The Iced Coffee Hour - Confronting The Most Contraversial Streamer | Hasan Piker

Episode Date: May 14, 2023

Click The Link And Use Code TICH250 For 30 days free + 2 months @ 50% off for Personal and Commercial Plans: https://share.epidemicsound.com/tichm... Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan https://www.instagram.com/alex_nava_photography Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] GET YOUR FREE STOCK WORTH UP TO $1000 WITH OUR SPONSOR PUBLIC - USE CODE GRAHAM: http://www.public.com/graham Timestamps:00:00 - Intro02:21 - Corruption In Companies05:14 - Redacting Child Labor Laws08:35 - Hasan's Background14:31 - Turkish Politics Began The Journey19:13 - College Experiences21:16 - Marker 729:08 - Finding Work After College35:21 - Appearing On Camera47:53 - THE Controversy55:42 - Universal Basic Income58:38 - Should Landlords Exist???01:00:40 - The Homeless Problem01:15:03 - Changing Housing Infrustructure01:30:27 - Overfunding The Police?01:35:21 - Crime And Punishment01:42:33 - What Should Be Decriminalized01:47:59 - Views Compared To Political Parties01:51:51 - Upward Mobility In The US01:55:58 - Best And Worst Political Commentators02:00:35 - The Meaning Of Life MY NEW COFFEE IS NOW FOR SALE: http://www.bankrollcoffee.com/ The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Shure SM7B mics, cloud lifters, rodecaster pro audio interface The YouTube Creator Academy: Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail] *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So there are a lot of problems with our economy that are only getting worse, from housing to crime to homelessness, to so much more. And today we're having a discussion with one of the most outspoken left-wing political commentators who's made it very clear he's anti-landlord. Oh yeah, we have a very unique debate on that one. Where do you draw the line between public housing and becoming a landlord? Do you think a property like this should be owned by the government? Housing is a mechanism for capital accumulation has really perverted our understanding of housing. Housing should be decommodified. Anti-capitalist and also a Democratic socialist.

This one is going to be very unique. And if you haven't seen it already, check out last week's episode with Brett Cooper from The Daily Wire, who is basically the exact opposite. So we get to see both sides of the spectrum here. But with that said, thank you so much. Enjoy, but first a message from our sponsor. Where's Jack?

We've got to start filming this podcast. Man. Yo, Grand Mexico is Fuego. First of all, Jack, that's not true. And second, turn down the music. We're going to get copyright claimed. Oh, Graham, don't worry about it being demonetized. That's because they're playing music from our sponsor, Epidemic Sound,

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I'm saying no free promo. Oh, come on. Oh, okay. What if I want to give them promo? You go ahead, man. I want to give them promo. Fair life is actually pretty fire. I mean, their practices are absolutely the worst. like even dairy farmer standards. Why? I think like the conditions that they keep the cows in is like worse than other farms. What do you learn something like that? I have a lot of vegans in my, a lot of radical vegans in my community.

One of my main editors is a vegan propagandist actually. So he constantly tries to sneak in stuff like that. See, I've constantly heard bad things about Nestle. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. What is their deal? Do you know anything about them? Yeah, I mean, first of all, when you're in the water business, that's, that's already pretty unethical. You know what I mean? What do they do?

Well, I mean, it's like something you need for survival. And these guys are basically going to a local resource, like a natural resource, shutting off access to it. And then reselling it back to the people that live there. Well, you know, I would say that's like kind of problematic at least. But then also on top of that, like on the chocolate front, they utilize child slave labor. However, they outsource it to, you know, third-party companies that are completely beyond their control. And the safety mechanisms that they've put in place, I think it's like the Chocolate Alliance, if I'm not mistaken, is like it's like a regular NGO, you know, shady, not exactly consistent. And as far as I understand, the United States Supreme Court ruled that much,

Mars, Nestle, and other American-based or multinational corporations that utilize child slave labor are not legally culpable for any of the damages if they were to ever be sued by the child slave laborers. Interesting. Is that because there's a recent Supreme Court case. Deniability that they could say, well, we hired this company and we're not responsible for what that company does. And if they do that, we don't know about it. Is it one of those? It's one of those like, oh, no, I can't believe the people. that we outsource this like hiring process in the global south is utilizing child slave labor like, but then again, you know, you got multiple states in the United States of America

unwinding child labor laws. So things are looking great here. Wait, could you explain that? Yeah. I can, I don't want to, I don't want to mess this up. We're pulling up sources here on the ice podcast. I think this might be the first time we've had sources pulled up like this. That's good. We know it's legit. But I know our, I know our, I know our Kansas, what some people call Arkansas. But I call Arkansas. It was recently making a move, and I think Idaho as well. Is it to lower the age that a minor would be able to work?

Or what is? Missouri Independent title says, Kids at Work, States try to ease child labor laws at the behest of industry. Now, this, of course, is following like a sea of NLRB investigations that were conducted at, you know, poultry plants where children were found. Hyundai had a facility in Alabama where children were actually working in the facility. Oftentimes, these are undocumented kids. The Hyundai facilities, I believe in two different facilities, they found children all the way from like 12-year-old, 14-year-olds,

working at the facilities on the assembly line. There was another article. There was another investigation conducted where they found. that cleaning companies that they were utilizing late at night were also, you know, hiring children. I would love to get more detail about exactly what they want to do because I know titles could be one thing, a title could be misconstrued, but I wouldn't be opposed necessarily if they make it easier for a teenager or someone who wants to work after school a certain amount of

hours, more access to be able to work if they want to. Yeah. But again, it depends on exactly what this says. I can tell you what it is. 11 states have done this, and they've either passed or introduced laws, the rollback child labor laws, push this coming from industry trade organizations and conservative legislatures for the most part. In the past two years, those states have moved to extend working hours for children, eliminate work permit requirements, and lower age for teens to handle alcohol or work in hazardous industries.

That would be an interesting one, because Jack, you worked at a restaurant, but you couldn't serve the alcohol, right? Yes, correct. until I turn 21 but a lot of restaurants like they don't actually listen to that not trying to throw my old restaurant under the bus here but restaurants don't really adhere to that

yeah it does seem silly to me that if you have a server who let's say is 19 years old and is waiting on a table they cannot bring a glass of alcohol to the people that they're waiting on even if that person doesn't have a drink like some of these things I think can be

but then again I come from the perspective of like I love working part time when I was like late middle school high school high school like that was the joy of my existence was being able to work so i think it just comes down to like what those changes are i think no children should work as a necessity you know what i mean like part-time labor understandable um if you want to do it um to learn the value of a dollar or whatever certainly and a lot of kids work and they're like you know family businesses and whatnot

But ultimately, I think like that genuinely harms your development, your, you know, capacity to learn when you're tired, fatigued. And you're, you have this additional burden. I think this is a gigantic, gigantic policy failure. I don't mean like, I'm just simply stating that the fact that that needs to happen in this country is, is pretty fucked up. Let's get more on to that. Which, but before, I just wanted to say, sure, there is apparently, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, a 69% increase in children employed illegally by companies since 2018.

Yeah. Child labor is on the rise. I had no idea. Can you tell us a bit about your background, how you got involved in Twitch and general streaming? Sure. Take us back from like, you know, as a kid. So I grew up in Turkey. to a relatively affluent family. And if you're like even a little bit affluent in Turkey,

because of how massive the wealth gap is in a country like that, you're, you know, you're caked up in comparison to like American standards where if a similar salary would not or a similar amount of wealth would not make you, you know, upper middle class even. Sure. Such as the nature of, you know, developing nations. But by the time I got to college, my dad lost everything, right?

Which is fine. I mean, I still had a lot of the benefits of early upbringing. Could you tell us, do you mind telling us how we lost everything or what? Future trading. What happened in this? Gambled, basically. Yikes, okay. How have you been doing that for a while and seen some success and then just kind of went all in on it or something?

Yeah, pretty much, I think. I'm not, I'm a little murky on the details. Like, I don't think he, he's never fully like brought it up, you know, what I mean. But he was successful. I mean, he was like lobbying the Turkish government. You know, he was, he was, like, the right-hand man in a holding group. You know what I mean? He was

like, he had some pretty serious jobs. But once he got a little bit older and retired, he basically got into that and fucking lost everything. How old were you at the time?

I was around 17. Mm-hmm. And then 18 when I went to college, when he like full-blown lost it all. Not that it really matters because like I said, I already got the many benefits of growing up and getting the best education. You know what I mean? So at that point, it's like it's fine. What other benefits were there besides a good education? Because you were in the United States at that point, right?

No, no. No, no. I'm in Turkey at this point. I came to America when I was 18. Got it. I would visit the United States sometimes for summers and whatnot, which I would. considered to be one of the benefits at least, you know what I mean? But I mean, it's just freedom to not have the economic insecurity.

Even as a child, even if you don't recognize it, that still weighs on you. You know what I mean? In ways that like your parents will be depressed in certain aspects, right? Like that's a lift that people that come from affluent backgrounds don't have to even think about. It's like a burden that doesn't exist. didn't have to work, you know what I mean? Could, I mean, they were very particular about not getting me things that I wanted, but, you know, ultimately it doesn't matter because there were so many amenities that come along with that that I,

that I benefited from, which is something I talk about regularly. I mean, it was a fairly privileged background. Yeah. And, you know, I think that was probably my first, that's when I first started developing and understanding or even recognizing income inequality was when I switched over from a private school to a public one. And that's when I realized like, oh, shit, like, you know, the gardener's kid and I'm going to the same school.

