things, to try to keep SNAP benefits going. But there's been this debate that's been saying SNAP benefits are bad. We need to get people off it. People need to get a job.
Drew
Yes.
Tom
Then I did some digging and I realized that there are people on snap who work 40 hours a week.
Drew
Yep.
Tom
If I work, for example, at Walmart, 40 hours a week and I still qualify for SNAP benefits.
Drew
Yep.
Tom
Some people are saying that is the problem right there because the government is now subsidizing the profits of the private entity because you're not paying your workers enough that they're still qualified for Medicare while working full time. Now if they were the 15 year old that works here on nights and weekends. Yes, of course you shouldn't. Yeah, you're open mobility. This is not the forever job.
Drew
Right.
Tom
But as a 35 year old who does 40, 50 hours a week and still qualifies for SNAP, I feel like that's a problem. Can we at least say that in that specific scenario the corporation could be held a little bit more responsible for advocating that gap and not having the government pick up the bill?
Drew
No.
Tom
Okay. How did that Break in that.
Drew
Here's. Here's how you want to look at it. You're. You're very close, and I get what you're saying. You want to think of it in a slightly different way. The government's job is to create the soil, and from in that, what will grow will grow based on what the soil is. And the problem is people vote for things not understanding perverse incentives and unintended consequences. And so there is no law as ironclad as the law of unintended consequences. So this is why you will see Republicans bang on about small government. And what they're saying is humans tend towards corruption, power tends to coalesce, and then basically solidify, and then that power becomes corrupting. And so you end up with, like, a political class of people that we will often refer to as the deep state, that they're making sure that the world is good for them but not necessarily good for anybody else. And by the way, they don't even really know, like, how the economy works. And so, like, this sounds about right. And so they vote for shit like that. And as long as it keeps them in power, that becomes their proxy for, are things working? Am I still in power? Am I still doing okay? Are my kids still in private school? If they are, it's probably all fine. Okay, so now the corporations are going to go. Well, I have a fiduciary responsibility to my shareholders, which, by the way, could be anybody. So in a world where the 401k of your grandma is tied up in stocks, especially if they're American, you should want that. You should want that. And that's great for American business. And I can get into how you aggregate capital and why that's so important and all of that. I can get into growth and why it is an absolute modern miracle that the stock market exists. It's a gambling machine, but it's unbelievable. It's a gambling machine where you really can beat the house. You have to be super patient, but you really can beat the house. And so it's like, whoa, you've got this incredible thing. You should want grandma to be tied up in that. You should want that to thrive and especially to be focused on American companies. And this is awesome. Okay, so we want a world in which those companies are thriving. We want them to have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. We just want to make sure that the average American is a shareholder. Okay, that's where that breaks. But if that were true, oh, my God, this would be amazing. So then it becomes, okay, well, if the only ironclad law is the ironclad law of unintended consequences, what do we do about the fact that right now we are in a position where somebody could be working 40 hours a week and not be able to make ends meet? Okay, cool. Ding, ding, ding. We have a problem. You've got workers in the working class, lower class, even in the middle class that they're struggling to make ends meet
Tom
to the point they qualify for government welfare.
Drew
Yes, but that, I hope you see the trap of that statement because that has to do with what you need to do to qualify. So if that were a very high bar, well, then a lot less of them will qualify. But that doesn't make the problem go away. So qualifying for SNAP is a way too complex, gerrymanderable, Jerry riggable, whatever the right phrase is thing. So instead, let's look at. There should be a sort of rough ballpark amount of your life that if you're buying the sort of middle of the road items at a grocery store, that you only need to make a certain amount of money to be able to do that. We do this with housing all the time. A house should cost roughly whatever it's like. Yeah, I think they say the average house should be like three times the cost that somebody makes in an annual salary. And now it's like 5.3 or something. So it's just obviously grotesque. It's way too far off. So there are going to be noble things like that. I don't know off the top of my head, what percentage, if somebody has an average basket of goods to eat for a family of four, what that should be in relationship to your job. But there is a number, that number is knowable. There will be historical averages. There will be times where we're like, yeah, that makes sense. And then we may look at times like now go, this is totally out of whack. This is crazy. What I'm saying is you then go, ah, the soil has a problem. Meaning the regulatory framework that we have created in this country is creating a problem. The great news is, to oversimplify, this is very easy to pinpoint. It's called globalism. So globalism fucked the middle class and the poor hard. When you look at, did you know that being a part of a union has basically no impact on the private sector? Basically none whatsoever. It doesn't indicate in any way, shape or form whether you're going to make more money. It matters a little bit in government jobs, but even there it's like 5 to 12% or something. It's a very small number. I was like, I was shocked. That was not what I was expecting. But if you return to America, the literal millions of jobs that you've shipped overseas, now all of a sudden your employers are competing in a finite pool of workers. That's where you want people to be. You want the average worker to go, ha ha ha, motherfucker. You can't find people to hire because you can't go to India, because you can't send this to China. So you're going to do this here, not Vietnam.
