The 2028 Presidential Draft | Ep. 022 Lemonade Stand 🍋

20:41Atrioc:I'm actually failing this.

20:43Aiden:It's crazy how you pulled up the photo and actually didn't help me at all. He was one of the front runners to be Kamala's VP. Governor of Kentucky? Look at that. I don't know much. He's got that Republican cred, from my understanding. He's in a red state, but he's blue. Oh, is it kind of the Bill Clinton vibe? A little bit Southern charm, a little bit of I can be bipartisan. I don't think he has risen anyway, but he's got that going for him. Aiden, who's your pick? My pick. I want to hear your pick. It's surprising to not see this person in the list. I didn't see them on the list at all. That is weird.

21:23Aiden:It was interesting to me because I feel like she still has so much further to fly. Are you?

21:31Atrioc:Oh, it's Nancy Pelosi. I thought you for sure were saying Doug.

21:36Aiden:It is time for this chick to leave the nest.

21:42Nancy Pelosi. Check the age real quick. check on nancy pelosi uh currently 85 so we have risk 90 when we're risk 90 born in 1940 during

21:54Aiden:1940 a wealth of experience to bring to the table yes she's helped us fight hitler every important she was there for hitler and she's here for trump she's here she's combated every issue of our time and you know at a personal level i'd let her log into my robin hood account any day dude get her in the white house let her manage our fund our national sovereign wealth fund just let her go hog wild with it incredible get nuts nancy nancy imagine with her at the wheel of a sovereign wealth fund that we all get a little little squish in bro i feel like infinite money every um like fox news host that makes a living off of like ribbing whoever the democratic nominee is you literally have like it's like covet for streamers you just made them you just made them so much money.

22:44Aiden:I think that's an important thought. Think about all the job growth in the right wing media sector. If Pelosi was the candidate, it would be unreal. Everybody, everybody would have a job. It would be unreal. That'd be awesome. That's a good pick. You want me to go next? Yeah. Okay. Your pick for the 2020. My pick. Democratic. I think Democrats need someone different. They need someone with broad appeal. They need someone with a little bit of riz and they need someone who in four years is going to have some free time ladies and gentlemen lebron james lebron james's nba career is about to wrap up mine is serious by the way i have a i have a bitch in can i'm serious too okay i love lebron james he's my goat he's better than jordan what better way to prove that not with another meaningless basketball stat but by becoming

23:36Atrioc:the president of himself into more championships becoming the president of the united states lebron james i think is what the democrats need shut up and dribble no shut up and vote wow his vp really makes ronnie

23:54Aiden:this is crazy because i feel like i so i made a full list yeah candidate ideas yeah okay he was on mine he's on your list also on mine but you know if you go on the polymarket and you scroll down enough not even that much lebron's on there he's there he unironically could pull he could

24:11Atrioc:do great. I mean, the other one...

24:12Aiden:I'll tell you what, he'd do better than Stephen A. Smith. People make that joke all the time. I actually agree. If they write hand-to-head. I think... I'm sorry. I don't know. Maybe you're on the wrong thing. But the other person on there that's not talked about, both Republicans and Democrats, the other person on both polyametric lists is Dwayne The Rock Johnson, who is a dark horse candidate for both parties. Dark horse for both... He's actually going to be at the forefront of the wig party, the wig revival. back the way he needs to put on a wig uh he does he does he's gonna have a big ball joke let's go all right doug who's your pick for the dnc in 2028 this is a real one i really think this

24:51Atrioc:would be the best pick for the democratic party now i'm starting to doubt that it's a real no it is you've said it so many times wall street journal all right what i'm trying to do is let the listeners know look some of us actually took this seriously okay are you the wall street journal serious about this pig what's not serious about this pig what's not serious about this pig wall street journal put out a poll okay and right now like right now the democrats are the least favorable they've ever been they like people dislike the democrats more they've ever been disliked in 30 years the democratic party is underwater the republicans are not they don't have a favorable rating but it's still way better than the democrats yeah so you have a fundamental problem with the democratic party where even like a quote i liked was the democratic brand is so bad but they don't have the credibility to be a critic of trump or the republican party you've got to fundamentally change the image of the democrats that's why boom mark cuban mark cuban okay you might think what that's a little weird okay first off the democrats are trying to get traditional masculinity back on right that's their big thing they lost men they lost gen z men they lost millennial men okay he's traditional mastian right he's big into sports he loves the steelers he's like you know he's your traditional kind of more manually guy on the shark tank, right?

26:03Atrioc:Yeah. Next non-establishment candidate, right? You, the reason Trump is so successful right now and people are so averse to somebody like Gavin Newsom, they're sick of the, the institutional kind of rot of the political party. You can see it in this, right? He comes from outside. He's not like a hardcore Democrat. He considers himself independent, right? He's really popular with independents. Okay. Uh, again, they, everybody hates the Democrats. If he comes in and he says, I'm a billionaire businessman like Trump did, I can handle the economy. One of the things in this Wall Street Journal article is they say that even though people don't like Trump's tariffs, they don't like the way he's handling the economy, they still trust the Republicans to handle the economy more than Democrats.

26:41Atrioc:So there's a perception, even with how much they dislike Trump, the country broadly thinks Republicans will handle finances and business and economy better. You counteract that with Mark Cuban. You say, look, this is a billionaire businessman. This is somebody you've seen on TV all this time. He's got that big brand. He's well known, just like Trump. He's got that big, he's got, you know, he had the Mavericks. Not only did he own the Mavericks, and everybody loves him for that, because he won the championship with his NBA team. Because of that, he could win Texas for the Democrats. Think about that.

27:09Unironically smart, right? I think before they lost Luka. I would not have traded Luka.

27:14Atrioc:That's what he says. He says stuff like that. Everybody loved him. Okay, check out this story. He's good at PR. He's like brash in a likable way. In a nationally publicized incident in 2002, he criticized the NBA League's manager of officials, Ed T. Rush, saying he wouldn't be able to manage a Dairy Queen. Dairy Queen's management took offense to Cuban's comments and invited him to manage a Dairy Queen restaurant for a day. Mark Cuban accepted the invitation, worked for a day at a Dairy Queen in Coppell, Texas, where fans lined up to get a blizzard from the owner of the Madrex. It's exactly how Trump spun himself.

27:44Atrioc:This is like the reverse Trump playbook. He has a show like The Apprentice, but it's Shark Tank. Yes. He's a billionaire. Okay. He's doing the brash stuff. He actually wants to run. He commissioned polls in 2020 that showed he would get 25 % of the vote. The only reason he didn't is because his family vetoed it. That's what he said. And so if his family, this would be eight years past that point, is like, hey, Mark, you're good to go now. We were off in college or whatever. He gets to go do it. He's not too old. He's 66. But by the time he's running, when he's 69, that's young enough to get the boomers on board, but not so old that he'll die.

28:16Atrioc:That's super young. He supports transparency in healthcare through costless drugs, fiscally conservative. He's pro-crypto. I don't like crypto, but a lot of young men like crypto again if your thing is you're hemorrhaging young men this is the man to take you back this guy will bring all the men into one tent one big sweaty blue tent together they're gonna take it home i genuinely think this is such a smart pick tell me i'm wrong doug you might be wrong what wait that's such a smart pick sorry sorry and i

28:45Aiden:say this as a political expert on this show give me i'll i'll pose a question do you think this is a smart pick to win or do you think this is a smart pick for the united states both because you know we could we could argue say that there's no maybe we completely transform the election process right and we want somebody in power who's going to do the best job possible in terms of the actual like day-to-day decisions and direction we're pushing in i feel like it's probably some quiet guy or woman who doesn't want to run that's what i'm saying it's like so that's what i'm saying And do you just see this as a path to winning more than,

29:22Atrioc:or do you think the answer is both? No, I think even of the people who have a realistic path to winning, he then would govern. So there's like, I actually looked into his policies to get curious about this. He's like fiscally conservative, but he wants to increase taxes on wealthy and big corporations while minimizing them on small families, small businesses. Yeah. Like big focus on small business, but he still obviously has enough experience to get big business, big tech on board because he's been involved with that. In healthcare, that's like a big thing he's pushed for. If you've heard of Cost Plus Drugs, this company he runs, that's all about transparency and healthcare.

