Weekly Business News for Aug 30 | Censorship Conspiracy Proven True: Zuckerberg felt pressured by the White House

0:00This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over 6 years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up guys? Welcome to Right About Now. It's our weekly business news of the week here on August 30th, 2024. 24 we have the lovely brianna hall here in studio what's up brianna hey of course oh christopher hansen down in miami what's up chris what's up y 'all how you doing hey it's friday that's what we say me and the boys it's always the first one uh like it's like an internal game the first one to say to say friday like it means because it's like i've told the boys like hey we need to be in a good mood.

0:59It's Friday. You should be in a good mood. So the first person to say Fri-yay kind of gets dibs like cred for the weekend. It's Fri-yay. There we go. There you have it. Who got it today? Who won it today? Absolutely me. I win it about eight out of ten times. You're like, good morning, boys. It's Fri-yay. And they go, oh, man. Like, dang. Dang. Occasionally, I'll walk in the room and And Clayton or Hudson would go, Friday. Like they got me. But they keep me on my toes. So we'll see how it goes for next week. I'm just excited. My distractions are back from all of the political bullshit and everything else going on.

1:46College football officially starts this weekend. You know, I'm not counting that Georgia Tech-Florida State game last week, which went down about like I expected as Florida State got beat. But I might be eating humble pie, though, quickly. You know, Clemson, where I went to school and I've been a lifelong fan, gets to play Georgia, who's been the number one team for like the last three or four years and not even been close. So I will either be really excited next week or I'll still be excited because I don't really expect. I'm a reasonable fan that, you know, we're a 13-point underdog. So, and Clemson hasn't been like a double-digit underdog in a long time.

2:30Like, so I'm like, okay, I got to take the orange colored glasses off and go, reality says that we could win, but we probably won't. So, but nonetheless, I'm just excited to have some football. And, you know, maybe it's an escapism and I can admit it. You know, we're all human beings. but watch the football's about the only sport that I can watch I can watch Miami of Ohio and Connecticut on Tuesday night and I'd rather watch that than probably about any other thing and so I'm happy football season's back so my my soul escapism is as content goes I think so Clemson fans are crazy yeah I don't know if I'm I don't I know those people I don't know if I'm one of them but who knows I got told so my son is having a birthday party this weekend and I got told by people that I was inviting they're like oh well you should probably plan around the Clemson game people are not going to come to his birthday party because they'll be watching the game that's funny welcome to South Carolina Brianna South Cacolac.

3:50SEC, baby. You take college football serious down in the South. So college football's here. NFL starts the following week. And so... Go Niners. You will hear us talk about it a little bit. Hey, it's big business. I mean, we talk about business on the show. I mean, it's a billion-dollar business. The players get paid now. I mean, college football is the wild, wild west. Like Clips is getting beat out for some recruits from like Nowheresville teams that are outbidding them, essentially. It is kind of crazy. Like, what do you think about the business of being able to pay college football players when that wasn't the case in the past?

4:32Oh, I personally believe you should be able to make money on your name, image and likeness. Two things can be true at the same time. I can believe that, and I can also believe that it's changing the game in not the most positive way. So two things can be true at the same time. They need some regulation because even coaches are coming out saying, like, tell your agents to stop calling me. We're the season starting, you know, because the NFL is at least somewhat organized around it. They have like these times for negotiations and all that. You can always have a player or two holding out of the contract, but it's not the whole team.

5:10But the college coaches have to hire specialists now, GMs pretty much, general managers that are managing all this. Yeah, that's crazy. And it's fine. It's just an evolution, but I think they've got to get their hands around it. They kind of unleashed this without really thinking through all the implications. And, you know, I have a lot of connections at Clemson. I had a lot of the football players on my boat weekend before last. Like half the starting line, offensive line, start two of the like all-American defensive ends, like big players. And they even talk about how it's the games. It's just different, you know, like, and not a negative way, but just navigating it all and managing it.