Tom
I mean, yes, if I was a software engineer for Microsoft, but I feel like as a cashier at Walmart, you can't globalism that job.
Drew
Yes you can, dude, you had an open border. How many people flooded across that border? Those are the exact kind of jobs where you have globalized in the way that you're just bringing people in. So if you said, sorry, there's only a certain number of people that we're going to bring into the country every year and it certainly isn't going to
Tom
be millions, we just need to cut off the supply.
Drew
Obviously a supply and demand problem increase.
Tom
So the reason that Walmart isn't paying people is because there's so many people who came here, who migrated here that it's lowering the price that they then charge.
Drew
That is 100% correct.
Tom
The regulation that we can immediately remove,
Drew
say it like this, they don't pay more because they don't have to. Now you can try to regulate what they have to pay from the top down, which is moronic. And the reason it's moronic is when you say, hey, that person that's actually only worth $5 an hour, I'm going to make you pay them $20 an hour. They go, I got to find a way around this. So that's just the reality. And a business will find a way to survive in whatever means cutting people, automating. And you don't want to be like forcing people to pay a certain amount on the dawn of AI. That is about the dumbest policy move ever. And then of course people that go, well these are all top down problems, let's just mandate you can't use AI. Oh great. So then we will handicap ourselves while the rest of the world goes, oh cool, America just shot itself in the foot. We're certainly going to use AI. Those kids. And this happens all the time, the strong become weak because they start making really dumb decisions. And so this is one of those where things need to build from the bottom Up. You want to create a light touch government that says, we're going to make sure that people don't get evil, because they will. If you leave corporations to their own devices, they will become just as tyrannical as a governmental body. And so you need some light checks to make sure that there are things that they can't do to block competition and all that. And ultimately what you're trying to foster is you don't want people to be able to build a moat too easily. You want people to be able to get in and be that new, young, fresh kid that's like, oh yeah, I got a better idea. You want the guy that's been on the S&P 500 for 20 years to lose because they don't innovate and they're not able to create that moat. They're not able to build Foxconn in China and do all the crazy things that like Apple has done. Like that's how you have to address.
Tom
Okay, let's, let's extrapolate that argument. It's a supply and demand problem. We should abolish the minimum wage. Everybody should come in as a quote unquote, free market labor society. All the illegals should be deported. And then at that point, whatever I can pay you, I will pay you. If you don't like it, this is
Drew
your pitch because it's obviously not mine.
Tom
No, because going back to it, it being a supply and demand problem and regulation. So minimum wage is a regulation regulating the wage. Bottom. You said we should remove those.
Drew
Yeah, but you also said we should deport all immigrants, which I've never said. Well, nor will I ever say.
Tom
Well, the supply, it. We need to lower the supply in order to increase the price.
Drew
If you said stop bringing people in, I'd be here for it.
Tom
Oh, well, the borders closed now, so the people aren't coming anymore.
Drew
So you, you have solved that on a go forward basis.
Tom
Yeah, but if we can't, that's not helping the person who's making minimum, who's making whatever they're making at Walmart, because it's not the minimum.
Drew
So now you've got two options. You can deport everybody, which I would not support. Deporting some. Deporting a lot, sure, but not as a default like get rid of immigrants. That's not my stance. The next thing is you need to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US that would be another great way to do this. Far more interesting.
Tom
That's not an Amazon or Walmart problem and it's not helping of course, that's
Drew
an Amazon and a Walmart problem.
Tom
They don't manufacture anything. Their third party really sells their warehousing.
Drew
You don't think Amazon manufacturers. Are you high? Amazon Basics, where do you think that just magically appears?
Tom
Drop shipped from China.
Drew
Right. So they're. They're making things in other countries or facilitating. They have no incentive to build here. Saying, give them the incentive to build here. Punish them.
Tom
What kind of incentive?
Drew
I mean, the boneheaded way to do it. And because I have not researched this enough to know what my entire bevy of options are, tariffs are certainly one way. So now it's like, well, your Amazon Basics just got a lot more expensive unless you make them here. So take what Elon is doing. Elon just announced that they're building a chip here in America with Samsung and tsmc, but they're building the chip in America. It is a Tesla designed with Samsung chip built in america, bro. Like, 10 years ago, that was a pipe dream. And now we're doing the things that we need to do to bring that back. Great. More of that, please. But, like, this is where I go nuts with Mamdani. Now, I don't know all the details of the supposed tax break that was given to Elon Musk by Cuomo, but my default assumption is that Cuomo was trying to use that as leverage to get him to come build in New York. Or is it possible that he was trying to get him to come live in New York? Probably not. But, like, both of those things would be phenomenal for the economy of New York. For tax in New York, like you can imagine, everybody wants Elon to live in their state because for all of people's bombastic rhetoric, no human in history has paid more in taxes than Elon. Okay, let that sink in. So this is one of those where I'm like, yeah, people have all these distorted views about what's actually happening, but the reality is you can't tax wealth for reasons I'll happily go into, if that's what the community's stuck on. But you can tax income. And if he wants to do anything with his money, at some point it turns into income, and that's when you tax him. And when he sold all of his shares, or a huge number of shares, he paid a huge amount of tax. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.
