Lemonade Stand - We're Open for Business | Ep 001 - Lemonade Stand

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

It's our first episode!This week Aiden, Atrioc, and Doug are discussing Canadian-US relations, AI's effects on the job market, and why you maybe shouldn't cancel those plans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. This is what I've been really staying up at night over. A.riok? Unreal. Can you tell me about what's going on with the culture and whether people are canceling? Absolutely. Look, I get that AI is going to be disrupted, but way more disruptive. Can I ask question about your dad?

Because you bring up your dad a lot and we're talking about anything serious. You're like, I talked to my dad about it. Yeah, yeah. Your dad is Canadian? Yeah, he is. Okay. And American. And American.

Don't take that away from him. He thought. It might be one thing soon. That's the big question I have. That's the big question. I want to know your dad's thoughts on Canada 51st state. Where is he?

Because that's changing everything in Canada right now. Everyone's freaking out over it. You know better than me. Well, he's starting to spoil a topic. Oh, you have a topic. From our new show. This is still cold open, by the way.

From our new show, Lemonade Stand. Oh, there we go. A new podcast where the three of us talk about business, talk about tech, talk about politics. And for those who don't know,

I'm Aiden. and what do you do? I also, you know, I have a different, why I'm getting, I've gotten like six phone calls as soon as we started recording. Don't worry, this is all part of the culture of business. Fake culture of business. We're going to talk about this later. For those not familiar, I'm also a podcaster where I talk about very similar things to this show. Definitely tuning to that one.

If you like business, it's, uh, I'm, we're doing this together with Ukraine War. I'd love the. By the way, we need to give you guys an intro, because. otherwise we're not eligible for awards, apparently. So you have to learn. Aidan pulses his side at the beginning. He's like, hey, we can't be eligible for podcast awards. We're in the same place.

He pulled, literally submitting this to the Oscars unless we introduce each one of our, by full name, by the way, and you have to drop social security. The arrogance of thinking we're up for a podcastee on our first episode. I'm Doug Doug, Doug. I make videos about things and stuff, particularly with a technology bend. I'm really interested in technology. You're going to hear me rant about. AI all the time. I'm going to be the AI guy who talks about AI and other things. It makes

fun of Aiden's dad and stuff. That's good. That's, that actually happens on the other podcast. We'll be two for due on podcasts that make fun of my dad. So it's just an easy role. I'm Atriac. I do a lot of this stuff already normally. But then these two guys had really, I like talking to them about all this stuff. And so we sort of had this idea of doing a podcast and I think it's going to be pretty fun. We were going to call the podcast Marketing Monday 2. but the Patriarch said I've had my lawyers He says no I've already submitted

Marketing Monday for an award and I'm not eligible if we have a sequel Because you're incredibly selfish I've had that I've thought about that Yeah But I'm really excited

I'm excited about it Because I think before we even talked about this We were just talking I was just messaging you constantly about AI stuff And asking about like Your thoughts on tech because you're really deep into it

And hey we've been talking about politics And it's like oh this could be fun Yeah I think the ethos for people you know tuning into this first step is we all have a shared interest in these things, like talking about them with each other,

and kind of wanted an opportunity to, like, bring that together because I think we lack maybe a creative outlet in the rest of our work to be able to talk about this type of stuff. So, and I think... Particularly Aiden and I, Black-owned outlet to talk about these things. What are you talking about? You have a massive platform, but you do text them all the time. It's just not the same. That's for fart jokes.

Okay, that's for an AI to call me small dick, okay? That's not for me to talk about business. Introducing the AI small dick segment. Yeah, there will be that, though. He's got nine pages on that right here. Yeah, it's going to be fun. It's going to be good. It's going to be a good time.

I think, and you guys probably agree, so I'm going to speak for you. Okay, all right. I'm going to do that a lot. Hearing someone talk about something they're really passionate about is really fun. It's just fun. Yeah.

So you guys have all the unique interests. We're going to bring our own topics and you're going to hear about things from someone's... Oh, why don't we eat? say one topic that is going to happen today to give you an interesting smattering of what we might talk about over the course of the next 90 to 190 minutes. I'm going to talk about why Aden is a massive flake and the damage that causes to people around him. And this is a real, I'm not joking. This is actually here here. So we're going to get into that later. It's called cancellation culture, not cancel culture,

cancellation culture, and Aiden's at the forefront. And now I want to talk to that. In a lighter news, I'm going to talk about the way that technology impacts jobs globally. Yeah, so just I like that one better because it doesn't revolve around criticism of me. I feel like the average user wants to hear more about Aiden's. We're going to kind of sandwiching. It's going to be Aidan canceling, the impact of technology, Aden's dad. I'm going to talk about my dad, just him and like what he's been up to. We'll get a photo album.

We'll get a live call. I've called in. And we're going to get Corwin on the live stream. Now, I, the main reason that I bring up my dad at all is I actually do want to talk about Canadian immigration to the United States. And also the tariffs that are currently affecting the relationship between the U.S. and Canada specifically. But I think that is a... Do it open with that? Yeah.

I want to talk about this. I'm interested in it right now. I want to talk to you. I want to hear your thoughts. Okay. Well, I think to just like set the backdrop because I think a lot of people know that there are tariffs that have been put in place or had been threatened for a while

as like Trump was approaching getting into his presidency, right? By the time this airs, they could be gone. There's, yeah, it seems... Which is tomorrow, by the way. So we're filming this, we're filming this on March 5th, a Wednesday and it should be coming out on

the Thursday right after this. So the, and already in the past three days, there's been like daily updates and changes. So leading up to this point, there was the threats of tariffs like incoming, Trump gets into office, passes a 20 or through executive order,

imposes 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Yeah. And then almost immediately paused these tariffs in exchange for... The fentanylzar. The fentanyl czar in Canada and basically more control and effort of the borders from like the Canadian and the Mexican

inside. That's what he's asking for at least. And then he paused for 30 days. And I think something that I didn't quite understand is like when this happened, I thought like he, at least from the Trump administration's perspective, had like met goals that they had in place. And then during that 30 day time period, he said they wanted to see whether or not a final economic deal with Canada can be structured. That's what Trump said. Can I say it's very cute that you have notes? Because whenever I do this stuff live and I don't know what I'm talking about, I just make it up. But you're referencing. So actually for the audience, there's nothing in that notebook. It's just blank. I memorized the quotes. Interesting. And that's when Donald Trump said, Aidan's great.

And I, and he doesn't flake that much. Interesting that he said that. But, so there was a goal apparently during this time period that out of the initial concessions, that he thought he got from Canada in Mexico or that they did get from Canada and Mexico, which I'll talk about in one sec, that a further deal needed to be made, which I didn't quite understand in the sense that I don't know

what like that ideal trade agreement looks like for him, especially because in the previous administration, Trump had renegotiated aspects of NAFTA, like a large portion of NAFTA as it currently, or sorry, as it formerly was, I guess, was from his decisions in the previous term, as far as I understand. Anyway, Canada puts in place this, like, quote, fentanyl czar

in, which some, I had seen people saying that this was part of a plan that Canada already had in place or, like, people were saying that Canada was only taking actions that it was intent on doing already, which might be the case. My understanding is that this pushed it forward a bit, and they did pick a fentanyl czar. Yeah, I mean, so timeline everyone's not. doing. He's like he asked for tariffs, right?

And then there's 30 days. It starts out. And then immediately before it happens, Canada says we're going to have more guards on the border and a fentanyl czar. Yeah. And then Mexico says the same thing. And then similar from Mexico. I think Mexico actually did did more. Something that I didn't know is like part of this, Mexico sent 29

drug lords into U.S. custody from Mexican custody. Yeah, extradited a bunch. In an effort to extradited people in an effort to like appease the tariffs being frozen. So that's what, yeah, his messaging has been all over the place, which is initially it's, this is for fentanyl. And now, now it's for economic disparity. And then I saw a quote yesterday, which is that nobody really knows what he wants. So there isn't

anything they can do to, like, it's not clear. That's my big issue. That's been the latest, that is the latest, like, update to this story. And that's Sprintz, his only issue. His only issue. You've been really pro- Trump. You've been really pro-Trump. Especially in private. Especially in private. When you're away, Flake a source, Rex, we'll get to you later. Okay. But I think that is the frustration from what I can see, right? Because this 30-day freeze runs out.

And then the tariffs are just back in place. And Canada and Mexico are like, we did what you wanted. Why are they back? And then the tariffs, apparently there's an exception. There's a 10% instead of 25% tariff on energy, specifically Canadian energy exports. Yeah. And they exempt the cars too, right? And then the today, that was the update today, is that the auto exports or the auto industry gets like a carve out now.

And so that's the thing. It changes every morning. The Canadians and the Mexicans seem very frustrated that the goalposts continue to be shifted, much like me in an argument. And I'm kind of, that's kind of the introduction to this topic is that's what's going on with the tariffs. I think it seems crazy inconsistent. I don't fully understand what the goals are. Here's the deal. Zoom out.

Tariffs are problematic, right? This is like a weird thing. It's not consistent. But like for Canadians, it seems like the bigger issue is that all of these tariffs seem to be in service of turning the country into the 51st state.

He keeps talking about that and like in a less and less joking way. Yeah. So I'm really interesting because I don't talk to a lot of Canadians because they're gross and they disgust me, but I would love to hear.

Like, do you have a Canadian POV on what that means? Wait, wait, wait. Remind me, and I guess everybody watching. You born in Canada came here. Yeah, so a brief backstory on me. I am a Canadian immigrant to the U.S. I was born in Canada. I grew up in Canada when I was young. I, like, permanently, I moved around a bunch

when I was really young to the U.K., back to Canada, to the U.S., back to Canada, permanently moved to the U.S. in sixth grade. and I lived in on a border town in northern Washington, but literally lived on the Canadian border. Like one of my growing up, one of my cross-country practices was they would take us to the border, drop us off at the border crossing,

and then we had to run back to high school. Awesome. So that was a little experience of like... Ice would never let you do that today. Dude, okay, and this is... Just the Canadian child running from the border into America? You know what's funny? It's so like when people talk about like border security and things like that right now,

I always joke about what the Canadian border is actually like growing up because I'm not kidding. The border in Canada, like the border between Canada and the U.S., like where I grew up, it's a ditch about the width of this table. Like I would be running to high, like back to high school on this side and then five feet away. We're going to make Canada pay for it. We're digging the ditch and we're going to make Canada pay for it. It's well-known Canadians can't climb.

And then if you... They fall and stumble. Poor balance. And you're literally a hop away from jumping into... It's very easy. Sure. Like if you wanted to hop the border, I guess. With a bag full of fentanyl.

