The Trial of the Century | Ep. 061 Lemonade Stand 🍋

21:34So the proprietary open AI products, which by the way, Elon Musk admitted two gasps in the courtroom that he has distilled for, for Grok as in Grok stole open AI training data or trained off of, you'd say trained off of open AI and the courtroom gasped. So obviously the judge pointed this out. There's a bit of a conflict of interest in that you're asking clearly a competitor of yours that you're already trying to distill knowledge from to make their proprietary product open source. But I want to bring up a different point and why Elon Musk, despite, I think the odds are quite close now, but prior to this trial, and according to legal experts that I was reading, his chances of winning are really low.

22:19They kind of dotted their eyes and crossed their T's on getting the nonprofit thing with Microsoft. so i don't think you have a good chance of winning however here's a reason why he might want to do this anyway so these are the 10 largest ipos in history but the biggest one is saudi aramco when a company goes public uh uh you know it lists its shareholders for public purchase saudi aramco 25 billion it's the state oil company right biggest one ever great business great business good fundamentals great fundamentals does have good fun bringing

22:50Aiden:Brings in a ton of cash every year. They have big plans for this canal. Does some of it end up doing things like live golf? Yeah. Sure. Sure. Who doesn't get a little money out there? But okay. These are, I mean, this is the biggest ever in human history. This is the biggest IPOs. And the biggest IPO last year in 2025 was$6 billion. Just to get a scale. This year in 2026, three big companies are planning the IPO. And SpaceX is going to IPO at$1.5 trillion. It's going to be by far, if it goes through, the largest IPO ever, ever done by a factor of any. It's bigger than the next 10 combined. At the same time, OpenAI wants to go public at like$900 billion.

23:31And Anthropic wants to go public at like$950 billion. And there's a real concern that the market cannot stomach all three of these at once. They won't all three be able to get the supply of liquidity they need in the market. And so there's actually a major, major advantage to being first. And so if you can tie up your opponent in any sort of legal battle that makes their IPO delayed or slow down or have to push it back a little bit, there's a material massive advantage. Like the first one to go public is likely going to do very well. The ones afterwards may, in fact, do worse. And so I think that is Elon Musk's deeper motive here.

24:16And as to whether or not Sam Altman and Greg Brockman lied to him, they probably did. Like there's two sides to it. So I don't know. You've read part of it. I don't know if you have any more thoughts that you want to give in. But that's where we're at now. There's weeks more of this trial to go. But in the end of the day, if the nine jurors favor open AI, I'm sorry, favor Elon Musk, then one of the biggest AI companies in the world is going to basically implode. And it'll be a huge win for Elon Musk's business interests. Yeah. And Anthropic. I mean, if I'm giving, like, from what you have explained, the synopsis is Elon is actually just mad that he was cut out of the for-profit version of OpenAI a long time ago.

25:00Aiden:He didn't actually care about it being turned into a for-profit company at all. He actually wanted that. He wanted it to be for-profit. but they push it towards for-profit without including him and then later made an offer that included him but he didn't like and he didn't have enough control in that's right and so none of this has to do with charitability at all he's just angry wants revenge on these people that cut him out of the deal at the time and he's trying to leverage the legal system in order to you know get something out of the situation or enact his revenge it seems like yeah and and both parties are not really in the clear like no which is unsurprising it's unsurprising and i do think at least for these three guys i think ilia again i don't know too much about him even but he comes off looking like the only guy that cares about even ai or like research at all yeah of the of these three figures because um internal text messages of sam altman and greg brogman especially greg brogman is like him discussing how do i get to be a billion dollar net worth like they're Like they seem to all care about the money of including Elon Musk.

26:12All three of them seem to care about control, power and money and are finding different ways to kind of screw over each other.

26:18Aiden:So if we were to ground this maybe for let's say I'm a guy who's protesting outside the courthouse. I'm in a robot costume. I don't like either of these guys. I've got people trained up on me. Yeah. And I'm on the fuck AI as a whole train. Sure. is there even a side to really like root for here because there's there's a winner and a loser and it's like there i don't think there's anything there there's nothing for that person to really be excited no i don't think so if you're out of fuck ai as a whole train i mean one of these two very rich ai dominant men is going to come out with an advantage yeah i would say realistically

26:59Atrioc:yeah i don't is there any i can postulate a couple things so some knock-on consequences that could happen. One, if OpenAI is forced to open source their software, that changes things a lot. So the whole ecosystem of AI right now, everybody's not profitable, but burning mass amounts of money and trying to eke out profit where they can. And if they are forced by jury to release open source models, that is going to hurt their ability to make monetized products even more and the other competitors in the space even more, right? And so the ability for then Elon to go out and then say, because again the spacex uh 1.5 trillion dollar metal dick you've put on the screen yeah is is in large part predicated on the fact that they bought xai so this is both space and ai right that they need to say is this mass evaluation it's going to make all this money so then being forced to open source would be like really interesting ai opening eye shutting down would be interesting because they're like the dominant leader right now so then you allow all these other companies to kind of come in i don't think there's a way if you just hate ai like i don't think this is going to stop it, but it's, I think it's going to hurt AI companies.

28:03Aiden:Well, maybe for another party is say I'm at Google or say I'm at Anthropic. There feels like something there for those people, where you have a lawsuit that is so big or so critical for these two companies that it potentially gives you an advantage. Like in Anthropic's case, right? You have two parties that potentially want to IPO, but you have the ability to race to that IPO first and get that advantage you discussed. Or in Google's case, like a company that is already safely public, has a ton of money. They have two competitors duking it out. I think Google is super happy that two competitors are just dealing with a stupid bullshit legal battle.

28:44They're totally safe and they're out of it. Anthropic actually is on OpenAI's side here because Anthropic is also structured as a public benefit corporation and there's some legal consequence if this favor the jury here favors uh elon musk then he could easily turn that same sauron's eye he also hates anthropic he talks shit about them all the time as well like he could easily find a way to lead that continuing down their path so well hold on public benefit corporation is not the same as nonprofit. No, it's not. It's not the same. However, at least from the legal experts I was reading, the idea is that they have clearly, um, you know, public benefit revision is supposed to

29:27Atrioc:be, uh, it's, it's basically you have the mission of a nonprofit and then the goal of give sugar hoarders value and you are legally obligated to do both. Right. Yeah. And the idea is that you could make the case that they have not fulfilled their legal obligation, especially if it's under the terms of like, you know, a lot of this trial was spent being like AI is going or could kill everyone, wipe everyone out. It needs to be in nonprofit hands focusing on that mission. Yeah. Unless it's from XAI and SpaceX. Unless it's Grok. Yeah, that is, by the way, that guy is UC Berkeley professor, Stuart Russell, who has paid$5 ,000 an hour to go in and basically just talked how dangerous AI is.

30:05Atrioc:It's like not helpful, I don't think. No, it wasn't helpful at all. And so that line of thought got kind of destroyed. They kind of pivoted mid-trial into the more of the charity scam thing. and yeah i don't know it's it's just a very interesting battle of wills and again they both have paid and this is true they both have paid pr firms so like a lot of what you're seeing on social media is like paid stuff trying to paint one side or the other is i got ten thousand checks from both of them it's tough well lemonade stands been getting a lot in the inbox lately

30:38Aiden:and if i'm taking elon musk at face value larry page is a blood boy in the basement also yeah i I mean, Larry Page does come out looking like a fucking psycho, though. I got to be honest with you. The idea that it's speciesist to care. If that's a real quote, that's crazy. Larry Page has got bloodborne. That's great. A bloodborne would be better than this. Oh, so sorry, he cares about robots.

