Gaza Ceasefire Lies, SNAP Benefits on the Brink, and Why It All Comes Down to Economics | The Tom Bilyeu Show

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu

Episode: Gaza Ceasefire Lies, SNAP Benefits on the Brink, and Why It All Comes Down to Economics
Date: October 30, 2025
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Co-host/Guest: Drew

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Main Theme

This episode tackles an “unbiased pursuit of what’s real,” diving into global and national crises making headlines: the fragile Gaza ceasefire, the SNAP benefit cliff, the autopen pardon scandal, rising civil unrest, labor market shocks from AI, Brazil's war with drug traffickers, and speculation over an approaching interstellar object. Tom and Drew analyze how these crises are rooted in deeper economic systems, power structures, and human psychology, urging listeners to see past surface-level headlines toward practical, fundamental solutions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Gaza Ceasefire, War Crimes, and the Limits of Power

• Ceasefire Fallout: The hosts unpack the latest flare-up in Gaza, including allegations of war crimes after more than 100 Palestinians—46 of them children—were killed during a breakdown in the ceasefire.
• Raw Realism about Power:

  "When you are wholesale slaughtering people, does it really matter if we call it a war crime or not? The honest answer is on a global stage, the only thing that matters is do you have power?" —Drew [02:47]

• Economic Peace vs. Ideological Entrenchment: The Abraham Accords and regional economic cooperation come up as the only durable hope.

  "If you can actually get an Arab police force on the ground in Gaza...that would be insanely historic." —Drew [03:30]

• Cycle of Violence:

  "We're so far from settling this down that unfortunately I think any sort of surface-level peace is Mirage." —Drew [04:51]

• Historical Echoes: The conflict is framed as a microcosm of wider ideological and economic fractures.

2. SNAP Benefits and the Looming Benefits Cliff

• Questioning the Numbers:

  "Why did [SNAP spending] double and not come down now that things have renormalized over five years?" —Drew [21:00]

• Causes Explored:
  • Pandemic-era extensions
  • Expanded eligibility and inflation
  • Possibility of misuse or insufficient means-testing
• Potential Fallout: Tom and Drew predict public backlash depending on whether the need is legitimate or “bullshit,” like fraud or over-allocation.

  "If it's people selling their SNAP benefits... rumor has it... are selling their snap. So these are all the things that we're going to find out." —Drew [26:12]

• Means Testing & Intent: Drew advocates for more accountability and reevaluation as conditions return to normal.

3. Government Shutdown and Structural Economic Risks

• Shutdown Politics:

  "This is the longest shutdown since Trump did it the last time... Republicans have no incentive to open government again now" —Tom [28:16]

• Potential Duration:

  "Polling suggests...nobody needs a deal. In theory, they can literally keep going until 2027." —News Reader [28:33]

• Economic Consequences:

  "Counting government jobs as GDP is so insane. That is patently ridiculous." —Drew [31:56]
  "Our GDP is largely fake because of people working for the government...driven by a tiny number of companies." —Drew [33:13]

• Middle Class Erosion:

  "America's just been getting poorer and poorer...the part that really wounds my soul...it's from money printing and globalism." —Drew [33:13]

4. Civil Unrest, Immigration, and the Psychology of Resentment

• Case Study, UK: Shocking stabbing incident by an Afghan immigrant prompts a debate over integration, civil unrest, and Elon Musk's prediction:

  "Civil war in Britain is inevitable. Just a question of when." —Elon Musk (quoting) [36:34]

• Blame Shifting & Populism:

  "When people are economically insecure...that economic insecurity turns into...anxiety...anger...and you start killing each other." —Drew [36:52]

• Revolution Realism: Discussion of why unrest rarely leads to true revolution in developed countries:

  "It's very hard to starve in America...You have a group that's politically savvy and influential enough to actually get well organized...Otherwise, you get Occupy Wall Street—energy dissipates." —Drew [38:43]

• Historical Patterns: Contrast between American exceptionalism in its founding/unity and likely chaos of any future revolution.

5. Delegated Power, Autopen Pardons, and Decorum

• Biden’s Autopen Scandal: Debate over the legitimacy and potential risks of delegating presidential pardons via autopen.

  "Auto pen has existed in every presidential administration... the real argument... is far less interesting about the auto pen itself and is far more: did Biden actually want these pardons to happen?" —Drew [13:51]

• Precedent and Reciprocity:

  "Whatever you do to them, they're going to do to you when you lose power...So these boys and girls just need to be very thoughtful." —Drew [15:15]

• Decorum as Social Glue: Importance of norms and “British common law” style expectations that aren’t written but ensure system stability.

6. AI, the Labor Market, and Coming Upheaval

• Waves of Job Losses: AI optimization triggers layoffs at Amazon, Walmart, and others—potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs.

  "Every revolution...technologically created more jobs than it got rid of...But with the AI revolution, you're creating something that's going to be better than me at everything." —Drew [46:22]

• Potential Dystopias:

  "It's a world of abundance... everybody has basically whatever they want... But I'm supremely confident there'll be a ton of bloodshed between here and there, because people are going to freak out." —Drew [48:43] "If you march yourself into the Great Depression, that's an own goal." —Drew [54:19]

• Role of Policy: Effective policies are absolutely crucial; “small government, innovation, thriving middle class” should be the guiding goals.

7. Brazil: Drug War, Police Raids, and Organized Crime Sophistication

• Massive Police Operation: Over 2,500 police square off against powerful drug cartels in Rio, using drone explosives for the first time.
• Necessity of State Action:

  "You cannot let drug lords, like, post up in your countries...these guys are sophisticated...recruit their own share of geniuses." —Drew [57:55]

• Parallels to Entrepreneurship: Street-level risk becomes the “moat” that allows underground economies to thrive—these skills would translate if circumstances were different.

8. Aliens, Interstellar Objects, and Simulation Theory

• 3i Atlas Mystery: Approaching interstellar object is sparking debate—rock or alien ship?

  "If it picks up extra energy on its flyby, that would clinch it [as ET intelligence]." —Michio Kaku (reported) [67:00] "This is wild. I literally can't allow myself to believe that, like, today on a random Wednesday, aliens roll up..." —Drew [68:32]

• Simulation Arguments:

  "Everything tells us that a simulation that is indistinguishable from reality is possible...If we can create a simulation, the odds that you're not in a simulation become vanishingly small." —Drew [74:05]

• Audience Engagement: A live poll: 56% say “no” it’s not an alien, 44% say “yes.” [76:02]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Gaza:

  "We're so far from settling this down that unfortunately I think any sort of surface-level peace is Mirage." —Drew [04:51]

• On Economic Solutions:

  "The only thing that's going to make this go away...is economic alliances...as measured by economics." —Drew [03:30]

• On Power and War Crimes:

  "On a global stage, the only thing that matters is do you have power?" —Drew [02:47]

• On SNAP Benefits:

  "If 40% of people are on benefits...that's wild. You have a catastrophic problem." —Drew [27:00]

• On US Government Structure:

  "Counting government jobs as GDP is so insane." —Drew [31:56]

• On Economic Resentment:

  "We as animals cannot look out at somebody else that has way more than us where the economy is working for them and be okay. We'll start fighting." —Drew [34:41]

• On AI & the Future:

  "Only people that can monetize the fact that they are human will have a job." —Drew [48:43]

• On Aliens & Simulation:

  "Everything tells us that a simulation that is indistinguishable from reality is possible...the odds that you're not in a simulation become vanishingly small." —Drew [74:05]

• On Audience Engagement:

  "Is this an alien? Poll says 56% of you say no. Yes is 44%." —Tom [76:02]

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Important Timestamps

• [01:35] - Headlines rundown and initial Gaza discussion
• [02:47] - War crimes and power dynamics
• [10:41] - Transition to domestic U.S. government shutdown and its stakes
• [13:01] - Biden Autopen Pardon Scandal and delegation of power
• [20:08] - SNAP benefits debate and crisis implications
• [28:12] - Analysis of government shutdown, potential for record duration
• [34:41] - Wealth disparities and societal friction
• [38:43] - Why true revolution rarely erupts in America
• [46:22] - AI, job loss, risk of economic depression
• [54:19] - Government policy: Small government and innovation as guiding aims
• [57:55] - Brazil’s police war with drug gangs; entrepreneurial parallels
• [65:15] - Michio Kaku on potential interstellar visitors
• [68:32] - Reactions to 3i Atlas "close-up" image
• [74:05] - Simulation theory and physical reality
• [76:02] - Audience poll on aliens

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Tone and Style

The exchange is urgent, thought-provoking, and unsparingly practical—but also lively and conversational, with Tom and Drew bantering, joking, and earnestly grappling with the realities beneath social media narratives and viral headlines. Their style is both pragmatic and philosophical, seeking both immediate solutions and fundamental truths.

