← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Trump & Elon’s IRS Takeover: What the Rich Know That You Don’t | The Tom Bilyeu Show
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- [00:00]
Grainger Announcer
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- [01:00]
Tom Bilyeu
Doge dives into the IRS and people freak out. Trump ratchets up saying Canada will have to become the 51st state, and I freak out. Someone bombed the Chernobyl nuclear facility. But conspiracies abound about who it was. Dems actively call for censorship of Americans, and a finance expert wakes up to how money printing drives the stock market. Someone leaked audio of Jamie Dimon thrashing his employees, and Ohio legislators want to charge men 10k per nut. Plus, if solo ball play is all you got, fear not, because AI gonna riz for you. Lisa Bilyeu, welcome to the show. It is yet another crazy day in the world. Tell me about it.
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Lisa Bilyeu
What do you think?
- [01:44]
Tom Bilyeu
Where we at?
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Lisa Bilyeu
All right, well, I am filling in for Drew today, and the first thing is, I can't believe. So why are people fre out about Doge diving into the irs?
- [01:54]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, that is a very good question. I think this is going to be the great conspiracy of our time. Is exactly what is it that the Democrats are pushing back on? Is it that they're afraid that the that they've been doing things for years, for decades that they don't want people to know about? Or is this a political ploy and they're just going to try to stop them no matter what they're doing? That's going to be the question. But I heard a really interesting comment. I cannot verify that this is true. But if it is true, it certainly gives you a leaning that the searches for litigators for defense attorneys, excuse me, have skyrocketed in D.C. now, if that's true, and again, I don't know that it is. But if that's true, that tells you that people are worried that they're going to, in all of these searchings, are going to begin to uncover things. But to me, this is an extension of the thing that made the USAID breakdown incredibly important, is the American people can feel that there is a reason that they cannot get ahead. They don't know what that reason is. Now, anybody that's been following me for a while knows that ultimately, you sniff this back, it's all going to come back to how currency is manipulated. Money printing, inflation. We have something on that later in the show. But why on earth would anybody want 87,000 more IRS agents? This is what the Biden administration was putting forward, whatever, two years ago, and people were like, yeah, cool. Like, get in there. Because it was this whole ethos of billionaires are not paying their share. Let's get in, let's figure this out. And I ran the math on it at one point, and it was something like, each IRS agent would only have to audit something like five people for the entire top 1% to be audited. You, you do not need 87,000 agents to. Even if we accept that the 1% aren't paying their fair share, you don't need that many auditors. This is very much about getting into the business of Americans controlling their finances even farther, making sure that the government can spend as much money as they want with impunity. This is the exact kind of mentality that's driving us off this fiscal cliff. So you have the previous administration, instead of saying, how do we get the government more efficient, they're saying, how do we get more money from the American people? That, to me, is so grotesque and so horrifying that it's almost hard to comprehend. Now, the same people who are saying, get 87,000 more auditors in here are twigging out that the Trump administration is saying, instead, let's point that audit back at the IRS to see exactly what they're doing. Why would you not want to see that go forward if you're clearly not opposed to audits happening, but you're opposed to the agency itself being audited? So this feels like a bunch of people telling on themselves. But again, I want to be honest, it could either just be, no matter what they say, we're against it, we want to oppose it, and that they go in and they find that there is gross inefficiencies, I think that will be very obvious, but they don't find anything nefarious. You need to let that play out. I think jumping to conclusions that, you know, we're going to find anything other than waste, I think is unwise at this point. But you're either saying, I don't care what's good for the American people, I don't want efficiency here, I just want to stop what they're doing, or they really are hiding something. But this era of transparency is, I think, the most important thing to happen in a very long time. The only way for us to move forward as a country in an age where information travels so fast and in such huge amounts, the only way for people to be able to make sense of this is to put things out there. I'd love to see it on the blockchain. But you put, where are we spending money? Where are we intaking money? Like what, what are the receipts so that people can look at this and go, okay, we're doing this deficit spending and I'm, I'm here for it. It's yielding these tremendous outcome. What they're going to find is that the reason you feel that you can't get ahead is because of all this. The government is spending way more than they intake. They are artificially stifling growth through regulations. And so by continuing to take money from people in the form of direct taxes and the indirect tax of inflation, that is the reason that we can't get ahead. And then you layer on top of that, creating a very unfriendly business environment, and you cap our growth. And so now you see, and it didn't make the cut for today's episode, but there's this one sort of loan legislator who is just trying to get people to understand how much debt we are bringing on. And once you understand that the interest on our debt alone is a bigger expense than our defense budget, okay, the thing everybody wants to see audited, the thing that's bigger than that, is the interest on the debt. So you have that reality to be faced and growing, by the way, rapidly. And if we don't make dramatic changes, you're going to add in the next 10 years, it's something like another $20 trillion. I mean, just absurd in the extreme. And so you've got that reality is there, and yet people are freaking out about an approach to efficiency. So to me, it's just laying bare that we have a wildly dysfunctional system where people just want to fight against the other side, that they aren't interested in what's better for the American people, which there is literally at the level of economics, there's just no arguing that you can't sustain these levels of debt, that you have to print money to do it. Printing money makes, makes the rich richer and the poorer poor. Which I've walked people through the mechanism a thousand times. I'm happy to do it more. But you're just up against structural realities. And so when I see people push back against that, it is truly maddening.
- [07:59]
Lisa Bilyeu
Okay, a couple of questions. You said you don't want to think like the go dark or think really badly until you figure out why. But why else would they do it?
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Tom Bilyeu
It seems like it's those two. It's either man is political animal and they will do whatever they have to to maintain power. Which we have a clip later of a Democrat. She, she actually says the words. We'll show it. She says the words, I want to support somebody that's serious about censoring the American people. And I quote, and I went and watched the whole speech because I was like, in context, does it make sense? Nope. That they, this is a naked grab for power. And because of my whole thing and I haven't talked about this in a while, but people in my audience hopefully have seared this into their memory. There are three books that I don't think people can read and not develop a real fear of top down authoritarian government. And that is the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Mao, the Unknown Story and the Gulag Archipelago. And though there are three books that, I mean this, this is relatively recent history. We're talking like 80 years ago and in the case of Mao, less. And when governments force compliance of thought through censorship, you end up necessarily murdering people. Now hopefully that sounds absurd, but the reality is that when you have a pluralistic society where I mean, just think about how we have a small company and we can't get everyone to agree on everything. You and I don't agree on everything. So the only way to make somebody agree with you is force. And you can make things very uncomfortable financially, we're obviously seeing that. Or you can imprison. And then when people just won't stop, you start killing them. That is how top down authoritarian control works. Because eventually people push back and they say, I'm not willing to take this anymore, but you force them to take it. And so that is the. When I hear people calling for censorship, that's just where it goes. And so I'm way more freaked out by what's going on in the UK than you are. But you're seeing this now in western countries in the uk you guys don't have freedom of speech. And so people are getting arrested for posts on social media. Like, arrested. They're getting longer terms and people that commit sexual violence. I mean, it's just. It's insane. So I don't think when people look at this stuff that they're taking it seriously enough that naked grabs for power are horrifying and they're done by both sides. And so the only punchline here is, you, one go slow. Don't. Don't add to the problem by freaking out. But when somebody raises their hand and says, I don't want you looking into how money's being spent, like insane red flag. And then when you see people calling for censorship, that, for me, you have to draw a hard and fast line.