30:58Atrioc:He cares about the ethical treatment of AI. Jesus. Dude, saying that in 2016 or something is insane to me. Oh, wait. Okay, something I don't know about. I have more to say about it, but I don't have a slide. So I'm trying to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, just with openness. So if Elon wins, there's all these obvious benefits. You maybe know this better. Is OpenAI get anything from this other than, holy shit, Elon is off our back? If they win, they're back to the position of, oh my God, we need to come up with$500 billion in the next year. OpenAI is a defendant, so they don't get anything. They are just going to survive this threat.

31:32Atrioc:They go back to, can we survive this insanity we're in? They go back to the... Elon has nothing to lose here, really. No, that's the power of a legal system when you're incredibly wealthy. I mean, they're both. The real winners of this trial are the lawyers who are getting paid absurd amounts of money in mass to do this bullshit work for billionaires who are fighting each other. I'm trying to think of any other text messages that came out that were particularly salacious. There was definitely some stuff. I put it all in slides. While you're thinking about that, I got two fun tidbits about this as well.

32:06Atrioc:The judge is, I believe, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, right? This is the same judge who's presided over the Epic versus Apple case. Ooh, I didn't know that. Yeah, so she's the one who's been dealing with that and chiding Apple and saying, you guys clearly are flagrantly ignoring my order. So she's badass. She's done some very high-profile tech court cases. Definitely, I'm just going to go off that. In this trial, she's been kind of universally praised because it's been a circus. There's so much pressure, so much honor, and she has been super consistent about sticking to the rules, sticking to procedure, not letting anyone fucking dominate the conversation or, or take things off a subject and, and to do the gag order on social media.

32:45It's very hard to get billionaires to, to shut up and take it seriously. And she's done it. She's not like treated them special. So I, yeah, I've been, I've been impressed.

32:52Atrioc:Second funny anecdote. I mentioned that on the, on a patron episode we did, that I had this long conversation with a guy who worked at SpaceX from 2014 until, uh, it was like four years, right and like worked on the space like actual launches and whatnot helped design rockets and satellites super cool so he worked with elon uh including directly at times but spacex early days and one of the things that he told me was that the if you were going into a meeting with elon one of the things you would do before the meeting is check what is tesla's stock price right now because that would dictate his mood going into the meeting and he would be either very angry and snappy or in a really great mood if it's doing well right then so there are like people who've worked literally with him over the last decade or two saying the stock price of his companies really does affect and so it gives credence to that that idea of like this could just be about juicing spacex for this unbelievable ipo well again and i want to say the context for elon musk's position in the ai race right now grok is a distant fourth have you seen the hot anime women on Twitter?

34:00What are you talking about? Despite how incredible that feature is, Grok has been dumping just as much money as almost everybody else, but they're not seeing the market share gain. So like Gemini has been really growing. OpenAI, growing but losing share, but still growing. Grok has been flat. So it's like he's spending just as much money but not seeing the results. And it would really, really help him and SpaceX and this big IPO were competitors to be kneecapped in some way. And I do think he's using the legal system as a way to do that. I don't think he genuinely wants the charitable outcome of open AI.

34:36It doesn't make sense when you run a for-profit company. It doesn't make sense.

34:40Aiden:Now, if we sat down in Elon Musk one-on-one and asked him about his principles.

34:50Anyway, I don't know if there's much more to say. I mean, we'll definitely have some minor updates in future episodes because it goes on for weeks. I think Sam Altman's testimony is gonna be really interesting. I'm sure more crazy shit's gonna come out.

35:00Atrioc:You can watch this live on YouTube right now. I was listening to some this morning, except it's only audio, no video. Yeah, it's audio only. And it's not very high quality. So if you're trying to get in on that. And also they just fit in an insane amount of boring stuff. I mean, I was reading the summary from a reporter who's in the room and she kept typing ZZZZZ. There's like parts where even the jury, she said are like looking exhausted, falling asleep because there's just so much document reading. so much like anyway big trial we'll see what happens today's episode is sponsored by anthropic and claude is the ai for minds who don't stop at good enough like this guy right here who's not in the chair yet i'm gonna reveal something normally we're a little bit goofy in these ads i'm gonna be genuine and i'm gonna reveal something people have asked me of this this is my what's up perry this is a legitimate prompt that i use in claude i ask it when i read an article i he's on my computer if you're wondering about the text but this this is claude from anthropic call me factory this is claude and i ask it to analyze an article that i've read and i want it to quiz me and i think the best way to learn something is friction and i do think that tools like this are actually the best learning tools that exist right now i know they're used for other things but you can use them really, really well to learn.

36:16And I legitimately use this all the time. And so I wanted to share this in this, this, this promotion. What's the brief overview of, of what this is doing? The brief overview is that it's quizzing you on what you're doing and it goes step by step and slowly and figures out what you don't understand. So you answer honestly, and then it'll be like, okay, you got that half right, but you missed this part. It'll kind of push you a little bit. And then in second question, you'll deepen your understanding. So just by doing this, I feel like my recall on something I read is way higher and I found it to be really useful.

36:41I found to be like this didn't exist before and it does now and i want to be legitimately happy with it

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37:25Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC.

37:32Atrioc:Trading at Schwab is now powered by Ameritrade, bringing you an expanding library of education with even more ways to sharpen your trading skills. Access new online courses, insightful webcasts, articles, engaging videos, and more, all curated just for traders. Plus, guided learning paths with content designed to fit your unique interests. No sifting to find exactly what you need, so you can spend your time learning to trade brilliantly. Learn more at schwab.com slash trading. But you guys have another thing we want to talk about. Hey! What's going on in your neck of the woods?

38:08Aiden:Well, we've talked about a little thing called Brightline a lot on this show. We've talked about trains a lot in general. We're a train-based organization, to be honest. And for those who don't know, Brightline is the high-speed rail in Florida that opened up in 2018. And they have a full, they basically now connect Miami to Orlando and a bit more than that, I think. and we've talked about it pretty highly just as a project on the show as a representation of getting something built in our country as kind of a success story. It's like here, it's possible to get something like this done. But recently, over the last few months, there have been a number of articles about the financial state of Brightline and how they may be in a position to declare bankruptcy.

39:01We don't get nice things. We don't get nice things, bro. That was one of our early optimistic episodes. We're going to have fucking...

39:07Atrioc:Wait, so trains can't have a hero's journey? In the darkest hour. What's going to make the victory satisfying if it was easy and profitable from the beginning, Aiden?

39:16Aiden:Has there ever... But what was Bilbo on that journey, if not saddled with debt? I think Byline should sue Sam Altman. I think Lord of the Rings should have no orbs.

39:27Atrioc:No sorry, he just walks in there.

39:29Aiden:Come on. That's a good point, Doug. That's a good point. That is a good point. It'll be more exciting when we get there. So to give some background, the train has been operating, at least in some capacity, since 2018. And it is a massive infrastructure project that requires a lot to be built. And naturally, that sort of company is not making money out of the game, right? I think everybody would expect that. unfortunately also the company went through covid where you know nobody is using their trains they were closed for a long period of time yeah uh and they're also not making money then but they come out of covid 2022 is is like the first fully normal year and uh they do tank a a big loss that year of over 200 million dollars in an operating loss and uh going into 2023 we actually see things begin to improve for this company their operating loss is declining they're not making money but over the same like nine month period at the beginning of 2023 okay it's getting better they their operating loss is only 190 million uh and uh they're all these in 190 million dollars and then if we continue to follow bright line up until now they actually actually have managed to make more and more money as their ticket sales and ridership has climbed.

40:50Aiden:And it continues to get better like month over month and year or year over year rather, which is, which is cool. It is a success story in that specific regard. However, depending on where you, which sources you read, this company is saddled with about four to five and a half billion dollars in debt. For those who maybe remember, we talked about something a long time ago called private activity bonds. And when this company opened up, they funded this massive infrastructure project by selling bonds to the public. This is a way for these types of things to get built, right? And a super, super ambitious project, not a lot of love in the US for rail, right?