5:57Because they're looking, they're wanting to look out for their own best interests. They all have agents, but they recognize, that it's not as organized as it should be either. So it's fascinating. Yep. Change is the only constant we have. Yes. So set your TVs accordingly, all you football fans out there. We know there's some football fans out there. You went to Central Florida, right, Chris? Yeah, baby. Go Knights. Go Knights. I think y 'all just changed conferences. I don't know. Maybe I'm something like that. Not a big football school. Yeah. No. We had a better basketball team, honestly. They've been okay in football here recently.

6:41Yeah, they're doing all right. They're doing all right. We just need to be in a better conference. Yeah. I think that you just changed conferences, but I can't keep up. There's so many changes. Like freaking Stanford. So Clemson's in the ACC. Stanford on the West Coast is now in the ACC. Like, and California. Cal and Stanford. The Atlantic Coast Conference.

7:06Go figure that one out. They got desperate. Clemson and Florida State are probably leaving the ACC anyway. And there's lawsuits going on and everything else. So we will see. But shout out to my boys at Clemson. Go get it done. I think we're going to have a good year, but it may not just start exactly right. So just because if you're not number one, doesn't mean you're not going to have a good year. It just means you're only one team can be number one. So we'll see how that goes. But in other news, you know, right out of the gate here, it's really getting hard. We talked about this pre-episode to separate conspiracy theory from reality and not get caught up in it.

7:53You know, it's like the stories come out, and you don't want to believe some of the sensationalism. Like, no. I mean, like, you also don't want to be naive. And so, like, there's this fine line of cynicism with naivety with, you know, chasing conspiracy theories. We can all admit that. And if you're not, then you're drinking too much of whatever party Kool-Aid you're drinking on. but this week mark zuckerberg came out and released a two-page letter essentially confirming what a lot of conspiracy theorists at the time that's what they were labeled not really conspiracy theory when they were claiming what they were claiming when it turns out to be true and essentially zuckerberg said that he had been pressured to censor both COVID-19 related content as well as the whole Biden son's laptop story?

8:59Free speech or not? Like, it raises a ton of questions. And a lot of people deny that it was happening, just like they deny the laptop and all this. And I give Mark Zuckerberg credit. I don't love everything about him personally or everything he's ever said and done. But putting that to the side to come out and release this and be honest about it and say, you know, we won't do it again. Well, maybe, I don't know if I, you know, maybe, uh, I just, it just sort of, it's real easy in the news cycle. And this is what I hate about it, that this stuff gets sort of, it's a headline one day and then three days later we act like it happened gone do we really pause to reflect what he's saying happened and what the hell that means it's huge massive i remember being livid during covid when all the censorship on twitter facebook everywhere right and you have the little fact checker stuff where it's like, and me being in the medical business, kind of with a different perspective than most of the population, questioning a lot.

10:21I remember this being in stuff that I knew to be true being censored, right? Stuff from my own experiences, from scientific stuff we were doing. But I think for, you're right, people don't understand, put yourself back in 2020, 2021, when this information could have been extremely valuable to millions and millions of people. And now we have, you know, and even people are like, oh, Zuckerberg is a conspiracy theorist. How? He was in charge of Meta and the entire company during this time. So if he's admitting that this happened, clearly it happened. And now we're living with the repercussions of that censorship.

10:56Biden, the whole election was going on when this laptop thing came. Because remember, it came out like two months. And so for it to get, if you remember, it was right at the election time. It was like October. It was like this time four years ago. And if you censored that and which all of it pretty much came to be true, it was exactly what was on the laptop. It was was on the laptop. You it very might have swayed the election. The fact that it wasn't allowed to have the impact that it probably should have had because it's just fact. I mean, I'm not saying, look, I have four boys. I'm raising them as good as I can, but at a certain point, they become men.

11:39Do I want their every move to be a reflection of me? Not necessarily, but they are my kids, and it's reality, and it has an impact, especially when you're in the power position that Joe Biden's been in in politics as a VP and previously, it matters. And so for Mark to come out and say pressured and then it didn't, then you're pretty much acknowledging that it could have swayed the whole fucking election. I mean - And what kind of pressure are they putting on, right? It's like, if you're going to decide to lie to hundreds of millions of people, what do they have on you? How does the government have so much control over Meta where they can pressure him, right?

