Lemonade Stand - This is Fine | Ep. 029 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

On this week's show... Aiden works on a farm, DougDoug revisits Nepal, and Atrioc has some News... We launched a Patreon! - https://www.patreon.com/lemonadestand for bonus episodes, discord access, a book club, and many more ways to interact with the show! Episode: 029 Recorded on: September 16th, 2025 Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCurXaZAZPKtl8EgH1ymuZgg Follow us TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thelemonadecast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thelemonadecast/ Twitter - https://x.com/LemonadeCast The C-suite Aiden - https://x.com/aidencalvin Atrioc - https://x.com/Atrioc DougDoug - https://x.com/DougDougFood Edited by Quack - https://x.com/QuacK_001 Produced by Perry - https://x.com/perry_jh New takes on Business, Tech, and Politics. Squeezed fresh every Wednesday. #lemonadestand #dougdoug #atrioc #aiden Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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started. That's growtherapy.com slash Vox. Growtherapy.com slash Vox. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need.

It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-4-free at O-D-O-D-O-O-com. Amazon Presents Laura versus Fruit Flies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen,

These little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo, chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. Ladies and welcome back to the lemonade stand. What the hell is going on in this crazy mixed up world of ours, Aiden? and why is it our fault? Because half the comments in our last video

is that the lemonade stand curse has cursed the world. It's gone too far. Look, occasionally, when we talk about things, immediately the world throws a gigantic bomb of some kind, and we just feel like we should spread that out a little more. It just doesn't help, Doug, that you have an episode

where you literally paid witches to do curses. Okay, have you guys seen the witch's thing? Okay, so somebody paid an Etsy witch to help the... It's the Seattle Mariners, and they immediately started going on a winning streak. Okay. And then somebody, somebody, somebody, I don't know if you guys saw this,

somebody cursed Charlie Kirk with a witch. You think it was a Charlie Kirk curse. I'm not saying it's a Charlie Kirk curse. Okay. I am strongly, you're strongly implying. All I'm saying is that even has been 10% funnier for the last four episodes of the art. That is actually true.

You just straight up got funnier, okay? So there may be some sort of power here. Yeah, we talked about the picture, but Ludwig literally messaged Aiden and said, stop uploading, you're ruining the world. Like, we're implying that every time we upload the next day, something bad happens. It's how you know he listens to the show, because he called me out of the blue,

and he's just like, you gotta stop uploading by the name you did. And I thought this is just a conflict with work. Like, he was worried about how much time I'm putting in it or something. He's like, no, it's because you guys are causing concrete damage to society. Well, now, once this episode releases, you have about five minutes to predict what is about to happen in the world. If I miss to get in the bunker.

Yeah. He knew what dropped. Run! But I think aside from the obvious because Charlie Kirk's assassination happened, I believe minutes after we uploaded our video last week, there was, there's so much that has happened in the world in the last week. And we came each with a few different stories of how things seemed to be falling apart just to walk you through kind of a week of world news. Yeah, not all of them are terrible, but I'd say most of them are. are pretty wild. By the way,

speaking to to Charlie Kirk, just real quick to say it, we talked about it pretty extensively on the Patreon. We did like a 45-minute

conversation between us. Doug, you were doing your charity stream which by the way, congrats. Thank you. And your published author, by the way,

congrats? I am a number one best-selling published author. I just want to say, not only did I buy your book, I bought the AI generated rip-off that someone made on Amazon. They called Doug Last,

the life story. just people are aware I did publish a book last week it's a very good book it did become a number one bestseller in three categories on Amazon it became the 10th highest book on Amazon period beating out three books about Charlie Kirk

which is crazy and then within two days somebody made an AI generated ripoff of the book where my name is the book title is like Douglas Scott colon a life of streaming colon

Doug M Dash bravely pushing against internet norms and it's all AI generated and it's nonsense. So apparently if you are a best-selling author on Amazon they will just make AI rip-offs. I'm not joking by it, but I did buy it and I'm going to bring it on the show or we're going to read it back. Okay, cool. I was going to buy it too.

I wanted to see what it is. I'm going to get a copy. So I'm probably talking about that at the end because we wanted to get your take as well but there's a lot of news. We all brought our stories. By the way, a little caveat. There's so much happened this week. We're all bringing what we're interested in. We're just bringing stories that we thought were interesting to us and we're going to try and share them

with each other. This is not. Yeah, this isn't your full encapsulation of news in the world from the past week. In fact, let me illustrate how much we are not qualified to cover everything on the... I was spinning it earlier just now, the globe, and I kept looking for the Bolsonaro, Brazil story in Africa.

Took me three spins to get to the right continent. And that's who you're listening to. Limited and geography class. Geography class. So what is going on with Bolsonaro? We got a little story coming out of Brazil. So Bolsonaro is the previous president of Brazil. The Brazilian government roughly works like the American government.

You have the president who sort of is supposed to manage and operate the federal government. You have a roughly sort of congressional system. You have a Supreme Court, all this. So Bolsonaro is the Trump-like figure who won around the same time as Trump, lost the election, and is now replaced with a new prime minister who is more left-leaning. He was pretty, let's say, more far right, more radical. very much in the same vein as the kind of demagoguery that Trump engaged in. Okay.

So, in a shock- Make Brazil great again. Make Brazil great again. In a shockingly similar parallel to what happened, he lost the election. And this is a few years ago now. I don't know if you remember the exact number. Yeah. But he lost the election fairly recently, replaced the Lula, right?

And then he went around and in something that has never been seen before by a leading, world president denied the election results. And not only was saying the election was fraud. It was fraudulent and was, oh, it shouldn't be valid. He encouraged media to talk about this. He encouraged like different political figures to engage with this story and really pushed this. He was removed from office.

And the big story this week is that the judiciary system in Brazil convicted him to 27 years in prison for basically attempting to overturn the results of the 2022 election. 2020 election. And so I'm not deeply familiar with Brazilian politics, but what I did look up a little bit was I basically read the story and was like, sounds exactly like what happened here. So I looked it up. It's just beat for beat. What happened? Except they didn't even have January 6th. The we had January 6th. And so Trump, I would argue, did basically all the same things. And so I was kind of trying to ask and figure out what is the difference. Why was the former president? convicted of 27 years in prison in Brazil and not us. And it's just apparently they just got the conviction. That's just what they wanted to do. Also, can't dance to YMCA like Trump. Yeah, he's got this. He's bulletproof. And you know what's crazy too is Trump can and probably will pardon himself. So that opportunity is gone because he got reelected. Yeah. You mean digging through the similarities between these two countries and finding

out like Brazilian Tucker Carlson was talking about Brazilian Dominion voting machines on Brazilian Fox news. I mean, do you have, like, how does someone of this position of power get drawn up on charges in a country like Brazil? Who makes the decision on his guilt? Is he arrested by the normal police? I think the idea that Trump would have even been arrested or charged for what happened seems, maybe it's just because there's this feeling of him getting out of so many things

over and over and over again within our system that the idea of him facing consequences for January 6th seemed very unlikely to me beyond. It seemed very real after January 6th. Yeah. It felt like Trump was going to receive consequences. And then it just stalled, got super slow, stretched out. And then like all, there's so many people that are currently Trump allies who around January 6th, were disavowing him, like rats from a sinking ship.

They were throwing him under the butt. They were like, they were ready to, because they thought for sure. And then there's nothing happened. So what's, unlike what happened here? What's the functional difference here? Like what system is Bolsonaro running into that someone like Trump isn't running into in the US? It's just the judiciary system. So again, they have like essentially a judicial branch similar to the United States.

And basically federal police acted on orders of the Supreme Court and arrested him. And so they are prosecuting him. and convicting him at this and saying you were attempting to undermine our democratic process, you were attempting to overturn the election, this is worthy of 27 years. Yeah, apparently like... Four out of five justices, guilty verdicts? Yeah, apparently there were actually riots in January 8, 2023. That's shockingly similar to January 6th.

So, yeah, there might be some degree of like there's a real genuine sense of violence that was instituted, but for the most part, it's, you know, it's not like he... Dude, it's January 8th, 20203. It's like two days later. And they're saying, well, part of the charges here is that he laid the groundwork for a coup in 2021 by spreading disinformation about the voting system. Basically saying the voting is fraudulent. That's the thing that struck out to me. It's like it stuck out to me.

It's very similar. It's just so similar. And so legally, we could do the same thing in the United States. But it would require again, like a strong rapid push from that. You know, and obviously the Biden administration did pursue legal action against Trump for a number of things. And a couple of them stuck while he has the felony charges for the money laundering. I forget, or money, whatever it was, you know, the mislabeling of funds. But yeah, it's very interesting to see the difference in how this country handled this, you know.

And I guess one thing that is actually relevant to point, it's a more, let's say, left-leaning judicial branch in Brazil. Whereas in America, our Supreme Court, very right-leaning. And so it's an interesting also parallel of like what happens when your Supreme Court leans one direction or other because it's just so unlikely in the United States that a six out of nine conservative Supreme Court is going to like really actively aggressively pursue this. Yeah, I looked that up for a separate reason recently and I found out that there hasn't been, you know how right now Trump's got the trifecta. He's got he's got, he's got more like four, he's got the House, he's got the Senate, he's got presidency and he's got the judiciary. I looked up when the last

time that happened on the other side and it was like JFK and I guess it hasn't been since the 60s. that there hasn't been a left-leaning Supreme Court plus the House, plus the Senate, plus the President. He's like that has not happened. So it's like a, it's rare. It's rare either side to have that. They have her now. So yeah, it's interesting.