41:37Aiden:Difficult to get the amount of investment required. So what happens? The government steps in and is like, we'll make, we'll, we'll give you guys private activity bonds. Basically the government, like a municipal government or a state government slaps a little stamp and says, these bonds you issue bright line, the interest that you'll owe the bond holders will be tax free. Yep. And this helps motivate people to invest in a project like this. And the government is down to forego the tax revenue on that interest because it's up for a public good. But, you know, this train being finished is going to be something that benefits society broadly.

42:16Aiden:And private activity bonds get used to build things like sections of highway or bridges. They're intentionally used often for like public infrastructure projects. But Brightline took on an extraordinary amount out of debt and then not only took on these billions of dollars uh in debt but the interest rates because this project wasn't super likely to succeed are also very high like we're looking at like 10 to 14 percent across all of these bonds and you know what i said that their operating loss was at you know uh you know 190 million 150 million the following year that's just the operating loss of running the train that's what it costs like like what it costs to actually run the train against ticket sales if you count their interest payments they are losing and the fees they have paid to restructure no no that's not counting interest payments or the fees to restructure the debt payments along the way they have lost hundreds of millions more dollars per

43:16Atrioc:year there's a number i saw is the most recent 2025 operating loss was 127 million total but then on top of that is 117 million in interest interest is like doubles their loss every year

43:29Aiden:In 2024, because they had already started struggling to make the bond payments, they had to pay the interest for that year, which was$178 million that year, and then pay money in a debt restructuring deal. That was another$150 million on top of that. So their total loss for just 2024 was$549 million. Well, we're never going to get trains. Our trains are juggling credit cards to pay off fucking... They can't even pay employees. If the train itself is operating at$100 million loss. And now...

44:03Atrioc:Could they just raise the debt ceiling? And get more money?

44:08Aiden:The Democrats won't let him.

44:10Atrioc:And the Dems won't let him. The Dems won't let him. Chuck Schumer's blocking it.

44:14Aiden:And the Fed chair at Brightline said he's going to start printing more Brightline bucks. Who's going to buy these anymore? The Brightline bucks? The only way... Those weren't real. No, but Brightline bonds. how do they keep issuing them so they're not okay so here's the issue they have this is the the market around these bonds has clearly completely lost faith in the company's ability to pay them because the bonds are now trading at like 28 to 33 cents on the dollar which is insane it's going bankrupt like and and also i think it was moody's uh lowered the quality of the bonds from like triple B to triple C.

44:55Aiden:And then Brightline requested that they remove the rating and said, you guys haven't given us enough time to respond to the ratings change. Please remove it entirely. It's always a good look.

45:07Atrioc:And they've already in 2026. When the health inspector letter is covered up. Did they try the strats of saying C's get degrees?

45:15Aiden:Yeah, that could work. Apparently in 2026, they have already skipped interest payments on one set of the bonds earlier in this year, which is the second postponed payment on these bonds. And they're only allowed to defer interest payments three times before violating the terms of the loan. So it's two stripes. Yeah, it's a default. They're going to default. And... You guys want to buy a train? We can get in on it. We can pick this up for cheap, bro.

45:43Atrioc:Like a fishing boat. Guys, we need a few more patrons this month. That's the next Patreon goal? We run the lemonade stand train?

45:50Aiden:so we get bright and we buy bright line it's already yellow colored do you know is this gonna

45:56Atrioc:is this gonna stop the train going from la to vegas almost certainly i do i do okay i it it looks

46:03Aiden:like it won't so the reason being is that bright line west is a completely siloed company let's go

46:10Atrioc:from the florida project and that's good because it's famously easy to build in california we'll

46:16Aiden:And if we were being optimistic about Brightline West, which, you know, everybody loves driving to Rancho Cucamonga. Even if this Florida project completely defaults and runs into these big financial issues that they most assuredly are, they have better circumstances in the West. They got outright funding from the Biden administration, a huge amount of money from that. uh and it's a like higher uh higher traffic more tourist demand route than what they've built in florida like there's more precedent for the demand that they'll be fulfilling however the project is also more expensive just in total so it you know this doesn't look good for that one i'll say that uh but at least it doesn't seem to financially harm the bright line west project moving forward but what's happening you might ask what happens to the trains in in florida and uh apparently brightline has been trying to get investors like the the bondholders to do a debt for equity swap for months and they cannot get the bondholders to do it nobody wants to do that nobody wants to do it they want you to sell the trains for scrap and pay them back but if we all agree to not ask for interest for a while we all agree we don't own any bonds sorry if the people the equity holders

47:43Atrioc:i mean to you know to be fair to them ridership and revenue are going up every year it's like they're they're largely doomed because of interest i've also seen there's one more thing i've seen

47:52Aiden:no evidence of this happening in florida specifically for this case but public sorry private activity bonds do have a precedent of the government kind of has a vested interest in these bonds working out successfully because if projects fall through that they allow to be funded with these things, right? Then they lose respect for the following bonds that they allow in the future, right? So if the government, if this whole project blows up and then the, I think like one of the municipal governments is like Tampa, like in Tampa comes, it's like, hey guys, we have this great investment opportunity for you.

48:31Aiden:Here's another private activity bond for you to invest in for this like other infrastructure project somebody's going to be like well you fucked this on the bright line thing that bombed i didn't get my money back uh so in other specific scenarios where these types of bonds have been used the government has actually stepped in to bail things out because they don't want to lose their credibility in the future last time it's such a fucked part of public activity bonds though it's like the implicit guarantee that the government will bail you out is a big part of it that's why it exists That's why they're like so.

49:03Atrioc:Yeah. But they're trading so low that it seems the market thinks that will not happen, right? Otherwise, they wouldn't be trading at 28 cents on the dollar.

49:12Aiden:Yeah. I mean, the market doesn't, nobody wants them. Yeah. Yeah. But that would indicate. It seems very expensive to bail out. I mean, is Tampa even got the money? That's the thing is like, I think at this scale, like when I looked at the other example of how this, like this other infrastructure project, which was like a highway was bailed out. it was way less money than this. And it was in a different state. So I don't think, again, I've literally read nothing that implies that there is going to be a bailout in this specific situation. So they're unable to get that swap. The hope is that if they are forced into bankruptcy and the debt were to be restructured, then ownership would change.

49:51Aiden:The trains would continue operating under whatever new ownership there is. And then probably all expansion efforts and the idea of this like Florida line becoming much bigger, which is what Brightline is working on now, is probably over. But the existing train would continue operating in some capacity under new ownership. So it's kind of a bummer story, honestly, because I think two years ago, three years ago, Brightline was this very promising thing. And, oh, here's rail getting built in the US. It's high quality. People are using it. But even if they were meeting their projections in like ridership and growth, they still would not be making enough money to get over the amount of debt that they have.

50:35Aiden:So kind of a bit of a bummer story, but I thought a really good follow-up considering how much we talked about this last year.

50:42Atrioc:It'll be so sad if like the one train project we get in America just bombs. Brightline West, don't worry about that. Brightline West, just as a reminder for people who didn't listen to the episode like a year ago, is going from LA to Vegas. Massive, massive popular route. that's a great spot for a train except it doesn't go all the way into los angeles it goes to rancho cucamonga which is like saying you have a train in new york city but you just have to drive to philadelphia to get to the train like it's just it's a lot the good thing about vegas at least

51:10Aiden:is that it's getting cheaper and more accessible to the every person than ever everyone loves

51:15Atrioc:vegas right now um another hilarious thing perry if you pulled this up uh i i met a person who was from florida in japan randomly and asked him about bright line and he was like oh yeah that's the train it kills all those people i'm like what so you can go to brightlinekillcount.com and there's detailed statistics of how many people have been run over by the train because floridians don't have any concept of trains apparently they have so it's 205 people have been killed by the train they have a map where all of the where all of the deaths have happened and then not only that you can look at these like detailed statistics because florida releases everything bro this is It's like mostly old people.