12:24Unless Zuckerberg in the last few years has had some turnabout of his beliefs and what he thinks is morally right, I don't know. Yeah, exactly right. And I saw, you know, there's a clip where Elon Musk was talking about, you know, X and censorship. And he was talking with Don Lemon. And, you know, he was getting the best of them. Don Lemon's like, he's like, so essentially Musk said, you really like censorship. You really love it. You want to make sweet love with censorship? He was like kind of fucking with them. and he goes no i don't listen to strip i just think you have a responsibility that's how it gets you have a responsibility for what you know whether because you smile it was about hate hate speech and must said look i'm if it breaks a law a clear law in whatever country it's in i will i we will remove it but if you don't like it that doesn't make it whether you like it or not and whether you think it's responsible or not, that's censorship, no matter what it is.

13:29And this is, I mean, this isn't even hate speech. We can all agree we don't agree with that for the most part, most human beings, the three of us included. But talking about news that's just factual about a candidate's son and censoring it when it all turned out to be true. and having 40 intelligence officials sign off saying the laptop was fake news what about those upstanding 40 intelligence officials of the u.s government like if it's that easy to to get our top people to lie to cover hunter's ass really like what else are lying about and all that covid stuff that again 80 80 or 90 of that ended up being true as well that the COVID, the shot was at best partially effective.

14:25Right. And that herd immunity was always probably going to be the only and best way for this to get, you know, and no one's denying it's a shitty disease. I've had it a couple times. It sucks. It killed a lot of people. Censoring, even if you spoke on natural immunity, it was censored. where it's like natural immunity is what we've known for all of history of how viruses work and replicate. Like science is science. And I just don't know how these continual releases of this stuff. And again, it's only one side that paints the other so extreme, right? It's the left that paints the right extreme.

15:05You know, Trump's extreme, there's people who are extreme, MAGA's extreme. But yet all this stuff comes out that sort of it validates most of what is being said. So it's like how you can at least acknowledge that this makes it real fucking difficult to believe everything that you're told from the news. Wake up. It's right. It's insane because even think about COVID. Like when COVID first came out, Trump was calling it the China virus. And he was saying like this came from China. This came from a Chinese lab. It came from Wuhan. And everybody was like, oh, Trump's a racist. this trump this trump that and then it came out as true and then they're like oh don't don't worry about that like well you're right they shoved it down in the news cycle when it did come out that it was true and they investigated there's still people that don't even know that yeah no i mean you have people still lining up for booster shots do you ever have kamla come out and say the news is censoring me no never not once come out and say anything not once you know why because it doesn't get censored on that side nothing they can say we're russian collusion everything say whatever they want nothing gets like that same level of scrutiny they own her yeah and so again put all of my own personal politics out of this you just look at the facts of this stuff happening and you don't see it on the other side you don't see kamala harrison screams about being censored about this nothing you know kamala is upset but like or biden it never goes the other way right that i'm aware i'd like to know if it does it doesn't believe me man it used to fire me up in 2020 it never goes the other way never and if it did we could at least go it kind of works out both directions you know like when you think about like look and people talking about this that look it all that all shakes like when everything's purely even i believe that the forces of yin and yang tend to like balance things out like the earth but like but in this stuff it's so stacked one direction it doesn't even make sense either like that's what's so confusing and like where it's hard to find like a good middle ground because it doesn't make sense like why it's happening you know and they always say oh it's our responsibility to only you know put factual information out there but then they'll put something crazy about like you know um i don't even want to you know i don't want to offend anybody but you know the a different side of you or abortion rights or access to women's health care or lgbtq um and it doesn't matter whether that's factual or not they'll just put it out there and it's not censored in any way No.