Which I do occasionally. And then that's kind of the circumstance that I grew up in. And also there's a lot of like kind of basic economic ties in that area. Like a really common thing is like if you went to the Costco in our area on Sundays, like 80% of the cars in the Costco parking lot would be British Columbia license plates.

They're just driving over the border for Costco and then people people that live in Canada come down to buy goods. The fentanyl is super cheap. You know, that would put the dealers out of business.

You buy it have fentanyl? Yeah. That's, a parent. Like you buy it, you get a free soda on the side. No,

oh my God. You get your hot dog, your fentanyl, and then who know, you go in for the fentanyl, you come out with a TV. If you think the cartel can offer a remotely comparable experience to a Costco.

The consumer will choose the Costco every time. It's just a better experience. Pitching the cartels, I mean, like, I'm telling you, man, if you kill a, if you kill a few less people, you put some TVs up front, and you sell the, and you give them... You put a hot dog for cheap. You give them cheese samples.

They'll buy so much more fentanyl. Yeah. You give them fentanyl samples. They'll buy some more fentanyl. Costco fentanyl sample. just people like passed out on the fucking concrete cost of like an aisle full of people the guy with 19 disguises on his 30th

temple's line I think but yeah so I my family's Canadian pretty much all of my family lives in Canada except for except for my parents and like my brother basically okay and the

I decided to like call a few people. Okay, as I was hoping, yeah, I want to... So, just to get, like, a general vibe on what's going on, because I think you've talked about this quite a bit, and this is, like, I think a somewhat well-understood topic, is, like, Canada's kind of also in a bit of an economic crisis in general right now. Yeah, it's not, yeah.

Like, the dollar... People are struggling. Like, I remember growing up, there was a period of time. My dad got paid in Canadian dollars because he worked out of Canada, even though we lived in the U.S. So there was a time when the Canadian dollar was, like, worth more than the U.S. dollar growing up. That's crazy.

for like a year and then basically on par for a long time. But now it's like, dude, I think it's like 70 cents to the dollar. I made a video game with a Canadian developer and so we got paid. We got our payout's theme and he's like, I need to pay you now because every day it sits here, you're losing money as it. Canadian dollar devalues. It is so bad. It was like losing big percentages of what we got paid.

And I think the like the real estate crisis there is pretty out of control. Like housing is in the biggest cities in Canada is even more relatively unaffordable. than it is in like the biggest U.S. cities. And there's there's all these like economic issues in Canada that from loosely talking to my friends prior to this that they're grappling with. Like they're worried about their prospects of the future. And for, and especially if they like went to college and like have a specialized profession they're supposed to go into, working in Canada kind of sucks. Because if you could get a job in the U.S., you get paid way more. Yeah.

One of the things I didn't know about until recently is the fact that there's, the trade agreement where basically if you're a professional in certain categories, but in most like good categories, and then you get a job offer from the U.S. You just get to come here. Like you don't, you don't have to like get a visa. If you get a U.S. job offer, yeah, there's, this is part of what was previously NAFTA. And so if you're a Canadian professional and you're like an accountant or a software engineer and you get a job from an American company, you just go to the border. You don't even have to pre-plan this. And you're like, I'm here. Here's the job offer. Here's all this. You just get let in. I didn't know this until really recently.

It's a huge brain brain drain because it's that easy. And it's just like, oh, if Google in the U.S. is going to pay you three times as much relative, you can just go, which is wild. Canada is trying to deal with this too, apparently. So I read this article that I pulled up. And this was focusing on Canadian to U.S. immigration in 2022. And from the previous year, it had more than doubled the amount of Canadians leaving Canada to go to the U.S. in that year.

And it seems to be an interesting split among age groups and why people are going. There's a quote from an immigration lawyer in that article where he talks about most of the inquiries he's getting now are from young people that are looking to move for financial reasons. He's desperate to get out. I actually tried to call the lawyer today and ask him about what it's like right now. And they didn't get back to me. But I called my – so my one other relative that lives in the U.S. is my cousin. And she works in biotech and she moved to San Diego with her also Canadian boyfriend a few years ago.

And I was letting her kind of break it down for me. And she's like at the end of the day, like it just came to like money and like my profession. And she says like all the people in her field and like who studied with her in Canada also want to the move to the U.S. Because she gets three X her pay down here. And she pays like a comparable amount in taxes. So like financially it makes sense. And then even if she wants to go back to Canada, and I think a lot of people in her situation,

it sounds like they would want to go back to Canada one day. They can save money faster to buy a home in Canada when they go back. And so that's like her experience as someone who's already made the move, right? Speaking of homes, can I show this? Are you going to show my actual home in my address? Yeah, I'm going to show your home and address and your dad and where he lives. You can draw on it. This is a...

Here, lemonade stands. I can remember this, yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah. Here in Lemonade Sand, we have fancy telestrator technology to really make it a worse experience for the audio listeners.

I just think if people don't know about Canada. You're going to look right here. That's actually Atriarch's real home. I commute from Toronto. I got a $2.5 million shag in Toronto. Fun fact, Ari is not allowed to leave the house between nine and five. That's for religious reasons.

But anyway, you know, Canada's real estate market, if you don't know, is like one of the worst in the world. Basically, every major city, the prices have gotten astronomical. They had no 2008-2009 housing bubble. Like, they had it, but they didn't pop it the way we had to here. So it just kept growing. Weird. And it's continued to grow. And at this point, like, any Canadian talk to talks about how they'll just never own a home.

Like, essentially at their wages. They've, like, given up at that process. So this is the interesting thing to me is, like, I was reading this article and I was like, this makes sense. like the thing that my parents tell me all the time is like the reason we moved to the U.S. or the reason we wanted to be in the U.S. was it afforded me like job and like economic opportunity that we wouldn't have had in Canada. She knew you'd make dick jokes on a podcast one day. Exactly.

And I said, mom, you're right. I never could have made it doing this work in Vancouver. And they, but I think that shared story is very similar between all the people I talk to. It's like it basically like they had some sort of specialized job, like especially like software engineers as an example that I can think of. In the tech industry, when I was still in the tech industry, so many Canadian software engineers. So many companies in Silicon Valley have a Canadian branch, like really smart people. And then again, now with these new rules, well, they've been here for a while, but like,

those people can just come to the U.S. now and just make way more. Right. And it seems like the financial aspect of it is the key mover on that over kind of everything else. Because I ended up talking to another close friend, a close friend of mine that still lives, he lives in Alberta, he lives in Calgary, and he's trying to get a job in like finance right now. And I was like, what is like, for you who's in Canada trying to find a job in Canada, how do things feel to you right now? And he's like, well, things are pretty like dumer here in terms of like economic, you know, like owning a home, like the job market's really bad. It's, it's tough to find work if you're a young person, even like if you're a new

college grad. And these things are all like shared frustrations among my friends. But then, and a big question I wanted to answer is like, okay, this trend of like people leaving Canada for the U.S. because of pay, like primarily because of pay or maybe like they're the data that I looked into, there's a ton of retirees as well, like wealthier Canadians that want to move like to Florida or they want to move somewhere with like lower taxes where they can settle down and it's warmer. The question that I wanted to answer was, okay, so you can see this trend in, um, you can see this trend in immigration happening, but is it still happening in 2024 and now in 2025,

which was not in this census data. Like, it doesn't go up to that point yet. And I was really curious because, like, politically, things are changing so significantly right now. And then on top of that, it's, like, not just the general politics of someone like Trump being elected in the first place, but the follow-up of the tariffs and the 51st state rhetoric.

Yeah, it's even more of a squeeze. And my friend was talking about how, Even in Alberta, which is a place that's in Canada pretty conservative. And has more people than like B.C. would that are like Trump sympathetic or maybe fans of Trump from like the Canadian side. He's never seen this level of anger among like all people. People there. My relatives, my friend is saying all of his relatives and his friends, everybody I talk to that lives in Canada is angry. They are like, this is fucked up that this is happening. Like fuck the U.S. This is kind of. what brings us together right now. And the idea of like,

he said it's like the highest sense of like national pride he's seen in a long time where it's like, you know, fuck the states. It's like we're Canadians. And that plays into people's idea or the appeal of moving into the U.S. too. He was like compared to like a year ago,

I think a lot of mine. Poison us from the inside. They used to want to poison us from the inside, but now they don't even want to get in. Maybe it's working in that regard. We're keeping, we're keeping the Canadians out. The Albertans are like,

how are we going to get over that ditch? It's just so, it's just it's a big ditch. I thought it was really interesting to hear him say, like if you asked me or my friends a year ago and offered me a similar salary in the U.S. for some type of job,

I might have said yes, but now I would definitely say no. And the difference, but then the overarching, like, economic theme here is like, he was like, but I would still say yes if the pay was like way, way higher. Right.

And that was like what my cousin was wrestling with too is that she's like, I don't like the political direction of the country. I don't know how long I want to stay here. But my career and my pay is so high here that I can't leave yet. Yeah, I mean, money talks, right? So that's kind of what's going on is like I think my parents are different. They're very proud to be American and they feel like more obligated to defend to the rest of my family, like why they live in the States and why they like chose to live here, basically.

But the rest of my family is like dogging them for it. And just being in America? They're very angry about the 51st state rhetoric, all of the tariffs and like how they're going to suffer economic. I've got a Canadian friend and I have been making 51st state jokes, obvious jokes, right? For a little while now. And then recently he's like, hey, I don't think it's funny anymore. He told me just privately that he's like, he's like, uh, like I know you don't mean it,

but like I don't like it anymore. Because like they're, because it's seeming more and more serious politically. It seems like, you know, Trump said it as a joke at first. And now he keeps saying like, he keeps calling it Governor Trudeau.

He keeps saying like, you know, and so they're like, they just don't want to have their sovereignty threatened so regularly by the neighbors of the nukes. Canada has no nukes, by the way. So I wanted to bring this up too.

I got two things I wanted to bring up. One is that is the craziest outcome that I ever could have expected. Recently, like a few days ago, Canadian politician went to the UK, And they're trying to get a deal where the UK's nuclear umbrella applies to Canada. I have a, Oh my God.

So, so they're going to like Canada, to UK and France to make a world where theoretically the UK would be threatening the United States with nuclear war if the United States invaded Canada. Wow. Like how crazy are things getting. That's how wild, you know.

A major turnaround from like a year ago. Like what? From like two months ago. Like that's, and I just did. I didn't expect Canada specifically to get involved in this. I didn't expect this to become a Canadian. Were you double gunsing this?

I'm picking aside. Oh, yeah. Okay, a number to reiterate this, which I think is so interesting, is like, I think you might have seen this, like two decades ago, something like that. The amount of people coming in and out of Canada to the U.S. was like about, it was like a few thousand on either side, net in a given year. And there was even a year or two where there was more people going into Canada than out. And then the most recent tract was like $12,000, right?

