What's After Superheroes? | Ep. 025 Lemonade Stand 🍋

22:36Aiden:No, I don't think the fatigue would have continued if they were good because you could continue to reinvent the genre and do things. It's like you aren't locked into a formula because it's a superhero movie. You can do anything with these people. These movies can be creative and interesting.

22:52Atrioc:Well, what if there's four of them instead of just one? Yeah, it's like, is there too much of a good thing? Is there a point where, you know, could it be four or five or six a year?

23:00Aiden:No. Even if they're all four.

23:02Atrioc:Oh, I made four heroes in one movie like the Fantastic Four.

23:05Aiden:That is also part of the issue. I would say that it's too much of a good thing is only the case here because one, it's not that good of a thing to begin with. And the movies all follow very standard formulas of uninteresting plots or characters that all, it's like the movie or the new movie, like whether it be you know Shang-Chi or uh Doctor Strange they don't feel that different in their like plot or their writing than the movies that came out 10 years ago and they're just mid they're mid to bad over and over and over again but I think we're trapped in this world of superhero movie means the plot and the characters need to all be thought about and structured in a very particular way whereas when you look at a movie like the new batman movie or the dark knight an older batman movie right you can take a character like that and and take them out of this like weird traditional world of what superhero movies are kind of trapped though right like do something interesting they're not trapped you can just it people respond well to like interesting things now they've dug the hole so it's harder to get out of it right yeah but they didn't have to dig the hole to begin with i think they i think they just they pumped it out on the slop line and maybe it worked so i want to this is not like a culture war thing but i don't think captain marvel is considered one of the greatest uh marvel movies but that movie before endgame made like a billion i mean that movie did really really really well the average tier movies before endgame were doing pretty well the slop was doing i mean the overall quality better But the movies are slop.

24:53Aiden:No one was saying Captain Marvel was a five-star movie. It was riding the hype of Marvel being popular, right? Yeah. And you dug the hole along the way of like, you cannot continue to feed mid-slop and have it make a million dollars. I think that's what they did. Eventually, it will stop. So you need to be creative enough and willing enough to like change things and do interesting things and make better fucking movies. otherwise eventually you get to the point we're at now. I think if they were continuously like reinventing the formula or creating some new giant compelling story, people wouldn't be fatigued by superheroes inherently.

25:29Aiden:I think properties like Spider-Man and Batman kind of prove that. Okay, what does it all say? Superman is doing pretty well this year. Yeah. It's well-reviewed. I think it's the first superhero movie in a while to break 7.5 on IMDb, which is pretty good. Yeah. It is still going to underperform the Batman. Yes. It's still going to underperform Man of Steel, the last Superman movie, which is actually lower rated. It's doing fine. It's going to make its money back, but it's not a smash hit. And then Fantastic Four, fairly well-reviewed, going to not do that well. So you're saying if they keep up this good pace, they can get it back?

26:05Aiden:Yeah, I think if you keep pushing, keep being creative and keep pushing things in a new direction and strengthening your position, eventually people will warm up to the idea that these movies are good and interesting again. If I were like Spider-Man, like why is Spider-Man so popular beyond the recognition of the IP, right? I think the newer movies are basically like pretty good teen comedies that a superhero happens to be in. Like they're fun and interesting to watch in a way that the other superhero movies aren't. And Superman, I think there is something to be said about the inherent popularity of the IP through history.

26:44Aiden:And sure, a new superhero that you've never heard of could only ever be so successful compared to something like Batman or Spider-Man. But in general, I think they just need to nail enough movies in a row, and then people will be back on board. and they haven't made and they've done a really bad job at making good movies for a long time. Who could have predicted that Kraven the Hunter would flop? I don't understand. It's such a well-known idea.

27:12Atrioc:When you said that, I was like, this is not real. You've AI generated a picture and a title. I've never heard this in my life. Can you imagine signing the document at Sony to give$100 million to make a Kraven the Hunter movie and think, yeah, this is a good idea. This is a good use of my funds. The guy who signed that makes so much more money than we do. The answer's crazy. Every one of the executives has been signing these off makes so much more money than us. Oh, yeah, they're all crushing. Oh, damn. They're crushing, right? But they are panicking. They are panicking. They've tried it, and it keeps working less and less.

27:46Aiden:I think that they're suffering from all of the mistakes of each other in that people do categorize superhero movies together in their head, right? And all of the bad movies, regardless of who they come for and because, because of how many bad movies have come out for so long, people will, they'll, they'll be inherently fatigued for a long time. Distrustful. And now there has to be a way that you, that you break that mold. But in the same way that we've gone through decades of superhero movies being reinvented, right? It's going to, it'll just happen again. How do you explain Sonic fans?

28:24Atrioc:They buy every game. That's different. That's different. The Sonic fans just beat off.

28:29Aiden:That's a different, that's a different mechanic that i can't account for i want to give a slight counterpoint and here's what i think sure is it possible i agree with you that a good movie will probably make more money than a bad movie and if they make a bunch of good movies people will trust them and i think that's true but i think the era where you could mix in good movies with mid movies and get by is kind of over because it seems like culturally superhero movies are going to the back burner like it's just it's it's like it's like how rock music was bigger in the 70s and 80s and then we switched to hip-hop whatever it's like yeah i think there's a cultural shift away from superhero movies as younger generations just turn away like it just or people i think there's probably something to be said here about giant ip that becomes successful makes an incredible amount of money or our formula that makes a bunch of money and then giant company rides the trend and beats the dead horse until they can no longer print the same amount of money on it and then they have to move on to something else because they can't successfully reinvent it.

29:32Aiden:That's probably happening here in the same way that it's happening with Star Wars. The movies were so bad that they're not going to make movies for a long time. They're not going to try it again. But eventually they'll be able to come around and do another attempt. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And to be fair, I'll see a mainline Star Wars movie. They got me from my childhood. I'll still see it. But man, they were soft. I will go see it. I will go see it.

30:02Atrioc:You guys are in a toxic relationship. I just want you to know that. That's how I feel. Yeah. You're being abused.

30:08Aiden:But don't you think it does change? I don't know. I'll be different this time. I swear, we won't bring back Luke Skywalker. It is different. I think the big thing that's changed with something like Star Wars or something I can think of, like Game of Thrones, where you so publicly do a bad job with your franchise that you actually stain people's ability to continue engaging with it without thinking about how bad it was before. There's something to be said about franchises going in that direction. And it's not that I won't go see the next mainline Star Wars movie. I probably will, but I don't know if I'll see it opening weekend.

30:49Aiden:I don't know if I'll be as excited. I stopped watching all the shows. I stopped engaging in all the side content around it because when I thought about Star Wars, I was like, they took something I loved and they got rid of all the extended universe shit that I liked and replaced it with absolute dog shit. And now I don't feel excited about Star Wars anymore. And with this, it's the same thing. It's like, Endgame is over. They closed the storyline. So what do I move on to next? I don't really care about going to see these new superhero movies because there's nothing to participate in. But now I, you know, I'm not locked into video game movies is the next step, but there's probably some sort of next formulaic franchise sort of thing that you could just walk into.