18:00Yeah, it's rage baiting. It's all emotional terrorism. Just keep people as divided as possible. Keep the infighting. Because realistically, we're all more alike than we think. Oh, yeah. I mean, everyone wants financial freedom to be able to put food on the table. But you're right. People need to realize this is literally us versus them. This is the government and these people censoring and controlling for whatever reason it is and lying facts from you, truth from you, and it's not in your best interest. And that's as simple as this is you have one group that controls all the media, all the pharmaceutical companies, all the food companies versus us.

18:39Right. And I think you'd be fair to say most podcasts, independent journalism are probably more right leaning. Right. And then you've got the media now where it's kind of us little guys versus the media. The problem is, is even we could get censored at any time. Oh, yeah. I feel like coming around the corner. Hey, I've already been censored on Instagram for posting about the Second Amendment. And even the rep at Meta, she even said to me, she goes, I don't disagree with you, but this is out of my control. Because I said there's nothing in your guys' policies about the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights or our amendments.

19:18Why is this being censored? I'm not selling items, right, talking about firearms and our freedoms. but it just shows you like these tech companies have a lot of power even i had to remove the post like i had to delete it and i held my ground for a long time and i'm like oh fuck what are you gonna do you know the algorithm's fighting against you now yeah it's a very weird position to be when every major mass media tv station is liberal today today magazine cover yeah said why processed foods aren't as bad as you think. Oh, God. Really? Talk about gaslighting. Yeah. So how can you determine what, like, back to Don Lemon's statement, because I think this is such the characteristic and, you know, some messages I had back and forth with a friend this weekend.

20:13Their side is the responsible side because it's what they believe and what they think to be true. So that's the responsible blanket that we all need to wrap ourselves in of what's responsible and what's not. Well, was it responsible that Biden's son had a laptop with all this stuff on it? That all was that responsible? Were we being irresponsible like to to claim that when it was 100 percent true? Or was it irresponsible to claim that Trump was colluding with Russia when it wasn't? when you have video of biden colluding with ukraine literally like and and you have emails of hunter colluding with ukraine and many other foreign countries china where there was obviously a lot of money getting moved to the biden family and it doesn't take a genius to figure that out this is all public court records now but the media doesn't cover it and okay we're a business show so like, what does that do with business?

21:13Well, you know, when news is censored and when Facebook, a social channel where a lot of business gets transacted, a lot of ads are run by clients and they don't think something you're doing is responsible, air quotes, if you're watching on YouTube, which you should be, you'd see them. It will have an impact on your business and them choosing, picking and choosing and censoring at will. And so just know that and be aware of it and proceed accordingly. Social media is rented land. It means you don't own it. So you need to have them on your newsletter that you control and your own website. And that's your business advice of the day, because this is all rented land that can be pulled out from under you at any time.

22:08So just be aware. Not much less that it can be censored or changed or altered at the whim of the government or anyone else. So just be aware. All right. Record number of home deals collapsed in July amid high prices and election uncertainty. There were 60 ,000 Americans canceled home deals in July due to high prices and election uncertainties. There was a slight increase of 0.6 month to month, but down 2 % year over year for existing home sales. Pending sales fell to the lowest level since April of 2020. Average 30-year mortgage rates decreased to 6.5%, but buyers are hesitant, waiting for further.

23:00Drops. Median sale prices rose 4 % year over year to$439 ,000, the median average sales price. Some buyers are delaying purchases due to uncertainty about the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Home supply increased by 14 % in July, offering more options to negotiating power for buyers. I put this up over the weekend. I think I've talked about it on this show before, but I'll mention it again since it's related to this article. I literally put it up. I sold a house in Greenville, South Carolina. Love it. Yeah, that Greenville. Come see us. We love you. We promote. Wonderful place to live. Sold it for$495 ,000 in January of 2014.

23:48$495 ,000. $500 ,000. That house sold last week for$1.3 with no upgrades, no additions, nothing new. Wow. 264 % increase in 10 years. Woo. Hello. And I wrote progress or problem? Question mark. Look, hey, I mean, I wish I just kept it. I like to solder for 1.3 today. I'd have a nice little gain. But I'm putting that to the side. And even being, look, let's just say this. I talk about these things. Ryan Alford's economics are fine, but I know that this isn't good for us as a community as a whole, you know? And that's why I raised the point. Like, I've got rental property. I've got stuff like, you know, not immune, but it doesn't change the fact that I scratch my head and just go, is that a good thing?

