This is Fine | Ep. 029 Lemonade Stand 🍋

30:35Whatever. Biden was not, I mean, the Biden in the Kamala thing was already pretty unpopular and then she didn't run a great campaign and also there was inflation. and if you don't watch the news closely, whatever, I get it. I totally get it. It's not, I do find it a little frustrating when you're in a moment like now, when you are a soybean farmer who thought this is all going to be good for me and now you are literally unable to sell your product because of decisions he's making and you are going to have to lay people off. You're going to have material economic damage and you still are like, this shit is going to work out.

31:05I find that to be a little frustrating, but I don't have any leopards in my face. I'm in the YouTube comments. I would like someone to reach out to the guy and try to like talk to him and explain to him. Maybe. Maybe we can give him. It is weird that he doesn't. Genuinely, maybe we can give this guy a call and just ask. Dude, I would love to talk to Mr. Maxwell. I would actually really like to ask this guy some questions. I think we're, you know, weeks out from when the harvest for these things starts and we'll see how it plays out for the rest of the year. What if we get our soft hands up and we go fucking harvest some of those soybeans?

31:35We go do a lemonade stand episode at the farm. In the field, bro. We can do that. Get some crops out there. I'm really curious to see What I would like to wait for is, say we wait a couple months, we see what the government reaction to the lack of demand is and see if there's subsidies or help. And then, honestly, I'd like to talk to farmers then in the situation where they have received or have not received that support from the government and see how that sways their decision about the situation. I think two years from now is when this is interesting. Because it is community. I mean, even for the tariff supporters, there's acknowledgement it's going to be disruptive in the short term, right?

32:09And so I think it'll take time for somebody like this to go, this was wrong. Whereas this is the short-term pain that was clearly communicated. Whether it then turns into long-term benefit, I don't think any of the three of us are very confident in that. But like, I do, I think it's perfectly reasonable, again, knowing people in my family who are farmers who voted for Trump. Like, I think it's perfectly reasonable for them to be like, this is what I was told is going to happen. But there's going to be this more sustainable America first economy long-term. and maybe that means soybeans pass away, but we focus more on cattle or corn and that will have higher yields because we're not competing with Brazil who's like dramatically expanding their farming production every year, right?

32:46Like that's, I think in a year or two, you can maybe call them, you know, stupid or - I'm not calling them stupid. No, no, no, I'm saying the people in these comments are gonna be like, see, but it's too early to tell. I mean, right now, this is the known short-term pain of tariffs. Does it turn into benefits long-term? I don't think this was known. See, that's the thing. I don't think this was no. I think if you would have asked them at the time of the election that they're going to flash forward and they're going to have a bunch of crop that they can't sell. I do not think most of these voters, of these specific people, and we'd have to ask to know for sure, but my guess is that when most people put that ballot box in November and voted for this guy, they were not like, I understand that I will not be able to sell my soybean crop a year from now, but that's worth the long-term gains of that economic concept.

33:32I do not think most people thought about that. A lot of people say he's – I think this is what most people thought from my understanding because I have uncles. I have family. Yeah, no, no. They said a lot of people think he's just using tariffs as a bargaining chip as a bluff. The idea was like the tariffs aren't really going to stick around. We're going to – Okay, yeah. We're going to use the tariffs. We're going to threat. We're going to get some things, but we're not going to – they're not actually going to stick around and make us be unable to sell our soybeans because that's – So they're still – yeah, no, that's an interesting – like they're still under the thinking of like this is just him riling things up right now.

34:02And they're going to get a deal from China. We can handle one year of no soybeans. Yeah, that makes sense. That's what I think. And then the second thing is like, where am I blanking? I heard really, it was very poignant, I promise. No, I don't fucking matter. Go on, I'm sorry. China news. I have another China news if we want to keep going on. I just, real quick, we could do a sort of opium war type strategy where we get countries hooked on our soybeans. China's too tough to fight, so we got to go somewhere. We have to go to like Australia or something. And make them all eat soybeans. Let me briefly sidetrack this.

34:38I actually think we're in an opium war with China and we're losing. For TikTok? What? Oh. No, for fentanyl. For fentanyl, dude. Yeah. We're in the war and we're on the other side. And we're on the losing side. It's the same thing because they sold opium for tea and there's like fentanyl for soybeans. Yeah.

35:02uh what else is going on okay well is there is there anything else digital opium i think that's i think we're done actually no i think just like that was the week it was soybeans in brazil and that's why the world's on fire uh i want to talk about digital opium okay let's talk about tiktok let's talk about scrolling that's what you know all about gen z okay makes me happy makes you uh we finally had news our little refresher on tiktok it is the first time i've seen this in my lifetime refresher on tech i want to refresh i want to explain to you okay um this is the first i've seen in my lifetime where a law was gone through the house gone through senate passed by congress signed by the president approved by the supreme court nothing happened we got through all the steps of the process we're gonna ban tech talk and it just didn't nobody enforce it nothing happened so we just kept extending extending extending and then in my somewhat limited knowledge.

36:01This appears to be the most egregious thing that Trump has done. Everything else is... No, no, no. No, no, no. Legally. Hold on, hold on. Let me explain. Getting out my... Getting out my video camera to re-tape that one. Legally. Everything else, every other time, and maybe there is an exception I'm not aware of, but every other time Trump tries to do a crazy thing and then the judicial system says, you can't do this, he follows along in bitches and complaints. This is the one thing where every single branch of the government, including the Supreme Court. Including him. He signed this letter. Everybody.

36:34Everybody. And so this is the one time where he's, it's not just like etiquette and what, you know, and executive orders and all this stuff. He's straight up defying the orders of the Supreme Court to ban this. Anyway, go ahead. So that is the context going in. And we all know that TikTok was officially banned. Everyone freaked out and then nothing happened. Nothing happened. And it keeps getting extended and nothing happened. So finally, you have an update. As of today, there is, again, he always calls them deals, but it's like a framework of a deal with the United States and China on how to handle tech talk, which is, and this is my understanding is they are going to, cause here's China's goals, right?

37:09China does not want the algorithm to leave China. Yeah. That is the most important part. That is the tick tock key thing. That is, that is the Krabby Patty secret. It's the Krabby Patty secret formula. And that was the big thing. And China was going to blow the whole, they were just going to not, they would rather have tick tock die in America than release the algorithm. So what they're going to do is they're going to lease, they're going to license the algorithm to American TikTok, which will be a new company, US TikTok, that licenses the algorithm by paying a part of their revenue, I think 20 % of their revenue, to China.

