We Fixed The Supreme Court | Ep. 018 Lemonade Stand 🍋

13:04Aiden:So I think I'll rip this straight from the John Oliver episode I just watched because they were going over the Big Beautiful Bill and all the ramifications of it.

13:14Atrioc:Can I give a quick reminder, one sentence summary. Big Beautiful Bill, this is going to be a budget bill for the United States government, in case you missed the last big episode about it. The two big takeaways, they're going to basically put us way more in debt by like$5 trillion by cutting taxes. So it's going to make a whole bunch of tax cuts permanent. The government will have less money over the next decade because of this. At the same time, they are saving money by cutting Medicaid, i.e. healthcare for poor people. That is like the super quick summary of the bill.

13:40Aiden:Yeah. And the main way those cuts are expected to happen is by instating new work requirements for people on Medicaid. The idea that you have to be applying to a certain number of jobs or working a certain number of hours in order to meet a standard that keeps you on Medicaid. And what I pulled away from this recent John Oliver episode that was covering this. and if you want to go check that out for yourself, I encourage you, because maybe you can take a closer look at it, is this sounds, I do think if you just take this at face value, it kind of sounds okay. This general idea that we have of, oh, in order to, if you're able-bodied to work, then you should have to work in order to keep your healthcare.

14:29Aiden:I think there's, I don't necessarily agree with that sentiment, but this is a common thought process from common Americans, I would say. It's like, oh yeah, I guess you should have to work to keep this if you can go to work. But the consequences of this are not that we encourage a bunch of people to work who aren't. You cut a bunch of people off who need these services, who don't quite meet the cutoff, or are having difficulty managing the bureaucratic process of maintaining the Medicaid after these cuts go into effect. And these bills are written with those consequences intentionally in mind.

15:07Aiden:So what happens is they'll build in some sort of requirement that now forces a bunch of people to submit updates and paperwork in order to meet the new standards of whatever Medicaid is. And some percent of them won't do it. And because of the friction, a bunch of those people that otherwise would be on the care and need that care are unable to meet the requirements of that paperwork, either through lack of knowledge or lack of internet access or submitting things incorrectly and then having it go back to them. And just this layer of friction is very intentional. There is an understanding that when you pass legislation like this, you are kicking a bunch of people off that actually should have access to the program, but will have difficulty meeting the standards to get on the program after the standards are in place.

16:01Aiden:And that's the only way those cuts are taking effect because the glut of free riders that there is claimed to be doesn't actually exist. Like if you purely cut it off on this idea of young, able-bodied working men that are grifting and taking advantage of Medicaid and you just cut all of those people off, it's not a significant savings amount at all. And you're getting the benefit from cutting people who actually - I mean, the bigger argument here right now that's happening, because again, no Democrats voted for this. They're not even really involved in the discussion. The argument's happening between Republicans whether it gets passed or not.

16:38And the argument is that, even with everything you're saying, it's not a significant amount. The amount being saved is not as much as the tax cuts are, which is, so it's still increasing the deficit. And that's what's causing this big fight. And that's why I wanted to bring it up real quick. That's why it's interesting is because, you know, I think everyone, even if you're a passive follower of politics, saw that there was a blow up between Elon Musk and Trump. They finally had this split and they were fighting and they were arguing. And then they kind of made up and Elon Musk deleted his tweets and apologized.

17:07But this Senate passage has reopened the rift. Elon Musk is now back out tweeting. I think he specifically said, anyone who votes for this bill, I will make it my life's mission to get you primaries, which is also not even I don't support the bill. But it's also not a good thing that the world's richest man is like, I will use my wealth and power to ensure that this person cannot be elected. To impact elections. I was like, yeah, I don't know.

17:31Aiden:I don't know if I'm really on your team.

17:33Atrioc:The quote is, and they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this earth.

17:39Aiden:So I saw that and I laughed to myself a little bit. because when I look at Elon and the way he approaches things, I do feel like there's a mixture of, one, his attention span seems really short. He moves on to the next thing in his life really quickly. It's like, will you even remember when the next election's happening? Will you still be paying attention to the political process by then? Because you're already like fading yourself out of it, it seems. And the other thing I was thinking about was he just spent a record amount of money on that judicial election in Wisconsin. and lost. Yeah. So the idea that his, don't get me wrong, threatening still, it's still an insane amount of like money and power.

18:23Aiden:I'm sure if he threw it all at the wall at an election after election, it's not like he's not going to win one. But it was funny that the most major recent example I could think of was one where he tried to do that and failed. Yeah. I mean, it's funny because 51 Republicans voted for it in the Senate. And the idea that he's going to primary the entire, he's going to get every one of them voted out is insane. It's not even close to true, but yeah, he could have influence. But anyway, he's just really ride or die on this. And he's tweeting again. And then Trump tweeted again saying, Elon Musk's wealth all comes from subsidies and we're going to get rid of him.

18:54And now he's going to be in the poor house. That was the back and forth that might've been over and is now not over. And that's where we're at with the big middle bill. I mean, it's going back to the house. My assumption is if it passed the house the first time, it'll probably pass it again, even with the changes. They're different, but it's not a dramatically different. This is sort of the window of opportunity to pass it at all, right?

19:14Aiden:Because you have at least this two-year pocket before the midterms affects your majority in the house. And if you can't pass it now, then you probably won't pass it in the rest of your term. And you don't have a second one. I'll definitely say. Sorry, you don't have a third one. You don't have a third one. We never know. All right, knock on wood, baby. Everything that I've seen is that the more people are exposed to this, regardless of party, like specifics of the bill, the less they like it. Like it is slowly, you know, just the process of this fighting is draining. It's plus Elon Musk throwing his weight against it.

19:50So they really have to get it through now, but I assume they will. Trump has been apparently running the phones. He's calling everybody. He's telling them.

19:58Atrioc:Here's an argument against that. So there's multiple people who basically, so again, it has to pass both sides of the House, right? Or the Congress, right? So first it passed the House of Representatives. barely. Then it went to the Senate, but they made a bunch of changes. And that's why it's going back to the house. And there's a lot of people in the house, I guess I shouldn't say a lot of people. I saw a couple of people, including Marjorie Taylor Greene say, I absolutely will not pass this bill unless the AI regulation stipulations are removed. They were changed. They weren't removed. It was changed from a 10 year ban from states regulating AI to a five year ban.

20:32Atrioc:And this is Ted Cruz really pushing for this. That was at least of like 24 hours ago. It actually literally might have changed since then. But there are certain things. I mean, this is the thing that she, once she had passed the bill, was like, I didn't know this was in there. I wouldn't have voted for it. And so she's been making this big crusade. There's other folks for whom several of the measures. I want to say one thing. Imagine Marjorie Taylor Greene makes a big crusade. I'm not going to vote for this unless I get rid of this thing. And then she gets a phone call from Donald Trump saying you should vote for it.

20:59My assumption is she will fall in line. That's my assumption. I mean, I don't know. I don't know either.

21:04Atrioc:there. There's various, it's just, there was a number of issues, because basically to get the thing through the House of Representatives, a whole bunch of people are like, well, I want this thing in there, and then that got removed in the Senate. So in theory, that's going to go back and be a bunch of fights. And really, I think you're right. It's the question of, can Trump convince a bunch of people to not make any changes? To just run it. And maybe, but they at least have been saying repeatedly over the past couple weeks, whatever it's been, that they are not going to approve it. So, you know, it's possible.

21:32Aiden:You kind of have to wait and see to see who stands on business. That's the real question. We've been talking about the off the pod too. People don't stand on business, bro. I was complaining about that today. Well, I don't think I necessarily want to be the guy who, you know, cherry picks hypocrisy, I guess. But this was Steve Bannon. Not to bring Steve Bannon into the conversation, but listening to another - Can I give a little off the pod thing? This guy's obsessed with Steve Bannon. If you don't know who Steve Bannon is, it's fine. You've got to stop saying it. Good for you. He's deeply obsessed with him.

22:05He constantly brings up Steve Bannon. So please tell me about your love interest, Steve Bannon.

22:09Aiden:He was getting interviewed. He was getting interviewed again recently. And I think we had been talking a lot about the discrepancy within the MAGA movement and the Republican Party in general. And Steve Bannon is this guy who's very hardcore, core original MAGA tea party kind of before that guy who built... Real hot-blooded American. Yeah.

22:35Atrioc:God-fearing Christian American. Yes, sir. He built Trump's platform and campaign, basically.

22:41Aiden:He was the guy. And one thing that really frustrated me is when I watched an interview with him at the end of last year that was right after Trump had been elected. I want to say the beginning of... Maybe it was the beginning of this year. and he's laying out all these like policy stances and principles of how he stands against like oligarchs and he stands for the working class and all of these things, right? And you might disagree with that outright, the fact that he supports Donald Trump to begin with. But I think specifically the hypocrisy I see is that he was like, in that interview, he makes a giant carve out for why Elon Musk is actually all right.

23:18He's like, fuck Bezos, fuck Zuckerberg. Yeah, but then Elon - Elon, you get a pass.