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Drew
Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.
Tom
If we regulate offshoring manufacturing trying to undo globalization, are there some unintended consequences?
Drew
Of course, always ironclad law. But I can tell you right now, you've gotta. If somebody were to send me the. Well, Tom, what is the metric by which you judge the efficacy of your policies? It would be how. How much money is the middle class making? How big is the middle class? Like, is that a nice big bell curve where the vast majority of Americans sit squarely in the middle class? That's my metric, yeah. So now I'm like, okay, what do we need to do to make sure that the vast majority of Americans are just bang on right in the middle class?
Tom
How to. And then increase upward class mobility?
Drew
Class mobility is an up and down phenomenon.
Tom
Copy.
Drew
So you can't. Like for instance, dude, I remember when the Silicon Valley bank thing happened, it was a mad scramble because for a second it looked like we might have some exposure to Silicon Valley Bank. And so I was in there like moving things around like, oh my God. And it's like, that's the game. You can't like bailing everybody out and saying, oh, these are too big to fail. This is how all of this stuff builds up in the system. And how it's like, well, the person that can just call the president up and be like, bro, but not me, right? So you can't have that I'm getting
Tom
a lot of capital risk, capital flight thing. New York Post did an article where they said upwards of a million people would leave New York if mom Donnie gets elected. Jokingly, I had a buddy retweet it all my family's out there. I have a bunch of Friends in New York. He retweeted and was like, okay, make sure you leave your key under the doormat. Because a million less people in the housing market, that would decrease rents. That would make mom Dini's policy, quote, unquote, active on day one. Yeah, I don't think people are actually leaving. I think that was a scary tactic. I think if you wanted to leave in Dubai as a billionaire, you would go live in Dubai.
Drew
You just go to Florida. But listen, Florida, New York has lost.
Tom
You'll change your id, but you're not leaving New York.
Drew
New York has already lost in the last decade hundreds of millions of doll in tax revenue precisely because wealthy people are leaving New York. This is not a speculative problem. This is rows in a spreadsheet. So it is happening. It will continue to happen. It will probably accelerate under Mamdani, but you're not going to lose a million people. That would be shocking. But you're going to lose people because everybody has their breaking point. I haven't left California yet, but literally, I think the spreadsheet says, I hope Drew likes Florida if he passes this no property tax thing. Because it's like, bro, if there's no income tax and no property tax in Florida, bro, at some point, you can't justify living in California. Like, it gets too crazy. It's too much money every year. Literally, at some point, I'm better off just writing off my house and never again paying property tax on it. So it's like kids. So policies have consequences.
Tom
Lisa's in the chat. Are you moving to Miami, baby? Yeah, we're looking at condos right now.
Drew
Hold on. My love. My love. First of all, I'm so sad I didn't see you, and I'm so glad I'm seeing you now because, of course, I miss you now more than ever. I. I am literally looking down every street being like, okay, what would it be like to live here if he passes that? My dear wife, it really may be unconscionable to stay in.
Tom
It's definitely. Are you thinking, like, mansion on the. On the lake, on the ocean type thing? Or are you gonna be like some, like, Penthouse lab? Like, what is your vibe you think you're going for? I don't see you as a history car garage.
Drew
I would probably live here for a year before I pulled the trigger on anything. I need to see. One, do I like it enough? Two, where do we want to be? That kind of thing. We'll see. We'll see. I don't want to move to Be very clear. But, ooh, buddy. Like it. America's in a cold civil war. It is geographically sorting itself like a deck of cards into suits. And, yeah, like, it's going to keep happening, dude. People think that because there's historical momentum that these things won't change. They change a lot slower. This is part of the deep dive that I wrote that's coming out on Monday is, like, getting the timing right is so hard. So Mamdani is a mile marker. He's not an end state. So it's. Things are getting. Things are moving in that direction because people have been done so dirty, and they have misidentified the solution to the problem. And so that's where I'm like, oh, man, I don't know that we're going to be able to back out of this one. I don't know that you're going to be able to convince people that it isn't going to work. This is the snake oil salesman that when you have. You're in extreme pain, and they're like, hey, take this thing, and it's gonna make that pain go away. And then you realize that they're selling you arsenic, and you're like, wait, this is making everything worse. But it. You. You had to try it. You couldn't not try it. You're just in too much pain.
Tom
Yeah. All right, we got a couple super chats. Anybody has questions, drop them in the chat. We'll try to get to them after it. The chat is jumping today. Yo, we love you. Thank you for joining. We're excited. We got Ruben Tiago, official. They said, hi. Tom and Drew, could you react to the Andrew Tate tweet, the empire of lies, seven minutes, October 4th. It's about the collapse of Europe. Would love your reaction and thoughts on it. I would pull it up, but I know you have some words about Europe, just in general.
