EverydaySpy Podcast - EXPOSING Xi Jinping's DEADLY Masterplan | EverydaySpy Podcast Ep. 10

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Like any other marriage, ours is a marriage of constant debate, arguments, and miscommunications. You'd think that CIA would have fixed all that, but in many ways they just made it worse! Let's dive right in and talk about why different types of communication exist and how they make life so much more complicated than it has to be. Since we're stepping on each other's feelings, let's go ahead and talk about China's broken population policies and why Jihi and I both agree there is a scary future ahead for the forbidden kingdom. And if you want to hear about all of Andy's bad business ideas BEFORE he started EverydaySpy, you'll want to stay tuned to the end… Find your Spy Superpower: https://everydayspy.com/spyquiz Learn more from Andy: https://everydayspy.com/ Join the SpyTribe: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EverydaySpy/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everydayspy/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/EverydaySpy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I believe Xi Jinping's master plan for China is to let huge chunks of the population die. He's emulating the United States. It's very clear that he's modeling the future of the Chinese industry off of the 1960s, 1970s era of United States. So we've come six conversations now into this new channel. How are you feeling? I'm pretty good. Yeah? Yeah, I like this time with you. I actually really liked this time too. I was never, I would have never guessed.

that doing a podcast together would somehow be like quality relationship time. Yeah, it's connecting time. We actually don't have children interrupting us every five minutes during these 45 minutes that we talk. Well, it's more than that, too. Like, I get it. Maybe for you. I will never understand the mom complaints about kids. The mom plaints.

The mom. Mom plaints about children. But they're like universal. Yeah. Moms everywhere in all languages all like make snarky comedic jokes about motherhood. Like dads, we're like, we don't really want to complain about our kids. But moms are like, I pushed them out of my vagina. I'm gonna make fun of them all day.

I'm not trying to make fun of them. I'm definitely airing my grievances though. Because you can't really air your grievances to your children, right? They don't understand. It's not appropriate anyways. They don't listen. They don't listen. They don't really care.

They don't get it. There's no, yeah. going to give you any love. I make these little mental notes that I'm like, when she's 30, I'm going to bring this back up. But in all seriousness, I agree, this has turned into some really quality time for us because we used to have smart conversations all the time. Yeah. We used to talk about world events and spy operations and places we wanted to travel and life. What did you, you called them dreams and hopes and dreams. Hopes and dreams. You've always called them. We used to talk about that. Yeah. Then we started talking about diapers and.

Yeah. Now we talk about dinner plans. I know. What's the dinner? And I don't mean dinner plans like a date night dinner. Nothing exciting. It's literally like, what will the kids eat? What's in the fridge?

What are we going to eat? Yeah. And it turns into this kind of cycle of life. But you are, you're introverted. Yeah. And you've always kind of struggled with anxiety. And now you're, you used to be a covert CIA officer. Yeah.

Now you're in front of a camera. You're in front of multiple cameras behind a mic, live on YouTube, talking about how you make fun of your kids. Yeah, I just don't think about what's out there. I think about you sitting in front of me. Yeah. And that's the trick? And that's the trick. I guess that's a pretty good trick. So you've also been, we've joked, we've joked on camera and off camera,

about how you have a filter. Can you talk about what your filter is? So I was, my formative years were in Japan, a very polite society. And then even when we move back to the United States, we practice a Japanese form of sect of Buddhism is what we follow. So the Japanese culture is very ingrained in my family. So we have always had a filter on what we say because it's important to be polite. It's important to, I would say be thoughtful, but really it seems thoughtful. And so I just have created this very strong filter over the last 40 years that, you know, I always think before I say something. And then even then, it's not just giving myself space so I don't blurt out something I'll regret.

There's another filter beyond that where I'm like, oh, this is what I really want to say, but this is what I'm going to say because I don't want to hurt their feelings. I don't want to be rude. I want them to say face, right? It's interesting because you talk about a filter, but what you're really talking about is just it's a lie. I know you like the call at that. That's what it is. Like when you have a thought and then you think to yourself, I can't say that thought. Instead, I must say this other thought, then you're lying about what you're actually thinking.

And I love that this came from Japan. I love that you're introducing this as. like your filter from Japanese society. Because the Japanese absolutely have a reputation of being polite and proper and organized. They're a bunch of biased

lying assholes sometimes. And you know it's true. They're racist. Only Japanese people count in the eyes of Japanese. Right? Everybody else is a second class citizen. And that's why they're running into their own issues in their country.