- [11:09]
Lisa Bilyeu
So what does the reality of this investigation look like for the everyday person? Like, is there a we want this to happen? Because now it benefits me. Like, what does?
- [11:20]
Tom Bilyeu
I don't think people really understand what it's going to mean for the IRS to be audited. So what? The right way to read this moment is that Trump feels that he has an edict from the American people to come in and make government more efficient, to put money back in their pockets to reduce the cost of living. And Trump has said, I'm going to go out to the greatest capital allocator the potentially world has ever seen, certainly the greatest living capital allocator. And I'm going to have him go into these tremendously complicated systems and, like a systems engineer, figure out what's going on. So one of the most. This happened a few days ago. But one of the most fascinating things that Elon has found in taking a systems approach to looking at whether it's the IRS or the big one, was they were offering people retirement and they were being told to shrink the government. And they were being told, well, people can't retire that quickly. He said, why not? And the punchline, and this is first principles thinking, the punchline of why people couldn't retire faster was because of the speed of an elevator in a mineshaft. Now, I hope you're like, what?
- [12:34]
Lisa Bilyeu
Yeah.
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Tom Bilyeu
As if I just glitched.
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Lisa Bilyeu
And there's no way I was thinking I was glitched.
- [12:38]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, you're like, maybe I didn't understand that correctly. Okay, I will repeat and then I'll explain how this is true. The rate at which people in the US Government can retire is tied to the speed of an elevator in a specific mine shaft. Okay. Why? Because back in the 1950s, they started storing the records of people retiring in a, I think a limestone mine in Pennsylvania as just a place to keep these gigantic documents. And they've never updated it, They've never gone digital. So imagine this is 2025. And so now to transport the records down into the mine, they have to go down this elevator. And the elevator speed then says, okay, wait, we can't store the documents fast enough. So we have to basically process people at a certain rate. And so when you put in for retirement, they schedule it based on how quickly they can get the documents into that mine. And so nobody's saying to themselves, why don't we update these systems? I mean, technically they are, but they're. They've gotten. In 10 years, I think they've gotten to the letter B.
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Lisa Bilyeu
What?
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Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. So this is where it's like people legitimately do not understand systems level first principles thinking. When you look at all of these audits making the government more efficient, it's going to bring to the surface things that will be very confusing to people, but it's what you have to do. So if you're spending $2 trillion and you know that the government is nakedly taxing and using surreptitious tax, going to the IRS that controls all of that is a great place to start just to get a baseline. Where are we at? So, again, I won't leap to the conclusion that you're going to find fraud, but I will certainly leap to the conclusion that that's a really good place to get a sense of, where are we right now? Is this being done efficiently? Are we only taxing people what we're supposed to. Are we keeping more of people's money because they don't seek a return? Right. And this is the one that I worry we're going to see that you're going to go in and realize that the government is over taxing people, and they're just waiting for you to be too dumb to understand the tax code. And so why are billionaires, quote, unquote, not paying their fair share because they understand the tax code, or they pay an army of people to understand the tax code, but the average person doesn't. And so the government isn't going to be like, oh, we're going to give you a lot more back. This is. They're going to give you back only what you put forward using TurboTax. And so the, the terrifying thing will be terrifying in the sense that people are going to be very angry if they go in and they find, oh, shit, the government already knows what you owe and they should just say, this is what you owe. Knowing the tax code and making it. They should make the tax code clean and simple. This is what you owe. We're not taking a penny more than you owed. We're not counting on you to outsmart us. We're just gonna say, simple tax code. This is what we take. So I have a feeling that what Trump and Elon are. I am, I am now way out over my skis. I am mind reading. But I have a feeling it will be something like the government is taking more than they need to. There are obvious things that people could be claiming and aren't. And the government isn't saying, hey, hey, hey, we. You don't owe us this much. We, you only need to give us this much. We're going to give you this much back. That will light people on fire. And then they're going to point and say, this is all the other guys. Now we get into the WWE of it all. Because let's remember, Trump is already president. So you have a system that is, I think, just wildly unmodernized, first of all, will take as much from the people as the people will allow them to take. You need look no further than money printing and all of the data is there for anybody to see. And so the second you start looking at it, the people who most want every dime that they can get from the American people are going to yell the loudest. And right now, the people yelling the loudest are on the left.
- [16:53]
Lisa Bilyeu
So does Elon's tweet hurt or help this situation?
- [16:57]
Tom Bilyeu
All right, so this is an Elon tweet. Reuters was paid millions of dollars by the US Government for large social, large scale social deception. He put that in quotes. That is literally what it says on the purchase order. They're a total scam. Just, wow, okay. This is why just reading headlines is problematic. I do it, Everybody does it. I get it. So for sure, for sure, we all have to be thoughtful about this. But if you pull up the image and to his credit, he included the image. But if you go look at the description, which is what he's quoting. So right there in the description field, it says active social. This is the payment that Reuters was given in the description. They say what this is for. And it says active social engineering Defense in parentheses, A, S, E, D, N parentheses. Next part of the description, large scale social deception in parentheses, lsd. Now, I don't think there's any way to read that other than that this is for defense of social engineering. I think Elon knows That, and I think that he put this out because he knew the headline would be amazing. Now, the headline is technically true large scale social deception. But let me tell you, if you're actually paying Reuters to do large scale social deception, you do not put that in the field. You only put that in the description field because it's tied to defense, defending against this. Now, I still think that's worthy of question because I doubt very much that I'm going to agree with Reuters that they should be in this game of deciding how they're going to protect us from that, because it's probably bullshit. It's probably all propaganda. But the way that Elon is framing this is also propagand. So, boys and girls, it is propaganda. Up, down, left, right, a, B, select, start. Like, it's just everywhere. And once you understand that every time somebody is speaking, they're speaking in propaganda, like, unintentionally, every word out of my mouth is from my frame of reference. I am, I am giving you the lens of the world through my frame of reference. That's why you cannot listen to any one person, myself included. You've got to be triangulating the truth by seeking out people who are sincere. Now, because of the way the human mind works, sincerity doesn't always get you the most clicks, the most views. It doesn't get people on your side. I think Elon knows that he, he can get people get their emotions inflamed by saying, look, it says it right there. So, yeah, I, I don't love it. But this is how the game is played. This is why you can't, you cannot allow your government to censor because at least I can come on and say, look, that's, it's obviously so. I don't know what the. But you're going to see more and more of this. Now, if you're going to run every person through a purity test, everyone's going to fail. So it's not like I'm going to be like, well, now Elon, like, get him out of here. But if Elon says something that I read to be ridiculous, I'm going to say I read this to be ridiculous. And I think that's the way this has to play. So does that help? No, it does not. Do I wish that he hadn't said it? Yes, I do. Do I think that this invalidates what they're trying to do? No, I don't. There's one more clip that we have to play of the finance expert coming to realize that money printing is the Problem. Not a problem. It's the problem. Quick break, but don't go anywhere. There's more to come after this short break from our sponsors.
