Julian Dorey Podcast - #59 - Kevin Gallagher: KANYE WEST; THE DONDA DROP; THE CUBA PROTESTS; CHINA'S SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM; THE NCAA NIL RULES; $15 MINIMUM WAGE

Episode Date: August 4, 2021

Kevin Gallagher (aka “The Miami Lawyer”) is a maritime attorney based in Miami, Florida. In addition to the law, he is also an expert in rap music. ***TIMESTAMPS*** 5:37 - Revisiting 50 Cent’s career and rise to fame with his debut  album, Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2003); The transition of thee music industry in the streaming era 28:24 - Kanye West: His Upcoming Album (Donda), his career, and his impact on music and pop culture; Kanye & creatives’ overlap with mental health struggles 50:17 - The balance of organization and creativity in the pursuit of perfection; The three types of arguments you make in life 1:11:24 - Gallagher talks Miami and the continued boom the city’s seen over the past year 1:23:57 - The Cuba Protests and the history behind the country’s dictatorship; How the Cuban Americans are taking  boats to Cuba to hand off supplies; Gallagher talks about his trip to Cuba 1:47:10 - The generational problem in understanding oppression; Gallagher gives his thoughts on the set up of government; A debate about the difference between corporations and governments; Antitrust potential in the 21st Century 2:17:24 - The New NCAA NIL Rule allowing college athletes to get paid on their own image and likeness; The one and done rule in the NBA 2:39:41 - Adam Silver and the NBA China situation; China’s Facial Recognition Program (Social Credit System) 2:54:55 - Debating the 15 dollar minimum wage ~ YouTube EPISODES & CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q  ~ Get $100 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover: https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier  Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey  ~ Beat provided by: https://freebeats.io  Music Produced by White Hot Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. They're fed up. They can't get access to food and water and medical supplies. And they can't, and they're, you know, it's reached a boiling point. But it's just really,

it's interesting. And I definitely, I'm team Free Cuba, man. Free Cuba all day. What's cooking, everybody? I am joined in the bunker today by Mr. Kevin Gallagher, a.k.a. the Miami lawyer. If you remember, Gallagher, aka The Miami Lawyer. If you remember, Gallagher was in here for number 31, and so since he was back up north

gracing us with his presence, I had to invite him through again. And I'm glad I did, because it was very, very good timing. The reason I say that is because Gallagher is one of, if not the most knowledgeable people on the hip-hop space I have ever met in my life. And this week, two days after this episode is out, at midnight on Friday, we are,

knock on wood, finally, finally going to get the Donda album from Mr. Kanye West. And so, naturally, the first hour of this conversation was all about hip hop and included a good 25 to 30 minutes talking about the upcoming album and other things surrounding the man that we know as Ye. So I was very, very happy to do that. After we talked about hip hop and stuff, the second hour, we got heavy into the Cuba issue as well. Gallagher, as I've mentioned, is the Miami lawyer. He lives down in Miami. He has a lot of friends in the Cuban-American community. So this is something that hits close to home. If you haven't checked out what's happening in Cuba, it's pretty wild. The regime may finally be teetering on the brink of collapse for the freedom of the people after 62 years,

which is nuts to think about and hopefully is very, very close to happening. But we talked a lot about what's going on there to fill you guys in. close to happening but we talked a lot about what's going on there to fill you guys in and also Gallagher had a lot of tidbits that he picks up I guess from the people down there in the community and and the things they talk about about what's going on so that was good and then the last hour we got into a few different issues including like antitrust law the $15 minimum wage and also new, I think it's called the NIL legislation or law or whatever the hell from the NCAA that actually allows athletes to profit off of their own image and likeness, which, you know, about 60 years too late, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway,

so great conversation. Good time. Love having this guy through and we'll definitely do it again. I hope you guys enjoy. Now, if you have not used the link in my description along with the code TRENDIFIRE at checkout to get $100 off either the 8SleepPod Pro mattress or the 8SleepPod Pro cover, check it out, people. And I'll even focus on the cover. As I say each week, you can absolutely get the mattress if you are looking to buy a mattress right now. But if you like the feel of your current mattress and it's a big hassle to get a whole new one, the Cover does the same thing. And what it does is it uses Eight Sleeps proprietary technology, the app that they've built to measure your sleep stages throughout the night. It measures things like those actual stages, which there's terms for, but also like your REM, your body temperature, etc. So that

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probably see it's total game changer anyway if you're not subscribed please subscribe we are on apple podcasts spotify and youtube and if you're on youtube right now hit that subscribe button hit that bell button and leave a like and comment on the video if you would, please. To everyone who has been finding the podcast on TikTok or specifically like over the last 15 weeks and has been sharing the podcast with a friend, I am noticing it. I've been asking for it now and adding on top of that for what you guys have already been doing over the last maybe like six, seven weeks, something like that. And it's happening and it is an enormous enormous help so thank you very much and please keep doing it it's growing the community i love the outreach i'm getting i'm really enjoying

talking with people that i can get to in the dms it's it's been a beautiful thing so to all of you who have not been making yourself strangers to me thank you. And don't stop doing that. You know, sometimes I won't see it, but when I can, trust me, I will respond to whatever I see. So once again, if you can continue sharing the show, that word of mouth is the biggest thing. So thanks to everyone who's doing that and let's keep it rolling. That said, you know what it is. I'm Julian Dorey, and this is Trendify. Let's go. This is one of the great questions in our culture. Where is the news? You're giving opinions and calling them facts.

You feel me? Everyone understands this, but few seem to do it. If you don't like the status quo, start asking questions. Kevin Gallagher, return of the king. What it do, baby? What's up, K? Get those headphones on. Let's roll.

There you go. Cheers. Salud. You are the fourth total person to be back in here twice. Okay. And Joro was technically here once, but we did two episodes episodes and ty was here like back-to-back weeks at the beginning the only other person who's like been spread out and then come back in was mike spear so you're in good company i'm honored man i'm glad you had me back yeah man well last time there was like a lot that we didn't like we got down some

interesting silos in that conversation and then i realized at the end we covered like a lot that we didn't like we got down some interesting silos in that conversation and then i realized at the end we covered like a little bit of music but like you've been the biggest music guy i know especially in hip-hop my entire life i love it yeah i obsessed with it since uh the first album that got me in love with hip-hop was probably, I guess, the Eminem show. Was that before Get Rich or Die Trying? I think it was. I believe Get Rich or Die Trying was 2003, I think. It absolutely was. So, I think the Eminem show was probably like 2002. I think that was 2002. Either way, that's what got me obsessed with hip-hop. And then 50 Cent, or the Eminem show is what got me into hip-hop, right? Because like, at that age, I was listening to Smash Mouth and stuff.

What are we listening to at that age? I remember the Eminem show came out, and I remember I wanted it so bad, and I had to get my grandmother to buy me it because my parents wouldn't buy me it. You play that trick. You're like, oh, Nana, let me get this. It's cool. No. See that Tupac picture?

Yeah. With the marijuana leaf? Grandmother? Grandma. Dude, grandm let me get this. It's cool. No. See that Tupac picture? Yeah. With the marijuana leaf? Grandmother? Grandma. Dude, grandmothers are the best. I tried to... I'm going off the side right now already. I tried to get Grand Theft Auto.

I tried to get my grandmother buying Grand Theft Auto for like PS2. I think it was Grand Theft Auto 3. And we went to the store. I remember this vividly. We went to the Best Buy or whatever. And we went to the store. I remember this vividly. We went to the Best Buy or whatever. We're in the checkout line. Your grandmother, they spoil you, whatever.

We go to the checkout line. We're there. We're home. Finish line. And then the guy's like, excuse me, ma'am. Do you know that this is rated M for mature and it's not? And she was like, oh, no, I didn't know. And I was like, bro, can I blow up my spot like that? Come on now. And then i didn't know and i was like bro can i blow my spot like that like i like come on now and then i didn't get it well shout out to grandma for trying it's it's the effort

that counts there but you so you got into it with that was eminem's second album right he did i'm not sure i think it was probably i mean he had slim shady lp and then maybe i think there was an album in between that um definitely i think he's a machine he's had so many no there definitely was an album and it was like maybe the marshall mathers lp i think right yeah i want to say the first one was like maybe 97 98 something like that yeah it was 98 because it had the bonnie and clive 98 on there that's it yeah that's it um but dude i'll i'll never forget the moment i was like watching tv or whatever like i would actually watch like trl like that's what you did when you got home yeah from school back in the day you would go on like aim you'd like do whatever you'd watch like trl you know ride your bike whatever uh i remember when

i first saw i was like i heard the beat of in the club and i was like oh damn this is dope and then all of a sudden you just see this like yoked ass man doing pull-ups upside down or whatever sit-ups upside down he's just like go go and i'm just like oh shit like who is this guy and like how do i know he's about to take over the rap game for the next 10 years he had the thing like he had the look there was something about it where i don't really know how to describe it the way i want to but everything about him was just like so almost like made for camera you know like he's this ripped guy with like a hell of a smile and then he's like this smooth like larger than life personality and he had that whole the

whole backstory of him getting shot nine times which was like at the at the time it was crazy it was like unheard of it was uh yeah i just remember 50 cent was you never heard of him and then he was literally everywhere for the next 10 years and i don't i to this day i don't know that a rapper i'm not saying 50 cents the greatest rapper of all time or the the most dominant of all time but when he was on top i don't know that anyone's ever had like a stranglehold on the rap game such as 50 Cent when he had that. Because you think about it. He had, let's say 2005, you had the Get Rich or Die trying, then you had the Massacre, and then you had G-Unit was coming up at the time.

So he had all the G-Unit guys like Buck, Game, all those guys. He had the clothing line at the time. He had, what else did he have? I mean, he had the shoes. He had the Reebok unit shoes. Wasn't he a vitamin water guy, too? Yeah. He had vitamin water, but I don't know that that was really related to rap,

but it was still, you know. It's a thing. Exactly, yeah. Attention. And I think maybe Drake has since beat him, but I know that there was some record and it might still maybe this is one that we google or whatever but there was a time where

50 Cent had the most he did something since the Beatles so let's say he had like 1 through 5 like all 50 Cent 50 Cent 50 Cent I think if you search like 50 Cent yeah there you go damn

June 30th 2005 I accept the cookies okay 50 Cent, 50 Cent. I think... If you search, like, 50 Cent, yeah. There you go. Damn. June 30th, 2005. I accept the cookies. Okay. Rapper 50 Cent has become the first artist since the Beatles to have four simultaneous hits in the U.S. Billboard Top Ten. Four out of ten. I don't even know that Drake's done that. I don't know that he has either.

I know Drake is the most... I think he's the most streamed artist now of all time. He's got that line, like, I got more slaps than the Beatles. But I think that was because he did a similar thing where he broke a Beatles record. But, yo, think about that. Four out of ten in the top ten. That's crazy. That's crazy.

It's nuts. And I was going to, you answered the question, I i guess before i was even going to ask it where i was going to bring up drake and be like but is it the same thing and like when i look at drake i don't think of him and this is a compliment it's not disrespect i don't think of him in the same type of category as like 50 cent 50 cent was the more traditional rap game. I mean, I think The Massacre is one of the top five rap albums ever made. It's top 10 at a minimum. And he's like a pure rapper. But what we saw was this whole genre bending idea that happened in music and Drake was a big part of it. Oh, for sure.

Where you saw in the late 2000s was the first little bit, but a big part of it. Oh, for sure. Where you saw in the late 2000s was the first little bit, but then the beginning of the 2010s, it started to move from people don't just have to be like in this box, you know, like as crazy as it would seem to us today, if a guy like Tupac was coming up, there's a chance he wouldn't just be a rapper. He'd be singing the songs as well he'd there'd be more layers to him that's where the the model's gone so it's very hard for me to compare rappers that we see today to even you know guys who weren't that long ago like 50 Cent still making music but I'm saying like when he was at his height that wasn't like that long ago you know

yeah it really wasn't and I never even I never even thought about what you just said about Drake. I mean, obviously I've thought about it. I know about it, but like, he really was the first to kind of do that. Cause now, like he honestly did pave the way for a lot of artists to, to kind of do the whole like straddle the line between like, is he an R&B artist? Is he like a rapper? Is he, you know, a singer?

And I can't really think. I'm sure there's people that could give a list of 10 people that did it before Drake, but to do it on that level, no one has done that. No. What's the one song I want to say,

when I think of them in my head, they all blend together from the older days with him, but I want to say it was the song Take Care. Maybe. But there was one song where I remember, whoa, okay, this guy's not a rapper. There's more to him than that. And he was definitely seminal in that. I think, to be honest, that was the whole, like, when i first heard about drake that's what the buzz

was you know what i mean it was like there's this guy he's like the first drake song that i remember is like baby you the best you my everything whatever that yeah whatever that song was that that's probably like the first drake song we all heard right and from the from the jump the buzz was like all right is this like, who is this guy? He's got this, like, cool voice, and he kind of raps, and he's, like, with Lil Wayne, like, and, like, who, and he's from Canada, but, like, whatever. And it was just kind of this, like, who is this guy? What is his, like, what is his place?

And, like, people were trying to, like, put him into a place, and they couldn't. And he carved his own place. Carved his own. And the voice thing is underrated at that point. Oh, yeah. Because these guys, when they do something, like, when there's something in their voice, and 50 Cent was one of them, 100%. Like, with, it just kind of had, like, that slight, smooth baritone thing.

It's like its own instrument. Like Jay-Z's voice is an instrument. It's interesting you say that about 50 in particular. Have you ever listened to his stuff before he got shot? Because he got shot in the mouth, if you recall. He got shot. Yes. He got shot through here.

And it completely altered his voice. It kind of gave him that, like, it's 50 Cent. Like, you know know that kind of like if you listen to him before he got shot his like i mean still i think he's still a dope rapper but his voice changed and i think for the better i think it's what made him unique and made him a good rapper like he didn't like slur but he kind of had that like he had that it's hard to describe but if you listen to a song from like a 50 cent song from like 1998 or whatever and then you know 2004 yeah it's totally different but the narrative is really what what drove the whole thing like yes that that obviously something like that made the back end

of his voice and made it the 50 we know but that story like this dude got shot like what was it nine times or something like that and lived and then you know Put out this amazing album, you know, there was there was a There was a full-blown Storyline a movie about his life. I forgot about that. Yeah, you know Eminem Eminem was a white rapper like Legitimately like a white kind of hood rapper that didn't happen at the time and then there was the full like he was doing it on the eight mile it became the movie eight mile but we've seen this whole shift like in that like when 50 was coming up it was unbeknownst at the time to us it was a

huge turning point in rap to where it started to move away from oh you have to be like a hood rapper from you know new york or l.a to wait you can be from all different types of backgrounds and do this true i also think you made a point you said when when 50 was coming up in the music the state of the music industry when 50 cent was coming up and this is another point when i when i'm arguing and saying like all right 50 cent no one had the stranglehold in the game that he had that was the most healthy time for the music industry about it was right when cds were just like incredibly popular so you were switching from the tapes to the cds it was before the birth of mp3s it was right around the ringtone era where that was just like people were just like

they'd spend however much like a dollar two dollars like every other week to get the new cool ringtone the ring back tones he's the amount of albums he sold it's it's crazy and those are that's at the time where it was pure album sales now the album sales they they say it's like they convert it from the streams to the sales so it's not it's not pure album sales but back then that was like he's selling like what i mean we could look it up like i want to say it was a lot 10 15 maybe even 20 million copies which is like insane that's insane i never thought about what you just said but i think you made a bigger point than you than you even realize he was actually you could look at 50 cent as the case study of the shift of the music industry because when he came out with get rich or die trying you're right that

was oh three and that was the height of the album game oh five the massacre that was I remember this because I mean I was young but I remember me and Nico were listening to that album right when it came out and you know how we were listening to it was right after this thing LimeWire came along and had gotten into the mainstream. Nice. So in a way, that was the first, and some people out there actually don't know

what I'm talking about with LimeWire, which makes me sad. But in a way, it was like... Those poor young TikTokers. I know, man. It was like the first time where music started to shift to, wait, there's the internet now. We can just, it's a digital file

we can share it and so then by the time he went to do his next albums now it was that world was people dropping whether it be from limewire or like the earliest not streaming but you know what i mean like platforms that were offering some toward some sort of like knockoff digital copy people were dropping those files into their itunes and so it was the first time where music was getting stolen and that's also not for nothing that's how steve jobs got a stranglehold on the industry because he came out with the iphone at the same time and it was when the ipod had just built it all in and he was like oh well you know you're gonna do it for less but you're gonna make something with me yeah yeah i gotta tell you man i still

download mp3s like i still download for most of my music i mean i obviously pay for spotify but for some reason i just i've always liked to just have the song because it's so fickle like watch the throne wasn't even on any like streaming platforms until like recently oh because jay-z's jay-z yeah because it was on title or whatever and like there's a lot of just like songs or like mixtapes and stuff from back in the day like i'm one of those people where it's like i have my songs on my phone right now and they're like i have the mp3 files that i own maybe through legal means whatever i whatever they're coming after you whatever um and yeah i just like to have that and i still i still uh like i'll rip the songs off of uh spotify to this day like i will

if i like an album i will rip it or or i'll you know maybe go on torrent website and get the album maybe hypothetically hypothetically speaking um allegedly yeah but i just it's to me like i feel like i don't own it unless i have like the mp3 file and it's kind of weird and i'm also like a nerd about the audio quality it has to be uh the bit rate has to be 320 kilobits yeah i know love you love you it's excellent yeah you know all the way around that's what yeah yeah yeah you know all the way around like you're into the details of that but that's actually what i remember like the first time i got apple music which is now like a long time ago and i didn't realize that that's how it worked like they had to license i mean i knew that inherently but i just

assumed all these artists put all their music on there. Like that's where people are going, right? But then I noticed, the first one I ever noticed it with was Reasonable Doubt. I went to go stream Reasonable Doubt, the 96 album from Jay-Z. And I'm like, where the fuck is it?