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For New Listeners

This episode is a masterclass in cutting through media noise and exploring why economics, psychology, and power consistently shape our headlines. From the Middle East to Main Street, and beyond to theoretical aliens, Tom and Drew challenge assumptions, question social inertia, and push for clear-eyed, historically grounded analysis. If you want to understand not just what is happening, but why—and how economics underpins nearly every crisis—this episode is essential.

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Transcript

[Tom]

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[Drew]

The Israel, Gaza ceasefire has been broken and at least 100 people are dead. The Biden auto pen scandal is gaining new momentum. The government shutdown continues, and the question now is what happens when SNAP benefits expire? A British man was stabbed to death by an immigrant in the UK in broad daylight, and that's got Elon predicting civil war. The labor market appears to be weakening as AI optimizations are blamed for recent massive layoffs. Brazil has gone to war with drug traffickers inside their own country. And we should find out today if aliens are actually visiting us. As 3i Atlas is headed towards Earth as we speak. Drew, how goes it? I think you're traumatized by what's happening in Israel, Gaza.

[Tom]

You know, it was just we were celebrating, taking victory laps. Yeah. We were like, hey, how come he didn't get the Peace Prize? Where's the Peace Prize? And then Israel's like, hold my beer, we're not done yet.

[Drew]

This one is too fragile. I don't until until like reconstruction begins and all the lines have like, moved all the way back. I'm not going to believe it. There's just this. This is a microcosm of an ideological battle that is going to play out across a lot more places now than just Israel and Gaza. So yeah, this one's not going away anytime soon.

[Tom]

Yeah. For those that are playing catch up right now, IDF soldiers were allegedly attacked in Rafah by Hamas, prompting Benjamin Netanyahu to then launch a series of airstrikes on Tuesday. Israel military Now I'm reading Marjorie Tyler Greene's tweet. Israel's military said Wednesday that the ceasefire was now back on, but after it killed 104 people, including 46 children, according to local health officials. 46 children? Are these not war crimes? And this is her retweeting an Associated Press article Originally the account was 60 people killed. But then as death tolls and things started ticking up overnight, we realized that it was closer in the hundred.

[Drew]

So yeah, this is, look, this is what are people trying to get at with the constant, is this war crimes? So when you are wholesale slaughtering people, does it really matter if we call it a war crime or not? The honest answer is on a global stage, the only thing that matters is do you have power? If you have power, you can do whatever the hell you want, including drop nuclear bombs, which as we know America has done. And we're the only ones who've done it. So. And yet you just move forward and you have Trump in Japan getting along very well with the very people that we drop these bombs on. So this is a game of power. And I don't say that to diminish any of the moral repugnance of what's happening. I say it in the hopes that people can really start looking at this stuff clear eyed, get out of just moralizing and get into, okay, we're in the situation that we're in and so how do we get to the other side of it? Like really, really, really, when you have the situation that you have, what is the policy, what is the things you want to see to actually make all of this go away? And I think the only thing that's going to make this go away is for the closest thing I've seen is the Abraham Accords to get everybody focused on economic alliances, to get people to understand that you can make life better right now, today for you and your family, that your kids lives can be way better than yours as measured by economics. And it is the only thing that has worked on a historical time frame. And when economics collides with religious ideology, you get this intractable problem, or so it seemed. So the progress on the Abraham Accord side is the only thing that is interesting to me. So if you can actually get an Arab police force on the ground in Gaza to get all of this settled down, that to me, and I said this before, that to me would be historic. I don't care who gets credit for it, that would be insanely historic. So fingers crossed that we can actually get to that point. But listen man, I don't know if you've been watching the footage of the Hamas, presumably Hamas street soldiers grabbing Palestinians and breaking their legs with pipes. It is so wild to watch. Or the, the execution squads like this is. We're so far from settling this down that unfortunately I think any sort of surface level piece is Mirage.

[Tom]

It's, it's sad that we're here again. Jokes aside, like, we really just want the war to end. So I just hope that we come to a resolution sooner.

[Drew]

I want it to end for sure. And I love that you're saying something kind because I even map to myself, I look at this stuff and I see political calculations of, okay, the grand sweeping arc of history which never tells the story of the individual tragedy. And a single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic. And I really am sort of up at the statistics level looking at this. So it is good that you remind us of the tragedy at the human level. But for us to, for us to make sense of what's happening in this moment, I think it. Because it isn't just happening in Israel, Gaza, there's a reason this is a flashpoint. There's a reason what would otherwise be this sort of small local conflict has these worldwide implications because there are far more people dying in Russia, Ukraine. People just don't care about it the way that they care about Israel, Gaza. There are other places in the world where there's far more people dying, even with religious problems. Is it Nigeria that killed over the last 10 years, 500,000 Christians? Like there's. There is plenty of religious and ethnic death happening in the world. But this particular flashpoint just really captures people's imaginations for reasons that we can tease out one by one if people care. But we have to reconcile with this. The, this collision of. You have a western style nation in the Middle east that has thrived economically. They have a neighbor that they have oppressed to death because they're afraid that they're going to be attacked, obviously for good reason. But then that also creates more people that want to attack them. And so you've got this situation that people rightly liken to the end of slavery, where it's like, well, we kind of these people over for a really long time and if we give them their freedom, aren't they just going to come and attack us? And so how you get this one to end? Well, when on top of that setup, because that obviously isn't how things played out at the end of slavery. They went about their economic business and were like, okay, cool, we've got our freedom, let's actually do something with it then. What you see now is there isn't. From Hamas, I cannot speak in any way, shape or form about the general Palestinian people. I just don't feel like I know enough. But from Hamas, they have an ideological battle that they're waging and they're not going to let it go. So now it becomes, are you actually going to be able to broker peace without what I think is going to play out? I think a consortium of Arab states are going to come in with a police force and hammer the living shit out of Hamas. And however much that spills into the average Palestinian, that may or may not be supporting them so that Israel isn't the one doing it, and so that the Arab world can be like, hey, we have to March into the 21st century. The. The oil dollars are going to run out. We have to be something else. And if we don't have stability, if we cannot attract capital, then we're going to be dealing with this forever.

[Tom]

Mm.

[Drew]

We've played the clip before, so I'll just summarize it here, but there was a guy in, like, the cabinet of either the UAE or I forget exactly what nation state, but in the Middle east, and he says, listen, Europe, you guys are going to give birth to the next set of Islamist extremists. It's not going to be us because we understand what this is. You guys don't. And I thought that was extremely prophetic. He said that, like, back in 2013 or something. I mean, a while ago. And so I really believe that the general vibe, very complex, but the general vibe in the Middle east is, okay, we've got to diversify economically. And that desire to diversify economically to become a stable place where capital flows into, to get capital investments from around the world. The country that attracts the most foreign capital wins. And so it isn't just about getting the capital from within your own country. You've got to show stability. You've got to show a willingness to let people make money. You've got to show that you're economically powerful. And they've got this just glowing problem between Israel and Gaza. And I don't think they're coming down on the side of Israel. I think they're coming down on the side of economics. And so if they can challenge that as a. Not going to be a united force, but as a loosely aligned consortium, if they can make a stand there, make a stand against Iran, okay, religious fundamentalism, that's really the stance, then I think you can make progress. If you don't do that, you will be in this death loop forever. Forever.

[Tom]

Yeah. We shall see. And speaking of death loop, I feel like we are amiss that we have to talk about this government shutdown. And more importantly, are we really saying

[Drew]

the community had nothing to say about all that.

[Tom]

It's a developing story, so I wanted to just make sure we acknowledge the elephant in the room that is Benjamin Netanyahu. But of course.

[Drew]

Now, do you really think this is just a Benjamin Netanyahu problem?

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[Drew]

Like get rid of Benjamin Netanyahu and problem goes away.

[Tom]

I feel like that's what we've done in Middle Eastern and other regime changes. We're trying to do that in Venezuela right now.

[Drew]

It never works and they shouldn't do it in Venezuela either. Because here's what happens. You, you have a problem. These people are bottom up leaders. They're not top down. You don't have Benjamin Netanyahu as a person who creates the problem. You have a problem. And Benjamin Netanyahu rises to the top in that moment. In the same way that Trump is not some tremendous leader that has moved us into a populist era. He is a populist leader that could only come to power in a moment like this. And, and so once you understand a moment like this is the thing to focus on, like what are all the underlying things that drive this? This is why it drives me nuts when people aren't talking about the economic problems. I feel so sad. This is as close as I'll be able to give people moral outrage.