Although I will say if this is time delayed two years, right? If ours happened in 2020, he'll be elected. He'll be elected president of Brazil. It does appear, Bolsonaro basically appears to be Trump in Brazil and all the same parallels just two years shift. Yeah. So it's got to be cool. Like, it's almost like the witch's powers.

just know what's going to happen. Damn, you think he's going to start sending ICE? They're nicknaming him the Trump of the Tropics. I did not know how close to him. I knew Bolsonaro was, was, I knew, like, knew politically where he stood and sort of what happened. I didn't realize how

similar this is to what happened with Donald Trump. Do you think he's going to start arrest? And they call him Trump. Start arresting illegal immigrants and then having them imprisoned in America. Send him to, just to Ohio.

Like, we have, We have the playbook, Trump is writing the book. Bolson artist needs to read it in two years. In two years, we know what's going to happen. It's like how every internet start up for a while, at least they're catching up now.

But for a while, every internet startup in America, China would just copy it and do it two years later. Right. China. Someone just watches what Trump does. And Jesus. Where is he at right now?

Is he in jail waiting for a sentence? House arrest. Waiting for a sentence? He's under house arrest. Well, they had a sentence. It just came out. 27 years. That's what happened.

That was the big enough. Oh, sorry. I thought he was just convicted. He's 70-something years old, so it's basically, that's it. You know, unless, but again, with the way politics words. Well, I've heard from Putin and Xi Jinping that people can live to 150 with organ transfers. Imagine he actually gets out 27 years from now. Damn. Runs and wins.

Well, that's what Bricks is all about. It's 97. Speaking of Bricks, what's going on? Yeah, what else is going on? Yeah, guys, that's the main story. What else is going on? You went to about China? Speaking of China?

Yeah, I do want to talk about China a little bit. I got a couple of China. I can talk about TikTok. We talk about, yeah. Let's go. I mean, this is a China story, but also a, you know, a U.S. story. It has to do with the tariffs and the relationships between the two. So I thought...

Could one of you guys spin the globe, though? I don't feel like we've traveled across the world. That's the, yeah, okay. Yeah. I'm going against the tags there. Spin it in the wrong way. Okay, now I feel like I'm really learning something about the world. Now we're in China.

Okay. A few months ago, I listened to this New York Times piece called What an Iowa Farmer fears about the trade war. It was about this woman who is a farmer of soybeans, and the market for soybeans is really, really dominated by China. They import the most soybeans in the world, and most of the output in the United States, more than 50% of the soybeans we make has historically gone to China.

Okay. And in certain areas or certain states like North Dakota, where a lot of soybean farmers are, over 70% of their crop is, She actually ties to Brazil a lot too. And Brazil, yeah, so this ties into Brazil as well. We didn't plan this. And I listened to this a few months ago.

And in that piece, they're talking about the potential consequences of another trade war with China and how it will affect their industry. Because in 2018, when tariffs got introduced the first time around, when there was a first trade war under Trump's first administration, the soybean farmers suffered a lot. Their revenues, I think, went down from. I think around like 10 to 15 billion a year to a year where they made less than $4 billion in a span of one year.

And the government had to step in and help subsidize the losses for that period of time. The way I recall was like China, you know, because we buy a lot more from China than they buy from us. So the few things that they buy are their strong levers in a trade war

and soybeans is the one they use a lot. It's like, that's the one they're one of their go-toes. Yeah. If there's a trade war. I'm going to be honest. I feel like they have a little more leverage in this situation. Like they, you know, in terms of like us having all of our manufactured goods versus them having less soybeans.

Exactly. They can survive. They have a little bit more power. Yeah. And so they, yeah. That's what they did in the last time. And so they're doing it again, I assume. Or what's the?

Yeah. So the issue is coming around again. In the piece, this woman is explaining their long relationship over decades with China. It's really interesting because this, you know, this woman from middle America farming. like working class is talking about how they, you know, they have a really deep relationship with their buyers in China. They go and have traveled there. They have personal connections there. And, you know, upsetting this balance in 2018 was a huge hit to this industry. And they're kind of bracing for how that might play out this year. And recently, we're a few weeks away from when the

typical soybean harvest will be. And right now, as of right now, nothing. None of the soybeans are being bought by China at all in the U.S. None of the expected crop is expected to go there because of the current tariff. They cannot price competitively compared to other countries that produce soybeans, like Brazil, most prominently, and then also Argentina and Uruguay.

And China, as a mechanism of leverage, is using this relationship and basically refusing to buy, or because of the market, refusing to buy these soybeans from the U.S. US. And there's this whole farming sector that is prepared to, you know, collapse to a degree that they never have before, even compared to 2018. And I thought this was, I thought this is interesting quote because it's from, oh, one sec. So this is from a professor at a university

in the area talking about the damage to the region, because I was like, well, what's the difference between this and last time? Like, is it really that different? He said, I've never seen as monumental of a disruption in agriculture as we're experiencing now, said Mr. Wilson, who's been teaching at the university for 43 years. These are turbulent, turbulent times. So China, and these Chinese buyers would prefer to be working with the U.S. still at an individual or a company-to-company level, but the economics just do not make any sense anymore. And I think there is a political risk or a political pressure here where this is a demographic or an area of the country like in these pockets of North Dakota or in these pockets of Iowa that voted heavily for Trump. And it's,

you know, will their support for him be fractured by the main source of their livelihood being taken apart? Maybe not. But that is one concern from the Trump administration's perspective of feeling pressured to solve this. And the article I was reading more recently about this, threw an interesting wrench into this as well. So Secretary of State, Scott Besson, is the person that's sort of charged was solving this issue, or dealing with... They put everything on him.

Yeah. Sorry, he's running the... Besson, is Secretary of State now? No, that's no... Wait, did I miss... You said, Secretary of State. He said Besson. Did I miss...

Treasury Secretary? My bed. Yeah. I wrote down with the wrong thing. Do you mean Marco Rubio? No, no, no, it's Besson. No, Rubio is... It is Besson. Secretary of the Treasury. Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent,

is tied into this. But they also got him doing the IRS. I don't even know that. He's like, no, he's doing a lot. They're making him do it. Him and Rubio are like the only two people running around doing every actual job that they require. So one of the,

this is an interesting thing that was brought up in the New York Times article that I was reading about this more recently was that Besson has a vested interest in this all personally because he owns $25 million dollars worth of soybean and corn farmland in North Dakota, that if this continues to, if this continues to devolve, the value of these assets that he owns personally are going to

collapse. And he had to report the fact that he owned these things and his potential conflict of interest a while ago and has been facing pressure from the Office of Government Ethics that Bessett has failed to fully comply with his agreement to divest these funds. financial assets to get rid of his personal investment in an issue like this. And he has until December to like fully comply. But if there's... In this case, what he's doing is anti...

You know what I'm saying? He's not helping his soybean interest. No, he should be motivated to figure this out. Because he has personal assets on the line. And right now, there is no, there's no conceivable scenario where this changes, like in the next few weeks. And I think it raises a couple questions is if, you know, if no trade deal comes to fruition that suddenly produces the Chinese demand for American soybeans again, you know, what happens?

Will the government step in and relieve these farmers of the economic issues of being able to not sell their crops anymore? most likely. Otherwise, they face a multi-year problem of like, well, you don't bring any revenue from one year, right? And you need a lot of that money to plant and buy money. And then you can't, you could

never go back to fulfilling the demand because you're already a weaker form. Yeah. If anything changes next year and this were to be figured out, you're not in the economic position to even produce the crop that you're meant to. Yeah, it's almost like tariffs are fucking stupid. So, and I think it begs the question. It's like, you know,

is this, is the suffering of this specific group of people or the specific sector worth the achievement of some grander goal that tariffs are building to accomplish, right? I feel like that's the main line of argumentation you can take is of course, of course this sector was going to suffer in the short term because of the tariffs going into place. But they're part of a grander American reconstruction. You know how you grow? Trump starts tweeting and telling everybody to eat more soy. We bring soy consumption back to America. That's the problem.

What do you make out of soybeans? Do you make out of tofu? Is that it? Why is China eat so many soybeans? It's just tofu? Is that really the main? They do eat a lot of tofu. What are soybean oil paints plastic?

Okay, there's something. Listen, I got a quote here from farmers affected by this. Our yields and our crops and our weather are pretty good. So they're getting a lot of soybeans farm this year. But obviously, interest from markets. is that right now on a low because nobody wants to buy it. And, you know, these supply chains, like you said, are now being created that go around America.

They're just going to buy it from Brazil or Argentina or somewhere else. And then once those relations get established, that's it. Like, you're locked. Now they have multi-year trade deals and there's not going back to your farmers. But anyway, the quote from the guy said, they ask him, with all this economic pain, rural areas could well have turned against Trump,

but that doesn't seem to be happening. Polling experts say in the countryside, he's still broadly popular. Mr. Maxwell, the farmer for this piece. Look at him, he's quite a, he's got a cute smile.

So he's sticking with Trump despite his own financial worries. Our president told us it was going to take time to get all these tariffs in place. I'm going to be patient. I believe in our president. So that's what I'm saying.

So if he, see this guy, that's not the problem. I'm in the villain. Excuse me, sir. Excuse me, sir.

I'm in the villain chair. And I, as a soybean farmer who voted for Trump, who is, who is yet to be able to schedule where my crop. will be sold this year.

I understand that change takes a long time. I can't think of anyone. That Trump is on... Less of an advocate for soybean farmers in the Midwest than a podcaster in L.A. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm deeply ingrained.

You're not deeply ingrained. But is this not a reflection of what I'm saying? There is a belief and there is a line of argumentation that this is the short-term cost of some grander solution to our economic woes. and, you know, if you had to, if you had to sit down with, with this guy. Mr. Maxwell. Which let's pretend it's me.

Okay. Hello, Mr. Matthew. It's an honor to be. Mr. Max. We're a real hardworking American. Yeah.

Well, you got soft hands, City boy. Me? Yes. Meet my fellow podcasters. There's one you should meet. He's as soft as it gets.