51:53Atrioc:Like there's a lot of Florida retirees who are like just parking their car on the train tracks or something. So I don't think that has helped. No, I mean, this isn't helping the vibes for sure. You know what? To be fair. I mean, it sounds like they have a money losing business where they kill old people in Florida with trains. Yeah, well, you got to spend money to make money. And then also, do we know? You do have to spend money to make money. Right, exactly. And do we know maybe other trains kill a lot more people? All right. Maybe I was looking, I was trying to see how many die in Tokyo subways.

52:26Atrioc:I think it's less. I think it's two sides. I actually don't think accidents are very high in Japan. I'm trying to find out the exact. Yeah. Yeah. It's very different. They had at most 22 accidents per year. And I'm not sure whether they're fatal, fatal or not. You know, this is a tangential story, but it reminds you guys heard about a GameStop trying to buy eBay. Yeah. um it's just funny because gamestop is a company that's worth 11 billion dollars roughly ebay is a company that's worth like 46 56 billion dollars so much much bigger yeah and so in order to buy them they're gonna have to take on 30 40 billion dollars like just an absurd amount of debt and so the interest payments are going to be so gargantuan which means ebay is going to have to be run so much better by the gamestop guys they're going to make so much more money to overcome home that like i don't it's staggering to me maybe maybe this is a fucking dumb question

53:22Aiden:but i'm i'm gonna own up to it how is that allowed why isn't ebay buying game stop do you know what i mean like when i hear about something like that it's it's like why doesn't the other company buy the small fish you ever see a ferret hunter rabbit i'd know that answers your question aiden uh i mean anyone can buy anyone if they can get the money yeah i guess that's the idea Yeah, a bank is willing to loan you the money because they think they can get it back somehow, whether or not they scrap your, take over your business and scrap it. They should do private activity bonds for that one. That doesn't make any sense.

53:57That doesn't make any sense. No, no. You understand, guy drops it in every conversation. Get a real private activity bonds vibe for this. Guy who's only read about private activity bonds.

54:07Aiden:Oh, this is a classic pad situation. You forgot. I'm guy who hangs on to the last thing he heard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're all there. You know what none of this is going to do, Aiden? What? Help us have more kids. But Doug has multiple ways people are getting around that problem.

54:27Atrioc:Doug is pregnant. Doug's pregnant. That's, yeah, that's where we're going. Actually, okay, I forgot to mention to you guys. I want to do a quick story because this one, we missed this, but I figure better late than never. We've never missed anything on the show ever. So I disagree. Yeah. So this is a just quick story happened in Greece. King Philip of Macedonia absolutely smashed Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Caronia. And it's looking like the Mediterranean could completely change from here on out. Yeah. Particularly with his son, Alexander. So we'll keep you guys posted as we learn more.

54:58That is something we missed.

55:01Atrioc:That sounds intense. Sounds high stakes. I was kind of looking through. Have we missed anything? Have we missed anything? That's probably the only thing. It's probably. Yeah. We'll keep you posted. Yeah. Lot could potentially come from that. Now, this next topic. The fool, he'll never get dessert season.

55:20You're out of touch. That was 100 years before this.

55:24Aiden:Me pulling up your analysis next episode.

55:29Atrioc:You can't reason with the sun. Trust us. We've tried. This summer, it's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's OmniShade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your summer at Columbia.com to spend more time outside and less time slathering on aloe lotion. You're welcome. Columbia, engineered for whatever.

56:00Aiden:I'm Maria Sharapova, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness.

56:15Atrioc:We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Follow Pretty Tough wherever you get your podcasts.

56:30Aiden:I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Ed Elson. And we're bringing the Profiting Markets Tour to Chicago. Chicago, that's right. The city with big shoulders, I think. Chi-town?

56:39Atrioc:Is that what they call it? The city with big shoulders? Anyways, I call Chicago the old navy of cities. I think it's 80 % of New York for 50 % of the price. I went there with my son. You probably don't love that.

56:52Atrioc:I went there with my son, and I had the best weekend. We went to this amazing steakhouse. We went to a batting cage. We did a bike tour. We had the best time. What can they expect from us in Chicago? We'll have predictions. We'll have hot takes. We'll have some of Scott's signature rants live and in person. And you will have the chance to ask a question as well. Come to the Vic on Monday, June 1st. You can get your tickets at ProfitMarketsTour.com. That's ProfitMarketsTour.com. I want to start this topic with a bit of a demonstration. And this is a serious question. I will offer you$20 to get on the table right now with your girlfriend and get her pregnant.

57:32i mean i'd have to call her hesitation proof that financial incentives aren't working to get people

57:41Atrioc:to have children right right right we can we can protest but it's weak it's not happening this this week's episode will be seven and a half hours you fuck crazy hours all right all right so birth rates we've talked about a bunch we don't have to entirety of the birth rate conversation. But what is interesting is some things are changing with what people are doing to try to increase birth rates. So some notable things, we've already talked about this. A lot of different countries right now are just starting to pay people that when they have kids, right? It's just here, have some money. So this is a government program.

58:16Atrioc:Some quick examples. These are all US dollar amounts. In Hong Kong, you get$2 ,500 for each baby born in South Korea, uh, children can get up to$22 ,000 over eight years. Um, like plus monthly checks and various other things in China, you can get$515 per year for each child under three years. And of course, all these childcare subsidies in Japan has numbers too. So we've talked about this pretty obvious thing that people are trying and it is not working. Right. And we've discussed this. Yeah. I mean, I made the point. I think that like that amount is so small compared to the cost of raising a child and the opportunity cost of like the woman having to leave work and like two thousand dollars this is on the main ep now people don't know about the hot

58:58Aiden:take my flaming take on patreon a while was that patreon it wasn't a main well uh i think it was a patreon episode but we talked about how affordable depending on the perspective that you look at it affordability is not at the center of the birth rate crisis if you want to call it that and i know there's people typing already shut up shut up you got that from tucker carlson right uh and but i i think you have a good point is like similar to you have to start somewhere it doesn't seem like there is a substantial example of financial help that moves the needle enough so we can see what that i haven't seen anyone that's really paying the true cost of a kid like if someone told me to buy a mclaren right now and i'm like i can't afford it and they're like well i'll give you eight hundred dollars it doesn't really change the decision

59:55Atrioc:but what if the number goes up each time you buy an additional mclaren which is what they're doing

1:00:01Aiden:and you can write off like the food and the diapers for the mclaren yeah

1:00:06Atrioc:the gas is free you just have to come up with two hundred thousand dollars I was picturing like a Herbie fully loaded McLaren with a giant diaper on the middle.

1:00:13Aiden:I think there's two from that conversation a while ago. I think there's like two ways I kind of break this down in my head. There's the core affordability aspect that certainly does matter, which is people are under immense financial strain in a lot of places that prevents them from having kids when they would like to, uh, because they simply cannot afford it because of, you know, cost of housing, cost of living. But you have it under strain. Like, doesn't it feel like, it's like a sacrifice. Like you really, you're going to be financially hurting when you do it. Like if you are a comfortable middle-class income, but everything's getting more expensive, you're not necessarily under strain.

1:00:55You're not like, oh my God, but it's like, damn, this kid is going to reduce my wife's income. This kid's going to cost us a ton of money. The savings I'm going to have to cut back. Like it's going to, your lifestyle will change dramatically. Your ability to afford luxuries will change dramatically. And so it's like. I think that's the cost. It's not necessarily like, oh my God, I'm in poverty. I can't afford a kid. It's like, this is just going to be financially way more difficult than the alternative. You know, as compared to the world where having a kid is, like if you're a farmer back in the day, it's a financial benefit.