24:46That house, it's exactly the same. The landscaping, no additions, nothing. It's just the exact same house from 10 years ago. And look, real estate's a great investment. I'm happy that investors can make some money, but 300 % in 10 years in Greenville, South Carolina, sorry, something smells wrong. It's not a good thing, especially in business. And especially like all of us know, like having employees and wanting your employees to be able to be happy and fruitful and be able to buy a home and stay for longevity because they're comfortable and they have a home to live in, that's a big problem. Like we need to be able to have, you know, people that work for us who make, you know, decent money, be able to buy a home.

25:33Because right now to buy a home anywhere in the United States, if you have like to save up a down payment and it's not handed to you and you don't have equity in a current home, you have to be pushing$200 ,000 a year as a combined household to afford to buy a home anywhere. Yeah, it's crazy. I talked to a buddy. I got a lot of friends in the mortgage business. It's all cash refinancing. No one's buying. People are pulling cash out. And I know even down here in Miami, you know, I was doing some research this weekend. There's so many new developments going up that are in foreclosure. I'm talking huge, you know, high rises, apartments, condos, even the single family homes.

26:14You've got people. Okay. Put it this way for your, your more financially like 400 ,000 markets still. Okay. Cause people are still coming to Florida. Yeah. But some of these higher priced a million and up, they're not moving. And some of these houses, I'm not kidding. Horrible part of town bars on the windows, a million dollars. like it's completely out of control and that's where they're saying there's a collapse is coming there's too much money in the market you have too much new housing going up and who's going to fill the demand i think it's more going to be the condo and apartment markets than the single family that's going to get hit the most kamala uh came out and said today she's going to put up three million i think she's going to do like three million new housing units if she gets elected build three million new houses.

27:04Yeah. Cool, Kamala. Sounds like something that a district attorney would be really good at. Constructing houses. Why? I don't think we have a shortage of housing. Yeah. Paris campaign releases ad with plans to build three million homes. We have a shortage of affordable housing. Affordable housing. What you just said, how many of our friends can even afford to go buy a house now? You know? Yeah. I don't know. Half of them. Like, even my circle probably yeah so especially most of them locked already in but they but if if luckily they bought houses you know seven eight years ago 10 years ago right and but if they had to go buy today they couldn't afford it if they if they didn't already have equity in one or something so like it's yeah like if like let's say the same i think that house i sold has been sold three or four times now, but say one person bought it for$4.95 and now we're sitting in it.

28:03They're sitting there, oh, look at all this equity we got. But if they wanted to live in the same zip code or two in Greenville, you're not, they're not getting more house. They're going to go get less or the same house because everything else costs more. Well, and interest rates are so high, so they'll be paying more. And so I was trying to think, I was thinking about this and again, taking myself out of it, like, because I'm an entrepreneur, I own multiple companies and I'm not sort of like in a salary position, but that house has gone up 262%. Has everyone that lives on that streets, has their income gone up 262 %?

28:41No. And our dollar value has gone down, right? Yeah. So that has to give somewhere at some point, right? Okay. Well, you can say, well, new people moving in old people moving out that's just it's progress that's just the way it works and i there's some there's some truth to that i believe in capitalism i'm not hating on anybody that's making the money on it i'm just sitting here though again we take the bs out of business just trying to like talk about what these things mean i just pause to go it just doesn't seem like that's a good thing if it was 30 years fine but 300 percent two is or 10 is a lot well one thing that i think we should really bring up sorry chris i didn't mean to cut you off but um is china buying up land and buying up housing and housing units um i was talking to somebody in the construction industry recently in greenville who said that um they sold a huge residential plot to a chinese company so why are chinese companies coming to greenville south carolina and buying up residential plots of land.