37:45So it's like almost no different than what it is now, really. This is so much work to do. Am I crazy? So it says the guy with the Huawei laptop. Deep state agent. Is this not, it just feels like so much work to get basically nothing. So an American TikTok will be, I think, co-owned by some of the investors that are currently in TikTok, which is like, I don't know, Sequoia and some of the VCs. And then also Oracle is going to be a major owner. I think Blackstone was one of them. Oracle's the leading one, which is interesting. So Oracle, which has already put out some incredible stock numbers on the back of hosting some of the data for TikTok in America, is now going to – he's owned by Larry Ellison, right?

38:34He's the CEO. His son also owns the Paramount Skydance merger that owns CBS News. And it is now in the same day making a bid to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, which owns CNN. So if this were true, TikTok, CNN, and CBS News would be owned by the same billionaire Ellison family that is very Trump-friendly. So there is something unique to that. Although I will say, based on my understanding, they will not have control of the algorithm to be able to change it. It's just licensed through China. You have to license it as it is. Yeah. so i'm i'm i'm a little skeptical it's still a framework deal so if you were to the the goal of this was to protect american data from the chinese government that was the original reason why this cropped up at all right it was the idea that the amount of data tiktok is collecting from american citizens can be used against the u.s by the chinese government because of their connections to, I mean, because they're connected to buy things.

39:49There's multiple things. It's what, so there's what the US government says. That's what they say. It's about data. Yeah, the security reason. It's the security reason. And then there's what everybody assumes to be the real one, which is the algorithm determines what topics are seen and promoted, right? Yeah. And so there is a lot of evidence to show that certain topics just magically don't get shown by the algorithm, right? Hold on, hold on. Let me mute the mic on my laptop. Sorry. Jujibing perked up at his desk. He's like kind of bored. He's like. So. So continue. Tiananmen Square is a topic that China really, really doesn't want anybody talking about.

40:27And conveniently, videos about Tiananmen Square just don't get shown. Videos about the Uyghur genocide or crackdown or however you want to call that situation conveniently doesn't get shown. Hong Kong protests conveniently doesn't get shown. And so there's like very strong evidence that they are willing to use the algorithm to basically promote whatever content they want. And maybe they're pushing certain subjects. Right. And the most egregious example is when it was threatened to be banned. They updated the app to basically say TikTok is threatened to be banned. You should reach out to your congressman.

41:00And that really freaked people out because this is a foreign government, the Chinese government, who's using an app to reach 100 million Americans and tell them, you should go bother your congressperson to pass a law. So it is multiple. I think there are real genuine concerns around TikTok and the idea that an adversarial government that has an extremely bad frack record with free speech and human rights, and obviously the United States government is not absolved of things here as well, but they use the algorithm to push certain things and to bring down certain things. So let's say all of the things, all of those concerns, let's just say they're 100 % true.

41:41If that is a given, how much does this license change those security concerns? That was my question. It was like, does this actually resolve the original reasons or fears that this existed? No, it doesn't. Oh. The algorithm remains in China and remains licensed from TikTok. So, yeah, I don't think it... Oh, good. I don't think this does anything. This is a... So, again, there's two big ones. One is the data, and one is the algorithm's influence on discussion, let's say. Yeah. The data is now going to be safer if that's held entirely within the U.S. systems. And if the algorithm is licensed, they can have more scrutiny over whether any data is leaving the United States.

42:25Like, it'd be easier to self-contain it. So the data privacy concerns is the one. But who gives a shit about data privacy? Like, honestly. Is there anybody who's like, man, I really care if the Chinese government knows about what type of TikToks I'm watching? I mean, maybe. So that data? Did they steal my dance moves? I don't know. Maybe I'm unique in this. I just don't give a shit. The government knows stuff about it. I mean, they know what I put into notion. The US government already knows everything. I'm not too concerned. They know every episode of this podcast is airs because you're live streaming it to Xi Jinping's house.

42:56Yeah. If you had the technology to do it like I did, you would do it. Once I get my Chinese EV and I'm driving around talking about Tiananmen Square and it hard breaks. All right. Do we want to hop on over to something else? Is there anything else I'll say on this? I don't know. It's kind of dumb, but I think the funniest part is that we just ignored the law. What are we doing? What are we doing? It's like TikTok is popular, so just nobody really cares. You know, it's funny. I think there's a big fear among lawmakers and probably Trump in general that he has a lot of fans on TikTok that would be really mad if it were banned.

43:37But my guess is much like what happened in India. If they actually banned TikTok, there would be a new TikTok very quickly made in America or in a friendly country and would be popular within... You know, it's not irreplaceable. The algorithm's good, but someone else can do it. What happened in India? India banned TikTok. And then a bunch of TikTok competitors popped up, and that's what they used. They watched more YouTube shorts. They watched more Instagram reels. Because India was concerned with the same thing. China's so close. They don't want the control of the narrative to be within an adversary's hands.

44:13I agree. I think it is very concerning to have an adversarial government with this much influence over how people discuss news. That being said, our own tech companies do this. Yeah, I would say like every country in Europe probably feels that about YouTube and Facebook. Every other country. In fact, that leads into Nepal very well. Oh, yeah, let's talk about that. That's a good one. Yeah, that's a good one. All right. This is a very interesting one. You got to stop spinning in the wrong way. I will spin whichever way I want. Nepal riots. You guys are both bad at spinning the glove. Now, I was particularly interested in this because I lived in Nepal for three months right after high school.

44:49Oh, hi. So I have spent a lot of time in Nepal in various parts of it. People are not aware about Nepal. tiny country in between China and India is most known for being heavily in the Himalayas. So it is one side of Mount Everest. They got a fire flag too. It's not a rectangle. It's not a rectangle. It's so beast to have a flag that is triangular. Oh yeah. Yeah. Flag is cool. So this is a country that is nestled in between China and India and over the last like decade or two is it's been kind of been an interesting, like they're kind of fighting for vying for influence. When I was there, it was extraordinarily influenced by India.

45:28And in fact, while Nepal is considered, people think of it as this Buddhist sort of haven, and you go there for the Buddhist temples, like 90 % of people there were practicing Hinduism. So it's very, very influenced by India. And then when I was there, insanely poor, like one of the poorest countries in the world. So they essentially, it's a small country. They now have 30 million people. and Kathmandu is the capital city. Kathmandu is basically the only city. This is not like a giant bustling country. It's like a lot of hills and fields that people are spread out in and then there's like one capital city.

46:03So this last week on September 8th, people started protesting, particularly led by Gen Z. And the quick summary is people were frustrated with government corruption, with inequality. People were particularly annoyed with government officials, their kids, having these lavish TikToks showing off their wealth and whatnot. And so this isn't that dissimilar from a lot of the kind of protesting and whatnot that's going around the world. I think a couple of things that are particularly notable. So on September 8th, tens of thousands of people go into the streets of Kathmandu. They start protesting intensely.