You got to let go on my head. He's in multiple podcasts, actually. It's really embarrassing. Uh, Mr. Maxwell. My response would be, even if the stated goals of, these tariffs work and we bring manufacturing back to America, how does that help you, my friend, as a soybean exporter? How does that, I don't understand, even if Donald Trump has created

this great manufacturing system, are you going to become a manufacturer? Well, I think the president is aiming to bring back so much manufacturing to the United States and so much economic activity that because of the grander economic success in the United States, there will be an increased demand for my product locally. Locally. Okay. I don't know if he would say that. I see. I don't think he would say that, but I could, okay.

So the idea is that America grows so much that we can consume all of the soy ourselves. We need to outgrow the debt. We can consume more than the billion people of China could ever consume. No, I'll be getting to see the issue here. I just, you know, it's funny. If you're like a local American manufacturer, I guess you could, I could see how you could get this in your mind and go for it and be like, well, the tariffs help me be more competitive against China. You might just have a very vague idea that the grander economic success of the country

is going to somehow relieve you of the pain in your current position. And I'm not saying, I don't think policy should be solely dictated by the success or failure of a single agricultural industry in the United States. That's not what I mean to say here. It's more how, you know, if someone has this outlook, I don't really know how to push against it effectively. Here's, here's one, which is these farmers have a system and, you know, their own economy that is based around exporting internationally, right? And the idea is to make the United States more self-sufficient, right? And part of that would mean selling products that United States wants. Like, we just don't want that many soybeans and you can make other things.

You can grow other things on soybean farms. It doesn't have to be soybeans. I mean, I'm not, like, so like one half of my family is all farmers. So, they're all in Texas.

So this is, I mean, I'm actually invested in like farmland and you can, you can rotate crops. Like it's, it's inconvenient, but it's not like these farmers now are fucked. Like,

they just have to rotate their business. And maybe the thinking is, okay, what has worked as a way of generating this profit internationally as part of the cost of us broadly as communities across the United States, bringing manufacturing back, would mean that we are not going to focus

on exports to those same countries. I mean, again, I... I would do things. I would say they are fucked in the short term, for sure, because they have a whole bunch of soybeans that they have a lot of money in time. It is bad this year. They already made the soy beans.

They're going to harvest, and they're going to have a really unprofitable season where they, you know, have to lay people off and whatever. But the second thing is, there's just no possible way, no matter what crop they switched to, for the United States, to generate as much demand as the rest of the world in aggregate.

It's just not like there's you'll just have to have the performers will take pain. You're saying because we're applying tariffs on everybody. So everybody's going to retry that in general. But I'm just saying there's not enough to there's enough people in the United States. The amount of soybeans you can sell to China will always be more or crops you can sell to China plus Europe or where is always going to be more than what you can sell to 300 million people domestically. There's just there's just no other way.

that there's just a lot more people out there who wanted to buy American. I'm just glad the greedy farmer is going to have to share their profits with the working man now. So like, yeah, what I'm saying is like, okay, you can make the argument that farmers want to take an overall amount of pain

for everyone else to benefit. If that's the, I don't agree, but this is the system. But it's just funny to me that the farmer himself is like, this is going to work out for me. Because it's not. There's just no way.

If there's tariffs on all the other countries, then you will sell less and they will buy more from more competitive. Okay. Okay, so counterargument. What if the guy's like, all right, well, we're going to switch to growing more corn or sorghum or whatever, and they grow more things that are desired by the American consumers. And the tariff trade war stuff means less crops are being sold, you know, internationally into the United States.

So they have less competition with the crops they do grow that Americans want. Yeah, but I'm just saying it's just not enough people. There's just not. So what I'm saying is they're going to eventually have a smaller slice of this total. It's going to be a smaller economic engine, which could be fine. I mean, you could take that as like from the outside, it's worth it. I just find it weird that the farmer wants it because the farmer will lose. In the long term, they're going to be a, in a, you have a question.

Okay. So when I pulled, because like I said, my original interest in this story came from a podcast months ago. Okay. And in that piece, when I went to revisit it, I found the piece on YouTube, the comments are very vindictive. because the woman that the piece is mainly about, I would say, she doesn't admit it directly, but has clearly voted for Trump, but is also bracing for the oncoming problems of his decisions.

Right? She's in a very similar spot to the guy that you just brought up in this article. Yeah, okay. And I think we live in a time where people are hungry for that leopards ate my face moment where somebody who voted for Trump, you know, reaps the consequences of their vote, basically.

They like seeing that, and then they like making fun of that person. And that's what all the comments on that piece are about. They're like just, I mean, they're just being pretty heinous to this moment. Yeah, I don't fuck with that vibe at all. And I wanted more your guys' thoughts on that. Because to me, this does feel like a very clear you voted against your interests and are either in denial or like surprise this was the outcome when it felt somewhat obvious. But it doesn't, you know, the idea of filling YouTube comments of like and making fun of these people for suffering.

I don't think it helps. I don't think these people dig their heels more. But I do what to say. I want to split that down the middle. Yeah. I don't fault anyone, especially a farmer in the Midwest, for voting for Trump in 2024. Whatever. Biden was not, I mean, the Biden in the common thing was already pretty unpopular.

And then she didn't run a great campaign. And also there was inflation. and if you don't watch the news closely, whatever, I get it. I totally get it. It's not, I do find it a little frustrating when you're in a moment like now,

when you are a soybean farmer who thought this is all going to be good for me and now you are literally unable to sell your product because of decisions he's making and you are going to have to lay people off, you're going to have material economic damage and you still are like, this shit is going to work out.

I find that to be a little frustrating, but I don't have any leopards ate by face I'm in the YouTube comments. I would like to someone to reach out to the guy and try to like talk to him and explain to it. Maybe we can get him. Genuinely, maybe we can give this guy a call and just ask. Dude, I would love to ask him.

I would actually really like to ask this guy some questions. I think we're, you know, weeks out from when the harvest for these things start and we'll see how it plays out. What if we get our soft hands up and we go fucking harvest some of the soybeans? We go do a lemonade state episode of the farm. In the field.

We get some crops out. I'm really curious to see what I would like to wait. for is say we wait a couple months. We see what the government reaction to the lack of demand is and see if there's like subsidies or help. And then honestly, I'd like to talk to farmers then in the situation where they have received or have not received that support from the government and see how that sways their decision from now is when this is interesting. Because it is community. I mean, like, if even for the tariff supporters, there's acknowledgement, it's going to be disruptive in the short term, right? And so I think it'll take time for somebody like this to go, this was wrong, whereas this is the short-term pain that was clearly communicated.

Whether it then turns into long-term benefit, I don't think any of the three of us are very confident in that. But like, I do, I think it's perfectly reasonable. Again, knowing people in my family who are farmers who voted for Trump, like, I think it's perfectly reasonable for them to be like, this is what I was told is going to happen. But there's going to be this more sustainable America-first economy long-term. And maybe that means soybeans pass away, but we focus. more on cattle or corn and that will have higher yields because we're not competing with Brazil who's like dramatically expanding their farming production every year, right? Like that's, I think in a year or two, you can maybe call them, you know, stupid or...

I'm not call them stupid. No, no, no, I'm saying the people in these comments are you can be like, see, but it's too early to tell. I mean, right now, this is the known short-term pain of tariffs. Does it turn into benefits long-term? I don't think this was known. See, that's the thing I want to push back on. I think they would, if you would ask them at the time of the election, that they're going to flash forward

and they're going to have a bunch of crop that they can't sell. I do not think most of these voters, of these specific people, and we'd have to ask to know for sure, but my guess is that when most people put that ballot box in November and voted for this guy,

they were not like, I understand that I will not be able to sell my soybean crop a year from now, but that's worth the long-term gains of that economic cost. I do not think most people thought about this. A lot of people say he's, I think this is what most people thought

from my understanding, because I have uncles, I have family. They said a lot of people think he's just using tariffs as a bargaining chip as a bluff. The idea was like the tariffs aren't really going to stick around. Okay, yeah.

We're going to use a tariffs. We're going to threat. We're going to get some things. But we're not going to actually going to stick around and make us be honorable to sell our soybeans because that's. So there's still, yeah, no, that's an interesting. Like, they're still under the thinking of like, this is just him riling things up right now.

And they're going to get a deal from China. We can handle one year of no soybean sale. Yeah. Now that makes sense. And then the second thing is like, I'm blanking. I heard really, it was very poignant, I promise.

No, I'm fucking better. Go on. I'm sorry. China news. I have no other China news if we want to keep going on. Just real quick, we could do a sort of

opium war type strategy where we get countries hooked on our soybeans. China's too tough to fight. So we got to go somewhere. We have to go to like Australia or something. And make them all eat soybeans. Let me briefly sidetrack this.

I actually think we're, an Indian opium war with China and we're losing. For TikTok? What? Oh. No, for fentanyl. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

We're in the war and we're on the other side. Yeah. We're on the losing. It's the same thing because they sold opium for tea and there's like fentanyl for soybeans. What else is going on? No, okay. Is there any else?

Digital opium. I think that's, I think that's. We're done, actually. No, I think just like, that was the week. It was soybeans in Brazil. And that's where the world's on fire. I was about digital opium, okay? I'm talking about TikTok.

That's about scrolling. That's what you know all about, Gen Z. Okay? Makes me happy. Makes you. We finally had news. A little refresher on TikTok. It is the first time I've seen this in my lifetime.

A refresher on TikTok. I want to do a friend. I want to explain to you, okay? This is the first time I've seen in my lifetime where a, law was gone to the House, gone to the Senate, passed by Congress, signed by the President, approved by the Supreme Court, nothing happened. We got through all the steps of the process, we're going to ban TikTok, and it just didn't, nobody enforced it.