23:24Aiden:About to be this active part of the administration, he makes a carve out. And now here we are with these disputes around this bill, Musk taking a certain stance, separating from the administration, the party kind of fracturing a bit under the pressure of a few of these things. And Bannon is just openly, fuck Elon Musk now. And it's like, dude, I listened to your interview four months ago and you just made this giant concession. And I get it. People listen to this and they're like, yeah, grifter's gonna grift and stuff. I think it's just, you know, taking things at face value, it's hard to just view the hypocrisy, I guess.

24:01Aiden:And then looking at someone like Major E. Taylor Greene, I want to have faith that, like, now people are actively speaking up against something. I don't think she stands for a bunch of great things outside of this. But in this moment, it's like, oh, if she's going to stand against this bill, I guess I can agree with that. But will she actually hold if she gets the phone call? Yeah, I mean, like, you know, I'm a... I have low expectations. in a way a deficit hawk. I'm always talking about how I think the debt is damaging for America. And there's people on the Republican side who are like, fuck yeah, deficit hawk.

24:30I'm voting against this bill. But then when it comes time to actually vote against it, there's like one guy. It's like Rand Paul. Like nobody else. They all talk about it. But then they put the vote.

24:40Aiden:Who's the Wisconsin senator? He's also standing against it too. Or did he cave? I think he caved. The only people that didn't vote were Tom Tillis and Susan Collins. Susan Collins, Tom Tillis, and Rand Paul, the only three Republicans. So it became 50-50. So Vance had to come down and do the tie-breaking vote with the 150. Which, by the way, happens too much in America nowadays where we have just this deep, deep fucking split, 51-50 vice president. Like, that's supposed to be for emergencies, and it's for everything. Anyway, Big People Bill, it's a big update, right? We'll give you more if it passes the...

25:13Atrioc:I mean, here's another way of looking at it, though. All of them arguing about this, The fundamental problem is them increasing the tax cuts, and we're going to go$5 trillion in debt. Yeah. And that's so bad. And that's what matters, and they're not really talking about changing that. And I think no matter what happens with this, we're a little bored. Did you see they changed the rules? Because when you have the bill, you have to say how much it costs, how much it makes, right? Yeah. And they changed the rules on costs where the tax cuts don't count anymore. They're just not included. It's like$3 trillion getting removed.

25:46Okay. And so there was a vote on that that doesn't make any sense, and they lost the vote. So the cost is just less. Oh, well, it's all. Oh, wow. Damn. Thank God. It's just a changing of the way it's beautiful. They're doing the lemonade stand approach. They're just fixing it. They ignore it. That's awesome.

26:00Aiden:They've done it.

26:02Atrioc:Yeah, there's all sorts of funny assumptions. Like when we talk about, oh, it's going to add$5 trillion to the debt, that's like this guess by the CBO, and that guess assumes there's no recessions. It assumes the interest rate's a certain level. It assumes that no pandemic. It's like best possible. Right. It's like in the best possible scenario, we think maybe it'll be like five trillion. It's like, who knows, man? Oh, it's not good. Hey, but there's some possible good legislation. And I want to hear you talk about it, Doug or Aiden. Yeah, which is the dollar's value. Remember, we're going to squeeze that in.

26:34Yes, I understand that I'm doing the wrong order. Tell us about the dollar.

26:38Aiden:Yeah, I was reading something this week. This is the dollar's worst year in 50 years. It is performing worse than it ever. You're such a European. You're such a socialist European. Why am I for saying the dollars performing poorly? You don't like our greenback. Just saying, dude. You don't like George Washington. You don't like freedom. You don't like his face. It's because we didn't move to the cool plastic money that you can't rip. You want plastic money. I want the plastic money that you can't rip. You want gold to balloons and you want plastic money. Yeah. So you're saying we should swap to Bitcoin?

27:11Is that what you're saying? And we're ready to make ourselves out. Next topic. Bitcoin and in prison. No, you're right. This has been the worst year for the dollar. Did you have the year it was?

27:20Aiden:In 50 years. Wait, I'm a stupid.

27:24Atrioc:Does that mean, like, what does that mean? Worst year for the dollar? Because in my pocket, it looks exactly the same.

27:30Aiden:That's true. Yeah, that's true. And also, I think you might have the same question that I do, is what does it mean when a currency actually loses its value, right? Because it's like you're comparing it to other money that also shifts in value. And my understanding is that the simplest way they do this is that there's like a basket of like developed countries' currencies that is like averaged out. And then you compare your currency against the pool of everybody else's. Perry, can you pull up the DXY? Just Google DXY. And ours is trending down. Which just means we can buy less stuff, right? Less purchasing power, right?

28:05Yeah, for overseas goods, yeah. Okay. And you just go year to date if this will not be. Yeah, this is what it is. You get fewer euros with your dollar. You get fewer yen with your dollar than you would have gotten at the start of the year.

28:21Aiden:Yeah, those are the things trending up at the moment. The euro, the pound, the yen. I mean, the yen was already really weak, so I don't know how much the bounce back really matters. Rosing to Britain? Oh. Even Britain. It's bad. It's a damn tragedy. The Swedish kroner going up. But one thing I thought was slightly interesting about this before we talk about the consequences of it is I have a lot of Canadian friends and family. I have a lot of Australian friends and talking to them, their situation, even with this, hasn't really improved. Their currencies are doing so poorly that even as we've had a bad year, theirs have like barely rebounded against ours.

29:06Aiden:They're still in a really, really bad spot. So because when I was looking into this, I expected to look at every developed country's currency and see it kind of rebounded in comparison to the US. But it's shocking to see that other people are also, or other countries are still struggling to that degree. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of weird effects that happen with currencies falling like this. One of them is that it makes US exports more competitive, which is an interesting thing. like there are European manufacturers who are actually frustrated with the euro being slightly stronger because it's hard for them to export things to America.

29:43Their stuff is more expensive apparently. And that's not even including the tariffs. So, you know, there's, there's weird effects that are going to happen with this. But what sucks is if you are somebody who's just a hardworking person, holding your savings in dollars, not necessarily in stocks, not necessarily in real estate, you just have it in dollars. You're just losing money. You're just, you're just, you can buy less things.

30:01Aiden:I, I remember a villain chair argument from a while ago, We were posturing what could be the strategy of this administration and the tariffs and how this is going to play out throughout the year, right? I recall the argument that all of this was an intentional effort to devalue the dollar and make American exports more competitive. Like, reset the system, get the dollar amount, a dollar down, and then we can sell more to other people. So we did it.

30:26Atrioc:Harry, can you pull up the picture of victory achieved that Bush did in Afghanistan or whatever? Mission accomplished. Yeah, mission accomplished.

30:34Aiden:We pushed back against that at the time. So I was wondering if you were to say, if I'm the stupid guy posturing that argument right now, or maybe the really smart guy posturing that argument right now, how would you push back against that? What I would say is they have... If you full screen that, yeah, go to Google Images. Pull it up. This is a victory speech. Go on. Why did America win? So there's a manufacturing index for America that is not going up. So the idea that this would lead to more America hasn't happened yet. Now, maybe weaker dollar will lead to something. and maybe tariffs lead us on, I'm not going to say nothing, but it's convenient to point to the one thing that may be going in a weaker dollar, going in the direction, but not the other things they said, like it's going to get our 10-year borrowing costs down.

31:17Those are not going down. Like all the other things they said were part of this picture, they're ignoring the ones that didn't go their way, and the ones that do are like, it was all part of the plan. It's all part of the plan.

31:26Aiden:You're ignoring the grand plan and its execution. You've no patience. Okay. It's all coming together. Yeah.

31:32Atrioc:Can I ask a question? Yeah. what's going on is to the average person do do we want the dollar to go down or up like do we want it to be devalued because i often hear that that like it is an explicit goal to devalue the dollar because then we are able to sell things to the international market because they're able to buy more of our stuff so we become more competitive is that a thing that is i assume it's there's good and bad right yeah i think it's a really tough question to answer i i wouldn't be able to tell you that there's a right there's a there's an answer to that i think you want it to be i mean

32:05Aiden:the basic i feel like the basic positive examples that you'd see in front in front of you right is anything that is imported would be cheaper for you as the american and then when you if you chose to travel abroad and you went on some sort of trip all of a sudden your money's worth more wherever

32:20Atrioc:you travel no no other way around you're saying you're saying if the value goes up if the value goes up oh the value goes up i'm sorry yeah yeah yeah the value goes up you can travel and you're the king. Like people have been traveling to Japan last year and they had a great time because the yen was really weak. The dollar was strong. You felt like your money went really far. Would it be accurate to say that if the dollar is stronger, you can consume more, like you can buy more stuff, but then your ability to sell into the international market goes down. So it's like kind of different group. You know, if you're a manufacturing group that sells internationally, you like the dollar being weaker.