31:30What if Hollywood executives tune up to turn the sound up? Okay. What if I'm putting myself in there? We get Robert Downey Jr. And pay 300 million dollars. The lemonade stand. No, just to come back again and again until he's 98 years old. If this works in doomsday, that's what they're going to do. The first lesson was superheroes are popular

31:50Atrioc:and the second lesson was Robert Downey Jr. I mean, what I would say if I was a studio executive is get Congress to fully ban TikTok. We need to preserve the American shitty movie studios and protect them from these awful apps that are taking their attention. I think it's TikTok, right? You're giving them better stuff. Unlike the high quality nutritious food that we gave them in the 2010s, now children are eating slop on the internet.

32:18Aiden:is there anything that you guys can think of besides what is the next gigantic movie? Is it really video games? I hadn't thought about it until you brought it up right now. I think it is. There's a bunch of, I don't have the list in front of me, but there's a whole bunch of video game movies have been greenlit like Zelda, like every big IP you can think of. Hollywood is ravenously like, Oh, this is where the money is. You know what?

32:40Atrioc:I, when you're saying that right now, I'm like, that's not going to work. It's failed forever. And then I realized it's the exact same pattern. 2010s. They tried to make all these video game movies like doom. Remember that? Yeah, that was terrible. In like Hitman and all these things. And they've all flopped super bad. And then these three, Sonic, Minecraft, and Mario Bros are probably the equivalent of Iron Man. Yes. And Dark Knight. I agree. That the studios are going, ah, cool, we're locked in for the next 10 years. Fucking send it. Oh, gross. Are they going to get a fucking Pac-Man movie?

33:06Aiden:You guys remember the Prince of Persia movie? Did you guys see that?

33:09Atrioc:Oh, yeah. That was terrible. That was terrible. Like Need for Speed and everything.

33:16Aiden:Isn't there like a, Isn't there like a Forza movie? Or am I just thinking in Need for Speed? There was a movie where a kid plays Gran Turismo. Gran Turismo. That's another one.

33:27Atrioc:The Gran Turismo movie. It plays ads everywhere. I think all three of these franchises have had a movie, none of which succeeded.

33:33Aiden:Dude, when they make a Madden movie.

33:39Aiden:They actually make a Madden movie like every year. Oh, dude, the spell's working. That was really funny. You know they're going to make like a billion dollar Halo movie. You know there's going to be a. They already tried to make a TV show. Yeah, they couldn't get it to work. But I think. Well. Pull off the mask. It's Robert Downey Jr. Robert Downey Jr. He's. Master Chief.

33:59Atrioc:It's Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. For the next decade. I don't want to say. On nostalgia. So even Spider-Man. Which is the biggest hit of the 2020s for superhero movies. The only one that I think break a billion. Maybe there was one other. But that's the big one. that movie was all nostalgia. It was Tobey Maguire. It was Andrew Garfield. It was like, obviously better movies are doing well, but the best ones are nostalgia bait for a better time. You know what I'm saying? Is it going to be all just like, remember this, remember that, like as they.

34:31Aiden:What did it? Oh, I just watched, I just watched, had the new Captain America movie on the flight. I haven't seen it. I wonder what you think. Cause that's an example of like, and truly, truly one of the worst movies I've seen in the past five years. I'm not kidding. It was so bad. There was so little redeeming about it. And I understand that there will be a general fatigue no matter what if you pump out a bunch of the same or similar product, even if they happen to be really good individually. But this was, it was remarkably bad. And it's like, this is what, you can't be mad that your formula isn't succeeding when you're pumping out that level of dog shit.

35:13Aiden:It was insane how bad it was. So that's what I'm thinking about. It's like, dude, if it's just... I understand it's probably hard to make a giant good blockbuster movie, but they're not sending their best. But if they had the original Captain America come back and pat him on the shoulder and they teamed up, would you smile and go, this is my childhood, I love this, and I... no I wouldn't let Chris Evans get away with that

35:43Atrioc:if you went into a McDonald's and you ordered the food and you took a bite and it's terrible but then Ronald McDonald walked out and patted you on the shoulder and said remember how good it used to be but that wouldn't do anything for you I don't think that would be that's kind of what they're doing right now but they raised the price alright well I mean I don't know I don't know if we have any more thoughts or you know Doug is there anything else you want to say about this I mean are you a superhero movie guy are you like a no I'm not really like a movie guy so I've been fully out for a while

36:08Aiden:I do have a closing thing. Could we go to the box office list? I want to see the current year's box office list. That was one of the slides, wasn't it? What do you mean? Didn't you have like last year's box office top 10 or something on there? Yes, I did. This one? Or like this year? Okay. Okay. I have a thought. This is semi-related. See the movie How to Train Your Dragon. Yep. Right there, right? Yep, yep, yep. There, what do you... And Lilo and Stitch. Okay. one thing that I'm surprised hasn't run out of gas yet in the world of film is this insane live action re-release of old films and maybe it's just the nostalgia thing you're talking about where people are just so attached to these movies from their childhood that they can't stop their idiot brains from going and seeing these You know Will Smith's biggest movie is Aladdin the live action remake Will Smith is, you know he was a top box office guy for 10 years and his biggest movie is the live action Disney remake of Aladdin It's crazy.

37:08People love those fucking movies.

37:10Aiden:I know. I think my actual, like, maybe top three hot takes is that if you are excited to go see one of those movies, I don't think you should be allowed to watch the movie. I think you need to go back to school or maybe... I don't know. They need something in their brain checked. Okay, you're picturing like a 27-year-old who's like... That's who it is. That's a lot of who it is. Some of it's kids, but a lot of it is Disney adults. It's like people who grew up with it are now parents, and they're bringing their kids because they want them to enjoy the same... A slightly worse version, actually, of what they grew up with.

37:51Aiden:This is the worst part of me. The worst part of me hates that they are successful. The fact that Lilo and Stitch remake made$420 million is disgusting to me, and I can't quite phrase why to you.

38:05Atrioc:uh that's funny you think how to train your dragon should have gotten more yeah because that's your childhood that's you like that more i mean that movie does

38:12Aiden:that i i don't honestly say that movie's better than lilo's stage but that that's have you wait wait wait have you seen both of those yeah you are the person you're talking

38:24Atrioc:about aiden what neither of us have seen it and you're complaining about these wait oh oh

38:28Aiden:you mean the remakes yeah oh no no no i've only seen the original oh yeah we won't see the original yeah i haven't seen that i haven't seen the remakes uh the the only thing i'm actually surprised about here in the the note i wanted to end it on was the amount of these movies that has come out and the length of time they have come out for i'm surprised they're still doing so well like maybe they haven't been coming out as much and as often as i feel that they have but in a conversation where we're talking about fatigue and like over releasing a certain formulaic type of product the fact that these are at the head of the box office so often is is mind-blowing to me and i i i wonder why maybe it's just because they're like exact recreations or something that were so successful in the past i think they're taking proven smash smash smash hits and remaking them it's like and there's enough time that's passed if they remade lilo and stitch again in five years i don't know there's a line somewhere anyways let us know your thoughts uh If you are more of a movie connoisseur, we'd love to know why you turned away, why you're still interested.