Nothing happened. So we just kept extending, extending, and then. In my somewhat limited knowledge, this appears to be the most egregious thing that Trump has done. Everything else is, I'm going to, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. No, legally. Hold on, hold on. I'm getting out my video camera to retake that one.

Legally. Like everything else, every other time, and maybe there is an exception, I'm not aware of it. But every other time Trump tries to do a crazy thing, and then the judicial system says, you can't do this. He follows law and bitches and complaints. This is the one thing where every single branch of the government,

including the Supreme Court. Including him, he signed this letter. Everybody, everybody. And so this is the one time where he's, it's not just like etiquette, and executive orders and all this stuff. He's straight up defying the orders of the Supreme Court to ban this.

Anyway, go ahead. So that is the context going in, and we all know that TikTok was officially banned, that everyone freaked out and then nothing happened, nothing happened, and it keeps getting extended, and nothing happened. So finally you have an update as of today. There is, again, he always calls them deals, but it's like a framework of a deal

with the United States and China on how to handle TikTok, which is, and this is my understanding, is they are going to, because here's China's goals, right, China does not want the algorithm to leave China. Yeah. That is the most important part. That is the TikTok key thing. That is the Craby Patty Secret Formula.

It's the Cravy Patty Secret Formula. And that was the big thing. And China was going to blow the whole, they were just going to not, they would rather have TikTok die in America than release the algorithm. So what they're going to do is they're going to lease, they're going to license the algorithm to American TikTok,

which will be a new company, US TikTok, that licenses the algorithm by paying a part of their revenue, I think 20% of their revenue to China. So it's like almost no different than what it is now, really. But this is so much work to do, am I crazy? So it says the guy with the Huawei laptop, but it's deep state agent. Is this not?

It's just feels like so much work to get basically nothing. So an American TikTok will be, I think, co-owned by some of the investors that are currently in TikTok, which is like, I don't know, Sequoia and some of the, some of the VCs. And then also, Oracle is going to be a major owner. I think Blackstone was one of them. The Oracle's Leeway, which is interesting.

So Oracle, which has already put out some incredible stockmumbers on the back of hosting some of the data for TikTok in America, is now going to, he's owned by Larry Ellison, right? He's the CEO. his son also owns the Paramount Skydance merger that owns CBS News. And it is now in the same day making a bid to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, which on CNN. So if this were true, TikTok, CNN, and CBS News

would be owned by the same billionaire Ellison family that, you know, is very Trump friendly. So, uh, you know, there is a, There's something unique to that. Although I will say, based on my understanding, they will not have control of the algorithm to be able to change it. It's just licensed through China. You have to license it as it is.

Yeah. So I'm a little skeptical. It's still a framework deal. So if you were to, the goal of this was to protect American data from the Chinese government. That was the original reason why this cropped up at all, right? It was the idea that the amount of data TikTok is collecting from American citizens can be used against the U.S. by the Chinese government because of their connections to, I mean, because they're connected to Biden. There's multiple things.

It's what, so there's what the U.S. government says. That's what they say. Yeah, the security reason. It's the security reason. And then there's what everybody assumes to be the real one, which is the algorithm determines what topics are seen and promoted, right? And so there is a lot of evidence to show that certain topics just magically don't get shown by the algorithm, right? Hold on, hold on. Let me mute the mic on my laptop, sorry. Did you be perked up at his desk? He's like kind of bored, yeah, he's like...

So good idiot. Tienaman Square is a topic that China really, really doesn't want anybody talking about. And conveniently, videos about Tiananmen Square just don't get shown. videos about the Uyghur genocide or crackdown or however you want to call that situation conveniently doesn't get shown. Hong Kong protests conveniently doesn't get shown. And so there's like very strong evidence that they are willing to use the algorithm to basically promote whatever content they want and maybe they're pushing certain subjects, right? And the most egregious example is when it was threatened to be banned. They posted the app to basically say TikTok is threatened to be banned. You should reach out to your congressman.

And that really freaked people out because this is a foreign government, the Chinese government, who's using an app to reach 100 million Americans and tell them, you should go bother your congressperson to pass a law. So it is multiple. I think there are real genuine concerns around TikTok and the idea that an adversarial government that has an extremely bad track record with free speech and human rights. And obviously the United States government is not absolved of things here as well. but they use the algorithm to push certain things and to bring down certain. So let's say all of the things, all of those concerns.

Let's just say they're 100% true. Let's, if that is a given, how much does this license change those security concerns? That was my question. It was like, does this actually resolve the original reasons or fears that this existed? No, it doesn't.

Oh. The algorithm remains in China and remains licensed from TikTok. So yeah, I don't think it... Oh, good. I don't think this does anything. This is a... So again, there's two big ones. One is the data and one is the algorithm's influence on discussion, let's say.

Yeah. The data is now going to be safer if that's held entirely within the US systems. And if the algorithm is licensed, they can, you know, have more scrutiny over whether any data is leaving the United States. Like, it'd be easier to solve contain it. So the data privacy concerns is the one. But who gives a shit about data privacy? Like honestly, is there anybody who's like, man, I really care if the Chinese government knows about what type of TikToks I'm watching?

I mean, maybe. But so that data... They steal my dance move? I don't know. Maybe I'm unique in this. I just don't give a shit. The government knows stuff about it. I mean, they know what I put into notion.

You know, I'm not too concerned. They know every episode of this podcast. They know it airs because you're live streaming it to Xi Jinping's house. Yeah. Well, if you had the technology to do it like I did, you would do it. Let's look at my Chinese EV and I'm driving around. Talking about Tiananmen Square and a hard break. All right.

Do we want to hop on over to some else? Is there anything else say on this? I don't know. It's kind of dumb, but I think the funniest part is that we just ignored the law. What are we doing? It's like, what are we doing? It's like TikTok is popular, so just nobody really cares. You know, it's funny.

I think, you know, there's a big, I think there's a big fear among lawmakers and probably Trump in general, that he has a lot of fans on TikTok that would be really mad if it were banned. But my guess is much like what happened in India. If they actually banned TikTok, there would be a new TikTok very quickly made in America or in a friendly country and would be popular within, you know, it's not irreplaceable. The algorithm's good, but someone else can do it.

What happened in India? India banned TikTok and then a bunch of TikTok competitors popped up And that's what they used. They watch more YouTube shorts. They watch more Instagram reels. And they want, like, because India was concerned with the same thing. China's so close.

They don't want the control of the narrative to be within an adversary's hands. I think, I mean, I agree. I think it is very concerning to have an adversarial government with this much influence over how people discuss news. That being said, our own tech companies do this. I was saying like every country in Europe probably feels that about YouTube and every other country.

In fact, that leads into Nepal very well. Oh, yeah, some of that. That's a good one. Yeah, that's wonderful. All right. This is a very interesting. You got to stop spinning in the wrong way. I will say whichever way I want.

Nepal riots. You guys are bold bad at spinning the glove. Now, I was particularly interested in this because I lived in Nepal for three months right after high school. So I have spent a lot of time in Nepal in various parts of it. People are not aware about Nepal. tiny country in between China and India is most known for being

heavily in the Himalayas. So it is one side of Mount Everest. They got a fire flag, too. It's not a rectangle. It's not a rectangle. It's not a rectangle. It's so beast to have a flag that is triangular. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, flag is cool. So this is a country that is nestled in

between China and India and over the last decade or two is it's kind of been an interesting like they're kind of fighting for vying for influence. When I was there, it was extraordinarily influenced by India. And in fact, while Nepal is considered, you know, people think of it as this like Buddhist sort of haven, and you go there for the Buddhist temples,

like 90% of people there were, like, practicing Hinduism. So it's very, very influenced by India. And then when I was there, insanely poor. Like one of the poorest countries in the world. So they essentially, it's a small country. They now have 30 million people. And Kathmandu is the capital city. Camandu is basically the only city.

This is not like a giant bustling country. It's like a lot of hills and fields that people are spread out and then there's like one capital city. So this last week on September 8th, people started protesting, particularly led by Gen Z. And the quick summary is people were frustrated with government corruption, with inequality. People were particularly annoyed with government officials, their kids having these lavish like TikTok showing off their wealth and whatnot. And so this isn't that dissimilar. from a lot of the kind of protesting and whatnot that's going around the world.

I think a couple of things that are particularly notable. So on September 8th, tens of thousands of people go into the streets of Kathmandu, they start protesting intensely. They start burning down government buildings. They burn the parliament building. The prime minister and president,

private addresses get burned down, media buildings and hotels. And they break into the prime minister's office and essentially force him to resign. And so this was all instigated when the Nepalese government was threatening social media companies and saying,

you have to register with the government and allow us to have control. Otherwise, you cannot exist in Nepal. So they did this. They tried to enact this law. They were temporarily banned, including Facebook, X, YouTube, Discord. And this was perceived to be by the youth. They got LinkedIn, dude. They got LinkedIn.

They got LinkedIn. They got Reddit. Yeah. And so. Imagine writing because you can't access LinkedIn. It's just that's where I really, that's where I really hanged me today. Yeah. So that really instigated this feeling of,

like our government has been serving us. There's been corruption. We are struggling as a youth. We have like 22% youth unemployment. 20% of the country is still in poverty, which is actually a huge improvement from 15 years ago. And so they're like, this is crossing the line with the social media ban. This is basically an attempt to, you know, enact even more authoritarianism and stop us from being able to do anything.

The timing is so suspect because it's right as these massive online hashtag nepo kid online. online protests are happening where they're like saying all the friends and family of these government officials are living lavish lifestyles we're living in poverty it's fucked up

and that's when they decide we're going to crack down on social media people draw the connection so two really notable things for this that I thought was interesting the first is so Gen Z collectively

is really kind of organizing around this and they do this from a Discord group called Youth Against Corruption which has like 160,000 members so this starts to be where people who are participating in these protests

really organizing them. It's happening in this Discord channel. So if the first two days of the protests, they're going around burning buildings, the military come out. There's like 70, 50 people die in the first two days, a couple police as well as protesters being shot by police. Eventually, the military comes out and assumes control. And now the protesters are sort of in control of things because of how much influence they have. They've literally burnt down the prime minister's house and the prime minister has resigned. So they- And fled is well, right? Yeah. So they start debating about who should be the next leader in this Discord group. And so they start having live stream debates.