29:53Atrioc:So he has concrete ideas and a track record to help fix the healthcare system, make it more affordable, make super poor people be able to actually get stuff even if they're uninsured. So I think he actually has legitimate, likable, well-reasonable policies that are broadly appealing to both bases.

30:11Aiden:Yes. okay the the two directions that i was pulled in here are one an immediate revulsion to the idea that another tv personality billionaire is going to be the next president of the united states yeah i feel like that is something that we need to get away from it feels like a movement in the direction of uh idiocracy like linda mcmahon being the head of the department of education it's what are we doing here you know but but pulling back a bit and thinking about stuff that have heard Mark Cuban say or Mark Mark Cuban advocate for. I'm not sure how appealing a billionaire is going to be even at the surface level to a huge portion of the left in this country or at least the Democrats in this country.

30:56Aiden:But I feel like I feel like everything I've seen him say publicly about things like taxes, health care and like social direction of the country all feel pretty progressive. And this is, you know, I'm open to hearing quotes of how maybe he says we should, you know, billionaires should pay lower taxes and I didn't see that. No, he explicitly says billionaires should pay higher taxes. He explicitly says raise taxes on me, like taxes on the wealthy should pay for a bunch of social services that we do not have in the United States. All of these things that I think are personally important, I think those, and he seems to stand behind that.

31:35Aiden:So I guess my open question to people listening is besides the fact that he just is a billionaire straight up, how many things has he said publicly that don't seem like they would be moving us in a better direction? I don't actually think this is a great pick, but I do think that there is an interesting, like getting past my first like five, 10 second reaction, there's something interesting here. Yeah, I mean, what I'll say is, you know, we're scrolling this list of options. This is all, it's a bad group. I'm saying in terms of like, uh, yeah, I guess what I'll say is for the, almost all the elections of my lifetimes, I've been able to vote.

32:16Most people have felt like we've had two bad choices or they felt pretty bad. So of this low bar, I actually think Mark human's fine. Like I think he, he can hang with everybody that he could, you know, him and Biden. I don't feel like, Oh, I'm so leading for Biden or Kamala. I'm so like he's, he, I would pick him over either of those to actually.

32:34Aiden:There's a big problem that I see that you alluded to at the beginning. And the next two people below Gavin Newsom were AOC and Pete Buttigieg. And I think the problem right now, because the approval is so low, and this applied to Gavin, but applies to everybody else, is anybody that is tied to the Democratic Party in the past five to 10 years feels like they have to overcome a massive hurdle in order to get accepted into the position. Like I think AOC and Buttigieg might be decent options functionally, but my faith in their ability to win is actually rather low because of their association to the party at large.

33:17Aiden:The only person I can even think of that has a commanding place in, let's say, left-wing politics in the United States that i think could overcome this is bernie and the reason i say that is because there is a strong narrative uh even among republicans that the democrats fucked him the first time and he's also an independent outside of that so i i don't think he's the guy either because he's just too old and it's too late for his window but other than bernie all of the people that have had all this democratic politician face time in the last few years it feels insurmountable for them to become the candidate that everybody likes and that's the that's why it feels like this weirdly

33:59Atrioc:mark cuban feels more reasonable and that he's he's fresh and new i think you have to go in two directions either farther to the left to somebody like aoc or i i guess like more center but with an outsider and that's what cuban would represent and so i have to go one of those two you can't

34:16Aiden:If I wanted to win, I would campaign, you know, whether I'm Mark or whoever, I would definitely take a piece out of Trump's playbook and campaign on a populist message. I think right now you have to take like a hard left populist message to to win in some way. You know, whether or not that all of the messaging that goes along with that is 100 percent the solution to every problem. But I think the path to winning has something to do with Trump took populism in a bad time and won with it. And the other side needs to do the same. And I don't think the Democrats, no matter who it is at the moment, really represent the everyday man.

34:57I mean, there's two routes this goes. And depending on that is how you're going to pick your candidate. So there's a first route, which is that things mostly hold up OK over the next three years. and the Democrats need to pick somebody who's a little safer, who can pull over some center-right Republicans. There's another route where things get so bad over the next three years, the Democrats are almost guaranteed to win. And in that case, you want to pick a candidate who's a little more, I don't know, exciting or progressive or different because this is your chance to make, you can get real change fast.

35:31Aiden:You can make really big changes. Because you're almost guaranteed to win because the economy or whatever is so bad that you're just going to win by default. which is kind of to be honest what trump sort of had this last election which is that people were so mad about inflation he was kind of running with a with a huge wind at his back there's a real chance that happens again and so there's a chance you could waste this opportunity by picking someone super safe or there's a chance where it's a close relation you need to pick somebody who's like more broadly appealing i don't know what's gonna be i i don't know i have no idea we're three years it could be an aoc or it could be a mark cuban i really don't know to me i we preface this conversation is more for fun than anything, right?

36:08Aiden:Because so much can change between then and now. Speak for yourself. I'm a political expert. Fair enough. Fair enough. Political expert, Doug. I mean, think about what's happened in the last three years. It's insane.

36:18Atrioc:Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, a lot will change. If you have your own suggestions or picks. What I'll say is, like, I feel there's a pretty strong chance that we get a Mark Cuban or LeBron type figure. Not to this degree, necessarily, but somebody who's kind of, like, a popular brand. because I feel I don't see us moving away from that. Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast, dude. Mr. Beast. I'm not saying I like that, but it feels like it'd be hard to move away from that after that's dominated the conversation for 12 years. And you've seen how utterly, ruthlessly efficient Trump has been with like utilizing that. Last to leave the White House gets a million dollars.

36:55That would be a banger video.

36:57Aiden:Do you want to hear my other? Oh yeah, if you want to tell me. And also, not chat, sorry. Viewers, please leave your comments on who you think might be a great Dark Horse candidate, who you think is going to win. I want to read them. I'm excited. It's interesting. Well, I think it's tough to say, you know, what party some of these guys would run for. Why is that so? It's just challenging. So I've just kind of put a party on them. I've taken a guess as to who would be the best fit. So for the Republican Party, I have Jeff Teague. Jeff Teague. Yeah, yeah. The basketball podcaster. Jeff Teague, the basketball podcaster.

37:33You think he would run for Republicans?

37:34Aiden:Yeah, probably a Republican.

37:35Atrioc:Is he a billionaire? Otherwise, I'm not interested.

37:37Aiden:Okay, not a billionaire. Not a billionaire. Cross him off the list. Didn't quite make it. I have the corpse of Lee Kuan Yew. Feels like it could go in either direction. God willing.

37:46God willing. I'd vote for it.

37:49Aiden:So this is actually, this guy's his own party. He'd be bringing something else to the table. It's Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping. I think the Dems should run him.

37:57Atrioc:that he sort of does a flip like Biden might do for the Republicans or that he merges? I think it's more like he just

38:03Aiden:continues running for the CCP but in the United States and then he just sees how the cards fall. Yeah. I have Elizabeth Warren. Would China become the

38:15Atrioc:51st state or would we become a new province of China?

38:19Aiden:Probably a province in that case, don't you think? It doesn't really

38:21Atrioc:seem like it would go the other way around. You don't get a lot of votes.