Drew
Yeah, I don't know what he said,
Tom
so we'll pull it up. If you can stay till the bottom of the hour, we got you.
Drew
The quick take on Europe is they don't understand values, collision. They have imported their own demise. They. They will fall if they don't. If they don't figure out what they're willing to stand for, and if they are perfectly happy to say the only thing that we care about is tolerance, then they will lose to Islam, because Islam is all about. They are very good at saying, this is what we stand for. We're willing to fight politically. We're willing to. I mean, historically, they've certainly been willing to fight militarily as well. So, yeah, they. They will be a formative, a formidable foe if this is the direction that they choose to head down. But they already. Because they're being. Sounds so terrible to say it this way, but they're being outbred so dramatically that the value system that has the most children and indoctrinates their kids the most clearly and strongly will win.
Tom
All right, next super chat, we have Sequoia hall. In the.
Drew
In the chat, what is up?
Tom
They said unions worked for pro athletes.
Drew
Unions were. Oh, oh, unions were effective for pro athletes. Great. So the stats speak for themselves. They did not. They do very little. So in terms of being correlated to people's increase in wages, they are not.
Tom
I also would say for pro athletes, they have the benefit of the highest caliber employees. Athletes are also advocating for everybody. I think unions would be a lot more effective if Elon and Jeff Bezos were advocating for unions in those discussions.
Drew
If Elon and Jeff Bezos were in unions, which is basically the business equivalent of what you get with sports is the best of the best of the best of the best.
Tom
When LeBron is at the table, it's a much different conversation than if it was just a. The bench warmer.
Drew
Yeah.
Tom
So.
Drew
God, that's actually a really good. Oh, that's really horrible. Oh, Drew, I think you may have found, like, why that statement is brutal in terms of, like, pointing to something and saying, hey, the reason it doesn't work is because it does work in sports. And then you go, the reason it works in sports is because you have rainmakers, people that they. If you can get them on your side, you will make so much money. And so every team's like, I gotta get them. And if I've got to deal with agents, whatever doesn't matter. If I've got a deal with unions, whatever, doesn't matter. Like, I need to get the best of the best of the best of the best because these guys will make me so much money, it's ungodly. Whereas the average line worker is. That's going to be harder for that person to be, like, a 10x line worker. Like, you could be a 10x coder. It's just hard. The nature of the job is such that it's hard to, like, add that much value. And then the nature of the job attracts a certain type of person. And those people are not spending their time optimizing for being a 10x person. Like, there's no gentle way to say that. So, yeah, that's pretty damning.
Tom
Oh, yeah, that's very interesting. And then last one from Marcus Aurelius. US has too many certifications for job CPAs in the 80s, A's in the 80s, BA's in the 20s, MA, MBA and CPA by training. Know nothing about taxes. Default is a cert. Makes us safe. Love the decisions always. And added value to my day. I think they meant discussions. But do we have a education problem? Because this is the first.
Drew
That's a very different statement than what he said. We have a horrifying education problem, but in terms of over certifying people, I think it makes sense in certain places. Like I do want to know that my cpa, like I need some sort of credibility check. So either you've got to have like Amazon reviews for CPAs or something, but I need some way to know that this person really knows what they're doing. Otherwise so many people are going to go with bad things. Now on the education front, it's a catastrophe. And parents should be just absolutely livid with the way that their kids are being educated. It is a, it's, it's a catastrophe of biblical proportions.
Tom
Yeah, but I mean I'm even looking at higher education where we have people who have master's degrees. Master's. It was the conversation we had with Red Yard. Definitely go check out our conversation. What if all his. It hit home that we have a over educated population. And I never thought of that. In the concentration of society like there is these over educated elites, quote unquote, who a lot of times are the fodder that usher in communism, socialism because they think because of their certification they know everything, they should be higher up than what they are. And that's kind of a lot of times the basis the, the base that then grows on these far left kind of policies that, that propagate.
Drew
So yeah, it's wild. When you look at what's happened to education, it is wild. It's something like in higher education, I want to say like 75 or 85 to 1, left leaning versus right leaning. Wow, that's crazy. And then of the people that are there, it's like they're more committed. So the Democrats that are in education are more likely to donate than the Republicans are. And the way that you could read that is that the Democrats that are there not only outnumber something like 75 to 1. It really is that wild. That may not be the exact number, but is that kind of crazy? And on top of that they're like farther left than their right leaning people are right leaning. So it's pretty crazy.
Tom
Yeah. Sandy Porter I love Truth Devin because He has like 14 burner accounts. I don't know whose cards you're stealing. Truth Devin, but we are not liable or responsible. Why do you think people vote Democrat or Republican? Do you think it's biology or something else? Why do you think people of Texas vote Republican and New York people vote Democrat?