And like, and this was when I was in third grade, I started realizing like, damn, the gardener's kid is not living like I am at all. You know what I mean? I think that was probably my first recognition of wealth disparity, wealth inequality, not like, I wasn't like a socialist or anything. Right. But as a kid, I was like, what the fuck is the kid not have anything? You know what I mean?

Fair. Like, what made you say that there or think that way? Like, what was it that that kid was lacking that you had? I mean, even like basic food items, you know what I mean? Like, you bring lunch to school or there's a commissary at school. I can buy whatever I want. He can't. You know what I mean?

Things like that, little things like that made me realize it. That there was something that was a little off. And what was your sentiment towards it at the time? Were you like, oh, I'm just happy that I'm one of the people like a haver? Or was it something? I mean, I was a kid. I didn't really think about it. Anything beyond like observing it.

Yeah. Anything beyond the observation. I wasn't like, you know, I didn't have a revolutionary spark. Sure. That makes sense. Yeah. So then you're 18. You come to the United States.

What happens there? And why did you come to the United States? Why here? I always wanted to come to America. I was growing up. So you probably know. is that I don't have an accent. And also, I have a pretty solid understanding of American culture as well because I was immersed in it when I was growing up. Many people around the world are immersed in

American culture. Obviously, it's like, you know, pretty profoundly successful. That's why you see the Taliban wearing like Oakley's and, you know what I mean? Like these dudes were in a cave, you know, three months ago. And now they got like tactical like American rifles, vest. They're wearing the baseball caps and whatnot. And that's that's one act. aspect of like how powerful American culture is. And I was certainly captivated by it. Other kids, they would ask other kids like, what do you want to be? And kids say, I want to be an astronaut.

I want to be a lawyer, maybe, not really. Or I want to be an engineer. I'm going to be a firefighter. I was like, I want to go to college in America. That was, it's so weird when I think about it, but that's all I wanted to do. America represented this freedom, right? The American dream. Like it was, it was.

it was something I definitely believed. Yeah. Pared up with also the social conservatism in Turkey that was like developing and and became the Areduan regime, like the changes that I started seeing. What were those changes, by the way? So, Rejib Taya Pardin is a long story, but Rizb Taya Parduan is kind of like Donald Trump, but more successful even than Donald Trump. Sure.

He basically ran on this like anti-Western degeneracy. We need to go back to, you know, conservative values, while also, of course, privatizing a lot of, you know, key sectors in Turkey that were otherwise nationalized historically. He came in, did all of that. And of course, in order to maintain his popularity with a socially conservative base of support, that was all around the country and not necessarily reflected in the big cities,

he had to keep, you know, ramping up the intensity, talking about how like Muslims, like the real Muslims were oppressed in Turkey, a country with like 98% Muslim. You know what I mean? But that the elitist Western-facing Muslims were, you know, morally degenerate and ruining the country. They didn't care about the hardworking. real Muslims in the villages and in other places or even in big cities. They were not being reflected in policy. So that was his main method. That was his like culture war basically that

he used to gain prominence. And it was very successful. I mean, he was pretty profoundly popular and also profoundly unpopular as well. But he still maintained like a coalition of like 51% of the vote. Fair enough. throughout his rain, pretty much. When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want. Like all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet.

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It was like a newspaper called Penguin, Uykusuz. There was a couple other ones. And they would regularly criticize Ardon as political satirists too. They would draw him as like different animals. And he is a very thin-skinned. man, as many of these petty tyrants are, and he sued them. He sued a bunch of them, as a matter fact. And then that was kind of like a turning point. We don't have an American understanding of free speech in Turkey. Adon himself actually went to jail for a poem and inciting violence

originally, many, many years back, many years prior before he actually, you know, ran for any position of power. But he was now weaponizing that against his, dissenters basically. That was one of those things. There was an element in the air of feeling as though you know, alcohol consumption was frowned upon, things of that nature. It was never fully regulated, obviously,

because it's like a, you know, pretty solid sector. Tourism is something that Turkey relies on heavily. And you can't really shut that off, right? You can't just be like, oh, we're not going to, you know, you're not allowed. But it basically started giving voice to, more social conservatives who then felt more empowered to be able to, you know, reinforce their ideas, no matter how backwards they were. So things of that nature.

I started noticing that. I didn't like that. The free speech conversation is also a major one considering that, you know, Turkey does jail a lot of journalists and a lot of academics, like famously. One of the worst in the country, one of the worst on the planet. it. America is still the number one jailer across the board, but Turkey jails a lot of academics and a lot of dissenters, basically. So, you know, that was not something I was fond of. But, you know, paired up with that, seeing America as it's, you know, this beacon of moral degeneracy that I thought was awesome and, you know, rampant consumption that I also thought was awesome because I'm a bit of a I wanted to come to America. It represented this like, you know, this beacon of freedom.

Sure. Something that a lot of people that, you know, actually immigrate to the United States, if they are fortunate enough to do so, this is a thing that they see from wherever they live. Because there's so much wealthier. Yeah. There's so much money. And, you know. Opportunity too. That's something that I've seen with a lot of people who have immigrated here. They're like there's so much opportunity everywhere you go. For sure. The possibilities are limitless. Yeah.

Absolutely. In comparison to other countries. Oh, yeah. Totally. And so what was your experience then going to college? I went to college. First, I came to University of Miami. It was a degenerate.

I partied a lot. I had two nines, both semesters. My parents were like, that is the most unacceptable thing on the planet. Like, how dare you? They were already upset that I chose University of Miami over Boston. or even George Washington University where I got like really fat scholarships from as a matter of fact

so when I chose that when I chose University of Miami they were already frustrated what was your reasoning behind picking Miami I wanted to have fun that was it yeah no I 100% you see the videos of like spring break there a minute like no it's crazy

and was it fun how was it it was a lot of fun yeah but so was Rutgers honestly which is where I inevitably transferred to and then but Rutgers was in New Jersey and I hated the weather and I just did not like

living in New Jersey at all throughout that time also I started slowly but surely that's when I started to like genuinely recognizing what was profoundly wrong with America one of the

most significant radicalizing components for someone like myself was healthcare like seeing the fact that coming from a country where there is private health care, but also public health care to a certain degree. Like, you can still get, you know, public health care, um, completely free that the government pays for, right? Um, seeing that, like, uh, you had to pay an insane amount of money to just get like basic procedures. I was like, oh, this is like unacceptable. And, um,

it didn't make sense to me at all. I always are also had, a negative opinion of America's foreign policy as someone who didn't live in America. So that was already there. And that's when I started, you know, moving more into my current beliefs. What about foreign policy do you think was the most broken from your perspective?

I mean, where do I begin? Everything America does is pretty awful in terms of foreign policy. It's always done at the behest of not some like, you know, democratizing principle as the way they presented here, but instead to make, money for the military industrial complex, which is like one of our most viable industries, right?

And, you know, there's obviously different layers to it. Resource extraction is a huge component. Whether it be illicit and like, you know, not on the books resource extraction or control, like, you know, opium fields that are being controlled or protected by the Marines that have no fucking clue what they're doing there in Afghanistan, even though those opiates inevitably make their way, not into America, mind you, we have fentanyl that's coming from China that's different, or any kind

of other natural minerals, natural resources, or even maintaining a country's economic status so that you can take advantage of the labor force at a much much, you know, at a much lower price. Do you think America does that? Oh, absolutely. I think the entirety of the West

does that. And I do believe that they they do it fairly deliberately. I feel like it's, I've always kind of in the back of my mind thought about it. If you're giving jobs to these third world countries, right? Like the little like not like the sewing jobs and stuff like that, like creating materials and stuff. The sweatshops.

I wonder if that, I always wondered if that was a ploy to keep them because it's such low paying jobs. It's just enough to get by and survive to like make sure that they still stay at the end of the crack of the whip or something. That's most jobs, I feel like most jobs to pay like, 50 to 70k a year are just good enough to keep someone under submission.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I would say most jobs keep you just at the neutral point where you don't want to leave, but it's good enough where you want to stay. That's where I feel like most. You don't want to recognize that you're being bagged into a corner so much so that you're both hungry and angry because inevitably you'll bite back. Right.

If you are relatively comfortable through, you know, a ton, a metric ton of. of commodities that you can consume and cheap, cheap consumer goods for the most part, you'll forget that the cost of health care is skyrocketed. The cost of college education, which is like one of the most significant, as it stands, one of the most significant ways of upward social mobility, which is not even that good anymore, right? But the prices have still increased. The cost of housing has dramatically increased. But hey, we get really cheap TVs. What I wonder to, like, How do you solve that problem? Because if you just abandon ship and you take all of those businesses that we're using those resources over there, then they don't have jobs at all.

