Pirate Wires - Jail The Tech Bros, Elon Musk vs. Brazil, Founder Mode, Voter ID & PIRATE IDOL Week 3

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

EPISODE #68: Welcome back to the pod! This week we are joined by Eade Bengard. We get into Elon Musk battling the country of Brazil over the banning X and the media & Kamala’s mission to silence tech bros. We then get into the new phrase that entered the lexicon this week: Founder Mode. What the hell is Founder Mode? Are we in Founder Mode Now? Right on cue, Founder Mode is, of course, deemed to be sexists. In our Polymarket Segment, we get into the odds of Biden passing the SAVE act which will require ID to vote. And finally, it’s Pirate Idol time! 3 new contestants step up for a chance to win a spot as the new Pirate Wires contributor.  Featuring Mike Solana, Brandon Gorrell, Eade Bengard We have partnered with Polymarket! Get your 2024 Presidential Election Predictions: https://polymarket.com/elections  - Disclaimer: Not Financial Advice, For Entertainment Purposes Only. Sign Up To Pirate Wires For Free! https://piratewires.co/free_newsletter Topics Discussed: https://www.piratewires.com/p/jail-the-tech-bros?f=home Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana Brandon Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandongorrell Eade Twitter: https://x.com/eade_bengard TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Welcome Back To The Pod! 2:25 - Jail The Tech Bros! Elon vs. Brazil - Media calling for Tech Bros To Be Jailed 23:35 - We Are Now In - FOUNDER MODE - What the hell is Founder Mode?! 48:26 - Voter ID Required To Vote - Will The SAVE Act Pass - Polymarket Segment 56:10 - Welcome Back To Pirate Idol - San Francisco Wants To Ban Zyn & Other Nicotine Pouches!? #podcast #elonmusk #technology #politics #culture

question of whether or not we should jail the tech bros a slow march toward real authoritarianism in this country i was not making fun of the fact that he was short i was pointing out that he was very short enter founder mode uh i'm always in founders mode they don't have permission to run their companies in founder mode elizabeth was in worship no that's definitely founder mode she was in the fast lane foundering the whole time. Welcome back to the greatest competition on earth. So it's nanny state. It is also like an insidious way to make Americans docile and less productive. What's up, guys? Welcome back to the pod we have the one and the only uh eid of twitter fame here joining us today i've known eid for i've been friends with you for years now but the first

time i realized that she had serious posting chops was back during the It's Time to Build era. Marc Andreessen released It's Time to Build, an essay that created this sort of eponymous meme, It's Time to Build, which we hear about to this day. Eid responds with just, actually, Matt, pull it up as our intro to Eid right now. China has all your data, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Daddy says it's time to build i've been intermittent fasting and haven't eaten in three days no it's just a favor but if you see any deals let me know amazing we have uh eat with us all day we have multiple topics just guest hosts for the day also joining us for pirate idol which you guys should stick around for or just fast forward through. I mean, if you're here for Pirate Idol at this point, it's possible. It's blowing up. Everyone's talking about it. It's on television.

I would understand if you were just here for Pirate Idol at this point. We also have Polymarket, our Polymarket segment coming up towards the end of this pod, right before Pirate Idol, we're going to be discussing the question of whether or not illegal immigrants should or should not be allowed to vote. Not really, but that's where I'm going to go when we start talking about the SAVE Act, which has to do with voter ID. But for now, let's just fucking get into it. The very first thing that we are talking about today, what else could we talk about? It is the question of whether or not we should jail the tech bros. I wrote a piece you should check out on PirateWire.

It's called Jail the Tech Bros. And I think it's sort of two things. The first thing is just, guys, if you've been following the Brazil, obviously, you've all been following the Brazil stuff. Everyone's following the Brazil stuff. So Brazil has this sort of dictator judge tyrant who nukes twitter there's a huge giant long saga here but the gist of it is just judge has new powers to moderate speech in the country code for censorship every other every other platform sort of, I mean, apparently plays by the rules other than X, which decides not to listen to the new sort of dictator judge. Now, I would say that's just kind of what happens

if you're selling software abroad, you have to play by their rules and not be surprised when a dictator acts like a dictator. I know he's not technically a dictator, but I'm going to be calling him that for the rest of the podcast. However, Elon censors speech in accordance with local law all over the world. So it was a little bit strange to begin with that this drama was happening. Elon alleges that the judge is breaking the laws of his own country, which places this in a strange category. The law also threatened to arrest Elon's employees in Brazil if he didn't comply with the various acts of censorship that he requested. He also requested them to be held in silence or done in secret. Elon said no, and instead fired his entire team in Brazil

so they could not be arrested. Again, allegedly, according to Twitter, the lawyer representing their case in court still had her bank accounts frozen and whatnot. The judge loses his mind. Once the attack exposure is revoked, he nukes the platform and also goes after Starlink, which is a separate company. Because, I mean, again, to be fair, Elon went out with both middle fingers up and said, well, if you're going to ban X from every single device, which he did, and you're going to ban new downloads, you're going to create a new fine for people who use a VPN to access X, what I'm going to do is just toggle Starlink to free speech and allow anybody who's using this service to access X. anybody who's using this service to access X. So yeah, judge melting down. The real story here for me is the way that we've been talking about it at home, which is just something really at this point of all of what we do at PyreWires is just interrogate the way that we are talking about issues like that and how that is turning into policy. And so there are a series of articles

we've already talked about out of The Guardian. They have a third now from Robert Reich, who is the former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, who actually called for the arrest of Elon Musk in order to, quote, rein him in. Now, why does this matter? This matters, I think, because we've been seeing a slow march toward real authoritarianism in this country. We're now, you know, Brazil's not happening in a vacuum. You have, obviously, all the speech we discussed over the last few weeks in UK, all this sort of anti-free speech actions, the arrests. You have the EU, you have Thierry Breton at the EU demanding censorship of last time we talked, the conversation between Elon Musk and Donald Trump on X, an American speech

platform. So an American entrepreneur, an American president, an American speech platform, a foreign bureaucrat trying to get involved in our shit. I don't like it. It is offensive to me and really dangerous when you add the greater context of it all, which is we have an unearthed clip going viral at the moment, thanks in small part to myself, of Kamala Harris talking about her conception of the Department of Justice's responsibility to police speech on platforms like, at the time, Twitter. This was 2019 when she said this, so not too long ago. And we'll put the Department of Justice of the United States back in the business of justice. We will double the Civil Rights Division and direct law enforcement to counter this extremism.

We will hold social media platforms accountable for the hate infiltrating their platforms because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy. Tim Waltz, her running mate, we've already discussed, has also characterized or sort of described his conception of free speech, which does not include misinformation or hate. Kamala agrees on this. Why does this matter? I know everyone's like, oh no, but that was five years ago. Kamala Harris is a totally different candidate now. We can't blame her for what she said five years ago. One, I find that stupid, frankly, to just pretend that she's changed her mind fundamentally on these things.