1:01:27It's a straight up benefit. But we've gotten rid of that. And now it's like a big financial negative. You're saying bring that back. Bring back? Child labor. Child labor, yes. Make it a net positive. And what I was getting back is we need to open up factories where kids can work. Right. or at least they can start making Roblox games. Get them to work somehow.

1:01:48Aiden:Well, they can make the brain rot that you'll steal. Yeah. Wait, so I want to ask if you have any kind of insight into maybe is there any progress being made in any places where people are rolling out programs to support families? I feel like they're loosely.

1:02:06Atrioc:You can make it a face like they're maybe. Interesting you should say that. That's the entire conversation. So, yeah. So Bloomberg posted an article, Asia's billionaires are bankrolling a push for more babies. And basically they're starting to see that many billionaires are tackling this problem. And on the surface, as I first started to look into this, it's a lot of this billionaire who owns this company is offering these crazy amounts of money for the for various people, right? For parents. And then as you start to look into it, it's for employees. But they're offering giant lumps of money for their company's employees in an effort to try to get them to have more kids.

1:02:40Atrioc:uh this seems to be different like billionaires around the world being like i'm gonna pour my money directly into this to produce more children so south korean couple interesting anecdotes i'm gonna say all of these wrong i apologize chong bing gu's craft and inc offering employees a lump sum of roughly 43 000 and again this is all dollars uh for every birth plus additional payments a lot bigger right that's a lot more until the child turns eight uh lee jung kyun Bujong. I'm sorry, is that$43 ,000 a year? No, so it's for the birth and then plus additional payments until they turn eight. Oh, wow.

1:03:16Atrioc:You just get a lump sum of$43 ,000. Yeah, yeah, probably, yeah. The next one pays$72 ,000 cash per newborn and has floated plans for tax-free housing for families with three children. Again, these are for employees. This is huge amounts of money now. In China, Zhang Zipai, founder of Far East Holding Company, is giving its employees tiered cash rewards for those who have more babies so you get more giant chunks of money that increase with each kid you have going from 21 210 000 one for third child to 280 000 for fifth they're prioritizing hiring graduates who promise to have large families and his quote is what our company is doing is akin to watering the pond to raise fish which i thought was very poetic and strange i wonder i wonder if

1:04:03Aiden:because one of the things we had heard about and learned a little about while we were there was China's pivot on this from the government side. And the messaging, you know, going from this era of the one child policy to a very hardcore public message about please have more children, public local officials calling single women in their districts or areas about having children. Yeah. I wonder what level that's like tied to, in China specifically. Are there any results from this here? Like this is like -

1:04:34Atrioc:So this is new and basically one of the things now happening. So we've seen for a few years, you know, I think what's particularly notable about this is the difference in scale. Like you called it out. $43 ,000 is a crazy amount of money compared to China giving you$500 for having a kid, right? These are not even close. One of those is like, you could hire a nanny to help for an entire year. It's a life-changing amount of money. That is a huge thing. And so that's what was highlighted by this Bloomberg article. And there's a number of different examples. I had hoped that it would be a little more like billionaires are now contributing to each child that is born.

1:05:07Atrioc:It seems to be more about their employees and then they just drop these giant sums. Um, but it's just an interesting change that seems to be coupled with the government changes. And then there's a different version, which is happening in America right now. So I know what you're talking about, which is Elon Musk, who's been helping by having as many kids as possible personally. Uh, that's a billionaire who's really been contributing that's been swinging the needle substantially we'll say um and i believe you guys want to have kids at some point yes and i assume it's going to be what a couple dozen yeah probably 24 okay we're shooting for eight that'll help a lot oh but you're taking them out to a different country you're gonna hurt our numbers unbelievable all right so you and i need to have far more than that at least eight more right okay so um this is 70 racks per kid bro you don't even have a credit card you don't even you don't even get credit card points what are we talking about i don't get credit card points so i need kids they can sell you it goes to right to your paypal you don't need a credit card i can create a self-sustaining streamer ecosystem where they watch my stream and i get the ad revenue yeah it's like the farmers of all yeah i'm turning out kids they're becoming my viewers they type cool messages to make other people think oh this is a sick community and i'm getting 70 racks per a farm to table bot farm oh my god and they're making roblox games for me that i'm playing oh you're playing the role of us it's all internal okay so trump accounts this is a new thing that i'll be honest i like this was passed as part of the big beautiful bill we actually talked about it with one of our best friends pete buddha judge and so this is a new initiative and the idea is that any kid any parents in America can create an account for their kid.

1:06:50Atrioc:And that account is going to be managed by institutional investors, investing money into private companies across America with essentially 0 % management fee. And so you as a parent can create this account for your kid. And if your kid is born anywhere from 2025 through 2028, we have already budgeted this in the big, beautiful bill. The federal government is going to add a thousand dollars into your account. And then the idea is hopefully other family members or friends or philanthropies or employees will also contribute to this. And so they have a website called investamerica.org. And they show, if you pull this up, Perry, they show what would happen is if, you know, if you have a kid who's born with$1 ,000, if you assume that there's a 10 % return annually based on the S &P 500 over time, it shows how by the age of five, it's$1 ,600 by 12, it's$3 ,500.

1:07:42Atrioc:And by 18, they have a$6 ,500 just thing there ready to go for them. And it's both, we want to give people money when they turn, when they become an adult, but also teach people and like have them get, see this real experience of watching how investment grows compound. And then if you just add a little bit of money every month, like$50 a month, which they have on this, that$1 ,000 by the time you're 18 is$38 ,000. if you can find the ability to put 50 bucks in. So this is -

1:08:10Aiden:Assuming in the bottom right corner. Yes. Assume 10 and a half percent annual return.

1:08:14Atrioc:I assume a hypothetical 10.5 % annual return, which is true of the S &P over time, I believe. But - It's definitely true in the last like 10 years. Certainly the last 10, but I believe that's like a 50 year average, something like that. Yeah, yeah. So assumes a lot. But what's interesting about this is that a bunch of billionaires have signed on to invest into this. So a notable one is Michael Dell, the founder of Dell, who has committed$6.5 billion into this program and said he's going to try to add to like 30 million kids, add 250 bucks into this account. Ray Dalio came out and said he's going to contribute to this for Connecticut kids and try to give 250 bucks to a bunch of them.

1:08:56Atrioc:And Scott Bessent, the secretary treasury, what I think is so interesting about this is he's really pitching this as like, hey, billionaires, big, rich people, you don't want to give money to the government, right? That sucks. They're going to waste it. We all know how inefficient they use capital, but what if you gave money - Give it to Brightline. Give it to Brightline or give it directly to the kids. This is a quote from Scott Besson. Trump accounts are not a government program. They are a radically new platform that returns us to a social contract anchored in individual ownership where everyone starts life on an investing journey.

1:09:31Atrioc:There's one that's like every, yeah every American will be invested in the free market system and its continued success and so there have been a ton of companies and billionaires who are like getting really excited about this and willing to pour hundreds of millions or billions of dollars into this because it is being pivoted as cut out the by the way it is literally a government program but cut out the cut out the government just give money directly to kids and now you as a parent just buy all these people throwing stuff in if you can contribute a little bit every month as well your your kid could turn 18 and have 20 30 40 thousand dollars and i think that on paper is like pretty pretty

1:10:06Aiden:great you can't withdraw from the fund early right like it's something that like it's basically an

1:10:11Atrioc:ira and it basically unlocks it when you're 18 and you can pull it out and do whatever you want at that point yeah um or you obviously leave it in savings i mean i think i have it's interesting

1:10:20Aiden:because i have my layers of cynicism to this which is you know what you know why is this the approach that needs to be successful? Why is this the type of thing that, you know, billionaires are excited about versus like other comparable types of social programs or that would try to implement things that have similar effects to this? But if we were to bring this back to the context of the birth rates conversation specifically, this isn't money that's accessible during the upbringing of your child, which I think is the number one barrier to a lot of people is like, I need the money now to take care of the child now.