32:49Atrioc:But if you're going to Japan and you're just some guy, then you can't buy as much stuff with it internationally. I think the more I think about it, I think if your economy is running well and sound, you want a strong currency. However, the big thing is that it makes your debts easier to pay. As your currency gets... And we have a lot of debt. Perry, we have the mission accomplished picture. Pull it up again. So we did it. Yeah. And we're done? We're done? We're good? Wait, the dollar's going down, though. The dollar's... No, but the dollar going down means... Helps you pay the debt. Helps you pay the debt.

33:19Okay. Like if I owe$100 ,000 and that buys less bread, then the amount of bread I need to pay the debt. You know what I'm saying? It's like the actual value of what we owe is less. Okay.

33:28Atrioc:So we did it. We did it. Yeah. I think what we're saying is that the weak dollar and high borrowing costs have combined to create a toxic sludge that is now a mission accomplished. Yeah. I don't know. This is something you got to wait and see. But if what I would say is if you're holding your money in a bunch of cash, you will feel this. This is going to be bad for you. A consistent weekend of the dollar, you're going to be like, at least get treasuries that match inflation or something. Because you will feel the loss of your purchasing power quickly if it keeps going at this pace. Get it into the metals company.

34:04It's free money. It just prints money. And it'll keep going up. It'll never stop. It's actually going down, right? Isn't it? It went down a little bit. It didn't go down a lot. That's true.

34:14Atrioc:It's the best time to buy then. It went down a little bit. Seekwa is also interesting. There's some updates in California, Aiden. Do you want to tell us about it?

34:23Aiden:Yeah.

34:24Atrioc:Let's start this off by saying we can all agree environmental regulation is bad. It's always bad. There's no nuance to this conversation. And when we talk about environmental regulation, we say, hey, it's actually bad in this instant. If you love the environment, you should be upset because there's no nuance to this. It's either the environment is good or bad. That's the only thing we're talking about. I know the tone you're taking, but it's tough for you to talk about nuance. when I saw you walk in with two aerosol cans, spraying in a circle in the air, and then you dumped a toxic sludge into the garden out front.

34:57Yeah. And you started stomping on the -

34:59Atrioc:Dude, there's a guy in front. I tarred and feathered him. Yeah, he was just trying to tend to the garden. I think that really goes beyond the environmental consequences. That's just a mean thing to do to assume it.

35:09Aiden:That guy just died. Oh, shit. Yeah, so there is something called the California Environmental Quality Act that was passed by Ronald Reagan when he was the governor of California a long, long time ago. And this law, over the decades, it was initially introduced as something for people to sue over environmental concerns related to building in the state. So if something was gonna get built in a plot of land that had great environmental consequences, you had a means to sue the government in order to combat that project. But as the decades have gone on, what has happened with this is it has been weaponized, at least for the people that have pushed for its removal in California, weaponized to block or delay housing developments and also other types of building projects in the state.

36:07Atrioc:Like the high-speed rail too, everything.

36:09Aiden:Yeah, so it's impacted California high-speed rail. It's impacted homeless shelters in Los Angeles. It's impacted apartment buildings in San Francisco. There's, you know, and this isn't necessarily all like grand public works projects. There's an example of there was this large mixed use tower building that was meant to go up near Hollywood or what's the record building called? Tower Records? Tower Records. Tower Records. meant to go up right next to that. And it was meant to be a mixture of office space, apartments, high rise buildings that in Los Angeles are pretty rare, right? And presumably those weren't gonna be necessarily affordable units or public units or anything like that.

36:54Aiden:But that was a project that was halted by the use of this act. And now two bills in California are getting passed in order to combat the effects of this law. So one of the, this is quoted from the New York Times, one of the bills signed on Monday will exempt from CEQA high-density projects as long as they are not on environmentally sensitive or hazardous sites. The other bill will create sweeping changes that are aimed at accelerating legal review and that will exempt numerous types of development projects from farm worker housing to childcare centers. This legislation will also make it easier to rezone areas to allow for more housing in some cities.

37:32Aiden:So California has been facing this housing crisis for a while, and Gavin Newsom has wanted to lead the charge in dismantling this specific regulation. I think it was ever since we talked to him. Things have been on the up. Do you know what I'm saying? I feel like this guy was not listening to my concerns. That's a good point. Perry, bring up the picture again. Give me the picture of me, Doug, and Gavin, because I think we got through to him. And there it is. That's Gavin Newsom. I think we got through to him, Doug, and I think we made a real impression and now he's finally making a movement on getting housing built.

38:07I saw some quotes from him in possibly the same article where Gavin Newsom, governor of California, basically said, people are so mad about housing that we cannot afford to wait any longer. We can't, this is no longer something where we can debate it. We just have to make a change to get more housing built. And I appreciate that. I appreciate understanding the urgency of the situation. Yeah. Because I think it is so, so core to people's frustration.

38:36Aiden:He has a goal of getting two and a half million housing units built by 2030 in California. That's what Gavin Newsom is hoping to push or do by then. And I think the detractors here, there are a lot of environmentalists who have spoken up over the years over the repurposed use of this law, the way that it has been manipulated from what it was originally intended to be. And then, and I think this is a big part of the, you know, NIMBY movement in people who don't want new housing to come up in their area. They utilize the legal aspects of this legislation to sue and get rid of the housing projects that might otherwise be popping up in their area, right?

39:21Aiden:But on the other hand, there is genuine environmental concern that some people do have. some examples are Nick Jensen with the California Native Plant Society. We do a great disservice to communities and biodiversity when you choose to silence their voices. He and a number of other quotes I saw, basically traditional environmentalists speaking up and saying that the consequences of this will be something that affects wildlife, like bears, like sheep in certain areas of the state, or things that just harm things like waterways and things that are publicly available to people that live in California.

40:01Aiden:But the main thing here, and I need to read, I think I need to read each of the bills closer to see what direction or how the changes to the law actually take effect. But the evaluation is that the new bills are meant to get rid of the way the laws are, is being abused, not get rid of its general purpose of keeping critical environmental spaces in California safe. So I hope that's the case. And I think anything that encourages building and helps deal with the housing crisis. Yeah, I mean, look, it wasn't working. This is not working. So changing it is good. Yeah, it's like, well, I think that's the main thing, right?

40:43Aiden:It's well established. It is well established that it doesn't work.

40:47Atrioc:Yeah, SICA is a, I don't want to say a disaster. It's so bad. So again, the love of God, I am not saying, and nobody would suggest that environmental regulation isn't important. Stop it like that though. Cause you're imagining this person who's about to write a comment when you said disaster, but then you said so bad. You're like, okay. It's, it's when we talked, it was a while ago. We talked about, you know, when the first time we ever talked about how there needs to be some degree of deregulation and people's response was, well, environmental regulation is really important. Yes. We're super on the same page.

41:20Atrioc:I think the environment is really important. This law, though, this act, CEQA, is just abused over and over and over and over to just stop things that shouldn't be stopped. Some examples, in San Francisco, they stopped 34 miles of bike lanes for four years, not because of environmental harm, because they were saying, oh, this might infect traffic flow and parking. They used CEQA, an environmental bill, to stop a project to build bike lanes for four years because of traffic. There was an infamous case at UC Berkeley where they were going to turn this park. I think it was People's Park. I forget.

41:53Atrioc:Which, when I was there, it was not a great area. But they're going to try to turn it into apartments. They were going to build student housing.

42:01Aiden:Student housing for students.

42:02Atrioc:It's too expensive to live there as a student. Super great. It's right next to campus. Obviously, it should be a student housing complex. And then the neighborhood sued using CEQA to say that the noise of students was environmental pollution. That's horseshit. That's not real. there are cases in San Francisco where you haven't seen my parties some of the folks like Peskin or Dean so many examples where it's like oh hey we're going to turn this parking lot into mixed use you know apartments and housing structures and they're like no no no no that's going to it might affect gentrification so we should shut the whole thing down and just by invoking this law you can basically like blackmail or extort or just slow things from happening at all telling me I just want to be clear that somebody sued to stop developing a parking lot because that would be gentrification.

42:54Atrioc:Yeah. 469 Stevenson Street. Aaron Peskin used CEQA to stop the 400, almost 500 housing units citing insufficient analysis of gentrification. That's crazy. That's a parking lot. Yeah. And this is Peskin, who I think is one of the worst politicians ever. You can't gentrify our American parking lots. It is part of our culture to have parking lots, I will say.

43:15Aiden:You can't make your joke about look at the 405 every time you talk about LA and then be like, ah, the parking lot. I'm constantly being bullied, Doug. Actually, you're not even on my side. Fuck, nobody's on my side. Yeah, because you're wrong. Everyone's constantly bullying me about liking the city that I live in.

43:30Atrioc:Oh, what a crime. Yeah, it's a piece of - What a crime. All right? I'm taking away your Skittles treats. This is not an acceptable opinion. I still have these. That's true. So look, this is not about should there be environmental regulation. It's that this law has been clearly abused by people to basically just stop anything from being built. Coincidentally, the people doing this generally are the ones who are homeowners or are going to benefit from things not being built in the areas that they have influence over.

43:58Aiden:Oh, it's about the character of the neighborhood.