- [20:24]
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- [20:56]
Tom Bilyeu
And we're back. Let's pick up right where we left off. There's one more clip that we have to play of the finance expert coming to realize that money printing is the problem. Not a problem, it's the problem. I didn't realize that if the average year the money printer goes, call it 8 to 10%, even in the Western countries, even in the OECD nations, and the average return on the S&P 500 is call it 9ish percent including dividends, maybe 9.7, maybe a little less. That it means that all of the work of The S&P 500, all of the value created there is actually the money printer. That to me was startling. That is a startling insight. So this is the thing I am just trying to get people to understand. It all comes back to money print printing. There are so many illusions that are created from money printing. Like, oh, the stock market's going up. No, it's not. The stock market is simply keeping. The way that it works is as you print money, the money loses value. Therefore, anything that is, I hate using this phrase, denominated in dollars, meaning it's just priced in dollars, will acknowledge that those dollars are worth less by going up in price. It's the same reason it seems like your house is going up in price. Your house is not going up in price. The dollar is going down in value. So to get the same value, it must go up in price. I will use the coffee analogy again. If what you want out of coffee is caffeine, if I keep pouring water into your coffee, you have to drink a lot more mugs of coffee in order to get the same amount of caffeine. It's not that my coffee has somehow magically gotten stronger, it's that it's in fact the opposite. You've watered it down so much that you have to like, drink your five cups, eight cups, 10 cups, whatever, to get the Same buzz. So once that locks into place for people, all of a sudden you go, oh, my God, the game is not at all what I thought I was playing. If you want an increase in. In real wealth, then. And he goes on to say in the clip, we don't have to play it because we're pressed for time. But if you want an increase in relative wealth, you have to make a huge bet and be right. And this is why I say the stock market is gambling. Because if you really want to do something, like if you want to buy a house that's actually going to go up in value compared to the devaluation of the dollar, you've got to, like, call Austin 10 years ago. Call Austin 10 years ago. Now, for real. It goes up in value because a ton of people flooded into that area. So now it's not just keeping pace with inflation, it's that area has truly become more valuable. But you have to call it early and be right. Most people will bet early and be wrong. And that's why the. That kind of trading ends up demolishing most people. It's something like 5% of the people make all the gains. But you have to own assets. This is not me saying assets are bad. You have to own assets to keep up with inflation. But if you don't understand the actual game you're playing, you're in trouble. And that is a finance expert who said he's been teaching finance for, like, 20 years. And only just, like, in the last few years has he realized, oh, this is what's actually going on. I'm telling you, people that think they know money do not know money. Even myself, I consider my vision incomplete. I've got to keep learning, learning, learning. But when you get to that foundational piece, it really does change how you view everything.
- [24:23]
Lisa Bilyeu
So I can imagine it'd be absolutely detrimental if you owned property and in a neighborhood that ends up declining because now your property value goes down. So do you technically lose even more money?
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Tom Bilyeu
Well, yeah. I mean, if you pick a neighborhood and something bad ends up happening in that neighborhood, hey, since Chernobyl has come up, if you owned a house in Chernobyl, ooh, buddy. Your property value just went to zero. So, yes, of course you'd be losing more money, but property values are. It's. I mean, take somewhere like Southern California because it's impossible or getting more impossible by the day to get fire coverage. Yes. The value of your house is going to decline, and you are going to feel that for real. That's a real Decline in value, for sure. But people need to understand it's just spin, spin, spin as far as the eye can see.
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Lisa Bilyeu
All right, well, speaking of spin, let's go.
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Tom Bilyeu
I feel that transition coming.
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Lisa Bilyeu
Trump somewhat insists and says that Canada must become the 51st state.
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Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, play the clip so people can hear it directly from him. Technically says have to, but I want people to hear it for themselves. By the way, Canada is just about the lowest payer. Also, just be, you know, they shouldn't be that they are just about the lowest payer in NATO in addition to everything else. So Canada has really been taken advantage of, and if they had to pay just something modestly fair, they would be able to succeed as a country. And that's why. That's why I. I feel they have to become a state. So, look, I think people are getting used to this rhetoric now. When he first said it, honestly, I thought he was teasing. I. I literally just thought he was being playful and over the top. But the more he talks about it, the more I realize he's serious. Now, I don't think it's ever going to happen, and I don't think that there's enough pressure in the world that he's going to be able to put on them without breaking all kinds of other things in terms of our standing in the world. And people just thinking like, this is absolutely absurd. Now play this clip of me being the wrongest person in the world. If it ends up happening, I will certainly update my thinking. But I cannot fathom a universe in which this actually happens. But why is he pushing this rhetoric so hard? Okay, so he talks about this a lot. And I think ultimately it boils down to if you're an entrepreneur and you're looking at the world and you're saying, okay, I have a mandate from the people. My job is to come in and make lives better for the average American. How do we make lives better for the average American? You put more money in their pocket. I just cannot tell you. There's a famous saying, it's the economy, stupid. Like, if you want to know why somebody gets elected or not elected, it is when a person who is about to cast a vote thinks about what that person's going to mean for them. What they mean is, are you going to make my life financially better? And are you going to make my kids lives even better than mine? When you get people to say, yes, this person will put more money in my pocket, and it will make sure that there will be more opportunities for my kids, people are going to Vote for that person. It really is the economy, stupid. When people feel like they're flush with cash, they feel good. When they feel hamstrung, they feel terrible. Humans are that simple. And he's coming in saying, okay, I've been given the mandate that I have to flip that for Americans, because despite all what I'll call bullshit reporting over the last four years from the Biden administration about economy is better than ever we're going to get into. When we talk about the economist later or the finance expert later who was like, jesus, I just realized inflation, printing money is the problem. We'll see why. But he understands, okay, I've got to get spending under control and I've got to find growth. Now, as an entrepreneur, you say to yourself, okay, what's the fastest way for my, my company to grow? Oftentimes the answer is acquisition. So this is Trump looking at basically the acquisition of a 51st state. I think very much in his heart, whether he would say it out loud or not, he's got like, oh, man, this is going to be terrible. All right. This would require a very long episode unto itself. So, dear world, please forgive me. I know this is going to get clipped out, that he has a pulk like tendency to want to make America great through expansion. And so whether that is Greenland, whether that is Canada as a 51st state, whether that is getting the Panama Canal back. And the bad news historically is that it works. And we all just think that we're living in a time where all that stuff is done, man. Like, nobody has to think about that anymore. Apparently we do. Like, he is, I think, serious that he wants to see Canada become the 51st state. Thinking like an entrepreneur who can acquire this company known as Canada, Inc. And Canada Inc. Has a ton of resources and he's looking. So when you acquire a company, you go, ooh, I've just found a company that's undervalued if it were in my hands. So you look at it, it's what's known as a strategic acquisition. So not being bought by, like, a private equity company that can't make, can't merge two entities together and get efficiencies. Instead, it's a strategic. Like when we sold Quest, we sold to another protein bar company. And so they were like, oh, my gosh, like, we can bring these guys in, get their revenue, get their community, and we'll be able to bring manufacturing efficiencies, not have to pay to accounting companies, all that kind of stuff. So for a strategic acquirer, you usually Get a much higher multiple because they on your revenue or your ebitda, whatever you're being valued against. And so by selling to a strategic, it's like they really think they have a vision for how they can make use of this. Okay, so Trump is drill baby, drill. So he's looking at America and he's saying, hey, like, we're going to stop all this green New Deal bullshit. We're going to return to fossil fuels. We're going to get this economy humming by drilling. Then he starts looking up at Canada in some kind of way and is like, oh, damn, these guys are even more greenly absurd than we are. I'm going to get them to be the 51st state. I'm going to now be able to use my drill baby drill tactic. I'm mind reading here. I'm fully aware of that. He has not said this, but this, this is my read. I'm going to apply the same ideas up there. They've got all these natural resources that they're not exploiting. We would be able to bring massive growth to the now very expanded U.S. economy. And where does that make us as an energy producer in the world? If it was US and Canada, I mean, we're already one of the biggest energy producers in the world. If we were also combined with Canada, it would be insane. And so it becomes not only territorial expansion, but you get the revenue opportunities from a GDP perspective of not only just getting those resources, but being way more, in his mind, efficient with those resources. And so, I mean, honestly, God, I hate to say this because it's so fucking terrible, but stick around. We'll be right back after this.