But two, she didn't even change her mind. She hasn't actually come out and said, I no longer believe in this. She hasn't been asked about this because in part, I guess, she's not doing interviews. And I don't think it's a leap at this point to really suspect that we're at risk of losing free speech in this country, at least in the way that we have had it for all of our lives. This is not me being pearl clutchy. This is not me making shit up here. I genuinely believe at this point that we're at some risk here. And what I would like right now is for you guys to talk me down. I mean, am I being crazy here? Is there a reason for hope? Seems bleak. So you said that that clip was from 2019. I just realized that COVID did more negative stuff for free speech and misinformation than any event maybe in our lifetime. That's when COVID set misinformation

up to be elevated into the category, the same category as right? Terrorism is a threat to the West. Misinformation is a threat to democracy. And these are very serious things that we, that we should deal with, that we should deal with. And I think, um, the COVID thing is just interesting. I just realized that now, but generally my thought on, on all of this is like, uh it really like i think you're pretty much on point and just to shore up um to shore up that point like uh what we're seeing now with misinformation is like we're being told it's a threat to democracy but i don't see a lot of people actually worrying about misinformation that's actually a threat to democracy. I think what's actually happening is that people with agenda are using misinformation to humiliate, silence, embarrass, or censor other people who they don't like just doing free speech.

And I think that's basically the short of it. And combine that with the fact that now you have Robert Reich calling for Elon Musk's arrest and the fact that generally, you are no longer considered crazy for calling for somebody to be jailed for enabling free speech. And I think, yeah, it is really scary. Again, we just have misinformation is now in the category of existential threat to something we care about a lot, which is democracy. And people are starting to use it, like call anything misinformation, I think. Even just somebody being highly partisan and emotional, that can be misinformation. I believe the word they used was they invented a word a while ago. They tried to make stick

called malinformation for something that is true, but not good for you. Yeah. Dishonest in some way the Robert Reich thing. So, I mean, I just think people are not taking this seriously you know as you said you're having calls for the arrest of actual calls from this guy's an academic at berkeley but he was also he's a former huge and really important uh player in the clinton administration calling for the arrest of an american for a law that does not exist here but exists abroad and and no one no one really i, no one really, I think no one really takes it seriously is the, that's why I wrote the piece. It's like, it seems to me that you're not listening to the things that they're saying. And the reason that's a problem

is because they actually, the state's very, Trump didn't do half the things he said he was going to do. Okay. Where's the fucking wall? I'm waiting. There's no wall. The state's very good when it talks about tax policy or when it talks about tax policy or when it talks about the internet legislation or something. It's very good at eventually getting to the point and doing it. Robert Reich saying that to me is that there should be outcry for weeks over this. And what I have instead is people in my comments well not all of them but you have a couple of people in my comments sort of criticizing me for making fun of the fact that he was short and i will say just in my defense i was not making fun of the fact that he was short i was pointing

out that he was very short and that to me is relevant i believe that there is an employee complex thing happening there i think it's a bit and when i say short man i this is i try i really am trying not to be insensitive here i'm not talking about like the guys like five eight house dad he's he's four he's 411 so i think that he looks at the world differently i mean literally he's looking you know mostly up at it and i think that i think that what's happening there is it naturally has made him sort of extra sensitive to any kind of threat whatsoever and um and i do believe i didn't make fun of him for it i said i think it explains some of his worldview i'm trying to understand it from his perspective again his perspective is like a little it's a low it's about two feet low i mean i'm not bragging but i'm six two so he's like an authoritarian

free animal i think so well i think it's like when you feel when you feel unsafe i think most of the authoritarians i think authoritarianism generally comes from a place of anxiety and feeling unsafe and if your whole life you felt unsafe then that says to me that you're attracted i mean not who knows who wants to generalize but but I can see how that would create a sense of sort of wanting order and security. And you should look at the pictures of him looking up at Bill Clinton. He looks, it's like love. He looks as if, you know, this man is protecting me safe. It's like a little boy looking at his dad and, you know, very disturbing in context of the laws that he's now endorsing. But, you know, to your point, the headline, I think, mentions like, oh, you know, we're not so powerless to stop him.

So there is definitely like a victim mentality there. Well, you think that they're invoking the victim mentality? Oh, yeah. Robert is for sure. It's like we're not powerless to stop him. You oh you say we're not powerless yeah yeah well it's like oh well you know maybe we can like do something but it's like the idea that you know that there's this like all-powerful person you have to like what to stop what yes like to stop what what are they all these articles the air times had an article too that did something similar where they have a bunch actually on the topic of Brazil, where they go in and they say just

super casually something along the lines of, as has been discussed over the last couple of years or concluded over the last couple of years, it's something along those lines. And then they referenced the link between free speech and erosion of democratic norms or an assault on democracy. They're drawing this weird one-to-one of you have free speech online, and then democracy is in danger. And they don't provide any citations. They don't explain, as we saw in this country when they had free speech and then democracy vanished. when they had free speech and then democracy vanished. I think there's actually an argument you could make for that. They don't seem to make it. I would like to see them make it. I don't feel that that has been really established. I don't think it's been established in America that with greater free speech, we've become less democratic other than, I guess, what I'm seeing out of the Democratic Party, things like subverting the Democratic primary. That, to me, is pretty anti-democratic. But was it free speech that did that? I don't think so. I guess maybe it was the dissemination of Biden speaking that seemed

to panic them. But in fact, it had nothing to do with us talking about Biden. It had to do with just the reality of the fact that Biden seems to have dementia. Yeah, it's like this core tenet of democracy is going to ruin democracy. Yes, the value. We have to protect democratic norms by abolishing them. It's ridiculous. Riley, what do you make of this? Yeah, so something else we sort of have talked about here is, I guess, sort of like the collision course between Elon sort of like poking the bear.

He posted recently this week an AI image of kamala in like full communist garb um and so saying like can you believe kamala wears this so like using ai in your taunts is like adding to the to the fire because if there's one thing these people hate more than like misinformation it's using ai as part of that misinformation that's like the ultimate no-no um so it does sort of feel like those two things are sort of on a collision course, both the threats to free speech and Elon sort of just goading it as it moves on. What do you make of why they're so threatened by the AI stuff? Because I'm not sure. I think there's an element to they have always hated the tech industry, and this is a key element of the tech industry.

They have always hated the tech industry, and this is a key element of the tech industry. And so if they can nip this in the bud before it becomes too big, then they have sort of delivered this big win against the tech sector. I think that could be it. I think it mocks them. I think that it's so easy to mock them now. There's a video, Matt, let me know if you can find it. It came out, I think, this morning. There's this sort of punkish kind of song playing,

and then it's just all of these AI deepfakes of the various leaders and foreign strongmen, their faces superimposed over sexy 1950s, 1960s-looking pinup models in various, I don't know, ways. And it's just really ridiculous and it's there's something really just shattering of the myth of power that happens when you see this stuff and i think they just don't like for understandable reasons liking it i think there's some real stuff i mean the ai deep the deep fake porn stuff is concerning to me and is such a weird question of, is that even a violation of privacy? Because it's not real, but it looks so real. So

does that count? And these are questions maybe that are interesting, but we don't know how to answer. The idea of AI-generated election misinformation, I've not even seen a single example of that yet. What is the example that they're going to show us? I'm waiting for the real example that really everyone says, oh my God, that's crazy that this thing that didn't actually happen happened because it was AI-generated. The closest we got recently was the Photoshop of Ben Horowitz and his wife in Trump hats. But that wasn't AI. That was just a Photoshop. That was just a picture.