44:00Atrioc:Yeah, we just want the character of the neighborhood to not change. And so I just feel like it is more important to build. We have to build housing. That is the way you help at least substantially alleviate the affordability crisis. Yes, there's other factors. We have to make things. We have to, people lamented last time that we talked about Tesla and said there should be more public infrastructure. We can't build public infrastructure because they're just lawsuits that slow it down for 10 years. Genuinely, 10 years of just slowing things down because of endless lawsuits that come up over and over.

44:28Atrioc:I've heard of straight up blackmail from like people I know where like labor unions, blackmail companies, and we're like - I told you that in confidence. It's like, this is like comic book stupid shit. So this law is being abused. I really like that Gavin made this big push to exempt, not entirely, but just from government projects on non-sensitive land. And there needs to be reform. Like, we are swung way too far in the, in quotes, environmental side. We have to get back to reality where it's actually about the environment and not just random people stopping whatever buildings they don't like.

45:02Aiden:I think, I mean, the simple demonstrations of this is like, was this environmental law intended to stop homeless shelters from being built in Los Angeles? Probably not. And reevaluating that and making changes is what needs to be done. So it seems like an exciting piece of legislation. Like all things we got to see. But if this starts to work, that's good momentum. Yeah.

45:27Atrioc:And Newsom like stopped the California budget from being passed. He was like, unless we get these bills through that are going to allow the government projects to actually move forward without constantly being stopped by CEQA. I think it was brilliant. Like he's, he's really is putting a ton of effort and putting his money where his mouth is in terms of getting housing built in California. So like genuinely credit to him. I'm, I'm really stoked about this. I think people will give credit once results happen. That's everything. Every, I think most people don't give a shit about the language of a bill who supported what, whatever.

45:57If they just see things happening, they will be, they'll fucking be happy. I think the hard thing with this though,

46:04Aiden:and we've talked a lot about like, well, I don't see the changes right in front of me or I don't get to see the changes within the period of this person's administration. This is one of those things that will not have immediate effects. It will take years, decades for this to be fully taken advantage of if it works in the way that's intended. And that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. I think it's a good thing that a politician would be pursuing policy that won't necessarily be reflective of something that gets him reelected in a few years. Wait, wait, hold on.

46:40Atrioc:I completely disagree. The point of this is to make sure things are happening in the next few years rather than decades.

46:46Aiden:No, but in the same way that the consequences are seen from this law over the course of decades, right? You mean like environmentally? No, no, no, no. The problem with the initial law, like the CEQA law and the consequences of that. we saw the consequences of that occur over decades and building is something that happens relatively slowly uh i think not that i don't think there's hopeful progress to be made in the wake of this in the next few years by any means but i think the full like ramifications of it and the full benefits of of it won't be super obvious to the broader population for a long time and i think that's the tough thing with passing things like this is like you really do have to do it because you think it's right and not just because you think it's something that's going to get you elected in two years yeah i that's not i don't think that's any i don't think that's discouraging either like i think this is a good this is a good direction to go and somebody has to create the change for something that has been demonstrably bad over decades what i'm excited

47:45Atrioc:about though is the next two to four years yeah i get what you're saying there's obviously going to be knock-on effects and we'll need to revisit it right and also it's not like sequel was repealed It's like just carved out for specific government projects. No, I'm not saying. There should be, yeah, yeah. But what I would argue though is if this has the effect that it in theory should, the high speed California rail should actually get finished, at least the first leg of it within the next two years. And there's a big, big, big, big difference to every politician in California between four years from now saying, look, we did build a train.

48:18Atrioc:It's not the train we wanted. It's not as big as we wanted, but it's there and it's usable versus four years from now saying, we need another$50 billion. We still have nothing usable. Yeah, I guess if you're right. This literally might be the difference between major infrastructure projects by the state actually getting built. And that is the type of thing that in the short term will be like, okay. Well, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying if we flash forward two and a half, three years, and the train is built, then everyone goes, this is a great idea, this fucking world. Yeah, yeah.

48:42Aiden:Yeah, for anything that was in like the delay limbo because of this, that gets to come out of that because of this, and just finishes. Which is, to my understanding,

48:51Atrioc:almost everything. Like, CEQA is just used to slow... I mean, I shouldn't say... I don't know the percentage, but it's baffling how many large projects in California all have CEQA thrown at it. Because, again, anybody can do it. Anybody can file a lawsuit, and then suddenly it's like, boom, another couple of years. I do it for fun. I wake up and I file like five or six. I'm going to file so many against you if you keep that fucking microphone. Do you know how bad it is for the environment that you speak into the ceiling instead of into the microphone like an adult? God, I'm all riled up. Like an adult.

49:20standard adult microphone I can't believe Doug hates the environment

49:24Atrioc:I can just imagine the comments I'm going to write some already I'm going to write some if you keep talking about my mic discipline

49:31Aiden:well I think this I feel like this leads us into the next big you know legal thing we wanted to touch on because there was a big supreme court decision recently so I'm excited for this one because I don't know heck all about what you guys are talking about here Yeah. Okay. I didn't read about it. You guys have to teach it to me. Teach it to me, actually.

49:51Atrioc:Yes. There was a big case decision by the Supreme Court, I think, one day ago, a few days ago, something like that. And the short version, there's a lawsuit around birthright citizenship. So one of the cool, quirky things that Donald Trump did when he came into office. He's such a quirky guy. He's a quirky guy. He dropped an executive order ending birthright citizenship. This is blatantly against the Constitution. You can argue, I guess, whether or not that should be the case. but it's very clear that it's how important is the constitution?

50:20Aiden:I'll be honest with you. This was one of those things where if you go and read it, it's tough to make the argument. It's like a hard story. It is a hard story. I have the villain chair to save my life. The aliens win.

50:33Atrioc:Here is the logic. The logic from Trump is birthright citizenship. Meaning if you're born in America, you automatically get citizenship was meant to, I believe in his words, It was about like helping slaves become citizens and guaranteeing that as emancipation happened, that everybody became a citizen. And that his argument is now it's abused where somebody like takes a trip to America while they're pregnant to like try to have a kid here. And then they give citizenship. So it's abused or whatever. So that's that's his argument. However, so he made an executive order saying that this isn't the law anymore.

51:07Atrioc:You cannot do that. That is so you can't do that. His argument was that birthright citizenship was for slaves. That's what it is. I saw it. So look, I saw one quote of him about this. I'm sure he said 300 dumb things about this. Okay. One of them, he definitely said it was meant for, this was like two days ago. Okay. Maybe you guys can find the quote, but you know, the argument is, oh, this is being abused. It's not, you know, it's not really being used to support citizens.

51:34Aiden:Yeah. This is the 14th amendment. So it was in the wake of like ending slavery. And it, that was one of the purposes was like to guarantee citizenship to all of the slaves that were free because they had all. Okay.

51:45Atrioc:Here's the Gatorade of misinformation. Again, this is the perspective of people pushing against it, is that if the idea is anybody who's born on American soil becomes a citizen, that does incentivize somebody from another country, for example, to get across the border illegally right when they're about to give birth. And if they can give birth on America's soil, then their kid becomes a citizen. And that means you stem a whole business of, let's say, the cartels in Mexico being willing to traffic extremely pregnant women across the border to try to get in this time window, that is extraordinarily dangerous.

52:16Atrioc:So there are these bad incentives that can happen. I don't know the specific amount of it. That's the argument.

52:22Aiden:I think this is, yeah. A lot of countries around the world, I think the majority do not have birthright citizenship. I think the US and Canada, I think Canada also has it. Canada has it? I think so. Are two of the only ones that do. You can go to Japan and have a kid and be like, cool, we got citizenship. Can we get a fact check on that? Can we get a fact check on Canada? Anyway, I think if you want to revisit this conversation and you want to tackle the issue of birthright citizenship and change the way we just look at that in America, right? I think that is a fair conversation to have through the legal process that we have.

53:05Aiden:Like if you just amended, if you managed to get enough cohesive opinion to amend the constitution, to adjust this going forward. We're going to be like most of the rest of the world and not have this anymore. I can understand that, right? But if you're just releasing an executive order that blatantly stands to the Constitution as it is. Right. You, and also if you were to approach that process, I think it's really important that similar to, you know, dealing with immigration now, rather than deporting a bunch of people, You should be giving people amnesty, like retroactively giving green cards or citizenship to the people who are already here, and then changing the laws and changing the process going forward.

53:49Aiden:That's how I think this should be dealt with as well. I do think it is a fair conversation to change the rules around this. But the way it's being gone about, that's the insane part. I see what you're saying. So they went through all this work to get something amended to the Constitution, Congress, House. They didn't do that. No, no, no. I'm saying that originally. Originally. To get this added, to make birthright citizenship real, all American government branches worked together and made that happen. And now the president is writing a consecutive order that undoes that. Yeah. And the idea of us having the political will to pass an amendment in modern day is absurd.

54:25Aiden:Right?