Drew
It oh well, so this is. There's two questions hiding in there. So yes, it's biology, but it's also values. So if you're raised to be left leaning, you're far more likely to be left leaning no matter what your sort of natural proclivities are. But I do think that right and left are evolution's response to how do you keep an AI from completely going off the rails? The more I think about the AI safety alignment problem, the more I am convinced that you need a swarm of AI that given that we are in a simulation and we are therefore all AI, we already know that one, you still get hyper destructive AI, but you get a balance, an equilibrium that is born out of having people AIs that have competing interests. And through that you avoid the because game theory just is a thing. You end up avoiding parasites on either side because the other side keeps them in check. So there's that. And there was another. You said something in the very end that I was like, oh, that's actually a totally separate question. Read the exact question again.
Tom
Why do you think people vote in Texas vote Republican, in New York people vote Democrat.
Drew
Okay, so what it ends up being, if you really look at a heat map, is it's cities, city, city cities. So I'm going to guess that Texas tends to be more in aggregate rural, which is why you look at something like Austin. And Austin is very purple. Austin's probably headed full on blue I would imagine over time. And so there is something about the urban environment bringing people into really close proximity. Probably something to do with you're just so confronted with your neighbor is doing better than you that it triggers all of that resentment that tends fuel a lot of left leaning policies. It's going to be something like that. I imagine this has been studied pretty closely, so we could probably get a far deeper take than that. But at the level that I've done the analysis on that, it definitely is. Urban areas almost exclusively go blue and rural areas almost exclusively go reds wild.
Tom
Marusha Dark if tariffs are so bad for the host country as you claim, why do other countries levy them against us? Why do we care if they're Just shooting themselves in the foot, Wouldn't we want our rivals to raise theirs to infinity?
Drew
Did they say terrorists?
Tom
Tariffs, Tariffs.
Drew
That makes a lot more sense. Okay, tariffs. Tariffs are a tax. So once you understand them as a tax and it's like, well, what do you think taxes should be used for? So when you tax the importation of a good, you reduce the cheapness of that good to the end consumer. And so you're able to balance things out. And so this is why we move in these cycles of we become protectionist and we become globalist and we become protectionist and we become globalist. These are just the cycles. So all of these things tend to solidify over time. And so what worked and in the beginning was very healthy. Like debt. By the way, debt is one of the most powerful things in the world. It is also one of the most destructive things in the world. So fire is such an apt analogy. You can use fire to cook your food or burn the entire village down. So it really comes down to where are we in the cycle? Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after Stay tuned.
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Drew
Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it.
Tom
RJ Johnson, thank you for your $20 super chat.
Drew
RJ. What's up brother?
Tom
Born, raised and still living in LA, I've been concerned for our future. Don't let New York City superior attitude, so ecstatic over Mom Dini's win. Don't like New York City superior attitude so ecstatic over Mondani's win. Won't be long before they sink below our pathetic condition. Go socialism and NYC muscle emoji 100.
Drew
Just remember they are never going to admit when things start going wrong that it was because of bad policy. They just won't.
Tom
And then Sequoia Hall 1695 said Central Park 5. And I think that goes back to the Trump doesn't peg me as racist. I don't know if you remember the children, right? Sequoia hall, they wrote Central Park 5. Oh yeah, when Trump was super hard on the Central park five thinking that they were the teens. He was. You don't remember this story.
Drew
Yeah, no, I know it. But why do we automatically assume that?
Tom
Because Trump took out that ad and said they need to get the book thrown at him.
Drew
Yes. And so we're assuming. Did he say they need to get the book thrown at them because they're black or because he believed that they were the rapists? Rapists, right.
Tom
Yeah. But. Yeah, they. But they ended up getting off. They weren't responsible for it. It was.
Drew
Sure. So he misidentified innocent people and wanted the book thrown at them. What I'm saying is that was dumb if he didn't know the facts of the case. But why do we assume that was because they're black?
Tom
Because how hard he went over a racially charged trial. It will be similar to the dude on the train who killed the Ukrainian woman.
Drew
Yeah.
Tom
And if somebody put a full page out on that and says, hey, this guy needs to go to the bottom of the pit, we don't. It's people like him that are making the country bad.
Drew
Yeah.
Tom
And at the same time, 1200 people get stabbed every day and they don't get full page ads. So it's one of those things where you glorify a racially charged case kind of.