And ultimately, it was debunked and people moved on with their lives. I don't know. I'm not that scared of it. I could be naive. I mean, it's happened before. I still think the biggest piece of misinformation that was generated by AI is, is this, this is the chat that Kevin Roos had with Sydney that caused him to write this article saying that it tried to break up his marriage.

It's a chatbot, Kevin. Yeah. Maybe it's all the AI photos of Trump and Kamala making out. I don't know if there's a purpose on your timeline. It just felt like a longing for love at that point yeah it was too tempting for her she's like shut it down um what about but brandon didn't he write something recently going yeah so he i'm gonna i didn't research this so i might get it wrong but he he seemed to so so he wrote this article about how now when he talks to chatbots about himself,

they tend to describe him as histrionic and sensationalist. And I think in the article, he doesn't actually realize that maybe it was because he wrote this article about how he earnestly believes that a chatbot was trying to break up his marriage. I thought that he was saying, I realize that I'm known now as the stupid AI guy because of this. It could be. I didn't read the whole thing. We're going to have to read it. I didn't read it either. I heard that Kevin Roos was doing something stupid on the topic of AI again. I actually don't hate Kevin. I don't want to trash Kevin.

But I did think the article was crazy. And I thought it was irresponsible to write a 10,000-word piece on a chatbot ruining your marriage, potentially, highlighting the risk of that, when we all know exactly what happened. It was an illusion provoked by him in his questioning of the chatbot, which I actually broke down in a piece that you guys should check out. If you're actually curious, the topics, Kevin Roos and AI, it was just called, it's a

chatbot, Kevin. And it's one of my proudest pieces, I think. I think that there is one way that we maybe get out of this and that it's that it turns out that misinformation is a moral panic just as microaggressions and racism turned out to be a moral panic between the years of 2018 and 2024 i think that during those years people got called racist i mean there's that thread on twitter where the guy keeps updating it with like things that are racist like hiking is racist well have you snowboarding is racist or whatever if you just google it give me a word right now give me a noun something anything bananas yeah but yeah sure bananas are racist probably bananas again create racial tension at america

maybe that's not the best apples apples are racist food injustice has deep roots let's start with america's it's the apple pies as american has stolen land wealth and labor five a few bad apples are okay that one is apple pie question is apple pie racist the independent jet june 2021 give me something else. Chairs. Chairs are racist. How a white folding chair became a symbol of resistance. Let's see. Russian socialite in The Guardian. I love The Guardian these days.

January 2014. Russian socialite sparks outrage with racist chair. This is not a joke, guys. So that's my point. My point is when you call everything something else then the word that you're calling it doesn't mean anything anymore and eventually you get laughed out of the room um because i think now when you see these articles which are few and far between

calling something randomly racist usually at least on twitter i just see them you know getting mocked and nobody's taking them seriously anymore. So hopefully we go that way with misinformation. I think the other point here too is that misinformation generally applies to foreign media or user-generated content and not established media. So I think all that content threatens media in its own form. And global people are super valuable to politicians. And so if the misinformation, you know, isn't swinging your way, you kind of have to wage war against it. Yeah, they've lost. I think the media is a good point.

I mean, if you lose, they're already sort of on the defensive because they've lost the press to a certain extent i mean there's this alternative press that's budding and yeah ai is just another version of that right now or not even i mean ai generally but there's something about the deep fakes in particular that they they kind of keep harping on i've never quite understood that when it comes to just text generated misinformation i'll see people screenshot text generated misinformation sometimes. And it's like, we can do that with a word processor. I can type out, it's possible to type out misinformation on a word processor. I was accused of it for the last five years.

Like I am aware of the word processor type of misinformation i'm not exactly sure why the ai generated misinformation is scarier maybe if you pair it with you know an army of russian bots and what are some other left-wing conspiracies we can add to it to like really make it scary um trying to think of them is there what are the other they had what was the recently the blue anon uh craze there was a lot of weird stuff trump faking it was the the fake trump assassination um which i guess i mean we forget because no one even talks about it anymore all right we gotta move on i want all of you right now to if you will exit manager mode and enter founder mode and this is a chat next, let's say 20 minutes founders only

Riley break down the story and tell us what we learned this week. Sure thing. So Paul Graham, uh, penned an essay this week, free of the word delve called founder mode, uh, a piece that was apparently sparked by a talk at a YC event, um, from Airbnb is Brian Chesky, more on him later, where Chesky talks about how the advice given to founders about adopting a sort of laissez-faire leadership style or just hire good people and give them room to do their jobs only led to disastrous results. So Paul goes on to characterize that mindset as manager mode, which he differentiates between this mythical founder mode,

which is presumably more involved in which he compares to how Steve Jobs ran Apple. But aside from that comparison, Paul is pretty light on details about what exactly founder mode is. However, that didn't stop many memes from springing up about founder mode, as well as many others jumping in to immediately say that that founder mode was sexist. At least one individual slid into Solana's comments and said of founder mode, it's unfair that women can't adopt it as easily without facing significant backlash. Brian Chesky himself tweeted, women founders have been reaching out to me over the past 24 hours about how they don't have permission to run their companies in founder mode the same way men can. This needs to change. And in another notable example that I'm sure you guys will love, Sofia Amoroso, author of the book Girl Boss, who is responsible for taking that term into the mainstream, penned a huge tweet about founder mode saying,

quote, it happened to me first. Headlines portraying me as a toxic leader when I had to make the same often unpopular decisions that my male peers did without critique. For them, it's called founder's mode. For women, it's called toxic. So yeah, well, much of the details. Okay, a lot to unpack here. We need to just table the sexism. Founder's mode is sexist. Just pause. We're putting that over here for now. First, what is in search of founder mode? What is founder mode? I would love to know what founder

mode is. I know what founder mode is not. Founder mode is not being a manager. Founder mode is not, Paul says, hiring the best people and getting out of their way and letting them do whatever. So beyond the sort of definition by negative, we never actually were told what founder mode is explicitly. So when I say this, I'm not just being an asshole. It's not just, I'm not saying, oh my God, this guy is so bad. He didn't do this thing. It's a shitty essay that everyone likes. He himself said he could not, he could not possibly describe founder mode in this essay because it's just too complex. It would take a whole book. It would take him forever. And he could never deign to try and cover all of the amazing things about Founder Mode in one single little essay. But he did conclude one day, when we finally figure out what it is, it's going to change the world. That was how he concluded this piece. So obviously, everybody online, I don't know if they didn't read it.

I don't know if they just... Maybe they're all having secret conversations about Founder Mode and the Founder Mode group chat that somebody forgot to invite me to, but they all seem to know what founder mode was. And my sense overall is that it's nothing. And what founder mode actually means, there's not one way to build a successful company. There sort of is one way to unsuccessfully manage a company to death, but there's not one way to successfully build a company. There are a million different ways to create. Peter Thiel famously once said, every successful company is a miracle. And that is really, I think, could this be my bias? That's certainly the school of thinking about the stuff that I come from. Paul maybe is coming from a school where you could perhaps explain to people how to build a successful company and how

to be a successful founder. I don't think that exists. I think this entire thing is actually just an exercise in identity. You have founders, I'm one of them. It's exhausting and hard. And you do have to work in a way that the average person doesn't work just to survive and keep the company going. You feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. And so what if founders like, they like to be told that they are one, special and two, hardcore. And I think they are both of those things, honestly, but founder mode became a way for us to talk about that. And probably would seem a little cheesy to just explain what it is in an honest way, but instead, that's where the conversation is now.