39:32Again, one more thing I wanted to say because I looked at the box office data. The opening week for the new Superman or the new Fantastic Four or Thunderbolts was actually fantastic. They still have this diehard group that is more excited than ever when the movies are actually good. But the drop-off is massive.

39:53Aiden:You've lost the general public. You've lost the general public. You haven't really lost the diehards. There's less of them. But the general public no longer gives a shit about the larger Marvel web or, or even, you know, Superman or like there's the drop off has been much, much bigger. And that was noticeable. I guess it's all the people on the peripheral that feel the fatigue, the heaviest. Right. Yeah. Because I think about people like my girlfriend who are like so checked out of this genre, even when it was hype, but she still saw Avengers Endgame. Yeah. You know, like, like Avengers Endgame was just like, you know, you just got it.

40:27Aiden:You just went. You're out of touch. And I think there is a giant group on like the outer edges, which was, you know, the bulk of people who were just deciding to go to these that feel the fatigue the most and are also the least likely to engage in whether or not the movie is good or not. So, uh, yeah. Interesting. Uh, I wanted to, I wanted to talk about a little, so I just got back from a trip. I went on vacation. Where'd you go? I want to set this up. And speaking of your girlfriend, listen, this is our last chance he went to Sweden with his girlfriend and this was like the trip to introduce her to Sweden and see if she would like it enough that they could move there together and so every night I have been paying witches and praying that she would not enjoy it so that our baby boy Aiden would not be able to go to Sweden and then I message him when he's there he sends me pictures of parks and strollers and green fields and grass and she goes she loves it i love it and i was like well we lost him that was our this is our last hope to keep aiden in the great country of america on the beautiful i sent him pictures of the 405 to try and keep him here he did send me a photo of the just back-to-back traffic on the 405 and it's like i tried my best to like show him the beauty of america uh i reminded him we have a great president donald trump and i just it didn't seem to convince you so i don't know what else can get through.

41:55Atrioc:I mean, have you ever thought about the fact that there is audio listeners? It looks like racism is frowned upon harshly.

42:05Aiden:Doug is Googling the cons of living in Sweden. The cons of living in Sweden is that racism is frowned

42:12Atrioc:upon. I'm just going off the list, man. Oh, police are useless except with regard to prosecuting crimes. Oh, wait, that's

42:21Aiden:like parking fines. Tell us about Sweden, Aiden. Okay. I'm not here to tell you about, you know, my trip specifically, but there was something really, really interesting I learned while I was there. And like Atriok said, the intention of this trip was I was bringing my girlfriend there for the first time to introduce her to Stockholm, surrounding, like, towns, and my friends there to give her a better idea of, you know, are you ready to move here? Because that's my plan currently. is uh i'm gonna move there in like a year and a half and uh the through the week we spend we hang out with a bunch of different people we know like uh virtual anna crambling yeah uh uh some other

43:07Atrioc:personal friends of mine okay by the way i did use the picture of the yard with virtual in it yeah for the witches so he might be less funny he's gonna so virtual is gonna be less funny

43:18Aiden:in his neck just Anna Anna touching his shoulder and she's like what's wrong this is like I don't know she's not feeling as funny anymore babe you seem about 10 percent worse but and uh so I lucky enough to like know and have a lot of friends there already and that's part of the reason why I want to move and but while we're there we're asking them all these different questions about you know the specifics of you know what do you like what don't you like what are the good and bad things about living in Sweden. And I think when you're raised in America, you have this general idea that even if you reflect on like quality of life in Europe positively, you have this idea that they have way higher taxes.

44:05Aiden:And so you have way less money. But the trade-off is you get a bunch of benefits in society, right? You pay the taxes and you get a healthcare and a welfare system and all and all these lovely things from it but when i was talking to a good friend of mine who just got an entry-level software engineering position at a bank there and we were talking about his salary and what his expenses are i was lying i was starting to do a bit of mental math in my head and i was like wait a second and i have you ever had this thought is like you know european people you work with they always seem to be on vacation they always seem to be out of the office.

44:46Aiden:And I kind of wondered, you know, if if people in Europe have way lower incomes or like way less disposable income because of all the tax they pay, you know, how do they go on all these nice trips all the time? How do they how do they get to go out and do all these lovely things on their vacation or like, you know, do things like that? I had this passing thought in my head and I went through and I mathed out what salaries would be like in Sweden versus Los Angeles and a bunch of other American cities when you consider all of the committed, like required to live expenses that you have in the US to see what your actual, like after tax and required expenses, like money you have left is.

45:29Aiden:So where I started was, I just took my friend's salary who has this job. And so he makes about 62 ,000, 61 ,000 US a year. right now, which is on the higher end in Sweden. And here, I'll pull up. I'm going to pull up this chart. So the way I went about this is the expenses that I considered, like, required to live are your health insurance, your car insurance, your rent slash mortgage, your utilities, your groceries, internet, phone, gas, public transportation. Do you want to send me the link? I'll put it up on screen. Sure. So these are the expenses that I considered required for living, right?

46:17Aiden:And I just compared it to living in Los Angeles. And so after tax, if you look at this salary of$61 ,300 and look at it after tax in Stockholm, it's about$47 ,200. And then the same thing in Los Angeles, after tax, it's about$49 ,400. And then you go through...

46:39Atrioc:sorry, A-Truck is adding in an expense you missed, which is a cyber truck, which costs$120 ,000. Did you add that in? That's going to make it negative. Do you know in Sweden the government just gives you a cyber truck? It's free there.

46:54Aiden:The way I estimated these was basically making the required expenses about as minimal as possible, like considering lower end studio apartment, base utilities, not anything above what you need, like lowest end health insurance plan that you could get reasonably. and that's how I generally estimated these expenses. And if you consider all these things, when you look at this same salary in these same two places, your after-tax and after-expenses income in Sweden, in Stockholm, is$27 ,600, which is much higher than the$14 ,300 that you're left over with in Los Angeles on the same salary. And I found this immediately frustrating because it feels counterintuitive to this narrative that I've been fed my whole life.

47:43Aiden:But I wanted to have an honest approach to this whole conversation. Yeah, the salaries are higher. Because of course, the same job would have a higher salary in Los Angeles. Thank you. Thank you, Brandon. I just want to bring that up because you're not mentioning the salary would be higher. And if you look at this position, if you entry-level software engineer in Los Angeles at a bank, he's looking at probably$90 ,000 a year starting point, maybe$95 ,000. And if you run the same thing, consider all the same expenses because, you know, base required expenses are going to be the same in this situation no matter what.

48:12Aiden:He's left with a higher amount,$5 ,000 higher in disposable income than the person in Stockholm. If it was 50 cents more, it'd be worth it. With$33 ,800 about, right? So a$5 ,000 difference. Okay, fair enough. You do have a higher take-home income on this similar job in between these two places, right? But then, so I have my thoughts on that to begin with. But I decided I wanted to take a look at, well, what happens when you just look at median income in these places or per capita income? It depends on what you're looking for. You can use a bunch of different numbers for these things. I tried to be as neutral as possible in what I chose.