Or like 80,000. That was in 2022. 22, right? So, like, just to give a sense, it is massive the amount of people who are going from Canada to the U.S. two years ago. And then you're right.

It's like, is that going to increase? Is that going to get... Yeah. Like, in 20... Like, this year, is that going to get even worse because of economic conditions? Like, the amount of Canadians

who are immigrating to America now is gigantic compared to any amount in the past for like a two to three year period. Right after COVID, it just like shot way up. Well, no wonder if things are getting worse here. There's so many damn Canadians. If they would just stay in their own

state. I don't think you should make jokes like that anymore. The friend was Aidenoff. I told you in common. I told you incommon. Yeah, that's what I'm super curious about is like how that trend is going to hold up

in the next like year or two. It's like, you know, there's this convergence of like sovereignty and national pride and being wanting to be like I am Canadian like fuck the US converging with like the economic hardship basically.

So that's, that's a great. I want to bring that up. That brings it us up politically. So, you know, you flash backwards one year. Everyone in Canada is so dumer. It's just like it's over, right? People are depressed. Housing prices too high, jobs too low. They're mad at Trudeau's the...

They're mad at Trudeau because he did so. Governor Trudeau. And there's fuck Trudeau signs everywhere. And it's become a foregone conclusion that him and his party were going to lose. That's the idea. And then this 51st state thing starts happening. And it's the most shocking, poll, I mean, the conservative government is still leading, and I think we'll still win.

But it's become, like, way closer. Okay, this is what I was actually thinking about this. And I'm glad you brought this up, because I didn't, I hadn't looked this up, but I was so curious if polling had picked up for Trudeau's party. Way up. This is a crazy circumstance where he's, like, defending the sovereignty of the nation. And I think this was in a video you made about how he, like, boxed one of the people from the other party. And that was a first, that was the, the first swing in like the, his liberal party picking up was him choosing to box someone from one of the other political parties. And it,

he won the, he won the fight. And it was kind of like a, it was literally like a liberals aren't pussies campaign. Like it was, and, and, and his polling dramatically picked up. And then he found himself in a position of prime minister like a little while after. And I was like, this is, when he's been making the tweets and these things that I've seen, it's like, I want, wonder if the polling is following suit. I mean, he's not running again. So he's getting someone else. I think he's getting Mark Carney.

But yeah, he's just pushing the, the liberal party to be where against Trump or fighting back. And that's what popular. Like rallying people. Yeah, yeah,

that makes sense. You know, it reminds me of, you know, George Bush, it was a divisive president with pretty low polling numbers by the end.

But after 9-11, it was like 98%. It was like the country was united. Yeah. And right now it seems like everybody's like, or like Rudy Giuliani post- yeah.

Exactly, yeah. So right now the polling is like really rallying behind it Because it feels like from the Canadians, you know, from my side, I still think of it as like, it's a little mean-spirited, but it still feels like a joke. As an American, I don't, I can't imagine we have tanks rolling in Toronto. Yeah.

From the Canadian side, it sounds like they're, they're like really pissed off, like really rallying behind this idea of like stop calling us a state, you know? And I would love to get more. I'm not a Canadian. If King George in the UK kept referring to us as the colonies, I would be pretty annoyed. Yeah. Right.

Like if he was dropping that, like on Twitter, every day. I'd be pretty fucking pissed. We won the war. We want. We want. Get over it, George. Jesus Christ. No, I... That's a good point. I think about that. I got mad just thinking about it.

I'm flung. I'm fliled up. Just thinking about it. I try to dig into my inner Canadian. And I'm like, I think if... Yeah. Like, it would... It annoys me. It's like, it feels stupid. It feels like intentionally antagonistic. Because even though I think there's no realistic path for that becoming the case, also from my perspective as a Canadian, psych, even in the world where it somehow happened,

maybe this is a dumb thing to worry about, psychotic that it would all be one state to me. It's like, it's a good, it's a good point. It's pissed about logistics, dude. Yeah. It's the second biggest country in the world. And he's like, maybe. That's one state.

Maybe if we respect it, it's like, all right, we're adding on nine provinces of states, three territories, you know, we respect the. And then Trump looks south, he's like, we're thinking of all South America of 52nd state. That's what I'm saying. It would be insane if it was one state.

He'd be insane if it was one state. 40 million new people. Not the top priority issue with this, but that was honestly my first thought when I heard about it. I was like, it just wouldn't be worse. It doesn't make any sense. Trump is probably like most Americans, though,

and does not realize you guys have states. It is not just a big city. Well, we don't have states. We have provinces. They're provinces and territories. and territories. Trump arguably like Nobel Peace Prize

level stuff here in terms of uniting Canada as a people. Uniting Europe as a people because they're all terrified now he's uniting the world. I mean I've never seen a bad time historically where Europe wants to spend a whole fuck ton of money on military.

I think that historically is always a good thing and I'm glad that we're... I think Trump's really cooking something here. Germany just said they had this thing called a debt break where they can't spend more than their budget, they're breaking it. I mean, they're like finally after, it's been a long debate, they're finally like easing the debt break

to spend 500, 800,000 million billion euros, sorry, billion on military. They're going to start doing this militarization of Europe. And I think that's base. That's awesome. It's going to be great. The more the merrier. This has never gone wrong before. It's never gone wrong, dude. I think when Germany

militarizes the world smiles. that's the old saying right yeah I've heard that I've heard that saying I'm not a big student in history I just sort of go off the vibes the so the I guess maybe the last thing that I was thinking about with the Canada thing is

the 51st state like I can see why it like frustrates people so much and I've seen something similar with a few Danish friends about the Greenland stuff they're like interesting it's gone from like I think when the initial reaction that I got from talking to friends when these things first hip in news was like,

what the fuck is this guy talking about? It's like, this is obviously so dumb. This is like borderline a joke. But he keeps talking about it. Yeah. And he keeps talking about it. And now people are angry.

Like, uh, and I find that, I, it makes sense. Like I, from, from their perspective.

I mean, as an American, I'm also not happy with it. Like I don't think. Yeah, that one's an interesting one though. It's such a more, even more complicated.

because I feel like the people of Greenland keep saying they don't want to be Danish or American. They don't want their own thing eventually. Right now they're still Danish. Yeah, I think that part is more divisive, though, from my understanding. Right.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. That one's tough. I don't know. I think there are a lot of people that are like pushing for Greenland independence. From the bit I've read and like asked about,

it sounds like that is just more, because there's aspects of Danish like society or like social systems. that are like so integrated and like the Greenland is so reliant on. So people are not like there's there's a big chunk of the population that's not ready to relinquish it. Yeah. It's a tough for me. I saw a good video on it.

They talked about how, you know, because some of the ice caps are melting, the real estate up there is becoming more incredibly valuable. It's going to open like shipping. It opens shipping lanes and there's a ton of rare earth metals. So I feel like there is some sort of global gold rush. And I don't fully understand it. I don't know where I stand. I really haven't made up my mind on where I stand on it. But I do think it's complicated given that there's like three distinct parties

that I'll kind of want ownership. I think my general, my general opinion on these things is that like in this era of like kind of global free trade, like national sovereignty and things like that is like it the there's probably some some other analysis to do here in terms of like the the costs of that system and like deconstructing like the global economics but but in general I think that you know this is led to like unprecedented relative peace and things like that and we're starting to like pull back the like walls of like these institutions and rules around like invading and co-opting other countries, I think that's bad. Because it's like, I think that's bad.

And I, because it's such a regression of like what global society is like built around, which I think is, you know, a lot of ways good. And I'm not saying that there's no scrutiny to be had of that sentence either. But it makes me fearful as like, okay, well, if nobody's following the rules anymore and we're going back to old times of, of invading and taking over and like sacrificing this like economic system that we've made. I don't know, the costs of that worry me. There's a good book by Peter Zahan. I don't know how you say his name, you might, but call the accidental superpower. And it's basically about how the global order got set up amongst other things after World War II. And basically the US did this.

The US could have continued the previous world order after World War II. And instead was like, let's do this global thing. We, America, will basically make it happen and we will pay for all the global shipping to be safe and we will basically institute this order across the world. Asteris, right? And then there's so the union. The U.S. is like they, you know, I feel like from a short term perspective may even have come across as like generous. But it's like I, but in the long term like ultimately it was way better for the U.S.

to. The issue, and at least what he talks about in the book and I think that there's value this is as the world has gotten bigger and more complex, it is more expensive to do that. So the one area where there is, I don't want to say, I agree with him, but there's truth to what Trump is saying is like, it is not feasible for America to police the world order anymore. And that is particularly true with like Russia doing what is doing and China doing what it's doing. And so I don't think the extreme of, okay, let's pull back from everywhere and just be internal is good because then the whole thing collapses.

But there is, I think, truth to the idea that that order can't go forever. The U.S. is $34 trillion in debt. We cannot afford to police everything in the world. Europe doesn't spend much on military. We do it for them. Same with, you know, particularly Germany and Japan, right? Like, at some point, it's not feasible for the U.S. to go in this direction forever.

And so I think this is inevitable to an agree. It's been, what, 80 years exactly? Basically, 80 years exactly of the current world order. And Trump is very explicitly trying to tear it down. But I'm not convinced that, like, if he wasn't there, then this wouldn't be in much. You know what I mean? I agree with that.

I hundred percent agree with that. He's accelerating the motion a lot. But that is the motion. Like we can't afford this just straight up. It doesn't, it can't continue in its current. I guess has to change. That's funny because I,

let me make my thoughts. I think that's super interesting and I like your POV. But you guys talked about it like this was generous or whatever. And in my mind, it was like, and I'm like a patriot,

dude. I'm actually like, no, I wouldn't say, I wouldn't actually call it generous. our benefit. No, no, yeah, I agree with that. It's self-serving, yeah.

It's self-serving. And I don't, I don't think that unwinding it is to our benefit. I think, I think, I think you're right that as these economies, you know, China is now a bigger trade partner with most of the globe than America. Like the fact that they're not stepping up to this, it doesn't make much, you know, Brazil is a much bigger economy. They always country to bigger economies. And they want a bigger say.

And I think it's going to shift because of that. But I think America trying to unwind it is kind of crazy because it's all helped us. It's all been to our benefit for so long. Like the system, NATO, the United Nations. Like, we say that Europe is spending too much on, or not enough on military, because we're spending too much. But it's given us so much power over European decisions.

We're simply like, if we're like, hey, we want to build our EV industry outside of China. Let's tariff Chinese EVs. Europe just goes along with it. They just do the same thing. Yeah, that's it. They do that because we have. And once we, once the US unwinds,

if it continues to happen, you know, I don't think you get it back. Yeah, it's never come back, right? There's a particular situation in the world where the U.S. was in this position where all the previous global powers were decimated after World War II except the Soviet Union.