- [31:46]
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- [32:00]
Tom Bilyeu
Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it. And so, I mean, honestly, God, I hate to say this because it's so terrible, but if they became the 51st state, you, we would be economically monstrous.
- [32:14]
Lisa Bilyeu
Okay, so good for America.
- [32:15]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
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Lisa Bilyeu
What about for Canada?
- [32:17]
Tom Bilyeu
I mean, oh God, from the Canadian psyche, terrible. You want to be your own country. You don't want to do things the American way. In fact, from what I hear, from what I hear, I don't have any studies, but from what I hear, there's not exactly a lot of pro America sentiment in Canada, which is exactly why this is never going to happen. Like, even if they were like, yeah, economically it would be better for us. That's not the country we want to be. And boy, oh boy, would I think it an absolute earth shattering crime for Trump to pursue territorial acquisition through force. That, that is, I am not here for that. That would be an atrocity.
- [32:57]
Lisa Bilyeu
Is he threatening to do?
- [32:58]
Tom Bilyeu
I don't think anything like that. I don't think that's his play. I don't think he's going to go down that road. But I think he is going to keep beating the drum about this is better for them and you know, they're going to get more protection and he's going to do what he can with tariffs to make it harder for them to be independent. So even what he's saying there in terms of if they were asked to pay their fair share of Naito, they would be in a very difficult position economically as a country. Now he tips his hand there where it's like, oh, if you can weaken their economy then it becomes like way better for them to consider becoming the 51st state. So is he going to play that economic card? Yeah, probably. Is some of the flirtation with the tariffs about that? Probably. Is he going to try to push that through in the next four years? I don't know. I don't know. This is where you read enough history and you start going, huh, this has Polk vibes. And for anybody that knows how Polk did the Manifest Destiny to get America to go from sea to shining sea, he was the guy and did it in four years. He said, I'm only going to run.
- [34:06]
Lisa Bilyeu
What is Polk?
- [34:07]
Tom Bilyeu
President Polk, P O L K. I forget his first name, but he said I'm going to run one time, I'm going to be in office for four years and I am going to get America to go all the way across the country. And he did it and his own like it was. I previously said I wasn't sure if it was Ulysses S. Grant. It was. And he, he was like, yeah, this is horrific because it forced us to go to war with Mexico and we just slapped him around and took like a huge amount, like 21 million square miles. I think fact check me on that number, it's directionally correct for sure. And yeah, people were mortified. So that would be, that would be civil wartime in America if he tried to do it through force for sure because even I'd be like what the is going on?
- [34:56]
Lisa Bilyeu
And so probability. Because sometimes you know what the man's going to do.
- [35:01]
Tom Bilyeu
So as an act of faith, I choose to believe it is essentially 0% chance that he will do it by force. I don't think it not keeping me up at all, but I Do think that he's going to try to play that card pretty hard economically. It's just crazy that this is real, but crazy in a. Like, I am realizing there's a concept called real. Real politik. Realpolitik. So it's like real politics, basically. What is realpolitik? Realpolitik is this is all force. That's all this ever was, economic and physical. And for 70 years, we got to think in the west that that wasn't what this really is. That's the game.
- [35:39]
Lisa Bilyeu
Well, speaking of force. So someone apparently bombed Chernobyl.
- [35:43]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [35:44]
Lisa Bilyeu
So what on earth is going on there? Who and why on earth would they bomb it?
- [35:48]
Tom Bilyeu
I don't think anybody knows, but this is where tinfoil hats will abound.
- [35:53]
Lisa Bilyeu
And you mean conspiracy theorists.
- [35:54]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, yeah, because. So why would Putin do it? So the. Is that the skeptic thing would be this. Putin wants to do a show of force because Trump is saying that Putin wants peace, and Putin is saying, no, no, no, this is all going to be on my terms, and I'm going to really fuck these guys up, and I'm going to drop a bomb on the sarcophagus around Chernobyl. So Chernobyl, for people that don't know, melted down back in the 80s when it was a part of Russia, and they had to build this gigantic concrete sarcophagus over Chernobyl to trap the radiation, and someone just dropped a bomb on it. Now, either Putin did it as a show of strength, like, hey, you, Ukraine. Like, we're gonna ruin you guys. We're gonna get all the territorial concessions. Just a reminder that we're totally in control. There's this concept called a false flag, where you do something against yourself to justify. In Zielinski's case, I. This is breaking news. I am not saying this is what happened. I'm just saying saying this is. These are the two things that are being talked about online. For Zelinsky, it would also like if. If the world wasn't so used to false flags now, it would be a pretty gangster move. You drop that bomb on Chernobyl yourself. You say Putin did this as an act of aggression. Dear us, all European countries, you got to give us more military aid so that we can push this guy back. As you can see, he's a madman. Who would do that? Now, only time is going to tell who actually did this, but you can see a flex on either side. If I'm honest, the person probably with more to gain is Zelensky. Doesn't mean he did it. But it does mean that it does give him a pretty big card to play to say, hey, like, we've really got to push back against this. And that's the world that we've always lived in in. I do not want people to think that somehow a new world. This is the world we've always lived in. This is how these games are played. People will. The Nazis did things against themselves, the US Go to Japan into attacking us so that we could enter World War II. This stuff's just real. People do this kind of thing all the time. People talk about January 6, that there were some number of FBI agent inform or people faking they were in disguise, but they were actually in the FBI trying to rile people up to get them to attack the Capitol. So these things are real. People do this stuff all the time. Time. So going back to the Nordstream pipeline, who blew it up? We still don't know, but many things abound.
- [38:36]
Lisa Bilyeu
Question I have is you said earlier that Trump said that Putin wants peace. And he was like, no, I don't.
- [38:41]
Tom Bilyeu
No, no. I'm saying if. If it was Putin that dropped that, it is entirely possible that his play is to say either, no, I want to continue being aggressive. I want to get what I want. But this is Tom prognosticating. This is not Putin actually saying that.
- [38:55]
Lisa Bilyeu
No. But you said Trump said that Putin wants peace.
- [38:58]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes.
- [38:59]
Lisa Bilyeu
Is he saying that as a manipulative tactic, or he really believes it?
- [39:02]
Tom Bilyeu
Well, according to Trump, they had a private phone call and Putin said, I want the war to end. Now, that doesn't mean that Putin's. Yeah, Trump, of course I want the war to end, but I'm going to get all of Ukraine. So as soon as they hand everything over. Peace, we don't know yet. Or at least I haven't heard anything out of Putin's camp yet about what this is. So I don't know. I only know what Trump said about it, and he was pretty brief and just said that, yes, he wants peace.
- [39:31]
Lisa Bilyeu
You said something earlier which is a little heartbreaking for me as a Brit, because when I was in England growing up, the thing was, America's the land of the free. You go there to dream big and be able to execute on that dream. But you mentioned it earlier that Dems are actively calling for censorship on Americans.