That's why they have a declining population and they don't allow immigration and you have to jump through 12 bureaucratic hoops if you're going to be, if you're going to get Japanese residency. It's like the polar opposite of the United States, which is hilarious considering how close we are as allies, right? Everybody looks at them and thinks they're a democracy and they're this and they're that and they're a first world like leader. They actually actually are racist. It's codified in law. racism. And it's just amazing to me. And you're right, they have this, this veil of propriety, but they drink all night, they smoke all the time, they're sexual freaks. They have a high suicide rate. They have a high suicide rate because the pressure that's on every Japanese adolescent to exceed the expectation of their parents is so high that they just, death is easier

for a lot of them, right? You can see how that culture begat Samurai's and how that culture be got kamikaze pilots you can see it in like there like that said i still love japan amazing place fantastic people to be around as long as you accept that whoever's looking at you is lying to you what's your dad call it oh the grin fuck yeah explain to us the joel bustamante description of the japanese grin fuck no it's it's he actually applies that term to Chinese because the Japanese are the only culture where it's important to save face, right? There are multiple cultures in the world where it's important to save face. You don't want to say something that's going to embarrass somebody or embarrass you.

And so you say something else with a smile. And so my dad calls it the grin fuck where like as they are stabbing you in the back doing something, they're smiling and nodding in your face. in your face and, you know, plaguing you. So yeah, yeah, I do think it's interesting that there are, you know, these cultures out there, I still have to say I prefer the cultures that lie to my face. I would rather have you be polite than... But lie.

But lie, right? Because there's an understanding that they are being polite. You know, like if you understand the culture, you know that they are being polite. So you just have to figure out how to navigate those things. I would much rather have that than have somebody be just straight up rude to my face. Because I think the problem, you know, I'm reading all these Star Trek books now. And it's not like we're not like a Vulcan's who say what we mean in a logical manner. And so it makes sense, right?

Like I'm being honest with you and it doesn't hurt your feelings because it's the logical thing to say and do. And you are a logical driven person too. Right. Right. you're Vulcan to Vulcan. You're Vulcan to Vulcan, right? You're so like, my logic, your logic. They meet.

Nobody gets upset. That's not how it works in the human world, right? Humans, when they say something, there's usually an emotion behind it. So if somebody says something rude to you, there's usually some kind of nasty emotion behind it as well that's being emanated, right? That energy is being pushed towards you. At least if somebody is polite to me, I don't have to deal with all that negative energy. As an introvert, it's really, like, powerful, the energy that people send to you.

So, you know, I would rather be in a society where I have to try to read between the lines and very diplomatically try to get to understand what that person is really saying. That sounds like a painful society. How much energy is wasted? Seriously, yeah, if I'm going to put a vote in the Vulcan court, then I'm putting a vote in the Vulcan court right now. Because to, you know, it's interesting. We're talking introvert, extrovert, because I lean on the extrovert side.

I certainly have introvert tendencies. You also have extrovert tendencies. But my point is just if someone's going to lie to my face, it's so awkward because you can see them lying to your face. And you know that they don't like, a Japanese person who's giving you the last piece of food, giving you their whole plate of food. And they're like, I want you to have this. You're like, you don't want me to have that. Like this is your culture, your society, your social pressure, your norms. It's a beautiful thing.

But just you actually want to eat this. So you eat it. So then you push it back to them and then they push it back to you. And then you push it back to them. And then you, oh my gosh. You find that exhausting, huh? There's nothing beautiful about that. It's just two people not eating.

What's the point of that, right? What's the point of that one? That's better than somebody being like, sorry about your luck. There's nothing left. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what you could because then maybe eventually you'll get to like, why don't we split the meal and then you both get to eat. Is that the goal? So why don't we just start with that?

That's a good question. Because society isn't quite there yet. That's the middle ground we're trying to get to. And it's really interesting too because you come from a Venezuelan family. So your Venezuelan father married an American woman. And then they together immigrated with you. to Japan. Yeah.

Where they then all voluntarily adopted this Japanese culture. And like I said, I love so many elements about Japanese culture. The thing that I don't love is when we bring back a part of that culture that doesn't fit in our culture. And inside American culture, the filter, it just doesn't work very well. Because Americans don't like filters. We don't understand them. We don't appreciate them.