They had all the industry, they had all the trade. They were the sole sort of standing, you know, we, I guess, were the sole standing power and were in the position to dictate whatever. Yeah. And there was this argument of like they could have been like, we are going to be the new British Empire. We're going to fuck all y'all.

And instead, they were very kind, generous people who we are all thankful for. And that's what we're taking away from it. We're going to get some comments. And they were, I'm just going to put in quotes here. They were very generous. Absolutely no meddling.

Yeah. Zero meddling. Famously. Famously zero. Show me the documents where we meddled one time. No, I think that's the, yeah,

I think that is the pro. Like, I kind of agree with Brandon is like, the deconstruction. This is why it's a hard. topic to... It is hard, by the way. This is a hard, okay, I'll just, I think I'll say it in a more straightforward way. This is a hard topic for me to argue about, not at like a personal level, but I feel like there is a conflict as someone who, I think I lean like pretty left on like most,

like, most issues in general. And I think there's like a, uh, I, maybe a, I don't know if I would call my, I definitely wouldn't call myself a socialist, like outright, but I think there's a socialist viewpoint here where that is also advocating for a like deconstruction of this global global order to not for American fiscal reasons, but to like dismantle the like systems of, of oppression that like they they would identify, exist across the world among this current system. Not that oppression and like people being exploited didn't exist before World War II. It didn't. That's, but it's, and that, that, that, that level of, like, American, like, empire and, like, control is, uh, the, it, it's interesting, I don't know, it's, it's, it's super interesting because it's like, yes, that has such a demonstrable positive effect if you believe in, I don't know, like, getting, getting rid of all these things has, like, such a harm, identifiable harm on the U.S., but there's two,

there's different perspectives on like why that all needs to be deconstructed and come down. I think because there's all these different layers of like what people see as the most important outcomes, who are the people that need help the most, what actions would help those people? The solution is, I feel like I'm a very like solution-oriented person

and this problem is so layered. It's like, of course I'm not going to sell that. I'm running a lemonade team. Yeah, yeah, we're running out of the answer. So I don't have the answer because I like, I like a lot of what like global like our globalized safe economy and society gives me. I like a lot of those things. And I also, you know, selfishly benefit from a lot of like the power and control that the U.S.

has. As somebody, especially as somebody who immigrated here and found, you know, got to make a podcast. You cross the ditch. Cross the ditch. Yeah. And but at the same time, I feel like I'm, I'm wary of, you know, something like the, can the debt grow forever? Right.

Right. If you listen to that one economist who wrote the deficit myth, apparently you can. Apparently you can. Definitely Kelton has interesting ideas. But or from other perspectives, like maybe you have a strong like moral stance

like built in what you'd call like socialist values and you want to see the deconstruction of the global order for those reasons. Like I don't know what path is correct. I don't have that take, but I can respect it. Right. I can totally see it and make sense. You know,

maybe a loss here is offset by a greater gain in the world. If you're at all humans benefit, The rising time. I get that. I actually have no problem with that. The thing that makes me mad is Americans that don't realize that the reason that a guy managing a Buckees in Texas makes more than a European doctor

is because of these systems of power that have America at the core. They think they can vote to dismantle this stuff and it's all, I think they're just born better. That they're just, they're getting, they're not and they're going to feel the punishment from this stuff unraveling as they, you know,

are more and more not protected from equal competition with the global. So I don't think it's fair. I agree it's not fair. But I'm saying as an American who wants a certain thing, it's crazy to not understand the consequences of dismantling this stuff that's all to your benefit. I do.

I definitely agree with that take, which is that it is not to America's benefit to dismantle it. Like we have benefited from deciding the global order. And then there's, if you dismantle it, there's like you said, there's arguably not, I mean,

there's all sorts of crazy complex things. I don't think it's great that American spy agencies have picked winners in various countries over the past 100 years. Like that's fucked up. The thing about it, though, the thing about it is like, I can't think of a single time at back. Right, that's true. That's true. The thing about it is like, it's just so...

It always worked out so smoothly, so I just really don't see... Deeply immoral the idea that we do that. The CIA simply batted a thousand. Can I say it? They were kind of the show hey, Otani of government agencies. They went into Venezuela, they pitch and bad. The fucking CIA was the Otonian government agency Fire bar.

That is fire. They just kept knocking out of the bars, you know. Every coup. Because if it blew back, if it had blown back out of the country. If it had blown back, I'd be critical. I'd be critical. Yeah, I think that's what I'm saying. It's like there's so many, I think they're,

this is why these things are like hard to come to end. any, like, solution or determination of, I feel like, is like there's so many little aspects of like how your lives are impacted by these decisions, especially over the long term. And it's hard to make confident decisions of like, this thing should be this way. Because I think for the average person, including me, it's hard to identify the costs, like the pros and cons of what those decisions will be. I can tell you that it doesn't matter. We don't have to worry about any of that because AI is going to come in.

and it's going to replace all this. We don't have to worry about the global order. Organic Segway. We don't have to worry about the global order. Because all of our jobs are going to be taken by AI, as Doug's about to explain. Board of podcasts, you know, you're probably at work. You think, God, these PowerPoints are so exciting.

I wish that I could watch a podcast where there's a PowerPoint. Let's fucking go. Let's go. We are upgraded podcast technology. We're moving to the first ever lemonade stand. To the future. Hot diggedy damn. No other podcast has this, folks.

Is this still the cold open? All right. Time for classroom. So what I was interested in is, obviously everybody's talking about AI and how it's going to steal a bunch of jobs or that it's going to make the future incredible and everybody's kind of all over the place on this.

What I thought would be interesting as we try to understand what AI is going to do is to look at some of the recent technological waves and what they did for job creation and destruction. Right? Because it's really easy to be like, oh, AI is going to destroy X, Y, which is true. It's going to destroy a shitload, but it's going to create a lot, presumably.

And so I thought it would be interesting to specifically look at real numbers of previous technological waves, like personal computing. So this happened starting in the 80s, let's say, and obviously has continued till now. So personal computing destroyed a lot of jobs. Turns out there's a lot of people who worked on typewriters. It doesn't really exist anymore. Lost like 100,000 jobs. Type setting for people who didn't read old newspapers and stuff, you had to manually put like type and print and font stuff to make things, right? Because you didn't just print it. Brandon, you're probably like super familiar with that.

Dude, I was just going to say, don't make a boomer joke. It's funny because I watched a movie from 93 yesterday. And one of the main plot points is this woman trying to get a job as a typist. And like, you just, there's a whole office people just typing up things. Other people.

It's crazy. And that's not even what this is. You know in Microsoft Word, how you can change two words or two letters? And it's just changed. You had to physically do that for the entire world operating before a few decades ago, right? So that's not even the same as a giant amount of people who lost work, clerical and secretarial work. There's three to four million people in the U.S. who just did what you're describing, just typing, putting in numbers, spreadsheets, because it's all done by hand.

If you think of all the finances and all the accounting and all the paperwork of every company in the world, they were writing all this by hand, bookkeeping, accountants, hundreds of thousands are lost due to spreadsheets and all the different software that PC. Cs introduced, right? Office equipment manufacturers, we lose tons of that because now all this is consolidated into a computer. So we lose a ton of jobs, right, based on personal computers. And probably a lot of people are really upset and scared at that time. But obviously, computers have generated an unobcene amount of new jobs. Programmers alone, there's 28 million globally, approximately. These are estimated numbers from like, you know, labor bureau, but it's, you know, 28 million globally apparently are working as programmers right now. 28 million people to send to the farms.

Yeah, we can get back out of nature. Given how annoying programmers are on Reddit, this is the biggest mistake we were being. So some of these, it's a mix of whether we have numbers so US or globally. PC and parts manufacturing. Millions of people globally, hundreds of thousands just in the US alone

of like good jobs of people making parts. And if you think about the actual PC itself and all the chips and all the peripherals and all the sales distribution that goes into all the different PCs, all the different equipment, IT and networking, hundreds of thousands. Do you guys know I used to solder the chips?

themselves when I worked at Invidia. They would send me the parts and I would go in my garage because we didn't have computers then. And so the chips were made by hand. Yeah, it was actually an American-made operation and I wasn't very fast. That's what they were shortages,

but I did a really good job. And then they outsourced your job to Taiwan. That's why you became a streamer. That's the story. Freed you up for creative work, as they say. Video game industry. Remember, that didn't exist when you were a kid. Okay, dear.

There's 500,000 people who have a job working in the video game industry. Right, this is, it is crately, we just take for granted that these things exist, but these didn't even exist. Same with manufacturing support. If you think about the amount of technicians, sales, distribution, I mean, just Apple stores alone, right? All of these things are based off of this industry that did not exist. The internet comes in. Internet's even crazier, right?

Retail stores. Now, let's look at what the Internet has destroyed, right? Retail stores are super bad, right? We're looking at least 700,000 jobs in the U.S., obviously millions globally, as a social. as essentially physical stores get totally fucked. Malls get wiped out all the way. And so this is, I think, more so than the computing one. This is a real, like, we've all seen and felt this, and it's sad.

This is not a fun thing, right? And this is, this is now, it's going to continue, I think. Unless you're spirit Halloween, because then you're getting a lot of free. Unless you're spirit Halloween. Newspaper and media, over half of the people working in newspapers and, like, news update media, lost their jobs globally. Over the past few decades, thanks to the internet. We have podcasters now.

We do. As it comes, as we'll bring up later. Turns out there used to be way, way more travel agents, and you don't need that if you can just look up what you want to do on the internet. Hundreds of thousands lost. Brokers, financials, advisors, lots of people where the internet essentially just invalidated their job. Can I just say something? Yeah, yeah. Both my dad has worked in the military for 30 years, and then he quit and he works at a military contractor now. He doesn't really like him.

He's ready to leave. He's always had this dream of bringing a travel agent, and I don't know how to break to him. I told him like softly in many ways. Like, oh, that's cool. But I just don't, doesn't really exist anymore. It's just not based on based on what I've seen in the, the east part of L.A. County. If he can speak fluent Chinese, he can make it.

Yeah. That's odd. There's weirdly a large amount of travel, travel agencies like are like the east part of LA County. But they're like in Chinese. Like they're only, they're only a Chinese. And this is what we call retraining for a new opportunity. I see, I'll tell my daddy we're going to retrain it.

We're going to retrain it. No lingo right now, Mandarin. Postal services dropped dramatically, but obviously the internet has created an unbelievable amount of jobs. E-commerce is absolutely massive. Obviously, Amazon doesn't have a great reputation, but so 1.5 million people work for Amazon. 200K for Alibaba alone.