- [39:47]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. This is crazy to me. Play this clip. Look, let me tell you something. I'll take a bit of umbrage here. I'll speak on behalf of my colleagues. I think I can say we are
- [39:57]
Lisa Bilyeu
all willing to work with anyone who's serious about doing the work of censoring
- [40:03]
Tom Bilyeu
the American people and advancing progress. But they are not serious, I would love to tell you. So I watched the whole speech from beginning to end, and I would love to tell you that in context, that line meant anything other than censoring Americans. It doesn't. That's literally. Literally what she's calling for. Ah, yeah, I am. I am scandalized by people's lack of fear of being censored and how devastating that is, because that is the thing that ultimately it just leads to being crushed from the top down, or in addition to that, surreptitiously being manipulated through things like all the back channel stuff that people were doing with the algorithms of the social media companies through Covid. And this is exactly how you make somebody like Brett Weinstein become radicalized and be told that he's crazy and he doesn't understand. One of the preeminent evolutionary biologists of our time, it was just absolute insanity. The exact person you want trying to sift through the data of this stuff, not that he knows the answer, but that he knows how to use the scientific method to get to the answer. But you need to allow people to speak. And so, yeah, it is so super bizarre in this moment to watch the two sides go at each other from, hey, we need more transparency. We need to audit. We need to see what's going on. And then other people going, the only way to get progress is to censor people. It's. It is a gross ignorance of history.
- [41:31]
Lisa Bilyeu
How can they convince themselves that's a good idea?
- [41:34]
Tom Bilyeu
Ooh. Okay, so Steel manning the other side. It goes like this. Oh, people, I'm sorry for repeating things, but they are true. You have to understand man is political animal. Okay, what does that mean? That means that you have a wide array of human beings with a wide array of opinions, a wide array of knowledge, a wide array of intellectual capacity. Given that that is true and that there are extreme logistics to be taken into consideration if you want to run what's known as a direct democracy. So imagine you say, tom, this is so simple. Just ask the people what they want. Let them vote. Why do we have to. Why do we have a representative democracy? That's dumb. Don't have representatives. We live in the digital age. You were just saying, like, all these records should be digital. Why don't we just make it. Everybody's got an app on their phone to vote for this, that, or the other. And then you realize that people won't do it, that they don't pay attention to the news. They're not informed. If they hear a headline, they don't read the actual thing. They're not making decisions for themselves. People manipulate because manipulation works. And so you have this mass of people, the vast majority of people, they. They just want to be in love. We're recording this on Valentine's Day. They just want to be in love. They just want to raise their kids. They just want to do a good job at work. They want to play some video games, they want to go play pickleball. Like, they. They don't want to think about this stuff. They don't want to deal with it, or they don't have time. They're working three jobs and raising kids by themselves. They don't have time for this stuff. It's not even that they don't want to. It's that they don't have the energy to do it. Okay? So that is just a reality to be faced. So even if you put an app on everybody's phone, they're not going to be educated on the topics. They're not going to have time. Most people won't show up for the vote even if you make it as simple as humanly possible, possible. And so now you're even in a direct democracy where you're just saying, vote on everything. You'll get a small group of people that do the research, that do the voting, that try to sway the public, all of that. So there. There is no way, given the architecture of the human mind, to get direct democracy to work. Plus, with all the people voting on all the things, you're going to be pulled in a thousand directions. So what people have realized through the course of human history, I'm talking from the dawn of man, is that there are always going to be a few people at the top, and those few people are going to give you a story. And that story is going to help you understand you, your country, your role in your country, what a good person looks like, what they do. And this is why when people look at, say, the US Versus China, it's very jarring because China is a very different cultural story than America. Now, we're all humans, but we have these wildly different stories. And when you're raised under one story or the other, you begin to form a frame of reference that allows people internalize this idea. Your frame of reference controls both what you look at and what you see. It controls more of your life than you could possibly imagine. And by telling those stories, you can get People to look at certain things. You can get them to. You can control what they look at, but you can also control what they see when they look at it. And because of that truth, the people at the top who have, sad to report, often higher intellectual capabilities, they have often more financial means. So they have the ability to pay attention to this stuff, and they certainly have the temperament for it, and they construct that narrative. Now, a more just, naked way of saying it is they spin things to get you to see the world the way they want you to see the world. And so how do they convince themselves that censorship is a good idea? Because it works. And so by censoring people. As long as you're the person in power, what do you care about? Unless you have the moral connection to, like, every human life is sacred. Then what? We. We've got a billion people in the country. Why? I mean, this is Mao, right? We've got a billion people. Why not kill a hundred million to make sure that the other 900 million have a better life? If you don't have the empathy of like. But that's. Those are real lives, those are real tragedies. Every one of those people that you starve to death or murder in the most heinous way like that, that is a. A tragedy of just epic proportions. If you don't have that, you go to the. You gotta crack some eggs to make an omelet. You gotta break eggs to make an omelette. And that's how they convince themselves that we're right. We're just doing these things will lead to utopia, which it never does, because humans are far too complicated for that. But that's how they convince themselves. And so imagine if you really believed you were right and you're really gonna lead people to the promised land, how many people would you be willing to kill? And unless your answer is zero, then you end up in a weird position.
- [46:47]
Lisa Bilyeu
Okay, that explains why she would say it. Thank you for breaking that down. Why would me, let's say the average citizen, why would I agree to censorship? Like, that seems so crazy to me. That's like, hey, whatever you think and you shouldn't be able to say, how has that convinced me as, like an everyday person, why would someone vote for that?
- [47:08]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, this frame of reference. So it comes down to what I call. And the team is begging me to come up with better branding on this. It's what I call the dumb voter problem. Ask somebody point blank, you have a voter who's too dumb to make an informed decision, and they're going to vote for Donald Trump. What should you do with that person? And that's where you get people who are like, you can't let Trump speak. You can't let him reach into the minds of people that are too dumb to realize that he's lying to them, that he's a criminal. Like, that's going to be their thing. Now, to me, the only right answer to that question, and obviously, I'm not saying that person actually is too dumb. I'm saying when somebody believes that person is too dumb, what do they want to see happen? The only right answer is, you must allow them to vote. You must allow them to have a voice. Because you can't let anybody decide who's too dumb to vote or who's too ignorant or too manipulatable or whatever. Because, again, you go back to authoritarian rule. The only way to stop that is through force.
- [48:09]
Jamie Dimon
All right.
- [48:09]
Lisa Bilyeu
Well, free speech right now still exists. And in America. In America, yes. Thank you.
- [48:16]
Tom Bilyeu
Basically only America.
- [48:18]
Lisa Bilyeu
But people are freaking out over the speech that Jamie Diamond.
- [48:22]
Tom Bilyeu
Jamie Dimon.
- [48:23]
Lisa Bilyeu
Jamie Dimon did, that was leaked, and he is the CEO of Chase. And we have a clip of it. Let's show that.
- [48:31]
Tom Bilyeu
That is not it.
- [48:32]
Lisa Bilyeu
That is not it.
- [48:38]
Tom Bilyeu
Jamie. Dylan.
- [48:38]
Lisa Bilyeu
It's work from home.
- [48:39]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [48:39]
Lisa Bilyeu
That clip there.
- [48:40]
Tom Bilyeu
Yep.