Not like the Japanese. It's not Vulcan to Vulcan here. Right. And I think that's the key is it's not understood. So an American will take you at face value for what you're saying. They'll never, you know, come to the conclusion that you are saying something you don't mean and that they should guess that and alter their actions based on what you just said. Right?

They'll just be like, oh, you don't want to come to the party? No problem. We'll see you later. No, I do want to come with the party. I just can't say that in front of my friend. Yeah. No, I agree. We don't understand filters. You even say that you don't understand nuance. It's difficult. It's gotten us in so many.

It's gotten me in so much trouble in our relationship that you don't understand nuance. And it's funny because I don't think I use very much nuance. I'm pretty straightforward. But I still do find that there's an American culture for nuance. That's true. We are, and that's probably our legalistic background. We're like, oh, you can't hold me accountable for, you know, I said late, but what I meant was just not on time. Oh, yeah, it's like when you see laws written with really broad language and you're like, what does that even mean?

Like, I can be arrested for. Yeah. What exactly is possession? Yeah. Is possession I'm holding it or it's within proximity of me or it's on my property? Like, what exactly is possession? Or there is a case recently, an injunction place. I think it was Kentucky someplace in America where they were passing a law to be able to criminally charge librarians for having harmful books in the children's section.

What is a harmful book? Who is the judge? Right? That's very subjective. So, yeah, we definitely do it in an American culture. It's different. And I don't know, you know, maybe it's not. I wouldn't I don't know that I would say it's cultural the way that it is in like East Asian cultures

Only because we're so young. I mean it's cultural here, but we don't have anywhere near the legacy That you see coming out of East Asia. I mean China's been around 5,000 years Japan's been around as long at least Yeah, so we've got 270 years of experience I think here in the United States I do forget we're so young we're so young I remember when you and I we took a trip to were we in Kyoto or were we in Tokyo where they showed us that that farm house that was powered by water that was a grind house it was grinding corn meal or something that was at the base of Mount Fuji there's a village there and the lady that was with us we both I think I looked at it or you look at it was mind-boggling to me I think I looked at it and I was like wow what a beautiful

old house and she looked at us and she was like yeah that's older than the United States yeah 400 years And I was like... Just the house, yeah. What? Yeah. It gives you a sense of how young our culture really is. Now, you know, just across the water, just across the ocean, I guess it's still considered an ocean that spans between Japan and China.

The sea. Just across the sea is China. And China has so many similar cultural traits, right? The grin fuck, like you said. even though if you've been to that area of the world, like China, Japan, South Korea, there's like animosity between those three countries that are all very close. But their cultures are in many ways very similar. But talk about a place that's running into some real, like, generational issues.

They've been around for a long time. They know how to sort themselves out in a lot of ways. But now they're running into some challenges, and we've been really reading about it in headlines recently. Yeah. I mean, fertility challenges, population challenges, employment challenges, real estate challenges. And I can't help but feel like they're all tied together, right? And from my experience, as a married entrepreneur with children who graduated college,

I mean, you and I started our life together comparatively late. We married at 30, started dating at 27. my mom was in her second marriage by the time she was 25. Yeah, done having kids. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just, it's wild to think that we started our first marriage five years after my mom started her second marriage.

Yeah, yeah. We met when I was 27 when I met you and my mom had already been married for several years and had me when she was 27. So now China as a country that's kind of modernizing. Now granted, the China that we talk about really only started in 1949. Yes, which I think is really interesting talking about a young country. The Chinese culture and the Chinese people are ancient. But the Chinese Communist Party is very new, and it is also an experiment.

Yeah, right? And it's been fascinating to watch this experiment unfold, to watch their child policy change over the years as they try to, adjust for the consequences basically of how they manage their people, right? I mean, they had the cultural revolution where they wiped out the huge parts of their own culture. Yeah. And then they had the one child policy where they just intentionally stunted birth rates. Yeah. Having the side effect of people choosing male children over female children more often,

which whether that was anticipated or not. Created a death of females. A dearth of males, right? So a dearth of. An absence of? An absence of. Thank you. I don't have my dictionary.

You're the reader, too. Come on. I know like four fancy words. Well, that's one of them. That's one of them that I don't know. Thanks for clarifying. Yeah, so they ended up with more males than females. And now they're in this quandary of,

you know, that adds to people marrying later, people choosing to have less children, people choosing career over, you know, and then if it's important racially for them to marry within the, you know, with, you know, Chinese marrying Chinese, that's important to them. Oh yeah, that's true too within the same ethnic culture. Right. Because in theory, that type of mismatch between, you know, how many eligible males and females are, wouldn't matter so much if it didn't matter who you married. Because there are probably plenty of females in the world.