Millions and millions and millions across the world in logistics and delivery, right? Like, arguably every industry in the world has been touched and largely benefited from e-commerce. cybersecurity and IT. These are industries that are created because of the internet and computing. There's millions globally. Content creation. There are approximately 50 million content creators at least globally, at least 2 million full-time. These numbers are very hard because so much of this is kind of interwoven.

But if you think about some of the numbers, like TikTok alone has millions of people doing it professionally. So it's hard to exactly say, but the estimate is like it's at least 50 million worldwide who are making content to sort of. some degree professionally. That is wild. And that's all, again, that's 50 million people who weren't doing that two decades ago. I think maybe it's, maybe it's time. You know, maybe a World War III is fine. Well, you say that now, but think about how many people love driving Uber. Everybody loves Uber and gig platforms. Again, you can, you know, obviously not all of this is sunshine and

rainbows. But, you know, objectively, demonstrably, there are many, many, many millions of jobs. And if you think about gig platforms like Fiverr or, you know, these other ones where people are just freelancing themselves for different roles, I mean, I probably all three of us have worked with people who professionally make YouTube thumbnails or logos or do art. Yeah, but I don't pay them, though, you know, it's like, for me, it's always like, exposure. Exposure. Right. Yeah. And exposure based economy. What's the formula for adding exposure to GDP. Do we have

3.34 trillion in exposure lying around? Right, we can put it into the treasury. What if Trump tweets out everyone we owe debt to for exposure? They call it even She. I'm going to make you a star.

We've got a slot in a new Mr. Beast video. And then interesting, one I thought was particularly interesting. even in traditional media, there was about 4.5 million people in the U.S. who now are working TV film music that weren't there before because the massive amount of additional opportunity that has opened from the internet. Tens of millions of people now are working in media jobs globally that weren't there before. And I'll move through mobile devices pretty quick. This is another very recent tech change. It's the lost jobs from mobile phone, I'm going to be honest.

It's like black people who made Blackberry and, you know, Nokia, digital cameras. That used to be a thing that people buy cameras. You don't do that anymore. You used to buy a Zoom. You don't do that anymore. Taxi services. People used to have jobs making maps. You ever heard about the taxi tragedy in New York?

Do you know how about how you need to buy like a yellow taxi medallion? Yeah. And the prices of those like inflated like super, super high because there's a limited amount of them to go out. And then a bunch of people bought at like peak market, basically. people that are putting like their life savings on the line, taking out loans to buy this yellow taxi medallion in New York, and then Uber picks up and the price of them plummets.

But all those people are locked into the loan that they took out to buy the medallion. Yeah, just a crazy, crazy. We need to add a medallion to become a content creator, and then that'll fix the problem for the future. We need a limit. We need a limit. And who will hand out the medallions? You?

Doug. I'm going to say lemonade stamp, I guess it should be me. Take on the authority, yeah. So going through this quickly, the app economy, as it's labeled, like jobs and business and economic productivity that comes from apps on mobile devices, is absolutely insane. And I'll briefly touch on it later. There's millions of jobs in the U.S.

that benefit from this alone, millions globally. Again, all of this kind of intertwines, right? So it's hard to exactly distinguish what is a phone job versus an internet job. But smartphone manufacturing, there's millions of people who do this worldwide in wonderful conditions. Social media, again, like millions of TikTok alone. you know, cloud service, there are millions of devs. Speaking as somebody who used to be a software developer and has dozens and dozens and dozens of friends in this industry,

these are really high-quality jobs. These didn't exist. And that's one of the things to note when thinking about job creation and destruction, most of the jobs that are destroyed, not all, most jobs that are destroyed from tech trends, are generally not as good as the ones that are created. Obviously, big asterisk there, not everybody would agree with that if you're working in an Amazon sweathouse or whatnot.

But like programming, for example, is a really good industry to be in. And so overall, just some numbers on this that I think are pretty crazy. If you look at these trends, PC personal computers in the U.S., thanks to PC, estimates are we lost 4 to 6 million jobs and made 20 to 30 million, right? We're talking like a 20 million increase, potentially. Globally, same thing, tens of millions of jobs increased. Going to Internet. Again, hard to exactly quantify. There we go.

Millions of jobs destroyed because of the Internet, right? and then we're making tens of millions. It continues to benefit essentially every business on the planet. Globally, hundreds of millions are likely either directly employed through internet services or benefiting from them. Mobile devices destroyed millions, made millions. And so what's also interesting about this is when these trends happen, generally they destroy a lot of jobs early in the wave and then they create the jobs later.

If you think about mobile devices, right, like it's destroying Nokia and BlackBerry right away, but it took time for Uber to pick up and it took time for TikTok. It took a decade, two decades for TikTok. So generally the trend is the destruction happens quickly early on and then the creation of jobs happens later. Quick other notes that we'll talk about. I'll get back to the desk.

You know, new tech obviously affects all industries. There's a McKinsey study that said the internet has created 2.6 jobs for everyone destroyed. That's wild. Mobile apps account for 20% of all new U.S. jobs from 2008 to 2022. It's crazy. Mobile apps are like crazy good at generating new jobs for Americans. It's probably like Uber, right? It's like Uber and I'm assuming? I mean, that's crazy.

Yeah, but if you also think about like every single business, banks, a huge portion of what they're doing with their energy resources staff is mobile bank. Building for mobile bank. Right. There's so much that goes into mobile devices. It's not just, you know, oh, some guy made a meditation app, right? It's all these things. It's games, it's gig economies. It's the fact that every single business also now has a major mobile. Twitch would hire some of these people for their mobile app because it sucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we created some jobs there. We created some jobs, not a Twitch. Kind of a big fan of how you just have a 30% success ratio on loading the clip.

I open a Twitch clip and it's like, sometimes it doesn't. I will create some new jobs. The new jobs will fix that. Yeah, create some jobs. Obviously, in this, maybe we get into this in a future episode or now, but there's a lot of ethical ramifications to new technology.

I'm simplifying this to just job creation and destruction for the sake of like, narrowing the scope of this conversation. But obviously, if somebody in rural Brazil has access to resources, which I believe AI will do, that allows them to access businesses or opportunities that they couldn't before, I think the internet has largely been a massively

positive thing for people around the world. There's also downsides, though, a lot of jobs have been shifting towards gig work, which, you know, I think many people do not feel is nearly as sustainable. And locations of jobs shift as well, right? It's not like every job that's destroyed grows in that same.

spot like a plant. Right. Right. In rural Arkansas. You might have roots. Them losing jobs in rural Arkansas, a lot of those jobs, then go to Silicon Valley, right? So this is not evenly distributed. And I had some ideas. Maybe AI future, there could be virtual worlds and experiences. Like, we don't know what's going to happen with AI yet. I believe there will be crazy ass stuff. AI run public service sectors imagining like traffic lights and utilities actually being managed by really smart AIs who optimize this. More scientists who can use AIs to run

experiments, genetic engineering and customized medicines, like the health care industry being far more sophisticated with people and cyberpunk where we all have cool ass fucking additions to our head and our face. Let me think about this alone. Dude, on a serious note, that is going to happen. And if you imagine the number of industries and people. I've seen that show before. I didn't watch the end.

I assume it's a happy ending. If you think about the number of industries in our, in the world that are around fashion and people expressing themselves in interesting ways. The millions of people who do little Etsy crafts, the millions of people working in fashion or hair styling or tattoos, different ways to express yourself. And you imagine it in the future, as we will get like essentially bionic parts of ourselves,

the amount of customization and flare and personalization, one of the things that I think is interesting, we all, you know, laugh about the metaverse and stuff like that. But as virtual worlds become really, really sophisticated, people are going to do crazy stuff and maybe there's going to be a whole industry where you manage a bar in a virtual world in a way that you couldn't before, right?

So I really do believe that there's going to be enormous, crazy different types of technologies and industries that we can't even imagine right now that come from AI specifically as part of this product wave that will happen largely after the current wave of destruction.

This is oversimplifying things, but I think it is very interesting and now I will go back to the table and we'll talk and make lemonade. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got that. talking about. This is very interesting. First thing I want to say is I think it's cool to have a techno optimist who can articulate your points on this podcast because I think the vibe I get from my audience, especially when I'm talking to them, and they're younger people in America, most of them,

is doomers. Right? They're very doom. Yes. And I don't know necessarily where I stand. I'm going to bring up some points they might make, right? I'm going to, when I talk to you, but I think it's cool that you have this idea because I don't like the idea that everyone is constantly Dumer in general. I just think it's like, it's self-serving. So self-defeating. Yeah. It's a bad snowball. Yeah. I think the, in the same vein, kind of we did like a test recording before this episode like last week and we talked a bit about I think that that feeling or that anti-AI sentiment maybe among our audiences like collectively or maybe like young people in general being so negative. I think like has valid points at its base. I think,

also what hurts is a lot of people at the forefront of like the face of people who are like fans of this stuff is often like the people who uh like i brought up the tweet that was that guy who was really excited about fully AI movies and we'll be watching fully it's like that's not really why i consume art yeah it's defeating the purpose finally we could delegate art finally finally we're offloading art like and there's a really big load of our collective human mind for so There's a really good, there's a really good Stavros clip, the comedian of him being interviewed, I think, by like Theo Vaughn, and he's talking about like, isn't this fucked? Like, it's like, we're like, this, like, the AI is like taking all the art and like we're working in the Amazon warehouses. This doesn't make any sense. This isn't what we wanted. Um, and I think when these things get talked about, uh, because like the positive outlooks for me, like when I read through, for example, you sent an article from a while back or a substack of, and, and, and, and, the very, very, very good piece of that all the potential benefits of AI, and the first section was all about health and the way it could help,

help diagnose, and deal with like modern health issues. And I was like, that is exciting. That is awesome. And I think that's the, like, when you talk about these things, being, like, sensitive to those concerns, or like, maybe, not, I don't even think sensitive is the right word. It's like being ready to like answer those concerns with like good, uh, like good positive answers. I don't know. Those, those things are important because I feel like the sentiment is so

overwhelmingly negative. Yeah. Let me, let me address that really quickly. So I think the part of what I mentioned in my important PowerPoint documentation is, uh, is the fact that with tech trends, with major technology waves, again, you generally see job destruction at the beginning. Yeah. And then the new industries start to emerge. And so I think that I agree that there's a lot of doomerism with AI right now. And it's justified if you're just looking at what's in front of you, which is right now it is destroying artist jobs. Straight up. That's what I wrote. I actually wrote this down is like I think that people get really caught up in the short term cost of situations like this. Because it's very visceral. It's very it's happening in front of you. It's hard not to if it's your job or it's

your family. Exactly. And I'm not saying that people, I can't look at it's like, I'm a podcaster. And I can't look at the guy, the guy who worked at the writer that's got laid off. I think I was listening to a story on the daily about manufacturing in America and this guy who had worked at a lock company, like a lock manufacturing company. And after decades of working there, he loved his job. He lost it because they offloaded all the manufacturing or outsourced it to another country. And he lost his job. And it was a huge part of his identity that was lost. He lost his income.