Drew
I mean, listen, racism's real. It's growing, which is horrifying. All of that's true. I don't know that we have any reason to believe that Trump did that ad because he is racist, given the number of prominent black people that have come out and said that he's not racist. So I don't know, like, going down the lane of Trump is racist. Whatever. Like, I'm not gonna die on the Hill, maybe secretly. I don't know. I haven't seen anything in public, but I don't know him personally at all. So certainly not going to defend his racist or not racist record. I will say that America is growing increasingly racist. And that is dumb. And I hope that we all back out of that immediately. And remember, I'm telling you, I could think of whatever race you guys don't like though that race. I could find you a gaggle of people that you'd be like, oh, man, this guy's just like me. Like people that are. They're just down with the things you're down with and you love spending time with them and you're just like, oh, yeah. Like, you will suddenly be like, oh, that's right. It's about fucking values. And I could find you people that are exactly the same Shade as you. You need to find a Casper the Ghost for me. But I can find you somebody that just matches your skin tone and you're going to be like, this guy is a dick and I don't want to spend an ounce of time with this person because it doesn't have anything to do with skin color. It has to do with values. We grow up in the areas from a historical perspective where everybody looks like us, because that's just how geography worked. And so of course, from a long standing perspective, many countries, there will be a wild correlation between how they look and what their value system is, but it isn't causative. It isn't causative at all.
Tom
So, yeah, also, Tom, you do know that people, you can be racist and have black friends. Sure, copy. Okay.
Drew
But also you do know that the odds of you being racist while having black friends goes down dramatically.
Tom
You can be very much.
Drew
Okay, define racism.
Tom
Discrimination against a certain class due to their skin color.
Drew
Okay. And so if you're not discriminating against your friend and you're like, yeah, this guy is black and I'm not treating him any differently, this guy's Chinese and I'm not treating him any differently, then you're queuing off of something other than race. When you discriminate against those other people, odds are you're now just in group, out group. And so if we are expecting humanity to not have an in group out group bias, we will die tired. That's never going away. So it's an algorithm that's in our minds. It literally in every room you walk into, you are trying to figure out friend fo friend fox, full stop period. Or fuckable. Are they fuckable? Is this a friend? Is this something I can eat? So you're having a biological experience. Okay. These are just the way that the mind works. I don't understand why people are so surprised by this. So, yeah, so the one that drives me crazy is that if you fully respect, love a person of another race and then people go, that doesn't matter at all. That is full retard. So it doesn't mean that you don't have a weird glitch in your brain where you then go, everybody has to be vetted through the filter of I have to know you personally or I'm leaving you in my sort of not thought through racist bucket. That is entirely possible. But what I'm saying is when you look at that moment, see the salvation in that, that, oh, okay, this guy isn't like, no matter what I fucking Hate Asian people, black people, Indian people, whatever that person's like, oh, if they get to know them, then they let all that shit go. So now we just have to get them to realize they're making a category error. That's a lot more hopeful than somebody who has a value system that's like, I hate insert race.
Tom
Okay, we'll call it a category error. And I think that would help the conversation.
Drew
It certainly is a category error.
Tom
All right. And Andrea, 279 with a 50 super chat. Thank you for coming back to back. I appreciate you. Andrea, thank you for your support. When politicians leverage hurt, why do we still want them to give us quote, unquote, free stuff? They're the coachmen from Pinocchio looking to turn you into an ass. You can tell who didn't grow up on cartoon fables. Lol. Make fables great again. The little redhead.
Drew
Wait, wait, who said this?
Tom
Andrea. 2798.
Drew
Andrea. Oh, my God. You are my new favorite person. I am thinking about this endlessly as I watch One Piece. Dude, it is. It's just fables. It is moral tales. Every episode is a moral tale. It is wild. It's so, like, on the surface, like, the show is about bravery, it's about friendship, it's about going after a goal, no matter what. I mean, and just over and over and over, it is in incredible. I. Yeah. So anyway, as somebody who wants to create children's entertainment specifically to pass on values a hundred percent. A hundred percent agreement. It's really insightful.
Tom
Yeah, I was trying to think about it. Like, I remember the tortoise and the hare, three little piggies. I feel like those are the only two. Like, I don't even. I didn't even see.
Drew
We gotta get you some more. We gotta get you some more, man. Watch One Piece. Watch One Piece it is. If you believe in, like, loyalty, friendship, going after goals, never giving up, pushing through pain. I mean, it's really incredible. And just honestly, I get asked, like, once you say that you're into One Piece, people will then ask, who's your favorite character? And the honest answer is, you really do have to take them as a gestalt. Any one of them is, like, wildly problematic. But honestly, like, the one I kind of lean towards is Usopp and which one is you? You have to watch the show because if I describe him, he's going to sound terrible. But he is a. He's a liar and he's terrified all the time, and he decides that his goal is to become brave.
Tom
Yeah, the one with the nose.
Drew
And so he keeps forcing himself to get in these positions where he's absolutely scared out of his mind, but he does it anyway. But he admittedly has wild character flaws, which is part of what makes OODA so brilliant. Anyway, I could talk about it forever, but I have a feeling I will lose the audience.