[Tom]

Okay, so Scott Jenning was on CNN yesterday talking about the oversight Committee's report. So the GOP led oversight committee has released a report that's saying they are pushing to void all of Biden's pardons because they were done by autopen. And they're saying that because they were done by Auto pen. They don't trust that he knew about the pardons that were happening.

[Drew]

Yes. Some of the testimony. I don't know if you've watched any of the testimony.

[Tom]

Pretty damning in the sense of that

[Drew]

Biden really didn't know.

[Tom]

He was like, okay, go ahead.

[Drew]

You got it. No, that they weren't even asking him. Some of the people in the testimony, they were like, how often did you see Joe Biden and be like, I saw him like, I think twice in my tenure. What? So yeah, it was very startling. But yeah, let's play this. Of auto pens has existed in every presidential administration across parties. I had an auto pen when I worked at ice. I'm sorry, Elliot Williams. Elliot Williams literally had an auto pen. You were important enough to have an auto pen.

[Tom]

I'm so impressed.

[Drew]

I am important, Casey, but no. And so it's a common problem. Did you allow people to use the name Elliot Williams without your knowledge of the document or what was on the page? I don't recall. So I'm asking you, if you were a government official and you had an auto pin, which you did, would you let some staffer sign things in your name without reading? Yeah, here's the question. Here's the question. Was my authority delegated to that person? And I think they do have the authority to do so. Laws and regulations and I'm serious, Scott. Laws and regulations. The authority to delegate pardons and executive orders. The president of the United States can say, you, unelected staffer, can go sign my name on a document that I've never seen for a decision that I've never made. Quite often the United States code delegates authority. So through the president. Pause it for a sec. Honestly, shout out to CNN for having differing views. It's very interesting to see these guys argue this stuff. I do enjoy that. But. So they're going to go back and forth and yes. Keeps basically saying like, there's no way you can't delegate these kinds of things. The real argument to me is far less interesting about the auto pen itself and is far more did Biden actually want these pardons to happen? And just going back to the principle of whatever you do to them, they are going to do to you when you lose power. So these boys and girls just need to be very thoughtful. They do you really want to go undo the power of the presidential pardon so that now all of these things are being fought? I don't think we do. So I would much rather like, hey, if we really don't think Biden did these Then get him, talk to him directly, put him under oath and just say, did you want to pardon all these people? And he is of course going to say, yes, of course I did. Great. Is it a cover story? Probably. But will I take it to move forward so that we don't find ourselves in this stupid political battle? Yes. And I just really can't understand how these guys cannot look forward into the future and go, oh, God, they're going to weaponize this against us. There's so much of the government that just operates on decorum, what all call British common law. So the whole idea behind common law is there's just some things that everyone just sort of does. Like, well, this is how we've done it, and you can update it and you can put something on the books and say, okay, we may have done that, but, like, this doesn't make sense anymore. New law. But that way things stand the test of time. And I know, like, even in an entrepreneurial context, I will beat people to death and say, just because you've always done it that way does not mean you should do it that way in the future. But from a law perspective, seeing that some things have withstood the test of time is very useful.

[Tom]

So

[Drew]

when these guys seem to be totally ignorant of that fact. Not everything is on the books. A lot of it is just we all agree that we don't do that thing and they start, like, tearing all of that stuff apart. Things will get unhinged very fast.

[Tom]

Yeah, I like when I seen this on the dials. Okay, let me, like, dig into it. Maybe it's something I'm missing, but I do kind of agree. I feel like this is a delegation thing now. Of course, I'll use our specific example, like, when people want to come on the show, I get thousands of pitches. Like, hey, I'll be perfect for Tom show, and it's a dude that sells supplements. I don't necessarily need to go, hey, Tom, do you need, like, should I. I kind of have a good gauge of like, yes, no. And I know from their perspective, they're like, this dude is gatekeeping. If I just get around him, I'll be fine. Now at the same time we have this conversation, I can't just add people to your calendar either. So it's not like I get free reign. But I do think we. We have to. We have to assume that President Biden in good faith, just like President Trump when he signed an executive orders. I might not know. Is this Executive Order 1451 about, oh, this is the one about the border. Right. That we talked about. Okay, cool. I don't need to go line for line. It's kind of assuming that the people I put in power are setting me up for success. So I agree that, like, I don't think that this is the hill that they want to die on. So I'm hoping that this is just a slow news day talking point and

[Drew]

not something that they're really going to push. This one. The DOJ is going to bring charges for sure. This is one where I think there are certain things that shouldn't be done. Delegatable pardons is one of them. Because it, I think in the Constitution it says like, only the executive can do it. So it's very clear about that. But there are many things that. Yeah, of course. Auto pen somebody else. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I trust you. Just do it. Like, that kind of thing is fine for like the lower level stuff, but

[Tom]

pardons and because physically sign 600 documents. I think it was 1600 pardons that Biden did or something like that.

[Drew]

So that comes down to, like, how are we going to use the auto pen? Like, is there one thing where it's put in front of Biden that says, I authorize these 1600 names to be auto penned and then you at least sign that so you've got some documentation. I'd be all for that. But we're at the point now where I think it makes sense to get Biden under oath and just have him say, yes. Yeah, I wanted all those people pardoned and then everybody calm the fuck down and let the pardon stand. Could be as mad as you want, but otherwise we're just going to turn the Democrats and the Republicans into increasingly violently opposed forces and they will just come at each other nonstop. And then fewer and fewer people will want to enter the government because you just feel like, yo, this is dangerous, man. I don't want to go to jail. Like, I don't want the other side taking something that I did in good faith. But we ended up, like, handling the paperwork wrong and now they can put me away. And everyone would agree this should be charged as a misdemeanor, but instead they're doing a felony and getting a max sentence. Like, that is not a world we want to live in, man. E gads.

[Tom]

Egads.

[Drew]

And here's the thing. Do the people saying, he will lie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. I get that. I'm fine with that. I just. We need a way to heal and move forward. As cheesy as that sounds. So if he's going to stand by it now, great.

[Tom]

What do you think is going to happen when SNAP benefits run out?

[Drew]

I think the thing I'm going to learn is how SNAP benefits are actually being used. The people that are using it to eat are rightly going to make a whole lot of noise and people will rightly be mortified that our government is willing to play these kind of dumb ass games. Are we also going to find out that there's a whole lot of bullshit in the SNAP benefits doubling in the last five years? Probably. And so I'll be very interested to see what that's about. Is it about immigrants? Is it about people getting more than they were previously being allocated?

[Tom]

Or it might be about a pandemic that happened and.

[Drew]

Yeah, but why. Why do you. And I'm really asking because I don't know why. Why did that double the expenditure and not come down now that things have renormalized over five years?

[Tom]

So it didn't double. Like you know. Yeah, just like we lost 25% of our purchasing. But like it. Those are tied to each other.

[Drew]

So. But that would account for 25%. What do you think is the other 75%? So if you're just saying. No, no, no Tom, that's just inflation. Cool. I totally buy that 25% of it.

[Commercial Announcer]

But.

[Drew]

But I don't it's not going to be a hundred percent of the increase. So what accounts for the other 75% of the increase?

[Tom]

So there is over such a short amount of time there was increased benefits. Full stop. There was supply chain issues.

[Drew]

Also why did we increase benefits?

[Tom]

Because people weren't working because the government was shut down. So you're saying because nobody could go

[Drew]

before it was like supplemental. Now it's like we're just going to cover your whole thing.

[Tom]

There was, there were temporary like bumps in the unemployment SNAP benefits and so

[Drew]

you're saying all those things were echo of the labor force.

[Tom]

Echo of the labor force from COVID shutdowns.

[Drew]

Yes, this was mathematically that's not going to get you very far. So you've got the total all in everything unemployment number. Even people that are just. I flat refuse to look for a job is 12%. So. And how. But that's like risen from whatever.

[Tom]

Yeah, but people, people think if you have snap you're not working. There's people who work who are.

[Drew]

Sorry, what I just heard you say is the increase is due to a corresponding decrease in the amount that those people are getting paid from a job, whether they've lost hours, lost their job altogether. Inflation, right? Or did I misunderstand what you're saying?

[Tom]

There were. Let's just break it down into tiers. So Covid, full stop, if you are

[Drew]

impacting, what does Covid mean to you?

[Tom]

The shutdown in economic activity ended years ago.

[Drew]

So what are we talking about?

[Tom]

But from 2000. But again we asked where it happened in the last five years.

[Drew]

This is, I think we have a different graph in our minds. So the graph in my mind, which we can pull up, I think we grabbed it, it spikes up at Covid and it comes down a little, but not a lot. And so I'm saying if this were coveted, it would just come back down to pre pandemic levels. It doesn't.

[Tom]

This is the snap.