There was a live stream debate with about 16,000 people watching on their own platform as well as YouTube. They pick sort of front runners and then they do a vote on Discord where people voted on which person they want to be the next prime minister of Nepal. And a former Chief Justice, Shishila Karki is chosen. So the first thing, that's crazy. Everybody's just arguing about it on Discord. And like that's where there's apparently like all these different debates. There's like fake news going around. So there's subgroups around, you know, going against the fake news.

I'm in there. I'm in the discord. I tried to get in. It's blocked it now. Yeah. But I'm in there and I was reading stuff and it's so Gen Z. It's crazy. Like it'll be memes and someone being like, you guys should like Joe Biden as president. And then it'll be like real serious paragraphs of discussion.

And then it'll be memes and it was, it's wild seeing it happen in real time. It's like Lord of the Flies. I mean, it's like, there's real beautiful stuff, but also it's mixed in with so much meme. Right, and I think that's what's worth just acknowledging. It's like, while this sounds cool on paper, this is, it's a, it's almost inspiring of like the youth is managed to like overthrow what is perceived to be this, you know, inactive, unresponsive, corrupt government.

And at the same time, it's tens of thousands of people in Discord who are anonymous, who might not be Nepalese citizens. The fact that you're in there is a little bit scary. People are spreading fake news. people are, for example, trying to bring back the monarchy, like they want the king back, which is, you know, if they vote on that on Discord, I guess that's legit. They use Discord to revote the king in. But it is like...

Okay, I want to counterpoint slightly. Only that I think what's inspiring about it is who they ended up choosing. Because this is gone, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like an incredible choice all things considered. Yeah. She has this history of anti-corruption. She's not Gen Z. She's like 70 years old.

Yeah. She's not. from a political party. She's independent. She's got, you know, she's like pretty well respected in a great apartment from Maljur. They picked somebody

who's not just from their group. Yeah. And it's funny because the second place in the poll, I saw the pool in Discord. Second place for poll is random Nepali, which I thought meant a random person. I looked it up. Random Nepali is a YouTuber who's popular in Nepal

and that was their second choice. So it could have been Gen Z Alexa YouTuber and said that they overwhelmingly picked like the right, I think seemingly the right person who like took this mantle, didn't understand discord. Yeah. I don't know. That's cool.

Yeah. What stood out to me, so she's notable, again, the youth is frustrated with corruption, the feeling the government isn't serving them. Things aren't getting better. And so this woman that they chose to elect as the interim prime minister, she's 73, but she worked on the Supreme Court as a judge in the 2010s. So in 2012, she and another Supreme Court judge jailed a serving minister for corruption. So she, like, aggressively pushed on corruption.

she became the first chief justice pushed against corruption even more and then some lawmakers tried to impeach her in 2017 because they're like, oh, you're biased. And so she's considered a champion against corruption and to me felt like Lena Kahn, to be honest. Like this very like outsiding political figure who comes in and is pushing back

against a very established system that eventually, you know, gets removed power. And so again, if this is like a kind of two year after America situation in two years, Lena Kahn will be elected president via discord. Don't get my hopes up. Don't get me stuck. Hey, by the way, can we do this? My underruption?

No, fine. After this. One more thing after this. Go back to that. Okay. Actually, I want to remember right now. Very small. Guys, we got featured in the New York Times for our Lena Con interview.

And they framed it entirely around your question, Doug. And it pissed me off. They put us in there and they were like, limited stand collectively pressed Lena Con hard on her. Yeah. All three of us agree. Yeah. That's very funny. Because it was true.

Like we wanted to ask that question. But the way that's phrased like these three gamers all. Yeah. I was like, damn. Damn, I got New York Times. Bro, they fucking, they misrepresenting it. Anyway, that's funny. Sorry, small outside.

I mean, to be fair, they represented me very well. They did. It should be included. But it was just like, it was funny because, yeah. Yeah, that two of the biggest Lena Con glazers were told. The one sentence is they, they pushed Alina Khan. That was like, what, five minutes out of 90 minutes?

I don't know. I thought that was funny. Yep. So Nepal, crazy situation. Right now, basically they have an interim government from this woman who was elected by discord. To be clear, that's not an official election. So there's a little bit of weirdness around. While everybody's like, yeah, this is cool, there is a sense of like what's going on.

And it is worth reminding people, again, like, as cool as this is, if you go around Nepal, the vast majority of people do not have internet. They don't have electricity, right? Like, even when I was, when I was there, you had internet maybe like an hour a day in the capital, right? The capital is a small percentage of the actual country. So you now have the prime minister of the country chosen by a discord.

And so if you're the person in the hills of, you know, two hours outside of Camp Mendo, that feels a little weird to me. Like the places I went are like, there's no way these people at any part of this process. So it's cool and I think inspiring that a ways. and also a little concerning. What she said, when she stepped out, I watched an interview,

is like she's going to take this honor from Gen Z. Right, yeah. And then she's going to do it. But it's only for six months, six to eight months. Yes. To set up real elections, which I think is cool. I mean, I'm more worried that, like, there's a long history of countries being in interim governments that collapse.

Because there's so much instability and other, like, again, I want to say historically, both India and China have a strong. strong interest. And also the United States because you just love the metal, want to meddle in Nepal. They want to have more influence and control over Nepal because it's a buffer state between the two. And so the chances of this going badly are still really high, of course. It's a very uncertain situation. But I, you know, I'm more hopeful than you on this one, but it's like, this could have gone way worse. I think this is the best way this could have gone. Yeah, exactly. Right? And I just, and at the same time, I just want to, you know, remind people that

160,000 people in a discord have voted the interim prime minister of a country. And one of those guys is a patriot. Of 30 million people. And that's, and that's, sick as hell if you're in there. And that's, by definition, not the majority of the country. And it's just, it's not, I don't think it's the incredible,

amazing restoration of democracy that maybe sounds like, even though it's, it's, it's, Patriot in this discord. Guys, I think Modi is a leading example. You're just working on behalf of the Indian government. I saw a tweet that was like a week ago, Discord announced that they were going to up the maximum number of people in a Discord server

from 2.5 million to 25 million. And people are like, what is the possible, a few days later, Nepal overthrows the government. I did have this thought with this story is there's an interesting trend of noticing Discord more in high-stakes political media or situations, like here, or Charlie Kirk Schueter, like confessing on Discord or talking on Discord, or I think it was a year or two ago when that kid, he was like 21, he was in the U.S. military, and he just dropped

a document. On files, right? He just dropped some files about the Russian-Ukraine War. on Discord to like his boys and they got arrested for it. But this theme of Discord becoming relevant enough to have these sorts of things take place on it. People like getting messages from their parents like, were you would, like, I heard, I know you're on Discord all the time. Are you in a chat with this guy? They think of Discord is like one thing.

It's one place. It's like one place. Where everybody's. I like the idea of all of these things happening in one server. And it's just like there's one channel where like this about is happening. but also one channel where it's same server. He's planning assassinations. Where the guy is planning the Charlie Kirk assassination.

Yeah, it's like Valorant screams. And then you got to. And then Valerite. Terex Pro City is on the bottom. It's all in the one big discurs. I, speaking of government collapse, though, France? Oh, I can talk about France a little bit. I do want to say one model thing on this is like,

we're not going to go deep on Indonesia as well, but all over Asia, there's a rock right here, Gen Z protests are rattling governments all over Asia, from Nepal to Indonesia. This is happening, not just in Nepal.

And by the way, I'll say, outside of Nepal, it's not going as well. It's not going as, and I will say a big part of that, in my understanding, the situation is like how incredibly

handled this was by the Nepal military. Like, for me, that was like one of the big stories of this. They did not seize power when they could have. They tried to find a civilian authority to go above them. Yeah.

They quieted the riots down. They regained order, got peace, but didn't cease power. Like, it's like almost unheard of in a lot of countries for that happening. And I looked into it. And the Nepalese military is like so deeply respected by its people, by other countries. There's one quote, I just want to say, I've said in my video, but like, um, they have these elite units called the Gurkhas. And they're like, if anyone tells you they fear death, they're either a lying or a Gurka.

That's like, that's like that's like badass. Oh, they don't fear death. Sorry, sorry, don't fear death. You know what's crazy? You said that the exact same way in your YouTube video. I said it wrong twice and a lot of people gave them death. I'm trying to get, they don't fear death. Yeah.

All just breed, like, this is pandery, all right? But Nepal is an absolutely beautiful, incredible country with amazing people. And I would rank them S tier above every other country. You heard it for on the Doug Doug country rankings. It is cool to read this. damn, this went so well. Like, that's, anyway. This is how so American politics is stuff.

I wish him the best. Tell me what's happening in France. Okay, very quick on France looking. It's actually so up our alley. It's crazy. I don't want to go too into it because we'll at least need to change my pants talking about. Before you get into it, here's my. Give your understanding.

It's like, I'll yell wrong loudly. Every two weeks, every two weeks, these guys are in the streets, burning cars. Every two weeks, it could be about the bread. could be about the debt. I don't know. So you can tell me what it is this time. I'll say, people say that,

but it really, if you graphed number of protests for riots and France per year, it's an up trend, okay? They're getting more and more upset and more angry. What is happening is that they are gone through their fourth prime minister in a year because nobody can agree

on what to, on what budget to pass, really. Yeah. The first thing a prime minister does when they come in, they have to decide what they're going to spend money on, what they're going to cut, what they're going to raise taxes. is nobody can agree on that. I will say all these prime ministers are nominated by the centrist, Macron, who is trying

to hold it all together and nobody agrees with it. He's not very well liked. But everyone he nominates, comes in, tries to pass a bill, doesn't get passed, things get more radicalized. Nothing, like the government is not able to govern. They can't do anything. They can't pass any budget. And so now it's becoming more and more of an issue.