1:10:56Aiden:This is also a concern in American context. So you sending your kid off to college, go live by themselves, all these things, right? Still, I think still relevant in the most idealistic scenario, but yeah, I mean, look, Stan's just had a kid. They have one of these Trump accounts for this kid. It's going to have a thousand dollars in it and it's going to be 6 ,500 at the rate of growth by the time he's 18. But I do think that$6 ,500 in 2044 bucks is not enough money to make a meaningful difference, it's fine. I think I agree with you on a fundamental level that billionaires giving their money that is going to kids in some way is a good thing.

1:11:31There's no downside. Right. It's a good thing. But the way it is structured, I'm skeptical about because the primary benefit in the short term, which is when it would benefit Trump the most, is that it helps prop up the stock market. It's just more money going into passive vehicles that go into the S &P 500. It's only going to the S &P 500 and that's where it's. and so yeah you know i i think that's my criticism is that a lot of things we do in banking industry are about keeping that from ever shaking because that is so much underpinning

1:12:02Atrioc:um what boomers vote for as me 500 being up what i think i like about this one i do i wish that i had something like this growing up just to literally make me aware of investing in the value of compounding interest because i just didn't fucking know i mean i said on this show at one point i just didn't even pay taxes out of college for the first year or two which sounds sounds incredibly stupid and is, but like nobody ever just sat and was like, this is what you got to do as an adult, you know? And I think stuff like that, where it's going to be like an app that you can look at is valuable. And then the second, and the main point I'm trying to make here is that if you take the average billionaire who has become publicly overtly cynical about government spending, and like, that's what Elon says all the time.

1:12:40Atrioc:It's like the government's going to waste all the money. That's why I should have it. I'm more efficient. This program seems to be perfectly catered to be like hey billionaires this is a good use of your money and it's this really strange way to convince a particular type of like hyper capitalist to be like that's where i should put my money and it's just going to kids so i think that's particularly interesting here it's like a marketing tactic to make them all feel good and the dumbest fucking part is that legally it is called trump accounts that's not a nickname it is called the trump account no i looked into this back when michael dell got up on stage with trump and announced he's putting a couple billion in i really try to look for the angles and i do agree with you that like at the end of the day the billions came out of his account and it's going to kids yeah so that's a good thing i can't argue with that uh it is like the small percentage of his money no it's he's got a hundred incredibly small he's got 175 billion dollars he's putting in six million i think i did the math on like what it would be to him versus someone who had a hundred grand and it was like it was like 17 i mean it was a small it was like a small donation i got one final approach for you you guys know pavel durov no perry pull this up like four times i don't know pavel durov is the ceo and founder oh i do know pavel durov look at this fucking giga chad man what the telegram guy got shaley shredded right yeah okay wait isn't he in jail no he's not in jail he was uh he was captured right he was arrested in paris in 2024 but he was released they released him yeah they released him he's back in dubai where his country so the whole thing telegram the whole thing is it's a messaging app that's super secure so terrorists are really really down to use it it is worth a lot of money and they make a lot of money so this guy's worth 14 billion dollars pavel durov what's his strategy you say how can you get the birth rate increase dude with pecs like that that's right tell me you donate sperm over 15 years and allow anybody to use it this is a real website where you can go get pavel's donated sperm and get impregnated pavelsperm.net bro and so he now has over 100 children around the world not only that ladies and gentlemen he announced very recently that in his will he has said that his fortune will be evenly divided amongst all of his heirs.

1:14:58Atrioc:So every single woman who goes and has a child with his sperm gets part of the fortune for their child. This is how you increase child birth rates, dude. This is it. You're on the balls in your court. I'm looking at a title that

1:15:12Aiden:literally, a website that literally says free IVF with Pavel Durov's donated sperm and then it explains he pays for you to get impregnated. Like you're buying an iPhone. I don't know if you can see us down here.

1:15:24Atrioc:I sent a message how much money does it cost to get his come i want some and they haven't replied so i will keep you guys posted on this put your email as atrioc at lemonade stand.com that's not my no that's my email oh i didn't tell you about this sorry i've been i've been talking to some hearing some strange things from people getting emails so three very different tactics going on sperm okay you really do need to be careful at some point if we want to if we want to start making a difference the three of us we pull together a barrel or two of wool together of lemonade stand of lemonade stand come wow and then we'll figure out the steps from there okay this is something good will happen it's a real lottery ticket when you it's funny because people love loot boxes atrioc It's like a loot box of a car.

1:16:18Atrioc:Oh, I got a special DuckDuck child. Look at how tall he is.

1:16:28Atrioc:He's so lanky. And then you get Atriox's fortune. I have to give you my... That's a good plan. You know what? It's kind of sucked, by the way. Pavel specifically said his six legal children that he's had with women he's in relationships with. So he has six of those than like literally a hundred from donated sperm. He said they're all treated equally. He doesn't want his legal children to have any advantage. So all of them get an equal split of the fortune. Isn't that dope?

1:16:55Aiden:That's so funny.

1:16:56Atrioc:That is wild. Dude, the text says, from our clinic, you can undergo IVF for free using Pavel Durov's sperm, one of the most famous and successful entrepreneurs of our time. Isn't that sick? You like market yourself and be like, don't you want me? There's gotta be some psychological underpinning of like a Genghis Khan. Like you want to populate the,

1:17:14Aiden:isn't this an Elon thing too? Yeah. You want to do the same thing? Well, Elon doesn't just put his sperm out for free. Well, okay. Hey you to get pregnant. He doesn't do that. But in the trial, just a little one more. That was one of the things that came out was a, I forget their name, Siobhan something, but she's one of the board members of open AI who ended up having twins from Elon. Really? Yeah. Oh my God.

1:17:34Atrioc:Okay. He got her pregnant, but, but she says in the trial, we're platonic. We've never had sex. He just paid for my IVF with his sperm. That is, so this is like a, So he's doing it on a small scale. I would argue Elon's doing it the old fashioned way. Would you?

1:17:51Aiden:Pavel's doing it with technology. Open source.

1:17:55Atrioc:Open source. Also, how much, you don't want to do the sperm clinic like every day? Dude, the amount you must be. It's said for 15 years.

1:18:05Aiden:I'm just picturing, dude, I'm picturing like a, like data center racks, but with his,

1:18:10Atrioc:this is also a real like do you press the red button or the blue button you know because if there's too many kids they don't get that much money the fortune is too small yeah you have to

1:18:18Aiden:you have to because there's a there's diminishing returns for people who keep jumping on the train

1:18:23Atrioc:exactly yeah uh me and my girlfriend are debating whether we're even going to do it it's interesting because with this room yeah yeah that's it yeah i mean weigh the options plus you know there's a bit of the fortune you get you know in 20 years 14 billion is not even worth that much yeah what if you what if you order the cum dump it out have a regular kid with your wife and then later on be like hey this is this is uh oh this is pavel's kid i would have val comes to your home he picks up the child he's like rotates it like it's an item in skyrim looks at the back no that's not my hairline i okay i gotta be honest we're at the end of this segment right now and i don't think

1:19:09Aiden:we arrived at anything that that works you know oh well sorry sorry the actually the very first

1:19:15Atrioc:100 children by the way 100 more children the very first thing we talked about seems like the

1:19:20Aiden:most promising but it seems like they've just gotten introduced at these companies yes so right and that is also based off of the volunteer effort of like a couple billionaires being willing to spend that amount of money.

1:19:33Atrioc:Yeah. Yes.

1:19:33Aiden:I wonder what the legal call that is. I'm not making any claims

1:19:35Atrioc:that this is fixing anything. No, no, no. I don't think so either. If you're a corporation and you all give 70 grand to someone to have a kid and then they work somewhere else, do you call that back? What's the legal? Yeah, I don't know. Presumably you get rights to all of their lineage. Yeah. You have to name the kid Delta Airlines. Yeah. I mean, I'm curious to, you know, I am really curious to see what this does, right? Because you have data about if a government is offering small lump sums of money and then you're like, okay, what if a billionaire is like, we'll give you 70 grand, right? Yeah.