And do you think that they would have to fend for themselves and they create something better, like internally? Or do you think that it's upon their government to do something for them? I think China is a pretty good example of like what has been done with respect to taking in foreign capital and then spreading it out as best as possible. and like immediately developing a lot of the underdeveloped parts. I mean, if you look to like the past 30 years of Chinese development and you look at the current Chinese economy in comparison to where it was before foreign capital started flooding in and, you know, before they started taking advantage of their manufacturing power

and also, you know, ripping the IP as aggressively as they could, perfectly openly, by the way, and our capital owners also, like the business owners here know that, right? It's not a secret, but they still want the cheap manufacturing. So they just were like, yeah, whatever, who cares? But I think their development has been pretty solid as a consequence of that. It's about how evenly you distribute the resources once you start getting in a shitload of foreign capital. Do you trust their numbers, though? Because I've heard quite a bit that they could manufacture their...

own profits and a lot of the buildings they've built or built on, you know, invisible money that was just basically taken from the people who invest and builders use it and plow it, you know, plow it into the next development. I mean, I see it. I look at their railroads. I look at high speed rail. Like if you pull up a map of like high speed rail in China from 2000 to now, in comparison to, you know, high speed rail in America, which is not exist in.

I think that that's like pretty even development in a country. there is the we were looking at like go cities yesterday because people immediately are like what about the go cities? I think that was a combination of like make work which I do think is something that every good government should do make work like busy work construction being one of those ways of doing that

and thinking that the population was going to grow more than it actually did and you know this happens in not only centrally planned economies but it happens in America as well. Not to the same degree, but a lot of those ghost cities are now actually becoming more and more populated because there is need for a developed city.

Like people want to move to a place where, you know, if they move certain things around, and that is an advantage that centrally planned economies have, if you move certain things around, you can move people there as well. People want to go to a place where they can get better educational opportunities, for example. So that's what they do.

they'll be like, all right, we're going to put some really good schools here. So then people start moving into what was before a ghost city. So I think that there's a lot of confusion and a lot of chaos about what gets talked about with respect to China. I mean, there are obviously awful things that the Chinese government has done, just like any other government has. You know, make no mistake. I'm not avoiding those realities. But I think overall, they have developed incredibly well, especially if you look to where they were 20, 30 years ago or where they were 100 years ago. I mean, it's insane.

And, you know, this is not just my analysis of the situation. If you look to like, I don't know, the World Trade Organization, whenever someone says capitalism has been profoundly good in, like, eviscerating global poverty, extreme poverty of the global level. level, they're pretty much just talking about China. Like the Chinese numbers really, really skyrocket that performance. If you leave China out of the equation, and obviously I'm not like the World Trade Organization and I have, you know, or these institutions have a profoundly different worldview than I do, right? But even they recognize that.

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I say it's because of resource allocation. like a more equitable distribution of resources. My biggest issue is that we have no way of verifying what China says is true. And that's my biggest concern. Have you ever been to China? Never. I haven't either. I really want to go.

I just look to Tier 1 cities. Sure. And think that like Shenzhen, as far as I've seen from people that have traveled, as far as I read on the matter, from, again, Western outlets ultimately, right? which usually will have a bias that is, I would say, anti-China because they see it as like in contention to American, you know, American power, Western power, right? Even they recognize the development. So, you know, I feel like, I feel like it's definitely there. Yeah.

Let's get back on to that after we finish the story because we left off of you being like 18 or so in college. You ended up transferring to Rutgers. What happened there? And then how did you get to where you are today from that? I graduated from college. Can't get a job, obviously. I graduated with honors, actually, a polyside degree. What changed between Miami and Rutgers?

I just realized like I have to, you know, I have to work hard. Yeah, I have to get my shit together. Yeah, okay. Was there a pivotal moment that happened for you that was like your wake-up call or was it just gradual over time? No, it was just gradual. Okay. Because like I think American school is like fairly easy in comparison to, you know, what I had to learn in school in Turkey. So I was just like really phoning it in.

So I decided not to phone it as much. You know what I mean? Sure. So that's that's pretty much it. And when you're a freshman, you don't really know what you're going to do. So you have to take a lot of like, you know, common core style classes. And those foundational classes are often like very. difficult, especially if it's not something that you're truly interested in, whereas

PolySide was something I was interested in. So it was a lot easier for me. Like it came naturally. It was the job you wanted to get. So you must have graduated, what, 2014 or 15? 2013. The job I wanted to get originally was, this is funny, a consultant in one of the big four firms. So originally I was like, this is, I, you know, I have a Polyside background. I could probably go to like, you know, PWC, McKenzie, one of those companies, you know what I mean? that's what I was like trying to get hired by.

But of course, that's all like wheeling and dealing. Sure. Who you know. And I did not know anybody. So they just, I don't even think anyone even looked at my resume, right? Could it be GPA too? Do you have a good grade? Yeah.

Like I said, I graduated with honors, 375. So, you know, that's like pretty solid, I would say. And my dad was like, you have to go to like law school or going to MBA or something, right? And I was not. not really necessarily interested in that. So I was just like, yeah, sure. I'll study for law. I'll study for my LSATs in California, Los Angeles.

At the time, you guys probably know this, but if you don't, my uncle has a YouTube channel called The Young Turks. It was like a 26-person shop. It was like a tiny operation, not that big, not that media behemoth or anything. So I was like, yeah, just go work with him, do an internship with him.

And I'll live in L.A. And I'll study for the Lsats with, I had no interest in studying for the Lsats. Yeah. Or going to law school. So yeah, I started working there. And then I was like, yeah, maybe I should just like work with him instead. And at first it was really awful because I had no money. And the young Turks didn't have any money either.

So they were like, yeah, we want to do biz dev. We want to do like, we want you to fill the role of someone who would be doing like our direct advertisement sales in-house rather than rather than someone who rather than having Google do it, right? Like bringing in sponsorships every now and then rather than, you know, relying on YouTube. We want someone to do it internally. So I basically set up our in-house advertisement sales and operations. A lot of cold calling, a lot of learning.

I didn't know anything about it. And I just knew the industry a little bit. But that's how I got my start of the Young Turks. Was it like commission-based or was it salary? It was supposed to be like commission-based. But, you know, when you put a 22-year-old in a job like that in a position like that and it's commission-based and the product that you're like trying to sell is kind of hard to sell because it's like political commentary, political news

and you're going for a lot of like DR campaigns, right? Or where, you know, with... That's what you're trying to sell to? Well, I had to, yeah, I had to get like, I brought in like Squarespace, Crunchyroll, things like that. And through, through like, you know, they weren't necessarily tier one, you know, ad companies, I would say. They weren't like tier one marketing companies. Like I would meet up with them, like OMD, all these like big brands, you know. I think it was O'Gilvy was another one.

I can't even remember now. But, you know, I was cold calling a lot. I was developing relationships with these people. while also simultaneously on the back end like trying to create a system like trying to create the structure so we can like actually deliver these ads all this stuff

and I brought in a bunch of I brought in a bunch of campaigns but they were all like you know CTR CTR based like that was the that was the performance that they wanted and it's just like the shittiest type of ads I'm sure you guys have them too still to this day

I wanted to do like native advertising I thought that would be cool, but at the time, you know, people weren't really willing to take a bed. I think we were too ahead of the game in that respect. And I brought that stuff in, but it was so awful. I mean, I fucking hated sales. What did you not like about it? I just, it sucks, man.

Come on. I'm sure you guys have done sales in some capacity. Yeah, I loved it. Yeah, I fucking hated it. It was just like, I don't want to, I don't want to be friends with these fucking people. You know what I mean? I just like I feel like you have to be a sociopath a little bit to be like really good at it No, no no no he was an agent I love you I was a real estate agent for 10 years so that's how I got started sales before that though Wasn't really sales but kind of I worked at a marine aquarium wholesaler so we would sell fish and coral

And it wasn't really like a sales I didn't have to pitch anybody but someone would call in and ask about something and I would describe it to him over the phone like I didn't get commissions or anything I was getting no inbound request I was all fucking I was all out that's gonna make it obviously less so I mean I was doing the same thing. I was calling up people from open houses who would sign in and talk to them. But I felt like sales provides a service where if they're looking for something, if you could help them find that something, you're doing them a service. So it's very much a customer service based industry. One other thing I did while all of that was going on was I always wanted to be on camera, but I was dog shit. Like I was so bad at it, right? I was not good. I don't think anyone is really that good. I love talking, but I was very nervous on camera at first. Like when the when the camera light was on,

I was a different person almost. I couldn't let my personality out. But at that point, I'd realize that, like, repetition and hard work for someone like myself, I was able to achieve a lot of the things as long as I just, like, fucking boulder through it, you know, push, push through it. It doesn't matter if I suck at first. Who gives this shit? It's embarrassing, but it doesn't matter.

So I would present myself as a fill in host because I looked at all these other hosts and it's a YouTube show. You know, these guys don't know anything more than I do. They're just, you know, they're a little bit more charismatic. Sure. They have more experience on camera. I don't think they're bringing anything particularly new to the table. It's a fucking YouTube show, you know?

And I was like, I could do that. I want to do that. So I would say, if someone needs a fill, I'll do it. Last second, doesn't matter. Don't care what the subject matter is. I'll read on it. I'll speak on it. I'll do it.

So that's why I started doing. That's why I started doing more, you know, on-camera appearances at first. Was that like a teleprompter or were they giving you a topic? You'd have to research that and speak on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no teleprompter at this point. Okay. And then I was living with one of the producers at the time for one of the media properties there on the entertainment side. And I pitched him the idea, the Young Turks at this point had no teleprompter shows.

