Economic Insecurity, Political Division, and the Youth Vote Shaping the Future | Tom Bilyeu Show Live

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Episode: Economic Insecurity, Political Division, and the Youth Vote Shaping the Future | Tom Bilyeu Show Live
Date: December 12, 2025
Host(s): Tom Bilyeu
Co-Hosts/Guests: Drew, Eric (camera), Chat Moderator, Campaign Strategist
Runtime: ~95 minutes (content summarized, timestamps provided)

---

Episode Overview

This episode features Tom Bilyeu and co-hosts engaging in a live, in-depth analysis of the current state of economic insecurity, rising political division, and the key role of the youth vote in shaping America’s future. They examine social, political, and financial anxieties swirling in the US and globally, with particular focus on how these factors inform populism, campaign strategies for 2026, and the risks and opportunities AI and robotics present for economic systems.

The conversation is grounded in recent news cycles, personal experience, and historical parallels—delivered in Tom's signature blend of rigorous logic and open curiosity.

---

1. Economic Insecurity and the "Loss Domain"

Timestamps: 03:00–09:00

• Daniel Kahneman's 'Loss Domain':
  Tom opens with insights from behavioral economics, referencing Daniel Kahneman:

  "When people go into the loss domain, where they no longer believe that they're going to be able to work their way out of a financial problem… they build a new internal model of the world where risk is completely reevaluated and all people think about is, can I get everything back in one move?" (03:00)

• Gambling as a Metaphor:
  He compares economic panic to reckless gambling—both in literal casinos and risky investments like Pokémon cards, stock markets, or speculative assets.

• Bubble Mentality:

  “I have a growing hypothesis that the hotter Pokémon cards is as a stand-in for all of those other asset classes that are way out on the risk curve… It is a very clear sign that people have become so convinced that they're in an only up phenomenon that they'll even go place these huge bets on something as ephemeral as a Pokémon card.” (03:55)

---

2. Global Instability and Money Printing

Timestamps: 09:00–12:30

• Global Conflicts:
  Drew raises breaking news: Thailand and Cambodia in conflict; Trump’s intention to intervene.

  • Tom downplays direct US impact but flags the pattern of global fraying due to widespread economic instability.

• Money Printing’s Role:

  “Notice now that you’re starting to see everybody fraying everywhere... You’re playing a game of mathematics. And once you realize that capitalism really is a zero-sum game, you are battling for economic resources.” (06:16)

• Feedback Loops:
  Tom connects global conflict, political instability, and economic insecurity—all as consequences of debt and overleveraged monetary policy stretching back a century.

---

3. The End of Capitalism and AI Disruption

Timestamps: 12:30–18:00

• Hyper-Specialization:
  Tom explains modern society as a structure built primarily on economic specialization, with everything rooted in the need to avoid scarcity, violence, and chaos.

• AI’s Looming Impact:

  “The way that [AI] is going to disrupt things… it will almost certainly simply eradicate capitalism.” (13:30)
  He warns of a challenging transition—comparing it to pre-WWI/WWII—where the promise of abundance ends up requiring a period of significant turmoil and loss before reaching a stable new equilibrium.

• Modern Monetary Theory’s Double-Edged Sword:

  “The adoption of modern monetary theory… Had massive benefits, but also created these massive problems. And at some point, the piper has to be paid... this moment feels like the bill has come due.” (14:48)

---

4. Infrastructure, Cronyism, and What We Call 'Capitalism'

Timestamps: 15:39–22:50

• Historical Analogies:
  Drew and Tom discuss the need for infrastructure investment to handle inevitable transitions—citing the railroads and internet as cases where upfront investors lost, but society benefited.

• Distinguishing Capitalism from Cronyism:

  “What we have right now isn’t capitalism. And so the things when we blame capitalism, what we really mean is cronyism by the government… the whole idea behind capitalism is… if you’re too weak, you’ll get snapped in half. And that is what it is.” (17:20)

• Rigged Game & Regulatory Capture:
  Tom uses the analogy of the NFL and WWE, critiquing current systems as “the government has turned capitalism into WWE. The winners are already decided ahead of time based on who has the politician’s ear.” (20:10)

---

5. Populism, Division, and Trump’s Ongoing Appeal

Timestamps: 22:52–42:58

• Trump Campaign Trail, Soundbites, and Base Strategy:

  • They play through Trump’s divisive rhetoric, including comments on Ilhan Omar and policies around migration (23:17–27:02).
  • Tom: "This is a greatest hits album. This is an entertainer who understands how to get people excited... It’s the divisiveness between the two sides that makes me sad." (27:04)

• Populism vs. 'Establishment':
  Tom frames Trump’s appeal as driven by mass distrust in the political class, and a desire for leaders “who do not sound like the political class.”

• Elections and Emotional Voting:

  “People do not vote based on logic. They [vote] based on feelings... First principles in an election—you’ve been in a year, you’ve got to show me exactly why my life is better and you’ve got to make me feel it.” (31:17–33:40)

• Youth Vote and Future of Politics:

  • Tom recounts the missed opportunity in US comics vs. manga, linking it to how nations lose the future if they ignore the next generation:

    “The second you give up on the youth, you f*** yourself. You put yourself on a timeline. You are going to be irrelevant.” (44:00)

  • Democrats and Republicans are advised to focus on policies for Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha—or risk irrelevance.

---

6. Cultural Change, Nostalgia, and Age Dynamics

Timestamps: 48:48–56:58

• Hostile Takeovers and Hollywood/Tech Industry:
  Tom and Drew quickly explain Paramount’s attempted defense against a Netflix takeover (50:00–51:36)—using it as a metaphor for relentless change and the risk of calcification.

• Adapting to Change:

  “Life is perpetually changing. I know it feels like everything is static… There is a sadness about adults; they’re just collecting all this scar tissue.” (52:17)

• Nostalgia and Self-Renewal:
  Discussion of musical theater, the continuing appeal of live experiences, and the need for adults to break through the “scar tissue” of age by re-engaging with new forms of culture and entertainment.

---

7. Youthful Optimism, Scar Tissue, and Personal Stories

Timestamps: 61:05–64:58

• Dating Across Age Gaps:
  Drew recounts dating a much younger woman and reflects on the joy—and anxiety—of being around youthful optimism.

  • Tom: “Can you find that other gear, reconnecting with someone optimistic and not just focus on the ways that everything is going to go wrong?” (63:20)

• Scar Tissue vs. Openness:
  Both hosts reflect on how past disappointments calcify us, and the importance of fighting that to retain curiosity and openness.

---

8. Immigration, Economic Incentives, and Welfare Fraud

Timestamps: 65:10–74:36

• Legislative Moves Against Islamic Organizations:
  Discussion of Florida following Texas in designating Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as terrorist organizations—Tom sees this as "the beginning of something, not the end," predicting escalation.

• Somali Welfare Fraud Cases:
  Tom analyzes viral stories of Somali-led EBT/welfare scams (67:42–68:55):

  “This is a freeloader problem. This is why the right and the left exist from an evolutionary standpoint... humans are always going to exploit whatever niche they can.” (68:55)

• Game Theory and Incentives:

  “Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome.”

  • Tom speed-runs American immigration history, arguing that a lack of economic literacy and modern monetary complexity leads to overgenerous policy and systemic exploitation.

---

9. Corporate Tax Evasion vs. Small-Scale Welfare Abuse

Timestamps: 74:36–77:39

• Public Outrage Asymmetry:
  Drew points out the public's focus on small actors (welfare fraud) vs. relative lack of scrutiny for massive corporate tax avoidance (e.g., Google’s Irish tax shelter). Tom agrees and proposes:
  • Simplification and radical transparency in the tax code
  • Strict debt ceilings and removing money from politics

---

10. Wages, CEO Pay, and Globalism

Timestamps: 77:39–80:26

• Disproportionate CEO Compensation:
  Tom lays out why top executives retain negotiating power (scarcity of skills) while wage stagnation is driven by globalism and technology.

  “People glom onto CEO evil because he still has negotiating power… but that’s not a very compelling argument. We’re hardwired to hate inequality, but it’s not the root of the problem.” (80:16)

---

11. Super Chats, Personal Fulfillment, and Having Children

Timestamps: 80:27–87:20

• Gambling Losses Story:
  RJ Johnson’s Super Chat about losing over $1M after “going into the loss domain” (80:53).

• Scar Tissue, Childhood Joy, and the Value of Parenting:
  Tom discusses fulfillment, evolutionary impulses, and why choosing not to have kids requires offsetting by building other sources of purpose and meaning:

  “Be very thoughtful before you don’t have kids. It’s a higher risk strategy if people actually want to be worried about me… I have very few friends. I’m very isolationist by temperament…” (83:51–85:15)

---

12. Libertarianism, Government Safety Nets, and Social Cohesion

Timestamps: 88:00–93:45

• Why Libertarian Messages Fail with the Young:
  Tom:

  “That’s not a compelling message for people that were raised to view themselves as victims and to put their hand out. And that’s how we've spent the last 30 years, raising kids.” (88:17)

• Is the Pure Free Market Real or Utopian?

  • Tom and Drew agree complete removal of safety nets is unrealistic: “I like unicorns too.” (90:42)
  • Tom: “The strong will do as they wish and the weak will suffer as they must. That’s history.” (90:43)

---

13. Immigration, Birthrates, and Labor Markets

Timestamps: 92:28–93:45

• Super Chat Suggests Child-Birth Subsidies:
  Tom replies that if welfare were gone, Americans would do any job necessary, and the current aversion is an artifact of policy, not capacity.

---

14. Closing Reflections and Community Engagement

Timestamps: 94:00–95:33

• Kaizen Video Game Project:
  Tom provides an update on his upcoming game, likening its development to having “thousands of children”—and invites the community to participate.

• Fulfillment, Friendship, and Solitude:
  He ruminates on being deeply fulfilled by work and creation, less so by socializing, but recognizes it’s a “high risk” strategy as he ages (85:37–86:58).