54:25Atrioc:Like with many things, what's supposed to happen is that Congress would amend the law if we don't like it. That's how the cover tree is supposed to work. And then in practice, we have a president and multiple presidents now who just write executive orders, which are the lowest tier of like, they have lowest prio. Okay. Yeah. Congress and the Supreme Court, they get to overturn or change executive orders if they want. Executive order is like the lowest ranked power thing. Not anymore. But if nobody stops it, then it is kind of sort of implemented. So, which is what this case is.

54:56Aiden:And that kind of loops back around to a later, I think a really important part of this, but I want you to continue. But keep this idea in your mind that we're talking about here, because I think it's the idea of Congress not being able to get anything done because it comes back around to the logic of the Supreme Court.

55:11Atrioc:It's the source of many of our problems, in fact. So, all right. So the Supreme Court ruling, the case was about Trump making an executive order that blatantly goes against the Constitution. So there's pretty much no debate that that's not OK and it's going to get shut down. But the real question and what this came down to is that immediately upon signing this executive order, there was a federal judge that made a universal injunction. So universal injunction is the idea that one of the federal judges, there's about 800 of them or something like that in the United States, that any one of them can place an injunction and say, here's this lawsuit about whether Trump's executive order is legitimate or not.

55:49Atrioc:I'm going to place an injunction that puts a pause on the entire executive order for the entire country. Any judge can say, we are fully stopping everything for everybody in America until we sort this out. And what this means in practice is that any of the federal judges, again, there are like 800 of them, can at any point when a case comes up, issue an injunction that completely stops a law that, or an act that the executive branch has done. So this particular Supreme Court case isn't really about birthright citizenship. It is about, do the judges in the American system have the ability to set a universal injunction that completely stops the law from applying that the president had just done?

56:29Atrioc:And historically, presidents hate this. To give you a sense of the scope of this, this was not a thing 100 years ago that all these judges would essentially freeze something that the president has done. So there were basically zero 100 years ago. And then Bush, during his eight years, there were six total universal injunctions. So six older Bush, younger Bush, younger Bush. So 2000 to 2008. Mission accomplished. Oh yeah. Pull up the picture. Mission accomplished. So George Bush mission accomplished. There were eight times or sorry, six times that a judge said, Hey, I don't like this law you're doing.

57:01Atrioc:I'm putting a universal injunction to pause it. And then with Obama, it doubled to 12. So you might've heard of some of this stuff. Basically a couple of judges were like, we don't like what you're doing Obama and just put a hold on some of the stuff and like permanently stopped what he was able to do because of these injunctions. So that was, it was 12 already by Obama. Trump's first term, 64 universal injunctions. So Trump's style is just to kind of like go, he just goes out, blasted. He loves executive orders. And so judges responded by being like, you cannot do this. And they put tons of universal injunctions that stopped many of these things he was doing.

57:33Atrioc:For example, the Muslim travel ban. Then you had Biden, he had 14. So he had the same problem. He like during some of the COVID vaccine stuff that he was trying to do of making it mandatory, that got a universal injunction. It didn't go through because there was a right leaning judge who was like, this isn't constitutional and completely shut it down. And then Trump in his second term got 25 in the first hundred days. So he just, Trump is just on another level in terms of this. So yeah, the argument and the question that the Supreme court was asking is, should this be allowed, because this is only in the last couple of decades, should any judge in the federal court system be able to put this permanent pause on an entire country's law?

58:16Atrioc:And there is a real genuine argument for both sides, right? If you elect the president into power, imagine, right, with Trump, it's kind of different. But imagine your dream, if you're left-leaning, dream left-leaning candidate gets into power and then everybody loves them. And there's one federal judge who just hates this person and can completely stop any of the movement and legislation that this person wants for months or years. Like this can happen. And it's, you know, I think it is easy to understand why that can sort of be abusable. And then the counter argument is this is a check and balance on the executive system.

58:51Atrioc:The whole point of this is that if Trump comes in and makes an executive order that isn't constitutional or that there's unclear the legality of it, that the judicial branch has the ability to shut it down until there is clarity around it by the Supreme Court, say. So short version, they ruled universal injunctions, not cool anymore. They're technically still allowed, but the six to three vote in the Supreme Court based on party lines, they voted. These universal injunctions are in overreach. We, as the Supreme Court, we can shut down executive orders. The president shouldn't have total unlimited power here.

59:26Atrioc:But this idea that any one of the judges should be able to totally stop this is too much. There are some asterisks here, but that is the core of it. So now that process that can happen is gone.

59:36Aiden:So Amy Coney Barrett, one of the younger justices, she was the one who wrote the majority decision on this case. And her claim basically comes from if this tool was always meant to be and always accessible, then why has it only started to be used from Bush onwards, basically, in the 2000s? obviously this was never an intended check to exist and then the minority decision which was pretty scathing if you if you go and read it it's it's pretty interesting speaks to we're losing this check that in the future might allow infringements on things like gun rights or and things that exist on the opposite end of like the political spectrum because when you look at how this has affected presidencies before this.

1:00:28Aiden:You know, Biden also hated that this happened to him all the time. You know, obviously different amounts between him and Trump, but generally this use of universal injunctions is really, really recent and it frustrates all presidents that come into power. The thing I wanted to mention here to keep in mind is that this has come primarily in the era of insane congressional gridlock, right? We're in the most polarized, most gridlocked era of congressional politics, lowest approval ratings. And that has largely grown to be in the last two decades. There was more bipartisanship and more cooperation in the 100 years before this.

1:01:14Republicans hate Congress, Democrats hate Congress, independents hate Congress.

1:01:17Aiden:More than they ever have, right? Which forces the hand of the executive to make decisions where they might otherwise be legislation getting passed through Congress. I think that's the main thing here, right? It's like in order to create the change that I campaigned on, I have to make executive decisions because the congressional body doesn't have the gas to do it. And now we're in a situation where the political landscape is drastically different from when these laws and intentions were originally drawn up. And I think this is actually a hard question to answer because I think, you know, in the short term, I agree that this check on Trump, who even by the numbers seems to be overreaching the most, is probably really important to have, right?

1:02:04Aiden:But I do think in the long term, the idea of this being something that constantly inhibits decisions made is also not great. That was my mixed feeling when I was learning about this. It feels like a Band-Aid thing that we would want in order to stop the decisions that I don't like Trump is making. But in the real long term, I think there needs to be something better. Like the incentive structure of politics should not be that we have to issue executive orders to do everything all the time.

1:02:40Atrioc:Yeah. The super broken. The thing I was coming back to on this is like it's as though any single person in Congress, of which there are also what, 500, something like that. I forget the total number. If any single person of Congress could completely shut down another branch of government. And that's not the case. Congress has to vote. And then if the majority votes on a thing, then they can actually implement a change. And so it feels intuitively like this doesn't make sense. Why would a single judge be able to fully lock down something of an entire, it's that's goes beyond a check and a balance.

1:03:13Atrioc:That's like one having, that's one branch of the three having complete domination over the other. And if you remove that power, it's not like the judicial branch can't put a check and balance on Trump. They can still absolutely, the Supreme court can come in and say, and presumably will what you're doing in birthright citizenship is not legal. Congress can also do that. Again, it's what you're saying. To me, my intuition is that the problem here is that Congress doesn't do anything anymore. Congress is supposed to be one of the checks and balances, and if that's completely gone and you're leaving it entirely up to the judicial branch, then yeah, the judicial branch is going to want extra power to make sure they can curtail what the president's doing because the president is doing way too much because Congress isn't doing anything.

1:03:50Atrioc:The balance is all fucked. Yeah, I see everything you're saying, And I guess I agree. I just, it's spooky because we're in a spot where the executive wants as much power as possible. Yes. And we have no other check right now. That's the only remaining check.

1:04:08Aiden:On him specifically. Presumably if you had, like if a Democrat gets elected after this, right? I feel like when it comes to Supreme Court decisions, they aren't likely to be leaning in that person's favor. Right. Or if there's midterm elections that go a different way or whatever. But, you know, for right now, that is the only check. And maybe... So one other interesting thing about the majority opinion from Barrett. Well, this is done, but this is done and dusted, right? They ruled it. Yeah, they made the decision. So there is some confusion here after this decision as well, but I wanted to note one other thing besides that, which was, you know, in the absence of these checks, what's your opinion for the...

1:04:49Aiden:like besides Supreme Court decisions, then what... What system do we have to check federal power anymore? Like, what do you think of that? And she wrote, Barrett wrote, that, well, you still have class action lawsuits, but this creates a problem where in order to gather a class action lawsuit, you need, like, the money, the time, and the resources. So now you've turned the like check process into a monetary one. It isn't something that is accessible to like the average person. You know, a normal person who might have the ability to challenge one of these executive orders in court probably does not have the money or the time or the resources to combat that.

1:05:31Aiden:So it's like a half like here you still have class actions to deal with this, but it's not really equivalent or realistic that they will be used in that way.

1:05:42Atrioc:Yeah. A clarification there. So this isn't saying that this, this ruling isn't saying a judge can't put an injunction to stop a law. The difference is whether it's universal. So if you right now sue Trump and you say this executive order you just did about birthright citizenship, that's bullshit. And the judge says, okay, I'm going to put an injunction and pause the law for you. That's what an injunction is meant to be. It's like the people involved in that specific case can get an injunction and they have basically immunity from the law until the case is resolved. A universal injunction is where you sue Trump and me as the judge says, on behalf of everybody in the entire country, I'm putting a pause on the law for everybody.