46:35They start burning down government buildings. They burn the parliament building. The prime minister and president private addresses get burned down, media buildings and hotels. And they break into the prime minister's office and essentially force him to resign. And so this was all instigated when the Nepalese government was threatening social media companies and saying, you have to register with the government and allow us to have control. Otherwise, you cannot exist in Nepal. So they did this. They tried to enact this law. They were temporarily banned, including Facebook, X, YouTube, Discord.

47:06And this was perceived to be by the youth. They got LinkedIn, dude. They got LinkedIn. They got LinkedIn. They got LinkedIn. They got Reddit. Yeah. And so. Imagine writing because you can't access LinkedIn. minutes it's just that's where i really that's where i really hang these days yeah so they uh so that really instigated this feeling of like our government has been serving us there's been corruption we are struggling as a youth we have like 22 percent youth unemployment 20 percent of the country is still in poverty which is actually a huge improvement from 15 years ago um and so they're like this is this is crossing the line with the social media ban this is basically an attempt to you know enact even more authoritarianism and stop us from being able to do anything the timing is so suspect because it's right as these massive online hashtag nepo kid uh online protests are happening where they're like saying all the friends and family of these government officials are living lavish lifestyles we're living in poverty it's fucked up and that's when they decide we're going to crack down on social media right people people draw the connection so two really notable things for this that i thought was interesting the first is so gen z collectively is really kind of organizing around this.

48:13And they do this from a Discord group called Youth Against Corruption, which has like 160 ,000 members. So this starts to be where people who are participating in these protests and really organizing them, it's happening in this Discord channel. So for the first two days of the protest, they're going around burning buildings. The military come out. There's like 70, 50 people die in the first two days. A couple police as well as protesters being shot by police. Eventually the military comes out and assumes control. and now the protesters are sort of in control of things because of how much influence they have.

48:43They've literally burnt down the prime minister's house and the prime minister has resigned. And fled as well, right? Yeah. So they start debating about who should be the next leader in this Discord group. And so they start having live stream debates. There was a live stream debate with about 16 ,000 people watching on their own platform as well as YouTube. They pick sort of front runners and then they do a vote on Discord where people voted on which person they want to be the next prime minister of Nepal. And former Chief Justice Jushila Karki is chosen. So the first thing, that's crazy. Everybody's just arguing about it on Discord.

49:20And that's where there's apparently all these different debates. There's fake news going around. So there's subgroups around going against the fake news. Dude, I'm in there. I'm in the Discord. I tried to get in. It's blocked. They blocked it now. Yeah, but I'm in there and I was reading stuff and it's so Gen Z. It's crazy. Like it'll be memes and someone being like, you guys should like Joe Biden as president. And then it'll be like real serious paragraphs of discussion. And then it'll be memes. And it's wild seeing it happen in real time. It's like Lord of the Flies. I mean, it's like there's real beautiful stuff, but also it's mixed in with so much meme.

49:53Right. And I think that's what's worth just acknowledging is like while this sounds cool on paper, this is it's a it's a almost inspiring of like the youth has managed to like overthrow what is perceived to be this you know inactive unresponsive corrupt government and at the same time it's tens of thousands of people in discord who are anonymous who might not be nepali citizens the fact that you're in there is a little bit oh yeah people are spreading fake news people are uh for example trying to bring back the monarchy like they want the king back uh which is you know if they vote on that on discord i guess that's legit um they use discord to re-vote the king in uh but it is like i want to counterpoint slightly only that i think what's inspiring about it is who they ended up choosing because this guy's gone yeah this is like an incredible choice all things considered yeah she has this history of anti-corruption she's uh what she's not gen z she's like 70 years old yeah she's uh she's not from a political party she's independent she's got you know she's like pretty well respected in a great public malls.

50:55They picked somebody who's not just from their group. Yeah. And it's funny because the second place in the poll, I saw the poll in Discord. Second place for poll is Random Nepali, which I thought meant a random person. I looked it up. Random Nepali is a YouTuber who's popular in Nepal, and that was their second choice. So it could have been Gen Z Alexa YouTuber, and instead that they overwhelmingly picked, like, the right, I think, seemingly the right person who, like, took this mantle, didn't understand Discord. Yeah. I don't know. They're like, that's cool. Yeah. What stood out to me, so she's notable.

51:25Again, the youth is frustrated with corruption, the feeling the government isn't serving them. Things aren't getting better. And so this woman that they chose to elect as the interim prime minister, she's 73, but she worked on the Supreme Court as a judge in the 2010s. So in 2012, she and another Supreme Court judge jailed a serving minister for corruption. So she aggressively pushed on corruption. she became the first chief justice pushed against corruption even more and then some lawmakers tried to impeach her in 2017 because they're like oh you're biased and so she's considered a champion against corruption and to me felt like lena khan to be honest like this very like outsiding political figure who comes in and is pushing back against a very established system that eventually you know gets removed of power and so again if this is like a kind of two year after america situation in two years, Lena Khan will be elected president by a Discord.

52:15Don't get my hopes up. Don't get me started. Hey, by the way, can we do a smite interruption? No, I'll find it. After this. One more thing after this. Go back to that. Actually, I want to interrupt right now. Very small. Guys, we got featured in the New York Times for our Lena Khan interview, and they framed it entirely around your question, Doug, and it pissed me off. They put us in there, and they were like, Lemonade stand collectively pressed Lena Conn hard on her. All three of us agree. That was very funny. It was true. We wanted to ask that question. But the way it's phrased, these three gamers all...

52:54I was like, damn. Damn, I got New York Times. They misrepresented. Anyway, that was funny. To be fair, they represented me very well. They did. It should be included, but it was just like... It was funny. because yeah yeah that two of the biggest lena khan glazers were told like told the one sentence is they pushed lena khan that was like what five minutes out of 90 minutes i don't know i thought that was funny um yep so nepal uh crazy situation right now basically they have an inner interim government from this woman who was elected by discord to be clear is that's not an official election so there's a little bit of weirdness around while everybody's like yeah this is cool there is a sense of like what's going on and it is worth reminding people again like as cool as this is if you go around nepal the vast majority of people do not have internet they don't have electricity right like even when i was when i was there you had internet maybe like an hour a day in the capital right the capital is a small percentage of the actual country so you now have the prime minister of the country chosen by a discord and so if you're the person in the hills of you know two hours outside of Kathmandu, that feels a little weird to me.

54:09Like the places I went are like, there's no way these people at any part of this process. So it's cool. And I think inspiring in a lot of ways. Yeah. And also a little concerning. What she said when she stepped up, I watched an interview, is like she's going to take this honor from Gen Z. Right, yeah, yeah. And then she's going to do it. But it's only for six months, six to eight months. Yes. To set up real elections. Which I think is cool. I mean, I'm more worried that like there's a long history of countries being in interim governments that collapse because there's so much instability. And again, I want to say, historically, both India and China have a strong interest.