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• "When people go into the loss domain... all people think about is, can I get everything back in one move?” – Tom (03:00)
• “The second you give up on the youth, you f* yourself. You put yourself on a timeline.**” – Tom (44:00)
• “This is a greatest hits album. This is an entertainer who understands how to get people excited...” – Tom, on Trump (27:04)
• “Rigged game… government has turned Capitalism into the WWE.” – Tom (20:10)
• “People do not vote based on logic. They [vote] based on feelings.” – Tom (31:17)
• “Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome.” – Tom (68:55)
• “Be thoughtful before you don't have kids. It's a higher risk strategy...” – Tom (83:51)

---

Key Takeaways

• Economic insecurity fundamentally changes the way people assess risk and engage with the world, fueling both micro (personal) and macro (global) instability.
• The transition to AI/automation promises eventual abundance but will likely involve wrenching, disruptive change—a gauntlet societies must thoughtfully navigate.
• Modern U.S. "capitalism" is hampered by cronyism and regulatory capture, confusing the public on the real sources of economic malaise.
• Populism and attention-driven politics are symptoms of deeper trust and economic crises; emotional rhetoric and divisiveness are more effective than logic at the ballot box.
• Neglecting the needs and aspirations of the youth will rapidly render political parties and industries irrelevant—a lesson shown by the US comic market versus Japan’s manga.
• Cultural and technological change are relentless; those unwilling to adapt or re-map meaning onto new experiences become locked out of the future.
• Large-scale policy issues—from welfare to tax evasion—are ultimately questions of incentives and collective attention, often shaped more by narrative than logic.

---

For listeners: This episode offers an unflinching view of how economic, political, and social trends are converging in 2025 America, synthesized with historical analogies and practical advice for how both leaders and individuals might navigate the turbulent years ahead.

Transcript

[Tom]

All right, remember, the machine knows if you're lying. First statement. Carvana will give you a real offer on your car. All online. False. True. Actually, you can sell your car in minutes.

[Chat Moderator]

False.

[Campaign Strategist]

That's gotta be true again.

[Tom]

Carvana will pick up your car from your door, or you can drop it off at one of their car vending machines. Sounds too good to be true.

[Campaign Strategist]

So true.

[Tom]

Finally caught on. Nice job. Honesty isn't just their policy. It's their entire model. Sell your car today, too, Carvana. Pickup fees may apply.

[Campaign Strategist]

Kids, they grow up so fast. One day they're taking their first steps, and the next they don't fit into the tiny sneakers they took them in. You blink your eyes, and their princess dress is two sizes too small. And their dinosaur backpack isn't cool anymore. But don't cry because they're growing up. Smile because you can profit off of it for real. There are a bunch of parents on depop looking for the stuff your kid just grew out of. Download Depop to start selling.

[Tom]

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another rousing edition of the Tom Billy Show Live. I am joined by Drew. What's up, Drew? How we doing?

[Drew]

Happy morning.

[Tom]

Happy morning indeed. Mason is back. It's good to see you. Welcome. Take good care of the community today, if you would, good sir. Behind the camera, we have Eric. Is G there? No G. All right, Eric's flying solo. Let's see what happens, everybody. And speaking of what's happening, so writing my most recent Deep Dive, which will be coming out next week, it really is about what happens to people when they feel economically insecure. How do they begin to act? And we don't calm down and tighten our belt. We go into what? The Nobel Prize winning economist. I don't know if he's an economist or a psychologist. Anyway, Daniel Kahneman wrote about something he called the loss domain. And he said when people go into the lost domain, where they no longer believe that they're going to be able to work their way out of a financial problem, they think of COVID think of the Great Depression. They don't go, okay, listen, going to have to tighten my belt. It's going to take me a few years to work my way back out of this. But there is a known way to build fiscal responsibility, and I'm just going to buckle down and do it. That is not at all what people do once they click over into that loss domain. They build a new internal model of the world where risk is completely reevaluated and all people think about is, can I get Everything back in one move. So if you've ever seen people at the roulette wheel playing poker and all of a sudden they just start gambling totally nonsensically. They cover this in the movie Molly's Game, where there was one player always super disciplined. He realized that he got bluffed by a guy that doesn't even know how to play poker. And he just goes full tilt, completely unhinged, just betting maniacally on every hand, every time, thinking, okay, I'm going to get it all back on this one. And then once people start doing that, it is a downward spiral of just epic proportions. And that's what happens to the human psychology. When we feel fiscally insecure, everything becomes unhinged gambling. But we do it in formal channels. So we'll do it in the stock market, we'll do it in Pokemon cards. Pokemon cards is interesting because first of all, I'm so into tcg, but it is. I have a growing hypothesis that the hotter Pokemon cards is as a stand in for all of those other asset classes that are way out on the risk curve that it is. Initially you think, oh, this is a good sign. It means that things are really humming in the economy. But I think it is a very clear sign that people have become so convinced that they're in an only up phenomenon that they'll even go place these huge bets on something as ephemeral as a Pokemon card.

[Chat Moderator]

So.

[Tom]

Pokemon cards have actually started to soften now, but TCG cards in general are still booming, which I think is a sign that we're sort of late stage bubble. We'll see.

[Drew]

Yeah. Like you said, we're tracking this story breaking right now. Thailand and Cambodia, as fighting rages on cheap, Trump intends to intervene. And we're gonna get to Trump's rally in Pennsylvania later. But as of right now, do you think that there will be a blowback that can impact America? I know we got troops in Venezuela. I know we're watching Russia and Ukraine pretty well. This conflict doesn't seem like it would impact us, but yet Trump is keen on intervening and stopping it. Is that just him being political?

[Tom]

Yes. If you think specifically about Cambodia and Thailand, this is not gonna be something that has any major impact on us. It's not gonna be something major impact on the world. Neither of them control chip supply or anything like that that we predicate our entire modern economy on. So you look at China and Taiwan, Japan like that, like Triangle is. That should make everybody uneasy. First of all, Japan has been responsible effectively for the post financial Collapse boom with the yen carry trade. So they've been propping up the global economy for a long time. So anything bad that happens to their economy is going to have global impact. They hold a massive amount of US debt, so that's going to have an impact on the U.S. anything that happens to the U.S. is going to have, have an impact on the rest of the world. So if you're focusing on Asia, that's where you need to be looking now. If you're looking at what's going on between Thailand and Cambodia, I don't think it's a nothing burger, but I think it's one of many, many, many things that show that the world is in an increasingly unstable position. Now, to your earlier point, why is the world in an increasingly unstable position? It's because. And money printing. And so the one argument that everybody has made for a long time is, well, Tom, like all this money printing that the US is doing, it's not a big deal, bro. What are you worried about? Like, everybody in the world is doing it.

[Chat Moderator]

Yeah.

[Tom]

Notice now that you're starting to see everybody fraying everywhere, everywhere in the world.

[Drew]

Is now in conflict. Yes.

[Tom]

Because unfortunately you're playing a game of mathematics. And once you realize that capitalism really is a zero sum game, you are battling for economic resources. Like, I want to get them, you want to get them, I want to try to outpace you to get them. And so the whole game of economics, the whole game of political power, these things end up boiling down to one person is in charge, one person controls the money. And I don't mean that literally in terms of the economy, but in any like back and forth battle over something, even if you're just taking it as employer employee, if you're taking it as person selling person buying, like everybody's trying to get the best deal for themselves. So once you understand the fractious nature of that, then you begin to understand why it becomes a problem globally. If everybody's feeling insecure, everybody realizes, oh, I need to get these resources for themselves, they go into a loss aversion mode. Their morality completely remaps. People suddenly feel that it's perfectly justified to march on another country, shoot you in the face and take your shit. And this is where trying to get people to understand they're having a biological experience so that they will look back on human history and go, oh, what do humans act like in moments like this? Because they want to believe that they sit outside of that historical truth and they don't. And once you start looking at History as merely a recitation of what humans act like in certain circumst, and that it's predicting your future. Then suddenly history becomes a far more terrifying, B, you realize that the patterns really are looping, and C, that they're pointing to what's going to happen to all of us now. And so when I look at, okay, how's AI going to disrupt us? What's it going to look like when people start losing their jobs? Why are all these conflicts popping off everywhere? Right now you can really start to trace this back to economic insecurity. Now, as I wrote the latest Deep Dive, one thing that I realized is people just don't understand that we're all an economic unit. And we tell ourselves a far more beautiful story that we are spiritual units. If I had to round it to probably what is the algorithm that plays in people's minds? But the truth of how you move through the world is everything is predicated on specialization. So you make music. I don't, because I'm not good at it. You are. And so we have built modern society to make sure that we don't starve to death, make sure that we don't have to worry about roving marauders coming in to rape our women, quite literally steal our assets, kill us. And then the benefit from creating that stability and that protection is we can go, and now you go do that music thing, I'm going to go do this other thing over here. And. And once you get into that hyper specialization, the whole world models itself, or structures itself a much better word, structures itself around economics, period. End of story. And so then you're like, well, hold on a second. When people say money makes the world go round, what they're saying is that the very structure of our entire modern way of life is economics. And that's why when I look at AI coming in, the. The way that it's going to disrupt things, which, to put it very simply, it will almost certainly simply eradicate capitalism. And it's like, okay, right now people aren't loving capitalism. So I get why they think that's a good thing. And honestly, on the other side, it probably is. But if you think about it this way, if it's like 1916 and I tell you, hey, on the other side of World War II, we have an unprecedented run of peace in the west. You would go, oh, wait, there's no World War I on the other side of World War II. What do you mean? And it's like, yeah, we're gonna have to kill. I Mean, if you'll count communism, we're gonna have to kill hundreds of millions of people. People would have been like, wait, what? Like, it will be very cold comfort to them that things get very stable on the other side of the most cataclysmic period, the 20th century was a level of bloodshed that's like, you got to go back to Genghis Khan before you start finding something like this. And so that's where I'm like, it's very easy to talk about, like, hey, this is going to be great once we get rid of capitalism and everything's abundant. Yay. But we're going to have to go through something that is going to be rough in order to get there because people will go into the lost domain. Their world will be upending so quickly. We're all. And all of this is happening while the world has just been weakened viciously by an unending stream of debt and money. Printing 1913, creating the central bank in the U.S. the adoption of modern monetary theory, which did have benefits. I want to always remind myself not to lose sight of how we actually ended up here. Had massive benefits, but also created the these massive problems. And at some point, the piper has to be paid. And so this moment feels like that this is where the bill has come due. Taking a short break, but there's more Impact theory after. Stay tuned. Let's talk about what's hiding in your closet. Most guys own 30 shirts, but rotate through the same five. That's certainly familiar. The reason is very simple. Only five actually fit right and feel good. The rest are just taking up space. That's the problem that True Classic solved. Premium fit and feel without the premium price tag. Tailored where it matters, relaxed where you need it. Fabric that actually feels good. This is why 5 million people have already bought 25 million shirts. When it comes to holiday shopping, the best gifts are the ones people are actually going to use, not the stuff that ends up in the back of the closet collecting dust. True Classic becomes part of that rotation. The shirts people reach for over and over again. Even better, True Classic now makes clothing for the entire family. Head to truclassic.comimpact and give something people will actually wear. Again, that's trueclassic.comimpact. we'll get back to the show in a moment, but first, let's talk about the most expensive mistake you can make in business. Most business owners waste weeks posting jobs, drowning in unqualitive qualified resumes, hoping someone somewhere decent applies. But that's backwards. You do not wait for talent you hunt it. LinkedIn jobs change the game with their new AI assistant. It filters candidates based on your exact criteria. No junk, no time wasted, just qualified matches. Then it suggests 25 top candidates daily. People already on LinkedIn who fit your role. You invite them directly. No waiting, no hoping. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30% more likely to stay for at least a year compared to the leading competitor. That is a huge deal. When every hire counts, that means everything. Post your job for [e-mail] impact theory. Then promote it to use LinkedIn jobs new AI assistant making it easier and faster to find top candidates. That's LinkedIn.com impact theory. To post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Let's talk about who you're trusting with your security. Your phone carrier was built by telecom executives. People whose expertise is connectivity, not security. AT&T Verizon T Mobile. They were designed to move data, not protect it. And as somebody who has had his phone hacked, it is not fun. Breaches are going to keep happening because of this setup. The people building carrier infrastructure don't think like hackers. Kape is different. It was founded by experts in cybersecurity and national security. OpenAI vetted them. The co founder of CrowdStrike vetted them. These are the people who protect the most valuable targets in the world. Kape owns its own mobile core, giving them full control over data collection and authentication. Head to Kape Impact and use Code impact to get 33% off your first six months with CAPE that C A P E dot CO impact and use code impact to save 33%. Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it.