1:06:23Atrioc:So what this ruling is doing is saying a judge can still put a pause on anything that Trump does with an injunction, but it can only cover the people in the lawsuit. You can't proactively cover everybody else. So in a class action, the reason that becomes more valuable now is because if you do a class action lawsuit and get, you know, what you're representing, let's say, an entire giant swath of people, the judge can now put an injunction on that, cover all of those people. So that might happen now. And that's one of the criticisms of this as well is like, now people are just going to flood the courts with cases because instead of getting a universal injunction for everybody from a law that overreaches, every individual party is going to have to go and make their own lawsuit.

1:07:03Atrioc:So it's going to be this like cluster of just cases going on.

1:07:07Aiden:And the ramification that I think people are really, really worried about and what the minority opinion had been writing about is because this injunction doesn't exist anymore, it's can you as the executive, because this is an example where it feels so blatantly unconstitutional, right? So if you as the executive can issue any order, like one of the examples was guns. If I just issue my executive order that says all Americans have to turn in their firearms. Now the theory is that that stands until it goes through the entire process up to the Supreme Court decision. And I can act on that in the meantime, even though we all recognize that it's blatantly unconstitutional, I can act out the consequences of my executive order for as long as it takes for that to get to the Supreme Court decision.

1:08:01Atrioc:Which is a huge problem. Which seems crazy. Yeah, it's a big problem. That's why I'm also, it's not coincidence that this is happening right when we have a president who is trying to use more executive power than literally ever. And it's basically a question of like, this system would hamper any president and then here's the person who's pushing it as far as can possibly go. And again, I just want to reiterate that Congress should be one of the checks. Congress should be able to pass a law that overrides or nullifies what an executive order is doing. But we basically have lost one of the three branches because they can't do anything.

1:08:39Atrioc:Atriarch, what is the conclusion of this? I was going to, you guys didn't solve shit. You guys are debating back and forth. And I thought one of you would just tell me what the solution is. We came to you. dude, it's one of many instances where I'm like, dude, this is really complex. There's a lot of issues back and forth. I can really see pros and cons. I wish Congress had their shit together, man. I wish Congress actually did their job. You know what we should do an episode on is what we think went wrong with Congress. Because I remember reading about how there was eras, 70s, early 80s, where there were constant bipartisan votes.

1:09:13People voted on many different areas. And it has slowly but surely split. And I wonder what the incentives were that made it

1:09:20Atrioc:that way? I have a theory. War. Not kidding. When Congress is most united, it's when there's a national enemy, right? It's when the Soviet Union is the big enemy and then everybody, you know, coalesces around a single movement. We have to take down the, and then there's, you know, there's some dissent within that. And then the Cold War ends and everything becomes kind of a disaster until 9-11, right? And then suddenly we're insanely united. Approval rating of Congress goes through the roof and then it deteriorates over the next couple of years. And there is a world that I'm not happy about, but I think is quite likely where we enter into a cold or hot war with China more explicitly and then everybody organizes around that like we're on a sports team and that's maybe the way out.

1:10:00Atrioc:Not saying it's good. I don't want that. No, but like historically, that's when we unite, right? I was actually thinking Iran.

1:10:06Aiden:I was actually thinking boots on the ground in Iran and then suddenly we're on. We rallied on that. I hope that is not the solution. Tell me I'm wrong about that. Well, I do. I won't disagree that it's a unifier to have an outside enemy. I do disagree that that is the only reason, the only incentive that is causing people to become more, not bipartisan, more polarized.

1:10:29Atrioc:Sure, I just, yeah. I'm saying the times where it didn't happen, it's usually when there's an enemy. What if the enemy is poverty? Whoa. I mean, to be clear, I agree with you, by the way. I'm not, I don't like this. No, no, no, I see what you're saying. The idea that China needs to invade Taiwan for us to get our Congress to work. You can see how that is an unappealing future for me to live in.

1:10:58Aiden:What if the enemy is poverty? I feel like that's, you know, you joke, but that's kind of what, isn't that kind of what populism is? Like you're kind of rallying, you're rallying behind the idea of like the working class versus the elites. and I'm not saying that's necessarily translate, but I think it's why there's this weird pocket of people that flip-flop between, people who work factory jobs that flip-flop between Democrats and Republicans because Trump managed to speak to some working class sentiment. And then, or the same reason why there's this, I understand that when you dig into this, it doesn't actually make sense, but people who are like, yeah, I like Bernie, but now that he's out, I guess I'll vote Trump four years from now.

1:11:51Aiden:There's a reason that happens. There's some crossover here of united working class thinking, like anti-poverty. I want to jump on this because there's a guy, James Ganesh, who wrote a piece in the FT basically saying, if you look at history, democracies work best in a crisis. I don't think it necessarily has to be a foreign war or an invasion.

1:12:12Atrioc:Yeah. Just enough people. Yeah. If there's something that we all agree is a problem that is now unignorable, because he also said people will ignore it as long as they fucking can. As long as you can keep this train on the rails as rickety as it is, they'll keep going. But once there's a crisis, then everyone sort of agrees that we got to make something. What if we make a crisis? So you're saying... Manufacture a crisis. A false flag. Right. You make that up. Oh, okay. We hire people to very convincingly act like aliens, right? And we're like, guys, we got to pass some laws about sequels. Dude, it's us three in alien outfits.

1:12:50And we say, if you guys don't get poverty together, we're invading. And then you see the Senate and they're shaking hands. Well, we don't want to get invaded. I think we got to take one.

1:13:04Atrioc:Mission accomplished. Mission accomplished. This is the most brilliant solution yet. Fuck. It could work. It could work is all I'm saying. Politics are so fun. Dude, I was going to say. Go for it.

1:13:18Aiden:I want to abandon politics if we can. I would like to. Yeah, I think we did a good chunk. It was like all really serious stuff that I think is nuanced and difficult to think. I want something where. Give me something easy. I want something easy. Give me something easy. Give me a soundbite game. I'm going to use a quick one.

1:13:31Atrioc:Yummy. I love a soundbite game. Well, that's also politics and based on drugs.

1:13:35Aiden:It's the exact same thing. God damn it. It's politics. Oh, because it's the TikTok band. It's literally the same thing. He said TikTok and I zoned out. I was like, ah, TikTok. You did so. I mean, sorry, scrolling.

1:13:44Atrioc:Look, it segues well. We'll do it. It's quick. All right. This is another example of basically executive overreach of Trump. No, make it more fun. Change it. Sorry. Don't you hate millennials? Yes, I do. On TikTok? Spreading their socialist propaganda? I hate millennials on TikTok. I want to have control of what they say and think. I don't want another country to have it. It should be my control as the United States government. That's why we decided to ban TikTok last year in April 2024. So as a reminder, because nobody talks about it anymore, TikTok is supposed to be banned. Wasn't it like a while ago now?

1:14:25Atrioc:Over a year in April 2024. Remember this? No, but they said a date, right? They said, well, ban by this date, and then the date came and went. So in last April, Congress, both Congress, they're actually very unified on this, by the way. The enemy was TikTok. That was the enemy. Again, literally it was like, China is taking all of our data and is influencing people. So they like overwhelmingly voted this through House and Senate. Then it goes to Biden's office in April. Biden signs a new law. It is a straight up law by Congress and then signed by Biden. And then it goes to the Supreme Court. And in January they vote, yes, this ban is legitimate.

1:15:00Atrioc:It's not infringing on free speech. This is a real valid thing. And then Trump comes into office and issues an executive order delaying it for 75 days. And his quote is, essentially with TikTok, I have the right to sell it or close it. No, no, he doesn't at all. So unlike some of the other things. Let's undo everything we just talked about though because you guys just said like, all right, no regular judge can stop an executive order, fine. But the Supreme Court can. But now he's overruling the Supreme Court with an executive order? Yes. The examples that mostly have happened with Trump is he writes an executive order.

1:15:33Atrioc:It's probably not constitutional. and then a federal judge puts a universal injunction on it and stops it. And now that process is going to change where it has to go to the Supreme Court. So first he does a thing and then Supreme Court or Congress are scrambling to catch up with it. This is the opposite of that. Congress passed a bill. It was signed by Joe Biden and then it was approved by the Supreme Court. The entire government universally said this is a law. It needs to be banned. And then he wrote an EO and said, no, I have control over it. This is, of my understanding as a dummy, the most blatant thing that he has done of like, at least ignoring the process, ignoring everything with the birthright citizenship.

1:16:12Atrioc:It's like, okay, obviously that's going to be ruled stupid and unconstitutional, but it does need to actually go through the process. This has gone through the process. So when he first came into office first day, he's like, we'll deal with this in 75 days. And then April comes around. He says, we'll deal with this in 75 days again, signs another executive order. And then we talked about this on a patron episode a month or two ago. June this month came by, signs another executive order. We'll deal with it in 75 days. And then like this week, he announced he's found a group of very wealthy people interested in buying TikTok's US operations.