- [48:41]
Jamie Dimon
A lot of you were on the fucking zoom, and you were doing the following, okay, you know, looking at your mail, sending texts to each other about what an asshole the other person is, okay? Not paying attention, not reading your stuff, you know, and if you don't think that slows down efficiency, creativity creates rudeness and stuff. It does. Okay? And when I found out that people are doing that, you don't do that. My goddamn meetings. You go to a meeting with me, you got my attention. You got my focus. I don't bring my goddamn phone. I'm not sending texts to people, okay? It simply doesn't work. And it doesn't work for creativity. It slows down decision making. And don't give me the shit that Work From Home Friday works. I call a lot of people Friday. They're not a goddamn person to get a hold of. But here are the problems, okay? And they are substantial, which is the young generation is being damaged by this. That means they may or may not be in your particular staff, but they are being left behind. They're being left behind socially, ideas, meeting people. In fact, my guess is most. You live in communities a hell of a lot less diverse than this room. Every area should be looking to be 10% more efficient. If I was running a department of 100 people. I guarantee you, if I wanted to, I could run it with 90 and be more efficient. I guarantee you I could do it in my sleep. And the notion these bureaucracies, I need more people. I can't get it done. No, because you're filling out requests that don't need to be done. Your people are going to meetings they don't need to go to. Someone told me to prove something as wealth management that they had to go to 14 committees. I am dying to get the name of the 14 committees. And I feel like firing 14 chairmen of committees. I can't stand it anymore. Now you have a choice. You don't have to work at J.P. morgan. So the people of you who don't want to work at the company, that's fine with me. I'm not. I'm not mad at you. Don't be mad at me. It's a free country. You can walk with your feet, you know. But this company is going to set our own standards and do it our own way.
- [50:39]
Lisa Bilyeu
All right? As a business owner and someone that used to be an employee. So let's not forget that. How do you feel about that?
- [50:46]
Tom Bilyeu
He's right. There's just no two ways about it. And I don't expect what he said to be popular, but it's so accurate that this is one of those. I wish there was a way to run an experiment to make somebody run a company for a year and put their house on the line, that if you don't get this right, you lose your house. Like all of a sudden. It just cuts through all the bullshit. And the reality is work from home is wildly inefficient. Humans are way better when they can overhear each other, when they can just walk into a room and have a quick conversation. People getting bogged down in meetings and all of that stuff, it. It is not only deeply inefficient, but it is going to be the downfall of a lot of companies in the AI age. They are just not going to survive. You have to be lean, you have to be mean, you have to be aggressive. You have to understand that business is a competition. And so people want business. People want business to basically take care of the employees, but you cannot take care of the employees if the company goes out of business. And that's the thing that I think people are super blind to. Yeah.
- [51:49]
Lisa Bilyeu
Because they don't think of it as a business. Because he even said, like, the efficiency of it. If we can do something with 90 people instead of 100, at least for me. My business brain goes, sometimes you have to make those decisions to keep the company alive. You have to keep the P L aligned. So if it's not, you end up shutting down the company. No one has a job.
- [52:08]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [52:09]
Lisa Bilyeu
So do you think that this is just a difference in mindset between entrepreneurs? Because guaranteed, every person that I know that owns a business would agree with this.
- [52:18]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes. It's not just that, though. You will get people that are hungry and they really want to do something awesome. They're ambitious. And so people in that position are probably going to hear that and be like, yeah, that resonates with me. Like, I'm here to win. I want to be a part of something that matters. I want to go. So really interesting story of an engineer that was working for Elon, I think, at SpaceX and he was burnt out and he quit and goes and works somewhere else. And I think it was the, the author that wrote the biography, I think, and comes back later and sees that guy that had previously quit because he was burnt out. And he was like, why'd you come back? And he was like, I went to another company and I was bored out of my mind. And I realized that I'd rather be burnt out than bored. And so there. That's not necessarily somebody that's going to run his own company, but that's somebody who's like, I am playing to win. I want to be on the field, doing my best, pushing my skills to the absolute limit. And when I hear stuff like this, I really am sad that the frame of reference that we've been giving people for the last 20, 30 years because we've had this world of abundance, is that companies are just taking advantage of their employees. You should work as little as possible and make as much money as possible. And instead of saying, go somewhere where you can fully express your talent and intelligence, go somewhere that you believe in, in and build something that matters. And that companies are the backbone of the world. Like, it is the thing that's pulled people out of poverty. It is the thing that's made life better. And right now, that's not the narrative. And I know a lot of people are going to say I'm out of touch and I'm just some rich dumbass. And to your point about, it's not where I started. Started as just another employee and I realized one day that my parents had taught me to have a slave mentality, to keep my head down, do as little work as possible, and avoid punishment at all costs. And I was like, whoa. Because the guys that were my bosses at the time took the day off. And I relaxed. And I remember on the day being like, hold on a second. Why am I relaxing? Because this was in the beginning of our marriage. And I was like, I've made my wife poor. I've got her. She is at home right now clipping coupons. And if I'm relaxing when they're gone, I'm saying that there's nothing that I can do, that I'm just keeping my head down and doing as little work as possible. And I was like, wait a second. What if I showed up every day and acted like I was the only person in this company and I was the CEO and if it were to be, it was up to me. And that changed my life. And that's exactly how I go from being an employee to being an owner, founding my own companies. And it's like, once you realize, oh, this is a switch in my own head, I can flip this switch. I can control my own destiny. This is about skill acquisition. I can get better at something and I can actually get so good at something that people can't stop me from doing it. Then it's like, man, you want other people to take those ideas and run with it. But I have learned that it's a filtering mechanism. You can tell people that you can give them the ideas and 2% of them will do something with it. It will change their life forever. But if you want to get the 98%, they've got to hear it from their parents when they're young. They've got to see it in their entertainment when they're young. Which is exactly why you and I make comic books and video games. And it's like wanting to introduce people to those ideas through entertainment when they're young. So they can be like, cool, I can be anything I to want to be and get that what all called the American spirit back to the forefront.
- [55:33]
Lisa Bilyeu
But then why people freaking out? Because he even said, like, if this isn't the life you want. And this is literally what we've done in the company. We were work from home during COVID Then we came back into the office, but it was somewhat part time in the office. And then we made it mandatory for it to be full time. And we operate on that same belief of like, if this company isn't for you, there's no pressure, but this is what we need in order to build the company to have the vision that we want. And he said that. So part of me is like, I don't understand what people are freaking out on, but because you should be able to control your own destiny. If you want to work from home one day a week, if you want to work home full time, find the role and the company that allows that. But don't be mad at the company for putting mandatory barriers in for the sake of the survival of the company.
- [56:19]
Tom Bilyeu
Again, it's frame of reference. If you believe that companies exist to give you a soft place to land and a way to make money instead of recognizing that a company is fighting for its very survival every day. And this is your chance to join a team that's doing something that you believe in and you want to be there fighting side by side. It's just a very different mentality. And I get it to your point, people should go where they want to go. But if you can't see the realities of what it takes to actually run a business, you're just going to approach it from a very different standpoint.
- [56:55]
Lisa Bilyeu
All right, I'm going to take a very hard right, because this is fascinating. But. But, oh, my God. We've got to talk about it. Life begins at an erection.
- [57:02]
Tom Bilyeu
This is. It's Ohio legislators putting this forward. They are clearly trolling, so let's just read this. Okay. Ohio lawmakers have proposed a new law that bans men from ejaculating without intent of conception, would fine men up to $10,000 per ejaculation. The bill was brought forward by Democratic state Reps. Anita Samani and Tristan Raid. And men would be charged with a felony under the law if they engage in unprotected sex without the intent of impregnation.
- [57:35]
Lisa Bilyeu
So even the last. But men would be charged $1,000 for the first offense, 5,000 for the second offense, and then 10,000 for any offense after.
- [57:44]
Tom Bilyeu
So basically a Saturday afternoon, they're. They're up to 10K. Yes.