But if it matters that you're marrying a Chinese female, that's a big deal. Yeah, you know, it's really interesting too, is they have, like, it's causing compounding challenges. Because you've got, like you were saying, you've got an absence of females, an abundance of males, who are in their core earning years, right? 28 to 35 right and they all pushed off marriage so now you've got an older population older than what they're used to right 32 year olds that don't have many

wife many female options to marry if you're going to have a married a marital union that creates offspring right and you've got career on top of it in the middle of like an unemployment crisis right in a culture that has no problem abusing its workforce because it doesn't have the social laws that we have here in the United States. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. So in China there's high unemployment, but the way that the employers have been treating that is to treat their employees as if there's high unemployment, you're lucky to have a job. And so now they make them work this 9-96 where it's 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. 6 days a week. And these people who are working,

these 996 schedules, they have no time and no energy to date or try to find a spouse, even if they wanted to. And so all of the courtships are being pushed to later in life. Also in Chinese culture, it's important for a man to have some kind of investment to have own a house, own a car, the housing market's been really tight in China, so it's difficult to do those things on top of that. And then if you have these, and then the Chinese laws right now are that even though they've been expanding their child policy, so now they're trying to encourage people, you know, you're welcome to have up to three kids. You're welcome. You're welcome to have up to three kids. Nobody's taking them up on the offer because everybody's working too

hard. The women have a lot of men to choose from and they're kind of choosing their career first. And And then the current Chinese laws make it so that IVF and egg freezing are only available to married women. So if you're a 27-year-old woman and you're like, you know what, I'm probably not going to get married for a while and I'm probably going to be, you know, not married, not having kids until my late 30s. You can't freeze your eggs, right? You have to wait until you're married.

What if you don't get married until you're 38th, right? By then the point is moot, right? And so it's creating, you know, this un, this insecure future for the Chinese country for China because what will they do? Their population is aging. Their, the baby, the birth rate is falling. The marriage rate is falling. What does that say for their future? Yeah, you know, it's funny is, you know, to put it another way, it's a chain reaction.

Yeah. People are getting married later. Because they're getting married later, they're not having large families because they're getting married later. Yeah. And as they choose to get married later and have smaller families later, it also means that the investment into cars and homes is also being pushed back until they have enough money to be able to afford a house or home or a house or a car.

But in order to afford a house or a car, they have to have a job. The jobs are making them work this 12 or this 996, right? Nine days, 12 hours a day, six days a week. Which prevents them from even meeting a spouse, which prevents them from getting married, which prevents them from having kids. And inside this construct, what you do have is aging generations still dying, and you have younger generations not being produced. So it's fascinating.

It also makes me understand a little bit more why Xi Jinping is so focused on creating a tech hub in China. Because it's just like Obama. If you remember Barack Obama in 2008 when he took the presidency here in the United States, do you remember what his big focus was? I just remember the Asia Pivot. The Asia Pivot was important because we were at CIA

during the Asia Pivoting. That's what I was doing. I was pivoting. But Barack Obama's platform was all about bringing high-tech production jobs back to the United States. Manufacturing jobs stay abroad. High-tech production should be in the United States. He wanted to make and continue to invest in the United States

being a producer of high technology because high-tech jobs are all high-dollar jobs. Those high-dollar jobs can be taken by fewer people. Fewer people create a larger impact on the economy and everything goes on and on, right? Xi Jinping's been making this focus towards a high-tech sector in China, making them, the tech exporter for at least the Eastern Hemisphere.

In doing so, he would essentially make it so that they could handle a giant generational population bust because they would need a fraction of the number of people they have right now as long as they're educated in working in high-tech jobs. So you think that Xi Jinping's focus actually is a part of that is planning for a smaller population? Correct. I think he wants a smaller population. It's the same thing that we have here in the United States.

And again, I'm going to speak very frankly and probably in a way that makes a lot of people upset. The number of productive adults in the United States is not many. There's a huge number of people out there that they're just pissing away their time and their money. They're not ambitious. They're not trying. They're not educated. They're living off of social welfare. Right.