[Drew]

There are a certain level of economics that are breaking what I think our founding fathers have thought about when we first invested. The one way I can kind of ground it is like I think it was Rockefeller or Ford. One of those guys started public education and it wasn't the government intervention, but they needed factory workers. So they then created the pipeline that then laid the foundation to become public education. So to this point of abundance and on the other side of robotics and AI, everything is going to be sunshine and rainbows. I do see that there is a possibility for that to happen, but I do feel like there is going to have to be a conversation about there's a certain all this wealth that is becoming that is now being generated. It does need to be converted into infrastructure improvements to help us transition along the way. Because similar to the railroad, yes, this is going to be a great positive, but somebody's going to have to actually pay the money to lay the track down. So somebody's going to have to put the money down to get us from point A to point B. And I don't think the every man for himself now system that we have right now is going to facilitate that. And this is on the back of the Scott Galloway interview on Tuesday, which I know in a perfect world right now our taxes just go into a black hole. But in a perfect world with a government with a balanced budget, we do want some of the higher earners to invest into the future so that way the next generation can be able to get on the whether it's the property ladder, whether it's the career ladder, they have that positive future in order to reap the abundance and become self sustaining economic units themselves.

[Tom]

Yes, all true. So the fascinating thing though is if you look at the railroads, for instance, some of the most important infrastructure that America ever laid, it was devastating for the investors. And there's almost certainly going to be something very similar that plays it played out again in the Internet and it will almost certainly play out again in AI where the people that put all the upfront investment into the infrastructure, they end up not making money, they end up losing a lot of money. But then the people that build on the back of the infrastructure that got created, they do well. So one thing that I have a feeling I'm going to have to start campaigning for though, it's such a weird time to be talking about this because it's got a shelf life, but getting people to understand that what we have right now isn't capitalism. And so all the things when we blame capitalism, what we really mean is cronyism by the government. So the government coming in and allowing for things like regulatory capture over regulating industries. So the free market actually isn't making sensical decisions, doing things like freezing rent so that the free market can't do its thing, bailing out banks so that nobody fails. And the whole idea behind capitalism is hey, you're go, you're going to play NFL and I'm putting you out on the field and good luck. And a whole lot of you are going to get your spines broken because you're just not strong enough for this game. And you're so fucking stupid that you walked out onto the field. Sorry. And so it's like we'll have the stretchers to drag you off the field, but we're not going to be buying all of your padding. We're not going to be doing anything other than saying these are the rul rules of the game. And we'll call a foul if we see a foul, and we'll get people that commit fouls off the field. But other than that, like, if you're too weak, you'll get snapped in half. And that is what it is. You're going to have to pay your own hospital bills. That's capitalism. Now I understand how that sounds to a modern audience. A modern audience has grown up in a world where stability can be taken for granted. Now we're about to find out, whoopsies, that was just a limited window and hope you enjoyed it, hope you had a good time, but the vacation is over. And so now there's going to be this cognitive dissonance of. Hold on a second. For the last, like 80 years, I was able to take for granted that things were peaceful countries, didn't invade other countries, not in the west, that this was all a very stable thing, that governments, we all agree, have an obligation to take care of the weakest among us. Sure, that creates all this opportunity for theft and fraud and all of that, but whatever. Like, apparently money is very easy to come by. And so we just deal with that to make sure that if a bank collapses, we solve it. If somebody is sick, that we cover it, like, all of those things. And so people have that in their hearts that that is the right thing, the just thing, the way that God intended it to be. Like, fill in the blank of how you want to say it.

[Chat Moderator]

And.

[Tom]

When I tell people that, nope, we need to go back to the. You're going out on the foot. If you so desire to go out on the football field, you are on your own now, if you win, buddy, like, there's huge upside and you will be able to take care of your family and pass on generational wealth and all of that. But if you lose, you lose and it hurts. And if you don't allow for that clearing mechanism of people getting hurt, they don't get to play the game anymore. They're pulled off, they're done. You get corruption on the field. This analogy is going to fall apart very fast. But that is where we're at now is the game is so fake, it's so rigged. It's how I felt about re watching NBA clips after we saw that there was a whole bunch of gambling being done by the players. I was like, oh my God, this is so heartbreaking to see these guys just turn this into wwe. Ue was mortified. So that is effectively where we're at. The government has turned Capitalism into the wwe. The winners are already decided ahead of time based on who has the politician's ear. The fact that ilhan Omar made $30 million in like two years once getting into Congress is the most insane shit I've ever heard. Now, hey, I haven't looked deeply. Maybe she is the most gangster investor forever and she's just like, got. Got it like that. In which case, please make a course because I would like to learn from you, but my gut instinct is that just isn't true. And this is another case like Nancy Pelosi. This has that side of things. Like, this is not a because I'm Somali thing. This is a. Yeah. When you're inside the government, you are a part of the political class. You know what's coming. You know that people need you to do something for them. And so you just get into the tit for t. That corruption that runs all of politics everywhere. Gain and retain power like it's just the game. So trying to campaign to say capitalism is good, crony capitalism is bad, and we need to stop calling it capitalism because it's just tricking people. Socialism bad, free market good. And yes, it's got like a 3 to 10 year. Just give myself a lot of flexibility, time horizon. And then unless AI hits some sort of ceiling where it asymptotes and we're just not able to make progress, which I don't see any reason to believe that's true. It is just a foregone conclusion.

[Drew]

All right, back to our regularly scheduled programming. Trump was on the campaign trail yesterday, and me and Tom were laughing before the show started of just some of the sound bites that were coming out of there. But speaking of, I really can't.

[Tom]

Ehan Ilhan. I can't. I can't believe that that's a president talking. This is so crazy.

[Drew]

It's. It's nuts. So let's jump into this. First clip.

[Trump]

Individuals from Somalia in the group, please raise your hand. That's for Minnesota. You know, that's called the great big Minnesota scam with one of the dumbest governors ever in history. I love this Elon Omar, whatever the hell her name is. With a little shoe, a little turban.

[Tom]

The little turban, not a turban.

[Trump]

There's nothing. But she's always complaining. She comes from her country, where, I mean, it's considered about the worst country in the world, right? They have no military, they have no nothing. They have no parliament. They don't know what the hell the word parliament means. They have nothing they have no police. They police themselves. They kill each other all the time. I love it. She comes to our country and she's always complaining about the Constitution allows me to do this. We ought to get her to hell out. She married her brother in order to get in. Right? She married her brother.

[Tom]

That'll be wild, by the way, if that ends up being true. We'll see. We'll see. But, yeah. So anyway, look, Trump is endlessly amusing, and I know that I'm supposed to be. I suppose I am mortified, but I'm also entertained, and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't. I look at this and I see this is who comes to power in a moment like this. Once you realize you cannot trust the political class, then you want somebody who does not sound like the political class. They sound like anything. But that is certainly him. I don't, admittedly, I don't categorize him into a racist box. That doesn't strike me from the things that I've seen. But it is so easy to look at him through that lens and be like, bro, when you're saying, I don't know if we have the clip, but he goes, basically, Somalia is a shithole country. Afghanistan is a shithole country. And there was one other one. Haiti, Haiti, oh, and then Denmark, Sweden and Norway, I think are like the. Why don't we import more people from there? It's like, bro, could you have picked wider countries? So, admittedly, he is easy to capture in that box. When I look at it, I think that there's a more obvious thing, which is he's talking about Western democratic countries. So from that perspective, there's another way to look at it, which has nothing to do with skin color and everything to do with my favorite word, culture. And I do think that given that culture is transmitting foundational, structural beliefs about how to interact with each other, culture is going to matter massively in terms of the outcomes that you get. So here's a clip.

[Trump]

I've also announced a permanent pause on third world migration, including from hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, and many other countries. I didn't say all you did. Remember, I said that to the senators. They came in, the Democrats, they wanted to be bipartisan, so they came in and they said, this is totally off the record. Nothing mentioned here. We want to be honest, because our country was going to hell and we had a meeting and they say, why is it we only take people from shithole countries?

[Chat Moderator]

Right?

[Tom]

God, this is so playing to a bass, man. Like this, this is a whole thing that blew up massively, however many years ago. And it's like somebody releasing a greatest hits album, like bringing this back up, reusing it. I mean, it, it, it is brilliant in terms of. I know what my bass wants. But we're just back to the divisiveness between the two sides. That's the part that really makes me sad. Now, listen, as a student of history, I understand this is what populist moments are. They are always, we're on a team, they're on a team. They're not human. We're the good guys. Be as derogatory as we want, take them out. The rhetoric escalates. It gets very bad. There's typically violence, so I get it, but that doesn't mean that I like it. So, yeah, funny though it may be, this is, this is a greatest hits album. This is an entertainer who understands how to get people excited. And you and I were talking before we started rolling that Susie Wilds, I forget what her name is. His chief of staff is. Oh, is this. We have queued up. Yeah, let's go. Susie. Wiles. Wiles.