Tom
Cfwilliams1 thank you for the back to back super chat and for those just FYI, we have it in the description. We say it periodically but super chats over 1999 will be ready. So we're not skipping you. We'll still put them up, we just won't read them out loud. She said. Sorry if you already covered this. Just joining now. What are your thoughts on the CA
Drew
redistricting redistribution really fast because John Doe is calling me out. I am projecting onto usopp but not the liar part, the terrified part. So that is the same journey I have gone. I've said many times my journey was one of learning to be strong and so getting into business. I was just terrified all the time. And so I had to learn my path forward. So I'm not gonna lady death protest too much about whether I lie or not. You guys will be able to watch me on camera. You've already got God knows how many thousands of hours so you can figure out whether I'm telling truth. But from the secret thing that I wish weren't true about myself is that I have spent much of my life absolutely terrified, anxious. I mean I try to talk about this stuff all the time but. But yeah, that is why I find him motivational.
Tom
Nice.
Drew
Very similar journey.
Tom
All right, Prop 50 redistricting, it just passed in California. That allows California to gerrymander a couple seats to offset what's happening in Texas and the Republicans effort to gerrymander. How do you feel about Prop 50 passing?
Drew
Oof. I think what's good for the goose is good for the gander. So if Republicans are going to try to redistrict, then of course Democrat Democrats are going to try to redistrict. So my thing is set one policy to rule the whole nation. It's the only intelligent way forward in my opinion. So what is the thing that we're going to say? Ah, this is the blanket. It applies everywhere. No one gets to re draw lines, nothing. It's just like a grid that falls down on America and regardless of state, regardless of color, like that's how this all gets settled. And if it comes out to be 80% blue, then it's 80% blue. If it comes out to be 80% red. It's 80% red. It is what it is. But pick one policy to rule them all and never ever, ever, ever, ever redraw the lines. If people start moving, it just is what it is. Like yeah, I think it's insane that we draw weird lines to try to get the number that we want. It's crazy.
Tom
Yeah, I think they're. It's just like crony capitalism and the middlemen who aren't entrepreneurs, who aren't good at it, who try to weasel their way up, they're the ones that ruined capitalism's reputation. I think this crony politics is the same way. Some of these district lines are literally a L shaped with a little notch and that's at one district. It skips over three different towns. It cuts through four zip codes. But the another zip code. Like it does not make sense. Personally, I feel like an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. So I think California doing it as a fight back just made. You just took away Californians rights, just like Texas just took away some Texans rights. And I think instead of high fiving our team, we just made life worse for both of those people.
Drew
That is correct.
Tom
So I just think it's dirty, but it's all dirty.
Drew
It's ridiculous. It's very sad. So that's where we are.
Tom
And we have LeBlanc, aka Nunyo. When are we getting the next playtest and update the map editor, Tom December.
Drew
Well, no map editor updates yet. We're not focused on that at all right now. But we are. You're gonna do a play test in December, so that will open back up. I could not be more excited about the progress that we've made on terrain generation. It is. It's still awkward as hell. Please do not get me wrong. Like it's gonna be ugly. But the world is really starting to get interesting. Really starting to get interesting. So again, this is one of those where this is exactly the kind of thing I love talking about. But we'll lose the audience. But yes, December.
Tom
And for those that somebody asked earlier in the chat, what's an update on Kaizen? So I don't know if you want to get us a quick elevator pitch.
Drew
Elevator pitch is. It is basically Minecraft with MMO skill trees and guns. So yeah, that. That sums it up very, very rapidly. But. And it is a procedurally generated world that is absolutely massive. That's based on rules. If you alter the rules, the world responds. You're not altering the rules, but you move Things around to match the rules, and then the world will respond to the new configuration that you've put it in. And like Minecraft, you can dig into it and drill down and find caves and all kinds of stuff.
Tom
And I know there's a, like, pre. Pre alpha available. I just dropped that link. Did some of the newer stuff. Yeah. Or that's still. No.
Drew
No, that's like, okay. What LeBlanc is asking for is like, hey, we want to come in and play what you play every weekend, Tom. As I'm play testing this stuff so that they'll get to do in December. It'll still be super awkward and all that, but from what we've done under the hood to expand the capabilities of the world is insane. So, yeah, the team is growing too.
Tom
We just brought somebody on too that's like.
Drew
Yeah.
Tom
So the development is starting to speed up and stuff too.
Drew
Yeah, yeah. And we are. We're trying to do an official countdown. I won't hold myself to this, but I will float it as this is what we're aiming for. So we're aiming for early access in call it November of 27. So roughly our countdown is 11 months to where we have to. Sorry, 23 months where we have to lock it and get it ready to release.
Tom
Do video games take longer than, like, feature films? Because I was surprised how long feature films were, like three, four years. But I feel like this video game.
Drew
Oh, games. By the time we get to early access, will have been developing for five years.
Tom
Wow.
Drew
Yeah, it's wild. Now if I had to do it over again, I could get this far in three years. But I did not know what I was doing. So for the first year, we just literally wasted our time and money. But I learned very expensive education. But I learned the second year was us going, okay, now that I've made all the really dumb rookie mistakes, now let's start putting a system together. But we were still deeply inefficient. And now for the last. It's been about 18 months. We've been deadly efficient.