It's not there, yeah. It's not there. So, you know, there are songs like that and I'm the same way. I'll go get the MP3 because I need it, right? Like it needs to be on my fucking phone so I can listen to it whenever I want. But it's kind of weird what streaming did to music because, you know, you then had like the app culture after the iPhone came out and Apple already had everyone kind of like hostage at the time.

The app culture comes out and you get something like Spotify to come in. You get SoundCloud where people can also, you know, SoundCloud made rappers made rappers for a long time people that's where fetty wap came up juice world like all these guys who blew up for sure they low peep they all came up through there because they were able to just take their music straight to the people with a quick upload it's it's nuts when you think of it in the context of not only what it allowed for like connectivity of assets so that anyone could go listen to this music on demand quickly but it also allowed for creativity and it allowed for exchanging beats and then creating new things on top of them and then opening that up to people who didn't wear a suit and say you're in the music industry because i say you're in the music industry yeah yeah it's uh it's wild soundcloud really changed the game

it really did um there would be yeah like you said there'd be no no fetty wop no juice world who else did you say post malone was on there post malone damn lil peep yeah um and i'm forgetting a ton of people there were trippy red all these guys they were all on there i think i don't know this one for sure i think sway lee was on there okay yeah it's it's kind of wild because and i hate to like i guess i'm i'm dating myself here but like mixtapes used to be so mixtapes actually used to be a legitimate like some guy like selling cds on the corner and then mixtapes became you know it was like datpiff.com you drop like a mixtape and that was the you know that was the thing and like that's how artists did before they blew up they

would have these mixtapes where they were not directly uh they probably weren't signed at the time and they weren't receiving any direct compensation from sales because it was free you know and that was kind of for a lot of a lot of artists and like rap groups like if you want to go back to 50 cent the g unit what was it g unit radio or whatever they put out like a mixtape every week where they just like remix songs and like do all this stuff and it was just uh it was an exciting time for music and then you go like you talk about uh like you have Lil Wayne with like with all his like the the dedication what was it dedication is that dedicate I forget he had those mixtapes

then those ceilings and then like like all those mixtapes which just free music him just remixing like you know rapping on other beats and like that in a way it's not as it's not as prominent anymore because it's the mixtapes were they had they were basically like mini albums you know what i mean it was they were absolutely like like uh album quality music that was released like on a regular basis for free which nowadays you kind of don't have because you have such easy access to upload your songs like you record a single song you'll just release it if you're not gonna put it on iTunes or Spotify whatever so I don't know yeah it's looking at the careers of guys like that though who lasted through it all like

Lil Wayne's enormous today you know and obviously now it's been a couple years since the big album he dropped at the end of 2018 but like he can do that you know that was sure that was the pure streaming era and Lil Wayne's bigger than ever because these guys found a way to adjust whereas a guy like 50 Cent and I think it's because he has a lot of other interests too like over time they stopped making as much music. They, you know, like they've kind of faded with the times. Yo, I have a couple thoughts on this.

You know why I think 50 Cent hasn't like kind of fell off or whatever or failed to kind of have the longevity of like a Lil Wayne? I think he just was too egotistical and engaged in too much beef. He just always had beef with rappers. Like you could sit here and name 10 rappers that he's beefed with. Like everyone. He's beefed with, I mean,

big one was Ja Rule, but he's beefed with Fat Joe, Jadakiss, Nas. Like beefing with Nas. He's like so many prominent rappers that he's just like, would just release a diss song against and like that was kind of so that's how 50 cent came into prominence was he had that song uh how to rob you do you know that song where he just basically like he started like talking crap on a

bunch of like rappers at the time and he gained prominence but then you know it kind of the older he got in the further into his career it it was kind of like, all right. And Kanye, remember that? That's kind of where it spilled over for me as like a fan, where it was like, damn, you're making me choose between 50 or Kanye. Like, that's, you know, that's a hard choice when they had the whole like album, like who's going to sell more copies and then Kanye won, whatever. But it was, it just was like, come on, it's just too much. Like, I understand the competitive nature and i understand what you're doing but like it's hard for a fan because you're making you're absolutely alienating a lot of your fans because you're making them pick sides

i think that people looked at the west side east side beef of the mid-90s completely incorrectly, and they assumed that's how they had to be. That beef between Pac and Death Row Records against Bad Boy Records and Biggie and Diddy, that went beyond the studio. That was some straight up, there were a lot of things behind it, and I'll leave it at that. And so the fact that it happened, though, drove a ton of attention to all of them. They were phenomenal.

Biggie and Pac were incredible. Their music was already great, and it made them larger than life. And so it was an incredible marketing tactic in that way, but that's my point. It was not that. What happened later to me is that don't get me wrong i think when guys start to come out with these things and start to bring out these beefs and stuff they start believing what they say don't get me wrong but like they do a lot of this and have done a lot of this in the years since then because that's

what they think they're supposed to do you know there was an album not an album there was a song that eminem was going to drop i remember this is like maybe seven, eight years ago now, where he was, you know, he's a lyricist just having fun and fucking around. He was going to rip like a million rappers, like all Lil Wayne, all the big ones. And then he came out, I think with a song, or maybe he talked about it. I don't remember, but he came out with something. It was, it was a song where he said, I made a song where I was going to rip all these people. For what? I love all these guys.

Here's all the people I was going to rip, and here's why I like them. Because it's like this thing. Like, oh, yeah, you're supposed to beef in hip hop. And it's interesting you bring up a guy like Kanye because I look at Kanye in a different light than 50 Cent, he's another guy who, like, maybe Kanye, 50 Cent, and Drake, for different reasons, were a part of this whole switchover that happened in hip-hop, because Kanye, like, I don't think of him as a rapper. He is a great rapper. Let me get that straight. I don't want to be misheard. He's a very good rapper. But Kanye makes a sound. He is an incredible artist. He's an artist. Yeah, he makes an ensemble, like a musical ensemble. I also don't think, and I think there's interviews of Kanye where he's even said this about himself he's like not that great of a rapper i actually

was watching this interview i forget it might be on that netflix thing where it was like the hip hop thing yeah where he's like when i started out i was rapping all these like very like intricate rhymes and like all these you know like double entendres whatever and then he realized like people didn't for whatever reason didn't relate to that didn't like that so he just was like i'm gonna dumb it down and be a little simple uh that's not to say he's not a great rapper obviously i think his resume and his his body of work speaks for itself but as far as there are better rappers than kanye yes what he what he does is i mean he's just like like you said he's an artist like he would he produces all of his own tracks pretty much.

Maybe here and there, you know, someone else will. He concepts all of them. Yeah. Yes. I mean, basically start to finish. I mean, early in his career, he was doing everything. And, you know, he gets all these artists from different backgrounds, different types of music, blends their styles.

Like he's so experimental with it. And yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, we're not saying anything that hasn't been said a million times about Kanye. different types of music blends their styles like he's so experimental with it and uh yeah i mean yeah i mean we're not saying anything that hasn't been said a million times about kanye he's he's just like a he's a musical genius and he knows it obviously and he's not afraid to tell people but do you know that kanye almost didn't happen though like his whole career um well what do you mean by that he was producing because i like to bring that up if you look yeah he was a producer first so he was he was making beats at rockefeller records and he was making music over there for other artists and he wanted to be a rapper he was the college dropout you know he's like 25 26 he's like no no like i rap too and jay-z all the guys they loved him but they're like kanye you're a producer man like you

make a sound and he's like no no i want to do it soup to nuts and the reason that they were giving him and it's not like they were holding this over him but it's just how it was such a weird spot with hip-hop with the precedent that had been set with like a pock and a biggie they were like well you're not like you're not like a hood rapper you know you're like a college dropout guy and with a backpack and the polo yeah right so they were like i don't know if marketing wise you make sense and he goes i'll make something so great i'll make sense and then he did and they're like yeah bet you ever listened to the song on um college dropout last call i was listening to it last night actually yeah like the whole thing is like a 12 minute song where he just goes he literally talks about all that stuff where he was like i was making beats for this guy i was doing this and they were managing me as a producer but i really wanted

to get into rapping and they weren't like you know they didn't have it and then i was doing this and this and then like it talks about how he almost signed with someone else but they didn't have it, and then I was doing this and this, and then, like, it talks about how he almost signed with someone else, but then didn't, and then he signed with Rockefeller, and it was like the rest is history. What do you think of Kanye? I mean, that's a possibly loaded question. It is. Let's go.

What do I think of Kanye? I mean, look, I think almost every person can say that there's shit about Kanye that they dislike. There's stuff that he's done that's like, all right, like, that's pretty crazy or that's, I disagree with that. However, I think the, like, art, the literal art that he's made with his music with, I mean, I guess you could get into fashion or whatever. People are always kind of willing to like all right we'll hear him out you know what i mean whereas like some artists if if he wasn't at that top level you would you know you'd tune him out after a while you'd be

like all right you know he was good maybe he had a couple and i don't like for instance like if 50 cent i don't think he has like that same type of like where people are just like willing to always like hear what he's he's releasing or what he's got going i think yeah i mean i think it's just kanye he's so good at what he does that it's like shit like he's dropping a new album like everyone's gonna listen to that and at least give it a chance you know what i mean he is a pure through and through creative like if you're somebody that that thinks that way uses that side of your brain and that's what you do for a living or whatever it is you make and you don't understand him i almost don't get that because and then if you're not someone like that and you don't understand him i do

i i get why you don't but he's he is frustrating though at times because it's like you're not someone like that and you don't understand him, I do. I get why you don't. He is frustrating, though, at times. Sure. You're like, dude, what are you doing with this Trump shit? You're not like, what is your endgame with that, man? And then it's like, all right, I'm only going to make gospel music. It's like, all right, that's fine. That's your choice, whatever. But you're not like a fine, that's your choice, whatever, but it's like, you know, you're not, you're not

like a, like a pastor, man, like, you know, like, you still are, like, doing other stuff, and like, like, two years ago, like, a year before you, all gospel music, you made that, like, horrible song with, like, Lil Pump that was, like, not gospel, like, what are you doing? And I don't know, he's frustrating, but, like i i always give him a chance he wears it on his sleeve though you see everything that's great you see everything that's bad he does it pretty publicly and i think over time there's a thing where people just recognize like a his music's phenomenal that helps like it it's the same way that like some of these guys who commit horrible crimes and still get signed by a team and then they say well you didn't sign the

backup who did that yeah because he sucks this guy doesn't it's the same thing like in society people think that but with him i think i think that he is so smart like intellectually brilliant and then adds a layer of like OCD creativity to that that he gets down these like these silos of thoughts and then doesn't separate his mind from the mic and I'm not talking about the mic on the songs though that happens too I'm talking about like in public with people and giving ideas and putting shit out there that he just can't help himself and he's just

passionate about it. Like when you watch him when he went and visited Trump in the Oval Office I mean he's sitting there designing the next Air Force One and Trump's looking at him like he has ten heads but he's like that's what he thinks and he's building this amazing thing that they're never going to build but like he sees the world like that he goes why is that why does that look like that it could look like this

let's make it look like this and i respect that all right i respect that to a certain extent he does have a clear diagnosable mental illness and i'm not i'm not like shaming or or i'm certainly not shaming or trying to take anything away from him for something that you know for a medical thing that he can't control however i think some of like that behavior is some some like manic behavior which is like you it's hard to separate like all right it's he's just like super committed to his craft to what he's doing he's like you know like a ultra perfectionist to like all right like now he's living at like what was it he's like still at mercedes-benz stadium like where is it like drop it drop it kanye by the time this airs dude like

i don't think we'll have Donda. We're not. This is going to be, it's August 6th. It's coming out. This is going to be before August 6th. This is going to drop before August 6th? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Interesting. I turn these around in four to ten days, depending on the episode. Okay. You sat on the last one for quite some time. Your episode was, and anthony fenu were the two that i sat on because outside of one thing we talked about in there nothing aged i was watching it each week and i was like oh i could put this one ahead of this one smart smart yeah so then i waited there was one thing in our conversation that aged the day we put it out but that's why gotcha okay but um yeah i think yeah it's hard to the the mental illness aspect is a i think

that's something that needs to be kind of you know talked about and like it's again it's hard to differentiate all right kanye's literally like you know he's manic right now and he's like obsessing over something or he's just an artist and like that that's the that's the thing i think the best artists of all time they all have that kind of like where does it become too much versus you know you're just passionate about your art and that's that's one of those things where like you can't really ever you you don't know because you're there's no there's no kanye without that side of him. No. That's it. There's no difference. It's not a blurred line. It's the line. The line is, you get the artist and you get the whole artist, what's good, what's bad. I mean, I do think about that a lot with creative-minded people,

whether it be in any kind of art. It could be a painter, it could be a musician, could be an actor, something like that. You know, you see throughout history, a lot of these people, I don't want to say a lot of them, but there are examples of people who meet a not great end. You know, they're depressed, they have all these underlying issues and things like that. And one example I always point to is Robin Williams, because he was such a sweet guy and such a – everyone loved Robin Williams. Yeah, damn. But he lived his life. He was a very humble guy, number one.

And number two, he lived his life to make other people laugh. Like, because, you know, he's an amazing actor and Oscar winner the whole nine, but the first thing he was was a comedian. And so he always injected that into what he did. And then in his own life, like in his own thoughts, he couldn't make himself laugh. Because it's just like you're so wired to constantly do something for the other people because as a creative, you are an entertainer. Even Michelangelo painting shit that takes years and then it comes out and people see it or they don't. He's an entertainer even michelangelo painting shit that takes years and then it comes out and people see it or they don't he's an entertainer in that way people entertain when they see it it's like with robin williams you know and obviously he got apparently

he got a parkinson's i think diagnosis shortly before he died which was horrible for him i didn't know that yeah that's what put him over the top i believe and so he was thinking to himself allegedly that you know a part of it was i'm what if i can't make people laugh anymore and that's the one thing that keeps me going which is so sad to think about and i wish like i wish you would have told people what was going on because people could have showed him how much they appreciated him but you know you know what i've heard i've heard that um comedians particularly they're some of the most like depressed people because they at like an early age or whatever have to like use comedy to cope with like whatever it is in life and um like there's like a common like you know like story arc of like a comedian's life where it's like they've

they've experienced you experienced whatever it is, like an alcoholic family member or something like this, where they just at an early age use comedy and become the class clown or whatever it is to kind of cope with that. And they're some of the most depressed people. That's what I've heard. That's a very real thing, and there are plenty of examples of that i do think there's such a prime example because their literal job is to make people laugh which is supposed to be the opposite

of sadness but it's it's in all art and you see it you see it a lot with kanye and you're right there i mean he's talked about it too, to his credit. There are some mental things there, I think, that are also just a part of who he is. I don't want to say the same way, but you look at a guy like Elon Musk, who has recently talked about how he has Asperger's. It's like a part of what also makes him that guy. I mean, a lot of people who have asperger's are unbelievably intelligent like far more than you and i than the average person who doesn't have it so it's like

the give and the take with it and i think with kanye like his brain is wired in so many different directions creatively like he's one of the few guys who has pulled off a pure combination of minimalism and maximalism in what he does. You know, you see him, prime example, you see him go into Mercedes-Benz Stadium to do the Donda release party in an all red outfit on an all white turf. It's simple. One main a on the purest cleanest color there is the blank color of white right but then you see the same guy will make crazy designs on his shoes which i think he was wearing i forget what shoes he was wearing that night but you see some of his yeezys they're maximalist right some of his songs like runaway classic great song he made simple on the front with the e major key

and then how does the beat go the beat drops into it stays pretty simple but then towards the end what does he do he uses the synth and then puts puts these puts these what's the word i'm looking for like spaghetti lyrics on the back end through a vocal effect where you can't hear them and you have to try to make out the words and maximalizes the song it's all in one song right there yeah he is a he is a walking like polarized contradiction of a person but he's able to make these things that the way he presents it to us we all go oh fuck we need that yeah yeah i would agree with that he is uh yeah it's uh it's a very uh paradoxical way to look at things yes he's minimalist maximalist and yeah it works what

did you think of the jesus is king album album though um to be honest i'm not like a big gospel guy so i probably listened to it and then uh like once and then i probably didn't tune in that much after so i don't i i didn't really uh listen to it just because i'm not a gospel guy that's not like what else to do what about you it's not it's not my favorite of his it was great work but like but for me, there's still kind of that wall. And no disrespect on it, but I'm not... Jesus Walks was one thing, because it was kind of a different context. And there were a lot of other songs at the time, so I was like, okay. That's interesting.