[Drew]

I don't, I didn't have an even expenditure graph.

[Tom]

Let's look it up. SNAP expenditure graph.

[Drew]

Yup.

[Tom]

But yes, they increased all the. They increased the benefits over Covid and then those. These are the same thing. What The ACA subsidies that they're arguing about, it was a Covid temporary relief that people now don't want it to. They don't want to resent that temporary subsidy.

[Drew]

Okay, so do you think they should? And I'm just misunderstanding.

[Tom]

I'm saying this is where it comes from. You asked me where it came from, right?

[Drew]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm saying as we look at this, what, what I'm asking is you've got people that got an increase in benefits. To me, you should only get an increase in benefits if you are going to be malnutritioned without an increase in benefits. And then we go, okay, why are you not able to afford food? I think this should all be means tested, which I know people hate, but just seems insane to me that we don't means test. So by means test that you have to qualify, like, are you looking for a job? Why are you not able to get a job? How much are you getting paid at your job? Could you.

[Tom]

That's like there's an application for snap. It's the same thing with like unemployment, how you have to like file, then you have to like, you get assigned it. I can't just go to snap.com and

[Drew]

put my direct statement is very simple. If we took people's benefits up because during COVID they were literally without work. I get that now that things have normalized, reapply, I would expect them all now to have jobs again. So the question becomes, are they proving that they're looking for a job, that they have a reason that they're not able to get a job. So on.

[Tom]

This was a big graph.

[Drew]

That's not the one that I'm thinking of. But if that paints the clear picture, it just looks like that ends in 22. We need one that ends in 24.

[Tom]

Snap expenditures grab anyway.

[Drew]

It goes up. It comes down a little. It does not come down. That's the graph.

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[Tom]

Yes. Boom. Boom. It spikes for 2020.

[Drew]

Pure insanity. I don't see like someone will need to explain to me why the 2025 trend is not back to 2019. There's a reason, but I want to know what it is. So anyway, this was all what do I think is going to happen when SNAP defaults? I think we're going to find out why that number hasn't come back down. And if it's a whole bunch of bullshit, meaning if immigrants are on snap, people are going to have something to say about that. If it's people that aren't being means tested, people are going to have something to say about that. If it's people some percentage selling their SNAP benefits because they are getting, let's say $3,000 worth of SNAP benefits but they only need $1,000 to eat, then rumor has it, some percentage between one person and a whole bunch, which I have no idea, are selling their snap. So these are all the things that we're going to find out or it's all entirely need based and so many people have lost their jobs, the economy is collapsing and it's just revealing the underlying rot and it's the canary in the coal Mine, I don't know the answer. So that's what we're going to find out. Now, if it's. This is just the canary in the coal mine. The government has fucked up so badly that something like 40% of Americans are on benefits. So it's like, yo, you have, you have a catastrophic problem if 40% of people are on benefits. That's wild. So we need to fact check that. We need to look at that, because I might be conflating 40% are on government payroll, which could also be true. Both of those are wildly problematic. But anyway, that's what we're going to learn. And then I want to be a reaction from that.

[Tom]

I want to go to this Peter St clip who says that the shutdown could last to 2027 because unlike past shutdowns, is not a debt ceiling scare that's around the corner.

[Drew]

This was crazy. Had you ever contemplated this? I had no. This was not on my bingo card.

[Tom]

I'm going to be honest. This is the longest shutdown since Trump did it the last time. And because he wants to slash government anyway. To me, Republicans have no incentive to open a government again now with their

[Drew]

poll numbers going up. But it I failure of imagination. I did let him say what he's going to say and then I'll explain how shocked I was.

[News Reader]

The government shutdown could theoretically last until 2027, according to Zero Hedge Dare we dream. As the federal shutdown enters day 28, we are just one week shy of the record set back in 2018 when Trump wanted a border wall and Democrats wanted new voters. Republicans ended up surrendering on that one with not one penny for the wall. But this time, amazingly, Republicans have held the line. This is probably because polls are showing the shutdown is not actually hurting Republicans. In fact, their odds in the midterm elections, which is the most important thing in Washington right now, have actually gone up since the shutdown began, now hitting 40%. That's pretty impressive, considering the party in power has won midterms just three times since 1934. Yet here we are near even after four weeks of shutdown. Now the polling suggests mainstream media has lost their mojo, while Trump has been very careful to keep funding everything popular. So the military ice, WIC for pregnant women while starving all the left wing garbage, the foreign aid money holes for New York subways and wind farms, food stamps for illegals. So there's little pressure for Republicans to cave. They win by doing nothing, which, to be fair, is already their comfort zone. That takes us to zero edge. Who asks how long can it keep going now the key is most past shutdowns were paired with a debt ceiling which makes markets panic about treasury payments, which are the lifeblood of our Ponzi financial system. But the next debt ceiling doesn't hit until mid-2027. That removes the external pressure to cut a deal. So if the world's not ending, if markets aren't even noticing the shutdown, if Republicans are rising in the polls while Democrats are afraid of their antifa base, nobody needs a deal. In theory, this means they can literally keep going until 2027. So for fun, what if they do? For starters, 2027 is far past these 61 days needed to permanently fire federal workers. The office management budget has already officially fired roughly 10,000 and can keep going to in theory, all 750,000 who are officially listed as useless.

[Drew]

If they do that, that would be be transformative from a cost perspective. I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of for it. I don't know enough about what the unessential worker or non essential workers do to just pull that trigger willy nilly. But this is the watching this was the first time I was like, wait, do I actually have hope of a balanced budget? So I again, I don't know that that would come even close. You probably can't get anywhere near what you need to get to without touching entitlements. But I was like, hold on a second. Yeah, because first of all, counting this as counting government jobs as GDP is so insane. Like that is patently ridiculous. That is patently ridiculous. It's wild. You're double counting because those are just tax dollars going out again. And you're counting it again. Like you're literally double counting revenue. That's insane. So you shut that off, you stop pretending, you get a real sense of where your economy is, which I think will be startling to people about how slow our growth actually is.

[Tom]

What would be the impact of that, of the GDP thing? Because I think that would overlo purely

[Drew]

psychological because it is, it's. You're double counting the revenue from a GDP perspective.

[Tom]

So we find out our GDP is negative for the last 20 years.

[Drew]

Probably not negative, but it'll be very low.

[Tom]

Yeah, yeah.

[Drew]

So let's say you find out that you thought it was whatever we think it is, 2.8 or 1.8, maybe it's 1.8 right now. And you find out that it's like 0.4. It would be like, ooh, we are stagnant. We have been stagnant. Like, because then you start running all the numbers going backwards and saying, okay, if we took out all the governmental expenditures, what does that look like? And you start realizing, oh, my God, like, this is a ridiculously low number. That would be very, very detrimental to the psychology of the US But I think it would help people understand why we are where we are. Dude, real wages have stagnated for, like, 40 years. That's insane. Especially when you think about how much inflation there's been in. America's just been getting poorer and poorer and poorer. And the part that really wounds my soul. And they don't understand it's from money printing. They just don't understand it. Money printing, globalism. If you like a one, two punch, and if you can only do one money printing.

[Tom]

Like, if you can only fix one, you'll fix money printing over the globalism. Correct. Got it. Hypothetically speaking, I know we talked about this number earlier that estimates 40% of people are employed by federal and, like, government. I'll say federal and state. I'll put combine those numbers together. Let's say we slash that to 20%. That is roughly 60 million people on top of the other million AI job losses. That is kind of on the.

[Drew]

That. This is where it gets scary.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Drew]

Is you now run the risk of putting yourself into a deep, dark depression.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Drew]

From just all the job loss.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Drew]

Because whether that's recycling tax dollars or not, that's money that people have to put into the economy. There are two economies now in America. They have completely fractured away from each other. And basically, rich people are driving all of the spending. And you can look at our economy and go, oh, like, hey, 1.8. Okay, that's not great, but it's not horrible. And then you start looking under the hood and you realize that that 1.8 is largely fake because of people working for the government. And then on top of that, it's driven by, like, a tiny number of companies. The spending is driven by a tiny number of people. It's like 10% of Americans are driving, I don't know, 80% or more of the spending. Yikes. Dude, you can't have that. You can't. You can't have it simply because of envy and resentment.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Drew]

Like, there's not a complex mathematical formula about why you can't have it. You can't have it because we as animals cannot look out at somebody else that has way more than us where the economy is working for them and be okay. We won't be okay. We'll start fighting. We Start hurting other people. Like, that's the response. And when you get a mass number of people mobilizing to hurt other humans, you have instability, lack of safety. It is a nightmare of epic proportions.

[Tom]

Speaking of killing people, let's go over to the UK now, where we have footage of an Afghan man attacking a. That was terrible.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Tom]

Thoughts and prayers that.