And Aiden was standing outside of the factory and said, well, The long-term consequences. That's, and I think when talking about these things, something that I think about a lot is like overall, in order for society, like a small-scale example of this is in business. I remember hearing an anecdote about how a lot of like tech, early tech companies and tech would be worried about their products cannibalizing each other.

And Steve Jobs like notably said when I think the iPhone came out that he had no, like he had no fear of this. Like in order to progress the products and the company forward, you cannot be afraid of like cannibalization, basically. And I think at like a society level, the idea that like you can't replace old jobs.

Like, oh, what, well, you've got to keep the horses and buggies. Okay, we can't get rid of my point though. I want to jump in. Because, okay, I agree, like I am not a Luddite by any, I don't follow Ludwig nor. I'm not a Luddwig fan.

I just say fuck Luddwigs. I'm sorry, I hate this guy. If it was any other technology, my instant response is exactly what you said. I know that if you invent the tractor, some guy loses his job, but the farm gets bigger,

we get more, whatever, I know always historically, I think people are maybe not correctly, and nobody really knows, but are intuiting that AI is a little bit different, that it feels different, because it feels like the first time

where maybe you just don't need a human at all. Maybe it's like, it's not that we're making this, convenient so the human can do a higher order task. It's like the human has now truly been lapped. And I'm not saying AI is there yet. And I'm not, I don't know exactly where I stand on this. But I think it's like, this one's different is what I'm trying to say. And I want your question on that. Because this one feels to me different than. I have thoughts. If you want to add on it before I respond. Yeah. And that's why there's a there's a CGP gray video from like a decade ago

about this, not necessarily about AI, but about automation in general. And like, why? this leap in technology is different from previous times ultimately. And I think if that is the case, or that's something that we worry about, I think something I think a lot about is like, well, if it's going to reach that point, and you might disagree with that, is how you change like society and legislation and things around jobs to accommodate for that. Because at a certain stage, it's like the way day-to-day life works and, like, jobs work, if that's going to be the case, if the human is going to be, like, lapped and replaced for labor, then the structure of society also needs to start changing. So I think, I'm just curious, I'm curious what

your response is to him and, like, also what you think about that. Yes. So, and again, to set the stage for people that maybe are, I am very optimistic on AI. I do think the net positive on Earth is going to be extremely high and for humanity. However, it's going to be more destructive in the short term than any other technology, probably. And I think a lot of people are concerned about that, even the optimists like myself. So three kind of categories. I think one, there's this idea of like, we're going to destroy all these jobs.

This will happen. This is going to happen quickly. And there's going to be a time lapse before new industries are created that can fill some of that space. However, I think people are overplaying the amount at which a company will simply fire the people that they can replace. So imagine you have company A, B, A, B, C, you have company ABC. They make 100 products a day. And then with A&C...

Company Aiden and Company Aidan. Company Aten. You know, actually this is good. Company A.N. and Company A.TRAK. Okay? Two different companies. You guys both employ 100 people, okay? You employ 100 people.

Okay. And then you realize with AI that each person in your company can be twice as effective. Because instead of just completely changing their jobs, every person's job, for the most part, in most offices, at least, is a mix of different skill sets. And people realize that they can actually replace certain amount of work with AI and it allows them to do more. So each person can now get twice as much done. Okay, you, given just your background and your nature as a human being, you fire half the people immediately. You think, I don't need half of them.

AI can replace them, right? If they're all working twice, fucking fire them, right? And you know, and you go home and you get in your fancy toy at a Prius and you're very proud of yourself. Leave them to the dog. Adirock, you notice the same thing. But I am a little different. There's two, there's two options you could do here. For me, there's only one option.

It's fire them all. Oh, fire them all, yeah, yeah. And I'm out. I sell the stock. I sell it to a private equity firm, and I'm on Bermuda Beach. Yeah, yeah. Now, what I believe most companies will do is go, my employees are twice as productive. let's make twice as much stuff, right? Why would your reaction be, yeah, let's fire everybody

and do the same amount instead of if you are a material science company or a manufacturing company or a software company and suddenly your employees are twice as effective as they were before? They can produce twice as much because AI can do so many of the tasks that simply took time before. Why wouldn't you make twice as many things? If you were a business, you want to make more money, you want to succeed in the market,

you can free up some of those people to develop new products, to be competitive in these other areas. Why wouldn't you grow? Every company is incentivized to grow. You know, obviously there's individuals who won't do that. There's going to be horrible leaders who are like, yeah, fuck all the human beings. They're going to be profit-driven. But in general, even if you take this very, very cynical, capitalistic, you know, they're

just doing it for money. Even in that case, I believe the vast majority of the time, the incentives are to make more. And that's the hope is that what this does is it enables all people and businesses around the world to be more effective, more productive. I've seen this in my own life. I've talked to dozens of people for whom AI has made their writing better, they're planning better, people who are now able to do businesses in a way they weren't before, tackle taxes better. There's going to be so many fewer barriers to people starting businesses and creating things because AIs will allow everybody to engage with this. It's going to destroy a lot of jobs, but it will hopefully allow people to make more.

And that means not just firing everybody. It means doing more stuff. And each person is, is more productive. And of course, this is also going to happen with a lot of job destruction. There's going to be a lot of people who use this in a very evil way. There's going to be a lot of people in certain areas who then can't recover and get the opportunities that are created. But I think that fundamental idea of if you can replace, if a person becomes more productive, you fire everybody, is flawed. My, I mean, my first, I think I, I definitely agree with, like, parts of what you're saying. My first response to that your original, uh, original idea is that like the demand doesn't necessarily exist for more to exist, right? So at some point

it's like, well, if I can't, if demand does not match this like shared increase in output that my company has and all the other companies in my industry are also choosing to make moves that are similar and increase their like productivity, well, eventually I do have to like let people let people. So the quick counteroffer, and again, obviously these are things are complex, but compared to five decades ago, people have far more leisure. opportunities now, right? There are literally every day, if somebody's listening to this podcast, presumably you are picking between literally thousands of different options on your TV, devices, video games of what to do every day. The amount of leisure options are massive. And these

industries have exploded and we are currently benefiting from it. None of these existed five decades ago, right? And probably those people were like, oh, if everybody started being five times as productive, what are we going to do with our time? Well, it turns out we as humanity have a huge portion, as I was pointing out, how has now developed these industries around that? I just want to drill down on the question, though, because I fully agree that if it's like artist versus artist plus AI,

that second one's more productive. Yes. I get it. But I don't know what happens when there's the leap of why have the human part of it at all. I guess I don't understand that a human can't be completely lapped to the point where they are cut out. Maybe you have one human as, a overseer or manager, but I just, I don't see, I see the transitional period.

That's what's happening right now. Writers with AI can research stuff really quickly and do something. It's great. They're improved. Sure. But, but I don't see what happens when I don't need to hire writers. Because I hire people for videos and stuff. And if they use AI, they can get stuff that.

I don't, I don't see what happens when they, like, like, because AI just feels to me different. That's what I'm saying. It just feels, it feels to me like, um, it's better at all of the human things. So I don't, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, almost inconvenient to have a human. I guess maybe, maybe. I have a thought, but yeah, go ahead.

The direction, the direction that you're thinking in is, is, in the past, in the past, like, changes in technology or tools or automation, free up the time of the human that couldn't do that job before so they could like move on and like do something else. But in this case, if like the AI goes far enough or the AI is good enough, whatever task or job that the human could move on to next, the AI would just also be able to do.

And that is like the maybe what's different is like the chain you get stuck in. It's like there's no new ship to jump to anymore. Because the AI can also always do that thing. And obviously there will always be like exceptions. I truly believe there will always be exceptions to the rule in that like we have, I think there's an underlying desire to like connect with people. and like, like, there's, there's still that. But that's what I'm worried about as well.

It's like there's this point you get stuck at. I get what you guys are saying. I want to make a counterpoint to my own point and just argue against myself is that, you know, people said this about chess when computers got better than humans at chess, completely better. There's no human on earth that can be even like a calculator, like a phone at chess.

It gets better. Chess has never been bigger. People, you know, at the end of the day, still want to watch humans play. They still enjoy the art and sport of it. and the entire industry of chess has never made more money nor been bigger than decades after computers lapped humans. So I don't think it's unreasonable to say that could happen for a lot of things where AI is

completely better than all of us, but we still want to do a human thing. We want to watch a human made play or a movie or whatever. I get that. But for the totality of industry, so many things are just profit-driven and they will pick the best option. And I'm worried that if humans are not involved in that, I even agree with you that it could be a good thing, but we have to restructure society.

Our system, I don't think, will work in that situation. Yes. Yeah, okay. So I basically agree with that. And it is possible. I just think broadly, we should trust that in the long term, we as humans, when given opportunity,

find things to do and create new things. So I think that in this case where, let's say, you described, well, this writer that you would normally hire is outsourced to an AI and you're not hiring that person at all. Well, what does that person do now? He has free time and energy. And you imagine that he's now just a drift in the world, but he's a drift in the world where AI is incredibly capable of doing creative things, right?

And he would have access to the same tools to go make things, to make a new business, to create leisure opportunities, to go find something and build one of these new industries that I think will exist. So I think what is sometimes lost is the assumption that the benefits of AI are only going to go to certain people. But if you assume that every human gets these same things, that even if a person is pushed out of a particular type of market, that we should not assume that we as humanity won't create new ones. And I think, I agree, society will need to be restructured. There's a possibility it's just a shitload of pain, and I hope that's not the case. And I'm somebody who thinks I'm optimistic because I think the good can be so incredibly good. And the bad is very possible, and we need to fight against the bad. But do you get what I'm saying, though? I do. Like, yeah. That's, I think it's, it's, it's, that world is terrible up until we do have all, and probably a lot of our economic system and what people do is around human leisure and creativity.