54:45And also the United States, because we just love the medal, want to medal in Nepal. They want to have more influence and control over Nepal because it's a buffer state between the two. And so the chances of this going badly are still really high, of course. It's a very uncertain situation. But I, you know, maybe I'm more hopeful than you on this one, but it's like, this could have gone way worse. I think this is the best way this could have gone. Yeah, exactly. Right? And at the same time, I just want to remind people that 160 ,000 people in a Discord have voted the interim prime minister of a country.

55:18And one of those guys is a Patreon. Of 30 million people. So it's like, I'm in there causing chaos. And that's sick as hell if you're in there. And that's, by definition, not the majority of the country. And it's just, it's, it's not, I don't think it's the incredible, amazing restoration of democracy that maybe sounds like, even though it's, it's, it's atriac, atriac in this discord guys. I think Modi is a leading example. You're just, you're just working on behalf of the Indian government. I saw a tweet that was like a week ago, Discord announced that they were going to up the maximum number of people in a Discord server from 2.5 million to 25 million.

55:58And people were like, what is the possible? A few days later, Nepal overthrows the government. I did have this thought with this story is there's an interesting trend of noticing Discord more in high stakes political media or situations. like here or Charlie Kirk Shooter like confessing on Discord or talking on Discord. Or I think it was a year or two ago when that kid, he was like 21. He was in the US military and he just dropped a document. On files, right? He just dropped some files about the Russian-Ukraine war on Discord to like his boys and then got arrested for it. But this theme of Discord becoming relevant enough to have these sorts of things take place.

56:51Have you seen the people getting messages from their parents like, I know you're on Discord all the time. Are you in a chat with this guy? They think of Discord as like one thing. It's one place. It's like one place. I like the idea of all of these things happening in one server. And it's just like, there's one channel where this vote is happening, but also one channel where it's same server. He's planning assassinations. Where the guy is playing the Charlie Kirk assassination. Yeah, it's like Valorant scrims. And then you got... Valorant... Tarek's pro city is on the bottom. It's all in the one big discourse.

57:29Speaking of government collapse, though, France? Oh, I can talk about France a little bit. I do want to say one final thing on this is like, we're not going to go deep on Indonesia as well, but all over Asia, there's a record here, Gen Z protests are rattling governments all over Asia, from Nepal to Indonesia. This is happening not just in Nepal. And by the way, I'll say, outside of Nepal, it's not going as well. It's not going as... And I will say a big part of that, in my understanding of the situation, is how incredibly handled this was by the Nepal military. For me, that was one of the big stories of this.

58:04They did not seize power when they could have. They tried to find a civilian authority to go above them. yeah they they quieted the riots down they regained order got peace but didn't seize power like it's like almost unheard of in a lot of countries for that happening and i looked into it and the nepalese military is like so deeply respected by its people by other countries uh there's one quote i just want to say i've said in my video but like um they have these uh elite units called the gurkhas and they're like if anyone tells you they fear death they're either a lying or a Gurkha. That's like badass.

58:39I don't know. I just thought... Oh, they don't fear death. They don't fear death? Sorry, don't fear death. You know what's crazy? You said that the exact same way in your YouTube video. I said it wrong twice and a lot of people gave me death. I'm trying to get... They don't fear death. Yeah. I'll just... This is pandering, all right? But Nepal is an absolutely beautiful, incredible country with amazing people and I would rank them S tier above every other country. You heard it first. on the Doug Doug country rankings. It is cool to read this and be like, damn, this went so well. Like, that's, anyway.

59:10This is how so American politics I wish him the best. Tell me what's happening in France. Okay, very quick on France. Look, it's actually so up our alley. It's crazy. I don't want to go too into it because we'll, I'll at least need to change my pants talking about. Before you get into it, here's my. Give me your understanding. I'll yell wrong loudly. Every two weeks. Every two weeks, these guys are in the streets burning cars. Every two weeks. It could be about the bread. It could be about the debt. I don't know. So you can tell me what it is this time. I'll say, people say that, but it really, if you had, if you graphed number of protests or riots in France per year, it's an uptrend, okay?

59:51Yeah. They're getting more and more upset and more angry. What is happening is that they are gone through their fourth prime minister in a year because nobody can agree on what budget to pass, really. The first thing a prime minister does when they come in, they have to decide what they're going to spend money on, what they're going to cut, what they're going to raise taxes. Nobody can agree on that. I will say all these prime ministers are nominated by the centrist Macron, who is trying to hold it all together and nobody agrees with that. He's not very well liked. But everyone he nominates comes in, tries to pass a bill, doesn't get passed.

1:00:27Things get more radicalized. The government is not able to govern. They can't do anything. They can't pass any budget. And so now it's becoming more and more of an issue. Real quick. So Macron, understanding, he's president, right? He elects the prime minister. But the prime minister has to be from the majority coalition, right? Such a good question. I'm so glad you asked that. Okay. So here's how, I wish I could draw it. But imagine there's three basic groups that he could draw from. There's the centrist party that he is the head of. There is the right-wing party called the RN. That's head by Le Pen.

1:00:58That is the single biggest individual party. And then the biggest group is what you would call the left-wing group, the new popular front. They got more than the other two groups. Not a majority, but more. It would be like, I don't know, they got 34 % or something like that. Yeah, yeah. But this group is made up of 20 individual parties in a trench coat, all of whom do not agree. Basically, almost anything except they don't like the other two parties. Okay. So, for example, there's a socialist party in there, and you think maybe that's more left-wing, but actually they're pretty centrist, and they really don't like the Melanchon's biggest party, left-wing party.

1:01:37So they can't agree on who to nominate as a prime minister. It sounds like American left politics, too. Yeah, it's similar. There's a lot of infighting, but there is a big support. So it's just like nobody can nominate somebody that enough people will agree with to get a majority. So he keeps putting in these centrist guys that are trying to get the bill passed. But what I'm saying is the debt in France, the bigger story here is like, is it, it's all going to old people. And we've talked about this before, but it's more extreme than almost anywhere. I looked it up. There's a really good piece on it in the FTD Deep Dive.

1:02:10And they showed that the average French old pensioner is living a better, like they have a better income than like the working age person in almost all of Europe and in America. Like they're living, they're living relatively lavishly on, they have one of the most generous pension packages. They have one of the longest pension times. So like the average French retiree is, is, is getting like 27 years or something after retirement that they're getting paid for. And like the government's income cannot support it. They, they are, they are borrowing to make that happen. And so one thing you could do is raise taxes, which I'm sure that's a proposition on the left.