48:58Aiden:And I have a bunch of different options here. But when you look at median income or median personal income in Stockholm is about 43 ,000 US dollars for the year. And if we go through the same math that I laid out or that you're left over with about 18 ,000 dollars of disposable income for the year, right? Considering all the same expenses. And then if you treat, this number's a little high, I think, but we could say the median Los Angeles income is 72. 72. I think there's some discrepancies here, but let's take a higher median income number that I came up with, which was 72. And you're left over with not much more than the 18 ,000.

49:43Aiden:You have$21 ,000 left over after all those expenses, right? And then if you take a lower median income measurement in Los Angeles, which is like$60 ,000, you're left over with a much lower amount. And then if you look at median or like per capita income in Houston, in Nashville, where it's$45 ,000 and $47 ,000, the number you're left over with compared to the median income in Stockholm is$14 ,600 you're left over with or$12 ,700 you're left over with. And all of the expenses for those cities, I tried to estimate specifically to those cities, to be clear. I wasn't like rolling over the Los Angeles numbers to each one of those.

50:23Aiden:My broader point that I want to make here is that I found this incredibly sad and frustrating because the quality of life for what you get, even if in the best case scenario where you have the same job and you're making a little more money, like say$5 ,000 more over the course of the year, in this example with the software engineering, is that you live in a place where you have higher rates of crime, including higher rates of violent crime, significantly more. Sweden, among Europe, one of the higher rates of gun crime in all of Europe, still considerably lower than what goes on in the United States.

51:01Aiden:You have lower societal trust, more expensive education, poor public spaces and things like parks, bad public transportation, no sick days, no parental leave, of which you get 400 days combined between you and your spouse that you had to use over the first four years of your child's... The presentation he gave his girlfriend on the plane. sick you get you get paid you get paid paid sick days paid sick days if your kids are sick you can take a week off from work and then pass that if you get like a doctor's note that your kid is still sick you get to stay home paid for by the government 25 days of mandated vacation per year minimum paid for you get to live in a walkable city you have stronger public welfare you have public health care.

51:46Aiden:You have a lower life expectancy in the US. You have worse child care, higher child mortality, higher costs of the health care itself with worse outcomes, better food and nutritional standards, and a higher quality of public education for your kids. You have all of those things. And maybe, maybe in some of the situations I laid out, sometimes you make less money. Sometimes. And if you take just median income, if you take the general median income from both places, you actually have more disposable income in Stockholm. And you get all of those things. And I will be honest, as I dug into this, I felt kind of betrayed.

52:33Aiden:Because to me, growing up, there was always this idea that you only got all of these benefits with the fact that you paid more in tax and that you had more income for yourself. But for the average person, that doesn't even hold true. In most cases in the US, the average person on an average salary or an average paying job ends up with less money than you do in a place like Sweden. And then even on the high end, if you're someone who is striving to become a billionaire, there are more billionaires per capita in Sweden. over double that in the US. I think it's almost three billionaires per million in Sweden and in the US it's one.

53:14Aiden:So if you really cared about becoming a billionaire, you have a better shot in Sweden. And I think it is to spend a whole week there walking around in a city that is significantly cleaner at all of these immaculate parks, finding out that I get paid leave from the company that I would own in that country by the government when I want to take paternal leave. I always thought that the paternal leave didn't make any sense for me because, oh, if I set up my company, I'm just going to... I thought it was a legal requirement for the company to have to pay for my paternal leave. That's what I thought.

53:45Aiden:It's not that. The government pays for your paternal leave. So even though I own my company, the government will send me money to take my paternal leave.

53:55Atrioc:Based on your salary?

53:56Aiden:Based on the salary that I pay myself.

53:58Atrioc:I assume that the corporate tax rate is higher though, right? For that company? The corporate tax rate.

54:03Aiden:Swedish. So theoretically, could I start a company right before I'm about to have a kid and pay myself a salary of$900 ,000 a year? Have the kid. The government pays that salary while I'm on a paternal leave. This is why you want to move to Sweden. You sneaky motherfucker. So interestingly enough, corporate tax rate in Sweden is actually slightly lower than in the US. 28, 20.6%. This is the other thing. As I'm talking to my friends there. Hold on.

54:30Atrioc:They lowered it this year. Yeah.

54:33Aiden:Yeah, it used to be high. They did a big, beautiful bill too. But even when they had theirs higher, right? It was 32 % until this year. It was lower than our previous rate of 35. Of 35, yeah. So that part aside, Sweden, extraordinarily business friendly. If you set up a business there, there's all of these things that encourage you to do so over surrounding countries. It's a big part of the reason why so many of the large companies in not only the Nordics, but Europe are set in Sweden or Stockholm specifically because of all the benefits that they have for business owners there. And a lot of the people that I talked to there who are business owners were explaining to me the ways that you like basically pay yourself and handle your taxes in Sweden as best as possible.

55:20Aiden:And I was like, this situation is better for me, I think, than it is in California. And I was surprised by that because I'm a high income earner. So all of these things and like stereotypes perpetuated about what you sacrifice by moving to a country like that, which is one of the first questions people ask me is, well, aren't you going to pay a bunch more in taxes? Isn't that going to suck? And I was already on board because I was like, no, I'm buying into a society that takes better care of me, my family, and all of the people around me. But then financially, I actually am not, I'm basically in the same place I am in California, if not better.

56:00Aiden:And for my kids, probably better. Like if they're just gonna pursue normal careers. And I'm not gonna say there's no trade-off. I do think there's unique career opportunities in the United States that I don't think exists there sometimes. But I think for the average person, this whole like debacle and rabbit hole of me going into this was it felt, I felt very betrayed. It made me angry that this is the case.

56:26Atrioc:Give H.K.O.K. and I a second to defend America. Yeah. What do we got? I was going to say freedom. Freedom was a big one, but I think he's got a good counter to that. Money. We have more money. No, he mentioned that one. We were going to talk about trucks. They barely have any trucks in Sweden. They barely have trucks at all. He didn't even include car payment in Sweden for this because they don't have a car, I guess. Because you don't need a car. Hold on. Are you assuming no car for people in Sweden?

56:51Aiden:Yeah, in Stockholm because you don't need a car.

56:54Atrioc:Gotcha. Okay.

56:54Aiden:And I think on app, and to be fair, like, I think there are cities, of course, there are cities in the U S like, you know, if you lived in New York or even when I lived in Seattle in college, right? Like I didn't need a car, but I think in general, in American life and in a city like LA, a car is a required expense. It's not, you do not have the same degree of choice over owning a vehicle in a place like Los Angeles as you do in a place like Stockholm.

57:18Atrioc:Okay. So help me understand something. I, everything you're saying makes sense, but the, when you compared a software engineer in Sweden versus a software engineer here and said they would make more here because salaries are higher. The take home was$5 ,000 higher. Yes. So my understanding from this is like, if you are a high earner, you do take more in the end from being in America. So I get what you're saying like about this system supporting people who, who make, let's say the median or less in America. And that makes sense. I think you just said of like, you felt like you were told you're going to have to pay so much.