[Campaign Strategist]

We're going to put him on the campaign trail, too. Typically, just a little bit of campaign speak, if I may. Yeah, typically you in the midterms, it's not about who's sitting at the White House. It's. You localize the election and you keep the federal officials out of it. We're actually going to turn that on its head.

[Chat Moderator]

Good.

[Campaign Strategist]

And put him on the ballot. Because so many of those low propensity voters are Trump voters.

[Tom]

Yes, they are.

[Campaign Strategist]

And we saw a week ago Tuesday what happens when he's not on the ballot and not active. So I haven't quite broken it to him yet, but he's going to campaign.

[Drew]

Like it's 2024 again and he's already started.

[Tom]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, listen, he, he understands how. He knows. He has hits to play, first of all, and he knows how to play them. And so, yeah, they're going to try them out. Get him on stage, let everybody know that local representative that doesn't have the Trump name, trust me, you're really voting for Trump. You got to keep Trump in power. Trump. Trump.

[Drew]

Trump.

[Tom]

Trump. Trump. Trump. So, yeah, I think the. But in the final analysis, the only thing that's going to matter is the economy. But getting to the low propensity voters like they're talking about by using Trump, it certainly makes a lot of sense, but that tells you that they are very worried. And I think if elections were held right now, it would flip. I don't think that's deniable. You just had Miami lose their mayorship to Democrats for the first time since 1998. I believe so. Yeah. Yeah, it's. Right now people are saying, matt, the Trump thing didn't work. So. Or I should say the. The voters who actually will change their mind are saying the Trump thing didn't work. So if you were to hold elections now, it would flip. Now, Bessant and Trump have, theoretically, whatever, 11 months, but it's really. They're going to start campaigning hard through the summer, and if they don't get it, it flips, he lame ducks, and then who knows what happens?

[Drew]

Yeah, let's talk about those consequences, though, because there are some pretty big Senate races being announced. Jasmine Crockett is probably the most prominent who already announced her Senate bid for 2026 using Trump sound bites. I have that one queued up as well. But it seems like as much as we love the greatest hits of Trump, quote unquote, this can also impact him negatively because you're feeding into what the Democrats have campaigned on for the last 10 years, not Trump. If you want, if you want a president that curses or a president that's bombastic or a president that calls certain Americans home country shitholes, vote for that side. But if you want to unifying America, come over here. It kind of almost tees up what their message could be. Do you think that he can run the same playbook? Or because he's not necessarily bearing the fruit of his past economic policies, that it is a little bit shaky now for him to kind of act like 2016 and blaming other people or act like 2020 and kind of use that same playbook?

[Tom]

Yeah. If. If he spends his time blaming other people, it just isn't going to play because nobody cares. Right. So when you're coming into office, it's like, yeah, oh, man, for sure. Like, they totally up. Oh, thank God you're here now. Clean it up. If a year in you're still whining about the last guy, it's like, bro, you are in office right now. Fix the problem now. Whether that's realistic or not is completely irrelevant. People do not vote based on logic. They based on feelings. People don't do anything based on logic. They based on feelings. When I'm teaching entrepreneurs, this is like the number one thing that I focus on is boys and girls. Your job is to think from first principles, not to go, I feel this, and therefore it must be true just to Throw some strays. That's my beef with Candace. Like she takes I feel something is true as proof that it is true. I had a dream, which is PS Your subconscious, however unhinged, trying to make a story about the things that you're thinking about right there. Dreams are nonsensical by nature. They, in my estimation, are not people speaking to you from the beyond. So when people are navigating through the world emotionally like they are guaranteed to be worse than chance. They're, they're like if you were just flipping a coin every time you made a decision, you'd roughly be right half the time. If you're going by feelings, you can be up to and including wrong 100% of the time. So that's where people need to be very careful to try to ground everything from a first principle standpoint. So first principles in an election you've been in a year, you've got to show me exactly why my life is better and you've got to make me feel it. This is something that I talk to from a relationships perspective. It's not enough to tell your wife that you love her. You have to make her feel in her bones that you love her. And that's going to take a lot of non verbal things that's going to take you mapping what she thinks is important and then actually delivering against it. So Trump and all of the Republicans and Democrats for that matter, they have to map what their constituents believe is important and then deliver it to them in a way where they really feel it. Now the good thing about being the challenger is that you can just make promises. You don't actually have to deliver anything. The bad part about being the incumbent is you have to show the receipts. You've got to be like, this is what I've done over the last year. And people just are not feeling it economically in their pocketbooks. So we'll see. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. In the age of AI, you do not need to become an E commerce expert. You don't need to learn copywriting or photography or even inventory management. You don't even need to learn international shipping regulations. You need to level expertise that already exists. Shopify's AI does the expert work for you. No marketing degree is required beyond AI, you get world class expertise built right into the platform. Choose from hundreds of ready to use templates that already convert. Plus inventory management, international shipping, processing, returns, all handled automatically by systems that process millions of transactions. Turn your Big business idea into reality with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com impact. Again, go to shopify.com impact that's shopify.com impact Data brokers are legally harvesting your information. Your home address, your email, your phone number, even your Social Security number and flipping it for cash. Scammers use it to steal identities. Criminals use it to commit fraud. Stalkers even use it to find victims. That's where Incogni comes in. Incogni finds where your data is exposed across hundreds of data broker sites and removes it it automatically. You give them permission, they go to work. No phone calls, no forms, no stress, just real results. So if you're serious about privacy, take action right now. Go to incogni.comimpact and use code impact to get 60% off your annual plan risk free for 30 days. Again, that's incogni.com impact and use code impact. Incogni is spelled I N C O G N I. Thanks to HomeServe for sponsoring this episode. Here in Southern California, we've been hammered with rain recently. When weather changes fast, your home gets tested. The problem is, most people think their homeowners insurance has them covered. But it doesn't. Last time we had a leak. I Wish I had HomeServe to get someone to help fix it immediately. HomeServe is like a subscription to your home. For as little as $4.99 a month, HomeServe manages repair plans that cover the critical systems insurance leaves out when a repair hits. You're not scrambling to find a contractor in a panic. You call HomeServe's 24. 7 hotline and they connect you with their trusted national network of 2,600 local contractors. Help protect your home systems and your wallet with HomeServe against covered repairs, plans start at just 4.99amonth. Go to HomeServe.com to find the plan that's right for you. Again, that's homeserve.com not available everywhere. Most plans range between $4.99 to $11.99 a month. Your first year terms apply. Uncovered Repairs. Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

[Drew]

A random poll in chat that said should Trump continue to campaign for 2026? It was 53% yes, 47% no.

[Tom]

There's no way they believe logically the 47% people, there's no way they believe logically that it will decrease a Republican's chance of getting elected to have Trump. Trump. It's not possible.

[Drew]

Well, fighting that. Fighting the. Against that. Here's Jasmine Crockett's campaign announcement.

[Trump]

How about this new one? They have their new star, Crockett. How about her? She's the new star of the Democrat Party, Jasmine Crockett. They're in big trouble. But you have this woman, Crockett. She's a very low IQ person. I watched her speak the other day. She's definitely a low IQ person. Crockett. Oh, man. Oh man. She's a very low IQ person. Somebody said the other day, she's one of the leaders of the party. I said, you gotta be kidding. Now they're gonna rely on Crockett. Crockett's gonna bring him back.

[Tom]

Yeah, that was a bit dramatic. It's a great ad.

[Drew]

So. But it's one of those things where I probably would have went in a different direction, but. But is this a way that again, will Trump bury himself? Because I feel like Trump, he's at that point now where he's kind of like that campaign rally. From the shitholes to laughing to cursing to. It used to be like, okay, you caught me that one time, hahaha. But now I feel like he's very comfortable. I feel like he's very casual. And sometimes having that power, you don't understand how certain things can slip. You can kind of help other people take advantage of that. So to the point of this ad, I think it is a good ad, but it's 100% based off of him going on the attack and her just flipping it back on him. Is that some way that Democrats can then use this long term? I'm just curious for sure.

[Tom]

So the, the thing that people have to understand about Trump is Trump is like a good headline. So Trump is always going to be talked about. He's always going to be an amazing leverage point because we live in the age of the attention economy. And he is extraordinarily good at getting an emotional response out of people, positive or negative. And what you need as a content creator is something that gets that really strong emotion. So the only thing you can't be is bland. And so we're living in the age where all of our politicians are rising up because they're not bland. They're the people that can get attention, whether it's Mom, Donnie, whether it's aoc, whether it's Jasmine Crockett, whether it's Trump. These are the people that they know how to cut through the noise and get you to pay attention to what they're doing. So Trump is going to be ubiquitous throughout the midterms. People standing with him, people defining their entire candidacy against him. And I think that that will be a winning strategy. Now, if you have a headline that's just clickbait and I get in and it's not actually what I've been promised. So if Trump is over here talking about, oh, this is all Biden's fault, blah blah, blah, and then I feel like, wait a second, that's what you said when you were running and your last year has been the actual video that I'm watching. And the video that I'm watching does not deliver on the promises that you made. Like now that you're saying it again, I know this is just clickbait. So he's going to have a problem where he's got to find a way to both be super engaging, get his base really excited. Right? The things that he was doing there, back to his greatest hit country, doing the YMCA dance, all of that stuff is brilliant. His base absolutely loves it. And if he can pair that with some big wins by the midterms, then he's really got a shot. So what could a big, big win look like for him? I really hate the idea of him, him sending stimmy checks, but if he sent stimmy checks would be great for his ability to get re elected. So you might have that. Also he's promising that he's got evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. So if he can hit you with a double whammy where people feel it in their pocketbooks that okay, the things that he's doing are working. Because remember, the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people are never going to take the time to understand tariffs and whether they're good or bad, but they understand a $2,000 check in the mail. So it's like, what do you mean tariffs aren't working? That's some. I just got a two thousand dollar check. You're dumb. I'm voting for more of the two thousand dollar checks. Okay, so you will get that effect then. If he's saying listen and let's say it's compelling, that there is very compelling evidence. I'm not saying there is. I'm just saying if he can present it, if he can present compelling evidence that, that they really did try to steal the election or did steal the election in a meaningful way. Now he's got the one, two punch. It's they illegally tried to keep me out of office. These guys are very, very bad people. Also, all the corruption is not going to Help. And if it won't help the Democrats. And if you've got, for instance, if you're starting to feel housing prices soften because of, of immigration, like, if that actually has a meaningful impact now, it's like, ooh, people are actually starting to feel it. And because he can cut through the noise, it's like, then they'll have a shot if people don't feel it. If they feel like for all of his bluster and all of his promises, like, I just still can't make ends meet. This is terrible. I'm looking out at my future. I have massive anxiety. This AI thing is freaking me the out. He's got a lot of talk about bringing manufacturing back to the US but all it's done so far is make things more expensive. Like they're dead in the water. Like, it just won't play. No matter how funny, no matter how entertaining. For anybody that thinks that he is coded racist, then they love it. Whatever. Like, it won't matter at all if you don't solve the economic problem.