That's my read of that piece. Before we get into the sexism which is just amazing uh the fact that it's been two days but it was two days okay so founder mode as a phrase entered the lexicon two days later we still didn't know what it was and it was already sexist that was how the uh the discourse evolved but brandon what did you make of a founder mode are you in founder did you make of founder mode? Are you in founder mode now? Is the founder mode in the room with us right now? I'm always in founder's mode. You should know that about me.

That's how I got the job. I believe that, honestly. You saw me and you were like, you're in founder mode right now. And I was like, of course I am. No, I thought it was funny. I think they kind of, I don't know. I don't know any of these people, but like, I have respect for Paul G and I have respect

for Gary Tan and the white common area people. So I don't, I don't want to dunk too hard, but I do think this situation snowballed a little bit too quickly and it ended up kind of be clowning the whole group. Um, they kindc dude that's what i was gonna say right so jared freeman um who i had never heard of um before this no offense to him or anything i'm sure he's important and all that but like he the they jumped the shark this whole thing jumped the shark when he tweeted something like um that the event felt like the Potsdam conference where the best minds came together and invented a new doctrine. And so I just thought that was pretty, I don't know, like when you start calling this a historic

moment in tech, it's a little bit hard. Like I was like, okay, you know, like, I don't know. So I'm going to defend the mem the meaning i think the memeing is fine and like to actually not to i think to not describe it and to just be serious the what he was being serious oh no he was being serious i'm gonna talk about gary so gary's releasing all these ai generated posters of people being in founder mode i actually from those posters glean more about founder mode than i did from the essay about founder mode and that's because you can get a lot from a meme you know we we actually do learn from memes basically that way we that's how we learn memes and we learn what a concept is I think

it's a very clever way of getting out what founder mode is or what it is not I think that the essay being worshipped was a little bit ridiculous and I think referring it to the posthum conference not ironically is I mean how do you not just know at that point more than anything what's not founder mode about being self-aggrandizing yeah that is that is founder as can not either it was placed in contrast with um investor mode was one that i i saw uh that was also mature to me and i'll find it was that like golfing uh it was anna mosterick uh she shares a screenshot um from masayoshi son jesus christ was also misunderstood masayoshi son tells investors uh and softbank founders defends 13 billion annual loss by comparing himself to the son of God.

That was a Financial Times, an actual story. Anyway, she screenshots that and says investor mode. It went hard. For me, that was the highlight. But yeah, I mean, I am in founder mode. I am searching also, though, for a little, a few more details. Sorry, Eid, were you about to say something? I don't know.

I think the baseline difference between manager mode and founder mode is when you're a manager, your incentives are kind of oriented around performance reviews, around being collaborative, around obviously what the exec team wants, but you have to be so partial to all these other things. And founder mode is like ignoring some of the whining and that sounds like evil boss, but yeah, ignoring some of the whining, trusting your own instincts. Founder mode is the people you fired along the way. Well, so the thing about that is what we're really talking about is difference

between a manager and a founder. So is that what founder mode is? Is it just means you're a founder, you're a successful founder is being is that is founder mode just when you are a successful founder. And I think that it actually if you had to, if you had to actually write down the write it down and explain what founder mode is, I think that's what it would look like is it's just successful founder. And at that point, again, there are a million different ways, not a million, but there are many different ways to do that. And it's just not a concept, right? That's not- Can you be in founder mode if you're not successful? Is having a mattress on the floor and no bed frame, does that count?

Well, because you're going to be successful one day. So maybe you never know if you're in founder mode until the end of your life. You can't actually... Founder mode is not actually determined right away. You determine it 50 years from now, it can be determined. It can't be determined. I think I'm in founder mode, but I might be in manager mode. Which is a horrifying thought.

If you were accidentally in manager mode for decades, and you were trying your best to be in founder mode, and probably talking about founder mode... It's like the Hall of Fame. The what what it's like the hall of fame you get inducted into it uh after your career there's like a it'll be that's a phenomenal museum idea founder mode i it would um it would suck it would suck to figure out that you were manager all along yeah i also think it's kind of interesting i i don't know that it's very founder mode-y to be talking about founder mode all the time and to be saying that you're doing founder mode. But it's certainly not founder mode to do. To me, based on the vibe of the memes that I'm seeing, and kind of just like what gut feels right to me, it does not strike me as very founder

mode-y to cry about being persecuted for Founder Mode or entering Founder Mode. And that is what we got a little bit of in the context of a sexism conversation, which, I mean, Riley, you alluded to, I touched on for a second. It feels like the ghost of Christmas 2017. And I cannot believe that we are back here with a prominent, a highly, a super famous entrepreneur publicly opening up the floodgate for this kind of crying of like, oh no, when a man does it, it's boss. But when a woman does it, it's, I guess this is like a, this is like a sort of boss conversation. Oh, I mean, but that's what we're doing, right? It's like when a man does it, it's, I guess this is like a, this is like a sort of boss conversation. Oh, I mean, but that's what we're doing, right? It's like when a man does it, it's fine, but whatever. And honestly, Madonna did it first and she said it better, but in the context of founders mode, I find it just incredibly rich to be saying this when we can't even define it yet. Do you just mean,

do you just mean running a business? The thing that Brian Chesky kept sharing was a scream defense when, because obviously he says this, he's been getting all these phone calls from female founders who say they weren't permitted to do this. People are in his comments saying, what do you mean permitted or given permission to or whatever? It's not how this works. They say to the man who I guess coined it, so I don't even know if they were right to challenge him. But in his response, he shared screenshots about the girl boss founder being fired and or losing her job or whatever it was. And I just thought to myself, do you think, is your conception of the phrase girl boss just

that it is a boss who is a girl? Because that was a whole cultural moment that has nothing to do with just like a woman being in charge of something. Anyway, Brandon, break down the actual girl boss who entered the chat. Okay, I'm going to start with Brian Chesky, who again, I respect. It feels bad to be talking on these people in a way, but like, so there was a clip of him talking about what unique things,

what about founders are unique in a company? You know, like how does a, how is a founder distinct from a manager or an employee? And I'm 99% sure that this clip was recorded before the founders mode meme came out, right? And so one of the things that he says, but I'm going to, I think when he was talking about founders in this clip,

it must've informed founders mode, the speech that he gave at Y Combinator. One of the things that makes founders distinct in his view is that, and you could, I don't know, Matt, if you want to play this, but he says something like founders and founders alone have like root access to the actual company in such a way that they can change the company like nobody else can. They can pivot the company like nobody else can. They have this like special access where again, they don't need not have permission to go into founders mode. My first reaction was like, that's totally incoherent. Like you are misunderstanding founders mode, which I understand. The second thing was that that kind of got my goat a little bit,

quite, quite frankly, it was just that, I don't know, like, like, I don't know if Sophia has heard of like Elon Musk or seen any of the news about him over the past 10 years. Like, you know, for example, a judge in Delaware literally voided his entire compensation package for partisan reasons for being a toxic, like guy, whatever. Elon was girl bossing too hard and he was punished for it. They didn't give him permission to, but he, to, but he carried through and he did founder's mode, is what I'm saying.