They're having more children just so they can get more welfare. There are children without parents. There are homes that are lived in by squatters. We live in a country where a huge portion of our country is held afloat by the social welfare programs that we have, which is why there's so much, you know, just polarization in our country. Because some people are like, I don't want my tax dollars to go to floating these people that don't do anything. but then hidden among this group of people who don't do anything

are very legitimate people who just need a chance. Right? But how do you- It's hard to sift out the abusers. Exactly. So you've got these two populations. That doesn't exist in China. Right?

In China, people die on the street. It's like India. People just die on the street. And then like the trash people come and pick them up and get rid of them and do whatever. I'm not saying it happens in Beijing, but it happens all across the countryside. And the vast majority, there's no social welfare program in China. You get old, you live with your kids. Yeah.

Right? You get sick, your kids pay for you. Or you die. Which is an interesting part of the problem also because all of the current generation, as their parents age, they are responsible for them. And you and I are already approaching an age where we have young children. And in the next, I would say, 10 years, we'll be responsible for caring probably for, I mean, your mom is younger, but for caring for my parents.

And now, you know, that impacts us financially. That impacts our career. So, you know, if you have people who are waiting to get married, right? And then suddenly their parents are aging at the same time. I mean, what kind of, you know, I want to say energy drag, but that's not the right word. I mean. Resource drain? Resource drain.

That's, thank you very much. You're welcome. Yeah, what kind of resource? strain is that on your individuals, then they're not going to be able to work 12-hour days for six days a week, trying to be caregivers for their parents and for their children. It's not possible. Yeah, you know, a big part of, if you think about the COVID response in the United States too, right? The COVID response in the United States was largely focused on, what were they called? Susceptible groups. What were they called? There was a term. Oh, at-risk?

Yeah, at-risk communities or at-risk individuals. So that was the big focus. was how do we take care of the diabetics and the elderly and the overweight? How do we take care of the smokers and the people who are high susceptibility risk? Yeah. That's not how it was everywhere else in the world. Right? And the rest of the world, they were just kind of like, get your vaccine because it's mandated by the government and you don't have a choice. And at-risk groups were kind of just rolled into the larger population. Right? We handle things very, very differently here because we have this culture, if you will. I don't know what it is, an imperative.

I have no idea where it comes from, but in the United States, we feel like we have to offset Darwinian evolution. We have to take care of the have-nots. We have to protect the people who are at risk, even though they got themselves at risk by having poor eating habits and having poor fitness habits and being smokers and whatever else. So it became this major challenge,

and that's not how it is everywhere else. So yes, to be short, I believe Xi Jinping's master plan for China to let huge chunks of the population die because as the population shrinks and they adopt more of a high high tech low manufacturing high innovation kind of foundation he's he's emulating the united states it's very clear that he's modeling the future of the chinese industry base industrial base off of the 1960s 1970s era united states and it's work looking, right? Yeah.

What is Huawei? Their own telecommunications company. Right. Right. And it's worldwide. You see that what is, they have the top selling electric vehicle in the world right now. They beat out Tesla. I'm not saying they created it themselves.

A lot of that stolen IP, but they're the ones producing it. That means Chinese people are doing the work. Chinese people are bringing in the income. Chinese people are getting paid high-tech wages. When they absorb the semiconductor industry out of Taiwan, but you can see that that's the direction they're going. It's a very smart long-term play for a country that has a long-term history, right, a long vision. And it's not at all fair or democratic or any of the things that we value. So a long-term vision of curating the population that he wants.

Which arguably is the same thing we're doing here in the United States. Only we don't say it the same way. Right? You're curating a population where people who have opportunities, have children who get opportunities. That's how it works in the United States. If you're poor in the United States, you're more likely to have a history of poor offspring. Right. Right. That's why the rags to riches story is such a powerful story in the United States because it's not common. Right.

It's rare. Usually it's rags to rags. Right. Riches to riches. So we have this idea that, oh, you can just, if you work hard enough, you can just pick yourself up from your brute straps and you can make it work. And to a certain extent, yes, you can. It's a shit ton of work.

Yeah. And there's a lot of luck that goes into it and connections. Yeah. But essentially, you're stuck in the rut that you're in unless you buck that rut nonstop. Yeah. I basically just said that China's cultivating its society by letting people die. We're cultivating our society financially. So I feel maybe I've gone to maybe I've, maybe I've gone a little bit on the deep end here.