[Drew]

Yeah, no kidding. Also, by the way, this is extremely graphic. So if you've got kids or you're squeamish, you don't want to watch this. This one's rough. But here we go.

[Tom]

This was reported yesterday, and as you can see, there's a.

[Drew]

This is broad daylight squabble. A squabble. And from what I heard, he doesn't know this guy at all.

[Tom]

I thought they were. They looked like they were yelling at each other.

[Drew]

He's literally just walking his dog and he. They must argue about something. I have no idea what. But this guy stabbed him to death. Just stabs him to death. I'm talking. If you're not watching overhand. I mean, what's he get him 12, 15 times? This is not like poke and run off crazy. He is just stabbing the literal life out of this man in broad daylight. This is so wild. And he goes on to attack a couple more people. Now, look, I don't know. Mentally ill, could be. But this. Obviously, in a country where you're inviting a whole lot of immigrants in that do not share your values and you give them a spark like this. Buckle up. We'll see, man. We'll see.

[Tom]

And then Elon Musk retweeted, civil war in Britain is inevitable. Just a question of when. Yeah, I feel like there's this similar notion of civil war. I don't know if this is just another example of populism. We need somebody to blame. Yes, Yes.

[Drew]

I mean, that's a.

[Tom]

That's it.

[Drew]

That is like. If you're gonna nutshell it, when people are economically insecure, then that economic insecurity turns into. It starts as anxiety. Nobody wants to sit in that, so they transmute it into anger. And then when you actually have a real problem, then it becomes easy to point people at that. And the real problem is very simple. You have a clash of cultures. I don't need you to believe one side is right over the other. I just need you to understand that the physics of the human mind is that when you encounter people that don't share your value system, you start killing each other. So. And just to make that one easy for people, Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, they were all white as the driven snow and they were killing each other as fast as they could. So when ideologies differ, people start killing. So welcome to the human experience.

[Tom]

There's a clip I want to pull from the Rudyard Tim Pool interview because he asked him this question, does he see civil war? And I like Rudy's response because I think this is something.

[Drew]

Yeah, that's surprising.

[Tom]

Yeah, this was something that we always overthink. The part I'm talking about though is when he was like, I don't think that this will do it because I

[Drew]

thought he was going to be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was like, well, so it's a very tempered and very insightful response.

[Tom]

Yeah, it comes from basically intimation because my search is not working and YouTube is hating.

[Drew]

That's fun.

[Tom]

You can cut it. Well, it comes into mission that poor people in America specifically they were talking about in the on the backs of snap apocalypse, they won't rise up for a civil war because effectively they have no power. They don't have the same infrastructure, they don't have the same guns. As a private. Now America has very specific people. If Elon Musk is wronged, he has enough money to get a bunch of mercenaries. He could do battle with the U.S. army. You know, he may, yeah, not directly,

[Drew]

but at least, yeah, I'll give, I'll try to get very close to verbatim when Tim Pool asks Rudyard Lynch, AKA Whatifalthist, if he thinks that the snap apocalypse, as some people are calling it, the end of the snap benefits, will cause a revolution in America. He said a couple points. One, it's very hard to starve in America. So because people won't necessarily be hungry enough, they won't have enough agitation. Then also the only times that you see actual revolutions are when you have a group that is politically savvy and influential enough to actually get well organized and then like really cause a meaningful problem to the government. And he said, this is why a lot of times you will see

[Tom]

when

[Drew]

people are trying to hold power in like a communist regime, they'll just kill all of those people. And so unfortunately, when like the Shah of Iran took power, he killed like 30,000 leftists. So the very people that helped get him into power ended up being a threat to him because he saw, oh, you guys were so well organized, you got me here. But you also don't believe the things that I believe. And so now I've got to kill you guys. So killed like 30,000 and exiled a Bunch more. And that's how he gained power. So, yeah, you. If you're not well organized, and that's the next part of his argument is if you're just poor, unorganized working person, you can't generate enough momentum to actually do something meaningful. You can sort of. What was the Occupy Wall street of it all? They didn't have. They didn't know what they wanted. They didn't have one clear agenda. There was no one clear leader. And so their energy just dissipated over time. So without that very concrete, well organized, very clear agenda, you're not gonna do anything big.

[Tom]

Yeah. Do you. So does that to me. That gave me a bit of relief because. Because there was a lot of this Snapoculus is gonna happen and people are gonna freak out and they're gonna riot and they're gonna do all these things where it's like, yes, they might do those things, but is that the equivalent to a blm? No. Kings protest. I don't think it's actually gonna get to National Guard. Trump needs to intervene.

[Drew]

The Snap thing.

[Tom]

Yeah. On the result of my.

[Drew]

I. The only way I can an is it's so rare that something really pops off. I don't think we're there yet. But that's not necessarily specifically because I have a whole set of facts and I'm looking at it. I'm just saying. Nah. From a historical perspective, like those kind of things, it's rare that they actually end up popping off. And we're not at the 30% unemployment. There isn't enough focused like this person. The closest thing, even during 2020, when you had the flashpoint of very specifically, we're all locked down, we're all freaked out. We don't know if we're safe, we don't know what our economic future looks like and we think the government is killing underserved people, then it's like, okay, you really had a chance for things to properly pop off. And even then it like, don't get me wrong, it was bad, but it wasn't revolution, civil war bad. So if that didn't spill us over, we're in a better position now than we were in 2020.

[Tom]

So I don't think, unfortunately, I think it's going to be worse. I think it's going to be a slow, painful death versus a revolution. And I'm saying you'd rather see a revolution. It's not that I'd rather see a revolution, it's just that I don't think we have the juice for a revolution. To be honest with you, because I think a lot of this bold rhetoric is YouTube and Internet talk. And when you get face to face with somebody, your courage is a lot different.

[Drew]

Is that a good or a bad thing in your mind that we don't have enough juice for a revolution?

[Tom]

I think for a bloodiness perspective, it is good. The comma, however, part comes into the. We aren't collaborative enough to come around the corner of it, though, because I don't think that that's also going to then lead to a Kumbaya moment. Kind of like we had civil war because we don't have the, okay, guys, no more slaves. We're all friends now. Let's hug it out. I don't think there's going to be a time where like, okay, guys, let's hug it out. No more legals. We're friends now. Or, okay, let's just split the difference. 50, 50 tax. Everybody's good now. Let's get like. I don't see a common ground for the right and the left right now. Even if everybody kind of tried to meet in the middle of their policies because we're so sprung out. Yeah.

[Drew]

Revolutions almost always lead to tyranny. It is beyond shocking what we pulled off in America. I mean, beyond shocking that we were able to get the states, which were essentially separate countries at that point, all together to rebel in unison and then to actually. And it wasn't immediately after, like a decade after we get them to ratify the constitution of the U.S. very impressive. Very impressive. And I don't know, man. I don't know if it was just that particular moment in time. Like, I got hit up by somebody who was basically like, tom, there's going to need to be a second founding of the country. And. And we need voices like you. And I was like, yeah, this is not real.

[Tom]

You want to go to a Freedom Papers? I would, but it's a convention that the Hamilton, not the. Where he did the Freedom papers. It was the Federalist Convention.

[Drew]

Oh, God. If it's one of those where. If I didn't have to say it out loud, I would know exactly what it was.

[Tom]

Anybody know that?

[Drew]

Anybody watching the convention?

[Tom]

The convention that they had to go to?

[Drew]

Yep. Chat's gonna tell us.

[Tom]

We'll get there.

[Drew]

So.

[Grainger Announcer]

Yeah.

[Tom]

All right, let's.

[Drew]

I don't think we're at that point. I don't think we could agree. I think if we had a revolution in America right now, it would end up like the Arab Spring. Just so many people pulling in different directions. That you just end up getting the most tyrannical person that can hold everybody together, taking back power.

[Tom]

Sounds like Trump. If we had to, would he be able to? With all the papers, he was willing

[Drew]

to shoot a bunch of people. Like if the military rocked with him and he could get him to. To shoot people. Yes. But if the military broke away, no Constitutional Convention.

[Tom]

Thank you, guys. That was so easy too. We dropped the ball on that.

[Drew]

Yeah, we did. Thank you. Ch.

[Tom]

We got to talk about this. AI bleeding job markets. These are a lot of people, a lot and a lot.

[Drew]

And it's. We're not at the beginning anymore, but Amazon, the odds that they do some approximation of the 600,000 that they're rumored to be letting go by 2033, it's very high. Yeah, very high.

[Tom]

And I feel like right behind Amazon is going to be Walmart, it's going to be Target, because they have the same warehouses, they do the same automations, they're just waiting for the test dummy to kind of prove this. Like.