Like Brian Armstrong, there was a month-long media cycle after he said that his company should no longer focus on Black Lives Matter and instead focus on cryptocurrency. Travis, what's his last name? The Uber guy. Adam Newman. People like, I think half the country thinks like Adam is in a cult or something like that. I kind of think Adam is in a cult.

And like all he did was like have a company during like a bad commercial real estate market, you know? So I don't totally buy that like that when women went into founders mode, they were not given permission and so they were unable to. But when men did, they were totally able to. I mean, what about Palma Lucky? And they were totally given permission. Yeah, Palma Lucky. Palma is fired.

Yeah, for voting for Trump. Also, if you step back a little bit, not to get like two men's rights activists here, like the whole movement during 2018 to 2024 or 2023, maybe was centered around men. Like it was like, men are bad and they do microaggressions and they're toxic. And, um, a lot of people got canceled for really, really dumb reasons. Um, who's this guy at Netflix? I don't know if you guys remember this story but jonathan freeland after they released i think like a chapelle special this is the chiefs comms officer of netflix he had to say the end he said the n word but in the context of should like in the context

of like describing the word but not obviously wasn't calling anybody the N word, he gets fired. Right. And it's just like, like, that is not, you know, there was no ill intent. There was no racism. So I don't know, I could keep going on the list here. But I just thought that this specific strand of like, well, women can't do founders mode, but men can, it's like, no, men can definitely not do founders mode. And they you know just google you know elon brian travis all these right if you're going to define founder mode in the way that we've intuited from the meaning and the personal stories as just going your own way then yep they're criticized constantly and then also that's why i get criticized like why what actually happened

with nasty gal like i i she wasn't just fired because she was succeeding. Well, her company went bankrupt. She filed for bankruptcy. And it wasn't anything like, I mean, I read about it. There's not too much public information about it. So she started Nasty Gal as an, she was an eBay seller. And so she grew that into a big company. She got a lot of funding.

People were very big on fast fashion at the time. So they were getting, there was a little bit of like a, I don't want to call it bubble, but there was a lot of investor, like, you know, a lot of frothiness for her company. So she got a bunch of investment and she grew the company too fast. She couldn't handle inventory. She basically was just like like she was out of her skis and um it kind of collapsed on her and that there was some lawsuits but it's not really fair to hold it hold that against her in my opinion but um yeah she just sounds like she wasn't founder mode and actually she just failed which mostly happens in founder most founders fail they act like it's not like every guy who acts like this succeeds they mostly separate from the unfair cancellations

who acts like this succeeds they mostly separate from the unfair cancellations operating in this way is crazy and you don't always win you mostly don't win i think it's like you said like if you if you fail you weren't in founders mode but if you succeed you were and clearly you know by that logic she just never got to's mode she didn't found her mode because she wasn't permitted to i mean what is your conception of the intersection of founder mode and feminism seventh wave feminism i think it's what we're at when i saw people complaining about it, I knew what they were talking about, which is it's really hard. You have to push yourself really hard to have the level of executive directness. As a woman, I think for a lot of women, you have to do this. And there's this innate self-consciousness about how that's going to be received. Because traditionally like women haven't, you know,

been as powerful. Or historically. And so. I read it more of a, more of as like a manifestation of that, like insecurity or the difficulty. Do I think the reality of the situation, there was a time period where there were a lot of takedowns.

I'm thinking, when I think of, obviously, Elizabeth Holmes, I view her as a sociopath before I see her as a female founder, personally. But you think of outdoor voices like Tyler Haney. And I do think that media, you know, mistreated her a little bit. But there's lots of instances like that for, you know, male founders too, as you've mentioned. And so it's like, my question is what would what would female travis k look like like how would she how would she act and could she get away with it i mean we had cheryl sandberg for years so and she was worshipped is what i think about and i think about elizabeth holmes is a great example because and i don't let's not who knows what happened there oh poor elizabeth

knows what happened there um she's in prison now so she's getting i'm not gonna elizabeth wasn't worshiped what yeah i think she was no that's definitely founder mode that to me is like fraud like doing fraud like that like she did that's founders mode in my opinion she was like yeah she was in the fast lane foundering the whole time but she was worshipped on her way up it wasn't like she was being criticized for for foundermoting she was she was it was she was being celebrated for that and then in fact i mean the nasty girl founder had a whole netflix series made after her that wasn't because it was uninspiring or they didn't like what she was doing and so i don't know that i it's literally land among the stars uh yeah you know even the question of like the well you know could a woman get away with uh how travis k acted it's like he didn't

he didn't get away with it either right uh i actually like him i'm a fan i love travis i've i've written about travis one of these days i'm a fan i love travis i've i've read about travis one of these days i'm going to connect with travis i want to interview travis i believe well he was just unjustly persecuted um he was a clear just classic vc assassination and i think that uber would be doing way better today if he was still in charge of that company. I think it's like, you know, the people who are most harmed by that were certainly Uber and anyone with Uber equity. That was messed up what happened. Bill Gurley just gets away scot-free.

It's crazy. Yeah. For being a founder in founder mode. Unbelievable. Another woman who got canceled in founder mode was the CEO of a company called Away. And this was actually quite a salacious cancellation. Away is a, or I don't even know if it's still around, suitcases. And they were very trendy.

They're like, what are those mugs that people were really hyped up on for a minute? Liberal Tears? No, no. Like the thermoses. Yeah, you can add a lot of things i feel like they had there was like a moment for these suitcases and um around christmas time of like of her cancellation they they had this like massive surge of orders and um she basically there was a new york mag piece or something like that this detailing how she was like basically it's like

she was a slave driver and um it was very humiliating for her because somebody leaked screenshots of slack where she's just going nuts on everybody like we have to get these orders through and she's she's being really mean about it um but this is one of these cancellations but i think honestly a man would have been canceled at the same time period for that too. I don't know. I remember that one. I do think that one felt to me, that one did feel a little bit sexist to me.

I felt like she was acting in a way that she should have basically acted. I mean, when I read it, I was like, ugh. Or like it was bad, but like if Elon has had stories like that and people have said, you're a bad person, get him. And it just hasn't mattered. Most people are just like, whatever, who cares? But then again, as I'm saying that, there have been, I wish I remembered. I didn't research the away cancellation. I would be curious to know what happened following that out. Was she unseated for that reason? Or was it something else happening with the business? I also remember Taylor Lorenz going after her and piling on at that moment.

She was screenshotting this girl's Instagram stories. This is like a not public company it's crazy the scrutiny that that just random ass small companies used to get we're not small but private companies used to get back then um yeah i don't know i don't know how that why that company ultimately whatever happened to her because of that an interesting case study though and for me the the one that's the one that i that i look at and i wonder about i don't remember what happened to it searching for a way we'll have to circle back and i'll teach you next week in fact have her on the pot see how she's been doing uh because i don't think that she's i don't think she's running that company anymore. Yeah, but I do remember being like, leave her alone.

Leave Brittany alone was where I was. I, to my credit, always on the right side of history. Always. Always. Doesn't miss. Never. I do not fucking miss.