And that I don't think AIs can replace, at least in its entirety. That part, I mean, that part I agree with, that those are the parts that we want to like emphasize and not let go of. I think the issue that I can think of is like a, like a lot of new technology,

policy and the way society works does not catch up very quickly with like the realities or the pace of technology. So like what I get worried about in the U.S., something that I can think of, is the cost of the person who loses their job to AI or automation or a factory being moved abroad or anything like that situation is the cost of losing your job in that scenario or the cost of losing your industry. on the whole is very dire. Like you, you lose your, you could lose your home, you could lose your ability to support your family. The social systems in place to support that person are not very good. And I think the pace at which the technology is accelerating right now

does not leave a very good safety net for the people that are like caught in the crossfire. You are definitely right. We need to restructure things so that we have a way for people to transition to this new world. And we don't have that right now. And if this happens without any of that other support system coming in,

it will be very much. It will be very bad. Yeah. And I think the incentive structure that is like building AI right now and like building the technology is sort of this, say, capitalist system. Like even in, even in China, right? Like they're using private companies to develop and like to develop the technology, which I think is a lot of like,

to that approach, right? Giving private companies the ability to explore and innovate and that's like very powerful. I don't think those companies necessarily share the incentive structure that saves the people that are like the externality basically. Yes, yes. And that's what I get worried about basically. It's like the net benefit in society in the most idealistic version of what you're talking about could be really, really good. But the guy who like lost his job to AI. along the way. He might have lost his job, gotten a divorce, gotten addicted to death. And the government has not caught up. I mean, I'm sorry. I'm making it really dramatic.

You're just making the saddest possible story, but I agree. But this is true, right? People who have lost their manufacturing jobs in like middle America and their life crumbles because like that was their identity. They can't get a work. People are attached to like the places they grow up

and they turn to things like drugs and like drug addiction. And like, No, you're absolutely right. There's a huge spike in, like, I don't know, like drug addiction, suicide, like all those things, right? These things, like, compile and affect each other. And that externality of the people affected by this race to create technology is what I worry about. And I don't want to leave, I don't want to leave the cure for Alzheimer's at the door that AI could bring, for example. Right.

I don't want to leave that behind either. Or the hundreds of thousands of people get injured or die every year in car accidents in the U.S. alone, which would be prevented by self- Prevented by maybe changes like this. There's so many, it's like we just, I want there to be a conscious, a conscious recognition of the, the costs and positive of both things and do our best to, to manage those. Yeah, to be very clear, I am an AI optimist.

I believe the net positive will become extremely high for humanity. And getting to that high could be a super rocky road. And there needs to be a lot of support and basically thoughtfulness on how it's done. Yes, absolutely yes, what you're describing is super possible, frighteningly possible, I would say. Even though I firmly believe 30 years from now we're all going to go, holy shit, the world is so much better because of AI. And I hope so. Something, a smaller version of this that I was thinking of, I watched this video breaking down like France's like relative economic position in Europe right now. And they have like very high productivity, but also low hours worked per week.

So their overall like economic output seems like lower or comparable to a lot of a lot of Europe. But when you look into the problem, it's actually, oh, the French people, because of like the rules and the laws they have set up, they actually just work less and they have like more time in life for other things. And their society, like their pop, populace of workers is very productive and uses that time very effectively. Like that's, that's what I would, that's an example of what I would want to push towards, right? Yeah, I mean, you guys brought up two points that are very interesting, which is you talked about saving lives from cars being able to self-drive, for example. Right. And you mentioned jobs. And it's like 37 of 50 states, the number one job is truck driving.

The number one job. Yeah. And the second self-driving trucks are good. All those jobs are going to be instant. That's probably the biggest inflection point of chaos from all this. That's going to be, I mean, it's going to be really, really bad. Yeah. And that there was, uh, third.

three years of Andrew Yang campaigning to the size into one sense. That's actually, that was his platform, right? It's like, I don't disagree with that. I don't know if I think Andrew Yang would have been the best president ever, but I think that fee, accounting for that and knowing that that's coming.

I really agreed with him on it. Yeah, he's the only politician ever donated to. And then I regretted it because they still text me all the fucking time. And I'm like, dude, it's been like 10 years. Stop. Andrew Yang is not going to be president. It's like, yeah.

I mean, obviously there's so much to go into. And I'll keep bringing this stuff up. Yeah. This is like, talking about these types of things is one of the biggest reasons I am excited for this show and excited to talk with you guys because this is so deeply complex and so impactful. And I can see in my own life, like as an example to the people who are Dumers, I employ like 10 to 15 people on any given basis. I do that because AI is enabling to be enabling me to be more productive. I'm able to code more things. I'm able to get more creative ideas out the door.

And I've used that success to hire more people who are now supporting my creative visions. And there are real world examples right now already where AI is allowing creative people to grow and expand what they're doing and hire more creative people and make more stuff. And I think in a lot of cases, that's going to happen.

And it's not always going to be the capitalist asshole who's like, and I like capitalism, but you know, capitalism is good at incentivizing people to be shitheads and the shitheads are going to be shitheads. Right? That's going to happen. And this, we'll talk about another episode. This is why Deepseek, which is an open source, is super important because open source is going to prevent companies like Microsoft from hoarding this all themselves and preventing it from benefiting the broader people. Like I think that is critically important.

But it's too big of a topic. And I'll stop there. Well, I'm again, like I said, I'm glad you're talking about it because I do think there's many, many, many people, especially that'll watch the show that don't see that side of it out. Right, right, right. They don't even have both sides of the argument. They have one side of the argument and they're really deep into it. Which makes sense when what you're really, looking at in front of you is a fire.

There's a fire in front of you. And the guy's like, no, no, no. Once the forest burns down, it's going to be vibrant, bro. Like, yeah, no, I get it. And it's easier to say when we're in good, comfortable positions. Yes, also that. Yeah, of course. So, but I think it's fair.

I think it's interesting. And I, and I, I want to talk to you more because I want to share that optimism because I don't like the idea that this technology is so different that I should just be sad. You know what I'm saying? Like, I, I, I, I have used, um, AI for reasons. research stuff, it's been helpful. Like, I think, I think I'm close to where you're at, but I still have reservations because I can just see the pain that it's going to cause, like, guaranteed

going to cause some people. Absolutely, yes. It's going to, it's going to be more destructive than any previous technological way. But I'll tell you's getting more pain than anyone. And that's me when I invite Aiden to something. And he flakes on me. This is what I've been really staying up at night over. Aetriok? Unreal. Can you tell me about what's going on with the culture and whether people are canceling. Absolutely. Look, I get that AI is going to be disrupted, but I think it's way more disruptive to have an event,

like a fun dinner or something. And then Aiden cancels on you last minute. And Business Insider did a very interesting article. Can you tell us straight and write fuck Aiden on that, please? Me? Can you write fuck Aiden? Wait a second. Please write Fug Aidan.

This thing on the rise of cancellation culture, which is basically they interviewed some people, they did some studies, and it looks into the idea that people now, more than ever have been flaking. They've been, they've been, it's a post-COVID thing. People have been more than ever resorting to,

you know that good feeling you get when you're an event you don't want to go to and then last second you cancel on it? Well, people have called that, you know, self-care or whatever. This study goes into the idea that, hey, it's actually kind of negative long term for your mental health, for our ability to form friendships for our loneliness.

Like there's a loneliness academic. It shows average time spent alone is like at an all time. And we had the COVID peak and then it dropped a little bit and it's going right back up. Like people are compared to the decade before COVID astronomically lonely.

They're astronomically more alone, more time at home, more time ordering in, more time. And I wanted to get a sense from a serial canceler like, Aiden, like what,

it's actually a joke. I actually want to get your thoughts because you are somebody who I think is the exact opposite of this. You like make a point to do all this stuff and you do a lot of social events. I have a high sense of guilt about canceling to be honest.

Yeah. So I wanted to get your sense of whether you thought that was a benefit to you or why you do it. Because I think there's a lot of people who fall into this mindset that they talk about here, which is like, it can feel so scary or anxiety inducing or whatever to just leave your house sometimes. It's so comfortable. We have built really palaces to ourselves lately. And why it's worth it to leave. Like, I want you to sort of make the pitch because you're the one I think does it the most. You know, I think we hang out of our house a lot. get them out. I go out, but like I...

Have you tried out video games? Yeah, because you're awesome and, uh, I don't know. And I like, I like, by reading, I like watching stuff. So I, I want to hear from your POV why you're so against this. Why, why this is not your attitude at all? I mean, I've, I think I have actually dealt with this. And this was a big thing coming out of COVID that I thought about personally, because before COVID, I think I was a person that had abundant social energy.

I thought a lot of joy and energy from going to social events and hanging out with other people and talking to other people. And I felt like after COVID, I actually am a different person in that regard. I think I developed a sense of, I don't know if I would use the word anxiety or dread about like going to social events that I had planned. Even though whenever I go, whenever I get there, it's always good. like I've never regretted going to anything that I've like committed to. And I really, I spent a lot of time thinking about it because I felt like a different person. I felt like I lost part of me coming out of that. And I wanted, I was like, is this part of getting older or is this because I just effectively spent a year and a half at home?

And I, that was a really tough question that I think I really, I still haven't answered like fully. I think the guilt or like where the desire to like show up comes from or like why I hate canceling is because I know it's annoying for the other person. It like six to be canceled on for sure. Everyone knows that. You know what's funny is like I don't mind. I don't mind that at all. Really? Yeah.

But I find that's like pretty rare. It's like I know the other person if I cancel is like probably going to give me shit or like they'll be sad. or I think something that I think about a lot is I know that if I cancel on the same like group or person like a few times in a row, you'll stop getting invited to things. And I don't want to stop being invited. So being a friend and participating is saying yes and showing up even when you have that feeling of like not wanting to go. And then like I said, whenever you actually get there, it's great. There's been so maybe never when once you get through the discomfort of like the plan. and going that, and I have a bunch of, I have a bunch of other thoughts related to this topic too, but that's, the main thing is like, I, I think about how it would make the other person feel and I also think about the social consequences of what saying no often means. And both of those things like are just hurt in the long run, right? They hurt your relationships with people. And that's funny that the article talks about that because that's, that's a big, underpinning.

What is the, like, or what are some of the theories about why? Because I, like, I'm curious why. we wouldn't have bounced back now that it's been a couple years. So the big two, they have in the article, are this busyness culture, this idea of like people feel busier than ever, they feel like they have to climb the economic ladder more,

they feel like we're in a spot where jobs are harder to get. Everyone's trying to be a little bit performative busy and also is busier. And so the idea that the first thing you can cut is, I'm with friends. You can cut, you cut the superfluous stuff that you can always. I thought that was a really good,

they put it in a really nice way. that we don't, that culture doesn't place your time spent with friends or time spent as leisure as like a prior, as a priority or as an integral part of your life. But it is. Like that, that is a meaningful part of, part of your life. And in one way, it might be the most meaningful part. Yeah. It also talks about that, right?

The literal meaning of life coming from that. So there's that. And then there is more anxiety. So again, people just self-report dramatically more anxiety. They think their friends... Since COVID, you're saying, right? Okay. So people will report thinking their friends want to hang out with them less than they do.