- [57:48]
Lisa Bilyeu
You're in a lot of debt, believe me.
- [57:50]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. Oh, buddy, do. I've got money, but not that much. Yeah. So this is. They're clearly just trying to get attention for something. There's no way they actually expect this to pass and become law, but they want to get people talking about it. So this is really a protest against what they see as curbing women's rights. So a bit of mind reading here, but I think it goes something like this. If you're going to say that abortion is murder, then we're going to say that ejaculation without the intent of getting somebody pregnant is murder. And that's why the you know, sort of joke headline is conception begin or life begins with erection. So it, it's funny but is certainly something that gets at a battlefield that we have not seen, the last of which is taking abortion away from the federal government and driving it down to the state's rights. So will this make a change? I don't know. No. As the short answer, will we continue to see the pendulum swing and abortion remain a really hot button issue?
- [58:58]
Lisa Bilyeu
Maybe for someone who very much supports abortion, this made me laugh and I actually thought it was serious. First of all, until you were like no baby, they're joking. I was like, oh, okay. Because obviously that is a little crazy. But I do see the somewhat analogy. It's like you can't tell me what to do with my body. I understand the other side of it where it's like but it's a life. But ultimately to your point, this actually did get us to talk about it. So I think that their goal in doing that, even though it's extreme, it got the message and it's now having people to talk about it, which I think is important because I do think sometimes shining a mirror on the other side and blood. But this is the equivalent. Look how ridiculous this sounds. And by doing that it then kind of, I think makes a point.
- [59:43]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, I mean the point that it makes is where do you mark the beginning of the life and that that's really the big debate. I, I personally think it is better at the state. I think you want people in a situation where they can vote with their feet and not have to leave the country. So for me that's a better way to handle it. Now I get it. If you're in a state that then outlawed it, that if you're one of the people that really feel strongly that this should be legal, hey, it's a pain in the ass to have to move state. But at least you don't have the umbrella sitting over the entire country. But yeah, because that's now the debate
- [60:25]
Lisa Bilyeu
like umbrella over a whole country all
- [60:28]
Tom Bilyeu
reversing Roe versus Wade did was say now this happens at the state level. So when you made it a federal law, you were saying a state could not deny somebody the right to have an abortion. Now you're saying you can. And many states already have.
- [60:40]
Jamie Dimon
Have.
- [60:41]
Tom Bilyeu
And so I get why people who believe in it are up in arms. But it's like weed. Let the states decide. There's no reason that that has to be at the federal level. Now would I be upset to see that pass at the federal level? No, because I tend to, I think that the data will back up that when you make this stuff illegal that you just bring out criminal elements. But I, I'm not opposed to that remaining at the state level.
- [61:06]
Lisa Bilyeu
That's what I was going to say. But where's the slippery slope? Because then you can have one state that says, yeah, murder's fine in this state.
- [61:12]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, I mean, look, you have to be careful of the, when you really go to the absurd like that, you give people a way to just brush you off. Which would be my one concern about the, the law that they're proposing is. It's so funny as to be like, I'm not really taking you seriously now. It's fun and it gets people talking. And so fair enough. In the grand scheme, there's plenty of people that are being very serious about the abortion thing, so probably not a big risk. But like, if you really want to have the discussion at the level of what should be done at the federal level and what should be done at the state level, you don't want to push it all the way to. Some people might say that murder is fine. No one's going to say that. You're not going to have a state that says that. But start talking about something like euthanasia, where somebody has the right to take their own life. Okay, well, do we want to see that at the federal level? Because we believe that every, everybody should be able to control their own dignity. And so when you're in a situation where you're just in chronic pain and life is totally miserable and you know, you have a nurse coming in and wiping your ass every day and you have no quality of life, do we want to protect that at the federal level? Those kind of arguments, that to me feels like the same kind of discussion as abortion. It's. We're talking about a life. We're talking about, are they sacred? We're talking, does who has the right to say yes, no. Does even that person have their own right? Is abortion really about, well, the fetus can't make its own decisions and so that's why we have to protect it. So, yeah, it's fine. Euthanasia, if somebody's over 18 or whatever right now, it's like, okay, that's a debate. Like, let's really have that debate. Which one will force people to lay out what their value system is, which I think is a huge problem in the world, full stop. Every aspect of life has a problem because people are not defining what their value system is. They are not dragging into the conscious mind into something they can articulate in a single sentence about why it should or shouldn't be. And that I would love to see where people are just saying, this is why I believe this to be true. So we can have the argument at the level of the value system rather than just at the level of policy, because policy is downstream of values.
- [63:15]
Lisa Bilyeu
Makes sense. All right, well, speaking of decision making, there's a new chat operator that actually helps us not have to make decisions.
- [63:25]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes, there is.
- [63:25]
Lisa Bilyeu
And I am seriously concerned on what this looks like in the dating world. But talk me through it.
- [63:32]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so the thing that I really want to talk about is the, the AI rizzing people up. Built in AI. This is Eddie Zhu saying, built an AI that sees five moves ahead in any conversation and tells you the optimal thing to say. So this is, you can imagine from a romantic standpoint people having a conversation back and forth in chat, but it's really two people having a conversation each with their AI representative. And so there's like this Riz chess game that's being played where people are not having real conversations. And here's the thing, I'm a huge proponent of AI. I love to see it. This is very exciting. But I think in the dating world this is, this is not going to play out as well as people think. The only way I could see this being interesting is if it's like, like instead of the algorithm of the dating app deciding who you pair with, I could see having the AIs like communicating with each other, like running almost like war game scenarios, asking each other questions back and forth so that you could have like that sort of opening conversation with a thousand people in two minutes and be like, these are the people who vouch for their AI representative. And the AI representatives had killer conversations. Now that could actually be interesting. And then it's like a handoff where instead of just being swipe, swipe, swipe, the AIs go, no, no, for real. We just had a six month conversation in 90 seconds between the two of you. You guys, there's like a real thing here. You guys should connect. In fact, as I say that out loud, that's fucking dope and somebody should do that. No, for real, like if you know this is just our AIs pre vetting each other, imagine that your AIs have a six month long conversation between the two of you in 90 seconds. Wouldn't you then be like, oh, this is cool. And then there's a handoff to you. And now the real people connect and go, hey, our AI say that we should have a conversation, let's meet for coffee. That would be.
- [65:28]
Lisa Bilyeu
But that would require you doing the talking in the first place. The AI knows who you are in
- [65:32]
Tom Bilyeu
order to then think of how much data you're kicking off all the time. Your AI will know you better than you. AI will understand your preferences is better than you. Once you understand that and internalize it. But my thing is you need a handoff to the real people.
- [65:47]
Lisa Bilyeu
Oh, well, that's also. And my mind goes to just cu. I've done so many episodes on relationships, psychology and psychopaths, my mind goes to the dark side of it.
- [65:56]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, that's why you have to have the hand off to the AI.
- [65:58]
Lisa Bilyeu
But I'm saying, but I'm saying you fake your AI into thinking you're a certain person, you're a psychopath, you're a psychopath. But hey, I'm lovely, I'm charming, totally get the point now. Now you get matched up with someone that is vulnerable. You put in your commands, you do the talking, all so that you know you're trying to attract someone that is vulnerable, that's going to fall for you. So now your AI goes, oh my God, you're a perfect match. And as a psychopath, you're like, ding, ding, ding, ding. This is just giving me the perfect prey.