1:20:05Atrioc:So it'll be interesting data in a few years, but we don't know right now. It's essentially, this is like people, this is how some of the responses that are happening as people realize that there's this like demographic cliff coming.

1:20:16Aiden:If you want to hear more about this topic, we actually talked about it for a long time on Patreon.

1:20:24Atrioc:Live demonstrations.

1:20:25Aiden:You know, a couple months ago. Yes, sir. And I think we could probably put that episode in like the description or something like that. But I have a couple other things I wanted to talk to you guys about. What do you got? Yes. Okay. I thought - Punch me. This is - With facts and logic. I'm punching you with facts and logic. And make it logical. I want to hear a logical argument for what this is. Okay. Whatever it is. I'm curious what you guys have to think about this. I saw an announcement. I actually initially thought this was an April Fool's joke. uh i it was a it was a tweet that ghana was introducing payment functionality to their national id cards so imagine like you have your california driver's license and it has like your little chip in it okay like you can tap and and scan your id you thought it was an april fool's joke from the ghana government it wasn't okay it wasn't from ghana's twitter account it's like may

1:21:23Atrioc:fit. Aiden logs on it. I can't wait to see what the South Sudanese government did for April Fools. I can't. It took

1:21:31Aiden:me a while. It took me a while to find something besides this tweet that backed up that the system existed. And it was tweeted out on April Fool's Day. So I'm like, I'm looking at one source. I'm having a hard time finding anything else about this thing. But then it actually is real. It's something they just like recently introduced coincidental timing. It wasn't from the Ghana. I didn't think Ghana's government Twitter was fucking around. It's just a random thing for Ghana to do. It was just a random Twitter account. It's April 1st. What's our joke today? You know what? Your ID can be used as a credit card.

1:22:06LOL.

1:22:10We got them.

1:22:14Please continue. You know what? You know what I'm going to do on this show?

1:22:16Aiden:I'm not going to research anything anymore. I'm just going to show up. I'm just going to show up. And say my address twice, huh? That's what you're gonna do. Shut up! Shut up, dude! So, and there are other countries in the world that do this. We've talked about Estonia on the show before, for instance. But I wanted your just basic thoughts on that functionality being introduced, because I think - Like as an April Fool's joke? Ignore all the negative consequences that there could be around security concerns. right or people don't like the idea of consolidating so much information uh with with the government is the bank with am i banking with ghana or are they connected i think there's

1:23:04Atrioc:a partnership with so how are you giggling that's my question that's a real question i just i just shouted like a commercial you'd watch it it's like now that i started banking with ghana me and my family have been able to start the shop i just got my amex ghana that oh you're still with the black you still have the black i've got i've got the gonna i've

1:23:26Aiden:got the gonna it goes crazy no i i i think just i thought it was really interesting because my initial reaction to this was kind of exciting similar to the idea of uh like the eu was announcing that like digital digital wallet or digital currency so that you don't need to use like intermediary credit card companies anymore. This seems really convenient surface level. And I was wondering if, what your reactions would be if this was introduced in the US.

1:23:58Atrioc:So I guess the, I mean, it's just, it's implementation, right? Is it tied to a state bank?

1:24:03Aiden:I think in this case, in Ghana's case specifically, there's other countries that do this. Ghana's case, they have a partnership with a bank or like a bank equivalent that they have connected to. There's like a company they're partnering and doing this through.

1:24:18Atrioc:I want to set the stage for this conversation. And unironically, Aatrock doesn't have a credit card. And this is insanity. How is that setting the stage for this conversation? It is important. I want to just say myself, I don't have a credit card because I don't like credit. I have a debit card. I spend money that I have. It's crazy. I don't want to borrow money. I don't want to go and suck off Jamie Dimon from JPMorgan Chase, which you do every morning to ask for your money so you can buy a fucking latte frappuccino. That only happens if you don't pay. That only happens if you don't pay. Which means clearly you weren't paying your credit cards.

1:24:50I have a great life.

1:24:50Aiden:Every morning I get out of bed and I go, oh, Jamie. Jamie. You suck off Jamie Diamond. And it's fucking awesome. And you watch her Carlson. And you come in here. You list my address. And he knocks on my door and he says,

1:25:00Atrioc:where's my interest, honey? Look, here's the reason I bring that up. Because I don't give a shit that this wallet has four cards in it instead of one. I don't care. It's no different. I have to carry the wallet anyways. I don't feel like it I don't know what I'm I don't think this would matter I do agree with you on that I don't think this would change in a well-banked society like America what am I getting out of this other than I'm flashing my ID more often in public well you get one less card which I think you would like you don't have to have your debit card anymore I like this because we somehow turned this topic

1:25:31Aiden:which doesn't have a lot of meat to it into making fun of HR it's unbelievable it's awesome wait I had more of this topic but you guys made fun of me and now i saw red so many places don't take credit like debit they

1:25:45Atrioc:don't take that day do you just leave you just go you just leave the restaurant no they everywhere takes it everywhere takes it i've had no issues i've had zero issues from my podcast cause making fun of me i had no i have good credit score i got nothing about it has affected me in any way except for you guys you don't need to be upset about the dumb decisions you make

1:26:12this is uh you guys are paid by big credit to push people into a life of servitude fuck i had something i wanted to say and you ruined it so when we go to the gas station

1:26:25Atrioc:you flash your debit card at them do you realize how embarrassing that is i'm gonna flash you're an adult uh something dude what was your next topic aiden because i literally can't think of what i want we need to move on yes we need to move on from the gonadian credit card id situation which turned into basically i don't have a credit card at what point is that true we've covered four news stories in the world on this episode of the podcast and i think one of them is that gonna maybe as an april fool's joke has the id card and then i don't have a credit card that's people watch the show. That's the big four things that people need to know about this week.

1:27:07Aiden:Okay, it's just weird because you could be getting so many points.

1:27:15Atrioc:It's you leaving a lot of points on the table. I'm leaving a lot of points on the table. I gotta know about this, H.R.

1:27:20Aiden:Okay, the other thing I wanted to talk about was a missed story from China that we I almost can't believe we didn't talk about this because it actually came up a bunch and it's the idea of the one, two, three, four, five hotline. Yep. So in China, you can dial one, two, three, four, five on your phone and immediately connect with an on-call like government employed staff to lodge any complaint that you could imagine. Literally you see like damage at a park or a safety issue in your neighborhood or any problem you could imagine in society, you can call one, two, three, four, five. And hello, Xi Jinping, my dipshit calls are bullying me.

1:28:11Is there anything you can do about that? I know it's not in your jurisdiction, but I would really appreciate if you could send a nuclear missile to aid in Calvin's house. Oh, yeah. Well, actually, if you will say my address.

1:28:23Aiden:If you're a real friend, you could say my address.

1:28:25Atrioc:For a credit card, you could buy a bodyguard, H.O.

1:28:29Aiden:And we got told multiple times, it's impressive at the scale at which this operates because they pick up really quickly. People make calls all the time. And oftentimes your requests are dealt with very quickly. And there was actually an example that popped up on Instagram that Stefik, who went on the trip with us, sent of surprisingly a foreigner living in China making the call in English and then basically laying out a mixture of like, I think it was park benches and a previously like swing set for children in an area that children climbed on. It was really beat up and broken and no longer safe for kids to use.

1:29:10Aiden:And he made the call. And within a couple days, the area is cleaned up and repaired. And then within two weeks, the whole area has been like rebuilt out again with like new markings on the streets for like bike parking. So they aren't parked on the things where the kids could play on. And it's this really interesting example of like public service that I don't really even have a comparison point for. Like because multiple people said you can use this at basically any time for anything. and they're, you know, and people's requests actually are dealt with super, super quickly.