I'm cool with peppering in some gospel, whatever. But again, that's what I'm saying about it that that's pretty alienating by kanye right because you're alienating a lot of people when you're you're making a purely gospel album i understand that that's what he feels and that's his belief and that's like what is in his brain and that's his truth at the time however it's hard for you know, not everyone is Christian and not everyone is super Christian. And most people don't listen to gospel music, you know? So, it's alienating, and it probably deprives a lot of people of good music when you make it just about that subject matter. Now, I'm not saying he's got to make it about, like, you know, like, doing drugs and

women and all this other shit but he could you know maybe make it a little more secular that that's all i'm saying you know what i mean i don't disagree with that at all because i and i haven't seen numbers or anything but i don't think that was like his highest performing album it's not people's favorite it is it is polarizing but that's to your point that's part of like he builds over the long term now he's dropping an album which we're still waiting for once again where it's like that's not the direction he's going but there's still you know he keeps themes of it in there we've heard about that some of the names of the songs like now he's taking like little themes that he

had from that era like that gospel era and he's keeping it in his music but now he's got travis scott on the song you know so there's like a little bit of a oh okay he's got Jay-Z on one of the songs bro did you hear that I yeah I did hear that that's pretty dope it's just it's just it just gives you hope that's like all right word like they're cool now cool enough to make a song together what was the story there well because Kanyeye well i mean kanye just kind of went off the deep end and like he was saying he i i don't know i don't remember what it was maybe he was like tweeting some crazy shit or something but like obviously jay-z was like i'm gonna keep my distance from that i forget what it was i think it might have been twitter might have been just a combination

of all this like you know how kanye was like and is like he's he's polarizing you gotta expect that though if you're like because i heard there was something too with and i don't know much about this because i have to say i'm a little miss a little uninformed on all the kardashians i vaguely follow like who they are and what's going on but i don't sit there and watch the show or read the read the tea or whatever the shit is but like i think i did here's every episode the what i said you tivo every episode i did not but i i think and isn't it done now it's not on i don't know okay yeah you don't know but um i think there was something where, also in there, where either Jay-Z or Beyonce didn't like Kim, and Kim didn't like them. And then he got married to Kim, and then, because that was, he got married to her in maybe like 2013, 2014, something like that. They had done Watch the Throne in 2011.

And then I think that or a song right after was was like the last time jay-z was on something with him i think watch the throne right yeah maybe they did like one song after that but that's pretty much like he was on a lot of his songs coming up and then he wasn't and so then he comes on this new song on donda and i was like oh there it is it is. Actually, I know the song. It was the pop style remix or something. It was a Drake remix. That song? The Throne remix. It was a Drake.

It was pop style Throne remix. The one that's coming up on Donda? No, no, no. That was the last song that they were together. Oh, I was going to say. Yeah, because what? Like, I haven't looked at that yet. The ones we heard at the album release party, what he drew them off of, like what he sampled.

Did you see any of that yet? I didn't even watch it. I follow some hip-hop blogs on IG, so I saw whatever little snippets were on there. And I definitely heard the Jay-Z stuff. That's it. That's all that i've really like and i saw like obviously him like walking around in like a red suit apparently he's still got the red suit on hasn't showered in two weeks no is that true that can't be true bro he went to the

apparently hasn't showered that's that's not like dude you're not we can't sit here and be like oh he's a genius like that's mental illness bro let's be real i mean that's a manic behavior he probably did shower i'm not gonna lie he probably did shower but he was wearing people were saying that's where i draw the line he was if you wear the same clothes and don't shower you're you're i'm not gonna be insensitive um you're mentally ill at that point like you need you need to that's not where the the artist is i draw the line there all right yeah that's probably showered he might he you can still you can still work on your craft and smell good that's where i think he has a little bit like and i don't blame him he's got a little bit of the marketing gene so the story on staying at mercedes-benz stadium sleeping there

in a full living quarters with a chef and mike dean like and a bunch of weed that came out after he attended that soccer game like two days after the album release party because he went to the game they're like oh kanye's here and he was wearing the same outfit with the same mask which is a whole nother thing and then they're like oh he hasn't showered or whatever it's a good marketing ploy because then the story leaks out like oh he's staying in mercedes-benz making the album and people are like oh my god and now they're locked in again because he's dropping an album two hours or two weeks late because he wants to perfect it and you know that's never an excuse for fans yeah remember uh damn we're talking a lot about kanye remember life of pablo where he just like edit the tracks after they were like uploaded yeah yeah that's that was kind of interesting

remember that he's like yeah i'm gonna fix waves and people are like what or not waves wolves he's like he's like i'm gonna fix wolves and they're like what and then there's a new track on there after and they're like oh he did fix it it's nuts yeah it i don't know how you can like live like that like dude just put it out there once it's done it's done like you gotta have like you gotta you gotta have like deadlines and like certain certain like schedule schedules and like rigidity to your life like like i you and i i couldn't live like that shit like you like you have to you just have to set a point and say like look if if i'm an artist if i'm a musician i'm gonna finish it by this date if i don't you know whatever i will put out what i have or at least

not make it so public like maybe if you make it a mental deadline you don't hit it but once you make that shit public you better be damn close to be finished at the time and then you better finish by the time and like it's with anything and like like in school or college law school whatever it's like you have a deadline for like papers and all that stuff and like me as as an attorney like there's like a deadline to submit a brief or whatever with the court like sure could i use an extra week on a certain brief and like make it perfect absolutely right but when there's a hard deadline and if i miss that deadline then you know i mean it's not really like that's not an option to miss a deadline so you just have to put what you have at that point could it be better always it could always be better you could

always make a better argument fine-tune it whatever but you just got to be done with it and like a lot of times like that brief whatever might still win it might still be great and might still win and get the job done and like as with a song if that song's probably still going to be good and still going to be like a great song's probably still gonna be good and still gonna be like a great song you know what i mean but in his mind he's like nah dude the drums don't sound like like the the like the snare doesn't sound right but like it probably sounds good enough man that's the difference that i know and that's that right there is the difference yeah and that's the thing where it's like art you can't really quantify it like and it's hard to say but like i don't know i think at some point like kanye's

probably like like getting way off in the weeds about like some random shit where it's just like dude just drop the song just drop the album just drop the album really just drop it drop it please but it is it's why i respect it it's what makes them great and i'll say this that's why i'm very grateful that i spent time out in like a rigid corporate world because if i didn't i wouldn't have that balance of recognizing that you need both you need at like if you're a true creative and making you need that perfection gene every single little thing that goes into like a TikTok video I make I know every single detail on it and most videos once I put them out I hate them because I see something wrong that like even if I knew it when I was putting it out I still had to put it

out though you know what I mean because I have to I have to create and put it out. Thank God I have that because I understand this is the difference between like people who aren't in that world and then people who are like the business people, they don't understand that. But there is a thing like you and I might listen to the intro of wolves 600 million times and be like, Oh my God's unbelievable but if kanye hears like the one little decibel in the back that's coming up at minus 35 at that one spot on the split second that hits him like a fucking brick every time he can't have that out in the world and he doesn't care if there's a deadline on it or whatever like he needs it so do you think don't you think that is a net negative because in my opinion that inhibits that inhibits like maybe not creativity but it inhibits i think perfectionism to to a certain extent prevents

people from doing a lot of stuff because they're because they don't want to do it until it's perfect or whatever like if you if you didn't put out your first podcast till it was perfect you still you still wouldn't have put out a podcast you know what i mean if you if you wrap yourself up with like the the tiny little details of and this goes for anything you know what i mean it goes for anything in life i think that definitely can inhibit you from actually doing stuff and accomplishing stuff and it's obviously different for art and music it's obviously different but i think to a certain extent that principle applies that's a bigger point than you even realize because because yes, if you wait for the, like, well, here's where I'll hedge it. If you wait for the line of perfection because you truly want perfection and know how to get it,

that's one thing. If you wait for the line of perfection and in the back of your mind, you know that you don't know what perfection is, meaning you are an up and comer and you haven't done it yet. You haven't seen what the audience likes. You haven't related what you can give versus what you also need to have to be able to take from the people, like what their response is going to be and what, what is good, what is bad, what plays, what doesn't. If you are then relying on that and then you never release, you're done. And I'm not, obviously I'm not going to name names, but I know people in my life or people who are close to people I know who don't put shit out because they're perfectionists,

but they're never gonna because they're waiting on the moment where everything's going to catalyze. If you sit on a great piece of content, whatever it is, whatever you make music, movie, whatever. If you just sit on it, you're never going to create the first thing that creates the narrative, right? Like go look at any basic social media page, go look at someone's Instagram page that someone finds, right? Maybe they find someone when they're at 200,000 followers. And what happens is they go back and they look at some posts that that person, cause they go through their whole page, that that person put up two years ago. That at the time, little did they know, that person put up that post and thought that was the one.

They're like, that's it. I perfected this. It's everything I want. And it got 10 likes at the time. Sure. But the work was great. It just didn't have the eyeballs. And now the eyeballs found work after that.

That's great. And now they go back and appreciate the work that was. You know, that's great and now they go back and appreciate the work that was you know that's where the the line is like the people if you're kanye and you already have at the time of life of pablo you already have seven eight albums out whatever it was like six seven eight albums and you're already kanye west and then i'll give him credit on that one he at least put it out and then was fixing it after you have the credibility to do that and the attention to do it but if you're just some guy coming up and you're like yo i'm sitting on a war chest here man and you never release it because it's like no it's got to be perfect you're probably just insecure about it and you're afraid that people aren't going to give it 10 million likes on the

first try and you're you're going to become post malone that's the problem yeah i mean the only thing that i have to really compare that to in my, I guess, you know, I'm an attorney. I practice law. It's like writing a brief, right? So, if I write a brief and I read it, I make sure it doesn't have any spelling errors. I make sure the content's in there. It says what I want it to say. It conveys my argument accurately to the court and i you know again proofread it make sure whatever it's finished and a finished product i can put that down and then look at it the next day and find a bunch of things with it that can be tweaked or perfected do that the next day and that that could go on for in an indefinite period of time but at some point you just got to say look this is what i want it to be that sure it could things be changed about it could could things be better maybe look this is what i want it to be that sure could things be changed about it could could things be better maybe but this is what i want it to be and and it is complete and i i've done my best on it and i think that i think that basic principle again it's it's hard to compare

because like writing a brief is a lot different from doing a podcast a lot different from you know making a song but at the end of the day the day, if you've made the content, you have the conversations you have with someone, you've said the points you want to make, you're giving your audience the information that you want to give them. At some point, it's good enough. Yes, maybe you could tweak tweak a thing here maybe you could tweak a thing there and that's the process you're always going to be doing that but at some point i mean you again like i think we're in agreement on this point you wouldn't you wouldn't be releasing stuff if you if you had to worry about every little you know little thing that could possibly be better look at little nas x now little nas x is huge and has the attention and the budget and the team

to be able to work on every single little detail at the time and have unlimited resources and he can drop it and it can be what he wants when he drops it and like people can help him stay to a timeline in that way because he's also you know he's he's a little bit more on this planet than like kanye west right but when lil nas was coming up, I feel like a lot of people should know this. People who were on TikTok definitely know this, but like it should be a bigger story than it is. He re-released Lil, he re-released, what's it called? Old Town Road. I think like three different times.

He put it out there and then he kept iterating on it later. Like once he got reaction to it, like, oh, we don't like that all right i'm gonna fix that i think he did it three times and the third time was the full it started to blow up third time was the full charm because he put billy ray cyrus on it and that he saw like oh i can actually blend into country with this right i can literally get a country icon on here and he did it but like he put out a version a little bit went a little bit he pushed it on every platform he dm'd everyone on every platform and then he put out i don't know if it was six months later seven months later put out another one that he cleaned up then people were like oh fuck with this then it's it kind of

went viral ish and then he said billy Ray Cyrus. He had the credibility to do it. If he had just sat there and be like, yo, I'm going to put this out. Well, that's perfect. Sitting in his mom's house. You never get that, and then you never get Lil Nas X. Exactly. Yeah, I just think a lot of artists need to be more willing to accept a very loose version of perfection. You know, I'm not saying that they shouldn't strive for perfection.

I think anything you do, whether it's writing a legal brief, whether it's making a podcast, whether it's making a song, you got to strive for perfection and be proud of what you're doing and be complete and, like, you know, don't half-ass it. Don't throw something out there. But yeah, I mean, look, like perfection is a very fleeting concept. Like you're not, like, you know, it's not really possible. You can always improve shit. Exactly.

It's a, you're right, it's a concept rather than a definition. Exactly. There's nothing, like, you could look at the greatest things ever made i could go through hendrix work and i could find things where i'm like oh he could he could have done that chord right there but you know he's hendrix at the time he put together all these crazy things and and we're just like oh my god that's unbelievable and yet you you can still be like oh he could have done that you look at steve. Like he could have done a few things different on the iPhone. We know that now because we have them.

And there were some things we have now that were technologically available back then. They didn't put in there, right? Iterate. Iterate over time. That's what people do. And like the legal brief example is actually great because that there is a lot of and this gets overlooked there is a lot of creative work in that in the sense that in that in when when you're a lawyer you are held to the constraints of the law and what is needed like what the guidelines are to write something like a brief there's like a page limit like stuff like that it's very it's a lot more it's there's a lot more of like a box of fine

like strict guidelines i'd say obviously than what you're doing, than creating a song. But, you know, the parallels are there. And that's the thing. Those constraints allow for the fact that any creativity you can do to work within those constraints can stand out more. Because people are held into this box and most people are like, all right, well, that's what we got to do. But if you can do that one, like, and I mean this, if you can put that one sentence at that one place. Dude, when I legally write, I always have thesaurusist.com up because I'm very, like, I'm a lawyer. I like what I do.

I'm proud of the work that I do and I'm a good lawyer, I believe. And I think I write persuasively and I'm a good lawyer, I believe. And I think I write persuasively, and I think I argue persuasively. I think the exact word matters. Like, there'll be times where I'm like, this is like, sure, this is saying what I wanted to say, but I can be more precise with my language. So, I'm thesaurus.com i always like i'm always like finding this is the exact all right this exact word and i know that's something that's like like it's very sounds like very nerdy and like very like oh like a lawyer like like that's such like tiny little trivial minutiae but to me i think that's what separates like a good legal

writer and like a persuasive writing from just like from from like just okay persuasive writing 100 man that's why all these companies not like literally are incorporated in a state like delaware because their court of chancery i mean the process you can also get there very quickly so like apple google all these places they're delaware corporations they're legal corporations through there because they can a get to that court very quickly without all the legal bullshit and hoops. But B, the judges on that court write opinions that they can set precedent. And the judges are incredible writers. Like the people who are judging these cases, to your point, you're a lawyer on the other

end. You don't think that in a big league place like that, like that's a commercially, that's the biggest league in the country. You don't think that like, they're going to see a lawyer write something up and if it's on their kind of standard, they're not going to be like, oh shit, that slaps. Oh, yes, they are. Yeah, but I would say, I mean, sure, the Delaware Court of Chancery, it's definitely a superior business court, but I would say i mean sure the the delaware court of chancery it's a definitely a superior business court but i would say that that is i mean i work for a judge in you know montgomery county i clerk for a judge um that's any judge and who actually is doing their job is going to absolutely appreciate that and notice that um and again it's one of those things where it's it's like sure if you have a losing argument say you have just like a case you just you're or whatever the issue is that you're

deciding and it's just like a loser you you could write the best brief in the world put the fanciest language whatever you're not going to win that probably but if it's a lot of times it's not it's not a clear loser and that's the whole point of you being in court and hashing it out it's very much up to interpretation and that really can make a difference and that's that's what i like about my job like i like you know like i get fired up about like all right like how am i gonna convince the judge that we're right you know what i mean and you know it takes a lot of work and you got to be, you know, precise with your language. But I like it. And that's just legal writing.