- [66:25]
Tom Bilyeu
Totally heard and understood. So I'm saying you have to hand this back off to the people. You don't go, our AI say we're a match, let's sleep together. You go, our AI says we're a match, let's grab coffee. So it's going to be there. There is no doubt that, that there will be people that modulate their AI and do absolutely horrible, just as they will do it in chat. They're going to lie and tell you what they think you want to hear. But it will give people an opportunity to vet at a really high level. As long as you don't try to advance things too far. You still have to see in real life now, hey, this is us. No more AI. For real. For real. But it's just, just all I'm proposing is a very sophisticated way of matching. You still have to start from scratch as you now connect with the real person.
- [67:13]
Lisa Bilyeu
But I'm going, Sorry.
- [67:15]
Tom Bilyeu
No, please.
- [67:15]
Lisa Bilyeu
I'm gonna guess they're not gonna put regulations on it though.
- [67:17]
Tom Bilyeu
So to your point, are you proposing more regulations bill you, so no, but I'm just.
- [67:22]
Lisa Bilyeu
So hear me out.
- [67:23]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [67:23]
Lisa Bilyeu
So if they did that, I actually hear your point. But what I assume is, is that it's going to keep going. It, it's, you've got a young girl that's 16 years old and she's got her phone and a boy's texting her. I don't know what to say. Let me use the AI. You do that over and over and over and over and over again. By the time that 16 year old gets to be 21, think about when you're driving and there's a road. When someone just drives you there, you don't actually know the way. You just show up, you know, and then you're like, well, how do you get there? I've done it 100 times but I still don't know because I haven't done it myself. So now take that as an AI. You have this woman who has been from the age of 16 to 21 using this AI because she told she doesn't have the confidence, she doesn't know how to reply to boys. And so the AI is saving her like her own confidence, her self esteem and she doesn't feel insecure because she has this AI. And then you turn up on a date and you have no idea what you're doing. You don't know how to communicate, you don't know what to do.
- [68:16]
Tom Bilyeu
AR goggles at home or her.
- [68:17]
Lisa Bilyeu
But that's what I'm saying. Like where does this go? At what point is it training people to not actually understand human behavior?
- [68:25]
Tom Bilyeu
Yep, there AI is going to be a mixed bag. And just like calculators make it so you don't have to be able to do math in your head. Just like ChatGPT is going to make it so you don't have to memorize facts. All of that is true. And there are going to be people that don't take the handoff from their AI and engage in the real world for sure. And it will be worse for them. There is no way this is an only up scenario. This is going to be, this is going to create a very tumultuous period. Just like we went through with social media where people are getting it too young and it's creating problems. You're going to have to find out where exactly do the problems arise. How do you get people to take advantage of the good things but ignore the bad things. You, you cannot hand over your agency to an AI, to anything. Ultimately people still have to take responsibility for their lives. Now I get it, a lot of people are not going to. But you, you just can't ever let Anybody off the hook for running their own life. But I don't want to be denied an incredible tool because some people are unwilling to take responsibility for for their lives.
- [69:24]
Lisa Bilyeu
But you've already built your mindset and your self esteem. That's where I go to. Okay, maybe as an adult now, this coming to my life as I'm 45, okay, I can understand the knock on effects, I can think through it, but that's why I use the 16 year old who hasn't developed that yet, who only is led by her own insecurities. And obviously your community is mostly male, but the equivalent of that men are too scared to go and ask a girl out on a date.
- [69:47]
Tom Bilyeu
Do you think it would be wise to say anybody under the age of 16 cannot interact with AI? Oh, this is a trap.
- [69:57]
Lisa Bilyeu
I know, I feel that I welcome you. That's what I was about to ask and I was like, I feel the trap for you. I know you well enough. I mean I think that there should be regulations like that. Just like with sex and voting and drinking.
- [70:11]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so no AI for you under a certain age.
- [70:14]
Lisa Bilyeu
Yeah, okay, unless it's create. But now I go, well, but then it's creativity. If AI can help you be more creative. Not only that, I know, exactly.
- [70:23]
Tom Bilyeu
So there's going to be a hundred percent. So imagine that you are able as the parent to train the AI or you're able to go, oh, Impact theory actually publishes AI for kids age appropriate this age to that age. And the AI sends you the information so that you have a running tally of what the teddy bear is saying to your 4 year old so you know exactly what's being transmitted. You chose the algorithm yourself. Now imagine your kid who's essentially like just backwards compared to the kids that spent the intervening 16 years with an AI that's training them and big upping their confidence and telling them they can be anything they want and helping them gain skills and working with them. Oh, so that boy was mean to you today. This is how you could handle this in the future. Remember you selected the algorithm and you get that running tally. So you're like, yeah, I approve all of this and you as the parent can even sharpen it. So you say no, no, don't say that. Instead say this next time imagine kid with no AI interaction until the age of 16 versus a kid that has parent approved algorithms from trusted sources that they see the output of. But those two kids, which one do you think is going to do a better job in life?
- [71:39]
Lisa Bilyeu
The one that gets the AI for sure.
- [71:41]
Tom Bilyeu
So you just regulated us into the Stone Ages.
- [71:44]
Lisa Bilyeu
This is what I'm talking about. I knew it was a trap.
- [71:48]
Tom Bilyeu
So look this, you don't want a free for all. You don't want people not being thoughtful. But everybody thinks that they can regulate this stuff from the top down and you can't. You have to accept a little bit of messiness in the beginning because I'm telling you right now, if you don't, China is, Estonia is. Somebody somewhere is going to be like, yo, this is our chance. We're going to raise our kids with dope algorithms that only make them better, that encourage healthy eating and exercise and positive self esteem. And like this constant feedback loop of we use these algorithms and the kids that use that algorithm actually do this well. And so you'll get this incredible feedback loop of these algorithms lead to this test outcomes, like all this stuff, it will be bananas. It will also be able to, oh, you'll get a feedback report from the algorithm saying, hey, you've been running this algorithm that you got from Impact Theory, the trusted source of algorithms. And the biometrics that we're getting from your kids are fantastic in all areas except this one. Would you like to adjust it? We've seen people running this algorithm. It actually improves their, their sleep score, whatever. Yeah, yeah, I would like to add that in. Cool. Oh, we're now getting the biometric feedback. The kid is sleeping better, their resting heart rate is better. So you'll be able to get real time feedback that the AI will be able to integrate and say like this is working or it's not. But you'll be able to say, These are the KPIs Key Performance Indicators that I care about with my child. And like, you'll get feedback. Oh, they're having a hard time falling asleep. They're waking up in the middle of the night. And now it's like the thing that people have to worry about is that your parents are going to be too in your business. Like, that's a bigger concern. Not that the AI won't be able to make your channel, your child's life better. It will for sure. But it could also destroy your child's life. So you have to pay attention. You cannot abdicate responsibility. You've got to take ownership top to bottom. But I'm telling you, the future, as I just laid it out, is exactly what's going to happen. There it is.
- [73:34]
Lisa Bilyeu
All right, all right.
- [73:36]
Tom Bilyeu
First of all, thank you for joining me today. You are my hero for showing up. It was actually absolutely wonderful filming with you. I appreciate you standing in for Drew, everybody. If you have not already, be sure to subscribe. And we. We shoot live the preparation for these episodes. So if you want to join us for that, you can do so by following me on YouTube. At YouTube and on Twitch ombilyu. And did I say at YouTube? Ombillue. On YouTube. If I misspoke. All right, everybody. Until next time, be legendary. Peace.