I pitched them the idea of doing a teleprompter show. They had a studio that was basically just like a supply closet. I was like, I'm going to put a fucking green screen in here. And I'm going to do a show out of this. I'm going to give you like a free show. You know, I'm just doing extra work. Right. And, you know, it took a lot of convincing, but ultimately he was like, sure, whatever.

I mean, we live together. It's, you know, I'm greasing his wheels that way, I guess. I'm going to call it the breakdown. And everyone was like, oh, we're just going to be a drain on our resources. 30 million fucking views every week. It was Facebook. Oh, yeah. It was monetized at that point, was it?

No. Oh, so this is, but it's so much reach for you guys. Yes. Wow. So, you know, it became this thing that was insanely popular. Facebook was skyrocketing. Like our Facebook growth was insane, tremendous. Who is the audience at that point?

Who the audience was? I don't really know what the demographics were, but I would say they're still 18 to 35, you know, like the key target demo. I probably was a little bit younger. Like Facebook at that point was like more popular, I would say, than it is now with younger demographics. This is when people were like moving away.

They had Snapchat as an alternative, but like there wasn't that many viable alternatives, right? And it was just doing tremendously well. I was doing these things where I would just do like a back and forth with Tommy Lauren. Do you guys remember who that is? She was a super. So we never collaborated, but she would make a video. And I would piece by piece go through her video and just like dunk on everything she was saying.

It was I think like this wasn't as popular as it is now. Everyone does it now, right? Everyone does it on TikTok. Everyone does it on YouTube. But at the time it was like kind of unique. especially to the political sphere and it was still scripted, it was still telepromped and I had like all these assets that I would bring in

and it was really it was for a brief moment I think I captured the attention of like a massive group of people but it was still under the TYT umbrella I did not have any ownership of this IP I did not have anything like I have no control over it

you know what I mean and I would constantly say give me more funds so I can hire a writer, give me more funds so I can beef up this process. And instead of doing that, what did TYT do? They said, no, we're just going to take the breakdown, your baby, your child, this thing that you've made, and we're going to make all the other hosts do it as well, which will dilute the brand and what my vision for it was. So now you have to train everyone, just like you've trained your editors,

to be able to do this kind of content. And you have to also help them, you know, make the show. Because my job isn't making a show. My job at that point is building our Facebook operations, right? Like growing our Facebook operations. I hated that. That was when I realized, like, fully that I just have no control over my life whatsoever. This is a reality that many people face and unfortunately can't really escape.

Because, you know, they can't become entrepreneurs because that is a, a massive, massive risk. It was one that I was able to do. Eventually, by January 2020, before that, I went part-time with the Young Turks because I wanted my own thing. Actually, I'm getting ahead of myself here a little bit. I'm jumping. What ended up happening is I realized I needed my own thing after that when they did that.

I needed to no longer be in the shadow of it. the young turks no longer being the shadow of my uncle because no matter what I did everyone was like nepotism that's the reason why you're successful nepotism that's the reason why your Facebook you know shit's popping off nepotism it's like well he's not doing fucking Facebook videos like what do you mean

he literally can't like you know um so I was always like trying to move the audience from TYT properties to something that I own like you know my Instagram yeah they were not too fond of that at first

they didn't give a shit, but then they realized like, oh, fuck, this guy's like kind of using our network to, like, build his own brand. I don't like it. Then I started Twitch because I was very bad off the cuff. I wanted a place where I could go to every day, build a community around it. I wanted something that was mine. And I wanted to be able to start speaking off the cuff. What better way to learn how to speak off the cuff, then speak off the cuff for eight hours a fucking day, to an audience even, you know, have a back and forth. And I also was a gamer already, and I saw the gaming space as one that was actually very diverse and had a lot of progressive opinions. But unfortunately, if you looked at like the gaming adjacent content creators, none of them were really openly leftist or anything like that.

They were all actually very right way. You had a lot of like actually far right content creators even that were doing like commentary and essays. It's where, you know, GamerGate had happened. And everyone was talking about like, you know, how video games are political. and that meant like there was like a black woman in the video game, you know what I mean? Not Call of Duty though. Call of Duty was not considered political.

So it was a lot of commentary like that, which is why I was like, no, there's definitely demand for this. My kind of politics with my understanding of memes, internet culture, all that sort of stuff. And Twitch was the best place to go to do that because it was a video game platform. So that's when I made the move to start doing my Twitch, which was very tiny at the time,

wasn't anything. And I started building it up slowly but surely. And by the time 2019 came around, it was at least like respectable. You know what I mean? I was reaching like sometimes 5,000 concurrent viewership. Oh wow. That's high amount.

Yeah. That's really good. I mean, well, in comparison to where I'm at now, it was at the time, it was like not that big, right? How are people finding you at that point? Was it just Twitch was pushing you to the top because people know, no. A big part of it was networking. There were content creators that I collaborated with that I basically would do content with.

It was a mutually beneficial situation. Trainwrex TV was one of them that does like debates or would host like this podcast. That was live. I would go on that all the time. there was another show by a friend of mine who I now do a podcast, what was called, well, at the time it had a different name. His name is Austin Show. He had like these massive debates for that, you know,

basically everyone on the platform would be watching. At the time, it was like 35K live concurrent viewership, which was like you're maxing out at that point, right? For any kind of like non-Fortnight, you know, non-gaming content. And that's pretty much how I grew my platform. There was another content creator who I'm no longer friends with, but Destiny, who I collaborated with a lot as well early on.

So how often were you working at the YouTube channel and doing Twitch? How did you balance the two? I, it was probably, 2019 was probably the worst. There was no balance. No time for friends, no time for relationships, no time for family. I would wake up at around 5.30 in the morning, start reading and writing my script. I would go into the studio, shoot the video, have all the assets prepared, would drive back home after 2.m.

It was like usually, you know, it was 637 to 2 p.m. is what my working time frame was for the young Turks. But then I was still on call. You know what I mean? It wasn't like I was done, right? I would have to upload the video myself to Facebook. That was my job as well. I would have to do the SEO for it, thumbnails, all that sort of stuff. Make the thumbnails, make the SEO.

And I would drive back home, take my dog to the dog park, make my first meal of the day, basically, cook it as quickly as I could, go work out at the gym. And while I'm doing all of that, by the time, you know, it was like 5 p.m. at this point, basically. Basically, you know, the video would be ready to publish, publish the video, go live on Twitch. And then from like 5pm, 6 p.m. to like 11 p.m. I was live streaming on Twitch as many hours as I could. What was the motivation for doing that? Was it to build Twitch up enough that you could leave? The motivation was so that, well, one, the motivation was that I wanted a place that I could like go back to, like a community. You know what I mean? another motivation for me was just like, you know, have some independence outside of the

young Turks, like a brand of my own, you know, something that people can point to and say, that's Hassan. That's Asan Piker. Not at the Young Turks, like individually. That's fair. So that was my most, you know, those were the primary motivators and also be able to learn how to speak off the cuff. How much were you making at the time between working like what seems to be 16 hour days like every single day. Before I left, I think my salary was around like 65 grand. Sure.

Which, you know, for LA standards, it's not great. And on top of that, it was like whatever I was making on Twitch. I think I said I would go independent. Like I started thinking or teasing out, like possibly going independent. Was it 5,000 subs or 10,000 subs?

I can't remember. Which, you know, after the Twitch pay cut, It was a lot of money. It's like another additional on top of that, like around, what is it, like 20 grand, 25 grand, something like that. So, you know, that was, that was, I thought enough for me to withstand the, the possibility of, like, losing health care and everything else, which was something that I had to, you know, struggle with.

It was something that I was genuinely fearful of. Something that a lot of people have to think about if they have to make that jump on their own. So that's how that worked out for me. So when did you make the jump full time to Twitch? August 21st, 2019 comes around. Yeah. And I say something that in a heated gaming moment,

that I still stand by in principle and also like, you know, as long as I elaborate what it, what the intention behind what I said was, said America deserved 9-11. Oh, yeah, I've seen that clip. Everyone's seen that clip at this point. I mean, that shit went off. Fox News, I remember being fucking terrified.

Like, immediately, Keemstar elevated it. Then, like, I mean, people clipped it out. Keem Star escalated it. It just elevated it, put it out there, you know, broad daylight. And in that, in a span of 24 hours, it was on Fox News. It made it to Tucker Carlson. It made it to Laura Ingram. Laura Ingram was calling Dan Crenshaw in to, like, respond to it.

because I also said some stuff about Dan Crenshaw as well. And I remember thinking like I'm so fucking, I'm killed. I'm going to be murdered. Well, you know, I'd been getting death threats at that point pretty regularly, but like it was on Fox News now. How many people were watching you when you said that live? I don't remember, but it wasn't that big. It's just like.

It doesn't matter. Once it's out there. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Once you, that's how this works. You know, it doesn't matter. You got 2,000 people, let's say, watching or 5,000. people let's say watching.

And then it gets in front of a much larger audience of people that are like, oh, fuck this guy. He's Muslim socialist guy. He's saying America deserve 9-11. He like loves Al-Qaeda. You know what I mean? Which wasn't my point at all. It was actually the opposite. But that made its way to Fox News.