Like, if you ask the friends, they would say 80 to 85% or whatever, the people would say 40 to 40. Like, people are generally more in their own heads. They think they're less important to social events they go to. They think they don't need to be there. And they also think that, you know, if you have a friendship with somebody, if I cancel on you, my general thought would be like, we're friends. It doesn't matter. And it probably doesn't.

But what this article goes into is like it sort of does. Like it does add up over time. All these lost encounters are are like deposits in a friendship bank that aren't earning interest. You're just not paying into that bank. And over the time, your savings at retirement are a lot. Yeah. And it's like a real finance anxiety as well. Like socializing is how you get most opportunities.

You know, it's how you expand. Anyway, yeah, yeah. Like all the best things in life, it's not necessarily the party itself. it's the person you meet there that leads to the thing, you know. I'm really shocked by the level of inertia that a year and a half of walk-ins has caused. I'm so glad I wasn't a student at the time. I just feel like for kids, it feels like it was a life-changer. I think it's going to be so, I think it already is so bad.

Like it has such resounding negative social effects as like outlined through something like this. But just anecdotally, like I think, and I think about like what a transformative and like important part of my life, like those years were, like, end of high school, beginning and, like, through college. And even just, like, learning, like, I think I wouldn't have learned very much if I wasn't in classroom. And then also going out to, like, parties and meeting people and, like, making friends and doing stupid shit. Like, that is all, I don't know, like, that's how you, that's how I learned things about myself. It's how I, like, made mistakes that drastically changed my, like value system and like how I behave like it's such an integral part of of life that is just like

sacrifice in like junior senior college or high school you to get your money it's not fair you didn't get you didn't get anything or even close to what I think you deserve or what you were earned I don't know if you guys feel this too is like I I thought a lot about like bringing this up because I feel a little like I'm going into old man mode complaining about X generation But I think it's not actually the generation below me. I think it's a lot of the people like around my age as well, like a little older than me, younger and then definitely the younger generation too is like talking to people in like public spaces feels like pulling teeth. And like the level of like conversational ability of somebody like age 35 and below is so poor.

And it's kind of why genuinely, It's kind of why I think I've always liked talking to adults and older people, like adults when I was a kid. But older people in general is because if you go up to any person, I feel like if you go up to any person above the age of 40, they can have a conversation with you. And I think this is also like a cultural. This feels too general, but you've done it more than anyone.

No, I think this is also a cultural thing in that I wonder how COVID and things like this and people's anecdotal experiences playing to this, but I found like going to, compared to the US, and also compared to Canada, going to like the UK and Australia, like the average young person there that you meet is like also better at having a conversation with you. Like they feel more socially comfortable,

just like interacting with strangers, which is a little odd to me. Like I wonder what it is about like, the way people are growing up and like going through their lives now that makes like baseline socializing so difficult. It's got to do with practice because everything is like if they're not getting practice and they get more anxiety and it's a snowball. Yeah and it stacks and like COVID, I feel like COVID like makes something like that so much worse. And it makes like the, like making plans and like showing up to them makes it feel like such an ordeal in a way that

it wouldn't be normally. This, uh, this thing talks about striking up conversation. with strangers and how it says, you know, if, if you're thinking about, hey, I want to say something that stranger, you get nervous and don't want it. They're going to think I'm annoying. Yeah. But if someone does it to you, generally, you're like, oh, this is kind of cool. Like, it's like fun. Exactly. It's a, it's a mismatch reward system. I did that at a coffee shop this week. You do it all the time. That's why I got to start. You actually do it too much. You are the annoying one. No, no, no, no, no. There's not an Uber driver who's not tired of this guy in Los Angeles. I don't want to. I'm upset this person said something to me.

Most people hate when Uber drivers talk. Uber drivers hate when you talk. The one more thing I was thinking about with this was, I feel like a big thing that maybe changed more post-COVID-2 is like, and something that maybe is really pervasive in like American work culture is I feel like the fluidity of socializing matters a lot. Like people used to move less. People used to like just hang out more by default.

I think they talk about it in the article, like the percentage of Americans that report they have a best friend is like way down. 30 year low or something. I think people lack a, I think the making plans and like hanging out with people is increasingly a task you have to do versus how it used to be.

That's how I feel. It's like you, I think a lot of people like grew up or we're in community spaces where hanging out happens like very naturally. You're not necessarily making a plan. It's easy when you're a kid. You just happen to be around each other, right? And then you just do something together.

But now making plans turns it into like a task, which I think when like people are so busy with things like work, it's not like an enjoy, you don't enjoy making the plans, so to speak, and you don't enjoy the buildup to how you get there and like figuring out the logistics and all of those things. You enjoy actually hanging out. out. So when like we as people have so many barriers between us to hanging out by default,

and then you build, you add the anxiety and the isolation on top of that. I also wonder how much of the inertia that is like the difficulty in people ramping back up into the previous lifestyle is the fact that tech has gotten really, really good at keeping people's attention. Gotten good. Right. View games have gotten good. Yeah. And you know, and again, I want to be clear. I don't think every tech is good. I think there's plenty of obvious downsides. And like the, you know, if you think about COVID, it's like a year and a half

where every single person making entertainment in the world got a chance, they got a shot at everybody. You know, like everybody is like, I'm like me? I captured like 200, two million people, dude. I fucking caught him like Pokemon and they haven't left. And like, back to him into a corner.

And like, I'm probably so many of my viewers are like, would be hanging out with their best friend right now. But they're like, oh, well, Doug drop a new video. They couldn't escape, but now they buy my mugs. They buy my mugs. I made a new AI character. This AI character calls me bald. No, I think that's a huge part of it.

It might have like it's like it's like glue. We put like caltrops all over the ground and they have to like crawl over them to get back out to a non-digital social life. It's so funny if you talk about COVID with anyone who's not a consecrator, they're always universally negative. But then consecrators have to do that thing where they're like, you know, Oh, yes. This is bad. Like all their numbers. Yeah.

All of their numbers like 10 X. Like, just three merchants of death at the table. Yeah. It's like, I just talked a lot about COVID. I just don't, millions.

I mean, you got to, it worked out so well for him. I just don't think the sacklers should have to pay that much. No, I think you're, I think you're right. It's a fentanyal damage panel.

It's all the sackland. It's like three different opinions. It's like, we like we like put them all in like a mirror maze and it's like look normal life is outside the mirror maze but you got to find your way out you know you got to get out and we got a lot of pop up i i would like if like for the people listening i would love people's opinions about like how they've dealt with this and like how they they feel about this because uh it's something that is so not just like the cancellations themselves but this like general topics like how did covid like affect you socially how how do you feel about socializing? now. Something I think about a lot is it wasn't just, I tried to dive back in. I was excited to go to big events and socialize and be out again once you could. And I remember feeling so fatigued in a way that I wasn't before. It was harder. Not just, and like I said, I enjoyed being there. But being there was harder than it was before. And that was a strange feeling to me. I don't, I don't know why.

think harder and I also want to give one more note because we don't talk about this because because of being kind of creditors I guess but it's also more expensive like I heard this from a lot I talked to people about it I talked to my old friend Jaywitz who is uh you used to go to a lot of basketball games he told me like it's got a family now it's just really expensive like it's just everything's like prices have gone way up he's hard for him to get out and I think when you talk to a lot of young people especially it's like every restaurant's expensive every you know a lot of things that normally would be a good third place have become monetized and more expensive.

And so they're running out of spots. Now, I don't think that, I think that's still a little bit of a cop out in that you can always find something cheap to you. You can always, I think a lot of things I think it's that, drop off the battle bus. But that's part of it. Even that, though, it's another, it's another layer of friction.

It's another, like, it's another work item that you need to figure out. Instead of just hanging out. Something I, you know what, the office, working at the office is really nice because conveniently, I work. I work at a company. I work at a company with friends.

And the people who are around and come to do stuff at the office is like we just hang out and talk and socialize. Play Mario Kart Wii. And play Mario Kart Wii with my headphones on and don't talk to anyone. I just want to be clear, I've been to the office many times. 98% of the time you are locked in, headphones in, no talking to anybody playing Mario Car Week. It's not a dent of socialization.

I'll show you my ladder page. I'll show you my Lano. I'm a hot streak right now. But having those spaces is so important. Like having spaces where you can just be around people to begin with. So the layers of friction don't have to happen between. And I think, like, I'd be curious, too, if people back this theory up at all. But I feel like a lot of other countries I've been to, even in the modern day.

of technology, even post-COVID, like culturally different places don't seem to deal with this problem as much. And I'm sure things like cost and like, like, layer into that. But I don't know. I'm curious about people's like, you said it well.

I would love to hear some people's responses, especially because we plan to do follow-ups on some of the comments in future episodes. Maybe that's a good time to bring that up too. I think like everything we talk about, I think a big thing we had talked about on the show is like, I think all three of us like have like, have pretty similar

ideals and values and like our good faith in the way we like bring stuff up and like argue about things and if you guys have thoughts like I like when people engage in that same way like if you have new information or something relevant to what we talked about and you think it would be

good for us to know or like your opinion on something I want to read that I think a cool thing about this show is that as we dive into stuff there will definitely be things we like miss or get wrong and if you and if you bring

stuff up in like the comments or I think we've talked about more structured ways to do that in the future it'd be nice to like re-approach topics or things we talk about here with like new information of mine. Absolutely. I don't want to pretend like I'm like as I

try to like navigate the geopolitics of global trade pretend like I have it locked down. I spent two hours on Monday making a podcast episode about cream pies. It's just I I know I know where where I stand. It's all about cream pies.

Okay, it's not all about cream pies, but it was like a good 15 minutes. And it's just, it's, we didn't need that. Which leads me to my next topic. So AI cream pies. Porn is going to be,

you know, porn is going to be, unfortunately, uh, fortunately, I don't know. Click the link below for our Pornhub follow up episode. Yeah.

They're paying the most, right? Yeah. Uh, guys, this is really fun. This is a, I really like this first episode.

I had a good time. I want to do a form handshakes. Oh. Great stuff. We're going to be making an episode every week. We're going to be covering whatever is going on and whatever we feel like and whatever we feel like and posting on Thursday. Unless we're late, which none of us are ever late.

We wouldn't cancel on you like that. You just heard how seriously Aiden takes that. I walk in. And now this is the part of the show where Aitrock eats an entire raw lemon. No, that's not me. That's you. I've been baited. I forgot the lemon.

There's one right there. We have real lemons on set. A-Chok will take a bite up until the skin ruptures. This is plastic. Oh. Do you want to see me more alive? Leave a comment in the fucking... Thanks for watching.

Thanks for watching. Thanks for watching.