57:49Atrioc:You are a high income earner. So won't you be paying substantially more in Sweden? So yes, with an asterisk. Okay. I, from my understanding,

57:59Aiden:if you're a business owner specifically, and that's how I would be applying for my visa, I might be in a unique position where I might be paying similar or less tax than I do now because of the way that you distribute profits from your business and the way business profit is taxed there versus a normal salary. but I just treated this as salary to salary. Right.

58:23Atrioc:Does that make sense? Salary to salary, you would get more take home in America, right?

58:28Aiden:That's up until,

58:30Atrioc:uh, like if you're a very high income earner, right? It's yes. Yes. It feels like I have an example.

58:35Aiden:I think I wrote it down. Like if you,

58:37Atrioc:it sounds like there is, yeah. So there's a, there's a reason why they might be like, no, I should stay in America.

58:41Aiden:So if I made, so as an example, right? Uh, I, I totally can see that's our,

58:46Atrioc:that's our defense. Rich people win. I totally concede that.

58:49Aiden:I totally concede. Well, rich people who are paid salaries but don't own companies. Yes. Yes. Point for America. So like the example that I did, I don't have it on the sheet, which was if you made, say you've made a salary of$450 ,000 a year. Your take home in Sweden on that salary, in Stockholm specifically, is about 236 ,000 US a year. That's what your take home would be. And then in California, your take home would be$269 ,000 a year. So about a$33 ,000 difference, pretty significant, honestly. But I think when you have that, the two main points I want to make here is that even though that difference exists, right?

59:31Aiden:You have all of these things and benefits that you sacrifice for not only yourself, but your kids, your family, and your community around you. Is it worth that salary difference to walk through the streets of a place that has a ton of people who are homeless everywhere and don't have homes and don't have access to healthcare and your kids have to go to an expensive private school instead of a public school. And all of those, is it worth all of that trade-off or should you just be buying into a collective benefit for society around you? I would argue that the trade-off there to begin with is bad.

1:00:13Aiden:But the thing I wanted to stress is that for the median income earner, for the average person with the average job, you walk away with more money in Sweden still. And that's crazy. Because those people are giving up nothing. They actually have more money than the American does. And then you also get all these benefits. and I think that runs very counterintuitive to everything we're told about these systems and the what Europe has over the US and these common like US versus Europe arguments. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. I think that's fair. I like like if I were to give you an example for my girl like for my girlfriend who, you know, makes a very normal salary in comparison for her job.

1:00:59Aiden:She would make she would make slightly more money there. she would make slightly more and then have access. And then if we had a child, she would have 200 days paid of maternity leave. She would miss American Idol, though, I think.

1:01:19Atrioc:She wants to stay her entire life in a country that's never won the World Series. The shame, the embarrassment. Unbelievable.

1:01:27Aiden:We didn't even win the last baseball international tournament either. We won the World Series. It's called the World Series, Aiden. Jesus Christ. No, I'm talking about the Baseball World Cup. I know.

1:01:39Atrioc:We're talking about the World Series. That's where the world plays. Dude, when the Grateful Dead does a world tour, you think they go to Sweden? No. They go to Britain and they go to America and they go to Canada.

1:01:53Yeah, I mean, this ties into some stuff we talked about on the show before. The idea that, well, I guess you're sort of countering the idea. You're saying they're not even paying that much more in tax, but the idea of like the equinox effect where people are happy to pay a little more if they notice the difference.

1:02:08Aiden:If you make less than, because of the way Sweden's tax system works, If you make less than 70K US a year, which there, because they have lower salaries on average, most people do, you pay less tax than you do in California. Yeah, I mean, the big thing I've heard from people who have come from Sweden to here is if they're high earners, they want the higher salary. That's the thing. That would be the big counter argument. It's just there is a higher take home at the highest level. Yeah. And people who really can earn the most. I think, yeah, to be clear, it's not like there's zero reasons to come to the US.

1:02:47Aiden:I think that's an important part that I totally concede, is like there are situations, from what I can see, the main things you would take advantage of is if you have a job in a field that pays you a really high salary in a specialized industry that is like more prominent in the US. So things I can think about is software engineering, right? If there's not a version of being like a senior software engineer at Amazon where you're paid 500K a year in Sweden, it doesn't exist. I know a bunch of software engineers there and their salaries are way, way lower, even at big companies, right? I think that the tax situation for people who own businesses, I'm finding out in Sweden is actually extraordinarily friendly.

1:03:32Aiden:I'm actually surprised by that. there was some Norwegians I was hanging out with and they were saying one of the main reasons that so many big companies exist in Sweden and not many big companies exist in Norway is because of the differences in policies around business taxes and wealth taxes between those two countries. Interesting. Interesting. Which I hadn't really thought about, right? Because from my perspective, it's just like those two countries are basically right next to each other and they're on all the charts together. They're very, very similar, but they're describing the difference in like the opening of business between the two.

1:04:06And the last thing I'll say is that, you know, Sweden population, 10 million. That's the Los Angeles metro area. That's - It's actually less. Yeah, greater Houston, that's New York. I mean, you know, it's just a bigger country with, you know, in that 50 different states, all of their own rules and regulations and laws and state taxes. And it's just difficult. I know. On a 300 million person scale.

1:04:28Aiden:But not - Not that we're not - Not to get - Yeah, we're all pushing for it. reactionary but i'm gonna get reactionary i i am i does it not make you does it not make you a little mad like it's crazy to me it is crazy the level of benefits and quality of life there is astounding to me like and this is stuff that i learned on this trip even though i've been looking forward to moving there and have been there many times before this and i the day-to-day enjoyment the number of like families i saw everywhere the number of like the parks and social benefits and all these things my friends just openly talked about and were like yeah this is just what we get and this is what it is and no and then i came back to la at lax and fucking walked to la exit got an a hundred dollar uber to get home uh and then walked through like a Street of trash.

1:05:25Aiden:And you knew your home.

1:05:27Atrioc:LeBron James gave you a nod through the train.

1:05:29Aiden:As I walk past a field of people that live in the street that should have homes or apartments and not have to live on the street, it doesn't make any fucking sense, dude. As my parents pay tens of thousands of dollars to send my little brother to college, and it's just, it is a fucked system. It is embarrassing that it is this way in this country. I think truly. It made me, I don't know. Because I feel like if you make, the fact that you have less money when you make$45 ,000 a year in Houston than$43 ,000 a year in Stockholm is like, I don't know, that's crazy to me. If you consider these expenses, right?

1:06:12Aiden:I'm sure you can like fuck with my numbers and I tried to be honest and like pick as many like low end averages and everything. I didn't want to like cheese it. but I mean the big thing is car right you have a huge gas payment and a huge car insurance payment and I assume a car payment you didn't include I didn't even list a car payment I'm just assuming this person owns their car in full just like they have a used car that they have no in full they're not making a car payment which most there's a bunch of things you could include in this that most regular Americans are paying on top of this stuff but I wanted to make sure it's like no only list the things that you need that are basically required for a living which is like utilities rent uh you basically need to have a car and you basically you have to pay gas to move the car and then uh and shit like that yeah i mean i agree i just don't know what to add it's like

1:07:04Atrioc:yeah i in part i i think this it just underscores the core fundamental cultural divide which is one of saying we are going to prioritize the ability to focus on your own individual success even at the expense of the broader collective. And that seems to be the American ethos for better or for worse. And I'm in the same boat. Like I don't, I don't want that. Like I hate Los Angeles. I,

1:07:25Aiden:yeah, it's, it's incredibly depressing, but I think to not, to not retread anything. I think that's actually a really good idea to end on because I agree with you to me, that's the value proposition you think of as an American and that you think of when you compare yourself deeply rooted in the American dream.