1:02:51and one thing you can do is cut benefits. But the truth is, nobody wants to do either of those bad things enough to get a majority. Like, anyone suggesting raising taxes cannot get a majority. Anyone suggesting cutting spending cannot get a majority. One of those riots we talked about, or we can call them protests, whatever, was because Macron tried to raise the retirement age two years. I think it was from 60 to 62 to where you can start getting the free retirement. That caused a massive protest. Yeah, it might be 62 to 64. Yeah, maybe that's right. Maybe that's right. You're right, I'm going to be correct.

1:03:19So anyway, that... I'm not saying I'm giving a solution here. I'm just saying like, this is, this is, it's such a, I think such a clusterfucking phrase right now. And it doesn't seem like there's any near term solution because the, the Macron doesn't get replaced until 2027. Yeah. We had talked about this a little bit a couple months ago when the budget proposal by the previous prime minister now had been, because he's already been kicked out. Yeah. Yeah. About a little bit out. Had proposed something and they were getting, he was getting that negative feedback from both parties on either side.

1:03:49Right. And I think the underlying thing is that the situation as it exists cannot continue in this fashion. Something needs to give in one direction. Nobody can get anything done to exit the current trajectory that they're on. Yeah, and I think the problem is there is an upside to people for not playing along, which is that this fraying centrist party of Macron, as things don't get done, they bleed users, bleed users, whatever. They bleed voters. I'm speaking like a fucking, they bleed voters to either the right way or the left wing parties. So neither of them have much interest in compromising because the longer they wait, the more they gain politically.

1:04:40Let me propose a different angle. The reason that – we talked about this last week. The largest voting bloc in human history is the boomer generation. This is true of every country. It's true of the French country where, again, right now they're in retirement and they are benefiting. As you just said, they are receiving these incredible government benefits, even though the government can't support this long term. And so they are incentivized to not change because until they die, the government will probably continue to function. And then their kids will have to deal with it. Totally. And that is what is going on in our country, to be clear.

1:05:15It's not old people rioting, which I find it funny. Everyone is mad about these changes. but most of what is like, so I looked at the French government budget and it's like the vast, way more than education, military, roads, administrative, everything combined does not add up to what they spend on direct checks to old people. That is the function of the French government is to give comfortable life to old people. That is what it does in practice, if not in name. So I, and people should, all people should have comfortable lives. I don't disagree with that, But it's like the math is so egregious in this situation.

1:05:54And I think there's a very strong case that like one thing Macron has done is cut taxes on the wealthy, which has made it even more impossible to fund. I think that's totally fine. But man, the budget shortfall is big. And France's debt situation is now worse than like Greece. Like Greece borrowing costs are lower than France. The market thinks that Greece is more trustworthy to pay their debt back than France. So I don't know. Again, I think we just want to update on it. That's not much more to say. and France is still a wealthy first world country. I'm not trying to, but it's just wild that like, they're just functionally stuck.

1:06:26The government, as it's written, cannot make progress on these problems. I feel like I'm watching the same cycle play out online over and over again in the last couple of years. Like when I look at this issue from the outside, as an American, pretty much every piece of news about France is some attempted change. People go to the streets to protest and resist. Neither party will cooperate. and it's just this basically the same story echoed again and again every few months for the last yeah couple so realistically what will happen is enough people will bleed out from the center to the sides that one of them gets enough power to make a move or like wins big or just takes control or whatever like that's that you know there's going to be an election in 27 the rn is the most favorite party right now which is the right wing one but something will happen i mean that's what's going to be lifted.

1:07:14Didn't Le Pen get banned? I mean, there's a whole other thing. Yeah, she's banned from running, but the party is still leading the polls with their second in command. Okay, so she can't run, but... Okay. Well, this is very tied to something else I wanted to talk about, which was the Norwegian election that just happened. Ooh, Antarctica. Dude, I would love for you to tell me one... This is a bad news episode, Aiden. You better tell me one bad thing about Norway. I know. Because you've never done this on this podcast in your entire life or in your real world. We got some bad things about Norway.

1:07:44Thank God. Or some problems that they're dealing with that are somewhat similar, except maybe more mild. If this is bad, I wouldn't want any one of my friends even moving near there. I wouldn't allow them to. It would be my personal moral obligation to try to go. I would not let them leave because that would be a good friend thing to do. To be clear, I am inciting violence right now. He's not inciting. It's still a joke. It's still facetious. and okay so if we say this enough we could get you banned i know i know norway and they're gonna look online they're gonna be like oh well all they do they go antagonize lena khan they don't really trust her norway norway uh just had an election last week and the results came in at the beginning i think discord what are we talking about they made they didn't do this one it was actually all on whatsapp it's crazy uh they they did the results i think were locked in i think as of this morning if i'm correct uh but basically the labor party which was the existing party in power which is a more left-leaning party maybe left center depending on how you view it within norwegian politics uh one with 28 of the vote which was up from 26 in uh 2021 which is the last time they had an election.

1:09:08What was the party again? I'm sorry. The Labor Party. Labor Party. Yeah. The other party that won big in this election was the Progress Party, which is a more right wing populist party that for the first time ever has become the leading opposition party within Norwegian politics. And they had a huge jump from 11 % of the vote to almost 24 % of the vote this time. And this is a fairly right wing party, especially within Norwegian politics. They are outpacing the former more right party that had the biggest portion of the opposition, the conservative party before them. I mean, I would just say for Europe, I didn't know about Norway at all, but the European trend has been, and it's happened in America already, is that the center right is just getting obliterated, and there's a more populous right that is surging.

1:09:58That is happening all over Europe, and it happened here already. And I think what's interesting is Norway is a country that, even with the joke that you introduced this through, is a country that we see as separate from a lot of the struggles and consequences that the rest of the world is often going through. Yeah, well, they're like number one happiness or whatever. They have good fish. They're up there in all the stats. They have all the stats. They're one of the most equal countries in the world. They're one of the richest countries in the world. They have a lot of success. They have a high quality of life, right?

1:10:26They define all of these metrics in a lot of ways. But this party, the Progress Party, The big points behind them is that they want to reduce. Yeah, yeah. Immigration, number one, and two, and three. All right. I'd say that's, you know, maybe number one or two for them. They want to reduce taxes, reduce bureaucracy and government intervention, and you guessed it, they're anti-immigrant. In that order? Really? Well, I think it depends on who you talk to. Anti-immigration broadly, I feel like, is their number one. But within the context of this specific election, I felt like it might have been a little different.

1:11:08I think Norwegians could speak to that better. I think their big win here was seen as a huge victory for this party because it's an enormous jump to go from 11 % to almost 24%. In this leadership in the opposition, they're angling for a chance at being the majority party in 2029. and that's the hope from them. But one specific note with this was at the center of this election that became a huge issue is the Norwegian wealth tax, which is a wealth tax that they have had in place in some form since 1892. And they're one of three countries in Europe that still applies a net wealth tax in this way.