[Drew]

Yeah, how much backlash they get.

[Tom]

Exactly. So we're seeing a lot of these things happening. I am 100% grateful for entrepreneurs and I look at this example, a lot of. Because if you're. Yes, there are now 20 something odd people that have jobs and families and all types of things. So God bless the entrepreneurs, all that stuff. However, that ratio, if we had to extrapolate that, can we, can that be sustainable enough? Because right now it seems like the job losses are coming in waves faster than new companies are coming into practice. So I feel like we're starting to hit a net negative. And not to mention the government employees that if Trump gets his way with this federal shutdown that we talked about that he hired, like, let's go even more people, we can really see a substantial number of people who had, quote, unquote, nine to five safe jobs now being unemployed, with jobs that don't exist no more, in industries that are fading away quickly. What is there to do?

[Drew]

True, this one is legitimately scary because the way that I play this out in my mind is as follows. Every revolution that we've had previously technologically created more jobs than it got rid of. So nobody should cry for the lamplighter. Although I'm sure there was legitimate human tragedy in a guy could feed his family one day and couldn't the next, and his wife ends up leaving him because he can't make ends meet. And she finds a guy that can. And I mean, just like all of it. And he loses his kids and he becomes an alcoholic. I'm sure all of that is true, but the reality is that you have to distribute the pain and suffering. So when you try to make sure that nobody can fail, you just stagnate society and then everyone fails. So you're in a position where you have to just say there's going to be creative destruction. Electricity comes along, lamplighters go out of business, automobiles come along, horse and carriage. All that stuff goes away. And it just is what it is. And historically, more jobs got created by electricity than we lost. So cool. This is a net win. We're all moving in the right direction. Industrial revolution, same with all that stuff. And then I think about what's going on with the AI revolution, and I go, huh? You're creating something that's going to be better than me at everything. It will, on a long enough timeline, be indistinguishable from humans to where you'll be tricked. You'll have a friend and it'll be like the Crying Game. And you, you're having sex and you can feel a bolt inside. I mean, it's literally going to be some shit like that. And you're like, wait, and we're going to get the. The. What are they called? The Comp Voight machines or whatever from. Oh, God, it's not cyberpunk, it is Blade Runner. And that's all gonna happen. And so I'm like, okay, these things are gonna be not a little bit smarter than me. Not like Einstein is smarter than me, smarter than me, like a thousand times smarter than me, 10,000 times smarter than me, and embodied. So now I'm like, what do I do? Exactly. And so then you realize, oh, only people that can monetize the fact that they are human will have a job. But then you go, but the reality is that the bots are going to make everything free. So now I've got this hyper intelligent being that will know how to capture energy from the sun, will be clever in ways that we just aren't. And so energy becomes free, labor becomes free. And that means everything is free. And you were limited only by the resources that you can capture here on Earth or in asteroids as they fly by. Or maybe you can even synthesize things like, think about this. Plants turn sunlight and dirt into physical structure that you can eat and survive. So you can transmute things hard. And so if this thing gets really good, it could be like capturing like bacteria from the air and mixing it with sunlight and turning it into whatever the. So we may not even have to like, go far, master. I don't know, like, but whatever. Like, with enough energy, you can actually manufacture gold. You really can turn lead into gold. It just takes so much energy, it's pure insanity. So once energy is free, though, so you might be able to just make whatever you want. Okay, so it's a world of abundance. Everybody has basically whatever they want. So it's like we're trying to think through this literally unimaginable future through the lens of what we're like today. So I'm both supremely confident that there will be a world of abundance on the other side of AI, and I'm supremely confident that there'll be a ton of bloodshed between here and there, because people are going to freak out. So at a minimum, the bloodshed will be religious, even if it doesn't end up being economic. Like, let's just say we like the companies solve like artificial superintelligence in the background. They real quick spin up like everything's free, and then they launch it. It's like, yay. No one has to worry. Everybody eats, starting right now. So even in a there's no time to have a bad transition period scenario. There's still the loss of meaning and purpose. There's still the religious battle that's going to be fought. And so it's like, what does the transition look like? That's the part that scares me. And then now make it a more mundane one where it's like the transition lasts 30 years, so there's plenty of time to react. But it's a whole bunch of years like this where you go from 12% unemployment to 16. And of the 16%, 10 are just people that have ejected out of the economy because they're just. It's despair. The only job that they're ever going to find meaning in is going to be something manual. But now all that's done by robots, because robots are just way better at it. They don't complain, they're not likely to be a lawsuit, they don't need breaks, they're way more efficient, they're way more consistent. I mean, just the host of advantages that then will show up as lowered costs to people. So it's like a lot of people are going to go, I was having trouble making ends meet, but I've kept my job and now costs are going down. So it's like, yeah, we have a 16% unemployment, but life's pretty good. And the government is like making sure they don't starve. So. And then it's 20%. And now you start getting, like roving bands of young men that do really troubling things.

[Tom]

You're like, clap work orange.

[Drew]

Yeah, I don't like that. I don't like where that's going. But, like, you know, we wall off our neighborhoods and. Right. So it'll be like this thing where we sort of limp along and you're getting an underclass of people and that underclass, they're doing a lot of drugs, they're being violent, but we can, like, sort of keep them at arm's length. And we. We build prisons for effectively free. And they're guarded by AI bots. And so it's like, yeah, we're now incarcerating like 7, 10 million people. But, like, energy, you know what I mean? Things are getting cheap, so it just doesn't get so bad.

[Tom]

Can I play a dirty leftist for a second? Wow. Let's go.

[Drew]

Tim Riley coming in.

[Tom]

Right now we have data centers spinning up, and local municipalities are subsidizing those data centers, taking the energy cost, passing them on to customers to get those data centers there.

[Drew]

Yep.

[Tom]

Crazy. Hypothetically speaking.

[Drew]

Yep.

[Tom]

We continue in that trend.

[Drew]

Yep.

[Tom]

Elon gets a crazy government subsidy to start the Optimist program to make them all. So now every police department is half robot. It's 50% off. So all police departments get 50% budget reduction, but Elon gets a big tax break for that. We extrapolate that. So we have these gains in more robotics in our streets, more data centers. Nationally, energy is effectively lower cost, but the costs are now spread to the people, and those economies begin to break. We don't have that abundance where freeze everything. And we're starting to give people subsidies away. Because just like the 41 million people on Snap, we're not about to give 82 million people Snap. Forget that. Y' all need to go put yourself up for your bootstraps. And we just kind of have this effective population of people falling off of the property ladder. So to your point, those gated communities now become smaller, but they're really thriving. The 10% that Ray Dalio says that's propping up the economy, that they're propping up now, the entire world now, because optimism robots are in every major country, every developed nation. But that bottom 60% is now, let's say, bottom 65%. That's really kind of getting to it.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Tom]

If the age of abundance never really comes, does this just become a great Depression style, like error that if you elect Mom.

[Drew]

Donnie. Yes. Yeah. If you do bad policies, this will Be a nightmare of biblical proportions. Because if you march yourself into the Great Depression, that's an own goal that is a decade or more long of just a lot of human suffering. But good policies can keep that from being a problem. So, for instance, the fact that China outproduces us on an energy basis, that is, I don't know that it's an order of magnitude. So let's say that hyperbolically, but orders of magnitude more than us. It's like such a grotesque number that, you know, it's possible. Okay, so this is a regulation problem. And if we were to do policies that hamstring us, that where we're distributing the burden to people, the taxpayer, that is so wild and stupid and completely unnecessary that, yeah, I am aghast. So if we do that, bad things will happen. If we realize that small government is the goal, small government is the goal, innovation is the goal. Thriving middle class. Goal, goal, goal. Then we have the right orientation and we can start making choices where it's like, okay, cool, we've got all these robotics, costs are coming down. That's amazing. So now we have to make sure that we have a thriving middle class. We have to make sure that the age of abundance is. It's not going to be evenly distributed in the beginning. It's never going to be evenly distributed. So you get people to work hard by saying if you work hard and outperform other people, then you can have more than they have. You'd never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever want to break that Brutus. Which is why I say socialists and communists are the same thing. So on that side, you, if you're protective of that, then you're going to be in good shape. But it really will one require us to be evaluating what's actually happening, because this is on the other side of the technological singularity. So I can give you like principles and guidelines, but I can't tell you the specifics of how this is going

[Tom]

to roll out, because it's on the other side of that wall that we,

[Drew]

for instance, energy needs to be cheaper for everybody. So you can't make energy cheaper for businesses and not taxpayers. You can't make. So I guess on this you might do special energy zones or something like that, but basically you want one rule set to rule everybody in terms of access to those public works. So right now we're asking taxpayers in certain areas to bear an unusual burden. That's wild. So as they begin to reap these benefits, distributing free energy to the people, that. That is hugely Important. You cannot let those wins just accumulate up to the businesses. This is where the government has to say, we're going to make these policies. We're going to build this infrastructure. We ourselves are going to point tax dollars at this. But it is to benefit the population as a whole.