[Drew]

Yeah, but I mean, to that point, a lot of times we get a bunch of, hey, look, the stock market is up, we're good. Or, hey, look, the gold prices are rising, we're good. But that doesn't necessarily affect affordability. He did get the major win recently with his increased drilling and oil prices have come down. Is it just simply, I need to get gas prices down, I need to get grocery prices down.

[Tom]

Grocery prices and energy are the two biggest, to be sure. But if he doesn't solve housing, he's going to lose the youth. Once you lose the youth, you are on borrowed time at best. And somehow. Oh, God. Will you forgive me a diatribe? I need to tell you a story because I think about this so often. Chat, hit the eject button, you pull me off. But this, if people are not engaged. But this is incredibly important. Okay, so for anybody that doesn't know my background, starting filmmaking, I only get into business because I want to make movies my way, spend 15 years growing businesses, only to discover that the film industry completely got obliterated in that time. Which is why I focus on games now. But anyway, this starts with me going, I'm going to break into the film industry through comic books. It's far cheaper. It's a great feeder into the Hollywood system. You build an audience, you tell the story, people pick it up. They always, Hollywood would much rather buy something that they can see and they get what this is going to be rather than, you know, just on a pitch. So let's start doing that. Go in. I launched the comic book and the there's only at the time there was only one distributor on comics. So the fact that they picked up our comic was already crazy. And then it sold and they were like, oh my God. For a first time publisher, you guys, this is unreal. You guys have done so well. This is unbelievable. And I just look at my bank account and I'm like, this is terrible. What the fuck are you guys saying? These numbers are so small. Like this isn't interesting to me in the slightest. And you're telling me that this is a huge win. And so I was like, wait, wait, wait, something is totally off here. That then leads me to go. One of the questions I always tell entrepreneurs to ask is, has anybody done this before successfully? If so, what do they do? So I start auditing the broader market and that takes me straight to Japan. I realized that Japan outsells the entire western comic market. So there's one manga called Demon Slayer. Demon Slayer by itself outsells the entire western comic book market. X Men, Fantastic Four, Spider Man, Superman, Wonder Woman, Teenage Ninja Turtles, all of it. You put it together and it's outsold by Demon Slayer. And I'm like, what the fuck? Like Japan is a third the size of America. And so how does one title. It doesn't make sense. So then I do this deep dive audit and I realize in the 90s, Japan made a decision and this is where the direct parallel begins. Japan made a decision that changed everything for them. And the decision was we are going to stay focused on kids. And they saw what was happening in the western market and they saw the pull in their own market to start aging up, up with the reader. So think about Harry Potter, book, whatever, seven is very different than book one. So what she did was she said, I'm going to speak to a generation and I'm going to age the story up with them. Comic books in the US did the same thing for reasons that I won't go into, but they are fascinating and of course all economically driven. And Japan goes, this strikes me as a bad idea. We always need to get kids in the market. So we're going to stay focused on kids and we'll just let people age out of what's called Shonen Jump. Shonen Jump is the beast of how you introduce manga which then becomes anime. It was a weekly magazine printed and they just said, yeah, if people age out, that's fine. We're going to keep making stuff for kids. They had A big meeting about it. It was like a very formal decision. So the US comic market takes the different approach and whatever, 30 years later you have a single title aimed at kids, outselling the entire adult aimed comic market. Now I say all of that so people understand the second you give up on the youth, you fuck yourself. You put yourself on a timeline. You are going to be irrelevant. You are guaranteed to be irrelevant. And so looking at the Democrats right now are going, ah, we're just going to focus on the kids. And so when I see Mamdani, I'm like, oh, here's a guy that looks at millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha and goes, yeah, I know the world that you're living in. Nothing is affordable. Old people are rich, you're broke, you're now in a very antagonistic relationship with older people. You already have every impulse in the world to define yourself against old people. And so they're just leaning into that. So when I think about progressive policies are absolute death for society, like literal death. But they're brilliant at in this moment, getting them elected. So if I were advising the Democrats, I'd be like, you've got to lean into that. You need to go after the youth vote, even if you're going to sacrifice 2028 to just completely pivot the party to, we are about millennials. Gen Z, Gen Alpha, period, end of story. That's all we care about. They're the future. They're going to be everything. Every day old people are dying and they're, you know, not voting anymore. And the youth is what matters. And so that's what scares me, is that that will be God awful because it's all predicated on a misunderstanding of the economy. But nonetheless, it is a thing that will get them elected so that they can rapidly destroy America. But my advice, if I were saying you guys really want to run things for the next 25, 35 years, would be that now all of that's in a bubble where AI doesn't just enslave or completely change society. But yeah, that would be my advice to them.

[Chat Moderator]

So Chat really liked the Shonen jump reference. Just to throw that in there. And then they also asked about Netflix buying Warner Brothers, in case you guys want to take a quick aside on that.

[Tom]

That. Well, that one is utterly fascinating. Seeing it devolve into a battle is pretty interesting. So we'll see. I think Netflix getting it is good and bad. It's great if you want to be at home and pay one fee and get everything you want them to buy it if you are a creative, you're going to hate it because they're just algorithms. So at least the old Hollywood system for how corrupt and horrible it was, at least that was they understood that creative talent ultimately wins the day. And Hollywood is learning a different lesson, which is when you've got big data and algorithms controlling people's lives, creatives are like, whatever, I just have to manipulate the dopamine loops of the people watching this thing and I will keep them coming back.

[Drew]

And I can sell stuff from the 90s over and over and over again. And I'd have to pay a new fee.

[Tom]

Yeah. And just like with AI coming, it's going to be wild.

[Drew]

So can you break down a hostile takeover so people know what Paramount's doing? Because Netflix was sending emails like, hey, guys, we got them. Don't worry about it, you're going to be good. And Paramount's like, hold my beer, we're not done yet.

[Tom]

So, yeah, you just. So when you're a public company, you put shares out on the market, which usually have voting rights attached to it it. And so anybody can go buy those shares. And if you can buy enough shares, you can become a significant enough shareholder where they have to listen to you. And so a hostile takeover is where you basically get control of the board. You have so much influence because you own so much of the stock that you can wrestle control of the company away from them. Reason 462 why I do not want to have a public company. It's like people do do not understand the realities of how cutthroat business really can be. And when your company's on the public market and you have any kind of vulnerability, then you'll get these shareholders that are what are the activist shareholders. So they'll come in and if they can buy enough of it, they can just do a hostile takeover where they get voting control and they can sway the board. They can kick people off the board, they can fire the CEO through pressure. It's usually not that they own like 51% of the company, but they become the single largest shareholder. And so now they can bully people. They can bully the board. They can get decisions made because they can tank the price. Like if they dump their stock, it's going to damage the price. So period, that's a hostile takeover.

[Drew]

Nice.

[Tom]

And it's hostile because the company doesn't want it to happen. But the shares are out there.

[Drew]

Yeah, I'm split between it because I have peacock roots. So, like, a lot of my old co workers are really, really Gunning for it. Cause they were in the running. They just got eliminated. And I think from a theatrical release perspective, they were the best company to get it, because the top three people who releases movies are Warner Brothers. Disney don't matter anymore, I guess. But I mean, that's like saying, stop driving cars. I know in 50 years I won't be able to drive anymore, but I'm gonna hold onto it as long as I can. But.

[Tom]

Okay, okay.

[Drew]

But Minecraft movie shows that youth will go if it makes sense. So to your point, I just think that the theaters need to be reinvented for this generation. And stop. Stop placating to a generation that watches everything in their couch. And don't leave the house. Yeah.

[Tom]

Yeah. Oh, man. Okay, let's do a speed run. Because I don't know that this fractal will be very interesting, but for anybody other than me, here is the reality. Life is perpetually changing. I know. It feels like everything is static. And when you're young, you. You are born into a world that. That is moving, by the way. Like, the culture is shifting entirely. The whole time that you're alive, the culture is always moving, moving. But you're born into this window where, like, if you think of yourself in the middle of something, sliding and until the backside here hits you and passes you and leaves you behind, where you suddenly feel like, wait, what? The world is not what it used to be. Like. I cannot tell you how weird it is for me that kids don't have mtv. MTV just doesn't matter. MTV was everything for us that not every young man plays video games. What? Like. Or they play them on their phone. Like, huh, this is so weird. Like, we. There was a movie made called Eight Bit Christmas about how hard one kid went to get a Nintendo, which is literally my life story. Like, that's how we grew up. And it felt like it was going to be forever. And it's never forever. Culture is always moving. So people have this sense that it's static, but the world is changing rapidly. It will leave you behind. And the great tragedy of the human experience. And one of the reasons that adults. There's a sadness about adults is they're just collecting all this scar tissue. And there is something about the formation of the human mind that will make you love the things from your childhood more than you will ever love anything else ever in life. Brain development says it is so and so. If you want to know why nostalgia is such a thing, is because nothing else will trigger you the way that those things triggered you You. And because of that, there's always going to be like, this misunderstanding between youth and things like that. I beseech adults to recognize that while it is true that the things that were hot when you were a kid, that's always going to resonate with you, that you can go through an affinity development process on new things. Things, but you have to go through the process of figuring out why they're cool, understanding them completely, welcoming them into your life in a deep and profound way. And in doing that, you can find yourself not a stranger in the current culture. And that I would advise people do, because, like, for instance, when I hear you say, like, I want to keep driving cars, and I'm thinking, but, Drew, we're going to be. Be flying. So it's like, it's obviously better. And to some extent, it's just that you've never remapped the thing that made driving exciting onto this new thing. And if you could remap it onto this new thing, a totally new world opens up to you that will, I think, make you feel more childlike. Now I'll stop there.