Tom
Copy. Okay, we got a couple more. We want to hit these quick. Sequoia Hall. Thank you for the 200 super chat. My dad had us read Aesop's Fable as his moral teachings bring Fables back. That is like Fables back. We might have to do like a Fable segment. We're gonna drop it. I mean, this five minutes or something.
Drew
Quite literally, this is when I'm not on camera. There's only one thing I do that isn't that and that's the ITU stuff. Which by the way, if you're thinking about starting a business, AI coming for your job, join itu. It's a huge passion of mine. But if I'm not on camera or doing itu, like all of my focus is on the game. I spend an inordinate amount of time on the weekends focused on the game. And it is a huge passion of mine. And I think it is ultimately, if I can get it to work, it will be the place that I try to impart values to kids. So that's one of those where if I'm on my deathbed and I'm like, okay, did I really do anything with my life? I'll be very proud of what I've accomplished. There's no doubt about that. I'll be super proud of my marriage. But like, if I never get that piece, if I never speak to anybody other than adults, I will be very sad.
Tom
Then we got another one from Truth. Devin said, I think the more you watch One Piece, your favorite will be Zorro. He's my favorite just because he has in his mouth.
Drew
Zorro is awesome. And he is admittedly the temptation because he's the cool kid, but he's the guy that's already good. So like when you pick up with Zorro, he's already the most feared like pirate hunter in the world. He's incredible. And so it's like I love him, don't get me wrong. But he's the guy. He's the invincible winner. I've never felt like the invincible winner. So I relate more towards people that have to struggle.
Tom
And then one more from Nunye K Levon that shops to hear. Being done. Doing a lot of self development and personal stuff in the background, so lots of new ideas as to improve stuff. Looking for. Looking to make decent content.
Drew
I hope he means around Kaizen, but
Tom
that's good to hear. Been doing a lot of self development and personal stuff in the background, so lots of new ideas to improve stuff to make decent content. I had to spell check that.
Drew
I think we got there. Let's go.
Tom
I think we got through it okay. I want to go into outer space. We still don't know what's going on with the Martian. I mean the asteroid that's flying around the sun right now. But there was breaking news that is there.
Drew
There's an update. I assume this just went away.
Tom
I'm going about the gravity. Oh yeah. Three Eye Atlas is still. Still circling around.
Drew
Yeah. Yeah. That's gonna end up being nothing. I'm so sad. It's just.
Tom
You think it's gonna be nothing?
Drew
Just a rock.
Tom
All right, well, we. We got, like, a week and a half left. Let's. Let's be optimistic. Yeah, I need some aliens to come in.
Drew
We'll see.
Tom
I need us to get together, man. I need us to get together. I need a mission. I need an Independence Day sequel. In real life, that would be cool.
Drew
All right, everybody. Till next time, my friends, be legendary.
[Impact Theory, November 9, 2025]
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Guest/Co-host: Drew
This special live Q&A on Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory takes on tough political and economic questions sourced directly from the audience chat and super chats. Tom (an entrepreneur and media personality) and Drew (his often outspoken, contrarian counterpart) tackle income inequality, the structure of capitalism, globalization, welfare programs, gerrymandering, education, race, and more. Throughout, their mission is to challenge assumptions, break down complexities, and surface fundamental truths beneath the headlines and memes dominating discourse today.
The tone is direct, intellectually open, and occasionally provocative—balancing strong viewpoints with a commitment to rigorous, candid exploration.
| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |---------------|--------------------------------------------------| | 00:45–03:24 | Rethinking Capitalism & Inequality | | 03:24–07:27 | SNAP, Minimum Wage, Working Poverty | | 09:00–12:45 | Globalization, Immigration, Automation | | 17:19–20:59 | Middle Class, Upward Mobility, Tax Migration | | 22:20–24:55 | “Europe’s Collapse,” Unions, Pro Athlete Unions | | 26:36–28:35 | Over-Certification, Higher Ed Politics | | 28:35–31:18 | Biology, Urban/Rural Voting Dynamics | | 31:14–32:15 | Tariffs and Economic Cycles | | 33:12–38:55 | Race, Central Park Five, Category Errors | | 42:48–44:29 | Gerrymandering & Non-Partisan Reform | | 39:19–41:27 | Fables, Values, and Intergenerational Wisdom | | 45:19–46:32 | Kaizen Game Update, Beyond the Show |
Tom and Drew’s live Q&A session is a powerful tour through today’s most contentious political topics—grounded in an effort to escape “team” thinking and return to “fundamental truths.” The show’s value shines in its willingness to probe beneath surface outrage and meme logic, making sense of a complex world through lively, honest debate.
Bottom line: If you want to understand why politics feels so broken, why wealth inequality won’t go away, how our systems really function, and what individuals might do to “see the world clearly,” this episode is essential listening.