38:26Aiden:And then my last pick uh forgive me here gerb gerb and ghoulie bur burden mu hamado bourbon did you make up somebody's your imaginary friend this is the guy who used to be the president of turkmenistan and there's that video of him riding a horse in a pre-planned race that he got to win every year and then he on the final stretch of the horse race face plants into the ground in front of everyone and is knocked out cold and then they pick him up off the track delete all the video of the event 30 minutes in silence the arena sits and then he walks back out and then they just carry on as if he won and they award him a medal and then they had all of the journalists delete the footage off their phone

39:10Atrioc:that makes me think I think a good candidate would be Kony 2012 is that guy

39:16Aiden:is Kony alive? happened to that guy Kony 28 I mean you said the corpse of Lee Kwan-Hugh so that's not a pre-rec actually I didn't say that pre-rec you're right you're right and then i had a i had mitch mcconnell but he you know what dude this makes me think how we have a country of 300 million and we just i think we just pick like the worst people that's pretty bad you know there's got to be just some regular person who's like proud to be an american works hard there's probably so many people who are like ultra competent yeah they would be great they'd be great they would do a really good job they're not psychopaths they're not willing to try to be the president have to be like built for tv in the media environment and social media and uh debates and what if it was like the mass singer

40:02Atrioc:like we don't you can't see them and you can't hear them the mass president yeah but you just like they submitted ping reveals he got us submit like a college an anonymous college essay and then our college admissions program decide who had the best one that 300 million chad gbt why i should

40:18Aiden:be president fuck yeah i like this i like this well uh you know we can talk about campaign reform another time but one of the big changes i would advocate for is corpses should be allowed yeah i think uh weekend at bernie style this is the video let me see dude this shit is crazy dude wait so we do have the video so somebody's some so how it worked was that every all the journalists and visitors that were there at the time got stopped and searched for their SD cards and cameras, right? But some people managed to sneak out footage in their bags or pockets or whatever. Like not everybody got stopped.

40:59Okay.

41:04So he's winning. He just face plants.

41:09Aiden:And he doesn't move. This is the president of, like a dictator president of this country. right they they take him off they make sure he's okay nobody is sure what to do for 30 minutes and then he just comes back out and they just all the whole of society pretends that he won dude that's so beast that's so beast and that's the type of thing that gets you know gen z men back to the park yeah that's what i'm saying back he could win for sure yeah he's a great horse racer is what i've heard yeah yeah men get emotional about horses you see that nick that's true that's our ticket back all right well that's our political analysis for 2028 we pretty much solved it uh flash forward in three years and see how correct we were when it's joe biden for the republicans running against lebron james the democrats when it's actually it's my girl you're gonna be fucking the one thing we didn't mention and this is worth mentioning is by 2028 there could actually be an america party oh yeah by elon musk i mean he's he's making moves to set that up.

42:16He cannot run himself, though Trump can't do a third term. Things can be crazy, but he can't run himself, but his stated goal is to try and win at least one Senate seat so he can be the deciding vote for things and possibly run a presidential candidate for the America Party. I don't know who he'd run.

42:32Aiden:So Elon Musk can be the deciding vote for things. Well, that's his party, yeah. I think he's going to run big balls or cat turd. He has so many people in the arsenal. who could run for president, which would be worth mentioning insane. Because if he did do that, that would reasonably split the Republican vote

42:53Atrioc:pretty significantly. Are Twitter bots allowed to vote? We're screwed. Tell us about trade. What's going on? And I quote a huge W from Donald Trump. I won't say what person on the podcast said that exactly. It wasn't just his new mustache. I want to talk about Trump and bullying and trade. I've been pretty negative on his trade policy on this podcast thus far in that. I thought it's been pretty effective, pretty lackluster, but his general stance is ineffective. Sorry, pretty ineffective. That's correct. Yeah, pretty ineffective, pretty lackluster and pretty damaging to America's trade partnerships and prestige and et cetera and the dollar.

43:37however the core philosophy of it which is like america has the consumers of the world we spend a lot of fucking money you want to shop here you got to pay my fee this kind of like uh mafia style bullying that he's been doing has been mostly ineffective thus far i want to say with yesterday's announcement of the eu trade deal i think he got his first in his mind dub and i do want to say The deal is so stacked in America's favor and so bad for Europe that it is impossible not to mention that his system in that way worked for this one. In that they are now paying across the board. We have an across the board 50 % tariff on all goods from Europe.

44:2250 or 15?

44:23Atrioc:15. 15, okay. And they have no tariff on us. Now, normally the problem with the trade war is you put tariffs on them. They put tariffs back on you. It escalates. It becomes a big problem. them everyone gets poorer but they have agreed to do nothing they will they just bend over and take it and they're gonna buy more natural gas they're gonna invest money in america this last part is pretty nebulous everyone says this and there usually doesn't happen but there's a 15 percent tariff on basically all european goods going in america and uh sorry 15 or 15 15 15 okay that's

44:53Aiden:but all good you said 50 the first time and i was like that's all that'd be insane now 15 but but none on American goods to Europe. And so, you know, I looked into this and this is pretty widely agreed European sources, American sources to be a very, very one-sided deal. And it's interesting to think about that because Europe as a whole is economically about the same as America. Like they're, they're roughly the same in terms of GDP output. Uh, you know, it'd be like the China block, the EU block and America block are roughly equally economic powerful. However, political power is much more difficult to find in Europe because they're fragmented.

45:32This was a negotiation by committee, and they kind of got picked apart is basically the idea that I'm seeing. In that Trump went in very forcefully and kind of scarily, and they couldn't react fast enough. Now, Canada and China both reacted very forcefully. China responded immediately with counter tariffs. They banned rare earth metals. they did a lot of things to like muscle their way back in the conversation same with canada which did like american good boycotts and tariffs of their own europe was not able to move quickly and they were very divided internally on how to respond how forcefully there's a block of like france and spain that were like we need to respond incredibly forcefully we need to do huge tariffs on america and there's a block of like germany and italy that were like if we get into a trade war it's really scary for us.

46:21We have a lot of manufacturing exports. If they stop buying German cars or whatever, it's going to be terrible for our economy. And because of that, they ended up in a place where they took the easy out. That was the less bad option than, you know, they took the 15 % rather than maybe getting a 40 or 50 and getting into a trade war. So in this case, the bullying, at least in the short term kind of worked in America's favor. And I want to like bring, I want to just be, it's a narrative violation of it to what I've been talking about, but it's worth mentioning. Um, that being said, you know, the, the social ties, the political ties have deeply frayed.

46:56Like we're really making Europe an enemy or like at least a sovereign block that is not tied in with America, but on trade, this deal is pretty bad for them. I don't know if you guys have any thoughts or anything you want to ask or, or I

47:08Aiden:have questions. Yeah. I'm wondering, so as it stands now, you know, in the short term seems not that good for Europe, good for the United States, right? Longer term, what are the consequences to us that you might've been reading about? And also longer term, what are the ways that Europe can make up for the shortfalls of this agreement? Like what you've talked about in the past that decisions that the U.S. is making and the aggression that the U.S. is using towards Europe pushes them in potentially other directions in terms of who they work with more closely, like, you know, whether it be China or they're more like interlocked in.

47:49Aiden:Let me jump on that real quick because that is the big thing. I think that's what I might have gotten wrong in my earlier analysis, which is basically that my first take on this, which is that China's this rising power and this is going to push a lot of people into China's arms. What has actually happened in practice is that Europe has found itself between a rock and a hard place because they have a massive trade surplus with America. They make a lot of cars and goods and pharmaceuticals and they sell it to America. But they have a massive trade deficit with China. So they can't run to China's arms because China is already dumping products on them.