[Drew]

I guess my pushback comes specifically for that, because I will look at TCG in your analogy. Like, something that you can understand is that in my youth, trading card games was very popular. And I remember having a Pokemon deck, a Pokemon card set, and I remember being in the plastic and the binders and all those things. And then I let that thing go because there was other things that I kind of attributed on. So to me, I look at driving as that hobby that then is going to evolve into the TCG world. Or I have a bunch of old cars that I fix up and then I make, and then I keep retro. And there is going to be a sect of people that are like, yes, absolutely. Why am I collecting cards when I could just get. Play Pokemon Platinum and. Or I could just get Nintendo Switch 2 and play Pokemon 45. I don't need the actual physical cars, but there is going to be some type of vintage nostalgia, you know, insert buzzword here, that sustains this hobby. So by no means am I saying I understand that cars are going to evolve and there is going to be that life, and I'll just have to go to a track and drive it with all the other old people. That's fine. But I think there are certain things that we can, especially from a Hollywood theater perspective, I think there is a way that we can evolve it, because I look at Broadway as that theater was the only thing, and there was no then movie theaters. Kind of disrupted live stage. And then now live stage has been able to sustain through all these years through cell phones and everything. It hasn't died yet. So I think that there's a secret sauce that movie theaters can preserve as opposed to saying, yup, it's done. Close it up, It's Best Buy. And it's like, or Circuit City or Blockbuster. And it's like, no, they're. There is a way we can do it if we actually put our minds together and do it, as opposed to just number go up algorithm, you know.

[Tom]

Scratch it out if there is an experience to be had that is better. Theater is a phenomenal example. The odds of theater ever going away are effectively zero. My wife does not understand why people want to go to the theater. She thinks of it as like, God, I forget the example that she used to. But she, like, would rather go to the movie, would rather watch it on tv. And I'm like, yeah, but they're very different experiences. So take musical theater, for instance. You want to hear them sing live. That's the point. You want to be around other people that are hearing that same electric human voice, like, do a thing. And for some people, that's like, you're going to hyper respond to that. Cool. So anything that was there was. That was the only way to do it. Obviously, it's going to be much bigger and over time, it will find itself far more neat as theater has found it. But there really is something unique and real to hearing a live human performing something. And so there's going to be a subset of people that really like that and respond, great, that'll exist forever. What I'm saying is, and maybe this is just me, but as I got older, Lisa went through a really traumatic period in our marriage where this is probably 15 years ago. We were just talking about this last night. She went through a really traumatic period. And she was saying she was traumatized over me. And she was like, you. Her words. I actually hate this word, but this is the real word that she used. She's like, you're no longer silly. And she was, like, really upset about it. And I was like, I'm kind of proud of that. And she was like, no, like you. Part of what I fell in love with was you had this playfulness about you that you don't have anymore. And I was like, that's interesting, because the way that I came up in entrepreneurship was very gladiatorial. And it was. I'll never regret that I went through it. It was transformative and learning to toughen up and be hard was very useful in life. So super glad I went through it. But admittedly, it did cause the death of that side of me. Me and Lisa like really pushing me to rekindle it made me realize, oh, it's interesting. I'm building up all this scar tissue. I have lost touch with that side. And now once I realized, oh, we needed to get back into children's entertainment, not back into, we needed to get into children's entertainment instead of adults, which is what I thought I was going to do again, brain development reasons why I had to reconnect with all of that. It's improved the quality of my life. And there's something about getting older and the buildup of scar tissue and the closing down of your frame of reference and the I know what works and what doesn't work. And not being open to radically new ideas that feels like dying long before you have died. And this is why the famous quote, science does not advance one insight at a time. It advances one funeral at a time. Time. People just, they build their reputation around like this idea. I've said it and I need to be consistent with it. And so if anybody watched Death by Lightning, the reason that Garfield died wasn't because he got shot. It was because a doctor was too stupid to realize that Jim germ theory was real. And so he gave him a massive infection and he died from the infection. So. And there's a lot of stories Semmelweiss, for anybody that knows that story ends up dying alone in an insane asylum after trying to convince people that the reason that women were dying from, I think it was called bed fever after giving birth was because doctors were doing autopsies in the morning, not washing their hands, delivering babies in the afternoon and passing on this horrible disease. And so aging tends to be a process of calcification. You can fight it. And in fighting it, I will put forward your life will be be much better.

[Drew]

Last fractal. Then we're back to our regular scheduled program. I accidentally bagged a 23 year old. I know, right? I know, I know. And I was like, haha, your boy still got it. And then there was a certain level of like youthful optimism that I was just like, oh, like, because there is no scar tissue, there's no this guy's this and this guy's like, there's no like I'm just mad at every man that ever happened and you're just the next one. So don't disappoint me by these six things. And it Was just that, yeah, I trust you. Just, like. And then I found out she was 23, but now.

[Tom]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And then what?

[Drew]

And then I found out she was 23, but.

[Tom]

Are we going on another date?

[Drew]

I don't. Like, it was magical because there is. There is that, like, I can do something with. That's the thing, yo. Is I think that people don't realize, like, you do have that scar tissue. And I am such an optimistic person. Person just in nature, that when I run into that, it does kind of like, oh, okay. Well. Yeah, you're right. So there is a thing. Until, like, oh, I'm not missing. Yeah, it will work out. Yeah.

[Tom]

We'll figure it.

[Drew]

And I just feel. To your point of, like, expansiveness. That's such a good, like, phrase. And I do feel expansive.

[Tom]

Are we going on another date?

[Chat Moderator]

I think that's a good thing to feel from a woman.

[Drew]

Yes.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Drew]

Yes. Age gap is real, though.

[Tom]

Age gap is real.

[Drew]

Age gap is real in that we.

[Tom]

Don'T have things in common.

[Drew]

No, that has not been the problem. I think it's the concept of the age gap that is throwing me off. I'm gonna be honest with you.

[Tom]

Interesting.

[Drew]

If she was three years younger than me, I wouldn't even think about it. I'm like, yes. Date number. 6, 7, 8. I already got. I got the next quarter planned.

[Tom]

Oh, Drew, please go out with her a couple more times and just see if there's a real problem or an imagined problem.

[Drew]

That's a good point.

[Tom]

And listen, I get it, because that is surprising, to say the least, especially you being 53. This is where I would like to. I want to remind the group, Drew's not actually 53.

[Drew]

Okay?

[Tom]

So for this discussion, we have to talk his real age. He's in his 30s. But we'll go back to the lie shortly. But that is very interesting. And I think you are getting a reminder of, one, the power frame of reference, and then two, how all of us need to fight against the battering that we take in life.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Tom]

And how it really does toughen you up is good. But, like, can you find that other gear of, like, reconnecting with somebody who is optimistic and not just focus on the ways that everything is going to go wrong? Because. And. And here's one thing that always helps me. All I care about is what is true. And the reality is, as they say, genius is a young man's game for one reason only. That you don't yet have a map of how everything falls apart. How Things don't work out. And so the evolution. I don't know what word to use, eats the vast majority of people. And they really do all fail. But a few actually get the timing right. Enough. They've got the right temperament enough, and they end up making it through. But virtually 100% of old people fail. They don't have the energy. They don't have the belief anymore. They don't want to go through it. They've had enough success. This is the thing that I fight against, which is, is should I ever just call in rich and just be like, why am I working this hard? Like, this is crazy. You have to stay hungry. You have to want something. You've got to be future planning and be willing to suffer again. But when you tap into it, there is something really beautiful. And every now and then, I feel the edges of the accumulation of the scar tissue, and I don't like the way that it feels.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Tom]

And so, yeah, that's a big part of why I think I've fallen so in love with what we're doing on Kaizen and building something that's aimed specifically at kids, because it just re. Sort of awakens a part in my own brain.

[Drew]

Yeah. All right. I appreciate that. I thought you were gonna have a different take from it, to be honest with you, so thank you for that.

[Tom]

No, no. First of all, she's. Well of age. If you were like, she's 18, I might be like, oh, yeah. But, yeah, I would say give it a shot.

[Drew]

Yeah. Literally, I did not know. And then I found out, and I was, like, hot crazy. Like, there was, like, awkward pause and everything. All right, we. We'll talk about that. Let's go over to Florida. Governor DeSantis has designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council of American Islamic Relations as foreign terrorist organizations. Florida agencies are hereby directed to undertake all lawful measures to prevent unlawful activities by these organizations, including denying privileges or resources to anyone providing material support. It seems like this is a growing. A growing legislation in America. This is on the back of Texas doing it a couple weeks ago. Do you think this is something we're going to start seeing all over?

[Tom]

Yes. You're not. You're not going to see it all over, but you're going to see more of this. This is the beginning of something. It's not the end of something. The world is having to come to grips with the reality of disrupting your own culture through immigration. People are realizing that if you offer economic support to underprivileged people, that underprivileged people all over the world will want to come to your country. If you have open borders, they then will come to your country and they will be a drag on resources. Also, if they have a really strong culture and you have a weaker culture, then they'll grow in influence because they will insulate themselves and solidify the way that they're approaching it. The Sharia courts being a great example of that. That. And then you wake up one day and you realize, whoa, like we're pretty far down this road, which is exactly what's happening to Europe. And America, thankfully has the show to watch of what's happening in Europe and then go, do we want that to happen here? And if the answer is no, then you have to move now. So that's what you're watching. I don't know enough about the organizations to know if this is like horrible or if this is, is exactly what needs to be done. I don't know. But I, I think that this is going to escalate from here. This is not going to go quiet. You've got three more years with Trump. So certainly the deportations are going to continue. Certainly there's going to be a friendly environment for isolating the culturally strong groups that are outpacing from a political activism, outpacing from a like just birth rate. Like if I'm really crass about it. So you're, those are going to be the areas where people are going to have the strongest immune response. So we'll see.

[Drew]

This is on the back of another Somali ran fraud scheme in Ohio that has been discovered. This is from Mario Naufault in On X. He said there's a wild scam going down in Columbus, Ohio that's straight out of a movie movie. Somali families owned a restaurant, a grocery store right next door, sometimes literally attached, and usually a daycare or home health business too. The wives and kids get loaded. EBT cards, that's food stamps on a debit card paid by your taxes. Instead of going to Kroger or Walmart, they shop at their own family grocery store with those cards. All that Money immediately walks 10ft into the restaurant kitchen. Boom. Free inventory for the restaurant paid 100% by taxpayers. The grocery store reports giant losses every year. Perfect tax write off. So Uncle Sam gets screwed twice. Twice. Same families often run daycares and home health companies that also pull in government cash. The women work part time at places like Walmart for minimum wage, keep their income low on paper so they still qualify for maximum benefits even though the household is pulling in Way more. Average Somali household in Columbus has seven kids. That's a mountain. A monthly EBT and welfare money. Back in 2020, the feds already busted one Somali market in Columbus for pocketing over 10 million in fake EBT and WIC charges. Minnesota lost 250 million to the exact same playbook. Locals are pissed, Whistleblowers are calling for raids, and the whole thing is finally blowing up. Online source Right Angle News.