And I remember thinking, oh shit. If Fox and Friends covers this in the morning, I know Donald Trump watches Fox and Friends. If Fox and Friends covers this in the morning, I'm fucking screwed because Donald Trump. my tweet about it. And if he does that, I'm dead. Like, they're going to murder me. Like, there's no way I survive that, right? And it was probably one of the worst weeks, months of my life. It's something that, you know, people still bring all the time, but I don't really give a shit. But at the time, I was still, like, a TYT guy. And so people were sending death threats to, like, everyone at the Young Turks. Like literally

everyone down to like the key grip. You know what I mean? Like they found anyone and everyone that works at the Young Turks and would like docks them and say that they're going to fucking come murder them. That's when I realized like you know, maybe I should do this on my own. Like I don't want other people

to be suffering the consequences of my fucking stupid mouth and not being able to like fully elaborate on on things or not get clip chimped really. What were you trying to get across when you said that comment? You know, the 20th year, the 20th anniversary of 9-11 really was an interesting moment for me because everything that I've said on that broadcast, basically things that I already knew, was reinforced through every documentary that came out in that time frame.

Talking about our arming and radicalizing of the Mujahideen in the lead-up to the Civil War in Afghanistan, and the USSR invasion of Afghanistan and how much the CIA very openly elevated these otherwise like random groups of militants into a viable and robust anti-soviet violent force. They did it through

Islamic fundamentalism that they instilled upon people and legitimized. And then some of those groups became the Taliban, right? They started infighting. Some of those groups became the Taliban and America was directly involved in this. And very openly, even before Ronald Reagan famously brought them to the White House and said they

reminded the Mujahideen reminded him of the founding fathers. So that's what I was talking about because it was in response to what Dan Crenshaw was saying about how, you know, 9-11 happened because they hate us. Like they hate us because they hate us. That's it. And it was very frustrating for me to see like a dude who went, served overseas, got his eye blown out. out, right? To come back and just like keep reinforcing that same cycle of violence. And even using his like veteran status as a way to just like send more men and women overseas to get their shit blown off for no fucking reason. You know what I mean? You're saying they have a reason to dislike us, but not deserving to happen to innocent people.

Yes. I never, I never meant that obviously like the 3,000 people that died on 9-11 deserve to die. That's fucking ridiculous. I was simply talking about America's chickens coming home to roost. You know what I mean? This is a, at least in academic circles or even in most circumstances, this is something that like every American kind of understands and recognizes. You know what I mean? Like we constantly fuck their shit up over there.

Eventually some of those guys are going to come back and like, you know, do do a little bit of whiplash, like come back and strike back, right? That was the point. Many such examples. It's a concept called blowback. And I think the way that the media actually started covering in the 20th anniversary of 9-11 and the Afghan invasion reflected all of the talking points that I was making at the time. Which is why I had a lot of people actually come back and be like, listen, I misunderstood what you were saying at the time, but I totally get it now. Did that not make you really concerned about what you say when you go live and how things could be taken?

out of context. Did you change the way that you would speak after that to be more careful or considerate of like you have to be very literal in what you say? Because things will be taken out of context. Absolutely. I call it Twitter speak. There's a way that people speak if they're on Twitter all the time where they want to make sure that nothing that they say can be, you know, intentionally misconstrued. And if you ever use like any kind of spicy language or if you embellish it all. If you exaggerate, like, people will weaponize that against you. They'll use it against you. It's certainly something that I, uh, I, uh, have, have, uh, cared about a lot more. Yeah. Like, I take into consideration a lot more now. I'm also curious, did any of that online

hate translate in person? I mean, I don't usually talk about that because, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to give any power to it. Fair enough. It's just, uh, you know, it is what it is. Okay. It happens. Got it. But, uh, no, for the most part, out in public when I meet people, no, it's an overwhelmingly positive experience. It's always just like, you know, people that work at the restaurants I go to or, you know, people that are union activists and leaders that are, you know, saying, look, I love your, I love your show. You gave me the confidence to go out and, you know, fight for my rights in the workplace, things of that nature. It's usually, it's overwhelmingly positive.

And what was the outcome of like your next live stream after that comment? Well, I got banned. You got banned for a week. Yes, because, you know, obviously. When, when, you know, when something that you say on a live stream becomes a matter of national news, especially in a negative way, you're probably going to get banned. Twitch immediately took action. Got banned for a week.

And then I, you know, I came back. And when you get banned and you come back, a lot of, there's always like a big boost. A lot of people pay attention to that. So this is something I actually wanted to get your opinion on. Universal Basic Income. What are your thoughts on that? Because that would give a lot of people that autonomy to be able to be their own boss to a certain extent

and pursue other creative ventures. UBI is actually a very good idea, but it can be a very bad idea as well. What do I mean by that? The problem with UBI is that if it's used as a way to further cripple the social safety nets, the existing social safety nets that are already in a state, disarray, then it's not good.

Just a cash injection with no, that that basically eats away at like EBT, snap credits, and, you know, social security and whatnot would be devastating. Because I feel like that would open up the avenue to further privatize these institutions that the government is supposed to be controlling. So that is something that I'm very fearful of. But as a concept, if UBI on top of that was supplementary, great, I'm on board. you feel like a person would be able to better manage money like that than the government would. Like let's just say hypothetically you do get rid of all the other social services.

But in its place, you go right to the person. You say you get $2,200 a month or $2,000 a month. You don't feel like a person would manage better. Absolutely not. Some people might, but no. I'm of the mindset that people are not very smart and as a whole. And when we think about every single person, I'm a dumb ass, okay? I don't want to manage all of that stuff.

Someone should manage all of that stuff. And I think that leaving it up to a governing body is always going to be, especially, I mean, even though it's like devastatingly crippled, it's awful for the most part and it's not significant enough. I still think that having it be regulated through a body that is still somewhat accountable through the democratic processes is the right thing to do. In theory, in practice, obviously our institutions are purposely crippled, undermined, underfunded, and left to starve and die out so that you can privatize it basically.

But I am a firm believer that, you know, having that, having that safety net is really, really important. There are plenty of examples of this being super successful. I mean, every Nordic country that you look to, social democracies that you look to in Europe, there are, you know, very different ways of doing things. But ultimately, the principle behind it is still the same. Socialization is a necessity, I would say. What things do you think should be socialized? I think healthcare is one of the items that you mentioned. You're not going to lie to what I'm about to say.

And I know what you're about to say. Yeah. But we can talk more than I'm just talking about it. So, yeah, I think, I mean, I, things that have inelastic demand, necessities for survival, should certainly have at least like a comfortable bottom that the government should provide. What do I mean by this? I'm not saying that we should like completely eradicate the private sector in all aspects of our development or all aspects of commodity development, you know, commodity production. well, maybe in the future that could be something that we could do

not in the short term of course but healthcare certainly should be nationalized but you can't nationalize health care without also having free college because you don't want doctors to get you know into $500,000 in debt and then go work at a you know

go work at a public facility for pennies on the dollar and not be able to even pay that debt back plenty of countries have recognized this and that's the reason why they also offer free education. Even America has kind of been forced to recognize this reality. And you know, you see schools like NYU and New York schools, like New York colleges, trying to create a scholarship process so that, you know, doctors can get educated for free or at least have heavily subsidized education. I also think, you know what I want to say, housing should be decommodified.

What do I mean by that? I think we all agree that housing should, I mean, housing is a necessity for survival. For that reason, I believe that housing is a mechanism for capital accumulation has really perverted our understanding of housing and has created, glaringly obvious problems in America, but especially in a place like California, where, what is it, 43.7% or 43.7 people for every 100,000 people is homeless here.

It's like an insane number. I don't want to mess the numbers up. But we are number one. My understanding with homeless, though, is that a lot of people come to California specifically because of the weather and because of some of the social services that are offered here, part of me believes homelessness is not necessarily a California problem,

but it's a countrywide problem. Someone could be homeless in, let's say, Nevada. And they get a one-way ticket to California. And that's Nevada solution, by the way, to homelessness. Oh, 100%. That was California's solution to homelessness was to ship them to Hawaii back in the day. Yeah. Another state with a lot of homeless stuff.

I feel like it's California's bearing a lot of the burden of a nationwide crisis of homelessness. That it's not just because California real estate's expensive, but it's also because the weather and I think the location really support people who have no other place to live but on the street because of the weather. There is some truth to the way that like Texas or red states deal with homelessness is a problem. What you're mentioning, there's truth to that. But ultimately, there are countries that have been able to eviscerate homelessness

without shipping them to other places. you know what I mean? Countries that do a much better job of tackling the issue through policy than we do here in California. And it's not like they're killing their homeless people. Like they're housing them. Yeah. And the reality is that, you know, public housing as or even like decoupling housing from the profit motive is, is one. 100% a necessity to solve homelessness because other than the people that are being shipped

to California, let's say, the reason why we have so many homeless people here is because, and I work with a lot of people that do activism in this field that work with homeless people in general, it's the number one factor is that they get priced out of the housing market. So I call this the different tiers of homelessness because the most public-facing side of homelessness is oftentimes the the person that you see on the street that has like leathery skin at this point from being under the sun from sun damage on exposure for many many years who clearly is not mentally well right um that is the last tier of homelessness that is the the type of homelessness that like this person is going to be

profoundly hard to recover and profoundly hard to reintegrate into this society and needs a lot of work. That number is growing in California as well. But there is an invisible side of the homelessness that a lot of people don't even recognize that actually makes up the largest percentage of homeless people. The invisible homelessness comes from people who are housing insecure, people who are couch surfing, people who are living in their cars, but still keep up appearances, have a job, people that don't have access to like, you know,

don't have immediate access to like running water, right, but can still figure it out by like going to the gym and like having a gym membership, living in their car, but then, you know, cleaning themselves up before a job interview or, you know, before going into their work. That is the first stage of homelessness. That's the most common version of homelessness. That is the most recoverable form of homelessness.