1:07:39Atrioc:And that the thing that we reinforce over and over and so many of our like parents and grandparents were able to, yeah.

1:07:43Aiden:And to a degree, I think if that value proposition were true, then you could fairly make that choice. But through this exercise, the thing that angered me the most was that the value proposition that you described is not really true. You don't really get more money. You don't really get more freedom. I'm saying for rich people, right?

1:08:04Atrioc:No, yeah. That's what I'm saying.

1:08:06Aiden:Yeah, but the American dream is bought into by a collective society that has endorsed it, right? I would say it's a collective American idea.

1:08:12Atrioc:Yes, but it's the idea of like, yeah, you're worse off if you're poor, but if you can make money through the opportunities that America provides, you will benefit more than if you did that somewhere else. Right. That is the pitch. Right. And so obviously the majority of people are left behind in that system, which I suspect none of the three of us are stoked about. But I mean, that's how you preserve it. Right. Is then you have all the people are successful saying this is good. We should encourage this type of thinking. Right. Yeah.

1:08:37Aiden:Yeah.

1:08:38Atrioc:It makes sense in a way. It's not what I would prefer. Another takeaway of this is that they're getting taxed roughly the same. They're after tax for the same salary is roughly similar, which means the tax dollars are just being misallocated. They have enough tax money. They have more tax money. You mean America has more tax money? They could spend that on similar things. They're spending it on other things. We talked about a lot. Yeah, that's a really good point. How much does Sweden spend on the military every year? We spend a trillion dollars. It's things like that that I wonder. And Doug, I'm glad you asked.

1:09:12Aiden:It's lower. It is? Wow, okay. Imagine it was a trillion, too. It was all going over.

1:09:18Atrioc:Yeah, I mean, we've talked about budget and how we spend money, and I don't think we spend money very well. Yeah, I think it's misallocated. So a huge part of it is that. Yeah, again, percentage GDP, 1.47. It's pretty low.

1:09:32Aiden:Yeah, and they just joined NATO, too, so I wonder if it's going to change. They all committed to five, so we'll see. But yeah, I think we would like to see, we've talked about it a million times on the shows, but public transport is like a thing that allows people to spend less on cars and that and have more take on pay. Yeah. And that is something we could spend our tax dollars on with the money we have now, but it's allocated elsewhere. It's, it's on other things that is, uh, that we need people to make hard choices to move those things over here or raise taxes if you want to, but one of the two.

1:09:59All right. Stop teasing us. So did you like it?

1:10:05Yeah, I couldn't get his real feeling. I couldn't get a read on this. I could not get a read. He was being so mystic about it.

1:10:11Aiden:It's just the weird colors for a flag. It's like the red, white, and blue. The old Stars and Stripes. The old Stars and Stripes is hard to beat, bro.

1:10:19Atrioc:We got 50 on them. If you don't mind me saying this, for the entire time we've been talking about doing this podcast, which is over a year now that we've been like kind of planning and discussing it, you've been saying you're about a year and a half out from moving to Sweden. Is it still a year and a half? Will it continue to be a year and a half? I think I said two years when we started, right?

1:10:37Aiden:I think it was a year and a half. Okay, well, I think now it's down to like a year and four months, three months.

1:10:43Atrioc:Okay, I get to be like unleashed from LA. I'm now like going to, I'm pulling the trigger once you leave, basically. Yeah, you're going to free me from LA. Japan and or Portland.

1:10:52Aiden:And Atriak is going to forever love the 405, dude.

1:10:55Atrioc:Stuck on the 405, just. That's good, though.

1:10:57Aiden:It keeps us grounded.

1:10:58Atrioc:It keeps us grounded. You know, you don't want to.

1:11:00Aiden:Like, you'll be stuck on the ground, out on the asphalt. You'll miss it. You guys will miss it. You'll be begging me to come back.

1:11:09Atrioc:I turn on the tube in Japan. Wait a minute. No World Series? What am I to do? Yeah.

1:11:18Aiden:Well, actually, let's move on. All right.

1:11:21Atrioc:No, actually, hey, this sort of relates, which is an interesting conversation about whether the United States government should be involved in private companies. That was pretty interesting. Before that, I'm going to really quickly follow up from last week. I feel like I had a little egg on my face. ChatGPT5 kind of sucks. I was telling Brandon how we got to talk about all the goods of Chad Gbt. I've been hearing universally negative things, and my experience has gotten markedly worse over the last week. Yeah, it got worse. It got worse.

1:11:47Aiden:Can I interject? Yeah. But how does it just get worse if it's the same version?

1:11:52Atrioc:They do update it. They're constantly updating it and changing it. So it's not the same. It's the equivalent of like... What if Chad Gbt got worse? Sam Altman after the blunt, dude? If you upgrade from Windows 11 to Windows 12, Like you're on a new big set, but it's, you know, you're going to keep updating it. Okay. That makes sense. Okay. My understanding is also the, they are hitting their energy limit. Like they, as more users are flowing into chat GPT-5, they have to keep making the service worse to keep the speed and quality. Like my, that is my, at least Sam all was trying to like hint at was like, they have so much demand and they can't get enough energy online for data centers online for this new thing.

1:12:38So it's actually getting worse in real time as more users are added, which is like the opposite of what you want. You know, like a social network gets better the more people that add it. Like this gets worse the more people that... Anyway, sorry. Yeah, there's a bunch of issues.

1:12:50Atrioc:A programming content creator friend of mine, Theo, like made a post where he's like, I need to apologize. When I was trying ChatGPT before it launched, it was incredible and what is out now is worse and i feel like i misled everybody and like i sort of feel the same last week on a very small scale like i'm like crashing out at it multiple times a day now because how annoying it is to talk to when practicing a language like oh yeah every day i'll be like stop prefacing your questions with eight sentences just tell me what this is a japanese and be like absolutely yeah i hear your frustration let me just talk quicker and get straight to the point let's get right into this no more dealing with this let's just go and i'm like shut the fuck you're doing it again and i like that's like an i think you should leave sketch dude i'm going crazy anyway like like we are like we know on this show ai is perfect and there's no downsides but this is one rare instance where there was some frustration okay um so last week interesting story where intel the giant company that makes uh you know cpu chips um they have been struggling a lot over the past few years that is maybe maybe a topic we can get into if we have time but there's another interesting thing that is happening in this whole as Intel, one of the American like tech giants who is in theory should be part of the future of AI and computing and all this stuff because they make some of our best chips.

1:14:02Atrioc:They're American. That's fantastic. They're doing bad. Like they're doing actually quite bad. So we can talk about that as well. But one of the things that is happening as people are trying to figure out how to help Intel is the U S government. Trump is like floating the idea of the United States government, investing into Intel and holding private stock. They are going to, In particular, Intel said they wanted to open up this giant factory in Ohio to manufacture chips. That doesn't seem to be happening. And they're like, we're not going to have money. We've got to push this back to the 2030s.