29:47Well, and also you could say BlackRock, right? Like the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, they've been saying, you'll own nothing, you'll be happy. This is the bigger thing they're trying to do is you make owning anything, a house, a car so unaffordable that everyone's a renter. And then you're easily controlled. You make buying a house so unaffordable. And that's what happened during the real estate boom, 2020, 2021. Remember Zillow was going in and buying whole neighborhoods to boost the valuations of the houses. So you had private equity going and buying whole neighborhoods, inflating the costs.

30:20And then now you have these neighborhoods with no tenants and maybe three people that actually live there who are, I guess, benefiting off the appreciation. But I think you have all this empty inventory. And to the Chinese point, I don't know, it's concerning when you hear about the Chinese buying huge plots of land near our military bases. That's insane to me. I know that was happening in Texas. Why? Why are we selling the Chinese government land right next to our military bases? That seems utterly ridiculously stupid. Yeah, I agree. I don't know. But and they need you know what it is? They need food.

30:56China is running out of food. They need our farmland to grow food for their own country, too. Yeah. Well, what about our people, our food? America first, baby. I just want to feed us that process. Yeah. My time's pushing it today. So that mac and cheese. I saw this. This is a good debate. Sawyer, you have to weigh in on this. I think you're the only... Are you a Gen Z-er, Sawyer? Right on the cutoff. Gen Z and... All right. Gen Z workers are twice as likely to call in sick than boomers. Interesting. Gen Z workers average 14.3 sick days per year. Baby boomers, 8.9. Gen Z is perceived to feel more entitled to sick leave compared to older generations who may be less likely to take off.

31:57It's, I don't know. Maybe some of that's because of COVID too. People got all weird about being sick. I think it has a lot to do with COVID because I'll tell you this, being in the workforce prior to COVID, I would go to work sick all the time. Like because I didn't have enough sick time or because I just didn't, I had deadlines or whatever. Like I would show up and I'd be like, yeah, I'm sick and I'll feel good. And people wouldn't bat an eye. They'd be like, okay, whatever. You're still at your desk. They're not worried about it. after COVID it's like God forbid you even come within 20 feet of somebody with a sniffle yeah it's like yo are you sniffling get away from me yeah I think I'm more of like the that's where like we have just paid time off like it doesn't matter how you take it and then and then I'm more of the type of if you give people flexibility they won't feel like they need to take fake sick days Like, hey, if you don't feel bad, because we work hybrid anyway, and we're flexible, if you don't have to be somewhere, then I choose to believe that people will work even if they feel a little under the weather, if they've got flexibility when and how they do it.

33:09so i think that might be and then i don't know like you know this is speaking to i think more people that have to be in offices or at places you know physically no matter what this is the averages and like some of the stuff i think there's like a totally different you know thing between the type of work that we do and being able to work anywhere from your computer and have that flexibility and like you know having to be in a business working whether you know you're the lunch lady at a school or your teacher or whatever it is, you know, there's going to be where you have to take more time off work than somebody who has the flexibility of working remote.

33:50Totally. And I do think there's this in my generation and ones before it, I think there was sort of, it may have been imbalanced. I'm not saying it was the exact way it should have been. This isn't me like the way that we came up is better. The way it is now is not. It's more, but here's the thing. There was a pride of hard work at the company and devotion to the company. And that was part of your identity is, and I think, hey, to say 25, not 20, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 17 years ago. But to say I work at Google and, you know, pulled an all-weekender was the source of pride. Working at a cool company, you had a lot of pride in that company, and you worked your ass off, and it was cool, and I take pride in my identity in that work.

34:51It's not that way today, I don't think. I feel the same. It's not just the work-life balance. I get that we've evolved as human beings and we put more. I do too. I have more work. I believe in it. But even putting the work-life balance over here, the pride and sort of the identity being in your work is definitely less than when I came up. Yeah. I think it's a culture shift. Because I think even when I was in college, the hustle culture, right? Gary Vee, that whole movement. And even, and I think some of it's company culture. The company I went to work for had a great culture. I was like, I was bought in, right?