Sharing my true feelings because I don't have a filter. You have a filter. I used to have a filter. I should have like an uncomfortable meter in front of me. It's like, it'll correspond with my filter meter. That's like more uncomfortable, higher filter. This is what you live with. Yeah.

I see why you don't go out in public. I do. I understand it more and more. That's why when we go to parties, I'm on the other side of the room. You're like, babe, come hold my hand. Okay. Let me get some snacks first. So despite the fact that we have these experiences, you know, kind of seeing the dirty way that the world works, we still want to travel the world.

And we still want to show our children the world. Yeah. How do you justify those two thoughts going together? I want to understand other cultures. So I would consider myself mostly American culturally. But when I was a kid, I was definitely one of those third culture kids. Or I wasn't really American. I wasn't really Japanese.

I wasn't really Venezuelan. And I was trying to find where I fit in. But during those years, it just occurred to me that nobody's right. No culture is perfect. Nobody's right. Nobody has the perfect government. And so I love learning about other cultures and why they tick the way that they tick, why their government set up the way that it's set up.

I love learning about their history and their language and their food because it all ties in to the way that they live their lives and the way that they interact with others and the way that, you know, we can kind of estimate our future as a planet, as a human race, is going to go. So that's what I love about traveling. I want to understand from more than more. than just the American perspective, why things work the way they work. And maybe one day, it just seems to me that a mix of what already exists will get us closer to the right answers.

So do you feel like you feel like you are getting, do you feel like your travel experience, do you feel like your life experience at CIA and beyond has helped make you more optimistic? about the human race? Does the face tell it all on that one? No, I'm not more optimistic. Because I certainly feel like, I feel like I've become very practical. Yeah. In large part because the world outside of our borders is a very practical world.

Survival isn't guaranteed. Meals date, meal to meal isn't guaranteed. And I'm not just talking about like your poverty-stricken, places in Central America or you know central Africa I mean like there are lots of places in the world where people are just trying to make it or they're making it but they're making it on like two ounces of meat and eight ounces of rice yeah they're not making it like we have it here on a 16 out steak and we throw three quarters of it away right they don't it's not like that so it's really fascinating to me because as I see the pragmatism the survivalism the the

the cold matter-of-fact way that business is handled abroad, it makes me feel like the world is much colder and much scarier than what we think it is. So I still have hope, and I cling to that. Because you have a filter. Because you don't tell people the truth. It's beyond my filter. No, I still, I have hope because I know. So have you seen the movie Legend?

It's an old movie with Tom Cruise, like 1980 something. And at the very end of it, you know, it's the whole movie is this, you know, fight between good and evil. And at the end, the person who's evil says, you know, what is light without dark? And it's so powerful to me because I feel like every human being has the capacity for light and for dark. So we have the capacity to be good to each other. We have the capacity to share resources. We have the capacity to not hurt others, right? But we have the imperative to do the opposite.

What do you mean by that? Because the survival, if you are the nice person, if you are the one that shares everything, if you are the kind, generous, like we have the option, we have the capacity, if that person is you, you will be systematically abused. In current day. So I think we talked about this before.

You think it was better in like the dark ages? No, no, I think we've talked about this before. We're like the idea of communism always seemed like such a great idea until I realized like humans have to run it. And then I was like, well, that's never going to work because humans are humans. Humans are humans. Nothing will ever be equal. So in theory, we have a capacity to practice, you know, ever. equity to make sure that everybody works hard and everybody shares their resources and

everybody treats each other kindly we could do it if we wanted to but the problem is that we don't we we feel threatened we feel insecure and those feelings lead us to protect our own yeah right what CIA taught us about this this was this was like the key to understanding how to turn an asset how to turn a patriot into a traitor was just understanding that, what you just said, that they have the capacity to be equitable and honest and fair, but they're going to choose self-preservation. Yeah. Right?

How do you describe that process? So I think that for somebody not to choose self-preservation, they have to trust, it's like the prisoner's dilemma. You have to trust that somebody else is going to do the right thing too, but none of us have that level of trust. And so in the end, you have to look out for yourself and your family and those who are important to you, right? What is the prisoners delam? Do you remember it? It's, well, it's going to take me a long time to explain it. So it's, you know, you have two people.

They're both prisoners. and I believe if they if one if one rats the other one out there's a certain mathematical score yeah there's this mathematical score where you are it it is better for you kind of to rat the other person out right because you go scot-free and the other person gets jail time if you both stay silent you both get jail time if you both rat each other out I can't remember it's like the massive cost it's the work It's the worst scenario.