48:25They can't sell. China is not buying enough European goods. So if they're like, all right, fuck America, we'll go to China. They just, their manufacturing still is lost because China is outcompeting them.

48:38Aiden:They're getting outcompeted by the companies in China that are dominating the Chinese market already. I wish I had a graph for you, but it's – with America, it's this massive surplus for Europe, and they need that. That's their – a lot of their jobs are making things to sell in America. They don't have a lot of jobs making things to sell in China. And so it's harder for them. In fact, they had a meeting with Xi Jinping and the Chinese delegation like four days ago where Xi Jinping said, I'm urging you to make the right choice, Wink, in this upcoming trade. but like they were calling him out because the deficit between europe and china has gotten so big that they were calling him out europe was calling china vanderlian who did the eu negotiations with america was calling china out and basically saying the deficit between europe and china has gotten so big that we have to fix this gap we can't the the negotiate they're saying china if you want to get what you want and for us to forge deeper ties you need to do things that help us compete better in the Chinese.

49:35You have to buy more European stuff. Yeah. Like if we're going to buy a ton of Chinese stuff, you have to buy more European stuff because right now it's very one-sided. Right now China wants to manufacture for everyone in the world and basically no one else has manufacturing jobs. They make it all. You buy from them. You get cheap goods, but you lose the jobs you had manufacturing. Okay. Europe does not want to do that.

49:54Atrioc:So this is the argument that I heard from Scott Besson, who's the treasury secretary, who's basically the guy in the administration, Trump administration, who's leading this. And I remember listening to him when all this tariff stuff started. And his argument was, it's a bad idea for any country in the world to, you know, threaten us because we buy everybody's stuff. We have the power here, right? Like China, this is the argument from him. Like China needs us because their economy right now is just based on manufacturing things and selling it. And we as America are the biggest buyer. And so we need them more than they need us.

50:26Atrioc:And it sounds like that's kind of what's going on with Europe as well. Or at least that's the argument in terms of being able to bully them into something. I would say with China, it didn't work out the way he thought in that China, first of all, I think was more ready for it. So they are still manufacturing for everyone outside of America. And they have found many, many ways to send it to Mexico or Vietnam or Cambodia and it gets around it. So it hasn't really impacted them in the same way. Europe blinked is how I've read from European and American sources. They just, they were too scared of this escalating.

50:57And in the short term having like empty factories in Germany and like just they don't have that system set up. They're built for free trade with the United States. And they thought 15 % tariff won't change the price enough that everyone switches to non-European goods. By the way, I do want to say very clearly the data is now out. Like who is paying the tariffs? It is still American consumers. Like 80 % of the tariff is paid by American consumers paying higher prices. So it's not like it's a great thing for us we're raising more money from tariffs but it's not yeah it's just it's

51:30Aiden:just less bad than it is for them so i yeah i was gonna ask the when you look at this from an american perspective yeah is the main downside or the only downside that we have to pay more or we have to pay more for european goods yes that but that's it that's the downside yeah and

51:47Atrioc:what what is the win from trump's camps perspective tons of money raised from tariff revenue i.e. from americans yeah americans paying more it's like a vat tax and then over time the idea is that that extra tax is going to make european manufacturers less competitive to americans and we'll get some of that business well yeah can i maybe a cascading bit of logic here and jump in

52:12Aiden:to correct me if i'm if i'm wrong my understanding goods from europe are usually uh finished higher end products rather than things that are used to build or produce things right like a lot of what we get from china or canada might be timber or oil or minerals right things that go into the base manufacturing of uh something else in the united states that you go on to make a house out of the timber for example sure but from europe you're buying more finished goods or higher end goods like BMW goods, wine, pharmaceuticals, cars. Yeah. Those are like, they're big. So even though the prices are going up on those things, the impact to American businesses might also be lower because they're end consumer products that are, do you see what I mean?

53:05Aiden:If they don't influence the cost of a bunch of things after the fact, whereas, or do you not think that's what you're saying? But I, you know, I think economic theory would say that over time, like an American wine producer is going to have an advantage long-term over the European one. If they have to pay 15%, if there's a 15 % tariff that makes them more expensive, that should eventually happen. What Europe is gambling on is that 15 % is not big enough to change anyone's buying habits. They'll just take this smaller tariff. It kind of sucks. Their prices are going to be more expensive, but the structure of global trade won't trade, won't change.

53:40They still have their leadership in the industries they have in pharmaceuticals and all that. That's their idea. We don't know exactly what's going to play out again so far outside of this deal. It hasn't really worked out on the Trump side for what they've said is going to happen. Like again, one thing I really want to mention is that China and the rare earth metals thing was the ultimate knockout punch. Like that, that turned out to be a really strong negotiating position because they own again, almost the entire supply chain on rare earth metals. They Until your company comes up. But for now, when they did that, Trump had to back down and change some things and soften because that cut off so much of American businesses that use rare earth metals to build things.

54:22And it all goes through China. Like once they cut that off, they had the balls in the vice I heard someone describe it as.

54:28Aiden:That's what I mean. Is there nothing like that that is being imported from Europe that has equal stake in terms of security or underlying economic value to American businesses? Is that part of the reason why this decision can get made? No, I think the thing that Europe had in its quiver they could have used was that trade between America and Europe is actually more balanced than Trump says it is, but they buy services. They do a lot of digital services. Basically, our big tech dominates Europe. And so a lot of money from there flows us. but doesn't count as a goods trade. So that's why we have a deficit.

55:06They have rules they created after Trump won for this situation where they can really crack down on American big tech. And they thought about using them and France was saying to use them. They decided not to because they didn't want to escalate this trade war. They blinked.

55:22Aiden:The employment of that would be something like, I have a Salesforce contract with a company in France and they can add a tax to that contract. Yeah, something like that. Or, you know, they could put a tax on Google AdSense or on they could antitrust regulate meta on Instagram or they could really make big tech's life hell in Europe. And if they did that, the threat would be that is going to, you know, that's the seven stocks holding up America. If we really hammer big tech, it's going to fuck your stock market. And so they considered it. It was a serious thing, but they got afraid. They blinked.

56:02And whether it's the right call or not remains to be seen. Some people say this was the smart choice. Tariffs are paid by Americans. They can deal with the problem. We'll hold steady and get American goods for cheaper. I'm just saying this is the first time someone's got truly bullied with no response. And they're saying that, not just us. European diplomats are saying we got rolled over. We got steamrolled. France is saying this is submission. We're agreeing to submission right now. Like, you know, there's, this is what's happening. And so I don't know what it'll mean going forward. It's definitely a fraying of the relationship, but if this deal is signed and holds, you know, it's, it's a win for America on trade versus Europe.

56:43Yeah.

56:44Aiden:This could be tough because I do love making fun of Europeans.

56:50Atrioc:Let's cap this out with a quick test. See if this whole thing that Trump's doing worked. Aiden, will you finally start manufacturing Ludwig's merchandise here in America? No.

57:02Aiden:No, it wasn't really getting made. You weren't making it in France. It was only getting made in Europe sometimes. Some things sometimes get made in Portugal. Yeah. So it might change that a little bit, but it's not going to move it to America. You're not going to finally open up a factory? Do you hate America? I mean... You're the one going to Sweden, bro.

57:23Atrioc:All right. Well, speaking of tech giants, I have some fun little information about OpenAI and Microsoft. So I think there's an interesting dynamic that a lot of people aren't really aware of, which is the biggest AI company, OpenAI, and Microsoft, the biggest company in the world, have a very strange relationship that is maybe about to implode. So the context here is that OpenAI is, in theory, rumors going to release GPT-5 in a couple weeks. They've been saying that. They've been saying that for a while. So that's the most recent rumors. It hasn't been fully confirmed. But in theory, they're going to drop the big new model, GPT-5.