Real quick. Yeah. So Macron understands. He's president, right? He elects the prime minister. But the prime minister has to be from the majority coalition, right? Such a good question. I'm so glad you guys said.

Okay. So here's how, I wish I could draw it. But imagine there's three basic groups that he could draw from. It's the centrist party that he is the head of. There is the right-wing party called the RN. That's head by Le Pen. That is the single biggest individual party. Okay.

And then the biggest group is what you would call the left-wing group, the new popular front. Okay? They got more than the other two groups, not a majority, but like more. It would be like, I don't know, they got 34% or something. Yeah, yeah. But this group is made up of 20 individual parties in a trench code. Yeah.

All of whom do not agree. Basically on almost anything except they don't like the other two parties. Okay. So, for example, like there's a socialist party in there and you think maybe that's more left wing, but actually they're pretty centrist and they really don't like the Melanchon's biggest party. Left League party. So, like, they can't agree on who to nominate as a prime minister. It sounds like American left politics, too.

Yeah, so there's a lot of infighting. And, but there is like a big support. So it's, it's just like nobody can nominate somebody that other people will agree. Enough people will agree with to get a majority. So he keeps putting in these interest guys that are trying to get the bill passed. But what I'm saying is, um, the debt in France, the bigger story here is like, is it, it's all going to old people. And we've talked about this before, but it's more extreme than almost anyone.

where I looked it up. There's a really good piece on it in the FTA deep dive. And they showed that the average French old pensioner is living a better, like they have a better income than like the working age person in almost all of Europe and in America. Like they're living, they're living relatively lavishly on, they have one of the most generous pension packages.

They have one of the longest pension times. So like the average French retiree is, is getting like 20. 27 years or something after retirement that they're getting paid for. And like the government's income cannot support it. They are borrowing to make that happen. And so one thing you could do is raise taxes, which I'm sure that's a proposition on the left. And one thing you can do is cut benefits.

But the truth is nobody wants to do either of those bad things enough to get a majority. Like anyone's just in raising taxes cannot get a majority. Anyone just in cutting spending, can I get a majority. One of those riots you talked about, all we can call this, whatever, was because they, McCrone tried to raise the retirement age two years. I think it was from 60 to 62 to where you can start getting the free retirement. That caused the massive protest. Yeah.

It might be 62 to 64. Maybe that's right. Maybe that's right. You're right. So anyway, that, that, I'm not saying I'm giving a solution here. I'm just saying like this is, this is, it's such a, such a cluster fucking phrase right now. And it doesn't seem like there's any near-term solution because the, the, Macron doesn't get replaced until 2027.

Yeah. We had talked about this, a little. little bit a couple months ago when the budget proposal by the previous Prime Minister now had been, because he's already been checked out, had proposed something and they were getting, he was getting that negative feedback from both parties on the other side, right? And I think the underlying thing is that the situation as it exists cannot continue in this fashion.

Something needs to give in one direction. Nobody can get anything done to exit. the current trajectory that they're on. Yeah, and I think the problem is there is an upside to people for not playing along, which is that this fraying centrist party of Macron, as things don't get done, they bleed users, like users, whatever,

they bleed voters. I'm speaking like a fucking, they bleed voters to either the right way with nothing parties. They just, so neither of them have much interest in compromising because the longer they wait, the more they gain politically. Let me propose a different angle.

The reason that... We talked about this last week. The largest voting bloc in human history is the boomer generation. This is true of every country. It's true of the French country where, again, right now, they're in retirement, and they are benefiting.

As you just said, they are receiving these incredible government benefits even though the government can't support this long term. And so they are incentivized to not change. because until they die, the government will probably continue to function

and then their kids will have to deal with it. Totally. And that is what is going on in our country, to be clear. It's not old people rioting, which is I find it funny. They, they, everyone is mad about these changes, but most of what is, like,

so, I looked at the French government budget and it's like the vast, way more than education, military, roads, administrate, everything combined does not add up to what they spend on direct checks to old people. That is, the function of the French government

is to give comfortable life to old people. That is what it does in practice, if not in name. So I, and people should, all people should have coverage for lives. I don't disagree with that, but it's like the math is so egregious in this situation. And I think there's a very strong case that like one thing Macron has done

is cut taxes on the wealthy, which has made it even more impossible to fun. I think that's totally fine. But man, the budget shortfall is big, and France's debt situation is now, worse than like Greece. Like Greece, borrowing costs are lower than France.

The market thinks that Greece is more trustworthy to pay their debt back than France. So I don't know. I think we just want an update on it. That's not much more to say. And France is still a wealthy first world country. I'm not trying to... But it's just wild that like...

They're just functionally stuck. The government, as it's written, cannot make progress on these problems. I feel like I'm watching the same cycle play out online over and over again in the last couple years. Like when I look at this issue from the outside, as an American, pretty much every piece of news about France is some attempted change.

People go to the streets to protest and resist. Neither party will cooperate. And it's just this basically the same story echoed again and again every few months for the last couple years. So realistically, what will happen is enough people will bleed out from the center to the sides that one of them gets enough power to make a move or like wins big or just takes Cesar's control or whatever. Like, that's, you know, there's going to be an election in 27. The RN is the most favorite party right now, which is the right wing one. But something will happen.

I mean, that's what's going to be lifted. So anyway, didn't the Penn get banned? I mean, there's a whole thing. Yeah, she's banned from running, but the party is still leading the polls with their second in command. Okay. So she, okay, got it. She can't run, but. Okay.

Well, this is a, this is very tied to something else I wanted to talk about, which was the Norwegian election that just happened. Ooh, Antarctica. Dude, I would love for you to tell me, one, this is a bad news episode, Aidan. You better tell me one bad thing about Norway. I know. Because you've never done this on this podcast in your entire life or in your real world.

We got some bad things about Norway. Thank God. Or some problems that they're dealing with that are somewhat similar, except maybe more mild. If this is bad, I wouldn't want any one of my friends even moving near there.

I wouldn't allow them to. I would be my personal moral argument at the airport tried to go. And I would not let them leave because that would be a good friend thing do. To be clear, I am inciting violence right now. He's not

incite, and it's still a joke, it's still facetious and, okay. So, if we say this enough, we could get you banned. I know, I know. Norway. And they're going to look online, they're going to be like, oh, well, all they do, they go antagonize Lena Kahn. They don't seem to impressing her.

Norway, Norway, just had an election last week. And the results came in at the beginning. I think they're on, I think, They just scored. What are we talking about? They didn't do this one. It was actually all on WhatsApp.

It's crazy. That's got it. The results, I think, were locked in. I think, as of this morning, if I'm correct. But basically, the Labor Party, which was the existing party in power, which is a more left-leaning party,

maybe left-centered, depending on how you view it within Norwegian politics, one with 28% of the vote, which was up from 26% in 2021. which is the last time they had an election. What was the party again? I'm sorry? The Labor Party.

The Labour Party won. The other party that won big in this election was the Progress Party, which is a more right-wing populist party that for the first time ever has become the leading opposition party within Norwegian politics. And they had a huge jump from 11% of the vote to almost 24% of the vote this time. And this is a fairly right-wing party,

especially within Norwegian politics. They are outpacing the former more right party that had the biggest portion of the opposition, conservative party before them. I mean, I would just say for Europe, I didn't know about Norway at all, but like the European trend has been, and it's happened in America already, is that the center right is just getting obliterated and there's a more populous right that is like surging. That's happening all over Europe and it happened here already. And I think what's interesting is Norway is a country that, you know, even with

the joke that you introduced this through is a country that we see as separate from a lot of the struggles and consequences that the rest of the world is often going through. They're like number one happiness or whatever. They have good fish. They're up there in all the stats. They have all the stat. They're one of the most equal countries in the world. They're one of the richest countries in the world.

They have a lot of success. They have a high quality of life, right? They define all of these metrics in a lot of ways. But this party, the progress party, the big points behind. them is that they want to reduce. Can I guess? Yeah, yeah. Immigration. Number one, and two, and three. All right. I'd say that it's, you know, maybe number one or two for them.

They want to reduce taxes, reduce bureaucracy and government intervention, and guess, you guessed it, they're anti-immigrant. In that order? Really? Well, I think it depends on who you talk to. Anti-immigrant, anti-immigration broadly, I feel like is their number. one, but within the context of this specific election, I felt like it might have been a little different. I think Norwegians could speak to that better. I think their big win here was seen as a huge victory for this party

because it's an enormous jump to go from 11% to almost 24% in this leadership in the opposition. They're angling for a chance at being the majority party in in 2029. And that's the hope from them.

But one specific note with this, was at the center of this election that became a huge issue is the Norwegian wealth tax, which is a wealth tax that they have had in place in some form since 1892. And there are one of three countries in Europe that still applies a net wealth tax in this way.

How does a wealth tax like this actually work? What it means is you're being taxed to some degree on all of the value of all of the assets you own. That could be like stocks, property, et cetera. And you don't have to sell and realize the gain of those assets to be taxed on it. So how does this actually work? It doesn't apply to you at all if you have assets below $180,000 USD. That's not that high.

Which isn't super high, right? So a lot of people do pay this. But the tax is, for what it's worth, the tax is only 1% once it applies to you. It's 1%. And then pass 2.1 million USD, past your assets beyond that, they tack on another 0.1%. And then also some things to understand here is they don't tax all your assets at their full market value. So, for example, your primary residence, like the main home that you live in, they only take 25% of that home's market value. Or, for example, stocks, if you had equity in a company, that's at 80% of that market value.