And that is almost entirely due to, you know, obviously market conditions as well, like, you know, the job sector. layoffs, things of that nature. But the most common reason for that homelessness to exist, the largest pocket is that they get priced out of the housing market. They have a job, but their commute expands dramatically, let's say. And that actually makes it more costly for them when they live like, you know, 40, 50 minutes away, ruins the quality of life. But let's say, we don't even care about that at this point. They're forced to move somewhere far away.

and they can't keep the jobs that they originally had. The job still exists, but it's much, much, much more difficult to, you know, go to it now. A lot of people have a hard time keeping jobs like that. They get fired. All of a sudden, you know, you no longer have access to, you know, clean water. You have your car.

You're having a hard time. You're being harassed by cops regularly because you can't park everywhere. You know what I mean? You're being called a vagrant, whatever. then you move into tier two homelessness, which is also another massive pocket, where it becomes permanent. Like your condition basically becomes permanent.

Now, one thing that I always like to stress is that, you know, even bears and animals in the wild need shelter for survival. You need a fucking cave, right? You need something to burrow inside of. You don't just like brave the elements. And as humans, I feel like we're all, you know, I don't know if you guys are vegans or not,

but like we're all a little bit specious, right? We think humans are the apex predator. We think we're a little bit better off than like, you know, monkeys and the like. We are, when you are shut off from having access to shelter with no recourse, with no way of like recovering that over an extended period of time, that is an insanely traumatic experience. You start developing PTSD. There's a lot of crime that goes on in homeless communities as well.

There's back and forth assault, rape. and the like. And then you also don't have access to health care, obviously. So you start both self-medicating in some ways and also simultaneously trying to make money. Start selling drugs. Start taking the drugs. You start selling the drugs.

And that completely paired up with the trauma of not having shelter and not having any job opportunities pushes you into the last, the final stage of homelessness where you see like a lot of mental illness, a lot of drug abuse, and even more assaults and even more, you know, rape and horrific things that people have to go through. I've definitely seen a very extreme side of things growing up and living in West L.A. Up until really 2020, where most of the people that I would see visually, I think, had a mental illness,

were severely addicted to drugs. And I think there's no resources out there that address those. No. And there was a property that I was considering purchasing that was right by Venice Beach. and it was down the street from the new homeless shelter that was there. That was the one that everyone was upset about because it was in the middle of Venice. And I think the average cost was like $500,000 a room. People said, why do they need to be right in the middle of Venice at such a high cost?

And the benefit would be if you sold that to a developer, the money that that person would bring in to the community can more than pay for so much more shelter. Why is it here? But I remember following up on that because I knew it was such a big deal for that community. and throughout a lot of the process, it was never more than I believe 60% occupied because they enforced a dry policy

that they could not bring in drugs, alcohol, be drunk. You're nailing it. This is, you're absolutely correct. But I've also seen a side of it where people just did not want to assimilate back into a community that they felt more free. I'm not saying this is everyone, but they felt more free,

not, you know, participating in society and having that freedom, really, to do it. What you're describing is, is actually 100% correct. Homeless shelters are actually more violent spaces for a lot of homeless people than the opposite. You would think, like, what the fuck? That's a shelter. That's like so much better. It's not. It's actually where a lot of the assaults and a lot of the robberies are committed.

and on top of that if you have items that you care about or even like a dog for example you can't bring your dog and you can't you have to go cold turkey if you're on drugs if you have any sort of like abuse and substance issues

you have to go cold turkey so a lot of people choose not to do that and while we all probably look to that and go fuck off you don't have any fucking rights you know why go to the shelter and fix yourself up the reality is that that is actually as far as like a compassionate and more ethical approach to homelessness, the reality is that this is why a lot of people advocate for housing first homelessness policies

where where where people have some semblance of autonomy still to to begin the healing process, the mental health and the you know substance abuse therapy process that that is a more permanent and also a more secure way to deal with this, with this issue. But that's on the tackling the existing homelessness part. What I was talking about with respect to housing is usually tackling it on the other side because there's two sides of this rope.

You got to shut off this part and you got to shut off this part. This part is being caused by, you know, this part is being caused by a lack of access to like affordable housing and being priced out of the housing market. This part is just way more complicated. You have to actually convince people to go into housing, even if you offer permanent shelter. Sometimes almost people don't want it.

They don't trust it and they're scared. And, you know, there is a mechanism of enforcement that you need to engage with there. But, I mean, that requires hiring a fuckload of social workers and, you know, genuinely trying to tackle this issue instead of just kind of, you know, playing chicken with the homeless encampments and just like pushing them one street over

and then being like, oh, we solved the problem. You know what I mean? Like, look. I mean, that's certainly something, but where should that be for homeless people? Should that be in the Pacific Palisage? Should that be Beverly Hills? What's to say it shouldn't be in Santa Monica,

but it's okay in Riverside? I think that it should be wherever homeless people are. I think that as far as like, it's not even shelters. Housing First policies should exist in most communities, I think that it would genuinely in the long term benefit those communities because then you just don't have homeless people

in the fucking streets. Let's say, Santa Monica would be a prime example of that. It brings in a lot of business, a lot of technology, a lot of really wealthy people. If you were to put a community of homeless people in the middle of that and say this is where they are and therefore that's where we should build for homeless,

it would drive out a lot of the people. people because they would feel less safe. They wouldn't want to do business there. And I feel like property taxes... Probably make the housing market a little bit better in Santa Monica. Well, the issue... Well, then you get property values going down. You get less commerce in Santa Monica.

The area slowly degenerates. And I feel like then that would continue to spread. So like overall, the benefit would be lower than if you say we're going to put money into mental health, into drug addiction. It doesn't need to be in the middle of the city, but it could exist over here. where land is more affordable and our opportunity cost is lower, if that makes sense. Well, the way I see it as someone, you know, who owns a house in West Hollywood, as someone who lived in these neighborhoods that you speak of as well.

I lived in Brentwood before in, you know, more affordable apartments, which was fucking awful. Still expensive. Yeah, but still incredibly expensive with many, many roommates. I think that the option is, do you want homeless people to keep moving around and shitting on the streets, or do you want them to shit in the toilet

with a roof over their head? And I think, like, if that is the alternative and what you bring up with Venice is actually a good idea, I mean, not a perfect solution, because ultimately that didn't eradicate homelessness in Venice, right? but with with some genuine changes into the way that like the shelters process works with like hopes for permanent shelter solutions yeah which currently are non-existent I think that it doesn't matter where you put these these places like it doesn't matter where you have

you know rehab facilities for example because like think about it this way property in Malibu is so expensive, right? Well, you know what Malibu has? A fuck done of rehab facilities. Does that change the property value? No, why? Because the people that are going to those rehab facilities are rich people. They're the rich people rehab facilities.

But they also aren't necessarily the ones defecating on the street. And I feel like the defecating on the street usually is an indicator of severe mental illness to the point where they cannot function on their own without assistance. And those would not be the people who could voluntarily go and like, I'm going to apply. Also, that's not entirely correct either. Not 100%, but I would say, because in a lot of instances, it's just like,

we don't have public bathrooms, you know what I mean? So where the fuck is he supposed to shit, right? Yeah. Every other country you go to. I'm talking about the extremes where, you know, I used to work in West Hollywood, and I would see people out front on Sunset Plaza,

pulling their pants down in front of traffic and just, you know. Yeah. Yeah. People are severely and, and like genuinely, cripplingly, mentally ill due to the circumstances that I described. And those people need help.

And part of that help comes from, again, like, not directly institutionalizing those people, but some level of institutionalization in a significantly more empathetic and significantly more compassionate and more ethical ways. I would agree with that. And I think that this is something that like everyone kind of agrees on. But there's a very, you know, there's a very shitty part of this conversation. that we will never agree on, which is the unfortunate reality that, like, housing prices might need to be devalued a little bit in the process of, like, building or not completely abolishing zoning restrictions in its entirety,

but at least like allowing for or allowing for certain types of housing to be developed in communities. California has a 55% homeownership rate. Homeowners are very powerful as an entity here. in this state, they don't want any housing. They don't want any housing people. I agree with you on that. That's something that I've said is that the building process in Los Angeles specifically is so terrible.

It is so bad. I made a video on this years ago about the process it takes to build a multifamily building here in L.A. The amount of open space that you need to account for, the amount of parking. Parking is a huge one. Even if you're close to near by transit, you need a certain amount of parking spaces

for the amount of bedrooms that you have per square foot in addition to common space, open area, all of these things that make the cost so unbelievably high to build any sort of multi-fielming here in Los Angeles. And so for a developer, for it to even make financial sense to break even, they have to build luxury units. That's the only thing that they could build. Otherwise, there's no financial, but they would lose money on that. But also building ADUs is so difficult in Los Angeles.