57:58Atrioc:Right now, we're on GPT-4.5, arguably. There's all these different fractional things. So the average person who isn't super into the AI stuff, you probably don't give a shit, right? The GPT-5 coming out doesn't really affect your life. ChatGPT will be like a little bit smarter in these ways. Well, it's worth saying, I'm putting a link here for Perry, if you could pull this up. But Sam Altman, he does this every time, but he has been on a little bit of a press tour saying that he is scared of GPT-5. It's so good, it's scary. Yeah. This might... This leads into it. Okay, perfect. So why would you give a shit if GPT-5 is a little bit better, right?

58:32Atrioc:Most people are probably like, okay, there's 100 new models every month. Who cares? Okay, well, there's a very interesting thing between OpenAI and Microsoft. Open AI started, again, they make ChatGPT 10 years ago, 2015, before the internet craze. Before the internet craze. Back then, it's just a scrappy little group of AI researchers. They're like, we want to try to make crazy AI stuff. They even got investment from Elon Musk, and they called it Open AI because they were going to be open about it, and it's a nonprofit. They're like, we're not trying to make money. And they 1v1'd Dendy and Dota with it.

59:03Atrioc:Oh, they were the Dota guys. Yeah, they did the Dota stuff. So early on, they made a Dota bot, basically, using these AI concepts and training. And that was like a cool little test thing that they did. This is a poor time. Yeah. Well, let's say I was there in person for that. Really? Really? That's sick. So for a couple years - You could have stopped this. Yeah. You could have stopped the Terminator, bro. So this is, if you guys remember 10 years ago or eight years ago, this is how most people thought of AI. It's like, oh, that's funny. Somebody made a chess AI or whatever, right? Yeah. But they start getting smarter and smarter.

59:33Atrioc:In 2018, this big paper comes out on Transformers. The AI craze as we currently know it with large language models kicks off. And they start developing this GPT models in earnest and start to really get some traction. Most people don't know about it yet. But in 2019, they are like, okay, we're starting to actually get something here. And they go to Microsoft and they say, look, we need to raise a lot of money. The problem is they're still a non-profit. So they can't really do that. And so they then split from not just a non-profit. It's a non-profit who owns a for-profit company. And the for-profit company is able to raise investment dollars for Microsoft at like capped return.

1:00:08Atrioc:So it's like, Hey, Microsoft, you won't make a ton of money if you invest with us, but you can actually make some. And in return, Microsoft gives them a billion dollars. That doesn't sound that crazy. Cause we talk about big numbers all the time. It's a crazy amount of money for any company, particularly a small research lab. And the thinking was they were going, look, we thought this would be this cute little nonprofit thing at the beginning, but it is now becoming clear that these models need a crazy amount of computation power. We need a ton of money to throw out the problem. We're going to start feeding all the data on the internet into it, et cetera, et cetera.

1:00:38Atrioc:So Microsoft agrees, but there's some weirdness here because Microsoft needs to put a ton of money into a very early company with this like moonshot idea. Nobody knows is real. So a couple of things go back and forth. Microsoft will get a profit return, right? So that's pretty standard. They also get access to the IP. So if open AI develops any AI, Microsoft gets it. Microsoft is the only company still to this day, this is Continued Sense, that has access to the actual mechanics of what OpenAI and ChatGPT does. Nobody else can do that. They also get to run their products, like ChatGPT, on their own servers.

1:01:10Atrioc:So you can go to ChatGPT and buy stuff there, but you can also go buy the same services on Microsoft. Yes.

1:01:16Aiden:Remember when we talked about open source models versus closed source models, and we were talking about DeepSeq? So they basically have the access that everyone has to something like DeepSeq, but for ChatGPT, and they're the only people that have that. Yes.

1:01:27Atrioc:so open ai has been developing this thing and microsoft's the only one who gets access to it every time every few months when open ai releases some crazy new thing microsoft has access to it and they get to incorporate it into all of their products so microsoft makes this big gamble they're like we are going to put more money in we're going to put all this money into open ai it's still early put a billion but with this gamble that if this goes really well we have access to your stuff behind the scenes we're going to grow our businesses together and that's a kind of big risk for a big tech company rather than doing it in-house and this all sounds you know pretty decent except they add something called the clause and this is where it gets really weird okay so open ai convinces microsoft to put a clause in the contract that says if we open ai create artificial general intelligence we create an ai that's like as intelligent as a person the contract is null and void you no longer get access to any of our stuff it's only ours now that is an insane thing for an investor.

1:02:20Atrioc:If you are a company offering a billion dollars and they're like, hey, we're partners, you get access to everything up until we make something that's really awesome, then we take it away and you get nothing. That's fucking crazy. And this is in the contract that they've had. This is called the clause. Now you might wonder, what does that mean? That's the point. Nobody knows what that means. AGI doesn't mean anything. It means artificial general intelligence and every single tech company has a different idea of what that actually means.

1:02:44Aiden:It's like if, it's like if Microsoft was edging and they want to get they can only they can edge closer and closer and closer yeah but if it if they get over the hump if they get over chat gpt gets over the hump it's game over it's not like that so but but getting over the hump is not well defined right right i won't put a lot of leg

1:03:06Atrioc:work in for my analogy so far they have not climaxed and we don't know if or when they will so okay you might have heard people talk about artificial general intelligence the funny thing about it is everybody has their own definition for some people it means you've created a god being that's as smart as humans for some people it's like well they're just better at than a phd student for some people it's it provides a certain amount of economic value maybe it's like you run certain businesses maybe it's like can replace a human at any job maybe it's only at math jobs maybe it's only at manufacturing jobs everybody has a different definition and the problem with everybody having a different definition is that two of the biggest tech companies have a contract that says one of them gets to bail and take everything if they achieve AGI, which neither of them defined.

1:03:49Atrioc:So that contract and that clause has existed since then. Both companies have continued to grow massively. OpenAI is becoming bigger and bigger. ChatGPT is now the biggest AI product in the world. It's arguably one of the most influential things in the world. They are the big dominant AI company and Microsoft is their partner. They've invested like 14 billion at this point. They're 49 % stakeholder. And at any point, if OpenAI comes out and says, we did it, we made the SuperSmart AI, we did it. They get to cut the contract and run. That's crazy. And so Microsoft is very concerned that they're going to come out and do this.

1:04:24Atrioc:And in fact, both CEOs are saying different things in the press tour. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft says, oh, there's a great quote. He's like, us claiming some AGI milestone, that's just nonsensical benchmark hacking. So he's trying to say, look, AGI is, that's just a concept. Meanwhile, Sam Altman is like, yeah, we think we're getting close. It's within the next couple years. And internally, there was a memo leaked at OpenAI where they defined clearly what it is. And it basically means an AI can manage an organization, which is not like that far off. So they're both trying to pin the targets.

1:04:58Atrioc:They can bail from the car. It's crazy. They can manage the vending machine. So they can manage the vending machine. And that's what it, and so, and to get this even crazier, and then we'll cap it off. Right now, OpenAI is having a problem because when they spun it into a for-profit company, that was still limited. They're now trying to turn it into a full for-profit public benefit corporation. They're trying to turn it into a corporation so they can give their employees stock, so they can raise more money from things like SoftBank. They think this is vital to them being able to survive. Microsoft can block them from doing that.