So nothing is taking at its full market value. and then also any debt you have, the full 100% value of the debt you have can be written off against the tax that you would owe for this. So it's not as crazy as like, I think this could seem at first, even at a 1% could seem really unreasonable if you're, like in the U.S., right, you could just be a homeowner and own a home in like, you know, maybe you own a home in like San Francisco or Oakland or Los Angeles, right? High value, real estate. state areas where your home has exploded in value and then all of a sudden you have to figure out a way to like pay this tax well there's there's protections and acknowledgement in the way this law is written

to have people uh you know pay a reasonable amount basically uh and only 760 000 citizens in a you know in a country of almost 6 million people uh pay this tax at all um in any amount so the pros behind this, like why, why is there such an advocacy for the rid of this wealth tax from this party? The idea is that previously, in 2021, there was a change to this law that added that little 0.1% to the 1% before. So for the wealthiest individuals in the country, they were going to tax them a tiny bit more, that additional 0.1%. And in the wake of that, 30 millionaires and billionaires left to relocate outside of Norway, primarily in Switzerland because of the difference in tax loss.

And it was estimated that because of that flight of those people, there was a loss of 500 million USD in tax revenue. And that loss in tax revenue is something that the tradeoff basically wasn't worth it. Like people say that. The other arguments are that the tax on these unrealized gains deter people from setting up businesses in Norway. So relative to its neighbors, Norway, which was doing really, really well, say like 10, 15 years ago compared to its neighbors like Denmark or Sweden or Switzerland is relatively declining in like productivity, the number of like new companies created.

And also I went to go look at the largest companies in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. And just this is this is solely by the eye test. So if you really want to dig into this, I encourage you to, but when I was going through the list of companies from all of these places, I recognized basically nothing on Norway's list except companies involved in energy or oil. And Sweden and Denmark have way more recognizable large companies. Is Maersk Norwegian? I think so. Largest Norway companies. I mean, Norway is like largely driven by oil, right? It is, yeah. Yeah. So this, and this couples into this. That stagnation, and reliance on oil and its sovereign wealth fund

are criticisms of combined with this wealth tax are criticisms of why new innovative businesses and industries aren't cropping up in Norway, like they have in their Nordic neighbors in comparison. And also lastly, for those concerned about wealth inequality, wealth inequality, regardless of this tax's implementation, has been increasing in Norway pretty significantly over the past 15 years.

And so if this law is meant to combat that significantly, it doesn't seem like it's doing a particularly good job. So all of these things are part of the argument of why this is becoming a topic of contention within Norway. But the pushback from a lot of people in Norway addresses a lot of these concerns. The weird thing is that it became a prominent issue within the scope of this election specifically. And a lot of the fears around capital flight or like the losses that we're going to see if we continue to have this tax in place seem a little weird because this election wasn't a referendum on this law changing or increasing the tax. The tax is staying the exact same as it has been over the last few years.

So why would anyone leave that hasn't already left during that first year where those people made the decision? It doesn't seem likely to dramatically increase the number of people leaving in the next few years. Wouldn't they leave after the first election afterwards because they know it's not going to get changed now? That's the idea. Yeah, I mean, if you wanted to wait another, you were willing to wait four years the first time and now you're not willing to wait another four years? I guess I'm saying if you're a rich person, you're in there, this vlog gets passed. You're like, this sucks. And then you try to like.

So maybe. advocate for someone to change it, then you lose the election. It's like, oh, it's not getting changed. I'm out. Maybe. Yeah, so we have to, we have to wait and see. But the argument that comes alongside that is even if the flight does happen, wealth taxes are such a low percent of overall revenue that,

that how much does this matter in the first place? Like if we're losing out on a few people leaving the system because of the way that this law works, how much does that matter to us when it has such a, a relatively small amount of her overall budget. So like last year in 2024, they brought in about $3 billion USD in overall tax revenue, which is about 3% of the revenue

that they brought in overall. And that 3% is higher than like the previous two years. Like it had climbed up a bit. Okay. The... What's your stance? What's your take over? What's your...

My take? Yeah. I think my take is. Remember, you're going to be a Swedish citizens. You need to kind of dig Norway. Okay, so different country. That's what I'm saying. Swedes would.

You have to show that you're out. You have to kind of look down on Norway. I have to make fun of them. You have to make fun of them. Yeah, I don't, yeah. Like you support Nordic. They should keep the wealth deck so that I can move to Sweden and not have it. And I can say I'm better.

No, I think the other couple things. that I did agree with were the issue and how riled up people are about it, especially with young men, seems very disconnected from the reality of how many people this law prominently affects. There's a very limited pool, less than 2,000 people, that this law significantly taxes. And the reason it taxes those people is because they also, people who have the most wealth in Norway, also have their wealth and income structured in ways that make it so they actually don't pay a lot via other means of tax payment, right? And the big thing with this wealth tax that they really hate is that it's a very, there are very few loopholes with it. It's a very surefire way

to get this group of people, especially with the changes they made in 2021, to escape the tax bill that you owe to Norway versus the other ways when you're at that level of wealth have ways for you to structure the way you make your money around paying taxes. And this is the way to keep those people accountable. I think the thing that I am most aligned with is when an issue that seems to affect so few people,

specifically the ultra-wealthy and the primary argument against it, which is like spurring innovation and new companies in Norway also has large other likely reasons as to like why that's the case and not this wealth tax specifically. It feels like a wolf in sheep's clothing

of a few small, very wealthy people demanding the lift of a tax that affects them and trying to sell it as an issue that seems important to everybody. That's what I feel like when I read this. But, but that being said, Norway is one of the only countries that still has this net wealth tax in place. And a lot of other countries in Europe, including some of their Scandinavian neighbors, have over the past hundred years gotten rid of the wealth taxes that they used to have. And many of which are, you know, are still pretty successful countries.

So I think there's an argument either, that kind of in either direction. Hold on, let me. I have a question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Capital gain, unrealized capital gains tax is fucking stupid. Sorry, stupid? Yeah.

No, no, I say, I mean, maybe. But, okay, this is the issue, right? Is like, the, if I'm Elon Musk and my fortune has increased from, you know, 50 billion to 100 billion to 400 billion. Yeah. Primarily because of the growth of a specific asset, right? Right. At that level of income, when I wield hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, I don't

function as a normal person in society anymore. I don't have a W-2 income that I take in and like pay taxes on. What I do is I take out loans that use the assets I own as the underlying like collateral for, you know, essentially spending cash that I, that I have, right? I interact with the world financially in a very, very different way. And just because this person sits on an asset that explodes in value that enables them to access a portion of the financial system that none of normal people can access interact with, should they be able to escape the burden of taxes on assets become a means to escape being taxed, if that's the case. And so there comes a point at which I think you have to push against that. I think there are maybe.

better solutions than a wealth tax. I think that's one of the, but that's not what the progress party is advocating for. They just want to get rid of the wealth tax entirely. Yeah, I agree what you're saying. I feel like unrealized capital gains tax is extremely flawed. And just to illustrate the point for people, Elon Musk is, has in quotes, whatever, at $400 billion. But if Tesla crashes tomorrow, he doesn't have that money anymore. He now has $200 billion. It's not, that much money isn't sitting around in cash, right? So the way the current system works for America in most countries is he has to actually sell the stock. And at that point, he does pay taxes. I would argue for increased capital gains tax, it's lower than normal income tax for

some reason. You might know the exact numbers. 50% if you hold it for a year. 50 or 15? Isn't it? 40, 40 within the year? No, it's your normal income, whatever that is. Maybe he's really high, so it'll be high. Yeah. But he has it all for over a year. So it would be 15%. Right. So he's weirdly low for. Right. It's like, why would you pay lower taxes for something? Like that feels weird. There's justifications, but still feels weird to me. And then what you said, people, incredibly rich people, basically leverage the fact that they have these stocks to get loans and get this other stuff. And that feels like a workaround around taxes. I think that should be addressed.

But, yeah, like inherently just saying your stuff is worth this much, even though you don't actually have that much money, therefore we're going to tax you as though you have that much money, feels deeply flawed to me. I haven't seen an argument that convinces me on that. but you know replacing that with another tax like we're talking about yeah i mean i support the fuck up thing i i just no no no i agree i want to say one of the fucked up things we do is uh you guys know what step up basis is for like uh inheritance tax so it's like if i if i get a stock at 10 and it goes to a hundred if i were to sell that i pay tax on the 90 i made right yeah but if i hold it till i die by just borrowing against it and then i pass it on to my kids they get a new basis of 100, whatever it is now.

So if they sold it, they would pay zero tax. They got out of a hundred. So nobody ever paid to the gain. Exactly. And so this whole buy, borrow die strategy is like how it's done to keep this generational wealth going. And I think, for me,

one of the biggest things is inheritance tax because like that's what allows this stuff to become metastasized cancer in a society. Like even if Elon Musk invent something great, which, okay, whatever. Yeah, whatever. He's done some Tesla's cars, and makes a lot more money than me.

The real danger is when his fucking kids and grandkids who haven't done anything have way more opportunities than my kids and grandkids forever because it just goes down. I really think inheritance tax is like so good for a functioning society. You're just like, all right, you get your shit, but now we're gonna, if you're over a certain amount,

if you're over $10 million, $100 million, we're gonna take a lot of that and use it to make society better for everybody. Like your kids don't, the fact that like the great, great, great-grand-nephew of Sam Walton is a fucking billionaire, like 14 of them or 28 of them. To me it feels crazy.

Like they all, and someone will tell me like, well, that's the point of working hard so you can have your family. But to me that the generational wealth stuff is like the most cancer. You don't have to send 100%.

I mean, it shouldn't. Yeah, maybe it's not 100%. I'm not saying 100%. But like, no, no, no, that's the point. Yeah, it's like you, I don't think you should be able to give 100% of what you made to your kids.