1:11:52How does a wealth tax like this actually work? What it means is you're being taxed to some degree on all of the value of all of the assets you own. That could be like stocks, property, et cetera. And you don't have to sell and realize the gain of those assets to be taxed on it. So how does this actually work? It doesn't apply to you at all if you have assets below$180 ,000 USD. That's not that high. Which isn't super high, right? So a lot of people do pay this, but the tax is, for what it's worth, the tax is only 1 % once it applies to you. It's 1%. And then past 2.1 million USD, past your assets beyond that, they tack on another 0.1%.

1:12:38And then also some things to understand here is they don't tax all your assets at their full market value. So for example, your primary residence, like the main home that you live in, they only take 25 % of that home's market value. Or for example, stocks, if you had equity in a company. That's at 80 % of that market value. So nothing is taken at its full market value. And then also any debt you have, the full 100 % value of the debt you have can be written off against the tax that you would owe for this. So it's not as crazy as like, I think this could seem at first, even at a 1%, could seem really unreasonable if you're like in the US, right?

1:13:20You could just be a homeowner and own a home in like, you know, maybe you own a home in like San Francisco or Oakland or Los Angeles, right? High value real estate areas where your home has exploded in value. And then all of a sudden you have to figure out a way to like pay this tax. Well, there's protections and acknowledgement in the way this law is written to have people, you know, pay a reasonable amount basically. And only 760 ,000 citizens in a, you know, in a country of almost 6 million people pay this tax at all. in any amount. So the pros behind this, like why is there such an advocacy for the rid of this wealth tax from this party?

1:14:03The idea is that previously in 2021, there was a change to this law that added that little 0.1 % to the 1 % before. So for the wealthiest individuals in the country, they were going to tax them a tiny bit more, that additional 0.1%. And in the wake of that, 30 millionaires and billionaires left to relocate outside of Norway, primarily in Switzerland, because of the difference in tax loss. And it was estimated that because of that flight of those people, there was a loss of 500 million USD in tax revenue. And that loss in tax revenue is something that the trade-off basically wasn't worth it. Like people say that.

1:14:47The other arguments are that the tax on these unrealized gains deter people from setting up businesses in Norway. So relative to its neighbors, Norway, which was doing really, really well, say like 10, 15 years ago, compared to its neighbors like Denmark or Sweden or Switzerland, is relatively declining in like productivity, the number of like new companies created. And also I went to go look at the largest companies in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. And just this is solely by the eye test. So if you really want to dig into this, I encourage you to. But when I was going through the list of companies from all of these places, I recognized basically nothing on Norway's list except companies involved in energy or oil.

1:15:34And Sweden and Denmark have way more recognizable large companies. Is Maersk Norwegian? I think so. Largest Norway companies. Norway is like largely driven by oil, right? It is, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And this couples into this. That stagnation and reliance on oil and its sovereign wealth fund are criticisms of, combined with this wealth tax, are criticisms of why new innovative businesses and industries aren't cropping up in Norway like they have in their Nordic neighbors in comparison. um and uh also uh lastly for those concerned about wealth inequality wealth inequality regardless of this taxes implementation has been increasing in norway pretty significantly uh over the past 15 years and so if this law is like meant to combat that significantly it doesn't seem like it's doing a particularly good job so all of these things are part of the argument of why this is becoming a topic of contention within Norway.

1:16:41But the pushback from a lot of people within Norway addresses a lot of these concerns. The weird thing is that it became a prominent issue within the scope of this election specifically. And a lot of the fears around capital flight or the losses that we're going to see if we continue to have this tax in place seem a little weird because this election wasn't a referendum on this law changing or increasing the tax. The tax is staying the exact same as it has been over the last few years. So why would anyone leave that hasn't already left during that first year where those people made the decision?

1:17:21It doesn't seem likely to dramatically increase the number of people leaving in the next few years. Wouldn't they leave after the first election afterwards because they know it's not going to get changed now? That's the idea? Yeah, I mean, if you wanted to wait another, you were willing to wait four years the first time and now you're not willing to wait another four years? I guess I'm saying if you're a rich person, you're in there, this law gets passed, you're like, this sucks and then you try to like... So, maybe. Advocate for someone to change it and then you lose the election and it's like, oh, it's not getting changed, I'm out.

1:17:48Maybe. Yeah, so we have to wait and see. But the argument that comes alongside that is even if the flight does happen, wealth taxes are such a low percent of overall revenue that how much does this matter in the first place? Like if we're losing out on a few people leaving the system because of the way that this law works, how much does that matter to us when it has such a relatively small amount of our overall budget? So like last year in 2024, they brought in about$3 billion USD in overall tax revenue, which is about 3 % of the revenue that they brought in overall. And that 3 % is higher than the previous two years.

1:18:35It had climbed up a bit.

1:18:40What's your stance? What's your take? My take? Yeah.

1:18:48I think my take is... Remember, you're going to be a Swedish citizen, so you need to kind of dig Norway a little bit. Okay, so different country. That's what I'm saying. Sweden would... You have to show that you're an ally against our way. You have to kind of look down on Norway. I have to make fun of them. You have to make fun of them. Yeah, I don't... Like you support Nordic. They should keep the wealth tax so that I can move to Sweden and not have it and I can say I'm better. No, I think the other couple things that I did agree with were the issue and how riled up people are about it, especially with young men, seems very disconnected from the reality of how many people this law prominently affects.

1:19:28It's like there's a... very limited pool, less than 2 ,000 people that this law significantly taxes. And the reason it taxes those people is because they also, people who have the most wealth in Norway, also have their wealth and income structured in ways that make it so they actually don't pay a lot via other means of tax payment, right? And the big thing with this wealth tax that they really hate is that it's a very, there are very few loopholes with it. It's a very surefire way to get this group of people, especially with the changes they made in 2021, to escape the tax bill that you owe to Norway versus the other ways when you're at that level of wealth, have ways for you to structure the way you make your money around paying taxes.

1:20:20And this is the way to keep those people accountable. I think the thing that i am most aligned with is uh when an issue that seems to affect so few people specifically the ultra ultra wealthy and the primary argument against it uh which is like spurring innovation and new companies in norway uh also has large other likely reasons as to like why that's the case and not this wealth tax specifically it feels like a wolf in sheep's clothing of a few small, very wealthy people demanding the lift of a tax that affects them and trying to sell it as an issue that seems important to everybody. That's what I feel like when I read this.

1:21:08But that being said, Norway is one of the only countries that still has this net wealth tax in place. And a lot of other countries in Europe, including some of their Scandinavian neighbors have over the past hundred years gotten rid of the wealth taxes that they used to have um and many of which are are you know are still pretty successful countries like so i i i think there's an argument either that kind of in either direction hold on let me i have a question yeah capital gain unrealized capital gains tax is fucking stupid sorry stupid yeah no no i say i I mean, you think that, but okay, this is the issue, right?