1:05:27Atrioc:So OpenAI wants to turn into a for-profit company so they can expand even more. Microsoft could stop them and is saying, you can't do that. We're not going to give you approval until you get this fucking clause out of our contract that says you guys can run and bail. All of this might, might climax. We might finish edging in the next month when they release GPT-5, which as you said, Sam Altman is going around being like, it scares me. I couldn't believe, I felt useless as a human. He's saying things like this publicly because Microsoft is like, oh shit, are they going to drop in quotes, AGI? Yeah, there's two things I want to say about this.

1:06:00I have two links for you. Number one is, no, that's who I just added. Number one is Sam Altman video, if you could play the one at the bottom. This is Sam Altman. He's a sharp character. He knows what he's doing. He is. He's been in this plan for a while.

1:06:18Aiden:The press tour being like, I'm scared of this. Like, it's crazy. It's AGI-like. And then the other guy being like, it's actually dog shit. It's actually not even that good. What the fuck are you talking about, AGI? This is an iconic thing of Sam Altman being grilled by Congress where they ask him, do you have any shares in this thing? Like, are you doing this for money? And then ask him.

1:06:39Atrioc:Okay. You make a lot of money, do you? No, I paid enough for health insurance. I have no equity in OpenAI.

1:06:45Aiden:Really? That's interesting. You need a lawyer.

1:06:48Atrioc:I need a what?

1:06:50Aiden:You need a lawyer or an agent.

1:06:52Atrioc:I'm doing this because I love it. Yeah, so that was a really nice thing to say. he didn't have any equity in the nonprofit form of open AI. However, he's about to have a ton of equity in the for-profit spinoff that they're making to actually manage the whole thing. And it's going to become a massively successful billionaire after this all is through. And so I thought that was a little bit of a funny thing. Secondly is this article. It just came out eight hours ago, Microsoft in talks to maintain access to open AI as tech beyond AGI miles. Oh damn. Okay. This is exactly what you're talking about.

1:07:22They are in deep negotiations right now. and as you've said satya nadella is very focused on getting this clause the fuck out because having this key man risk where someone says we have agi and you lose your 300 billion dollar

1:07:36Atrioc:valuation investment is it's not it's not it would take Microsoft stock it would be yes it's not just that like all the ai companies our entire stock market as a country is based off of big tech jerking each other off about how ai is going to make everybody trillions of dollars that like I get the edging metaphor. Yes. That's what's going on. Microsoft is at the head of that. I believe still they're the most valuable company in the world, right? No, NVIDIA. Oh, they got, oh, right, okay. They got bought. Anyway, but they're up there, right? And they briefly were the most valuable.

1:08:05Aiden:Microsoft's the goon commander. I've been saying.

1:08:09Atrioc:And yeah, their valuation is, like the other companies, largely propped up by the AI concept of them saying, we're going to put AI into all of our products and everything is going to get way bigger. I don't really think that's necessarily going to happen. But if they suddenly lost access to the company that is supplying the AI models that is propping up this entire concept, this entire pitch, they're going to tank. This is a huge deal for Microsoft. Yeah. It's just funny that OpenAI went from like, this is a pure nonprofit to get us to AGI safely to we're a for-profit spinoff that is managed by the nonprofit.

1:08:43And that's because we have to make some money, but it's all for this plan. And then it's just going to be a for-profit company.

1:08:48Atrioc:technically it would it will still be owned by so they tried to do that yeah they received pushback basically it turns out legally the states were not going to allow them to just turn their non-profit into a for-profit so the the now attempt that they're trying to do is to keep the non-profit with ownership of the for-profit but the for-profit becomes a a proper corporation with shares yeah but it has all the right it like owns the ip now instead of yes but the non-profit it would have control, like can set the board of directors and veto things. They still have a lot of control, but it's been a pretty blatant shift towards profitability.

1:09:24Aiden:I thought maybe this is what you're talking about. When there was a group of people on the board of OpenAI, the original group of people had labeled themselves primarily as ethical altruists, like Sam Bankman-Farid, and they had a different outlook of the company. Wasn't there already a power grab within the company and change of the board in order to transition it to a private company? No, there was an attempted, I don't know if it's called a power grab, but they tried to force Sam Altman out. They came out as CEO. They said he was a liar. And they said he was trying to make things into not what they agreed on as their mission.

1:09:58Aiden:Yeah. And all of the employees revolted because they want their stock to be worth something. They do not want. So everyone said, we're just going to leave if this goes through. And so they brought Sam Altman back and everything went back. But through all of that, it remained a nonprofit. Yes. Actually, because of that, I think, is why they got the AGI clause. I think that was like the one thing. No, no, no. Really? Okay.

1:10:20Atrioc:That started 2019. Okay. Yeah, that's a long time. So, yeah, there's a weird history. And basically, Sam Altman, as the CEO, has kind of like gotten control. And it's funny because like Elon Musk, if you enjoy following him on Twitter, every few days he'll be like, scam Altman, and just tweet something about what Sam Altman has done. He is like super pissed. He's so mad. Yeah, because Elon, again, at the very beginning of this, in 2015, when it's a little scrappy research company, to elon's credit for a long time he's talked about the importance of ai regulation and the necessity for it to be like open and safe so he invested i forget how much but at least millions of dollars into the original open ai it was like 100 million wasn't it it was something crazy the first 100 million actually i think he promised 100 million and didn't give it all didn't give it yeah but but he did give money for free the thing is my understanding of the story is that elon musk puts this money in and then as it's growing after the dota stuff he's like i need to have soul control right yeah and then they were like no he saw dandy lose that 1v1 minute he's like this is getting out of hand everybody involved with the story is not right they're not i mean they have their own incentives and they they all pretend they don't but it's all comes back to money 45 million dollars whoa that is way more than i thought is what musk put into it apparently so yeah he put into that being like ah it's gonna be this open source thing and they they are one of the most closed source ai companies out there they have nobody has any access to it except for microsoft right now asterisk yeah so there's a bit of war there and now they're both competing to see who can give jensen hwang more money every day yeah it's so weird it's so weird to put a clause like that to be like hey if the spooky ghost shows up it's all con like it's all canceled well i think you know it's weird i feel like we've like as a society we've given up on regulating it in just one year.

1:12:03But in the crazy before times of 2019, it was like, one day we'll have AGI. We need to be ready for that. We need to be prepared. It needs to be not for profit. It needs to be. But now everyone's like, I like Chad JBT. They're going to make money. I feel like society has already given up on the fact that anyone will slow down at all for any reason. Anyway, we'll see. I don't know. The drama is crazy. It was wild when the CEO of Twitch was OpenAI CEO for two days.

1:12:31Atrioc:during the during the drama sam altman got ousted very briefly because again the board was like you're a lying scumbag we don't want you leading the company anymore emmett sheer gotten the new

1:12:41Aiden:cco imagine that stuck and it's been open ai under emmett sheer this whole time uh chad you

1:12:47Atrioc:have a hearthstone for non-stop it would have the company would have failed rapidly uh yeah yeah Yeah, people didn't like him. Funny stuff. Funny stuff. Funny stuff. Aiden, what's funnier than open AI drama? It's making fun of British people. Oh, God. They're collapsing society.

1:13:07Aiden:One of my favorite times. And it really is. I mean, I thought ever since Beans on Toast, they've been screwed, but you're telling me it's gotten even worse. The London bombings? Yeah, I'm going back all the way to 2005. Hey, what's going on there? I'm going all the way back to 2005. Uh... All right. I think this was an interesting thing that I'd see reported across a bunch of different videos. And in general, I think we have this idea that the UK economy, not on the best track, right? They have - Wait, can I just say, from a YouTuber POV, saying the UK is failing is printing money. It's the new China.