Like there needs to be some, at some point, attacks on what you've earned. And yeah, I think there needs to be. And that's the point of earning it, quote, is if you're giving your kids, I think. You know, it's like...

In this situation, it feels like ideally you would be working on some sort of better system to be taxing these people. But in its place, I don't think you need to get rid of this, especially because the actual amount is so low. Like, it's 1%. It's inconsequential. It's probably fine, but it does feel like that's a stupid way of taxing people. in the same way that we in America

should close these essentially loopholes that rich people are getting around. I mean, we should tax leveraging your unrealized assets for loans. Like, that's ridiculous. They're just acting like their assets are money when they're, anyway. So, to be fair,

in the perfect world, they fix the core problem, you know? Where it kind of land on this, why I think this is so hard is I kind of see there's, to me, there was like two, two sides or two answers to this, which I know that. That sounds silly. Can you stop being a centrist? Pick a side.

Jesus Christ, Eden. Okay. So I think Norway is... Push back against Lee the Con for one. Yeah, God. Norway is a very unique position. We push back on people. Norway is in a very unique position because it is sort of backstopped by their oil industry.

They have this massive sovereign wealth fund that exists because of a nationalized oil industry. And it's a system that a lot of countries do not have like safeguarding their economy in a lot of ways. So I agree the same way. And you could argue there's sort of consequences in the long term because of a reliance on that specific commodity, right? In the short term, I think you can afford to keep this wealth tax because largely it doesn't affect normal people very much. And it affects these wealthy people that are threatening to flee, maybe, because since the last change, it doesn't seem like there's been an influx of people, or outflux of people fleeing. And if you're willing to gamble on how relevant oil will be for a long time, it doesn't really

matter if those people leave because of the safety net of the oil industry. This is a tax that produces relatively low income, so you can deal with the consequences of those people may be leaving. You don't even know if they really will, and you can keep this tax in place. The big trade-off I see is this revenue could become way more relevant, or people having the capital to stir up new industries or businesses in your country could be way more relevant.

If the value of oil starts to collapse, and you need other industries to pick up the slack within your economy. Because that's the big gap in Norway right now is that since like 2013, the productivity of their non-oil-based economy has been declining relative to the other countries around them. And that's the, I think that's the long-term versus short-term argument you really have to make here.

That's how I felt after I read through all this. I'd like to hear from normal Norwegian guys and girls about what they think about this. The general thing that I got from like young people when I heard them being interviewed

is like this is like a non-issue the progress party has turned this into a talking point. We want to focus on other problems. The real problems like immigrants. Yeah. I was going to say I can't imagine this is a big voting issue.

I think that's the thing. The criticism is that this got stirred into a big voting issue when it doesn't make sense that it is at all. But I think even Progress Party voters, if you ask them, would probably put immigration is their number one. Like I have not heard of this being like such a,

at least in other countries, such a. I mean, it's because they don't have it. Yeah, but even the countries that had it, like, was it something that the regular people were pushing for,

like demanding to get rid of? In this case, apparently yes, at least from the articles that I've read, but people who are boots on the ground participating in the Norwegian election can like weigh in and see how, accurate that reporting is.

But I was surprised by every single article I went to about this election, the wealth tax was like at the forefront of it. Yeah. So that's a, you know, compared to, you know, what other people are dealing with, it's, you know, maybe not that big of it. They're like, like, essentially, it's so funny.

They're so rich. If you spend the globe, if you spend the globe, it's like, oh, oh, Norway's arguing about the 0.1% they added to their wealth tax, you know. And do we, and people talking about, oh, do we have too much oil money? Yeah, fucking, fucking. I hope Norway falls off the fucking map. There we go.

There we go. Fire. That's right. Putting a foot on one side. We're almost at a time. Etrauk, do you want to hit the story about Australia? I know you mentioned you wanted to do that. Yeah, it was really important.

Thank you for bringing this up. It's like, I think I read about this in your book, actually. Yeah, yeah. It was talking about it. Geopolitical deal. Hualas, Doug. They killed the prime minister. Wow.

Tell me more. Paul Menei was visiting a koala factory. They do a lot of work down there. Hold on. Do the people work at the koala factory? Don't ask questions while I'm giving a presentation. The koalas were working hard to create the Australian economy. And they were, he was trying to tax them.

Taxes. There he goes again. With the taxes. And it was a wealth tax on the koala's bamboo. And they ride and they killed them. And that's the story. Unrealized bamboo. It hadn't realized bamboo.

Did they eat ukuleptus? You'd think that, but not these ones. They're hungry for bamboo, Aden. That's part of the issues that are going on. My story. This is my story, the one that I brought. Yeah, that's my fault. Guys, we are out of time and we have like 15 more stories we didn't get to.

We didn't plan. Nope, that's it. No, that's all happened in the world. That's all that's happened in the world. We'll do more on the Patreon, and I appreciate you guys listening. What else? Do you want to say anything about the... Yeah, I guess just final note on Charlie Kirk stuff.

So... Because you didn't get to be in the... Yeah, we're not going to chat. Obviously, it's a big story with a lot, a lot of impact. And if you're, uh, if you're, were interested in a longer discussion. Last week, I was unable to attend because of the charity streams I was doing, but there's like 40 minute

discussion on Patreon. So if you want to hear in a lot of depth about that, that would be the place to do it. That was recorded, what, like, a day or two after it happened? Yeah, it was basically right after. So it was much more fresh and a lot of depth. I think we wanted to dive into it just because yeah, I mean, it was right after it happened and I know that's when I was

thinking about, even over the weekend, I've been thinking about it so much. So I think if you're interested in listening to that, it's like I really do that. It's like 40 minutes of a 70 minute episodes. It like helped me yeah, it helped me get my thoughts together on it. We just really hashed it out. That was a good discussion. Yeah, and then plus

a drag you have videos on your own channel. Yeah. Which I have a note. I want to give it after these Okay, I'm just going to, this is probably fucking obvious and I'm just going to say it anyway to say it. Political violence is really, really bad and I'm I'm real concerned about this and I'm concerned at how many people seem to celebrate it. I think it's fine to abhorred Charlie Kirk's

views and I disagree. agree with him as far as I can tell and almost everything. I don't deeply know his stuff. But the idea that apparently millions of people will go on social media to celebrate the, like, murder of a person for the views that they expressed verbally is super deeply concerning to me. The fact that any portion of our society seems to think that's an okay or should be celebrated in any way is this is a extremely worrying trend. If you just think for an instant on if this applies to both sides and everybody starts doing this, This is a fundamental breakdown of democratic process, of nobody being able to speak their mind on anything because you just get shot or your gun down.

This is the path to totalitarianism. This is like the core tenet of fascism. This type of shit is abhorrent to me. I'm really disturbed by it. And it's been very sad to see how many people are like celebrating it or seem to think it's, I don't know, man. And I know you, I'm sure you guys went on a long thing. We tell about us a lot. I think.

And again, to say, to clarify, just because you guys misunderstood, misheard maybe at my point, it's not that you have to feel bad for Charlie specifically, but the idea that this is a, that shooting people who say things you disagree with, that that's anywhere near on the level of saying things is fucking crazy to me. And it's so incredibly dangerous and like, how do we have a functioning democracy? How do people talk about issues? I really, it's been kind of disturbing to me. So I think the very, vast majority of people are on the same page, which is like, whoa, not cool. You should not fucking murder people who say things you disagree with. But I just wanted to really also vehemently express that view. Yeah, we landed on pretty much the same spot.

I think one thing we said was like, you know, imagine an example of somebody who is deeply against abortion, right? And so they believe that an abortion doctor is killing babies. In their mind, they are now, based on this logic of like this guy said or did a, things. Like they should be able to go firebomb that place or kill that guy. It's just, it's not working that way. We have laws for a reason. We make them, yeah, I get it. I get it. I agree with you on, on generally that I want to say something a little more lighthearted after your speech, which is inappropriately times, but I have to bring it up anyway. I have to do it on the pod so that you guys are on camera and you can't get mad of me. This is about, I made that

video about Charlie Kirk. Okay. Gavin Newsom saw it. What? Gavin Newsome or his team. saw that video and then reached out and wants to do a one-on-one interview with me about. So I'm just telling this happened this morning. I got called this morning by Gavin Newsom's team. And so I have now cut you and now cut you. So it's just me and Gavin. No, it's cool. No, that's good.

But what's weird is the way, I was telling you ahead of time, the way they phrased it was like, we want to see, I think they want me to explain like what Discordy is or like what, like what gamers think. They're like, what's going on with gamers? What are the gamers? Why are gamers getting so radical? Whatever, that's the idea. When Aiden moves to Sweden, can I still be a guess on your and Gavin's podcast? Fuck you guys, dude.

I can't believe this. I'd still like to hang out some of the time. We could hash it out. We could have had it something. We can hash it out. I'm just going to send you in my stand, bro. You show up. You stay your intro.

What do we need to do to start giving this love from Gavin, right? Now he's on your side. I guess it's like. Yeah, now he knows what it's like. It changed quickly. I don't know. You guys are final thoughts. Yo, you guys see what happened in Antarctica?

The penguins, bro. Damn shit. They're doing so. No, no, no, no. Let's save that for the Patreon. Yeah, that's for the Patreon. You guys will play your mind. We'll see you guys on the Patreon.

You're going to go patreon. com slash lemonade stand. We're almost at 10,000 paid patrons for our trip to China. Our trip to China. We will. We are deporting Aiden to China. Yeah, we're going to leave in there. Just leave behind.

Can I'm getting you feel a little bullied. We're going to leave you at the hallway factory. You'll get a new phone and a, At 11,000 patrons, Gavin Newsom's joining. In China. In China. Thanks for watching, guys. Bye, everybody.