[Tom]

Interesting. We got to go to Brazil right now because it is turning into a war zone. With some of this footage that's coming out. About 2,500 cops rode into Rio before sunrise to take on Red Command, one of Brazil's biggest drug gangs. Gang members answer with bullets, burning cars, barricades, and for the first time ever in Brazil, drone drop explosives.

[Drew]

You have to do this. You have to do this. You cannot let drug lords, like, post up in your countries. Yeah. And you get so much corruption in these governments, it just becomes impossible to fight back. I'm super encouraged by this.

[Tom]

The death toll hit 80 by noon. Four cops were among the dead. The governor says Rio is effectively at war. And based on the skyline, he is not kidding.

[Drew]

Look at that, man.

[Tom]

You just kind of see all of the burning, all the things that's happening right now.

[Drew]

You enforce laws. This is why you enforce laws. Like when you just let these people go into certain areas and they can entrench, like, they just get more and more powerful. These guys are sophisticated. Just like you get geniuses in East Coast Ivy schools, you get geniuses in the hood. And so, yeah, these guys that are doing and selling drugs, they're going to be able to recruit their own share of geniuses, and they start doing fancy, highly technical stuff. Did you see the USOs? I know they were called that off of Fort Lauderdale. Oh, my God. Do a quick search for USO Fort Lauderdale. This is one that I didn't think was going to stick to my ribs. I had no idea I was going to bring this up, so I didn't grab it. But this is. You got to see this. I don't even want to give it away. Scroll down. Yeah, that right there. Okay, everybody look at your screen. So, Drew, what are those? You have unidentified, I assume, sunken objects. I don't know what the S stands for. Submerged. That's probably more likely Unidentified Submerged Objects. Yeah. Now, hey, this video could just be a guy, like, dropping lights and trying to do something fancy, and he's just making a video. Totally, totally get how this could be that. But also, we know that the cartels use submarines to get product to the United States.

[Tom]

And I was wondering. I was like, how do we get from drug cartels to aliens? I was so confused.

[Drew]

They get so sophisticated. They, like, get engineers to build them, like, the most crazy contraptions. So now again, I don't know what this is, but it is not an alien. It's either fake or my guess is drug cartel related.

[Tom]

Like light effects. I remember. I'll never forget this. I read Freakonomics for the first time and they thought they broke down one of, like, Chicago drug pens. And he said the structure is corporately similar to a McDonald's, like from the top to the bottom, to the corporate infrastructure, to the bureaucrats, even how they do the laundering, everything. So it's not just a bunch of dudes with durags who are just selling drugs. Like, there's a lot of.

[Drew]

I had at Quest. So put out the word on the street that even if you had felony convictions, we would consider you for employment. It's all because I believe it doesn't matter who you are today. It matters who you want to become. The price you're willing to pay to get there. Okay, so we end up getting all these gang members, drug dealers, I thought former drug dealers applying. And some of them were amazing. Some of ended up being my favorite people in the world. Just absolutely incredible people. Some ended up being dirt bags. But anyway, we got this one guy, and he had originally taken the job for a front for his drug money. So he could go to his parole officer and say, I got a job here. And he ended up breaking down for me how his organization was structured. And I was like, you're a brilliant entrepreneur. I was like, you don't call them employees, but you have employees. You don't think of it as a corporate structure, but you have a corporate structure. Like, different people have even different names of what they do. And I was like, you guys have to be incredibly sophisticated about how to move and market your product. Like he was talking about. Because I was like, how do you not get caught? And he was like, first of all, everybody can be identified. This will age the conversation. But everybody can be identified by their whip. And so I'm like, okay, so you know who's undercover. Yes. And you know when they change based on what car they're driving? Yes. He was like, also. And I still can't believe this was in America. He was like, I kept a wad of cash in my back pocket. So when I get pulled over and they would frisk me, they would find the money and they would just leave me alone. And I was like, holy bejesus. And he was like, you know where the cameras are? You know what their blind spots are so you know, where you can post people up. I was like, this is wild. And, yeah, all very crazy. And for anybody that doesn't know what a trap house is, that's horrifying. But, like, all of this stuff is. It's very sophisticated, Very sophisticated. And once I realized, oh, what you sell is risk, then I was like, got it. Like, what they're actually making money off of isn't the sale of the thing. It's that that thing has so much risk associated with its sale that that is the moat that keeps all the competition out. And so, in fact, that's a better way to say it. Their moat is risk. And so if you're willing to take on all that risk and you have the sophistication of a, like, proper entrepreneur. Whoa. Like, these guys move units.

[Tom]

Are you one of those people from the school of thought that if they were in a different environment, they would be somewhere on Wall street type thing?

[Drew]

100, 100%. It's just humans. If you took any one of those kids and raised them in an affluent neighborhood, they would have done affluent kid shit. And some of the stories from those guys were wild. One of the kids got jumped on the way home. His own mother. His own mother sees him beaten to shit, and. And she puts a bullet on the table, goes, does that bullet have a name? And he just goes, yes, takes it, puts it in the gun and starts looking for him on the street. Thankfully, he doesn't find him. But I was like, yo, when your mom is like, you need to handle that business to a 13 year old. I was just like, whoa. My mom's reaction would have been very different. It would have been straight to the principal who did this to my son. So, yeah, you end up reflecting the world around you. There was another kid who his father, Stepfather was shot in the head and killed. Drug dealer. And so his mom was like, you got to take over the family business. So it, like, I mean, he was a teenager, ends up taking over the family business, drugs. And I was just like, whoa. So, yeah, super bright. Not all of them, obviously. No matter where you go, you're gonna find smart people, you're gonna find dumb people. But I was scandalized by how bright, how savvy some of these guys were. And honestly, I was like, I don't know if I'd be an entrepreneur if every day I had to worry about people showing up with shotguns to steal my protein powder. I was just like, I don't know, man, that's a lot of risk. I don't know that I come on the other side of that. And I have a huge appetite for risk, but nobody's tried get to kill me for my protein powder.

[Tom]

Yeah, man.

[Drew]

Very different game.

[Tom]

All right. That's all I'm talking about about aliens. 3 Eye Atlas.

[Drew]

This as far, you got to show Michio Kaku first.

[Tom]

Oh, okay.

[Drew]

So Michio Kaku basically gives credibility. Once the credibility is established, then we'll look at that image. But this is crazy. I did not think Michio Kaku was going to say, the world's divided on this. I thought he was gonna be like, it's a rock, boys and girls, it's a rock.

[Tom]

Because that was the story. The story was it was a rock. We didn't know what it was then. We had to wait a couple. We had to wait until it got closer so we could get better images of it. And it's looking like a ship now.

[Drew]

It is close. This is wild. I love though there have been people posting enhanced versions, of course, not saying this is AI and when you see the AI version, it's like hysterical. But we'll get to that. We got to earn it first.

[Tom]

Drew, here it is. Okay, so this mystery object has been

[Drew]

added to the International Asteroid Warning Network. That's. That's the first interstellar object ever to make that list. So I got to ask you, what

[Tom]

the heck is 3i Atlas and why. Why the clouds of mystery around it? NASA's like tight lipped.

[Drew]

Well, there's a split, a split in the astronomical community. The majority faction says, what's all the fuss about? I mean, it's just a rock from outer space, and it's going to come through our solar system for the first time and then come whizzing back out again. Is the third. Third known object from outside our solar system. So what's the fuss? Another faction, however, says, now wait a minute. Perhaps this is a visitor, an intelligent visitor from another solar system.

[News Reader]

And perhaps this week we could have

[Drew]

a test of it.

[News Reader]

That's right, this week it turns out

[Drew]

that the asteroid or comet will be whizzing around our sun, and if it picks up extra energy on its flyby, that would clinch it. That means there's extraterrestrial intelligence involved. So watch for it on October 30th. Starting then, I don't think he explains how we'll know if they've picked up extra energy. So I'll trust that scientists are going to freak out if they do. So we'll get the answer. But this is wild. That the closer it gets, the more we're like, say what? Yeah, what is this thing? Okay, now let's take a look at the actual, like, close up. Now, as far as I know, this is legitimate footage, but I can't swear to it. But this was shocking. This is like a really decent one, but they have one that's much closer. I think the reason they show this one is it like slightly changes course or seems to.

[Tom]

Yo, hold on. This is the wrong link.

[Drew]

Yeah, we need the one.