You know, open court argument, that's a whole other story too. There are two different pieces. But there's also, you know, there's a ton of planning that goes into that and how you're going to, you know, attack the issue. That's anything in life man that's like one thing you realize is just like you absolutely have to whether it's you know uh an oral argument whether it's a deposition whether it's you know you're examining a witness at trial like you got a plan you just have to be prepared and you have to there's always there's all these like sayings like there's three arguments that you make the argument that you wanted to make the argument that you made and

the argument you should have made um and that's that's kind of like a legal saying everyone says that whatever and that's the truth though because it's like every time you you have uh you know like a hearing on like emotion or something you have a plan of like all right here's what i'm gonna say when you get up there you always say it slightly different you know what i mean because it's it's like contemporaneous you like most arguments you're not like reading from a thing and I'm just talking about like let's say an argument on like um like emotion like I'm not saying like a a trial necessarily but um you always do it different and then after you're always like shit I should have said this and like it's true every time without fail you're always like, shit, I should have said this. And like, it's true. Every time without failure, you're like, shit, I know I would have, I know I would have won if I said this, you know what I mean? And it's, it's just one of those things. But the, the one thing that you can

control is your preparation. You just have to be prepared. You have to know what you're going to say. You have to have a game plan. Cause if you don't have a game plan and like, I've seen lawyers just like flounder and get like totally steamrolled and it's not because they're not talented because they probably are they just don't prepare what was that quote the three things the argument you wanted to make did make and then the argument you wanted to make the argument you made and the argument you should have made see i wish like and you do that for your career and you're so into it and you're so fired up about it which is you know a lot of people go through jobs in life that they don't like and it's great when i see somebody there's a lot of shit about my job which i i'm like all right this is boring as fuck sure but it's anything yeah yeah that's anything and it's like nah i'm pretty i'm pretty

satisfied with my job yeah but something like that, you know, you're so into it, and you're into that preparation with it. That's that one thing, though, that you pointed out, where it's the argument you wanted to make, the argument you made, and then the argument you should have made. Think about, like, if more people thought about that in life with everything it's not just arguments it's it's with anything you do down to the most important things in your life like your family or the people raising my kid well i wanted my kid to turn out like this you turn out like this but damn you should have turned out like this and so was i prepared did i did i do enough did i did you know like we regret we regret the things that we say but we also regret the things that we don't say because we don't think about like oh should i say this right now to this person or these people because we have

this thing going on whatever it is like a failure of communication but then i'm always interested when and it can come back to a lot of careers, but it's just exacerbated in something like law where the job is literally to like communicate the point where it's like, you can see people not talking about you, but you can see other people who are like great at that job and everything they're great at in that job. They don't pay attention to in their own life. And they're horrible at it in their own life. Cause they're just so into that world. And it's a similar thing to me that we're like we were talking about with creatives they get so stuck in like that one thing that everything else can fall by the wayside yeah

yeah that's that's definitely i mean that and that's not even law that's just like everything you see people that are like how do they like function in their job when you see like you'll go to their house like i'm not naming any names but like we all know people that are like will have like a high like like a high paying career high like a high profile job or they'll objectively achieve success in whatever their career is and then their house is like a mess or like they're they're just like you know they just like are like they can't function as an adult and you're like how do you how are you able to like be like a doctor but you can't like you know take in your

mail or whatever it is you know what i mean and you can't like you know clean your house or whatever the hell it is different strokes different folks i don't know yeah it's it is weird when things don't carry over but also people get so focused on what they prioritize and I do this in my own life with some things there are really simple things that just fall by the wayside it could be something as simple as

you gotta do this on your to-do list for the bills or something like that and then three weeks later you're like well that's been sitting there and i haven't done it it's not like i sat there every day and said i'm not gonna do that but it's like these other things that i prioritized got in the way that i could see it out of the corner of my eye and be like yeah i'll get to that yeah i'll get to that yeah i'll get to that and then one hour leads to the next one day leads to the next and you don't get to it and like

you got to check yourself on that stuff i try to you gotta i i mean so i'm inherently like disorganized with a lot of stuff i'm i'm kind of like like a little bit all over the place with stuff but like dude you just gotta you you have to like check yourself with certain stuff like you just have to you can't like as far as you know some people for them it's like you got to make your bed every morning i'm not a like make your bed guy whatever you know if i'm like you know if i'm like if i know i'm like having people over or something whatever i'll make my bed whatever maybe you cut that whatever that's good that's good um whatever but i don't fucking make my bed if it's just gonna be me chilling um but there is certain stuff like you just gotta like you gotta be cleanly you gotta

like you you have to be an adult you have to be an adult and some people just don't you've been an adult down in miami too it's impressive yeah it's impressive there's a lot of good shit going on down there it's fun man it's fun it's hurricane season right now so that's that's why i dipped up here man for real you're loving it though uh yeah i don't i mean i think i'm down there for like for good because that's just where my career is uh i fucking like boats a lot and like there's a lot of boats it's like a very it's like a city on the water and there's like a lot of maritime activities uh i like boats i like good weather i like my job uh yeah i like the culture down there it's everyone just like it's just more of a like i'll give uh an example i worked at a law firm in philly right for like a like over a year a little bit over a year and it was like a very i don't

want to i legitimately like the people that i worked with and i'm not trying to like you know disparage anyone there but it was just a different environment so like everyone it was like all right you gotta wear like your button-up shirt and like your dress slacks your dress shoes every day like it was like we're a we're a proper law firm um you know you come in whatever you dress this way uh the partners were your typical like partners they were just like like old white guys now again there's nothing wrong with that and they were nice guys like whatever you know and but there was like limited diversity and it's just like a lot of just like old white guys who like weren't that like fun my first day at my my law firm in miami like i went out with like four

of the partners and like we went to this like sick restaurant right on the bay and like it's my first day i'm there like a few hours and like already two of the partners are having like a contest of who can drink the most martinis and like they drank a lot of martinis like we racked up like a enormous bill like an obscene bill and like i had multiple drinks because that's what the partners were doing and it was just like it was very chill and it was like a cool environment and like it's just like uh everyone's on kind of if you live in miami so i'll say this if you were an adult living in miami you like to like somewhat party and have fun yeah i'm not better i'm not saying that everyone in miami is like like you know going to clubs and all that shit,

but you're just in a city where it's built on that. You have more of an affinity for that, or you're not against it, because if you were against it, you wouldn't live in Miami. If you didn't like going out and having a good time, you wouldn't live in Miami. So everyone, I don't care if you're a major partner of a law firm or you're like me who's in his 20s, barely, and you just moved to Miami, people are going out on weeknights and stuff like that, but it's just more entwined in the culture down there, and I like that. I think it's also the weather, too. Things are outside, and people are more festive in that type of environment.

It's more accepted. But, dude, here's the thing with Miami that's different than Philly. And also, there are so many things that I love about Philly, also, that Miami doesn't have. And I could talk about that. Yeah, like what? The food scene in Philly, I love. Philly's got good food. Yeah, like...

It's not like New York, but it's got good food. True. I mean, I'm very biased because, like, I'm staying in Airbnb in South Philly right now. And, like, I have a house in South Philly as well. And it's just, I think that's the best food neighborhood. You have all these great pizza places, the Italian market. You have all these, you'll get a great, I went to this deli, some random deli in South Philly the other day, and it's a phenomenal,

I got a club sandwich or whatever, and was like an amazing club sandwich I've been back like twice since it's I don't know I for whatever reason I think South Philly particularly has great food like Italian food whatever but in Philly you can't like if I want to go out right now on a Monday night like there's nowhere I'm gonna go that like is gonna be lit in miami there's like a hundred places not a problem yeah not a problem like i would even say like on a wednesday night in philly you're kind of struggling to find like a place that's like popping yeah i i love philly because i grew up around here and it's a it and it's a great spot. It's fun to visit and go out in.

But I think once you go to Miami, or if you're like me and you came up through New York, Philly's a town. I mean, it's not... Nah, dude, Philly's a city. It is... When you are really looking at it, comparatively speaking, I look at Philly and it's a big town. And I'll put an exact definition on that. When I walk into any one of the five to six main bars that every fucking person known to man goes to,

because those are the ones that people go to on a Saturday night in Philly, I am guaranteed to see someone from every walk and generation of my life a representative each one in there which if that happens once in a while like when i visit great very cool but what i like about new york and what i like about a place like miami is like you can blend in you can go places you you you can you can go to every bar in that city and you're gonna you're gonna meet a whole bunch of people you've never met in your life you know it's nice to run into people once in a while and it makes it more fun when you do that but like there's just there's not the diversity of options in philly like there is in in new york and in miami as well yeah man what i will say though is like i've actually

probably become more disciplined in miami about like going out and shit because quite frankly like if you're not like you'll just i mean you'll become like an alcoholic or something like because literally you have like every single thursday friday saturday like you could go out uh i've had friends visit me, like, damn near every weekend I've been there, and it's, like, it's crazy. You just have to, like, draw boundaries and be like, I don't go out on Sunday. Like, I do not go out on Sundays, like, at all.

I don't care what you tell me, like, is happening on Sunday. I'm not going out on Sunday. And that's also the one thing that I've kind of realized. Like, I've kind of been, like been doing some introspective shit, whatever. I don't have FOMO as much in Miami because it's like no matter what you tell me, you're like, oh, man, there's this sick thing or this sick whatever. I'm like, dude, all right, it's going to be just as sick next weekend. There will be another one.

Yeah. It's like seriously, try and tell me something that's like, right, like, it's going to be just as sick next weekend. There will be another one. Yeah. It's like, seriously, like, try and tell me, like, something that's like, oh, man, you can't. You can't. Like, if you don't go here, like, you'll never get this cool experience again. It's like, it's just not true. It's like, all right, next week's going to be just as lit. Like, and the weekend after that is going to be just as lit. And it's going to continue to be lit.

And, like, i'm not really like yeah so it's like it's a honestly a weird uh a weird dynamic that like but i i think if you live there that's how you have to be because if again like if you're not then you're just like you're just gonna spend a bunch of money and go out now not that like there hasn't been like there's like a there's like a two months period there where i was just like going out every like friday thursday friday and saturday and i don't regret it again not a sunday sunday is where i draw my lines don't go i never dude i never understood sunday i never understood sunday fun days of college it's a big thing it's a big dude it's a big thing at college it's a big thing in a lot of places the sunday fun day i'm like

what are you doing this is like the one day a week where you need to like get your body right so that you can be like a functioning human the first few days like me and some of my friends we joke about it like our sundays are like yo let's spend like 60 on some food that's really should be like 15 on grubhub and just like not move from our couch. Yeah. That's my Sunday. Like a lot of times. I agree. But what about like, cause you went down there, what, July, August, 2020? Yeah. About a year. Okay. So you went down there, what I would categorize like people, there were some people that started going down really like right after you like in the fall you you were there it's kind of crazy like i didn't think i didn't like plan

or whatever to like plan i didn't try and ride a wave or whatever like because i literally plotted that move for a while dude you were the wave i was the way it was you i'm the way you'll play waves right now dude well we can't play that on youtube but you were the wave that's what i'm saying people followed you down there yeah yeah man all these tech companies followed me down there but that happened the tech thing i mean there were a few outliers like the eight sleep guys like mateo the founder of the company he moved out he was one of the first ones he moved down there are you slanging eight sleep right now i'm slanging eight sleep a little bit that was a subtle a subtle push there use the code trendifier in your bio or in my bio description let's uh get a hundred dollars off your order at eight sleep you won't regret it anyway thank you for that but yeah like they were down there and

there were a few other outliers who were down there but people didn't start moving until that tweet on de December 4th. And we talked about that last time you were in here because it was like underway. It was crazy what was happening. And at the time, we were, I don't know, four weeks into it. And I'm like, and you were saying the same thing, like, let's see if this lasts or whatever. But it, by all appearances to me, it did. I mean, people, I've seen it all spring, like talking with Anthony Riley and Baker and all those guys at SOAR.

Like, they're locked in on who's going where. And they're like, dude, everyone, everyone's going down there. And now we're getting deeper into the summer. And I'm seeing, like, people have stayed in the summer. And that was, like, the one thing. I'm like, ah, they're all going to come up north. And some of them did. But, like, you know, they have a shore house or something. But people are lasting in the summer. And that was like the one thing. I'm like, ah, they're all going to come up north. And some of them did. But like, you know, they have a shore house or something.

But people are lasting in the summer down there. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, dude, how is this not going to continue to be the new tech hub of the world? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's obviously a massive change. I think people are realizing that you don't have to be in silicon valley i think that there are economic benefits i think there are government regulation benefits to being down there i think that people are just eager to create a new culture uh like tech culture because i mean silicon valley that culture is already established like it's it's kind of known

what the scene is there this is kind of like paving a new frontier, I guess. And, and as far as, you know, new tech companies, uh, you know,

not taking over, but making their, you know, staking out their, their presence. Yes. Um, and so it's,

yeah, it's an opportunity to be part of a new wave. So, I mean, yeah, it's, it's definitely, I think it's going to continue.

I think I, I saw something the other day that, um, Miami had the most new tech jobs in like Q1 of 2021 or something like that. They got 750 new tech jobs. I believe, I think I'm quoting that right. Whatever.

It could, could be different, but whatever. Uh, but it was the number one city for tech job growth. Q1, 2021. I mean, Austin's also like blowing up, but that's, I mean, could be different but whatever uh but it was number one city for tech job growth q1 2021 i mean austin's also like blown up but that's i mean that's kind of been a thing i believe right

they had a big leg up yeah and and that's the thing like miami just entered the race and they i mean it's blown up seemingly every bit as much and a lot of that suarez man suarez is unreal like he's not your the mayor of miami francis suarez he's not your typical politician at all he's like such he's he's i guess he's a republican but he's this very apolitically kind of guy and he's just you don't even hear about that he's just saying like hey what what can we do to get you to come here and and what can i do to help you stay it's pretty cool yeah and um have you seen like the speeches he's been giving about cuba recently he's been getting real fired up about cuba i wanted to talk about this with you how much how much of like the

cuba situation are you aware about so to be honest it started popping off popping off i mean all right i want to be respectful with what i'm saying actually i mean cuba obviously has been under communist rule for like a long time however the situation reached a boiling point within miami with we're talking like protests on Calle Ocho, and that's like A Street, Little Havana. It's like a famous street. It reached a boiling point, honestly, like right as soon as I came back to Philly. Oh, right, right, right.

So within the last like three weeks, I've been here like two weeks. But yeah, man, it's a situation that um i mean i i think most cuban americans living in florida feel the same way and they just they hate the communism they hate the communist regime in cuba um and they think that it it should be uh completely eliminated and they're trying to you know their their power to the people and it's uh you know it's people are very passionate about it's i mean it's pretty so i guess we i i think most people i take for granted that most people know what's going on so cuba's a a communist country right under under a dictatorship it was i mean uh what is it raul castro was the last castro that was in power now he's not he's not the president now he's like he's like the emeritus

it's middell diaz canal i think is his name yeah um either way it's it's not a very not a very free country at all and um there's been recently the covid uh 19 pandemic has really put a strain on that country as far as like getting medical supplies as far as like getting food and shit like that it's been like horrible and like so what's interesting is like i've been to cuba which a lot of people can't say that when did you go to cuba i didn't know that oh yeah i went like a couple years ago uh i went on like a family trip to to havana yeah that's that's actually pretty cool it is i don't even know that that's like a lot of a lot of people a lot of cubans in south florida haven't been to cuba as recently as i have which is odd and um I mean I

said that to some of like my co-workers and like they're like dude like that's cool that you like enjoy Cuba but like that's not Cuba and I agree with that and I respect that and I understand that and I'm like I'm not trying to say like I mean I just wanted to go look it was like Obama opened it up for a little and it was like cuba's like a beautiful place i've always wanted to like oh it seemed cool so i went i do honestly i do too yeah it's it looks i do i have a feeling cute like power to the people man free cuba bro but um basically so like i was talking with one of my co-workers and he was like we had a conversation i showed him the pictures of cuba and he told me, like, yeah, I'm from Cuba.