1:29:51Atrioc:Another example that the person we spoke with at the university program said was somebody, you can, like, for example, you can call in and be like, there's a lot of flies at this public bench. A lot of flies right now. It seems to be, you know, they must be hatching right now. And then they come in and like clean it all up within a day. Like things that you just wouldn't think of is like, oh, you can just ask your government to do a thing. it's just anything and they do it within a day yeah i wonder how they deal with abuse because i'm thinking if we did that right now the calls you'd get some of them would be so stupid and i wonder what you do about it you just ignore it or do you i don't know i don't know yeah i don't

1:30:29Aiden:think they didn't suggest that literally every single thing is you know not everybody's complaint is valid or perfect right and they're dealing with everything uh you can assume that they're getting a similar amount of shitty calls yeah that's what i'm assuming so i'm just wondering how they do but they have an apparatus like they i that somehow you know there's no like weight on these phone calls and no matter where you live in the country there's like a reasonable response time which was the impressive part the logistics of it uh yeah i just thought that was like a fun thing to share because it came up so much and we didn't get to talk about it at all yeah that's

1:31:05Atrioc:cool. Dude, another example that I'm blank. He, so again, the university director, it told us that one example was that a parent called one, two, three, four, five and said, Hey, the teacher at the school who teaches my kid is being unfair to my kid. And that person was disciplined. Like you can call about schools and stuff. And so, I mean, it's, it's obviously only like a product that is only possible when you have extreme connection and like decision-making ability on every level of everything right whereas for us it's like hey this bench is fucked up that needs to be a whole i mean i don't know the specifics but presumably like a city council meeting whatever to decide how that's budgeted and who does it and who's contracted in the reviews and everything else and they just have none of that just everybody you know yeah you can just act you can just immediately go make things happen and say and so that is definitely one of the examples that is uh truly like man if you do have central government and you pull it off really well that is nice that's fucking nice that's i'll read more about it i wonder i don't think there's any downsides i'm always skeptical but i want to know it does seem cool especially in that video that that's a big cent yeah we have i remember the thing i want to say though one more thing before we go okay about it was about it was about the cards okay but it was a tangential point and it's not funny it's serious i was questioning what i asked all right all right you said that they're going to tie their bank to their ID, right?

1:32:29You're making such a face right now. And I want to ask legitimately, because I've thought about this, I legitimately want a social media platform where your ID is tied to it and required. And I wonder if you guys would want that or think it's lame. I'm not saying it's the only one, but I would like to be able to log onto a platform where everybody has their government name and you have to have an ID to sign up and it's 100 % pure human beings, no bots. No, I think that would be sick as hell. And I want it more and more every day. And I just want someone to do it. And I don't care about the fucking privacy of it.

1:33:05I would literally just want humans only.com and it's, uh, and it's, and you can't be, you can't be anonymous. You can't be fucking chumbug at four 20. And you're like talking about shit. You have to just be yourself.

1:33:17Aiden:Yeah. I've thought about this a lot. And I think it's one of those things where my opinion has transformed somewhat recently. From what to what? Like, I think it used to be no. And then Tucker Carlson said. And then whatever Tucker says goes. And then I pivoted. No, humansonly.com kind of rips to me. Because I think one of the things I hate the most about the internet is the lack of social accountability. Not that I think everybody would be like wonderful and nice because the closest thing I can think of is like early to mid-era Facebook. And there were still terrorists on there. Yeah. And social terrorists.

1:33:52Aiden:yeah well real tears plus your brother osama on uh and and uh i and to me the trade-off of the security aspect is worth it because it's like i'm not fooling myself like that's i've already compromised that in so many other ways in my life i'm not going to pretend like i'm not already facebook knows what time i take a shit they know every fucking thing about me from millions of data points and i rather have a social media platform where i'm like i'm on humans only yeah If you're not on humans only, I do not take your opinion. Yeah, you're not a human. This did make me think of something. Because obviously, if you think about this in a broad sense, there's way more downsides.

1:34:31Aiden:It's not just about my individual security as a person. It's about people of certain minorities or opinions on the platform then being attacked or monitored by the government. uh i think i say this in the context of oh if i trusted the institutions around me uh like enough then i would prefer this type of platform where in-person social accountability exists embedded into the social that's a swedish thing to say though i live in america and like i'm already posting on fucking twitter i don't trust the institution it's fucking i don't even like elon musk okay it can't get worse for me i don't trust facebook i don't like it's over to go it up I have no love for my current social platforms at all.

1:35:14I would take humans only, even if they're fucking monitoring me, even if they're, the government's got its greasy paws on it.

1:35:19Aiden:Yeah, I understand that. I think it's, I don't, I also feel that way, but I don't also don't think I'm like the primary party at risk. Oh, sure. Yeah.

1:35:30Atrioc:Obviously there needs to be platforms where you can be anonymous. Yeah. Like, but, but this type of platform existing,

1:35:36Aiden:I think the, the note I actually wanted to end this on was an interesting story. I forget his name. I think he used to work. I think he used to work at Vox's YouTube channel. And he did this little investigation into these Tinder accounts that are going on right now where like the profile photos will be filled with like a really handsome guy in his like late 30s, early 40s. But then the last picture will be somebody else, typically like an Asian man, embedded into like a painting or photo or like bobblehead. And it's weird because you're looking at like, you know, this like European supermodel in the first five photos.

1:36:24Aiden:And then it's just this like really distorted AI photo that has somebody's human face embedded into it. He's like, why does this exist? You know, why is this type of account on Tinder everywhere? And when I ask other people who use it, they also have talked about this type of account existing. And it's because of Tinder's photo recognition to approve your, to verify your profile. So when you upload your photos to Tinder, in order to get the little verified badge on the platform, which people use to like make sure they're interacting with real human beings. Yeah. You upload a photo, say of yourself, and then you do the face scan thing in your phone.

1:37:08Aiden:And then it does like an AI matchup to make sure that your submitted photo matches up with your face scan that you submitted to verify you. But the thing is, it only needs one photo to match up with the face scan. So what scammers are doing is they borrow a bunch of photos from like a really hot guy's Instagram profile, right? build out the profile take a photo of themselves and then embed it into like a weird picture of like a painting or bobblehead and that's enough to get past the approval sensor and then they have a verified profile that they try to like scan people through on tinder and i'm not saying that in obviously your stipulation has in the hypothetical world where we have humans only.com the sensor works really really well yeah but this is an example of how people and like are already overcoming these types of verification services to like abuse them and scam people and i worry that like no matter how far we go there's always a way to like oh start bending the rules and putting bots on it i just thought that was super compelling shout outs to uh fuck i feel so bad for not remembering his name, but it was a great video.

1:38:23That's really interesting. I had not heard of that. I mean, I do think that like having your social security number and fucking ID would help limit that in the kind of way where like I've been, this is so much a random example, but I've been trying to sign up for a Chinese Warcraft account so I can watch replays and you literally need a phone number and you can't do it. And it's like, I have money and time and I can't do it.

1:38:44Aiden:Yeah. So I can imagine humans only having at least that level of friction to where somebody who wants to do it can't do it. Start the humans only. I would love humans only. We covered basically all the news in the world this week, I think. We got it all.

1:38:59Atrioc:The most important ones. Cover Greece, cover Ghana. If you look for a place with a lot of humans.

1:39:05Aiden:It just doesn't make any sense. He says he doesn't want credit card debt, but you just set it to auto pay. Thank you guys so much for watching. You just set it to auto pay. Am I crazy? He has money. This is literally murdering my co-host. You can find it on the Patreon. It doesn't make any sense. hour on Patreon. Patreon.com. It's an automatic payment. We've got this time next week. Thank you so much for watching. Goodbye.