And they came out with this program a few years ago saying, I remember. We're going to accept most ADUs. And I was really looking forward to this because I have a dude. duplex and I'd love to turn the garage at that point into another unit, two units. And there was a proposal that would allow you to build five stories if you were within. I think it was like a mile from a major intersection or half a mile from public transit. And I was so looking forward to that because I could take that duplex and build five to six units.

And that would provide a lot more housing and everyone in my neighborhood would be able to do that. But that failed because people didn't want, and I kind of understand if you're a house, you don't want to be necessarily living next to five stories, and have people look down in your backyard and lose that privacy. I get that too. But they make building so difficult here in L.A. Yeah. I agree. I think that they do that deliberately.

They do that for one, because, like, you know, a lot of people say their quality of life or the character of the neighborhood will be eviscerated, destroyed, right? Or they also don't want their housing prices to devalue either, technically because now there's more housing availability. You know what I mean? Or because they're next to a fucking building all of a sudden.

And to that I say, you know, yeah, there's going to be some, there's going to be a little bit of struggle there. But in the long term, in the long run, it will yield tremendous benefits in the form of not having people that have been homeless for five years, six years that's taking a shit outside of your house or just like trying to break into your fucking house. house breaking into your car. I've had all of these things happen. It's a it's the cost of living in big city. It shouldn't have to be. There are plenty of examples of cities that have been able to eradicate this problem, not entirely, but have done a much better, you know, have dealt with it

much better. Like what cities? I am of course going to bring up if you are not familiar with this. I'm surprised. Red Vienna. Austria is the country we're talking about in Vienna. In Vienna, 65% of all homes are actually public housing. They are not-for-profit housing, basically. It's a concept where the government offers many benefits to develop housing and then basically have the rent exist specifically to either further develop more public housing or to maintain the housing itself. Housing that is not created with the sole purpose of accumulating

more value to the single sole owner or whatever corporation owns it but instead housing created by basically taking away some of the barriers of developing this project that can only be done by the government like offering a lot for a dollar with the express purpose of like building cooperatively on housing

and then working with like credit unions to basically get investment in like to get a loan from a bank only to have the existing property once it's completed and built and the rent in said existing property, pay for the mortgage and the maintenance fees. I've seen quite a few countries offer that of like a dollar, but in a lot of those instances,

it's usually to promote people to move into a city that no one else wants to live in or that is declining in population. They need more people in there. And so they use that as a resort to say, hey, come here. No different than people like, you know, doing that in Riverside and saying like, hey, we want more people over here.

We want to be more of a hub. But I think Los Angeles and a lot of California specifically in a higher price neighborhoods, they want to attract top talent. They want people like that to move here and innovate. And they don't have a problem with declining population to that extent where they have to incentivize people and land is so expensive. I don't think it should be a by-Bankover. Vancouver doesn't have a declining population.

but it's not it's not to incentivize more people to move in it's to basically uh it's to basically do the the lightest form of government intervention you can do and utilize the same capitalistic system and the same structures without like completely undermining it to offer affordable housing as a low cost alternative but because that system is not funded at all and has actually been uh you know disfavored by homeowners and, you know, all of these people that are incentivized to consistently keep their housing prices up in places like Amsterdam, uh, the number of

cooperatively owned, uh, nonprofit housing, uh, units have declined. And that's why even in a place like Amsterdam, for example, you see since the 2000s the cost of living fucking skyrocket and become a genuine problem. So where do you draw? the line between public housing and becoming a landlord. I mean, do you think, like, a property like this should be owned by the government and someone should have to pay way less because it's owned by the guy? Like, should someone have the right to live in West Hollywood, for instance? Yeah, if, if, I think that, I think if, like, I am not in the business of, like, completely eradicating private home ownership. I am a private homeowner myself. What I simply want to do is make it

unaffordable for people to generate and accumulate capital from a home that they're not living inside of, a home that they're basically renting out. That's what it means to decommodify housing. Now, that's a very long-term goal. And obviously, that's not going to be happening anytime soon in the United States of America. So the solutions I present in the interim period in the short term is to literally just like eviscerate the problem that currently exists with homelessness. So let's discuss this on an ethical level because I think that would be really fun because I know you two have very different opinions on the ethics of landownership slash obviously being a landlord. Graham has his own unique experiences because he's obviously a property owner like that. And you probably have your own respective opinion.

Let's hear what you have to say about that. I mean, I think that shutting off a necessary resource by, you know, by making it a profitable business, a profitable venture is like something that. I'm entirely against. If you want to still, you know, do that, you know, you could do commercial real estate, which is a whole different hand of worms. But how is that any different? Because it's a business. Yeah, but let's say it's a mom and pop business. How is that any different from a household? I feel like a, like a family is also a business. They have to run a business just the same way as a mom and pop liquor store on the corner would have to run a business. You're taking in money. You have expenses. You have to save a little bit for a rainy day. Wouldn't that be the same thing?

No, because you don't have to live inside of your, you don't have to live inside of your business in the same way. A business can thrive and survive even if the barrier in that regard exists, right? A business can still get a bank loan to be able to pay for these sorts of things, whereas like I think the similar process should not exist for homeownership. Wouldn't that be, wouldn't getting a loan be the same thing as renting a house from a landlord? because then you're owing money to someone else, probably the government, who you're going to be paying five to seven percent interest to. Yeah.

I mean, in some respects, absolutely. Well, obviously, we don't have like Soviet bloc style public housing in this country. So I'm just simply saying that like in the short term, these are the, this is what I advocate for in the short term to like at least tackle some of the issues with availability of housing that creates homelessness. From my perspective, I see landlords is providing a service. And I'm trying not to include the slumlords

because there's certainly people that do the bare minimum, like just basic above the bare minimum living conditions to try to maximize profit. But talking about like a lot of landlords that I see, the vast majority are mom and pop. They own three or fewer properties. They a lot of times have owned properties

from their parents that they just turn into rentals. They own the house instead of selling it, they'll choose to rent it out to someone else will they buy something else and then eventually rent that. But from what I've seen, seen. And what I've seen a lot of people do is that they'll buy a property that no one else would consider, and these would be properties that need a lot of work, that maybe an owner user

doesn't have the funds to fix up, they don't have the time, they don't have the interest. Someone else goes and fixes that up and rents it out to someone who doesn't want to own a home. And there's a lot of people out there that renting is more beneficial than owning. If they're only going to live there for a few years, if they just want to test out an area, home ownership is really burdensome as I'm sure you've seen with property taxes, insurance, repairs, miscellaneous things. Right now it's cheaper to rent than it is to own

throughout the majority of Los Angeles. I think ultimately the sense of security that you get from having permanent shelter when you're a homeowner is, you know, much, much better overall than having the fear of, you know, your landlord, literally changing your rent just because they can't,

because the market conditions are favorable to do such a thing. And regardless of that, though, I mean, like I said, public housing does not necessarily have to mean permanent shelter in the sense that, like, you own the house that you're in. Singapore, I think, has a system similar to that as well, where you're basically leasing it for the government, right?

And, you know, these are places where they've been able to tackle this crisis head on before it even existed. and it still works on a rental basis. If you want the opportunity to rent a home, you can absolutely do so. I guess the way I see the world is that I wish for a future where people don't even need to be mom and pop landlords

as a nest egg for survival. They don't need to even do that because a lot of those things are taking care of, through social safety nets when you are no longer a productive laborer when you have retired. But of course, that is a fuckload of other issues as well. How would that play in though if you want a higher quality of living beyond that? Let's say that you don't want that and you want to be able to make more money or work harder and get something nicer.

Then go ahead. I mean, it's not, I'm, what I'm talking about with respect to like full-blown decommonitize decommodifying housing is, again, so far out in the future that it's like unimaginable to talk about from today's standards of living and the way that we experience society right now. Because there are other complications that that exists there. Like, for example, housing is not the only issue. Part of the problem that I mentioned is commutes and travel, right? One way to make traffic congestion infinitely better and more livable in a place like California is public transit.

We're very spread out. But unfortunately, we also have made zero attempts to better our public transit system in this state in general and certainly not in Los Angeles. That is also a necessity, walkability, like making walkable cities and making this city more walkable and simultaneously have better public transit options is an absolute necessity for low-income people to survive. I would love to see micro apartments.

I'm talking like 300, 250 square foot. That's what I would have loved. When I was 20, 21 years old, you're working all day, you're out and about, you could live in the central part of wherever you want to live, and that's all you need. You need a bed, a kitchen, a TV, bathroom, 300 square feet. No.

I don't think that's a solution. I mean, it's just like, sure, if you, if you want to create an opportunity for, like, cheaper living, that's fine. That's great. But, like, I don't even think, when I say affordable housing, when we talk about, like, again, going back to Vienna, 65% public homeowner, like, publicly owned housing availability, those massive complexes that we're talking about are, like, luxury condominiums in comparison to what we have here as, as, uh, available. available in the private market. They have, they have gyms, they have pools,

they have some sunlight coming in, and, you know, a balcony that you can, you know, build like some kind of shrubbery on, you know, like just some green.