1:21:50Is like the, if I'm, if I'm Elon Musk and my fortune has increased from, you know, 50 billion to a hundred billion to 400 billion, primarily because of the growth of a specific asset, right? Right. At that level of income, when I wield hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, I don't function as a normal person in society anymore. I don't have a W-2 income that I take in and like pay taxes on. What I do is I take out loans that use the assets I own as the underlying like collateral for, you know, essentially spending cash that I have, right? I interact with the world financially in a very, very different way.

1:22:36And just because this person sits on an asset that explodes in value, that enables them to access a portion of the financial system that none of normal people can access and interact with, should they be able to escape the burden of taxes? Assets become a means to escape being taxed, if that's the case. And so there comes a point at which I think you have to push against that. I think there are maybe better solutions than a wealth tax. I think that's one of the, but that's not what the progress party is advocating for. They just want to get rid of the wealth tax entirely. Yeah, I agree. I agree with what you're saying.

1:23:16I feel like unrealized capital gains tax is extremely flawed. And just to illustrate the point for people, Elon Musk has in quotes, whatever,$400 billion. But if Tesla crashes tomorrow, he doesn't have that money anymore. He now has 200 billion. It's not that much money isn't sitting around in cash, right? So the way the current system works for America and most countries is he has to actually sell the stock. And at that point, he does pay taxes. I would argue for increased capital gains tax, it's lower than normal income tax for some reason. You might know the exact numbers. 50 % if you hold it for a year.

1:23:4850 % or 15%. Isn't it 40 % within the year? No, it's your normal income, whatever that is. Maybe it's really high, so it'll be high. But he has it all for over a year, so it'll be 15%. Right. Which is weirdly low for now. Right. It's like, why would you pay lower taxes for something? Like, that feels weird. There's justification, but it still feels weird to me. And then what you said. People, incredibly rich people, basically leverage the fact that they have these stocks to get loans and get this other stuff. And that feels like a workaround around taxes. I think that should be addressed. But, yeah, like, inherently just saying your stuff is worth this much, even though you don't actually have that much money, therefore we're going to tax you as though you have that much money, feels deeply flawed to me.

1:24:26I haven't seen an argument that convinces me on that. But, you know, replacing that with another tax like we're talking about. Yeah. I mean, I support tax on the wealthy. No, no, no. I agree with you. I want to say one of the fucked up things we do is, you guys know what step up basis is for like inheritance tax? So it's like if I get a stock at$10 and it goes to$100, if I were to sell that, I pay tax on the$90 I made, right? Yeah. But if I hold it till I die by just borrowing against it and then I pass it on to my kids, they get a new basis of 100 whatever it is now so that so if they sold it they would pay zero tax it's it's they got it a hundred anything yeah so nobody ever paid to the gain exactly and so this whole this whole buy borrow die strategy is like how it's done to keep this generational wealth going and i think for me one of the biggest things is inheritance tax because like that's what allows this stuff to become metastasized cancer in a society like even if Elon Musk invents something great, which, okay, whatever.

1:25:26Yeah, whatever. He's done some Tesla's cars are cool and makes a lot more money than me. The real danger is when his fucking kids and grandkids who haven't done anything have way more opportunities than my kids and grandkids forever because it just goes down. Like, I really think inheritance tax is, like, so good for a functioning society. It's just like, all right, you get your shit, but now we're going to, if you're over a certain amount, if you're over$10 million,$100 million, we're going to take a lot of that and use it to make society better. for everybody like your kids don't the fact that like the great great great grandnephew of sam walton is a fucking billionaire like 14 of them or 28 of them to me it feels crazy like they all and someone will tell me like well that's the point of working hard so you can have your family to me that the generational wealth stuff is like you don't have to send 100 i mean it shouldn't yeah maybe it's not 100 i'm not saying 100 but like no no no that's yeah yeah it's like you i don't think you should be able to give 100 of what you made your kids like there there needs to be some, at some point, a tax on what you've earned.

1:26:24And yeah, I think there needs to be. And that's the point of earning it, quote, is if you're giving your kids, I think, you know, it's like in this situation, it feels like. Ideally, you would be working on some sort of better system to be taxing these people, but in its place, I don't think you need to get rid of this, especially because the actual amount is so low, like it's one percent. It's inconsequential. It's probably fine. But it does feel like that's a stupid way of taxing people. And they in the same way that we in America should close these essentially loopholes that rich people are getting.

1:27:01I mean, we should tax leveraging your unrealized assets for loans like that's ridiculous. They're just acting like their assets are money when they're anyway. So to be fair, so perfect world. They fix the core problem. you know uh the where i kind of land on this is why i think this is so hard is i kind of see there's to me there was like two two two sides or two answers to this which i know that that sounds silly uh can you stop being a centrist pick a side jesus christ aiden okay so in it i think norway is in a yeah god norway is we have a reputation we push back on people norway is in a very unique position because it is sort of backstopped by their oil industry.

1:27:49They have this massive sovereign wealth fund that exists because of a nationalized oil industry. And it's a system that a lot of countries do not have safeguarding their economy in a lot of ways. So I do agree the same way. And you could argue there's sort of consequences in the long term because of a reliance on that specific commodity right in the short term i think you can afford to keep this wealth tax because largely it doesn't affect normal people very much and it affects these wealthy people that are threatening to flee maybe because it not since the last change it doesn't seem like there's been an uh influx of people or outflux of people fleeing uh and if you're willing to like gamble on how relevant oil will be for a long time, it doesn't really matter if those people leave because of the safety net of the oil industry.

1:28:49This is a tax that produces relatively low income, so you can deal with the consequences of those people maybe leaving. You don't even know if they really will, and you can keep this tax in place. The big trade-off I see is this revenue could become way more relevant or people having the capital to stir up new industries or businesses in your country could be way more relevant if the value of oil starts to collapse and you need other industries to pick up the slack within your economy. Because that's the big gap in Norway right now is that since like 2013, the productivity of their non-oil-based economy has been declining relative to the other countries around them.