Like, my whole family's there. Like, family still lives there. And, like, he was showing me pictures of, like, he's, like, here's the real Cuba. He showed me a picture of, like, a supermarket. And it was just literally, like, nothing on the shelves, and it was just, like, some toilet paper and, like, some water. And it was, like, an empty supermarket. And he's, like, this is literally, like like what my family has to deal with and go through and it's like it's kind of like one of those where it's like whoa like you know you kind of you show i remember

the picture they showed me it was it was kind of just like damn it's like it's pretty like remarkable when you go down the down the street here and you can go to acne and you can get like literally whatever you want you know what i mean where did you get food when you were like how long were you there for and so i was only there for like three days so okay so like what's it like are you going to restaurants are they yeah i mean lights on so i went i i went on a cruise right i forget which cruise line it was um big cruise guy i'm not a big cruise guy really you're my family's law guy i like so i like maritime law i'm not an anti-cruise guy but it's not like i'd like to just go go to i would have liked to just go to cuba but um it was a little more complicated at the time because you had to get like a you had to like go on like an art trip or like a whatever type trip to to just

go there so i we were with the family my brother was about to go into the army so we're just like you know what we'll just do a family cruise there like we'll do it um so yeah i mean i would go to rest there was restaurants there but like the thing is they were very uh there was like the restaurants that you go to if you're an american tourist in havana which is like obviously not representative of like cuba at large yeah so like i i thought the restaurants were great and like the food was great but it was like it was obviously like kind of bullshit but the cruise was like parked there so you were staying on the cruise during this yeah yeah okay yeah but so i mean and here's the thing so me and my brother were like young and like we want to do shit so like the first day we're there we're like all right we just like get a cab and we're like like take us to

a beach like not not here so we go we went in like an hour-long cab ride and went to like a beach where like we're the only like white guys there and we're like that was cool and fun and like you know it was a very you know i've i've like pictures of it it was a cool fun time and we went did you talk with any other people i don't speak spanish but did anyone like try to yeah i mean we're bullshitting we're bullshitting with like you know people like we went to like uh we went to like a bar and a club a couple nights like there was again we tried to not go there was a spots like if you've ever been on a cruise if you like don't leave where the ship is like you're just gonna just gonna be with other like yeah

like american dumb americans and like that's not that's not the way to travel however and i'm not saying that like i i didn't really i still don't think i can say that i i like experienced cuba like i think that would be a blatant misrepresentation however we did try we we like paid cab drivers to just like take us to like a cool spot like 40 minutes away and we went to to spots where there was more European tourists and shit. But again, I'm not like Mr. Cuba. You know what I mean? Right. No, no.

I don't want to overstate it, but you mentioned you went to a bar or club or something. What's a Cuban bar or club like? We went to this cool spot. Again, it was like mainly, it was like some cuban people there but mainly like european tourists whatever um and there was like a lot of dude cuba's very poor like that's it's incredibly poor so that's the thing so like like people are not like in general again i don't know i've never lived in cuba in general people are not just like at like fancy bars like on a well we were probably there on a

weeknight or something i don't remember but there was live music there was uh like you know we're drinking you know mojitos it was i mean i have i have videos and pictures of it it was fun but um yeah i mean it was made i would say it was largely European tourists. It was, like, a European tourist, like, spot, which was, again, better than, like, just Americans, but, like, still not, you know, didn't get the full Cuba experience. And so right now what's happened, I guess maybe, like, a month ago, something like that,

is that, as you mentioned, they had all these shortages. I think part of it was they couldn't get access to the vaccines, too. month ago something like that is that as you mentioned they had all these shortages i think part of it was they couldn't get access to the vaccines too there's the economy is even worse than it usually is which it's always bad and so there's been just straight up regular citizens out in the streets calling for an overthrow of the regime and the regime has been steadfast in saying fuck you and raising like their national national guard and telling people we're still in control. Yeah, you pretty much summed it up. But what's wild is it started popping off in South Florida, like in Miami.

People are jumping on boats and loading boats up with supplies and heading to Cuba. That's got gotta be dangerous. It depends. Cuba is 90 miles away. So if it's, if it's calm weather and you have a big enough boat, I don't think it's dangerous. What about when you get there though? So that's,

that's the part where that's like just blatantly illegal. So you can't just like go unmonitored in a boat to Cuba. Like you, you just can't do that that's illegal there's like immigration laws and like obviously again i'm not like hip on the exact immigration laws but i know that cuba's status and its relations with the u.s like you can just hop on a boat and go to the bahamas people do that all the time it's 50 miles from uh miami to bimini bahamas people just like get on a boat and go to bahamas and then when you come back you just gotta like within 48 hours i think you gotta go to you you self report you gotta go to customs and say hey i was in bahamas i'm coming

back and they're like okay cool right so can you do it the other way around like i'm from the bahamas to the u.s though um i i think you'd have to i think you'd probably have to again this is a question i probably asked some like some of my friends in the coast guard i think you probably have to let like the coast guard or something know um but i mean i know i know you when you get here you can't just like show up and be like i'm here you have i have arrived even if you're a citizen obviously you have to go through customs right so obviously if you're not a citizen and you're like a foreign national i you i think you got to go probably right through customs um i don't know that's easy enough to look up i just don't know i don't know the procedure of that but i know bahamian people are allowed to come to the

u.s yeah so you know i'm sure there's a way yeah that's interesting but um yeah go ahead anyway so yeah you can just go to bahamas and come back like if you're a u.s citizen bahamas back you can't just go to cuba and come back that's that's just not that is just not a uh a tenable situation so what they're doing is i think some people are just fucking like just going to cuba and like saying fuck it catch me if you can which is which is illegal you get shot there it's a it's a dictatorship maybe but i think i think the theory is like power in numbers and like you know yes like i don't know the cuba i don't know the cuban navy like i again these are all like these are all questions where it's like,

yeah, it's kind of remarkable. But a lot of people are then, they're being a little bit more reasonable in the sense that they're like, alright, they're going 15 nautical miles, which is, we're getting into international water now. I think on your last pod

I said it was 12 nautical miles. It's 15 nautical miles is the international water but if you stay in international water you could technically like rendezvous with someone on like a cuban boat and like give them supplies and like whatever you're trying to give them there's also like people on boats that are just like going into like international waters and like supporting from like they're like lighting off fireworks and like supporting from afar um but i think there's like i think the legal way to do it is to just like ron did me to rendezvous point and then just like supply them with supplies but like the coast guard had to make a statement like the uh what i guess it

was the the key west uh sector i think that's what it's called i think they had to make a statement of like yo don't go to cuba and do this it's i'm looking up some just as you're speaking because i was asking a question that's like a little bit exact because i'm curious about like you're mentioning the rendezvous points and stuff and i'm just thinking about communication like i've never gotten a phone call from cuba to my knowledge right like and then you think about the fact that the internet's there but these countries that are dictatorships block off a lot of the internet so i was googling i think you can make phone calls to cuba i'm i guess you can but like you don't you don't think about that you know what i mean like so in i'm just reading i'm reading

this on july 29 2019 cuba legalized private Wi-Fi in homes. In 2019, you could get private Wi-Fi. Think about that. In homes and businesses, although one must obtain a permit to have access, as of December 6, 2018, Cubans can have full mobile Internet access provided by Cuba's telecommunications company. Did you see what rubio was um rubio was saying we should the u.s should deploy these like wi-fi balloons or drones or whatever to

to support uh cubans access to wi-fi that was that answers my question that was one of his um things that he said he was saying that we have the capability just to like deploy these like i don't know if they're balloons or drones but like some like like mini satellites basically like like lower satellites to just like help the cubans get uh drones wouldn't make sense i feel something though something along those lines i haven't seen that but that's that's a great idea and i and that it is crazy and it's even crazier when you consider it's a this one happens to be a literal island only 90 miles off the coast of the united states of america you know like so close but it's crazy cuba is beautiful and here's the thing that that's like shitty like well first of

all i mean people are absolutely like they're absolutely oppressed it's like they're impoverished um you could i mean you could point fingers at like is that the u.s's fault with our you know strict policies towards cuba um maybe however at the end of the day it's a authoritarian dictatorship communist you know regime that's like absolutely like restricting their rights of their people and enforcing it with violence and like in the streets there's people getting shot in the streets like in cuba right now there's videos like all over of like like cuban authorities i don't know if they're police if they're national guard like again i'm just i don't know the the details of all this but i see all the

videos like i follow these like miami instagram accounts and it's just like all day it's just like crazy videos and like some videos it's kind of wild like i don't even get what's going on the cops will join in some videos like they'll join with the people and be like yeah like in protest with the people because i guess the cops are different than like like the nationals i know what you're talking about i've seen that yeah i like to be honest it's it's like kind of tricky to follow well it's not really tricky to follow like i understand what's going on it's like they're fed up they can't get access to food and water and medical supplies and they

can't and they're you know it's reached a boiling point but it's uh it's just it's just really uh it's interesting and i definitely like i'm team free cuba man free cuba all all day because it's a beautiful it's a beautiful country it's in a prime position to succeed economically before castro cuba had some of the highest standard of living in all of the caribbean it was a beautiful prosperous country and it's like and it's just like it has that potential like i think immediately if if if the current regime is you know replaced with like a democracy but who's uh whose place is it to do that and this these are all like so they're very tricky political questions they're hard questions but there's there are simple there are simple

definitions though a simple definition is that the current regime is disgusting and has been in power for almost 63 years they took over i think new year's day 1959 but even though that's the case it is a case study in in why or not why how human beings and it's one of many examples are in large groups and large numbers primed for the polar extremes because to your point before cuba was taken over by castro they were this ultimate tourism spot they have this incredible island of of resources and beauty and all these things and i think batista was the guy who i think was a dictator i don't want to say that wrong i think he did technically like have that type of power but it was this you know and had a lot of capitalism to it and people could make money but part of what happened this isn't the full explanation i need to actually go and research

this again because i haven't looked at that in in years but part of it was you had a lot of people getting at the top that one percent getting rich and wealthy off this tourist economy and then you had everyone else who's kind of living you know they weren't like they are now but they were they weren't as well off and there was that push in the pool like wait why do those people have everything and so castro comes in and che guevara and all these people and they're like no we're gonna give we're the people's party we're gonna give power to the people and they use that excitement and that and they were young at the time that fervor to rise to power and create this communism and what happens is people learn that the opposite of what you don't like oftentimes can actually be worse and it is and so by the late 70s

you had all these people i mean they were swimming in some cases, like crazy stories, like they're swimming part of the way from Cuba to Miami to get to refuge. And like you saw it in the movie Scarface, that was like a little side historical part of the plot. You had all these Cuban refugees coming because just two decades later, in that case, they realized, wait, this isn't it. This is not what we're looking for. And yet you see the fact that once you give up power to a small group of people who have the backing of the military and ingrain that and reward that system, that military system, to be able to, you know, continually keep that loyalty, once you allow that to happen, even in a world that moves to open communication and the internet and culture sharing ideas and the blending of borders, so to speak, it doesn't matter.

It can stay in power. And it's amazing to me that now, finally, we are looking at this is really, I'm sure there's been a couple that were somewhat close calls. But this seems like the first one that has enough support from people among the community there who are not scared to actually have a chance to overturn this government. I think so, too. It's like and I think most people kind of get that feeling. And I fucking hope I hope they do, man. I hope they do. Yeah. And it's crazy because you see it culturally here, like the effects of that type of thing.

Trump was not a guy who was, in rhetoric, exactly kind to Hispanic people. And it reflected that way in the polls in 2016 when people voted for him. He didn't get a lot of those votes but pretty much and i have to go look at this again pretty much all the hispanic vote he got in 2016 were all cubans and then by 2020 he loses the election but there were a couple trends there that were really interesting to me because i'm like what and one of them was i think he got like i want to say it was 28% of the Hispanic vote. And it went beyond just Cubans because there are other people from countries that don't

have the same attention or long-term history of that type of regime as Cuba, but have horrible regimes that have left their people in continued economic impairment and everything. There were people that were willing to look past the fact that they probably didn't like the guy at all because trump kind of wasn't exactly kind to a lot of hispanic people but they're like we know what the alternative is and i don't think they're right about this aspect of it but they saw patterns of the alternative in the other side and that's how they made their decision which is very interesting to me i mean that's true for from so i don't want to paint anyone with a broad brush but from my anecdotal experience of like you know i i know a lot of cuban people in miami um and again there are

cuban people that are like you know they're absolutely not support trump and i think it's also kind of a generation a generational thing it is the closer that the closer that you are to the actual you know to actually cuba and to to see all right before and after sorry you got it yeah is it good to see to see like the um maybe let's uh no you're good you're good keep going it's fine the so i'll say this it's i think it's somewhat of a generational thing so i think that um the older cubans that are you know have lived in cuba more recently or are closer to uh cuba and have potentially even seen cuba before um you know the cash flow regime they they are, and again, I'm not

painting anyone with a broad brush. I don't want to, you know, just say things like that, but I'd say they're definitely more, they see the downsides of communism and socialism, and they see the rhetoric on the left, and they're like, no, absolutely not. That destroyed a beautiful country that was my home and I'm not going to support that. Then I'd say there are some, you know, the younger generation of Cubans that are a little less staunch on that and maybe a little bit less, you know, they maybe realize more so that, all right, Joe Biden's not Castro, you know what I mean? And I'm not saying, and I want to be careful with what I'm saying,

because I'm not saying that any Cubans think that Joe Biden is Castro. But I just say that, yeah, I mean, it is, I think, depends on generational differences. But, yeah, I mean, that is absolutely, like, a thing. And I feel like, yeah, if you're, if you're, if you are a Cuban person in Miami, you are aware of that. You're at least, like, you're aware that that's your like like history and culture and heritage and like what what it was and like what happened and like however you choose to vote you're definitely acutely aware of yes of of what happened there so and then how well is that passed down to your point and there's people where it's like you're you're removed from it enough that

you don't you know your parents your grandparents you don't give a shit what they have to say, which is fine. But, like, people learn to repel the smallest patterns of things that they realized are evil. And so they can see evil in things that maybe aren't, you know, and that's fair because we're all built off our experiences. But I think on a separate example of of that that's something i think about a lot that is applicable here you know you look at our society now and how yes we have issues and we need to fix them and we talk about them on the show and and that's that's fine and i i like having those conversations but i do think we take things to extremes and instead of saying like hey we have a system here that has

some good and we need to improve this this and that which is perfectly healthy and fine and what we should do we instead are training ourselves to live in the extremes of no let's tear everything down it's horrible you know you you america like in in our example at home here people will think america is a horrible country that has no business leading anything in the world. All we do is bad, which is a ridiculous assertion in my all neither do I so I want to be very careful how this is heard but you hear people talk about like you know the younger generations don't understand what war is they don't understand what you know having to put your people together and and realize like some shit could go down is like even you know if your parents are at the back end of boomers or the

front end of of the of gen x like they knew what the nuclear drill was as a kid you know they understand they understood that there was there was a small aspect of it that was home and our generations now you know looking at millennials and gen z we've grown up in, you know, maybe until the last couple years here, but we formulated in a utopia where there aren't, you know, there aren't these inherent life and death problems all over the place, that when we do see something that we think could be life and death, right, and in some cases is, even being on small percentage situations in some things we exacerbate those to make them the rule and not a bad exception that needs to be fixed are you talking about wokeness sure but that's one example it's and and well because i don't even know what wokeness means

anymore but i think when we're talking about like how what our country is and what it stands for and what's good about it like i rip our country our government particularly all the time and i'll continue to do that because there are a lot of things that are patterns that i think are disgusting that have long since formed that need to be fixed and cynically i'm not sure they're gonna be but like i can i use this quote all the time i can say that like our government by and large overall is a massive pile of shit but also at the same time say it does still happen to be the best piece of shit on a pile of shit around the world and i'll die on that hill it's better than anything else so like i don't want to accept that but i can look at it that way and i think a lot of people are unwilling to do that and they're also beyond just like the government they're willing to find more

problems in their fellow man rather than the things that make normal people like you and me who aren't in the government or aren't a part of that great not to say people in the government are but you know what i mean yeah i think the government's a pile of shit it is i think the government i i think um there's just a lot of inefficiencies in the government and it's just hard to it's hard to hold people accountable and like i think to a large extent and i'm not trying to get left or right but i i mean i just think that when you have something that exists in a lot of senses, purely to like support itself, I feel I truly do feel like, like a lot of what government a lot of government's existence is just to kind of keep the machine going and support, support itself, keep give keep people having jobs and just like okay

it's supporting itself if you ever go to like the go to like uh you could go to the department of justice website you go to the department of state website and you look at all these like office of this office of that office of this seriously like i'm i think honestly you should like it might even be useful to go like go to the Department of State right now and look at all the fucking offices we have. And you don't even know what any of them do.