1:13:47Aiden:It's the new China class in 30 days. I've seen it in my niche, all these business finance channels, They just make a video saying the UK is a failed state. The UK is in trouble. The UK is about to collapse. And you just print views. So everyone's doing it and it's all over. Everyone's talking about it all the time. So that is the context with which you're telling me this story. Okay. Yeah. So as the country is in this pretty rough spot, right? One place in the UK is doing relatively well, at least from an overhead economic view, right? London is still a place that people go to. like if you're in the UK, you often need to go to London for opportunity, London for jobs.

1:14:25Aiden:That's where things still are in the country. And over the past, I mean, more than decades, London has always been a global center for finance, right? And until the global center for finance until New York surpassed it. But it's still a really important place within that context. And the place that, you know, London Stock Exchange, much, much smaller than New York Stock exchange. So what is the economic value of London? They have found a niche of supplying very wealthy people with specific services to store and hide and invest their wealth. That is the market that is primarily in London. If you want to figure out if you're an internationally rich person and you wanted to go somewhere to strategize how to structure and store your wealth abroad in order to avoid paying taxes, you go to London.

1:15:20Aiden:And they have spent a lot of effort supporting this industry of finance within London over the past decades. And that's why so much of the opportunity in Britain is centralized in this one sector, in this one city. And it's the one thing that still has a lot of movement behind it, basically. However, in recent years, there has been a spike of millionaires in the UK choosing to leave the country. They have the most millionaire flight, at least as of last year, of any country, more than China, even more than China, even. And where are all these UK millionaires going, right? This wealth is choosing to flee the country for a variety of reasons that they say they go to places like the UAE.

1:16:06Aiden:Maybe they go to places like Switzerland. It's also important to note that a lot of these millionaires that have been choosing to leave are not actually British citizens or not originally British citizens. They're people that came to the UK for the economic opportunity of how to structure or hide their wealth in certain ways. And now they are choosing to leave as more and more time passes. And there's something interesting here in that the UK leaned really heavily into to designing an economy that supports these really wealthy people, right? And they made a lot of concessions along the way in other ways that leave normal people behind, right?

1:16:46Aiden:Wealth inequality is increased. Opportunities in other cities are really low. It's difficult for anybody to afford a home in a place like London where all this wealth is congregated. And these people are now choosing to leave an economy that was like specifically designed to support them, right? And why would they go to a place like the UAE? At a base level, there's just no tax, right? They're offering a better version of the service that was available in the UK prior to this. Or for other people, they don't like where their tax money in the UK was going. So they might be not fleeing to a country with no taxes.

1:17:28Aiden:They're just fleeing to places where the taxes feel more representative of something impactful. Maybe they wind up going to Norway or Denmark, uh, or, or Switzerland. The Aiden. Yeah. The, all right. We don't have to, we don't have to give it an eight or anything. Uh, I think as this is the reason I wanted to bring this up is while I was kind of exploring this story and learning about people's place in the, uh, people moving to the UAE because of this or moving to other countries for various reasons, that there is sort of this two layer structure to the economy that comes into existence in these places.

1:18:09Aiden:So in London, right, there is an economy that services rich people and is leaving the poorest behind and also increasing wealth inequality the longer it exists. And then in places like the UAE, this might be even more dramatic where they've specifically structured their country in a way that invites businesses and invites wealthy people to come and get residents there or set business up there because of their really friendly tax laws. But all of the services and economy in the UAE is built on very cheap, imported foreign labor that is, you know, in practice, basically slavery, like getting people coming over from Southeast Asia, revoking their passports so they can't leave.

1:18:58Aiden:They can't change jobs so they have no negotiating power. And they're just trapped in the UAE to, you know, build buildings and operate services and basically service this rich person economy that exists, right? This structure of you let really wealthy people run rampant, you change a bunch of rules to accommodate the wealthiest and attract them from all over the world in order to create this vision of success or a seemingly successful economy. While it's supported by people who have very little resources or very little autonomy or increasingly bad economic circumstances. And it's a bit of this race, this interesting race to the bottom, right?

1:19:40Aiden:Where London was this hub and is this hub in so many ways still until things, the strain on the system breaks and people start, they just go to the next rich person place or the next tax haven, right? They don't stay and stick it out and try to fix things. They just go to the next place that can accommodate what they're looking for. And then the country that remains behind them is this a broken place that has no economy, uh, you know, built for normal people anymore. And this, uh, This happens with a bunch of other places and tax havens, and I'm still learning more about this. But I wanted to just bring up this interesting idea of two-tiered economic systems where wealth inequality has been stretched to the extremes.

1:20:32Aiden:And so these countries are incentivized to make things better and better for the remaining rich people that have money or to attract outside wealth into their country. and then eventually they pay the price because they have to make some sort of concession or something about the system breaks. And then all of those rich people that you spent all that time building a system for and attracting just jump ship and go to the next best place they can go to and you're left with nothing at the end of it.

1:20:58Atrioc:Why are rich people more loyal?

1:21:00Aiden:That's a great question, Doug. No, I actually want to talk about this. So I read a book called As Gods Among Men, A History of the Rich in the West. And it was a pretty boring book, but it did talk about something very similar to this that I think that I want to bring up. And it was just talking about how for the longest time, there was a bit of a social contract with the wealthy because there's always been some form of the wealthy in almost all societies. The social contract was, they're getting a larger slice of the pie, but a lot of that is being reinvested into the place they live. So they are like, they did a lot of beautification efforts.

1:21:31They would build fantastic public libraries and they would improve the area around them because they wanted to live in a nice place. What this book pointed out is, our recent crop of mega rich in our lifetimes, something has changed dramatically. And that is the internet and private jet travel. And it has created a new global super rich that no longer see themselves as part of one individual country. They see themselves as a jet setting elite that are, they have more in common with another billionaire from Dubai than they do with someone in their own country. That is their cohorts. And so they just kind of move around, as you said, to wherever they can get the best deal.

1:22:07And they don't feel a particular allegiance to any town, state, region thing. And so their money is no longer even a portion of it flowing back into the area they live. And so it's purely extractive. And that is breaking the system that is at least somewhat worked in other areas in the past where you would benefit from having a wealthy person in your area. But now it's almost purely parasitic in that they are just finding the deal where they could pay absolutely minimum tax possible.

1:22:38Aiden:I think the analogy that came to mind is that there's ultra wealthy people that are moving around and they're wringing out the towel of wherever the system they're in is. And the government of that place is doing whatever they can to like increase the size of the towel or add water to the towel but eventually there's no more water to get out and then the rich person or the rich entity just cuts and runs throws it out and runs to the next place that has towels available because in a previous time if you lived in the UK and you were wealthier uh seeing society start to crumble around you is an incentive for you to not want to like you'd have to do something to invest in where you're at yeah because it just ruins your quality of life, even purely from a, but now you can get on a private jet and you can go anywhere.

1:23:29You literally don't have any reason to stay in that spot. And that is a fascinating change. And I, I do think the UK has been just, I mean, you talk to people in the UK, it just feels like it's been looted. It feels like it's been pillaged, bro. But of course what happens everywhere, it feels like the second this happens, the number one thing to blame is immigrant. Like they're, they're in a, they're in a huge anti-immigrant wave right now. Like that's the problem. That's what's looted the UK. And it feels like that's not the case.

1:23:56Aiden:Um, I think there's some messaging online that is pushing against that a little bit. Like, uh, I think that's the core of Gary Stevenson's messaging that is getting really popular there and getting traction there. Uh, there are way more layers to this that I have been touching on as I've looked into this or listen to videos about it that I find really interesting right now. But, uh, one thing I wanted to mention was this idea of the city of london that i think a lot of people don't know about there is a city an area within london that is literally called the city of london that is legally distinct from london the larger city and they have their own mayor and their own and a bunch of exceptions for how uh the laws are treated the tur or like the laws of this area go back to medieval times and the lord or like the mayor the lord mayor excuse me is chosen by like a board of companies that operate within that place it's not an elected official and then they also get a seat in the house of commons this is not an elected person they are selected by companies that operate within the city of london and then they get a seat in the house of commons this i the thing that reminded me about this earlier was when we were talking about elon trying to win a seat under his new political party that presumably would vote in whatever way he wants.