It's the worst scenario. So you're counting that the other person is on the other person being honest, but you're not going to be honest. And that's the prisoner's dilemma. And that's the mathematical truth of it, is that mathematically the empirical evidence shows that the predominant outcome is that one person rats out the other person while the other person rats out the first person. They both rat each other out because they can't count on the other person keeping quiet.

though they do the math in their own head and they're like, oh, if I keep my mouth shut, the longest I'll go to jail is two years. But if I rat, if I tell on the other person, right? If I, if I rat out my other prisoner, then I have the chance of going scot-free or staying for seven years. Yeah. And even with all the odds, people still ride each other out. Because there's no, and when it comes to it. There's no honor among thieves. Yeah. Right. So I feel like math, algebra has shown us. People are not going to do the fair and equitable thing.

Experience has shown us. People are not going to do the fair and equitable thing. History has shown us. People are not going to do the fair and equitable thing. And yet we keep wondering. We keep hoping. We keep thinking that someday, somehow people will do the fair and equitable thing. You have to have hope. But we don't do it ourselves. If the possibility exists, you have to have hope. But this what's so interesting is people have hope, but they don't practice it themselves.

Yeah. Some of the, oh my gosh, some of the people that I know who preach about fairness and equity and whatever, right, woke culture, the list goes on, right? Environmentalism. I love how you say it. There's so many people who preach these things. Tell me how you feel about it. And then behind closed doors, they're wasteful.

They're bias. Like, it's insane. The hypocrisy is insane. It is the prisoner's dilemma in action. Right? We sit here and we blame our politicians for not policing a certain set of social norms that we don't even practice ourselves behind closed doors. Right?

And then we wonder why progress isn't made. Meanwhile, outside of the United States, the same thing is happening. Only nobody's expecting politicians to police it. They're taking this much more pragmatic approach. This is one of the things that I love about Europe that people just don't talk about. There's universal health care in Europe, right? If you get sick in Italy, doctors are paid for, right? Yeah.

Until you know where I'm going with this? Go ahead. You know where I'm going. until you're too sick. What happens when you're too sick? You don't want to say it. You don't want to admit it. It get treated, obviously.

It's universal health care. This is your filter. The filter is strong in this one. Once you are too sick, a panel of European doctors decide whether or not it's more costly to treat your illness or whether you should just be written off, which is also why health insurance exists in Europe. so that you can become terminally ill, and when the public health care sector decides

that they're not going to keep funding you because you're a terminal case. You're a waste of tax dollars. You will not have a return on investment. They're going to take the money that would go into treating your terminal illness, and they're going to spread it out to treat society. But if you have health insurance,

then you can use your own health insurance to treat your terminal illness. How is that actually better than what we have in the United States? How in the world is it better to have the state decide whether you live or die? than to have your own choice, whether you pay for insurance. This is one of those things that just people don't talk about. And we've seen it firsthand.

We've seen it firsthand. And it's frustrating to me. And they just, in Europe, they just accept it. And they accept it because their whole life they've been raised to know, like, oh, well, if I get cancer, I'm going to die. And I'm going to die relatively quickly because the state won't take care of me, because once I'm deemed at a high risk, low reward, then my access to health care dries up. I think that's a separate conversation as well about this about a cultural norms regarding

how we view life. I don't disagree with you because in I was like in America so once you enter the hospital system in America their job is to keep you alive by law yeah that doesn't Which doesn't mean that you should be kept alive. Whoa, the filter comes off. I'm just saying. Let them die, she says. No, if you. I believe in the fair and equitable nature of human beings.

But some people should not be kept alive. You know, I think there's a larger conversation to be had about how people view death. We in modern society are mostly removed from death. Most people don't experience it. experience it in Western society, right? But the fact is that people age, people get sick, people die. And there's a definite, a certain point where, you know, if you have a finite number of resources and you need to treat somebody who is, who will survive, or you can use that to treat somebody who is terminal, right? Why put the resources into the person to extend their life

that is questionable whether the quality of life is going to be there for them, even if you do extend their life, right? So I just, I think that's a completely separate conversation about, you know, the why there. Right? In America, you have insurance. You can choose how long you want them to keep you alive. All I'm saying is that there's a pragmatism that exists outside of our American borders. And you just hinted on it, right?