U.S. Department of State. Okay. Where would you even find that on here? Like... I love how it says business at the top. Bureaus and offices okay bureau secretary of state deputy secretary of state arms control and international security civilian security

then click them okay economic growth energy and environment because then then it'll be its individual offices holy shit office of the chief economist office of science tax office of global partnerships bureau of oceans and international environment okay let me turn this back on you what makes this different from a major corporation and i'll even give an example what type of great innovation this bank of america brings in the world because we're losing it's it's different from a great corporation because we're losing a fuck ton of money every year it actually is fair that's very fair that's very fair but like the but the same thing happens i'm i'm i'm not painting you know corporations as bad as the government i'm saying they're an offshoot of the same machine i used to look through the job postings at bank of america and i would look through active

employees i knew no offense to them they're out there getting a job, making a living. It's not their fault they took the job. But I'd be like, what the fuck does this person do? It's not their fault that the job was created. But what the fuck is this job? This job was created by someone who read a management textbook and said, oh, I think we could create a job on that. So let's do it. There's no purpose to it. You know, there's a lot of that. And I think it there's no purpose to it you know there's a lot of that and i think it's interesting you bring this up because yeah everything's top down and it stems from the fact that the government has been created to get bigger over time and to create a reason to sustain themselves sustain themselves and create more needs for more different types of people of all

backgrounds to have to come in to do jobs that don't fucking matter. Yeah, and it's just like, look, I'm not saying that we shouldn't have a government. I'm not saying that the government shouldn't take an active role in doing things for the collective good.

Because there's some people that might say, oh no, anything that infringes on an individual freedom or whatever would be a non-good purpose and you should you know do away with that i've taken political science i made it in political science and we had to i had to read literature excuse me i had to read like an anarchy textbook and i had to read like a like a complete um you know basically like a like a socialist uh textbook and these were not textbook, rather. They were written by certain authors that were on total opposite viewpoints. And there's clear, good takeaways from either side.

Really. And I'm not trying to be one of those guys that doesn't have an opinion. I have my opinion for what it's worth. I probably lean a little right for certain things. I definitely do um technically though i'm right now i'm a registered democrat you know so there's like a lot of i'm a registered democrat because i just hated trump i just hated trump couldn't vote for trump so i went democrat but

but i generally lean right on the role of government however i think there's certain like collective action things that an individual there's no incentive for a person to do that so i believe a lot in incentive right so i think incentive dictates human behavior i think uh humans are rational uh free-thinking people that act in their own self-interest they which is rational for someone to do. It is irrational for you to act in the interest of the greater good when there's no benefit to you, right? So a small example I like to use of this is

if you support small business or whatever and don't want to see Walmart or whatever take over, then fine, you go to Joe like joe's hardware store and buy like your your stuff or then you go to like steve's you know whatever produce but like you're spending a bunch more money and going on 10 different trips to buy all this stuff whereas you can just spend a lot less money and go to walmart and while you may, while that is in your own best interest, it might not be in the best interest of the collective good and the collective economy, whatever. And that's just, I'm presupposing a lot of things there, but that's a clear example where

it's just like, it's just way cheaper for you to just do this one thing. The environment, that's a, that's a perfect example of that as well. It is on an individual basis individuals don't have really an incentive to to do a lot of things that might be beneficial for the environment that they don't have an incentive to you know it costs a lot more money to get like solar panels instead of just paying your electric bill so why would they get solar panels it costs you know like recycling, the effort used to be, you used to have to go to your local municipal, like, you know, whatever, like waste place and like individually sort your bottles. So, like no one recycled. Now it's a little bit easier. It's a little different.

But I think there's certain areas where government actually can help and can make a difference in those instances where there's no incentive to act for the greater good. So I actually do kind of believe in the government regulating certain things when it comes to the environment, because I just don't think corporations act in self-profit, right? They act for their own self-profit. There's certain things where unless the government says, you can't do this, you can't do that, that corporations, it's always going to be cheaper to just do the thing that's good for them, but bad for everyone else. And that's on an individual basis, a corporate basis. And I do think that certain laws like that and the government should play a role in certain things like that. I absolutely believe that. But to what extent do we need the government to have the massive control and reach that it has today?

I don't know. I don't think this is your intention with what you're just saying right there. But in my mind, you're bringing up the libertarian versus leftist argument. And I like this because i disagree with both so in a very very quick synopsis this is generalized in some things but you'll see like the hardest core libertarians would be like the government is evil get rid of pretty much all of it if all people are allowed to be free everyone will be free and it'll infect around the world and we'll live in a utopia that's not possible because guess what there's inherent evil in mankind outside of our borders too as well. And like that just doesn't

work. Then on the other side, you'll see leftists be like they want the government and everything in their life because no one, whether it be corporations or the individual has any ability to make a decision for them for themselves. And I'll even hear all the time when I'm talking with people who I would describe as leftists, they will repeat the line like it's creed that the government's job is to protect me. That, when stretched to everything that can mean, that should send a shiver up your spine. It does for me. So I don't like either of their arguments. I appreciate the fact that on the libertarian side, it comes from a place of they have faith in people, which is a positive. I think it's a little, as I said, exaggerated misplace, but they also,

they want freedom. I like that. So I like the motive for why they think what they think but to your point somebody's got to have the power man and like this has come up now on a couple podcasts recently and it's as old as time and in a lot of ways in this country it's a part of the story but it's it's so relevant to today because of things like what we're seeing with the tech companies especially like an amazon who are just monopolizing businesses left and right, or industries left and right. You know, you look at Standard Oil. That, look, whether or not, I'm not going to say it was the cleanest job, because it was a government doing it. And, you know, oil is still very much an oligopoly from the companies they created. But what they did is they split that up into all these entities,

and they took away the opportunity for someone to basically take over the world. There comes a point where these guys, you want to talk about it with a Jeff Bezos today, or like a John D. Rockefeller back then, where when they're in the private sector like that, they cross the point from which it's about doing good versus it's a game now. I love what you just said, because I'm going to talk about a point I believe strongly in. So I believe capitalism is the best system. Is it perfect? No. There are a lot of flaws with capitalism. Let's take an example. We all know, like, let's use Comcast, like cable as an example, right? So, and I talked about this, you know, previously, I think incentives drive behavior, right? uh economy a company is incentivized to provide services that people want and they're incentivized

to provide good customer service good service so for instance if you're a business in the united states or in a capitalist economy and you do not provide good service you'll go out of business so and we can we do we agree on that we can agree on that 100% I'm just this is great keep going yeah so let's look at a company like Comcast they're big they're huge they have some of the worst rated customer service of all time such so much so that they kind of, in my view, defy principles of capitalism a little bit. Because everyone fucking hates Comcast. You want your cable installed, whatever.

They're not there within the, they give you like a 10 hour time window. They're never there. They're always late. They're always doing a shitty job. I mean, I think they've gotten better in recent years maybe um but like maybe not even comcast but just like cable companies and shit like that but you don't have a fucking choice because you got to get the cable so there are companies and businesses and industries that kind of don't align with capitalism and incentives should in an ideal capitalist economy like a company like comcast

should go out of business or they should be incentive us to perform better or a competitor should overtake them but that doesn't happen so i do believe in certain anti-trust provisions like like um and and for those of you who don't really know what that means, it's basically just like anti-monopoly. You know, one company just having control. And there are antitrust laws in this country. And I think that, you know, I think that that's a good thing. And I think that what you said about Amazon and Jeff Bezos, these companies just getting so big and so motivated by by profit you can be so big at a certain point that you're kind of not susceptible to the the safeguards of capitalism right too big

to fail is the line that people have talked about i wanted to avoid that phrase why well because i don't think that's i think that conflates a point um because and i don't also think that that's necessarily true right because i i think that you can still if you look at uh certain of these banks they they did in essence in my opinion fail they were just given bailouts so they didn't fail because well actually let's attack the root cause of that why were they given bailouts because they were given bailouts because they were so big that if they failed they pulled down everyone else because they had grown so big so the government was they were they were forced to do that sure um and again you have to weigh your options there is it is capitalism is true capitalism worth so much that you allow the entire economy to collapse probably not but i i don't know i don't like the too big to fail

rhetoric because i think at any given time let's look at like some of the i mean we could go to major huge major corporations that have that have failed i mean you'll go like uh let's let's think of you know let's blockbuster is one that comes to example that it had a month it had it was the only place you would rent videos yes and that was a huge that was a thing that everyone did right everyone would go out and rent videos and there was only one place i mean they had like movie king or whatever but like Buster dwarfed all those other companies. And that was, again, that was a, if you wanted to get a new movie and watch it, you had to go to Black Buster and rent it.

I mean, you could go to your library, you could go to whatever, but like, would you agree that like the overwhelming majority of people would just go to a Black Buster on a Friday? Oh, hell yeah. Okay. And that, and Black Buster failed because another company who innovated better and had a better business model came in and took it over. And I'm saying Netflix, but I mean you could just say the advent of the internet in general. Sure.

So I don't know necessarily the too big to fail. prop up the the united states and global economy in those regard maybe it is in that regard maybe it is you know one of those where you you kind of need to bail out to to stop everything from collapsing but i other than that like what's the what's the harm of comcast fails well let me let me give you a another type of being too big to fail it's not so much that everything's like the entire economy is relying on it though i think the example i'm about to give has more has more of that than we think but like let's look at amazon amazon is too big to fail because in the internet era which is what they are an internet company the laws of monetary gain not that they haven't always practiced some sort of exponential pattern.

I'm just saying they do much more in an era where, like, use the Blockbuster example. Blockbuster was a physical store. It required brick and mortar, bullshit overhead. It reached locations it did. At its peak, did it have like 5,000 locations around the country? locations it did at its peak did it have like 5 000 locations around the country sure it did but there were people all over this country in pockets who didn't have a blockbuster near them sure whereas you can have your address in bumblefuck if you have an internet connection you can get netflix you know so with amazon the reason that these guys and apple all

these companies are quote unquote too big to fail is because they have the balance sheet of 47 countries combined they have so much money like i've had the sore guys in here riley horvath painted this point perfectly he's like they don't need to innovate because they can buy whatever innovation comes up everyone has a number like that's what google sure which has the greatest ai arm like in of any of the big companies they bought deep mind but but is that not so you might say fine that's not innovation that's them that's them buying other companies but is that not innovation oh it is but i'm saying that the end result is not the defeat of the old guard to bring in the new. It's the old guard finding a way to continue to be the new guard and then also continuing in an internet world, when you're talking about tech companies like that, to hold more and more sway over everyone because they create these centralized places that we go and if you're not

a part of that node you're cut off from the world i mean look at them cutting trump off twitter he's and off socials he's cut off no one fucking listens he built a blog for like a week it didn't work no one even his biggest fans they don't the average person doesn't go take the time to go to Google if Google even puts in the search results Which is another thing but they don't take the time to go to Google and Google Donald Trump's blog You know you and I did because I'm a podcaster and you're an interested guy and like doing shit Maybe you know, I'm not on top spot Maybe she didn't even do it but like I had to go find it and i'm like no one's fucking reading this

and i was right and i'm not everyone was saying that because anyone who was looking at that was like well they're not in the most simple place that someone can get it same way that you were talking a little bit ago about like if someone you know wants to support all these small businesses great but if they can get 10 things at once at the click of a button they're gonna say i'll do that this time and enough people are gonna to do it that those places are going to be irrelevant regardless of what the sentiment is and this is kind of i do think amazon is slightly different than all the other companies you mentioned so excuse me so if apple ceases to innovate, if Apple ceases to continue selling iPhones, to continue producing content, I mean, I think that's very, I think, is it going to happen tomorrow? It would be very hard for it to happen very quickly.

It would probably have to be many years. It would probably have to be a shift in the needs and wants of consumers and a shift in a lot of things. But I don't think i think apple could in in theory potentially fail if if if another company started putting out better phones better computers whatever again do i think it's likely no because apple clearly is the best company at doing this right now however i think amazon is different because amazon has almost become in my mind like a utility company right so like there's certain needs that we all just like accept that we have there's certain bills and stuff we pay every month we all pay for cable we all pay for well not like internet we all

pay for internet i don't mean cable tv because i don't pay for cable tv um we all pay for water electricity we all fucking pay for amazon we all wi-fi what even above that wi-fi wi-fi what do you mean we pay for the internet itself and the internet has companies that's why i think it's all in the same like amazon google netflix we get all these places through the most basic thing we do which is we pay for wi-fi or data yeah that's what i'm saying but i'm saying that amazon has become more than just a a just tech company or an online marketplace and again that's actually even half of amazon's business model because they got the web the web services now but let's just take let's just you know presuppose that they're that we're talking about the the online marketplace part of it

it's become such a um it's become so ingrained into our way of life that like we all just expect now that we that we we can't really go back like right now we all have it like and when i say we all i think most people obviously there's some people of higher lesser means than me whatever but i'd say most people that i interact with on a daily basis they or their household have an amazon prime membership and they hit a button and they get goods on their doorstep in two in two days right we can't go back from that now that's just become so ingrained in the way that we do things and our expectations of of our life in our society we can't go back

so that's why it's kind of in my view a little bit greater than just like a place you can buy shit online because it's just completely changed the game of our expectations of of our access to things and and the speed by with we by which we access them that it's it's it's here to stay and it's it's like to me it's like a utility company it's like all right you're living in a normal society you need amazon prime yes and i would say it's more than just amazon it's it's a few of the other ones but yes yeah i would agree no i would agree 100 and it's it's like i'd like net i would say netflix too that's one everyone's got netflix yeah fair i mean it and and we've equated we've equated different forms of escapism or things that are offshoots of it all we've convoluted them all together and it's just a part of like who society is but to your point

people will take over the long term people will take stands on things until it affects them in the long term and then they'll give in you know it's like every time nike puts on something with kaepernick all these people will be like i'm boycotting nike i mean chances are if you're someone who did you didn't buy nike in the first place and secondly five months later if you need to get shoes real quick because you know you got to go for a run at five o'clock and you realize you have a hole in in your shoes you've been wearing for nine months and there's a fucking nike there for 84.99 and it's comfortable you're buying it like it's not and people are going to push back and say all right they're i know this person and they wouldn't do that okay there's outliers

everywhere the point is like people are gonna do what's best over time and so yes Amazon is here it's here to stay these other things are here it's here to stay the consequences of the rise of their economies of scale and power is the thing that we cannot ignore and it's a question worth asking though i'm not sure you know talking about it is going to do much about it because these trends are not are not shifting but things have shifted in the past i what i don't want to do is discourage innovation right but? But I also, you know, like, especially when I'm talking with some of my friends who are conservative, you know, they gotta,

I tell them, you gotta ask yourself the question of where your priorities are here. Do you believe that, like, the government is all inherently bad and you should take away as much of its power as possible and hope that it doesn't exist? And then also, do you think that you can yell at these huge companies for censorship or whatever for following the same laws that they're allowed

to follow as a private corporation which one is it because guess what in order to fix it who's going to come in and do it the government someone has to have the power. That's how society works. I'm not saying that the option is never not going to have bad choices on both sides. The question is, if you want to look at it negatively like that, and that's fine, I'll even agree with you, what's the least negative choice? And so for me, when you point out that Amazon's a part of that main tree of things that people need. I agree. At what point is it out of control is my question that I ask. And then at what point do we get the government involved to be able to say like, okay, you can do this, this and this now, but you can't do that. Because like, you know, I don't need to see Amazon coming in and also announcing how they're going to do it

and defeat the entire pharmaceuticals business or the entire pharmacy industry i don't need to see them do that because what that's what they're that's what they're doing that's their next frontier yeah they're good and you know how they're doing it they're going in and they're saying we have so much fucking money that we'll be able to lose billions of dollars over the next three years and bleed you out and they're going to be able to do it. I don't like that. I don't like that. Yeah.