1:14:31Atrioc:Trump obviously really pushing for more jobs, investment in the U.S. So their idea is like, okay, if we as the United States invest into it, you guys would then be able to get this thing going. We get jobs. We get all this stuff. And so I was curious about this. I was like, I don't know of any instance where the U.S. government has like bought stock in a company and just like invested in it. So I looked into it. There are cases over the entire history of the country where the U.S. government comes in, but almost always it's either you're failing as a company. We want to help because this is going to be economically devastating or going to lose a lot of jobs.

1:15:02Atrioc:Here's a gigantic loan. Hopefully you pay us back. That's one. That's happened a bunch of times. It's like the banks, right? In the. Yes. But actually, even then with the 2008 financial crisis, that was the other example where they actually do buy a big stake. So they bought, for example, 34 % stake in Citigroup during the financial crisis. So they actually owned part of the companies, but then within a few years, the banks recovered and paid the government back. Or GM and Chrysler, like our car companies, went to bankruptcy. U.S. Treasury bought 60 % of them, of GM, 10 % of Chrysler. And then by 2013, four years later, they had bounced back.

1:15:35Atrioc:The U.S. sold all the shares. So it's kind of these like temporary things. The U.S. government comes in, uses money to help like prop up a company, get the back on their feet. They succeed. it's a great success story the u.s government is totally out and this would this would potentially be the first case where the u.s government wants to just invest into a healthy company intel is not doing well but they aren't dying you know and they're still very valuable they're not going into bankruptcy and the idea is like the united states would just hold pieces of it and have influence on it that is very unusual and i would say pretty un-american i mean that's like the hallmark of of the chinese government right and that book we write is all about how the chinese government basically oversees all companies like you have to have a chinese communist party member in your you have to have like these you know monitors in your companies so i'm just curious open question what do you guys think about this it's weird that they didn't start with gamestop yeah a strategic investment in gamestop would also a company that's doing really well very healthy buy more of it right now uh i mean there's a strategic thing here right which is like so the foundries that make chips are extremely important and right now all the good latest and greatest ones are in taiwan and the second latest and greatest ones are in korea samsung's got the other foundry and then the third best which used to be the best for a long time is intel in america now they barely even make their own chips they outsource it to tsmc but the idea is eventually either get tsmc into america to build factories there because we're all under the assumption that eventually China will want to take Taiwan.

1:17:08And they had to plan for that future where we can make chips outside of Taiwan. Or Intel gets on its own feet. And that was like the plan during the Biden years where they simultaneously enticed TSMC to come to Arizona and also gave a bunch of money to Intel to make foundries. And one of these will work out and we'll get chips in America. And the TSM thing is kind of soft working out and the Intel thing is not working out at all. It's like a total flood. The company is just floundering. It's just getting worse and worse all the time. So, you know, I can see the strategic reason for putting money in.

1:17:39It does feel weird to have the government take a permanent stake in a company with no plan. That doesn't, first of all, it just gives them a weird leg up on their computers.

1:17:47Aiden:Is it just the difference between this option and going a subsidy route that you have more direct say in the direction that the company can move in?

1:17:58Atrioc:A bunch of things. It would be a partially state-owned company in perpetuity, right? And that's very different than how the United States has been involved with any company. They aren't a shareholder who owns part of the company and can influence the direction through that. That's what I mean.

1:18:12Aiden:Do they own it? They get to be on the board or they have voting chairs or something. Now they get to directly impact the direction of.

1:18:19Atrioc:Correct. Yeah. So, I mean, they would have influence of the company. I mean, they would just be a buyer like anybody who buys stock in the company. There's a, I think one angle to this that I thought was interesting is looking at some of these patterns in the past where the U.S. has provided a giant loan. to one of these companies that then comes out on the back end and succeeds. If the United States had held that, they helped, you know, they like came in, they injected money into this company, helped them recover. In theory, if they just held the stock, we as a country would have made a ton of money over the decades as that company continued to grow and benefit from that.

1:18:54Atrioc:And that's what a normal investor would do, right? They're like, I'm going to invest in this company. And then if they do really well in the long term, we get to have returns. And in some of these things, there were actually billions, like tens of billions of dollars coming back to the united states that they made but in most cases it's like it kind of averages out to being even i want to say i fundamentally have a problem with that because if you're a competitor to intel they have this inherent advantage of they have the government's ear they have yeah they are invent you know it's just a weird thumb on the scale that is weird i want to say this is part of like a dartboard of ideas that trump has been throwing around intel first he tried to get the ceo fired he tried to make him quit or whatever yeah he said he was a Chinese spy, the CEO of Intel, and he had to resign immediately.

1:19:35Atrioc:Well, to be fair to Trump, he's Malaysian, and Trump probably doesn't know the difference.

1:19:40Aiden:That's like when the TikTok CEO is getting interviewed, and he's like, you work with the Chinese, you're Chinese? And he's like, I'm Singapore. And then he has to say it like three times. So he first did that, and then he said he's a great guy, and he took it all back. And then he said, we're going to get TSMC. We're going to force them to buy 49 % of Intel. and that'll make them move their stuff to america and then they kind of scrapped that idea well tsmc

1:20:05Atrioc:was like no we do not want to go buy another company we're doing really well we don't want our own intel sucks i don't know why i keep bringing them up but like if mcdonald's was like like trump came in is like you gotta buy burger king like mcdonald's like no we don't have to make more mcdonald what are you talking about we don't want this yeah and again a big part of it that's why i'm concerned with this idea for many reasons obviously the competition thing but also So like throwing good money after bad is the story of the last 10 years of Intel. A lot of people and different governments and Democrats and Republicans have found ways to try and give Intel more opportunity and money than they probably should have earned.

1:20:40And they have squandered it. They've just they've done really poorly. So the idea that, you know, another massive government fund to them is going to turn things around. I'm skeptical. I think Intel is a mismanaged company with rot at the core that, you know, it's going to be they're going to need to go through the hard time.

1:20:56Atrioc:You don't think LipBooTan is going to turn it around? I don't think so. You don't like LipBooTan? He's like the Ford CEO in four years. No, LipBooTan is badass.

1:21:03Aiden:I talk about LipBooTan. They're going through a few. They're going through that fast? They've gone through a lot. They've gone through a bunch, yeah. I think my issue would be less with them buying the stock itself and being involved because I think there could be some sort of approach that's interesting there. it's more to do with the chasing a company that has historically underperformed. Like in an American context, how much does you buying stock in this company actually able to change the trajectory of it? Can you really correct the management issues at the center of it? It doesn't seem like, from the outside, from a basic investor's perspective, doesn't seem like a great investment.

1:21:48Aiden:I can see the general ideas behind it of like why the government would want to do this in a general sense. But the specific company they're choosing to do it with feels like the risk.