1:25:18Aiden:Uh, and the city of London is this interesting vehicle for all of these wealthy foreign people and companies. And you know, not all foreigners necessarily, but a lot of foreign interests that have flown it come in there over time. And they're, uh, using the different laws of the city of London to escape taxes and form relationships with like offshore kind of in the British, like kind of in the UK islands, like, like Jersey and Isle of Man. And it's a very interesting world of like global finance and ways that people dodge taxes that I want to spend more time digging into. But a lot of, I think a lot of this is what the, do you remember when the Panama papers came out?

1:26:07Aiden:Yeah. A lot of that it's about stuff like this. London has been used as this vehicle for hiding money and avoiding taxes. Yeah, I saw a documentary. It was called like the spider's web. And it was basically saying that after World War II, World War I basically, Europe, I'm sorry, UK realized that it was no longer the financial center of the world. They are losing their colonies. London was replaced by New York. And they decided to pivot 100 % into creating a global spider's web of wealthy tax avoidant. Like you said, they're just fully leaning into the fact that you can go to London and you can hide your cash in Bermuda or in Jersey or in and it's part of the UK, but nobody checks and it's off the books.

1:26:50Aiden:and yeah and then if some foreign entity if some foreign entity comes to the uk and they're like hey can you check up uh you know we think this loophole is being taken advantage of or we think this citizen of our country is hiding money in a shell company or a shell company in a trust in jersey then the uk just goes like well they're independent and we don't really have any like poll here like there's not really anything we can do and it's just functioned on the basis of that for so long and it's uh it feels like something that is hitting the uk particularly hard in the last few decades uh and i'm i'm really interested i talk about all of this in uh i'm i'm spending a lot of time looking more into this right now so i can kind of present something more cohesive i

1:27:39Atrioc:would also love to hear how the corporate side of this works because you hear about ireland being where everybody sets up corporations because of the low taxes, would they suffer a similar thing at some point where another country comes in and says, we'll do it for even less and then people start fleeing there?

1:27:53Aiden:I think, yes, yes. So I could give you a short answer to that right now. There's a really interesting thing with Ireland where if you look at their GDP figure, it goes through this massive jump in a really short period of time in recent years. And the reason this is the case is Apple sort of lobbied in Ireland to create this specific law where if you formed a corporation in Ireland, but brought in revenue through an outside asset, it didn't have to be corporate, it didn't have to be hit by their corporate tax anymore. And then Ludwig, Jesus, oh my God, I'm leaking. And then Apple sets up a corporation in Ireland, right?

1:28:40Aiden:their new global headquarters or their EU headquarters, and then gets a patent or sells the copyright to the Apple logo to a foreign holder for Apple in an offshore account in somewhere like the Cayman Islands or something like that. So it's coming from the Cayman Islands. And then they attribute a ton of the value of the sales of iPhones and other products to the value of the brand, which is not copyrighted in Ireland. And because they basically paid Ireland to write the law in this way, take in all of this revenue through the company in Ireland as untaxed. And that was, and because they created this loophole, a bunch of other big tech companies followed suit and like set up in Dublin because of this.

1:29:34Aiden:Right. And that's why GDP has skyrocketed on Ireland, but it's totally disjointed from actual individual wealth in Ireland.

1:29:44Atrioc:And this. Ireland's GDP has absolutely skyrocketed in the last 15 to 25 years of Norway. I think they're just more productive.

1:29:53Aiden:that the factor you want to look at is gdp per capita it is insane the the leap that is taken yeah but the quality of life is not that's what i'm saying yeah the quality of life for the average person in ireland is not very well represented by that number anymore because of the fashion in which it was inflated uh so that's that's an example of like a corporate loophole that's being that was or is being taken advantage of uh i think there's a lot more layers to this and i want to spend more time looking into it. But I was particularly fascinated about this idea of, you know, two tiered economic systems where the rich take advantage of a system at the expense of like the poor in that country.

1:30:34Aiden:And then when the system is absolutely exhausted and won't work for them anymore, they just cut and run and jump to the new place. At the risk of sounding

1:30:45Atrioc:handery, and I said this last week on our Patreon episode, one of the beliefs of mine that has changed over the last six months as we've done this show and done a lot of research and read books is the belief of like seems like you really need to raise taxes on corporations and particularly wealthy people because there's just so many weird knock-on consequences of not doing that that don't benefit people and i know that yeah it's i know for many people in certain political ideologies that's that's obvious but i think it's taken a lot of us looking at many many many different examples of how it harms things over time to be like yeah this makes sense like you have to yeah It's like a short-term thing to not - Let me villain-chair.

1:31:22Aiden:Really? Let me villain-chair. You're gonna villain-chair. Why don't we let the rich run over it? And you're the most - No. The struggle that I see here, and this isn't to say that, you know, raising taxes or combating these issues is not important, but what you said about people on private jets cutting and running and going to wherever is convenient, the difficult part for at least the wealthiest of the wealthy, right, or companies, Cause they can just bail from any, it's much harder to hold them down. To hold them accountable. Cause I do think one, maybe one thing to note here is that the, there, there's one thing before I go to the next part, the idea of capital flight because of taxes being raised, I think from my very limited understanding is, is a little bit of a myth because these people, the taxes have been high in the UK for a while.

1:32:16Aiden:In the case of corporate taxes, I think they've gone down. But the spike in millionaire plus wealthy people leaving has happened in recent years, right? It's in reaction to something deeper than just the tax rate being high, right? I think when people live, like rich people in Scandinavia aren't leaving in droves, even though the tax rate is ridiculously high, right? In Denmark, they have an insane top-end tax rate on the wealthiest people, right? But millionaires aren't fleeing Denmark. it's because I think they have a very conscious view still that their taxes pay into a system that is working very well for them the society around them still is is good so I think there is a degree of people choosing to leave eventually when things get bad in the surrounding area I think for the people who are the wealthiest of the wealthy and can like move mountains with the amount of money they have I do worry is like it when whenever there's one country willing to break off from the rest.

1:33:18Aiden:You need an agreement from all nations, right? That you're going to supply a base level corporate tax rate, a base level income tax rate. And as soon as countries choose to start breaking off from that, you create an avenue for those people to leave and take advantage of it. And I think it's like that global unity part that is really, really challenging. I think there's already been efforts to raise the OECD, like corporate tax rate, which is just, you know, a bunch of developed countries coming together to establish like, what the minimum corporate tax rate should be right and i think they wanted to raise it and ireland didn't want to do it because they aren't you know they're in a beneficial position because of it that is the challenge in the future uh as people can move around way more easily is how do you plug all the holes how do you prevent one country from deciding hey actually we're gonna let these people in uh letting these people in being the fucking ultra wealthy uh you know billionaires uh so i i think this whole thing has so much more to dig into but they're like cats you

1:34:20Atrioc:we they're hard to find what'll keep them around you know but sometimes they're new toys being introduced every month you can be like no stay here in america don't go outside come here yeah come here jeff we got a new massage chair come here it's only in america come here we have a city-owned grocery store in new york come eat that we'll give you free food stay here pay us taxes it's like jeff has you can get free food in new york that's what pulls him in guys thanks for watching I appreciate you thanks for coming to the lemonade stand we served up some good lemonade today we picked the candidates for 2028 and we solved taxes it was easy

1:34:57Aiden:Nancy Pelosi 2028 get on the card now see you next week bye everybody