Yeah, it's definitely one of those where it makes you think, it makes you think, you know, on the one end, I do like innovation. And if Amazon is in any way able to streamline or innovate the industry, you know, I'm kind of open to it. But on the other end, it's just scary to have one company having that much power. And here's the thing with Amazon is they already have our information. We already trust. I use the term trust loosely, but in a sense that we give them our money. We trust them. You know what I mean? So we trust that we give our money and we expect, okay, I know Amazon.

If I place my order, I'm going to get my product. So in that sense, they have consumer trust already. So it's just like, let's just do another thing. Let's just do another thing. And it's tricky like, let's just take, let's just do another thing. Let's just do another thing. And it's tricky, but... Human nature. step in i don't know i mean um i'm not an antitrust lawyer uh but i you know i know there there are laws out there but they they have to for my understanding of antitrust laws there's an act called the sherman act um it has to be there have to be some engaging in some artificial manipulation of the free market. So on its face, it doesn't sound like them just kind of taking over the pharmaceutical industry

would be any manipulation in a sense. It just sounds like it's a company that's got a shitload of money and just able to bleed out other companies. What would an example of that be uh well a recent example is um if everyone's familiar with the new um the supreme court ruling with the ncaa student athletes so that and again i'm kind of paraphrasing i'm not an antitrust lawyer and this is not what i do but it's just something i'm interested in whatever basically the argument uh was uh student a group of student athletes sued the ncaa um ncaa excuse me uh past and present athletes sued the NCAA and they alleged that certain NCAA restrictions saying

that student athletes could not accept money for certain things would be considered you know artificial like restrictions on like the the free market I guess and um you know it restricts the free flow of interstate commerce i believe that's kind of what the argument is i'm not an antitrust lawyer i don't know i got you whatever but basically what happened was um the supreme court uh i believe it it upheld the lower court's opinion, and it basically said, yeah, there's certain aspects of the current structure of the NCAA that absolutely is a violation of the Sherman Act. And actually, the original opinion for the Supreme Court only dealt with certain benefits related to the education.

However, the Supreme Court issued that opinion on June 21, 2021. And then I think nine days later, the NCAA issued their own interim ruling that said, all right, now we're going to allow all athletes to profit off their likeness and image, which was revolutionary. But basically, the NCAA saw the writing on the wall. Like, okay, our rules that have been kind of set in stone forever have been massively undermined by this Supreme Court decision. So now we're going to allow these guys to profit off their likeness and image. And in my opinion, that's just like a, that's a clear win for capitalism right there

because it's, you did have these artificial rules restricting someone from making money where they would otherwise be able to make money. And there was no real reason, there was no real concrete evidence that showed that it had any, that it deteriorated college athletics or deteriorated the concept of amateurism, which was the whole argument that,

oh, they're not going to be amateurs anymore or whatever. There's no proof or there's no link or evidence that showed that it's going to do shit in that regard. How the hell is that going to change the fact that you know uh johnny manziel is you know was he was he won the husband as a true freshman right i think was he i think is a redshirt freshman i'll check that was a true freshman um but like that man's an amateur i don't care yeah he's getting if he's getting paid you know three million dollars from his likeness and image he was i think he was a true freshman yeah how much money and that's the question how much money was he generating not just for the program but for the ncaa when he was ripping in college

a shitload hundreds of millions hundreds of millions yep i sure. It's crazy. So he won in 2012. I'm away from the mic right now for people listening. He won in 2012, and he redshirted 2011. Okay, so he was a redshirt freshman. And then I think Jameis Winston won it as a redshirt freshman, I want to say, the year after him. But those guys, that doesn't change the fact that they're amateurs. What are they, 19 at that time? 20 maybe? You know?

And it's the fact that they are generating so much money and they're receiving nothing for it is a ridiculous concept. And I don't think college sports are going to change all that much. I think it's just going to be a more accurate reality because that was the reality that these guys, whether they had the money now, whether they had it under the table, or whether they knew they were just going to have it in two years, everyone knows when you see when someone's a heisman winner that that person is you know they're going to be a millionaire they're going to they're going to have financial success they're they're going to have a

career doing that what's the point of artificially putting this boundary the NCAA created these rules when your fucking grandparents were in college. And since then, the major sports, not even, I'm not even going to focus on the smaller ones, but since then, the major sports have all begun to generate, long begun to generate hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars every year. And the one constant has been that it requires athletes to come and play and create a product that people are going to buy. And on top of that, a part of the argument was, as those revenues grew over the years, a part of the argument was that, oh, these students are getting a free education, though, because we're giving them a fucking

scholarship. Well, guess what? Over time, the value of the scholarship went up because education went through the roof, but also the value of a college degree went way through the floor. Because when you had 20% of society getting a college degree in 1965, you had fucking 50-60% of society getting it by 2005. So supply and demand was completely shifted, and yet the metrics remain the same what type of economy would ever fucking function over what type of economy would ever ever function under that sort of constraint from a government ruling body no economy does you know what economies are like that cuba that's what's like that dictator economies and that's really what it was it was an oppressive it was an oppressive organization they obviously were seeing so the i think the president of the ncaa

gets something like three four million a year some coaches get 12 million a year some assistant coaches get like three billion a year um and this what's interesting is i i did read the uh the supreme court opinion on this again it was it was very, it's legally dense. I mean, it was a Supreme Court opinion. I forget the specifics of the Sherman Act provisions, all that stuff. But they talk in that opinion. Gorsuch wrote the opinion. The first few pages are just all about a history of the NCAA

and about how certain, those stats that I just gave you are they're straight from the Supreme Court opinion so yeah some coaches get like 12 million a year assistant coaches getting like I think they said the highest assistant coaches are like four mil a year which is insane which is insane and uh you know 1.1 billion billion contract for March Madness, SEC football TV rights are in the $600 million. It's insane. And it's a big money grab. And of course, of course, if you're the president of the NCAA who's getting $4 million a year, you don't want to see these kids

get any money that are actually making you the money. That's crazy. Yeah. It is so obscene to me. It seems like a lot of people now have come around on this, including traditional types who five years ago would have looked at me

like I had ten heads. But for the life of me, when I was ten years old and saw this problem, I could not understand how other people weren't thinking the same thing. Because I'd watch people run around every year and fill out their brackets. That's just one example. And I'd watch this tournament with all these companies sponsoring it. And you know what? They're not selling that product by saying, you know, Mark Emmert is the head of the NCAA right now. That's why you're watching this. They're selling that product by saying you know mark emmert is the head of the ncaa right now that's why you're watching this they're selling that product because unc was winning the title with four guys being drafted in the lottery two months later in 2005 that's how they're selling it

they're selling it based off of like even guys who didn't translate well at the next level like a tyler hansborough who was after that team like, that's what they were selling. And yet those people were, they had to be an amateur. And my issue was, okay, if they want, and I totally disagreed with them, but if they wanted to make the argument that, well, you agreed to it by coming here to not profit off of the fact that you are a basketball player, a football player, and say like, that's the barrier to entry because we are a private entity and we're allowed to set that okay think it's bullshit but let's just say hypothetically for a minute okay when you then extend that to every single thing that happens outside of where that kid goes to school and what sport they play for example when these kids until now i think they're now officially

able to as of june 30th but the fact that these kids might have had a youtube channel as an amateur by the way this is super interesting when they were 15 years old in high school but in order to now come play at the big boy school to get their shitty college degree at bumblefuck university that no one will give a shit about if they go to get a job if they don't go pro afterwards those same kids have to shut down or go away from demonetize that youtube channel that they built in a free market before they ever went to do that now do they in that case did they did they know that coming in and they agreed to it sure yes doesn't make it any less bullshit because they're in a society that says you're supposed to do that next thing and even though i would say fuck it and build my channel you know who knows if i would

say that when i was 16 or 17 so these these these organizations and they prey on all these kids and it's not just the athletes too you can get to i mean i've talked about it before it's how i started this whole podcast before i had people in here but you want to talk about like the lie That the I'm not saying like individual universities I'm saying the university system has sold to American families and not just the kids It's the fucking parents and the competition It causes the lie that they have sold them for years and years and years now when they watched they saw the numbers You could see it. they watched the value of

of a college degree i'm talking about the people who work at these fucking places they watch the value go through the floor they watch the number of administrators and bullshit invented jobs just like you were talking about in the government which we still have the thing up back there bullshit jobs invented at these places that just put all the bills on the universities up they watch the student debt grow. They watched this entire pattern form and also the wealth gap in the middle of all of it form. And they did nothing to stop it because they were profiting off of it.

So when incentivized, and you also made this point at some point, when incentivized, yes, private entities like that will do shit that's not in the best interest of the general public to get their nut and get their best interest. And in this case, it's universities who aren't even public companies that have a quarterly to get to

it's up man i would agree with that i i i think though this supreme court decision and the um you know the subsequent rules it's it is a win for for i mean it's a win for the students first and foremost i mean it sucks for the the past students um and you know i'm interested as like you know what's gonna happen with like reggie bush like you know give that man his heisman back right now give it yeah it's a joke that he doesn't have a heisman it's a joke he's one of the best college football players of all time. I mean, he's probably, what, top five? 100%. Probably top three. I think he was the best.

I'd have to think about it. I've seen some pretty unbelievable college players. I think he was the best I ever saw. It's not like he's a scumbag. No. He was the best college football player on planet Earth playing out of his mind. And, like, what?

He bought his mom a house or something which is i think it was less than that dude i well i didn't wasn't something with his mom in a house or something i think it was like cars and then they got and i shouldn't be saying this but they got there was some form of payment that allowed her to pay off a house or something like that i think we'll check it later don't take that as law but yeah either way but even assuming that's true like it's not like he's some like horrible scumbag that like stole money he like and again if that's true he allowed his mom to purchase a house like what like what kid wouldn't do that you know and and honestly like most kids probably would wouldn't

have done that they probably would have spent it on dumb shit the value of what he spent illegally in air quotes there was worth about one one hundredth of a percent of the value that he brought in to not just the university but the entire ncaa during his three-year run at usc and i'll even only count the last two where he was a big big name but that like and i'll obviously obviously never name names on this but some of the last people you would ever think, like the last people, and I'm talking Hall of Fame-level athletes that – I don't know any of them. But people I know who are friends with these people have told me, and it is one degree of of separation but i trust these sources pretty well i've heard at least two i think three but i i'm blanking out right now i feel like there was a third one too where they went through exactly not only what they took in college but what other kids who weren't as good on their team took and they're like dude we all did it we took something we still got way less than our actual worth so when i see someone like reggie bush

getting picked on it pisses me off even more because i know every kid was doing that but because he's reggie bush and they just felt like the long hard dick of the law attacking him was going to be a great you know notch on their belt that's what they did and they made an example out of them and you know i don't know if you know this but in december 2005 when you and i watched that heisman trophy presentation and reggie bush you know was elected walked up on the onto the stage that didn't happen yeah you can't we didn't watch that yeah that didn't happen you can't take that back yeah brighter days now though yeah brighter days now i'm I'm hyped for the future. And also, I mean, if we're going there, if we're on the same subject,

when are they doing away with the NBA or the whatever? You've got to play one year in college. Is that done yet? I haven't heard anything on that. I have heard. They've got to do away with it. Yeah. I think because that's another thing where it's just artificially just making kids play in college

so the college can get their nut, as you said, and then it's off to the NBA. And that's like... To me, it's like worse for both sports, right? Because you're depriving the NBA of like Zion for like one year, and then you're depriving the NBA of Zion for one year, and then you're just kind of fucking up the entire dynamic of college basketball. Where prior to that one-and-done rule, or is that what it's called, the one-and-done rule? Whatever.

You would have those guys that were good enough to clearly play in the NBA just go straight to the NBA. And then everyone else would be college athletes and like they would be they'd join a team and and more or less expect to stay there now look fine if you're good if you clearly demonstrate you're good enough to to play at the next level that's fine then go then enter yourself in the draft and go play at the next level like i'm i'm cool with that but it became this instead of like programs recruiting on like you know and trying to build a team over like you know let's say like a few years it's it's hard to build a team in college because there is a high turnover but you could good recruiters could kind

of try and build a team over a few years redshirt people strategically do things like that to build a team um it just became okay let's get let's attract these these one and done guys like real quick let's let's get them it it completely changed up the recruiting game completely changed like the the nature of of teams in college sports and instead of like you know maybe a team building over a couple years it just became all right let's just get the best freshman we can and like let's get him we only got him for a year let's just like let's get like five was didn't like kentucky have like like the was there starting five like all freshmen one year yeah and like i'm look look if that's if that's the rules of the game, you've got to do what's in your best interest as a program, whatever, as a coach, whatever. But to me, it's kind of crazy when it's just like,

all right, maybe some of those freshmen might have played that year, but some of them surely would have been in the NBA. And again, I forget names, whatever. But yeah, I think that any all these artificial restrictions just like they just fuck everything up and people are just making money off of it that's why you go from Juan Dixon and Sean May to Kevin Durant and Anthony Davis davis so there's four players who were enormous and outside of kevin durant were all national champions at the collegiate level the first two unless you're a college basketball fan you don't even know who the fuck they are because they were guys who didn't who at the time the rules were you

could jump from high school to the nba but they weren't good enough they weren't built they didn't have nba bodies they weren't cut out for the game, but they were skilled enough that at the college level they could get by being great. Then after the rules put in, I think in 05 or 06, I think Andrew Bynum was one of the last people drafted. I know he went straight to the NBA. Yeah, and he was 05.

So after that, that's when guys like Durant and then later Anthony Davis, by way of John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins, and I'm just naming a few of them, Derrick Rose, all these people, Kevin Love. Did Lou Will go straight to him? He did. He was in the 05 draft. He was the last one.

All right. He was a part of that. So that was the difference where now those guys had to go play one year and think about how unbelievable the product was. I mean, the final four in 2008, I think, was UCLA, Memphis, and I'm going to blank out on the other two teams, but it was like fucking... 2008? Yeah, it was like... Not Butler. It was like Kevin Love, it was Derrick Rose, it was these unbelievable players who translated to the next level who

were one and done-ers yeah the product and that's why it feels like an inside job because the product that the NBA created with that rule at the collegiate level was insane not that not that people weren't loving college basketball and filling out their brackets before them but they took it to a level where there was superstar power yeah and and that's the thing so here's the thing college sports people are still going to be just as fired up for college sports no matter what you tell them the rules are whatever people college sports fans are going to like it whether it's one and done whether it's you know you have to stay all four years but the thing is they kind of sold it as oh we're doing this for the interests of the athletes right because we we want to be sure that they have an opportunity to get an

education before while they're you know while they're so young and you know let's make them wait an extra year before they they play in the nba that's kind of how you know it was sold i don't know how believable that is but it's it really no it's so you can just profit off these these names and these kids and then ship them off to the mba so it's not believable at all and then but it goes back to another thing we were talking about entirely different but it's one in the same with this which is free markets find a way to reset the course and so what did the free market do it it took a few years admittedly but the first cracks in the foundation yes jr you saw you saw players like emmanuel mutier went over there uh brandon jennings i think no that's a brandon

jennings went over there yeah you were thinking jennings over jr like these jr did go to china but it was after he was in the yeah it was after he was in the nba but these people they said all right fuck your rules we'll go somewhere else and make money and you can't stop us and they did and so it wasn't a ton of them but then you had you know especially once clutch sports got involved and started to become big and obviously that like that's a player first agency because it was have started by lebron james who also went straight to the NBA and is all about player rights and has done a great job with that stuff. It's like, then they came in and said, Oh, well, now we're really going to get around the system. And they got, you know, some guy you've never heard of to this day, a $1 million internship at New Balance, you know, to go train for a year because they realized, Oh, shit, we can get scouts looking at him and generate buzz. And it's basically like he's taking an off year and he's one year younger coming into the NBA because he doesn't have game wear on him.