1:16:43Atrioc:So he talked about this on Fox News, I guess, and was like, yep, we've found some buyers or whatnot. But it's so bizarre because this is one of the most brazen possible thing and nobody's talking about it or cares and because it's less impactful, I think, But it's truly bizarre to watch, again, the very executive order-based approach that Trump is doing, which in most ways is just not how the government's supposed to work at all. And this is the most clear-cut, like, everything about this is wrong. And TikTok should be banned as of six months ago. I guess it just doesn't have a lot of teeth.

1:17:20Aiden:Like, from a... People stopped caring. It's not really in the conversation as much anymore. I think the reality is probably most people don't want TikTok to be banned. Right, right. So they have no reason to like really get behind it.

1:17:36Atrioc:With all this stuff going on, the idea that Congress would be like, hey, let's hold off on all the other important things going on. We want to really force Trump to sell. Like nobody's going to like that, right? And so it's in this weird limbo where it's exactly what you said. Just nobody cares. But it's just sad. As the middle chair, I've signed an executive order. You have to buy me more candy. and I've signed it and it is now law. Well, actually, the Supreme Lemonade Court has already overruled. Oh, and here it goes. Oh, my. I can see why Trump does it now. I actually got a real world example of why he does it this way.

1:18:14It was so quick. You're telling me I can just be ripped in this? I just ripped it and I got candy. That's awesome. Okay. Yeah, I guess if maybe somebody listening

1:18:24Aiden:can provide some sort of insight here? Is there a piece of this I'm missing that you - Well, I'm sorry. Never mind. I was going to make a dumb joke. Never mind. No, make the joke. Make the joke. Do not edit this out, Ish. I remember around the band, people were doing TikTok dances to save TikTok. Maybe they've been so consistent about doing that. Oh, that's what worked. Maybe that's why.

1:18:48Atrioc:So in terms of constitutional authority, you have the president. On top of that is Congress. is on top of that is TikTok dances. The fourth check. Yeah, it's the media. Even without universal injunction, we have universal TikTok dances. Yes, okay. Your tone says you don't agree with me. No, that's serious. You can tell because I am saying the words. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

1:19:11Aiden:I still want them to ban it, man. It'd be so fun. I just want to see what happens. I understand. I've said all the arguments, and I don't really care either way for TikTok. But man, I just want to see what would happen. I'm just interested. That's a little bit of how I feel too, where have you ever, have you ever gone to another country where they've banned some sort of website and then you just like can't, you just can't go to that website all of a sudden. And, you know, China is the most extreme example, right? Where you need usually a certain type of VPN to be able to access the internet beyond China.

1:19:45TikTok is banned in India. Oh, is it? Yeah, it's totally banned.

1:19:48Aiden:That's what I mean. so in the US I just want to see what it looks like because we haven't had that I can't think of anything we have like that where there's a piece of media or like a huge popular website where you type it into your internet browser and the US government is just like you can't go here except for like fucking Silk Road you know stuff that's been seized well what happened in India is pretty funny is like they just made a bunch of Indian owned TikTok competitors and people started like it didn't I think people have this hope when TikTok gets banned that like the kids will finally get off their phones.

1:20:22Like they're gonna, this will work. It's gonna be a utopia where everyone starts listening to Grandpa.

1:20:28Aiden:I'm gonna tap geriatric Nancy Pelosi on the shoulder and say, hey, they actually, they just go to this thing called Reels. Yeah, you go to Reels. They go to Reels or YouTube Shorts or something else.

1:20:41Next topic, Doug. All right. Topic boy. Topic boy, my next one. Topic boy. I'll have some candy in the topic, please.

1:20:49Atrioc:Let's stop talking about the terrifying overreach of a certain branch of government and instead, let's talk about something a little more lighthearted, which is, I believe we spoke about this on a Patreon episode. A few weeks ago, about like two weeks ago, hey, if you like tech companies kind of fucking with each other and having to spend too much money and having a hard time, this is a story for you. This is one of the stories. Yeah, yeah. All right, so Sam Altman, He's the head of OpenAI who makes ChatGPT. He said this quote on the context of poaching.

1:21:22Aiden:Giant offers to a lot of people on our team. $100 million signing bonuses, more than that comp per year. That's crazy. Actually, it is crazy. I'm really happy that at least so far, none of our best people have decided to pick him up on that. Cool. So that's good.

1:21:39Atrioc:So he comes out on this podcast and he says that Facebook Meta is offering$100 million signing bonuses. This is an absolutely insane amount of money that would be unheard of and just baffling, right? But maybe they are, because they just spent like 15 billion acquiring this company, basically just to get the AI talent there. And so what's funny about this, this came out and we were like, and a lot of people, myself included, were like, holy, that is a lot of money going to AI people. That doesn't seem worth it, but my God.

1:22:07Aiden:It's the same headline as the Shea Gilgis-Alexander contract I saw this morning. It's the same headline. Yeah. He's hired for AI at Meta? Yeah, Meta got him. He has left the Oklahoma City Thunder. He has a lot of talent. That guy's got a lot of talent.

1:22:21Atrioc:And so what's so funny is that in an internal meeting, a top Meta executive said Sam Altman is lying about the$100 million bonuses. And he's like, Sam is known to exaggerate, which is true. And in this case, I know why he's doing it, because he's upset that we are successfully poaching some people from him. And so there's this tweet talking about it, how this is actually a brilliant strategy from Sam Altman. So most likely this headline that everybody was talking about of$100 million signing bonuses and$100 million yearly comp is probably just a complete lie. But what happens now is anytime anybody talks to Meta and they reach out and they're like, hey, we want you to leave and join Meta and join our AI team.

1:23:02Atrioc:They're like, well, I heard you're offering about$100 million. And they're like, no, we're offering like a couple million. And so now anybody who talks to meta is like super disappointed or meta has to match it and go up to like 70, 80, 90 million dollars, which is insane amounts of money. And they'll just like they'll just burn through that and hurt stock and everything. And then on top of that, his whole thing of they have successfully poached people from open AI, but his line of like our best people aren't leaving. So he also throws shade at anybody who leaves, makes everybody who stay be like, oh, I'm one of the premium people.

1:23:35Atrioc:I'm worth like 100 million dollars. and so and then it completely changes the narrative of like okay well it's not people are leaving open ai that's not what's going on it's the bad people who only care about money with the shitty culture they're leaving all of the best people are here that's how good they are and then on top of that anybody trying to put like from any company now if let's say google wants to go get somebody from open ai the open ai person's gonna be like well i'm actually worth a hundred million dollars so you're gonna have to up your price by let's say 10 15 20 times so this is probably an insane psyop that he did to just fuck up meta's ability to poach it's crazy i i don't i

1:24:13Aiden:don't even know if this is legal so question question do do you both think that is that more likely it's like is that the likely explanation or if i'm occam's razor in this it's just you know just him saying saying stuff and and this is like the retroactive here's why Trump's tariff strategy is actually be snowed. Yeah, I'm going to give an alternate take to both. I want to jump in. I don't have a take. I think this might be the case, right? It's like he's on an interview with his brother. He's time to orchestrate it. Yeah, he could orchestrate it. I think they did make these offers. And actually, if you read the rest of this article, this is just a quote from the article.

1:24:53But the actual article was this. A meta employee asked a senior meta executive in an internal meeting that got leaked, hey, I saw Sam Altman say$100 million bonuses for some people is that true if you actually read what the guy said to me it's more obvious that it is true or at least very close to true because what the meta guy actually said was like um he said well it's not signing bonuses he said like and he said and actually open ai is matching us in a lot of these things and also for most people this is not this is for very few senior high level roles like you're getting great comp don't worry about that he had every incentive to like play it down as like, because he didn't want his regular rank and file asking for more money.

1:25:35I think there's, and again, none of this is a hundred percent confirmed, but my understanding, especially with the acquisitions of the acqui-hires is at the very top level of AI talent is commanding this level of salary and does have deep bidding wars between open AI and meta. I think what Sam Altman lied about is that the people that did leave, he said, they're not the good ones. I think that's true. And I think he pretended like we're not going to match that money or we do it for the love but they did they did offer similar amounts they'd offer maybe not the exact 100 million but they offered close because they wanted to keep that talent well

1:26:09Aiden:he also said the one thing that stuck with me is he said 100 million dollar signing bonuses and more in that comp per year and i was like you're signing bonuses 100 million dollars and then their fixed salary after the fact is also 100 million dollars yeah the salary is the part that

1:26:24Atrioc:seems crazy that seems absurd to me right but in total absurdity like not even grounded in reality I think for a regular employee, yes.

1:26:32Aiden:There's no feasible way that you're setting up to pay an employee half a billion dollars in four years. There's no conceivable way that it's really going to be.