Yeah. And you hinted on it because in your worldview, in your experience, you brought that with you. That said, if I was terminal, you would keep me alive. Maybe? Maybe not? Oh, man. I thought that was going to like land.

I thought that was going to score. I didn't go the way. I didn't go off. So in the best interest of keeping up with the me falling flat on my face, Our question from the spy tribe today is a good one. I think you'll like it. And the question was, was everyday spy the first business idea we had, and was it always a success? No.

So it wasn't the first business idea we had. I do think that it's been, I mean, in my eyes, it's been a success because it has grown steadily through your efforts, right? through our efforts. So in my mind, that's a success because it continues to grow and that's really exciting. But it was definitely not the first idea. The first few ideas,

we had a business where we sold the Emissus bags, the Trust Emma. So for anybody who doesn't know, emissus bags or the bags of hospitals give you to throw up into, they're very nice. Our bags.

Our bag design was superior, but it was still just a barf bag. Yeah, it was a purple barf bag. bag. It was very nice. I think we put $7,000 into that business. I think we were $7,000 into that business before. And I don't know that we ever broke even. I think we made, we made maybe $700 back. Yeah, that was my, that was a net loss. But that built a lot of online selling experience. And we, we had a couple of booths at some like events. And then that made me realize how difficult having your own booth is selling something. And I thought, it just gave me

so much respect for vendors who have boosted events. I started a bounce house business. Yeah, that was my favorite one, not at all. That totally didn't work. No, it didn't. I think, well, the good news was we didn't get too deep into that financially. Well, that's because I think that was the only one that I put the kibosh on. That was very fast.

You brought it home, we tried it once, and I told you, there's no way we're working every weekend to, with parents. And I mean, we're parents are. insurance risk. High insurance risk, but I don't want to work with parents in that capacity on my weekends. On their special days. On their special days. Yeah.

If stuff goes wrong, no, no, no. No things. And then we finally got into a consultancy. Yeah. We opened a consultancy. Yeah. And that went well. And our consultancy worked.

And we learned very quickly the value of sharing information. People have their own relationship with information, which we knew from our time at CIA, but we had never seen it in a business context. Yeah. So the same, like the exact same presentation to three different people is interpreted three different ways. And then the three different ways, they all apply it to their situation in their own way as well. And then there's an ownership fact, like an ownership level where they take ownership over their own actions. And then there's an ongoing relationship because they value your information and you feel valued by them.

It's the exact opposite of a bounce house. Yeah. Where like you're a service provider. They don't value you. and if you screw anything up, like you're an idiot, and if everything goes well for their party, then you're just one more thing that went well. It's a completely different kind of beast.

Yeah, and everyday spy was born because you were trying these other businesses and I was like, you know, people are interested in you. Like, why don't you just do something where you answer people's questions or give them information that, you know, that I hear people asking you for and you started a lecture series, an eight-part lecture series, put it together almost on the fly just with ideas that you had already had. And it was really successful. It was just, it was not-for-profit either. That first lecture series was all, it was all not-for-profit for a local art studio. And that's how it took off. Yeah. And then I think from the time that everyday spy started, it's been largely

successful, like you said. We've had, and it's not been because of us, it's been because of all the failures before that we like we learned a lot and then when the right people discovered our little lecture series we all of a sudden had a network and we had kind of a brain trust that we could turn to with with for ideas and for guidance and for and for mentorship yeah I agree I think that having having a group of people where you can bounce ideas off of people who is so valuable that you can you know, lean on their experience for advice. It's so valuable. And I think that's what I've come to really appreciate about this time with you too. You've always been the person that I bounce my ideas off of it. You've always been the person that I go to with my crazy, harsh commentary and you take

the edge off it. Yeah. And then you tell me that you wouldn't survive, you wouldn't save me if I was terminally ill. Yeah, it's case by case basis. I need more, I need more facts here. That's fair. I can't argue with that. Thank you very much for joining us again. Please leave your thoughts. Leave your comments below. We read them after every conversation. We pull from your comments to decide what we're going to talk about next time, what

questions we're going to have. Clearly on this one, you discovered that Ghee does not necessarily want to rescue me if I am in desperate need. I hope one of you will rescue me if I am in desperate need. Otherwise, I'm going to have to go get an international life insurance policy to make sure that no matter where, where I get ill. You can save yourself. I can at least hire somebody to rescue me.

But thank you very much for paying attention. Thank you very much for joining us. And we will see you next time. Take care.