So watch out, Coconut. No, I don't know. I'm not making a political statement right now. It is time for our polymarket segment featuring us pirate wires and our barters paid barters polymarket thank you polymarket love you guys um we're gonna look at the betting markets and we're gonna look at them on the topic of immigration all right so at the time of uh at the time of the recording the time of this recording right now hi polymarket gave the save act a bill requiring id to vote in federal elections a three percent chance of passing okay the bill still needs to clear the

house and there's consensus that it would be dead on arrival in the senate president biden strongly opposes it stating it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. He argues it would make voter registration more difficult for eligible Americans and notes that non-citizen voting in federal elections is quote, extraordinarily rare. Okay, as long

as it's rare. Media outlets have echoed the sentiment. Axios Reality Check states a handful of states and localities allow non-citizens to vote they say in some local elections but axios emphasizes that instances of non-citizens wrongfully voting or registering to vote are rare again um man so i mean on the betty market side i think what's interesting, 3%, there is nobody thinks that this is going to happen. Nobody thinks that the government is going to take voter ID seriously on the question of voting.

And I think it's worth just kind of taking apart briefly a couple of the Biden claims. These come up again and again. One, that it's extraordinarily rare for non-citizens to vote. Two, that it somehow disenfranchises minority voters mostly. I've seen this argument made the most in the case of black voters, which to me is maddening, crazy, kind of can't believe that we're saying black people don't know how to get a driver's license in 2024. I don't even know where that idea came from. Like, was there a time in American history when black people didn't have this? It's certainly before my time, 1985, and does not exist

right now where the black vote, we talk about costs. Black people are not having a hard time figuring out how to vote. So what are we really talking about here? A bunch of pieces. I don't know. What do you guys make of it? Didn't Palmer mentioned on the pod this week, like needing to show ID to buy paint at like a hardware store in his early inventor days. If you're a certain age. Yeah. So you need ID to buy a can of spray paint, but to vote in and decide our next president. Yeah, it's fine. That's insane to me. Yeah, or to drink. You show your ID. I guess I don't care. I never thought much about this. The fact that they so desperately don't want it to happen, that is the thing that concerns me. The fact that they are so furiously opposed to the idea of checking an ID before voting,

it's like, wait a minute i was not thinking about voter fraud but now i'm wondering what the fuck you're covering up like what are you hiding i it's it's the same question to me and honestly if you're one of those people like your phone is cracked you lose your id at the club every three months you can't vote like should should vote? Do you want to vote? I think that's a point. Oh my God. It's not clear that people

who don't know how to get a driver's license, maybe they shouldn't be voting. I don't know. I know, man. It's probably heretical to say too it's not just that like like it's like i always say whenever i see these campaigns to get out the vote and it's just you know get out any vote is kind of the that's the the that is the philosophy there doesn't matter who who they are or how prepared they are, how thoughtful they are. It is just some kind of moral good that everybody in the country votes. I don't believe that. I actually tell

people, if you don't know what's going on, just sit this one out, champ. It's fine. If you don't know who the fuck to vote for at this point, are you really keyed in at all? Honestly, fine. The average normie is like, I don't know. I haven't really thought much about it. Drilled down on issues that matter to them. Generally speaking, they're pretty blissed out. They're happy in their life. They're not thinking about politics.

Who am I to go and knock on that door and say, look at this horrifying hellscape. I don't know that they need to. I don't know that that really matters. I think that probably low information voting is a bad thing, and high information voting is what we should prioritize. I don't know if that makes me a radical. I think technically it does in today's landscape. And so maybe I wear that badge proudly. If you don't know what's going on, please stay home in 2024. I don't care what you have to say. If you don't read, I'm not really that interested in what you think about Kamala. Truly. I'm not. I'm not mad about it. I'm not mad. I just don't give a shit. So it's like, I'm happy you're happy. I think you're probably happy. I'm happy. I don't

know why this third party is getting involved in saying, no, we all have to care about each other's business. It's like, stay home if you don't know what's going on. And that's the same for, it's like, yeah, less people voting actually probably is what we need. Probably. So that's our polymarket segment. All right. Last thoughts before we get up to the Pirate Idol segment. What do you guys, I mean, what do you think is going to be coming up in this next batch of Pirate Idol contestants?

Well, how many more rounds do we have? Like, what's the next step? I guess that's my question. We have this one coming up where they're all first timers are we narrowing i think we're gonna do it so we're moving one more week of first timers if not two i'm gonna see kind of i'm gonna feel it out there and then i think we got to bring people back and and have more head-to-heads i think i'm going to invite them into the group chats where we can put them on topics to do researching and presenting uh i was also thinking it might be fun to do a debate you know that might be interesting to get people who disagree on an issue and just have them attack each other maybe like a physical fight

we could put them in fat suits too. It'd be funny. That would be funny. That also is going to cost money though. And we're a startup. I'm in founder mode. I can't afford that. Brandon,

I think we should add the, what are they? The front runners to, they should just be the fourth guest on the, on the next like series of four podcasts. Yeah. I think that's like the semifinal. I think it's um I think

we have maybe one more because I was thinking about taking even two from some of these groups you know not just one one from each I like a lot of these people they're all great can I jump in they're all welcome on the podcast what was that eat can I jump in can I just like the dark horse yes yes yes of course I don't know I mean like I feel like you just have to do a lot to stand out. That's what Martin Shkreli said. He said, it's not enough to be informed. You have to be entertaining. And if you're not, you get the cut.

And I said, that's so rude. But quietly, I was like, that's accurate. I think our audience saw, they recognized the people who added a lot of value from a more intellectual standpoint as opposed to entertaining standpoint. I'm talking about Cardick who I stan. Brandon came out earlier on Cardick. Yeah. And the Pirates are with you right now. We still get carded comments we'll probably get carded comments today well we'll see because we've got quite the lineup for you now uh all right let's

get into it welcome back to the greatest competition on earth i was gonna say the internet but it's like it's bigger than that at this at this point it's pirate idol i mean i'm getting messages about it i'm getting dms about it i'm stoked for every single one of you last week actually i'm trying to think now who who was the break brandon riley do you ever remember who the who the breakouts were I'm getting DMs about it. I'm stoked for every single one of you. Last week, actually, I'm trying to think now. Who was the break? Brandon, Riley, do you remember who the breakouts were? I mean, Cardic heads are still going strong, like in comments on the last episode.

People are going nuts for Cardic. We've got four new contestants. Every one of you guys sent in a take that I thought was great and interesting and fun, and I liked your energy. Stoked that you guys are joining. The rules for folks just tuning in, if you're possibly just tuning in now for the first time ever, seems crazy to me.

We are going to give, we're going to present a topic. Riley's going to break down the topic. It's a fun topic this week. Each one of you guys is going to get a chance to just give your take on it. Any one of you can jump in on any other. Dunking is permitted. Friendly banter is permitted.