They sold it. Great job. Yeah, no, I mean that makes sense. I support any scheming like that. I love that. Just being creative, thinking outside the box, and just trusting trusting the the process in that sense i i fully support that and to me yeah i i i think i mean i i feel like adam silver is i feel like he's smart enough that he should realize this like why isn't this change like like he seems like pretty woke or whatever on this stuff like why why hasn't he

changed the rule i didn't he say he was gonna like i i don't know we could be like he could have we could be talking right now and he could have like it could be like set to change next year i think i mean it's been in the talks and it wouldn't surprise me if adam was out in front of it and i've been talking with with people in my life who've been ripping adam recently and look i think it's always just a popular thing to rip commissioners but look i think adam silver's a phenomenal commissioner i think i do i think most people think that he's one of the better ones he's for sure i mean yeah i mean a commissioner's job i don't know the commissioner of baseball and i only know uh roger goodell so well guess what believe it or not the manfred and the mlb might be worse than goodell but like well he's changing the baseballs every year and shit

yeah dude he's he's like hated by everyone but a commissioner's job is to make ownership money. And especially in today's time, that, but always, that puts you automatically at odds with players. That's why there's players associations and all that shit. And Adam Silver has geniusly managed to develop a phenomenal relationship with the players while also printing fucking money for his owners now it comes at a cost with things things that also predated him and like the common example is china and fuck if i know how i would play that if i was him because like he can't just suddenly be like

yeah you know we're going to take a stand on this well they're going to lose tens of billions of dollars what i don't appreciate is when they don't come out and I think he tried to but it wasn't he didn't do a good enough job on this to me, you know when they then allow people around the league to Throw a guy like Daryl Morey to the wolves for saying something that should be humanely common sense Was he talking about Tibet or something free Hong Hong Kong. Yeah, like that whole thing. You know, that's where I draw the line. There's so many of them with China. Yeah, exactly.

To Hong Kong, to Taiwan. And that's the big question because his job and David Stern put it well. David Stern was open about this. People don't know about this, but he gave an interview to the New Yorkork times back in like 05 it was one of those where they write down the answers they were sitting with him on the airplane and they just put out the written answers and you know they describe him they describe his facial expressions while he's doing it and they're like and then the topic of china comes up and stern leans back and lets out a sigh and shakes his head something like that and says we're gonna have to answer for that and they're like what do you mean he goes my job is to make the owner's money there's a lot of

money in china we're making a lot of money now we're gonna be making a lot of money in a decade there but he goes they're a totalitarian communist regime that's gonna get in the way at some point. And so Adam Silver, unfortunately, is the child of that fruit. You know, he's the fruit. The fruit has now bared, or however you say it, and he is the guy sitting there with the decision. And I mean, to use John Borick's point, are you going to stand up and make a stand and lose your job and lose everything? Or are you going to do what's in the best interest of stand and lose your job and lose everything or are you going to do what's in the best interest of continuing to keep your job and rise up it's a tough moral question and i don't envy his position yeah i've i'm not super up to date on

the nba's well i mean nba's just expanding everywhere like i mean i don't know specifically the nba's operations in China, but I can just imagine that they're expanding greatly, and basketball's becoming a global sport, and China's the largest population in the world. So, yeah, I mean, China's growing, and it's a huge economy. Yeah, you need to deal with that, or just kind of sweep it under the rug and keep making money and you know

keep everyone in the u.s talking about other shit which is kind of what they're doing well i i did see something you know because like biden's administration even before they came in was getting ripped for you know being in bed with china and all this stuff but that that was a concern for me as well one thing i did like about Trump, even though I think he didn't attack the things I wanted him to attack on it, but I at least appreciated that he recognized that there was some threat there from China. We haven't had a president do that.

And so when he left, I'm like, well, there's one decent thing from him that's gonna die with him. But Biden did the administration, this is maybe like a month and a half ago now two months ago they did ban u.s investment in i forget the number of companies but maybe it was like 60 70 companies in china who had any direct monetary relations with the chinese military over there and things like that because you know we're talking about this in the

context like the NBA or something like that but in things like that I want to keep seeing that because we have to draw the line of you know to use the words we use all the time we have to draw the line of human rights and the good of humanity at some point and you can't tell me that the actions of that regime are good for humanity not not just Americans, for everyone over the long term. And so you're going to need – that was one thing. That was one positive thing. I need to see a lot more of that. And you are going to have to see governments lead with that because corporations in a free market are going to have to do what's best for them.

And guess what? There's a lot of money in China. There's a lot of money in China. That's for damn sure. It's kind of crazy. How many people are over there now like one and a half billion yeah uh a lot a lot more than the next closest country which i guess is india yeah i i can't figure out why india i mean it has it's it's definitely got a lot more economic force than it did a decade ago. No question.

India? Yeah. But it's got incredible human capital there. Like people, brilliant people coming out of India all the time. And yet they haven't gotten anywhere remotely even 1% close to the influence of like a China or the U.S. And some people yell at me for saying it like that but it's true well yeah i mean i would disagree from my my knowledge of of india's economy versus china's economy and probably objective measures i'm not i'm sure that objective measures show that

but i think china like i think it comes down to China's, the means they use to accomplish certain of their economic goals are pretty underhanded. And, you know, I don't know that that is taking place as much in India. I don't know that they're stealing our intellectual property to the extent that China is doing. I don't know that they're stealing our intellectual property to the extent that China's doing it. I don't know that they're doing all the hacking and

all the spying, whatever China's doing. I just don't think that, at least I don't hear about it in India. Do you worry about the fact that China, and people use TikTok as the example

and i have to i have as well but it's far beyond that let's be honest do you worry about like them in a in a machine world just collecting everything to be able to use information against people i mean they're already like i feel like you've had to talk about maybe even we talked about this on the last time i was here um we talked about like the ports and stuff the ports yeah shout out to the ports yeah um um i feel like they're already doing it with um with like facial recognition and all that bullshit and the social credit and like all that shit you know what i mean but no expand what do you mean so you're worried so your question was are you worried about china just like collecting information and using it against the u.s or anyone anyone around

the world so you know what's going on right now in china with the whole like social credit system right fill me in like I might but there's like they're using mass cameras I mean maybe I guess it's probably stop I mean maybe COVID-19 has massively curved that curbed that rather because of uh everyone's wearing face masks but I know like you could go on like there's HBO like stuff about this where they were using facial recognition and like tracking people's locations and and tracking where they are and then establishing a rating of their city. You don't know about this? No. Are you kidding me?

No. This is almost like I want to stop the show and have you watch a five-minute video on what's going on. I need to watch this. I don't know much about this. I've heard some facial recognition things in passing, but I haven't read a full... This is new territory for me. Yeah, they're basically tracking citizens,

tracking their locations, and they're, like, tracking their social rating and basically, like, assigning individuals, like, a social rating. What does that even mean?'s like like a human credit score on like how good of a person you are based on like who you like associate with like like and it's like most extreme it could be like yo you were seen going into like the shady housing area like you you lost a few points there because you were hanging out where a bunch of scumbags hang out. And like, yeah.

Yeah. It's very real. Alright, let me ask you this then. I don't know all the details on that because I only watched a thing on it. But it's very real. I think there's even some name for it. I don't know.

I'm going to watch that. I can't believe you don't know. You're like Mr. China. I can't believe you haven't heard about this. I don't know i'm gonna watch that i can't believe you don't know about no dory you're like mr like china i can't believe you haven't heard about this i don't know everything man i learn a lot on fair enough fair enough people bring stuff up that's how i look at shit the research and like ironically i almost recently i've been looking at less china stuff like just over the last month or so i almost think you should pause and watch a five minute video and just like understand the gravity of this we're almost done we'll watch it as soon as we're done here because i'm interested

in that but i'll i'll throw this right back at you do you think we could be doing something like that here no because i don't think it would i think we do have the constitution that like i think that would just be an infringement on a lot of rights but we already do that edward stone proved that completely constitutions violated fine but you couldn't have a social credit you couldn't you couldn't dictate stuff on like a social credit system now maybe pri like private institutions could like you know and and i mean well that we kind of do have like a social credit system like insurance companies they use all the different types of types of metrics to give get your

insurance rate that has nothing to do with your financial ability it has to do with like your job your you know um what what i mean whatever actuaries are figuring out ways to to connect the dots here and there and say okay so i mean but that's a private institution i don't think the government could ever get away with that because i think there's too many constitutional implications against that um as far as like the the facial recognition stuff i think i think now that people are wearing masks it fucks it up a lot and it's kind of interesting it's hilarious because like literally all like china just implement started implementing all this stuff and then it was like global pandemic everyone's wearing masks and like

honestly you didn't hear about it for a while and like it might actually have been been a net positive well no not net i'm not i know what you mean yes yeah there might have been there might have been a positive effect for chinese citizens as far as the masks i'm not saying covid was was positive yes no i i understood exactly where you're going with that that's that's the interesting thing about this because we're pulled in so many different directions now all the time where we can, is that in any system that involves power, money, any group of people, by the definition of the word, in the lightest measures, there's always some level of conspiring going on for something, for some form of gain that the average person who doesn't exist inside of that scenario can't get access to or

is going to be on the losing end of. The question is, we like to live in this world where we form conspiracies that we want to believe because it makes life more interesting. And that's where we start to make all these leaps and call everything a giant fucking conspiracy that's rigged against every single person around the world and we're all going to die. That's where it goes too far for me. The middle ground of the fact that you can recognize that there's a level of conspiring in everything, though, and then realize that sometimes there are instances on individual bases. Is that a word? Bases? Bases?

No, I think bases is a word. Bases, okay. There are some on an individual basis where, where yes it does go to a ridiculous level i mean prime example would be like an epstein or something like that it happens with china i'm constantly battling that because i see all these different trends that are like holy fuck and i know they are evil that's not a question and taiwan's a country i think that's five times on this podcast i've said that but just won't get that in there anyway and you to clarify they are evil you mean the chinese government yes exactly thank you for that the chinese government and i

usually do clarify that because i think i think everyone knows that's that's what's being discussed i think that's i think that's important but thank you but i see i see that all these different trends and it's like all of it can't be true i don't i hope but some of it is and like it ties to everything and this world is run by money more than anything else another hill i'll die on don't care what you say if you ask the average person what the most important things in their life to them are, they will say, my family and my health. You know what pays for both? Money. People don't want to admit that. It's the truth.

And so when you control a lot of it, you have sway. And we could go down a whole rabbit hole on things you talked about earlier with, like, countries that are set up to fail by more powerful countries and stuff. But, like, China is at the top of the spectrum with us. And while we have our faults at least there is some level of freedom to our people here their government does not give their people freedom and then they try to take that ideology and spread it around the world and so when i see all these different trends that happen in other places i start to ask myself what if it could emanate from there what if it goes back to their money yeah yeah and i think

i think we're getting less freedom in the us i mean well i think that's that's true i mean just like a a small example that i was kind of kind of got me fired up recently is the whole $15 minimum wage thing. I know it's a little bit unrelated to China, but... I like this. Go ahead. So, to me, I understand why people want a $15 minimum wage. I understand fully. And like I just said, you know, I said a little bit earlier in this pod, I believe that the government has to step in in certain instances.

So why do people want a $15 minimum wage? Why do they want it? Because, I mean, we can all agree that it's not livable to live on $7.25 an hour in the United States right now. Sure, sure. And I will agree with that position. So right now, if I'm a small business owner, right, and I'm employing an employee, let's say I have like a sandwich shop or something. I'm employing an employee right he is he or she a lot of times is very young like high school kid whatever who's making you know very little money but they're probably living

with their parents and it's just like a you know like a like a part-time job right do that does that person need to support themselves and support a family no additionally i will agree that there are well let me back up real quick actually most people work in those kind of jobs they're not that's probably one of their first jobs right the well let's talk about a true minimum wage job let's talk about like a like a bus my bus bus boy they get tips that's a bad example let's talk suck like a guy making hoagies that like a guy or girl making hoagies who's like 18 years old whatever that's probably one of their first jobs would you agree with that yes and you would agree that as you, you know, get more experience and more time in the labor force, and I'm not saying they have to be,

that these people have to be college educated or have some advanced education. As you get more time and experience in the workforce and labor force, you see an increase in pay. Your skills become more valuable. Now, I understand, and i'd like to actually talk about this that there are certain individuals that they may not have that type of they for whatever reason they may have uh they may have intellectual disabilities may have physical disabilities they may have uh background circumstances they may not be able to contribute to a job where they really there might not be capable of a job that's really worth more than minimum wage, right? We would agree that there are certain people like that.

Yes. Okay. So, what does the government do for people like that? We have many programs in the government. We have social security benefits. We have disability benefits. We have certain welfare uh benefits we have certain housing programs in the government to to support these people right i mean yes yes so now

you're saying to the small business right who is paying paying someone what was otherwise a fair rate and this small business is paying taxes on all their income and these taxes are going to help the those presumably people who are in the lower lower income tier i don't i'm not i want to be careful with my language i want to be precise with my language i don't want to say that these people are any less whatever but for whatever reason these people can cannot get a job making that much more than minimum wage so now we have these programs that these people can avail themselves of and then you're saying to and the small business is paying those taxes to those programs

and then you're going to say to the small business even though you're already bearing this burden through taxes double dip we are going to then artificially say you have to pay them double what you've been paying them it's your if you're a small business owner you're getting spit roasted by the government it's just not it's just not a winnable situation really and it's just to me it's just wild because it's like that's just the small business owner right which it's already hard enough to be a small business owner in this country is it like something like like half of businesses fail or something like that maybe at least probably more right yes it's more it's already incredibly difficult you have to take on incredible risk and overcome incredible odds and like but by by golly you you make it right and

you are able to employ people and then the government's like nah you gotta fucking pay him double what about so that's that side of it right it's fucking fucking small business owners spit yeah spit roasting them yeah because they're getting... So you have that. And then let's talk about the other broader effects of this, right? The other broader effects are you're just not going to have as much people employed. You're going to have a lot of people that otherwise would have had a job. They're just not going to have a job. Big companies are going to put, you know, McDonald's's you type in a thing now to get your order you're if you were you know maybe maybe you worked at a call center or

something and you were uh you know answering calls whatever they'll they'll outsource your job to to you know india or somewhere else or a computer or a computer yeah and it's just it just to me it's like people just don't think about it. People say, oh, let's help these people. And I understand that. And I really, truly have thought critically about this. I really have. I was like, I think that the government is, I'm a little more liberal in this regard. I think the government does have a role to help some people that don't have the means. However, I think that there's already systems in place to do that. And I think by just doing this, you're just screwing over small businesses and just going to tank gainful employment.

It's not just the double dipping of the small businesses. It's also, when did we start this $15 minimum wage? The term I used was spit roasting. Spit roasting. Excuse me. Let's get that right. When did we start the 15 minimum wage push like 2014 maybe i yeah i think i was still in college yeah okay towards the end of college i remember there

was like straight up like i was in pittsburgh i remember there was straight up like marches about like 15 minimum wage and like people like like take like yeah like picketing for it let's call it let's call it like probably around the Occupy movement. Okay, so that would even be like a decade-ish ago. But let's say it's five years ago. Since we started that argument, $15, rough math, without looking at any data in front of me right now, goes as far as $10 did then. Yeah, well, now we're getting into inflation.

Yeah, now that's a whole... And we're coming up on the end here we just did three hours pretty good man but you know we we could touch that forever so i guess i guess we're doing that next time but i agree i think it's another one of this came up one other time i think it was miles matthews who brought it up and i'm like bro i don't know i don't have an answer for you because I think the answers are bad. I think the answer of, oh, let's just stamp that on it and double dip on small businesses, disincentivize the economy as well, and then just to make people happy in the short term and really make them miserable because it comes downstream and takes away jobs altogether or automates them, I think that's bad. I also think it's fucking terrible that people are trying to live off of $7.25 in this country at this point, which is ridiculous. Yeah, well, then lower the – fine.

Then put the onus on the small businesses but then giving them a reprieve in taxes. You can't have it both ways. So I'm a practical person. I like to think that I think critically. I just – you just cannot have it from both ends in my opinion and i'm not i'm not going to sit here and say that the government has no role to play in helping someone who's for whatever reason for whatever circumstance is not capable of of earning much more than minimum wage i'm not going to say the government has no role

in helping that person i'm not going to say that person should be in the street i'm not going to that's not a world i want to live in where there's people in the street starving and homeless i don't want that yeah but i don't i don't want to live in an environment where you're just you're changing the goalposts on us as a small business oh well welcome welcome to the world man welcome to the world of of moving goalposts I think we've seen enough of that over the last year and a half to realize they do that on everything yeah which is sad so you brought up that point by saying we're getting less freedom on things and that was an interesting example to use with it but it's it's pretty is actually great because that you would you would never think of that that way but the

way you related it to what the government's trying to do from a power perspective of double dipping yeah prime example prime example of the goalposts that are just going to keep moving and there's always going to be something wrong with it too so i like that word it's great i'm tired man i'm tired i'm tired too we're a long one here but it was a good one thanks for doing it brother yeah pleasure as always anytime man we'll do it again and I'm glad we got you

the first time to do this because now now you like this yeah yo you want to run it back right now do another three hours yeah you know what let's

we'll turn off the cameras turn them on again and see what happens alright we got enough whiskey here we'll see alright but yo

thank you thank you man do it again soon happy to be here alright everybody else you know what it is give it a thought get back to me peace