1:29:34and that's the, I think that's the long-term versus short-term argument you really have to make here. That's how I felt after I read through all this. I'd like to hear from normal, normal Norwegian guys and girls about what they think about this. The general thing that I got from like young people when I heard them being interviewed is like, this is like a non-issue. The Progress Party has turned this into a talking point. We want to focus on other problems. The real problems like immigrants. yeah i was gonna say i can't imagine this is a big voting issue i think they that's the thing the criticism is that this got stirred into a big voting issue when it doesn't make sense but i think even progress party voters if you ask them would probably put immigration as their number one like i probably i have not heard of this being like such a at least in other countries such a i mean it's because they don't have it yeah but even the countries that had it like was it something that the regular people were pushing for like demanding to get rid of like in this case apparently yes at least from the articles that i've read but people who are boots on the ground participating in the norwegian election can like weigh in and see how you know accurate that reporting is but i was i was surprised by every single article i went to about this election the wealth tax was like at the forefront of it um yeah that's so that's a you know compared to you know what other people are dealing with it's you know maybe not that big of a deal they're like like essentially it's so funny they're so rich if you spin the globe if you spin the globe it's like oh oh Norway's arguing about the 0.1 percent they added to their wealth tax you know and and do we and people talking about oh do we have too much oil money yeah fucking fucking I hope Norway falls off the fucking map there we go there we go fire putting a foot on one side we're almost out of time.

1:31:27Atra, could you want to hit the story about Australia? I know you mentioned you wanted to hit that. Yeah, it was really important. Thank you for bringing this up. I think I read about this in your book, actually. Yeah, I was talking about it. It's actually a big geopolitical deal. Koalas, Doug, they killed the Prime Minister. Wow. Tell me more. Anthony Albanese was visiting a koala factory where they work. They do a lot of work down there. Hold on. Do the people work at the koala factory? Don't ask questions while I'm giving a presentation. The koalas were working hard to create the Australian economy, and they were, he was trying to tax them.

1:31:58Tax the coal. There he goes again with the taxes and it was a wealth tax on the koalas bamboo and they rioted and they killed him and that's the story. Unrealized bamboo. It hadn't grown yet. Don't they eat eucalyptus? You'd think that but not these ones. They're hungry for bamboo, Aiden. That's part of the issues that are going on. My story. This is my story, the one that I brought. Yeah, it's my fault. Guys, we are out of time and we have like 15 more stories we didn't get to. We didn't plan. Nope, that's it. No, that's all that happened in the world. We'll do more on the Patreon, and I appreciate you guys listening.

1:32:30What else? Do you want to say anything about the... Yeah, I guess just final note on Charlie Kirk stuff. Because you didn't get to be in the... Yeah, we're not going to chat. Obviously, it's a big story with a lot of impact. And if you were interested in a longer discussion, last week I was unable to attend because of the charity streams I was doing, but there's like 40-minute discussion on Patreon. So if you want to hear in a lot of depth about that, that'd be the place to do it. that was recorded what like a day or two after right after yeah it was basically much more fresh and with a lot of depth i think we wanted to dive into it just because uh yeah i mean it was right after it happened and i know that's when i was thinking about i even over the weekend i've been thinking about it so much so i think if you're interested in listening to that it's like i really do that it's like 40 minutes of a 70 minute episode so it like helped me yeah it helped me get my thoughts together on it we just really hashed it out that was a good Yeah, and then plus, Adrek, you have videos on your own channel.

1:33:22Yeah. Which I have a note. I want to give it after you say your thing. Okay, I'm just going to – this is probably fucking obvious, and I'm just going to say it anyway to say it. Political violence is really, really bad, and I'm real concerned about this, and I'm concerned at how many people seem to celebrate it. I think it's fine to abhor Charlie Kirk's views, and I disagree with him as far as I can tell in almost everything. I don't deeply know his stuff, but the idea that apparently millions of people will go on social media to celebrate the murder of a person for the views that they expressed verbally is super deeply concerning to me.

1:33:57The fact that any portion of our society seems to think that's an okay or should be celebrated in any way is this is an extremely worrying trend. If you just think for an instant on if this applies to both sides and everybody starts doing this, this is a fundamental breakdown of democratic process, of nobody being able to speak their mind on anything because you just get shot or you're gunned down. This is the path to totalitarianism. This is like the core tenet of fascism. This type of shit is abhorrent to me. I'm really disturbed by it. And it's been very sad to see how many people are like celebrating it or seem to think it's, I don't know, man.

1:34:36And I know you, I'm sure you guys went on a long, a long thing. We talk about this a lot. I think. And again, to say, to clarify, just because you guys misunderstood, misheard maybe my point. I it's not that you have to feel bad for Charlie specifically but the idea that this is a that Shooting people who say things you disagree with that that's anywhere near on the level of saying things Is fucking crazy to me and it's so incredibly dangerous and like how do we have a functioning? Democracy, how do people talk about issues? I I've really it's been kind of disturbing to me So I think the vast majority of people are on the same page, which is like whoa not cool you should not fucking murder people who say things you disagree with but i i just wanted to really also vehemently express that view and i yeah we landed on pretty much the same spot one thing we said was like you know give it imagine an example of somebody who uh is is deeply against abortion right and so they believe that an abortion doctor is killing babies in their mind they are now based on this logic of like this guy said or did a point things like they should be able to go firebomb that place or kill that guy it's just that it's not working that way we have laws for a reason we make them that i get it i get it i agree with you uh on on generally that i want to say something a little more light-hearted after your speech which is uh inappropriately timed but i have to bring it up again i have to do it on the pod so that you guys are on camera and you can't get mad at me uh this is about i made that video about charlie kirk okay Gavin Newsom saw it.

1:36:07What? Gavin Newsom or his team saw that video and then reached out and wants to do a one-on-one interview with me about... I'm just telling you, this happened this morning. I got called this morning by Gavin Newsom's team. And so I have now cut you and now cut you. So it's just me and Gavin. No, it's cool. No, it's good. But what's weird is the way... I was telling you ahead of time, the way they phrased it was like, we want to see... I think they want me to explain like what discord is or like what gamers think. They're like, what's going on with gamers? What are the gamers think? Why are gamers getting so radical?

1:36:41Whatever. That's the idea. When Aiden moves to Sweden, can I still be a guest on your and Gavin's podcast? Fuck you guys, dude. I can't believe this. I'd still like to hang out some more time. Yeah, but we can hash it out. We could have had it something. We can hash it out. I'm just going to send you a master. What do we need to do to start getting this love from Gavin, right? I... Now he's on your side. Yeah, yeah. Now he knows what it's like. It changed quickly. I don't know. You guys have final thoughts. Yo, you guys see what happened in Antarctica? The penguins, bro. Damn, shit. They're doing songs.

1:37:16No, no, no, no. Let's save that for the Patreon. Yeah, that's for the Patreon. You guys will blow your mind. We'll see you guys on the Patreon. You go to patreon.com slash lemonade stand. We're almost at 10 ,000 paid patrons for our trip to China. Our trip to China. Where we are deporting Aiden to China. Yeah, we're leaving there. We'll leave behind. Can I not? I'm getting you feel a little bullied. If we get to a way factory, you'll get a new phone and a laptop. At 11 ,000 patrons, Gavin Newsom's joining. In China. In China. Thanks for watching, guys. Bye, everybody. Bye. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project.

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