Just sort of evolving the conversation any way you want is permitted. At the end of that, we'll kind of just talk back and there will be probably some sort of judgment, but it's going to feel less probably official than when Martin Shkreli did it. I just don't have that in me to

your faces. They're all nice guys. Then againkreli did it i just don't have that in me to do your faces they're all nice guys like i mean we'll see i don't know i mean maybe it'll just surprise me and be the simon cowell that we've been looking for but i think it's not going to go that way so let's just get into it riley the topic of the week my friend sure thing so your topic this week contestants the san The San Francisco City Attorney's Office filed a lawsuit Tuesday against tobacco companies, including Swisher International and Lucy Goods, accusing them of violating state law over their sale of flavored nicotine pouches and endangering young people's lives. A 2016 ordinance had banned the sale of flavored tobacco products to anyone in the city.

However, San Francisco officials say that companies are violating that law by selling the pouches to customers online. TLDR, they're banning flavored Zin. Yes. They're coming for your Zin, boys. Faisal, my man, welcome to the show. Introduce yourself, please. Who are you? Where are you from?

What's your favorite color? What do you think about flavored zen? Okay, my name is Faisal. I'm from Saudi Arabia, actually. But I went to high school in the US, so I had the full high school musical experience, I like to say. But yeah, my favorite color, I'd say, is green.

And there's a lot to the story, actually. At first, it seemed like a surface level topic. But the way I was framing it to my friend on the phone is, suppose I woke you up in the middle of the night. I told you that all high school students were using Zyn. Would you care? I would go back to sleep, personally. And I think what we're going through today is just another set of below the belt uh moves that intend to just win boxing

points um in this end of endless partisan boxing match and um yeah it's not that surprising and i don't think that's the real story here i think like there's this trend i think was mentioned on the last part pod that like the truth is separate from reality the truth is separate from the story and i think that's the story but i feel like the truth if you dig deep even on the like website of the California Department of Public Health, they mentioned themselves the FDA study that was actually released this September in 2024. That was like a survey of youth. That one in a hundred high school students were using nicotine pouches

and one in a hundred middle school students were using nicotine pouches where this that is that feels like a lot that's a lot it's a lot but in context i would say a lot of i mean middle school 13 year olds one in 113 year old ron's in that's crazy i mean that strikes me as insane it's gotta be more for drinking yeah parents i was what was that ed one in a hundred middle schoolers has a really cool parents dude i don't know i think this is more evidence of like the the infantilization of society when i was 13 kids were smoking marlboro reds man like what is this yeah well my dad was 17 he was signing up for vietnam there you go look at me i'm 39 i've got a podcast so i agree with you there um actually andrew why don't you uh i mean tell us uh who are you and

give us your take i am uh andy jones i'm just a guy i am currently a stay-at-home dad in uh in texas um so i'm not i am not like i don't have like a B2B SaaS startup or anything like, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But anyway, I've got opinions. So, dude, this thing to me looks like, you know, at first blush, it's kind of like a Bloomberg style, like nanny state thing, like, oh, you can't have big gulps anymore. Cause everyone's fat. Right. Uh, you know, and, and, you know, you sort of get that vibe off of like, I mean, Chuck Schumer's even involved in this thing. Right. I mean, he got up in front of the cameras where he likes to be and, and, uh,

was telling everybody warning parents about the evils of, of Zins. This is the dude that took real for loco from us by the way like his number one sin real for look i never got to try it i'm 45 years old yeah i can't you know i hate for that alone i hate that man but but i don't think that's the real story just like feisal i don't think that's the real story i think the real story here is that studies show, and this is going to be like my Tucker Carlson, like, you know, Alex Jones, like schizo take here. But like studies have purported to show, right, that like nicotine use raises testosterone.

And as I found out in my research, growth hormone amongst other things. So growth hormone makes you jacked, huh? And testosterone makes you jacked and driven and if you are they want you feminized they do hey they they don't want you jacked and driven because you are a jacked and driven person you are not a good subject for their wef like globalist agenda right i i mean that that speaks to you're not gonna eat the bugs well you have to place it in the context of what they are allowing so they're coming you you have you have a group of people

who are dedicated to going after flavored zen this is the pouches right not it's not true it's just the little nicotine pouches that sit here so you're going after just nicotine straight up not tobacco not inhaling not i mean it doesn't seem like we there's any kind of cancer risk that we know of yet you're going after nicotine which is an addiction um fentanyl dealing is effectively legalized in san francisco or decriminalized let's say i mean no one's going after them we have a honduran fentanyl dealers that we can't get deported and this is what we're focusing on it's just crazy so there has to be some kind of a motive some kind of a reason why i love the idea of it being a conspiracy theory i

are not a conspiracy i love the idea of it being something broader you know the sort of anti i didn't realize that it pumped your tea yeah yeah evidently it's it's it's not a very i mean it's not a very you know in all honesty it's not very large. A good reason to explore the substance. Yeah, yeah. But I also know that San Francisco voters, like your kind of average San Francisco lib is pretty stupid. And the thing that will motivate them here and the way that sort of, you were able to do anti-nuclear stuff

because people are like, oh, well, nuclear is scary and we like the environment. And so somehow you end up supporting energy sources that are actually bad for the environment. This feels like that. It's like the word nicotine is scary. And so we're not really exploring the new substance. It's just, let's ban it. And then, I mean, please don't let it get out there that it also spikes tea because at that point it will be, I mean, the pitchforks. And growth hormone, dude, and growth hormone. I mean, you know, come on. This is like, that's a killer combo.

That's the bodybuilder combo. And, you know, if you want compliant bug-eating, pod-sleeping, like, you know, subjects, you don't want them on nicotine. That's all. Yeah, you take away their nicotine. Riley, I mean, what do you make of the – I you strike me as i know eric's a zing guy he's not here with us today he's our director of ops are you uh i mean are you like a zoomer zin boy like what is the what tell me that zins are huge among my demographics so if there's any hope for the youth it's it's in that but yeah eric's the big, big Zen guy. I mean, you know, another thing that I forgot to

bring up though, I mean, it's a stimulant, right? It's makes you more productive. I mean, nicotine, aside from the addictive properties and the blood pressure and like the, you know, the cardiac stuff, you know, the light that burns twice as bright, burns a half as long, right? But like, it makes you more productive. I mean, come on. There's another reason they don't want us taking it i think it's like super tied to um just the inability to accept that that like story does not work at all and kind of pushing this like harm reduction psychology into regulating zin in a way that you couldn't in the fetus when like jewel was like popping off in the beginning so just a little bit in defense of the drug never doer people um it seems like the jewels probably were pretty bad right i mean i'd say that maybe not maybe not i

see some head rolls no maybe not no it seems like so they have those was all the throat stuff was that just like fake news yeah i thought there was like some big moral panic about like whatever like you know water in there or something i remember there being like a mystery or some shit it was giving people turbo cancer I don't know right it was it was also Chinese pods like janky Chinese like fake walk off pods so that to me is really not even that's not a tobacco story or a nicotine story that's a globalist globalism all day but that's very different than trying to ban nicotine um Chris my man where are you from what is your favorite color her no give me something else give from? What is your favorite color? No, give me something else.

Give me like, what is your favorite state that is not a state that you live in? And what is your take on the great San Francisco banning of Zinn, 2004? Yeah, hi, I'm Chris Duvall. I'm the co-founder of Tech Sales Mentors. We help people get hired in tech. And I live outside of Nashville.

My favorite state is definitely Florida. It is incredible. I'm spiritually an old person already. Me and my wife are like, we're ready for the retirement homes as soon as they'll let us in. So definitely Florida. Okay, so here's my hot take.