1:22:00Atrioc:It feels like the 2008 financial crisis of like, well, you guys fucked up really bad, but you're important. So we'll save you. And it's like, that sucks. That's a shitty way to have a company operate. It's like they just have this permanent parachute that we as taxpayers pay for, to be clear. Yeah. So I'm uncomfortable with it, but I do see the need to have chip making somewhere in America. Although I think the TSMC stuff is kind of working. the Arizona plants, as far as I know, have been doing better. They had a hard time fighting Americans apparently willing to work as hard as the Taiwanese chip guys with the insane on-call hours and everything, but they are producing good yields and it's like it is doing...

1:22:35The Americans had the gall to ask for two sick days, Aiden. Imagine the Swedes,

1:22:40Atrioc:okay? Swedes would show up for 10 minutes. They would go to their park and hang out with their child all day.

1:22:46Aiden:I want to be clear, TSMC would hate the Swedes.

1:22:52Aiden:I actually have a question for you guys because I think there's an interesting thing here that I've thought about sometimes is in the wake of 2008, a point that gets brought up a lot is that the banks got bailed out with taxpayer money and that is something that angers the average person. But when you look at what actually happened, I'm not a villain chair, dare I say. Am I a hitter for the banks right now? Who knows? is that we got paid back. All the money that was spent on bailing out the banks was returned to the government with interest. Yeah, I have a huge counter to this. I love that. So I want to hear your thoughts on that.

1:23:31I'm chomping at the bank because I've actually answered this before and I think I've heard this talking point. Yes, the money they gave directly to the banks got paid back. Yes. But it's like if you are a Pokemon card investor, okay? And you have gambled massively on Charizard. You bought a whole ton of Charizard. Yes. And then Charizard's tank. If I give you money, invest in your company, and then simultaneously at the same time, print a bunch of money out of thin air to buy mortgage-backed, Charizard-backed securities and get the price of Charizard's back up, then your business is suddenly healthy again and I get my money back.

1:24:09But that's not, you know, that's not, we didn't really get our money, but we got the money back from this specific part. What's wrong with charging? We lost the money we spent propping up the housing. That money was just thrown away. Yeah. So, you know, yes, we saved these companies. There was still at great cost. There was still a huge increase in the money supply. It still had these terrible knock-on effects. So I just think...

1:24:33Aiden:This is a good answer because my own pushback to this argument is that you're still bailing out a system that was abused and kind of incentivizing people pushing the boundaries of legality and bad behavior. But there's a way more nuanced version of that. And then the second part of it is, as you said, there's this, you know, there's moral hazard, which is the term that like, if you are on Wall Street and you're a thinking, smart, sharp individual and you recognize, oh, if I'm this size and I make this error, I will get this bailout. You have to factor that in the future. And so the moral hazard is I should take more risk in the future because I will have this higher percentage chance of getting a bailout.

1:25:13This is a smart thing to do. And so once they factor that in, they take, you know, we just get an increasing risk because we've proven that they will step in at a certain point. And when you don't have that risk, you have to play safer. Now you don't. It's just the meta is evolving. And I think it's bad. I think it's bad to send that message. And if you don't bail them out earlier, say even before 2008, but 2008, if you start there, you take the pain then, then people grow up with a, you know, the tree grows straight. Everyone, they learn the limits. But if you keep trying to kick it down the road, the problem gets bigger and bigger.

1:25:45And the bailout required, if it happened now, is like 10 times bigger. It's astronomical.

1:25:51Aiden:Yeah, we just print more money. We're not the first government in history to think about that. And like sometimes problems arise, is all I'll say. Zimbabwe printed money and they ended up fine. They did end up fine, you're right. Because you can always knock off that last three zero. We actually did solve it in that one episode. You just white out a couple of zeros off each of the money. Everything's good again. I mean, it goes back to Rome. Even Rome, they couldn't print money in the same way, but they would just reduce the gold value. They would just put less gold in each coin. And you couldn't notice it, but it problem solved.

1:26:27People are finding ways.

1:26:29Aiden:What's the term for how they're filling chip bags a little less every year? In shitification or whatever? In shitifying the currency? yeah i i so i just you know we're on that path this would have we'll talk about it in that book club if they talk about it a lot in the ray dalio book but um we have a few minutes left i i don't know if there's any uh breaking news updates i wanted to talk to you guys about i don't know if you guys saw do you guys remember the um the last time zelinski and trump and vance all met in the white house and it was you didn't say thank you and they had the big blow up in the big fight yeah They had a follow-up meeting yesterday.

1:27:08And I want to say the bar was in the floor, obviously. Probably one of the worst meetings I've ever had. But it was better. It was better. I was saying this, I was like, I hate to give anyone any credit here. Zielinski showed up in a suit. He said, thank you. Fit check, how'd it look? He said, thank you 19 times. We counted it. he opened by saying thank you like 14 times in a row i'm not joking he's like i just want to start by saying thank you for this wonderful room and it was almost comical it was like clearly he had just been coached and he was like i'm gonna say exactly what i need to get what i want i'm not gonna vance didn't say one word he didn't interrupt he didn't like it was a much better meeting and the reporters which i gotta say the reporters in those meetings are trying to derail it and they're trying to ask the most incendiary question to get trump to say something crazy Trump for the first half of the meeting the best I've ever seen him and being like this is off topic I've never seen him do that in his life but then he cracked of course and he started ranting about Joe Biden and Obama and how he saved crime in DC and

1:28:18Aiden:it is funny when when Joe Biden gets brought up as a talking point but he was the previous administration was the previous president you know I think it can be relevant at times but when it's I think it's really funny when he sticks it to Obama because it's like it was just so long ago. It was just so long ago.

1:28:36Atrioc:I mean, you know, came out of his that was his first presidency, right? Of Obama. That makes sense. You know, I saw a stat the other day that like seven percent of British people consider themselves as having a rival. Like the nemesis. And then 17 percent said there's like most say they don't have one. and one says that 7 % say the nemesis and then somebody's like 17 % say they used to have a nemesis and then they slayed this what's going on there? how did you solve that? I do feel like there's still a little bit of that nemesis-ness going on here oh also dude, Zelensky opened not only by saying thank you a million times he also handed Trump a letter from his wife saying thank you to Trump's wife kind of a brilliant diplomatic move honestly, it's like a really nice gesture he clearly was ready for Trump's style this time around.

1:29:28He called America and your country so big. You can't say how big it was. Like he kept talking about big.

1:29:35Atrioc:He said, we need your help for this thing so we can buy the best military stuff in America. Like your stuff is so good. And you can see Trump's eyes light up. Like it's like, wait, this guy's. So, you know, it's crazy that the meta is evolving around Trump. So many leaders are figuring out that like, if you just say he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize and and he's great and big. Like a quick time event. Yeah, and he's like a QTE. Yeah, I don't know.

1:30:02Aiden:By the way, QTE is crazy because that's like the same amount of syllables.

1:30:06Atrioc:Don't fucking know. No, it's one more. Go back to Sweden at this point. Go back to Sweden. Okay, you've already lost your American values. You're ignoring our traditional American values of calling things big. Yeah, and shorting them.

1:30:18Aiden:Wait, I should be the one who's tilted here. I heard I weighed in on the Ukraine war negotiations last week. Definitely agree with that. And that's our show, guys. Thanks for watching. Thank you so much. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Goodbye.