1:26:42Atrioc:So then the counter argument is he did just do that and bought Scale AI for$15 billion. And it was arguably to just get all the talent there. So I don't know how many people worked at Scale AI. I don't think it was that many. So if you average that out, it might be like$100 million average per person. I read a Bloomberg article where they had reported on this, and the reporting from Bloomberg is that Meta has offered tens of millions on the high end. So that's what Bloomberg is saying. Is the high end not$100 million? But from what you're saying, I didn't see that full article. Sounds like probably they have actually offered that.

1:27:14I mean, it would be nice if we could pull it up. If you could pull up the Meta.

1:27:17Aiden:I guess it wouldn't be in salary either, right? Most of that would probably be in stock options and stuff like that. That's what I think he said. I mean, they asked the Meta executive, and he goes, it's not a signing bonus. It's other things. And what I think he's implying is, because I've got a Jensen bonus when I was at NVIDIA. It's a four-year vested stock bonus. It's like they're not going to give it to you up front because then you could just walk away in a year. They give it to you over a time period that you have to work there. But I, and again, maybe it's a little less than$100 million, but my personal belief is that that number is roughly accurate for the very elite, top, top, top level people that think they can move their stock price.

1:27:56because, like you mentioned in a previous episode, if Mark Zuckerberg thinks you can do one good AI thing that gives them a 1 % lead over Google, that translates to$15,$20,$30 billion of market cap. It's worth it. This is the environment right now, the crazy bubbly environment right now where if you're winning an AI, everyone just throws money at you. It's infinite money for your stock value. That's what I think is happening. That's my honest opinion, but I've got pushback for saying this too. I think it's hard to verify because it's all people's words. But I encourage people to really read what the meta guy said and think about it from the POV of him, where he has to talk to this audience and pretend it's not as much as, because they will want more.

1:28:37Convince his own employees, we're not paying that much to people. Without lying to them because some... Yeah, because it could leave. And when you think about it from that POV, I think everything he's saying is like, yeah, we have a lot, but it's not, don't get high ideas. Don't get crazy.

1:28:50Aiden:Don't get crazy. Don't ask me for more money. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think he literally said, I wish you could pull up the article because I mean, we can pause for a second. I really want to get the quote. We just like eight is we can pause. And then, so I found the article and he specifically says this, uh, for all the new AI bootcampers here, you didn't screw up not getting a hundred million dollars. Okay. Uh, they laughed. You made a great decision. Your comp is right where it should be. Nice. So I, you know, I listen, I, I think it's tough to say.

1:29:26Atrioc:That's really. Your call is right where it should be. That's such a line. Yeah. And so they talk about the thing and he said, you know, that's, they say, ask him a hundred million dollars signing bonus. And he goes, that's not the general thing that's happening in the AI space. And of course, Sam's not mentioning what the actual terms of the offer are. It's not a sign on bonus. It's all these different things. That's not a no. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. That's not a no. A hundred million dollars is in the right. But apparently Mark Zuckerberg has been personally calling all these people and hosting them at his home.

1:29:56Atrioc:What do you think they do? Dude, they smoke meats. They smoke meats. He's a meats or the MMA fight. Or the MMA fight. Or the windsurf. You know, he raises his own cows in Hawaii.

1:30:06Aiden:Oh, yeah. Do you think he takes... That's like a whole thing. He bought that whole section of the island in Hawaii. And the native Hawaiians are protesting it. And it's... He's smoking meats. He's windsurfing with a full slather of sunscreen on his face.

1:30:22Atrioc:What I'm imagining is they do none of that, and they sit in a dark room and talk about LLMs for like three hours. Most likely none of the cool things Mark Zuckerberg does now. I think he talks about money. Yeah, probably talk about the amount of money he will give him.

1:30:36Aiden:We all have different takes. I'm in the Smoky Meat game. You know what's effed up is that there was a world where Elon Musk and Zuckerberg were going to fight in the Coliseum, and we didn't get that. we could have had that as the world. We have such a less fun world. Yeah, instead we got Jake Paul, Mike Tyson, whatever that was. That's so much worse.

1:30:58Atrioc:I don't know. That's like saying there's a world where Trump saved the environment. Oh, yeah? Like, technically, it was possible. Like, somebody floated that. He writes the right EO, dude. He'll get through in no time. Yeah.

1:31:10Aiden:Mark beats the brakes off of Elon. He's just younger. He's younger. He's better shaped. He's smaller, though. So we're going to get into those details. Let's break it down. You know, weight matters a lot. And he can fall on him.

1:31:27Atrioc:Elon can't be in good shape. The man does not do anything. How much ketamine? I'm not the guy to make a ketamine joke. I understand. Bro, I'm a big ketamine. If he comes in loaded up on ketamine. You talk about me like I'm like a Knicks fan. I'm like, oh, sorry. Can't talk about the Knicks here. I'm not like super stoked about ketamine. I'm just saying. It's a sports team. I like to make ketamine jokes about Elon Musk, but I understand that it has medicinal properties. I understand. Thank you.

1:31:55Aiden:Well, one thing that I was thinking about for the coming weeks is if anyone has any sick business stories, I've been patrolling and trying to get some better or just interesting random product that happens to be taking off or anything similar to that, if you have a business story and you're in the Discord, which you can join if you go to patreon.com slash LemonAidSan to submit. I really want to see some more story submissions because I want to go into our Discord for ideas. Yeah, I want to say, because we're going to do our little end of episode Discord pitch. If you want to watch Aiden Calvin truly crash out, check out the last Patreon episode.

1:32:40but his hands get wide and big like he's fighting a bear and he just starts, shut the fuck up.

1:32:48Aiden:Shut the fuck up. I'll synthesize it. I'll synthesize it right now. Maybe you're somebody who's not in the Patreon. You're listening to this right now and you're one of the people who commented about how - Don't do it again. The robotaxis. Why are we talking about robotaxis? Just invest in public transportation. Stop watching the show. Stop watching the show. Just never watch again. Go watch and consume something else. That's the really synthesized version of my rant. I don't know how much more pro-public transportation I could be. Throwing that in there. Throwing that in there. Or you can listen to the full crash out if you want.

1:33:23Aiden:If you pay five bucks. The director's cut is worth it. I promise you. He loses it. You can unsubscribe. You're making me mad. You're making me mad just thinking about it right now. Oh, please. He was so wound up. It was fire. I loved it. It was one of my favorite Patreon moments. Business stories. Yeah. Please send them. I mean, there's actually a ton. I need to bring some. That's part of my job here. I've been focused on the politics. And also, I'll be honest with you, at the highest end of business where the biggest money is, it's all been AI lately.

1:33:50Atrioc:It's so much AI. It's so much AI, man. I think that's the funniest.

1:33:54Aiden:We talked about the triangle, the business, tech, politics triangle of like, oh, what would we talk about on the show? Our show is AI and politics. And unfortunately, tech is all AI. Much of business is AI. It's just insane. And the other half of business is politics. because it's become very... This was different a few years ago. I think anything fun and like, oh, damn, look at this new popular product that happens to be breaking out and people are buying a bunch of... I've been trying to stuff just niche, interesting stuff like that. Oh, dude. La Boo Boo Dolls? I want to do a story on that.

1:34:31Atrioc:I've been trying to find sales data and stuff. I know them to the extent that it is possible for a 34-year-old man to know about La Boo Boo Dolls. But you know about them. That's the thing. They're doing well, bro. Okay. All right, man. I'm excited to hear about it. I was making this point on my stream. It's like the first example I've seen. Not the first. Actually, TikTok is the first. But it's an interesting example of China cultural exports in a way where they used to be always a cultural importer in a way. They would make manufacturing stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But now, the boo-boo dolls are a hot fashion item for celebrities around the world.

1:35:04And they're going viral on TikTok, which is a Chinese social media platform. Yeah. It's a bit of a beginning of a Chinese cultural blue jeans and rock jeans. A Chinese cultural revolution. You guys both made that joke. I just mean in America's 80s day. I'm not even saying it's happening. Actually, I think it's a bad thing. Labuma dolls are literally just gambling but with status symbol ugly dolls. It's certainly not good. It's just that they've gotten good at these things. They didn't usually, usually the marketing type thing was usually for America.

1:35:42Atrioc:This is the problem, Perry, if you bring this up. Yeah. This is us every week, okay? Is that we're trying to focus on business and then Trump comes along and does something. That actually is. And then we got it. And we look at his sweet ass. Dude, I swear to God, every week I'm like, I'm going to try to not talk about AI this week. And I say no to so many stories and then they put AI in a vending machine. What was I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? I'm looking at his hot ass vending machine story. I'm not going to go talk about the nuclear power plant. I like the vending machine story and I have no problem with it.

1:36:12That is fire.

1:36:13Aiden:That was great. All right. Well, thank you for joining us for another week on lemonade stand and we will see you next week. Bye. Mission accomplished. We just moved into our new house and I didn't realize just how close we were to the neighbors. That's when my friend told me about blinds.com. Blinds.com isn't a medication, but it can improve how you feel about your home. Customers who shop at Blinds.com experience excellent customer service from consultation to installation. Side effects include increased privacy and better sleep. Talk to your partner today and see if Blinds.com is right for you.

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