And I've got some screenshots I can send to Matt afterwards if he maybe wants to edit these in. The quality of cocaine has risen dramatically even since 2011, while the price has actually decreased if you take into account inflation by a lot. And the same is true for heroin and fentanyl too. They're following the same cost curve. So if you look at common consumer goods, the worst things that are suffering from it. Are you saying that inflation has not touched hard drugs? So like eggs are more expensive.

They're beating it. The drugs are beating the inflation. It's cheaper than it was in 2011. It's cheaper than it was in 2011. I know. Yeah. So if you look at consumer goods, the three that have suffered the worst are colleges, anything education related, housing and medical.

The things that are most highly regulated by the government, and the things that have actually dropped in cost. So those things have increased by 200% in the last eight years. The things that have dropped by 50% in the last three years are cars, cell phones, and televisions, the things that are least regulatable. So really, what this looks like to me is there's a straight line between how much we regulate something and its cost and quality. And in order for us to protect the children of America from the FDA, it is our moral obligation to create a black market for nicotine pouches. Oh, I like I like this. I image I'm I'd subscribe to the newsletter. I'm interested in learning more. That's the spirit of 1776 right there.

Brandon, what do you think? Not much. I think it's weird that we prescribe kids Adderall. I think that's a closer analogy than legalizing. Basically legal fentanyl on the San Francisco streets. Like we're happy to give kids Adderall, which I think probably destroys their brains, but we don't want them to use nicotine.

And I think kids like, I don't know. And also I was confused, Riley, you said that Lucy was under investigation, but what about, is Zyn owned by Philip Morris? Is Zyn like specifically not, or is it just Lucy? It's all flavored nicotine patches. So including Lucy, but plus like Zyn and all the others. Yeah.

Yeah. It's interesting to pose that question of just asking a parent would you rather your kid chew two milligrams of lucid like nicotine gum every day or they take 10 milligrams of adderall as prescribed by a doctor every day for i don't know even just a year i don't know what actually andy what do you what would you say to that uh let's see under your head you have to choose or you know if you don't want to bring your kids into we don't have to either i just know that's okay i mean let's see as the father of three children myself and somebody who was an adderall user i would probably honestly go for the adderall like uh it's just i i was a smoker like a long time ago for for a few years and it was way harder to quit like cigarettes than it was to stop taking

adderall that is true that i've had the same experience with nicotine gum um is it does it is like a legit it becomes a legit addiction in a way that i agree that adderall is never i i've i've no problem i mean there's a withdrawal period, no doubt, right? I mean, because you're going to have like a big like dopamine crash and all that stuff. But, you know, it's generally speaking, it's better. You're better in like a week or something like that. But yeah, like the nicotine stuff, dude, that was tough. I just get the sense that the Adderall actually has a more lasting impact on your brain it just seems

that way to me even just from having tried both it the nicotine it just doesn't feel as serious to me it just feels which is probably it's not scientific but i mean the guy with the podcast you know just like experientially like kids should not be on meth. I mean, it's like kind of a bad demonic experience. It's like demonic. I've been on Adderall before and it's like, I feel like a little creature, you know, on Adderall. Like I don't feel right.

And I think it's kind of weird to subject kids to that feeling. I don't know. I don't think it's right. Yeah, no, I mean, personally, I sympathize a lot with that. kids to that feeling it's i don't so i don't know i don't think it's right yeah no i mean personally i sympathize a lot with that i mean in my experience i honestly felt like myself on adderall i felt like my brain worked the way that it should uh but that being said like i'm extremely hesitant to have it prescribed to my children like Like, you know, I would much rather do, you know, sort of behavioral type stuff way before, you know,

way before we go to drugs. You know, sort of the South Park, like, shut up and study! Which is obviously much healthier for kids. Yeah, I do. I have a problem just with the idea of, you know, your kid is having trouble paying attention in class, maybe bumping up and down, wants to go outside. And your first reaction as a doctor is not to say,

maybe this environment's unnatural for children and especially young boys, but should we give them amphetamines? I think that's the broader problem. That's a whole other topic. It's an interesting topic. I love that we got to like an actually, like authentically interesting topic out of idiots in San Francisco, once again, banning something rather than fentanyl. Chris, I saw you like kind of shaking your head before we cut this one. I saw you kind of nodding a little bit ago. It seemed like you had another opinion you wanted to add or a point you wanted to share. Yeah. I mean, part of the overprescription of Adderall is just because kids are doing something pretty unnatural, which is being put into school for 18 years. Like boys are not supposed to do that. And when I was in middle

school, the teacher recommended that nine out of 10 boys in our class get prescribed Adderall. So that's, I don't know if that's still such an endemic thing, but like it's been a problem where especially boys are not great at sitting in a chair for eight hours. And so you're going to get your what are teachers going to do? Teachers are going to optimize for the results that you're driving them towards. And that's how do we make the boys sit in the chairs and you're going to get downstream results from that. Yeah, I think I think like one of the one of the simple solutions to this is just make PE the first thing they do. Like, I'm serious, just run their asses off, like run them into the ground. And then they won't be like, you know, like bouncing around like they're in a fucking electric chair, like while they have to listen to some idiot drone on, you know, the black. Right. There was that California school

that did that in like the 80s or 90s and they have all the kids are have like eight packs Founders fun. What is it called Andrew? Oh, I don't remember what it was called, but I know exactly what you're talking about Yeah, I was actually from like the 60s or something like that. It was like a while ago Yeah, it's in founders funds like promotional. Okay. Oh You mean the one my colleague Petrano put that together the one on Twitter? That's the with the cool music behind it. Matt, you can play a clip of that right now. It's inspiring. I always love to get back into that.

Last thoughts, guys. This is it. We're wrapping up here. Anything. Do we want some advice? Honestly, I think it's bullshit. I think it's nanny status bullshit. We're back to the real topic here. Like,

like my Adderall kicked in. So, so it's nanny state bullshit. It is also like an insidious way to make Americans docile and less productive. And, you know, screw Chuck Schumer and screw San Francisco's leadership.

Screw all those people. I want my goddamn Four Loko back. All right. That was the his bitch is too bad. His smoke is too tough. They'll kill him moment. Crime of like allowing murder and just like not letting the easy shit slide sounds like a i mean it's really it's really just nonsense tinkering at the margins as burke would probably

think it was burke yeah i don't know anyway like you know just tinkering at the margins you know like the fentanyl thing everybody's like you know nodding out and fucking dying from fentanyl and and living on the street and shit and here you are like taking away nicotine pouches. What the fuck are you doing? You know, nobody knows. Correct. Like hire some more cops,

like crack some skulls and like establish order. Jesus. Sorry. Yes. You said you have three kids. So we can give one Adderall, one nicotine, just in their Gatorade.

And then one. Oh, I thought Gatorade was the third i'm like what's wrong with gatorade is a problem too now i can't keep up with these rules guys it's been real thank you for joining pirate idol in the comments sound off who do you want to see more from tell us what your favorite color is tell us what you think about zin rate review subscribe tell your friends about it follow the. Listen to that last podcast we did with Palmer Lucky. It was fucking epic.

Thank you, Palmer, again. Thank you for your service. Have a great night and a good weekend.