[Tom]

Yeah. I mean, oh, God. So this is such a clear example of, show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome. So we don't want to believe that people will take advantage of systems, but game theory makes it abundantly clear that they will. So this is a freeloader problem. This is why the right and the left exist. From, from an evolutionary standpoint, to get. Get humans to function in large groups together, you have to have something that causes cohesion. And because in the, you know, God knows how many millennia before refrigeration, the only way to make food last was basically to store it on somebody else's body as body fat. So if I got more than I could eat before, it would rot, I was going to give some to somebody else, knowing that in the future they would feel a sense of. Of reciprocal need. And when I don't get something and they do, they're going to let me eat. And so you bake into the architecture of the human mind, this feeling of reciprocity, of wanting to help other people, but then what ends up happening is evolution says that humans are always going to exploit whatever niche they can. And if the niche is, oh, you have an algorithm running in your brain that says, give something to me, I'm going to exploit that algorithm and get you to just give something to me, me, even though I'm not contributing to the group. So then if you don't address that from an evolutionary perspective and bake something into the human mind, then you just get a bunch of freeloaders and you get a parasite that ends up killing the host. So you get this pushback against the freeloader problem, which is people saying, no, no personal responsibility. You got to stand up for your own. I'll give you occasionally, but if you're not contributing and giving back to me, you. And that's what humans are really like. They'll give to you first, but if you don't give back, then it's like, whoa, I'm not giving to you the next time. It's something known as tit for tat. So that is what's in the human mind. And so for a while we have run a strategy that just assumes everybody's a good person. The reason that we could assume that is because people do not understand the economy. They don't understand the impact of money printing. They don't understand why if I print $1, there's no problem in the economy, why I print a million dollars, there's no problem in the economy. They don't actually understand the mechanism. It's very explainable, it's straightforward, it isn't simple and most people aren't going to be able to grasp it. But nonetheless, because there isn't one for one, they then just go, oh, it's fake, it's not a real thing. And so we can just print as much money as we want. Honestly, they're not even thinking about it that far. They're just steering by their feelings. And so it takes a while for all of this stuff to build up in the economy that it becomes a big enough problem that we then go, wait a second, hold on, we can't keep doing this. And so you also, there's like this self reflexive guilt. So let us speed run American history. We come over here. 80 to 85% of the people that land on the shore just die instantly. The people that meaning they don't make it to the first winter, the people that end up surviving bring disease and kill off the vast majority of the already the inter fighting war hungry tribes that were here just to avoid the belief that they are all noble savages. Everybody's killing everybody else, everybody's taking from everybody, including white man, just as culpable as everybody else. But they also bring disease. And so that bad, bad news. But people keep sending people over because they're tired of being tyrannized, which is the default state of humanity. They come to America and we get to the point where we build the Statue of Liberty because we offer opportunity and no guaranteed success. So if you leave or die either is what happened. People would go, whoa, I'm not going to make it. They would leave. Other people would just try, try, try, try, try. They would end up dying. That's how you got the Statue of Liberty. Okay, you didn't get it by offering a welfare state. But then because we end up being so incredibly successful, largely on the back of World War I and World War II, we end up being the victor. We end up being the reserve currency. We end up helping rebuild everybody else. It makes us tremendously wealthy and we just geographically are in a blessed position. All of it just Working to our advantage. We get this prolonged period where everything is good. We start feeling really guilty. And because we're printing money like crazy, we're losing. And we don't understand the connection between I can't afford anything and printing money. We start believing that we not only can, but ought to take care of everybody. And that would have worked for longer had we not also believed that that needed to apply to the rest of the world. And so by throwing our doors open and ignoring the fact of the freeloader problem, we have now created a situation where we're going to find that this kind of fraud is everywhere. And it goes down to the individual level where it's like some people are just, I don't really need this, but I'm going to take it anyway. All the way up to just massive entrenched corruption in entire regions. And we're going to have to root it all out. We are going to have to get disciplined again. Realize we have to be fiscally responsible. Realize that in the modern era there's no reason that you can't account for every single penny ever. AI should be able to track an infinite number of transactions almost infinitely quickly. Like it'll be able to churn through global economic purchases, let's say within five years. Like it will be able to do it effectively in real time. So that's where it's like, if we don't track it, we don't want to track it.

[Drew]

Help me understand this, right? Why do you think that this gets like steam credibility and kind of goes like crazy viral? When I remember 60 Minutes did a story on Google and they went to Google Ireland's office and it was literally one lady at a receptionist desk behind like a lady lock gauge. And the only reason that Google had an Ireland office was to receive mail. And that receptionist, that was the only base of operations. But just having that installment there saved them like $2 billion in taxes in the US because it was like some type of like EU. Yeah. So it's, it's one of those things where it's like a family is running a fraud scheme. And while I'm hesitant to call it like fraud because basically to your point, if there is incentives of, okay, if I make this much, I'm eligible for this thing. I just stay under that incentive level. So it's not like anybody's being illegal, it's not like anybody's sidestepping things. And that will. This one family is now, let's say, brings in $2 million, $3 million. Okay, that's cool. If that happens perpetually, okay, we can shut that down. But then when we go to some of these corporate taxes and the shell companies and the LLCs that are allowing for tax havens and things like that, those don't get nearly as much attention and don't go nearly as vibrant. Viral. And I feel like a lot of times we beat down on the people. Like SNAP is the problem. We need to take everything from snap. If there was no snap, we will be good. We would have a surplus in our budget. But we're not looking at the hundreds of billions of like, avoided, like tax dollars just by saying, oh, I have an llc, you can't tax that, or, oh, I'm in. I'm in Delaware, even though 95% of my business happens in New York, but because it's incorporated in Delaware, I get to save 75% of tax dollars. And there's all these types of strategies that they're using to avoid taxes. And that doesn't seem to get any type of scrutiny or.

[Tom]

Well, I think it gets a lot of scrutiny from the public. People are very angry about it. People don't think that things are working the way that they should be, and they are correct about that. The thing that would need to be done to fix it though, is where everything falls apart. So, first of all, people would actually have to get economically literate to vote for the right things. We would have to get money out of politics. We would have to stop cramming things into bills. We would need to wildly simplify the tax code, which stands at, if I remember correctly, 4 million words, which is just stupid.

[Drew]

It's like longer than a fantasy novel.

[Tom]

You could buy a lot by a lot.

[Drew]

All of the Game of Thrones series.

[Tom]

A crazy long book is going to be 120,000 words. Like, that would be absurdly long. So, yeah, that it's wild. So there's no reason for that. But simplifying the tax code, which would be awesome, isn't going to get people elected because we are constantly trying to do things for donors. Yeah, if we just said, you gotta balance the budget. Like if you literally said you can't use more than 3% of GDP in debt, you'd be great. But no one's gonna vote for it.

[Chat Moderator]

Somebody in chat said. But Right now, Tom, CEOs are the freeloaders. CEOs are the barnacles that are bringing down the system because they're just taking too much.

[Tom]

So I think that there is a legitimate argument to be made about the discrepancy in pay with CEOs. I totally understand that argument. Let's talk about the way that the person gets paid is I think very important to look at. If their real compensation is coming from performance in the stock, then that at least is aligned with the public markets, which anybody can be a part of now. It creates its own distortions. And so trust, trust me, I'm not saying that's a perfect solution, but when people look at what's going on there, what they're witnessing is that you have a scarcity of people that can run these companies and make them more valuable to shareholders and an absolute glut of people that can do the lower level jobs. And so the people at the top have negotiating power and the people at the bottom don't. And so, so that's where I want people to ask a question. Why don't the people at the bottom have negotiating power? And the answer when oversimplified is globalism. And so because of globalism and just some modern technologies, the reality is that people at the average worker, they just don't have any negotiating power because it's like, well, if you're not going to do the job that I want you to do at the price I want you to do, I'm going to go to Bangladesh or whatever, I'm going to outdoor outsource it. And because of the whole like comparative advantage thing, which I still can't believe, people trumpet as if it's like some brilliant statement, we end up running into a problem where you can't negotiate your wages. And so now wages stagnate, prices go up because I'm money printing. Then people come with their hand out and the government realizes, oh yeah, we are doing this massive wealth transfer from you to the wealthy. We want to keep that going. So when you stick your hand out, even though I know that means that I'm going to steal from you even faster, I'm going to give you that money because it looks like I'm doing something for you, but in reality I'm still just doing the same wealth transfer. It's fucking wild. But people do not. Half of the people are not going to be capable of understanding it. A huge percentage just don't have the time. And then that leaves the top 10% owning 93% of the assets. So you, if it's, it's one of these sort of great travesties. But when people glom onto CEO evil because he still has negotiating power, that's where I'm like, like that's not a Very compelling argument.

[Chat Moderator]

Cool.

[Tom]

I get the bitterness because we're hardwired to hate inequality, but it's not the root of the problem.

[Drew]

Super chats.

[Chat Moderator]

Let's do it. All right, first ch up from RJ Johnson. I earned my way through school counting cards in Blackjack in Vegas. Fifteen years later, the 2000 crash. And I tried to do it all again. Didn't have patience for the slow grind and started taking chances. Lost over a million dollars. Ooh. And this was in response to you talking about taking huge gambling risks when you're desperate.

[Tom]

Yeah, that's the lost domain. Brutal. Brutal. But that is. Is real life. Once humans click over into that, yeah, it's rough.

[Chat Moderator]

Next up from Mr. Mike. Life's perpetually changing. It's never forever. Are games your scar tissue? It will always resonate with you, but being a parent, obviously is better. You just never remapped it. It will make you feel more childlike. Even adoption.