[Tom]

Yeah, I just had it. I just had it. There it is.

[Drew]

All right. Looks like an amoeba. This is wild. Okay, if you're not looking at your screen, I mean, this really looks like a weird shape. Something with a whole bunch of lights on it. And the lights are way too symmetrical to just be completely random. But weirder things have happened. So I'm like trying to think, is it possible that these are like some sort of.

[Tom]

Or.

[Drew]

And they're reflecting light off of this? I don't know, man. This is wild. There's no. I just. I literally can't allow myself to believe that, like today on a random Wednesday, aliens roll up and they're just like, what's up, guys? Just cruising by. That would be the wildest shit ever.

[Tom]

And to be fair, it's passing the sun, so it's entering into our solar system. Now it got notoriety that they're technically,

[Drew]

I think it would already have to be in our solar system system to pass the sun.

[Tom]

But it's the third interstellar object ever recorded in history. But the reason that they're waiting to see what happens when it passes the sun is assumedly if you get something hot, they'll try to alter their course, they'll try to drive around it, or they'll just pick up the energy and gases will expound like a typical asteroid does in the past. So they're looking to see how it reacts to getting that close to the sun to see, like, okay, is this driven by something or is this just a rock floating aimlessly?

[Grainger Announcer]

This is.

[Tom]

Yes, this image definitely makes it look like more Mother Shippy.

[Drew]

Right.

[Tom]

Especially with a little flicker runs across it.

[Drew]

Yes, but why would you have a ship that does that? I was like, that feels more like. But it feels more like something like wind has crossed it that causes some sort of chemical reaction of whatever's there. But then I was like, there's no. It's the vacuum of space.

[Tom]

There's no wind in space.

[Drew]

So. But ah. And isn't part of their beef that it's not giving off, like a comet tail.

[Tom]

Yeah. Like, it's not. It's not acting like traditional asteroids have acted before, but there is gases and stuff emanating from it.

[Drew]

I'm so curious what people think this is.

[Tom]

Can we do a poll? See, Is this an alien? Yes or no?

[Drew]

Yes.

[Tom]

Is this an alien? Yes or no? Let's hop in on this and see. Why would an alien ship have lights? The same way the United Airlines ship has lights when it flies? Have you ever seen the bacterium under this?

[Drew]

And people are saying there are solar winds in space. So maybe that's what's doing it. It's a giant, shiny nickel rock. That's the kind of thing I'm thinking, like, there's just parts that are, like, more exposed than others. It does look like an amoeba. You're definitely correct about that. We've got some deaf aliens in here. Alien ship is too much fun not to be. I want it to be an alien ship.

[Tom]

We talked about this. There's definitely. The universe is too big for there not to be one other living heart simulation.

[Drew]

So. Well, so there's two things that could be real. If this is a simulation and you just set up a bunch of rules, and then the rules go crazy. But you put life only on one place because that's what you're trying to simulate to see what it does. That would certainly explain why we can't figure out what is that first thing that triggers life. Because you don't need that. That's just the code in the simulation. And it.

[Tom]

That's the light turning on.

[Drew]

Yeah. It starts at a certain point and then just goes from there. So that's part of why it could be. And then the other would be that as a civilization becomes advanced, they collapse inward into simulations rather than going outward into the excruciatingly dangerous universe. I don't think life will ever form an interstellar space. There's nothing that makes me believe that that would even be remotely possible. So now you get into. You've got to have a planet in a habitable zone. And all of the things we know about life says that you need that. Just the numbers are too staggering for there not to have been life anywhere else. Like, that's too crazy to believe. But if they do realize, like, okay, we've evolved to be like, okay, on this planet with all of its crazy protections. And so the second we try to leave this atmosphere, like, we're going to be taking crazy radiation, like, all kinds of. Of Bad things like this is not going to be good. And hey, as we started developing the technology to do all that stuff, we also realized that we could make the Matrix. Far more people are going to, I think, go inside of these virtual worlds in success. I mean, that's what I'm trying to build. It's obviously such a pipe dream right now. I don't want any credit for that. But man, I really hope the whole gaming thing works because it is so thrilling to me. The idea of building something that people could literally experience at a nervous system level in call it 30 years. Remember, there are people moving robotic arms with their brain implants right now, today. Right now, today. So this is not playing video games via telepathy with their brain implants. This is not some far fetched thing. So that's really actually going to be possible. And man, would that be cool.

[Tom]

Emilywill 4992 it will be so easy to create unity in the world using alien life form threat briefly. Is this, is this just the Watchman pitch? Is this just. Oh, sorry. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert.

[Drew]

It's possible. I don't, I don't trust that. Do we have an Adrian Vite among us?

[Tom]

Yeah, Elon, obviously, Elon's the closest.

[Drew]

Obviously Elon is bang the drum the hardest saying, this is nothing.

[Tom]

There is no aliens.

[Drew]

Yeah. He's like, if there are aliens, he's like, they have not attempted to contact us.

[Tom]

Is he team simulation? He's the one. I seen that.

[Drew]

He said, mathematically the odds of you being in a simulation border on 100% mathematically.

[Tom]

I feel like. No, I feel like I hate that conversation because there's a framing issue. It's like, okay, there's no simulation or we'll be advanced enough to create a simulation or we're in the simulation or simulation don't exist. I feel like we forget about that first thing. We just get into the 1, 2, 3 of it all. And that's why you're 67. To be in a simulation or going to be in a simulation.

[Drew]

The problem is like at some point you have to base your logic on something. Once you anchor your logic on the world that I'm experiencing right now actually exists, simulated or otherwise, but it actually exists. And then you run into the problem of we are creating a simulation. Everything tells us that a simulation that is indistinguishable from reality is possible. And so once you're like, okay, there are simulations that are indistinguishable from reality. Oh, and by the way when I look at the laws of physics, it really does operate like a simulation would operate, provably. Meaning the universe is not locally real. Okay, so the universe is rendered. The universe renders. There's no better way to say it. So we know that the universe isn't locally real. We've proven that experimentally. So we know that it effectively renders. And everything tells us that we can create a simulation. So it's like, oh, you start stacking those things and if we can create a simulation, then what would we likely simulate? Ourselves? Okay, if you'll give me both of those leaps, once you give me those two leaps, then the odds that you're not in a simulation become vanishingly small. If you don't give those two. If you believe you can create a simulation, but no one will ever simulate ourselves, or you just can't create a simulation, then it's like, okay, well then yes, upon your logic, which I reject wholeheartedly. But if that were the logic, then okay, at least you have internal consistency. You'd have a hard time explaining what's going to stop us from doing it right now. But which would then invalidate your hypothesis that it's not possible. But, so, yeah, mathematically, odds are you're in a simulation.

[Tom]

Let's do it. First, is this an alien? Poll says 56% of you say no. Yes. Is 44%. 56%. No.

[Grainger Announcer]

No.

[Tom]

Okay, 44. Yes.

[Drew]

Yeah, I'm in the no camp. It didn't want it to be, though. Oh, it's a sparkly rot. Yeah. There's going to be some really mundane explanation. And I didn't involve myself in this until now because it was like not coming until the end of October. And when I first heard about it was like July or something, I was like, I don't even think about this. Now that it's today, I'm going to be checking my feed every hour to figure out if this is real. And man, do I want it to be true. That would be so cool.

[Tom]

I love that somebody said it's an alien tour bus. And those are phone flashes.

[Drew]

That's hysterical.

[Tom]

On your left we have the sun.

[Drew]

That's another part of this. Do you know how long at the speeds that they're traveling, they would have had to have been traveling? Like, even if we say, well, no, no, no, they traveled at near the speed of light for the vast majority of the journey and now they're just slowing down, they'd still have been traveling just for the length of time that we've been able to pick them up is months and months and months. So what would they send AI Maybe. And that's like a ship full of like processors, I don't know. But it just all becomes very like, why would they do this? Dark forest is a very interesting concept. If you have not read the three body problem, read it.

[Tom]

They just did a show too. I was supposed to watch it, then I forgot.

[Drew]

If somebody built a perfect simulation, first of all, AI would live inside of it. AI would probably get to the point where it would not know that it's AI So let's start with that. And then on top of that, I think people, if we have physical bodies, I think people will spend the vast majority of their time inside the simulation. They will come out of the simulation only if they have meaningful personal relationships, which on a long enough timeline, most people will not. And or to preen their physical body essentially if we're not able to. Just so dystopian, suspended in vats or whatever. But your life inside the simulation will be meaningful, if that helps. All right guys, that's it. Make sure you join us for Halloween on Friday. Be ready for it. Love you guys all. Thank you for another wonderful episode and we will see you next time later.

[Grainger Announcer]

If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.