[Tom]

So that's very interesting, and I appreciate the number of people that try to save me from my childlike. I look, it comes from a great place. I really do understand it, and I read it as such, and so I appreciate the attempt insight. So I think that people should really look at their lives and say, okay, how does my brain work? And so what is likely to make me feel the way that I want to feel? I think fulfillment ultimately is the thing that matters the most. It's the only positive neurological state that I have encountered. Encountered that will survive even grief. So I orient towards that. What is going to be the thing, long term, that makes me feel fulfilled. Now, fulfillment, I think, is a byproduct of evolution. Evolution has things that it wants you to do. I think the surest path to fulfillment is to have children and contribute to the group. There's no doubt that having kids is what nature wants you to do, and so you don't do that at your own peril. In choosing not to have children, I realize that I create a deficit to evolution and that I have to make sure that I address that. I have to find a way to derive meaning and purpose, to address the sense that I will end and nothing will carry on beyond me. Like, those are all the things. Like, they're mappable. And so when I look at those things, recognize where it creates vulnerabilities in my life. The biggest vulnerability, of course, is when I'm old. If I eject out of the work scene, I'm not contributing that way anymore, and I don't have kids. And I can feel the End of my life coming. I think the distress will be that there's nothing of me that will continue on into the future. Okay, here's where I will remind everybody that nothing is either good or bad. But thinking makes it so. So I have to have a frame of reference that's going to do its best to inoculate me from that. There's no way to avoid all pain of all kinds, but you don't want some sort of crippling regardless regret. I'm pretty good at teleporting myself psychologically into a different state, a different frame of reference, better way to say it, like, what will I feel like when I'm in that phase of my life? And there's no doubt I will wish that I had had kids. And so when I put myself in that position though, I will remind myself, yes, but during the years that you would have needed to actually raise those children, there were other things that you wanted. And so that lets me off the hook in terms of like beating myself up with regrets and things like that. Because I love my life.

[Chat Moderator]

So.

[Tom]

Yeah, but anyway, people have to be deeply self reflexive, reflective and they have to make sure that they understand what thoughts are going to haunt them and how to deal with them. Anyway. I don't know that it would be interesting more than that, but I've thought endlessly about this and certainly do recognize that like my advice to other people is be very thoughtful before you don't have kids. It's possible you can do it well, but it is a higher risk strategy if people actually want to be worried about me. The thing you should really worry about, because this is the one that scares me, is I have very few friends. I'm very isolationist by temperament and so I'm the guy that can see his friend once or twice a year and just feel full to the brain. But if my wife dies, I have no kids and then also have no friends. I mean, listen, I think about AI. I'll probably be fine. I'll have a robot that will, will share experiences. But that's the one where I'm like, ooh, this is a dangerous strategy. So that one feels like doing life without a safety net. As long as I have my wife, everything is fine. But if I lose my wife, oh God. So yeah, anyway, that would be the one where I would say, tom, stop fucking around with creating a video game. Stop fucking around with your TCG cards and watching anime. Go, go spend more time with friends. I just can't bring myself to do it. I want to friends are fun, but God damn it.

[Drew]

Is it like a social anxiety thing?

[Tom]

No, it. It is entirely. I'm sitting there weighing in this moment right now. I can collapse inside of my own imagination, or I can go compromise and do something with another human where I have to do a slightly worse version of what I want to do in order to protect myself later.

[Drew]

I can physically see your body like. Or I can be with other people.

[Tom]

True. It's so weird. When I was young, I was legitimately the life of the party. I wanted to be the center of attention. I wanted to be around people. My friendships were everything to me. And then I got married and that just so filled that part of my life life. Like, if my wife and I die at the same time, which my wife really wants, I am not feeling suicidal. So if my wife dies and I suddenly end up dead, that was my wife 100%. But if we somehow miraculously go together and she didn't take me out, my life will have been perfect because I'll never have to face the high risk strategy of. And it's not that I have no friends, it's that I have a very small pool of friends. So anyway, I don't think people understand how much I like being alone and creating. So like, if my wife walks away, I don't take my phone out. I go inside of Kaizen and I start problem solving like that for me is more enjoyable than you can imagine. So, yeah, I don't have the same response to being alone that other people. People have.

[Chat Moderator]

Somebody said when Kaizen is released, Tom will have thousands of children.

[Drew]

There is.

[Tom]

Well, we'll see. Because Kaizen could suck. Kaizen may be a game that only I enjoy playing. I try to keep myself sober about that. But we were gonna do an open community test before the Christmas holiday and then that was gonna end up up our actual development rhythm because it takes weeks to stabilize the build. So forgive me for all that. We're going to do that.

[Drew]

So.

[Tom]

But anyway, it's becoming. I mean, is Minecraft with guns the easiest way to sum it up? That's overly simplified, but that will certainly give people. Because I know there's some people listening, LeBlanc for one, that have contributed so much to that community that I do want to honor them by getting them back in. But yeah, we probably need end of Q1 probably roughly enough of these things will be together. It'll be worth stopping down for a couple of weeks. Weeks to stabilize a build and then get people in. But anyway, I. Yeah, we're still on track. 23 months from now is when the game will go into early release. That is my guess.

[Chat Moderator]

We got three more super chats too from Sadney Peter. The first one is Tom. It's truth. I'm 23. The Conservative Party and Democratic Party don't speak to me. The party I love is the Libertarian Party. Like Ron Paul, why can't the Libertarian Party gain steam with people my age? I want real liberty.

[Tom]

Yeah. So I don't think the Libertarian Party has a very compelling message. I would consider it very similar to my message, which is, hey, if you work hard and you get really good at something, people can't stop you from doing it and you can have all the success in the world that you want. That's not a compelling message for people that were raised to view themselves as victims and to put their hand out. And that's how we've spent the last 30 years, raising kids. So that's why it's not catching on with your generation. And by the way, we gave you a horrific economy. So you're now in a position where you come out and you really do feel like a victim because you have been victimized. There's no doubt about that. And we've taught you to think like a victim. So just not a good message. Also, libertarianism is probably not real. So if you were in a truly anarchic world, which you are, it'll get mowed over. So strong men win here. I've said this before, but once you understand that countries will expand as far and as violently as they can until they hit one of two forces. Force number one, people that can kill more of your people than you can kill of theirs, literally. So you stop or the internal value system of your country is, is so violated that. And so obviously there's no way to hide it that people revolt. So that's it. Other than that. Like again, read history. Knock knock. Hi, my name is Genghis Khan. If you don't come out now, I'm going to slaughter you all. Oh, you're not coming out great. Dead. That's history. And I don't think people believe that it's real or something. And so imagine trying to have libertarianism when Genghis Khan rolls up and being like, what do you mean? I don't need to draft men the army. So anyway, it's my temperament to be sure, but I don't know that it's high functioning in the real world. See how many people that pissed off.

[Chat Moderator]

Next one from Sadney. Peter, if we remove all economic safety net, balance the budget, stop printing money and let adults live the life they want. People will make rational choices if there is no safety net for people and companies. Ron Paul said that.

[Drew]

I like unicorns too.

[Tom]

Yeah. So again, this goes back to. That is the idea in the abstract, but in the reality you do want some government. You want to protect people from people that are predatory. So if again all of us are a thousand dice, 20 sided die and you're gonna get some people that get an awesome role on intelligence and on Machiavellian traits and they will Bernie Madoff, everyone. So you do need protect you. How about this? My moral compass is such that you do want some protections. I get. Some people probably really don't want any. But there's a great quote that sums up what life is really like and explains all the protections that we build. The strong will do as they wish and the weak will suffer as they must. Must. That's history. I mean that's really hard to deal with. There's a line that Eminem says in Toby, that song is so good, where he says, sometimes things just do not pan out. That's life, dude. Like I think about. So trust me when I say I want to make Kaizen the greatest video game of all time. But in the back of my mind I'm like Concord board spent like $400 million and closed in 15 days. $400 million. Five, six years of development and then closed after 15 days. Sometimes things just do not pan out. That just is what it is, man. It is what it is. So you got to be able to face that down. We'll see.

[Chat Moderator]

Next up, we've got two from LeBlanc. First up is if the government paid people to have children, we wouldn't need non skilled immigrants. And I'm not talking about tax credits. 25 to 50k per child, forever married couples in 20 years, the investment is paid back 100 times. Not. Not utopia, but close.

[Tom]

Do you know how fast people would pick strawberries if they were going hungry and there were no government handouts be picking strawberries, like real fast. So yeah, we have. I know that we like to think that our problem is that Americans won't do that work. But the reality is Americans might not pay that price for strawberries. Okay, well then we eat less strawberries. This is market demand. Like there's no rule that says Americans have to eat strawberries because to pick those strawberries we're going to have to send. We're going to have to pay people a better wage to get them out there. But if there's no handouts, people start real fast going, yeah, I don't like being cold. I don't like being hungry. I'm going to go work this food field. Yeah, cool. That. That one is not popular right now. That is not what people want to hear. People want to hear that they're going to be taken care of by the wealthiest country in the world. I get it. But it violates the laws of the physics of money. So.

[Chat Moderator]

Last one, LeBlanc said, take your time on Kaizen. Tom. Also, I'm available if you want to shoot some ideas and need feedback on stuff.

[Tom]

Oh brother. We'll. You will be one of the first people in the game, that is for sure. Sure. So, yeah, I eagerly await his feedback.

[Drew]

And if you want to follow the development of Kaizen, make sure you join the discord. Also, if you want to argue with me, make sure you join the discord. I'm undefeated so far, man.

[Tom]

Thank you guys so much for coming on this ride with us today. Thank you for being here. And until next time, my friends. Be legendary. Peace. Most healthy habits are hard. Meal prep takes hours. Gym routines get derailed all the time. Complicated supplement regiment fall apart, often within weeks. But AG1 Next Gen is different. AG1 NextGen delivers what your body actually needs. 75 plus vitamins and minerals, 5 clinically studied probiotic strains, plus prebiotics and superfoods. It replaces your multivitamin, probiotics and more in one simple Daily Drink. AG1 NextGen comes in three new flavors. Tropical citrus and berry. All plant based flavoring with 0 added sugar, 0 artificial sweeteners, 0 erythritol. Every flavor maintains NSF certification for sport, so you know you're getting the strictest quality standards. Subscribe today to try the next gen of AG1 and if you use my link, you'll also get a free bottle of AG D3K2, an AG1 Welcome Kit and five of the upgraded travel packs. With your first order, click the link in the show notes or just head to drink ag1.comimpact to get started again. That's drinkag1.com impact the Uniswap wallet makes.

[Campaign Strategist]

Crypto easier and safer to own and use. Discover new tokens, research confidently, swap instantly, and manage it all securely in one place. The Uniswap trading protocol has powered over $3 trillion in volume and it's trusted by millions worldwide. Buy your first crypto assets in a few taps and experience the freedom of decentralized finance. With Uniswap tap the banner to get started.