All of that stuff is, is still very much a possibility, even if it is decoupled from the profit motive. And we can't even think about it like that. We were immediately, we're like, well, why not still have it be private and just be cheaper overall and, you know, take out some of the amenities? I don't want to do that. I want to make sure that we build, you know, livable, livable housing that people want to live in that is still kept at a low cost and more affordable. That's what I think can be done.

And it is done in other places. And I think that it should be done in California. It would literally make this state like the number one country to live in. Because, you know, we have a massive GDP or very powerful economy. I think it's like what, fourth, fifth largest economy on the planet. Pretty much the fourth largest economy. Yeah. But where does the money go?

That's what I want to know. I can tell you where the money goes. The money goes to, you know, Gavin Newsom and other people's like cousins and uncles that are like contractors. and developers that take on and bid for these, like, viable contracts of, like, massive infrastructure projects that they have really no intention of fully seeing through. It goes to our police force, a gigantic chunk of it goes to our police force. Every time you drive over a pothole, think, like, you know, cops got a fucking armored personnel carrier, so you can't have this pothole fixed.

It's unimaginable. Even then, part of me thinks that crime is escalating to a point where we need more police officers, because it's so prevalent. Like I've seen... You bring up a good point. First of all, crime is not escalating technically. That is, even if you look at police numbers, police data, crime is actually decreasing.

But everywhere in the media, they're like, oh my God, crime is so bad. You would think that crime is worse in California than it is in like South Carolina. No, it's not. South Carolina has a much higher rate, for example, of murders in New York. But didn't they decriminalize a lot of the things in California too?

No, that's, again, a lot of this stuff is, a lot of this stuff is portray. trade in the media in a way to draw out hysteria towards it. And then you see homeless people like defecating on the street. And then you think, oh my God, the media is correct. Crime is fucking skyrocketing. Homicides are up. That's true.

Certainly. The main component, though, is not our police budgets. Because police budgets have fucking gone up year over, year, over year. The Los Angeles Police Department spends $8 million a day just to operate. Eight million dollars a day. And, hey, if you get your fucking. car broken into, good look. You know, you call them up, they're like, sorry,

nobody on the line, you know? But doesn't that promote in a way more crime? Because what I've seen, again, this is me personally, have seen his firsthand, but the level of crime out in the open, I've never seen that before in my life as someone who worked like Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, I've never seen before someone in a broad daylight, smashing a window.

But over the last two years, I've seen and heard more stories firsthand about people in broad daylight being robbed, for their watches, walking down the street in a crowded space, someone pulls up, smashes a car window, grabs it, and everyone's just kind of standing there looking. The police won't respond to it because it's not worth their time.

It's not. And also, they're fucking super lazy. Let's be real. But, yeah, there's no other sector where, like, you, there's no other sector in which people go, oh, yeah, they're just bad, but we gotta give them more money. But part of me thinks it's just because it's so prevalent because it's not,

enforced because the penalties are not as strict as they should be for that level of crime. America houses the largest number of, you know, caged people, not free people, prisoners on the planet. We are 4% of the entire planet's population and yet we have 25% of the entire planet's prisoner population. We have a very draconian attitude towards crime and punishment. And unfortunately, in other countries where they have a much more. understanding approach that focuses on rehabilitation, they have better results of reintegration. They have lower recidivism rates. It is demonstrably failed. Our carceral state is an abject failure. We've even baked in the profit incentive into it in the form of private

prisons, which are just abhorrent by, you know, other other country standards. Norway literally has a non-extradition treaty for many crimes to the United States because they consider U.S. prisons to be a regularly violating human rights, solitary confinement, and even like regular prisons, like regular jails like Rikers and whatnot should be shut down, but are currently operating with like millions of people, I mean, not millions, but thousands of people that are, that are going through that jail system without even a court date. We have, we have basically proven time and time again that like these kinds of you know we're going to fucking tackle

crime head on by you know beating people's heads in not working is just a failure in other places where they don't do that it's not a failure what is the main difference though it's because crime doesn't happen because people are bad people certainly there are still of course going to be

perverts freaks whatever you know anti-social personality disorder related crimes but crime for the most part is a consequence of your material conditions. That's why when there's more poverty, like in a state like South Carolina,

there's more crime, there's more violent crime. And the unfortunate reality is that we rarely ever try to tackle the underpinnings of why crime happens. And then we try to do this patchwork solution of like more police enforcement, which ironically then takes funds away

from the ways to maybe even deal with why crime happens, and, you know, when there's less funding for after-school programs, when there's less funding for education, when there's less funding for, you know, any kind of affordable solutions to the housing crisis, all of a sudden you have more people that are desperate. You have more people that are just like willing to say, fuck it, I'm crazy, I'm just going to go, you know,

pass someone's head in and steal their watch, rob them at gunpoint. That is a reality that has been consistent and has been endlessly pontificated on since ancient Greece, the relationship that crime has with poverty. And yet, for some reason, we just like to turn a blind eye to it here in the United States and refuse to implement actual solutions that would tackle it head on. Meanwhile, there are examples, even if they are not, you know, perfect,

even if they haven't completely eviscerated crime, right? You know, violent crime, gun violence, and even, you know, thefts, grand larceny have, are comparably much, much better. Like those rates are much much better in other countries where they have social safety nets. Why do you feel like, and perhaps this is just me making assumptions, that crime has gotten worse since COVID, even during the times that stimulus checks and employment benefits were going out? That's a great question.

Crime has historically gotten lower year over year up until 2019. And then in 2020, it actually diminished dramatically because of the things that you're mentioning. And also on top of that, people were not able to travel as freely. So it literally just completely suppressed crime, right? A lot of economic factors were helpful in tackling that aspect. But then after the stimulus checks ran out and after, people were able to, you know, go back to their regular order of business, go and travel freely and walk around. It seemed like in comparison to 2020 and 2021, crime started skyrocketing.

Well, yes, in comparison to 2020, yes, the year after and the year and since then, crime has gone up and now it's basically catching up to 2019 levels and maybe depending on homicide. For example, it's even higher than 2019 levels. But other than that, Crime is still consistently lower year over year. It just depends on what snapshot you're looking at. But when you see a big boost like that in the numbers in comparison to the year prior, and you have a media that is like very excited to, you know, ramp up the hysteria and the, you know, if it bleeds, it leads style attitudes that they have when they keep pushing for this narrative.

And you have a police union that sees a lot of scrutiny when you have police, see a lot of scrutiny at the national level through police brutality, becoming a more prominent conversation point. What are you supposed to do against that? How do you counter against that narrative? You say, well, they're trying to defund us. There has not been any significant defunding movement

that has existed in any state, any municipality across the United States of America. They say the police have been defunded here in Los Angeles, for example. I'm a taxpayer here. I probably pay for my... more Kevlarvests and more guns than many of your viewers and maybe even some of them combined, let's be real. And I could tell you with a certainty that police have not been defunded in Los Angeles.

As a matter of fact, they've gotten more funds in comparison to the year prior and the year prior to that as well. Their overtime benefits have skyrocketed as well. That's one way that police actually make a lot of their money is overtime. time. And I think what ended up happening in order to like, I guess, satiate the masses that were asking for some level of accountability from the police, our neoliberal administrators decided what do we do? Instead of giving them 200 million extra dollars this year, we'll give them $150 million extra dollars this year. We'll just shave a little bit off the top of what extra money that we were going to give to the police as a rate increase. And then how do they make up

for that, of course. They made up for that with COVID funds, which Joe Biden has openly stated, can be used to pay overtime and the police force to continue funding the police. Don't they need more money because of rising costs in general, whether that be for their families, the cost of cars, gasoline, Kevlar, the cost of everything has gone up. So if they cut extra funds, that is also in addition to their own cost probably going up by 20%. Well, but they haven't really cut funds like that. You know what I mean? They keep funding the police very thoroughly

and very handsomely at the opportunity cost of not funding other places that desperately needed significantly more than the police as a matter of fact, like education, like the roads and the like

every single thing that you see. That's why I always say every single thing you see in California, we're like how the fuck is this still like how is this pothole still here? You know what I mean? That's crazy.

Like fix the fucking potholes. It's like, yeah. can't because a lot of our funds are currently being used elsewhere. It's like a business. Everything is a business, right? What do you do? When you have an unlimited money supply, okay, year over a year, you're going to find a way to spend it so you can keep asking for it and even ask for more.

Everyone massages the numbers in that regard. If you've ever worked for a corporation, you know they do it all the time. They want to make sure that, you know, their budgets look good. They're going to always find a way to spend it. Yep. There's never a moment where police go, maybe we should do a little bit of belt tightening. There's never austerity towards police.

There's only austerity towards education year over year. I feel like that's not a problem with the police. That's just the problem of the whole California system where if any company, government funded, says, I don't spend this amount of money that I'm given. I'm not going to get more than next year. And I'm going to seem like a failure.

If I get $20 million budget, I need to spend the whole thing to be able to get that again. and if I spend 15, well, now I'm going to be limited to 15 the next year. Audit it. Have some fucking number crunches in there go, no, not anymore. We're not doing this. I think we should do that. I think that would be great.

Yeah. I am in favor of implementing efficiency protocols and eliminating redundancy. Me too. As vicious as like a Bain Capital guy or, you know, a McKinsey consultant when it comes to something that is as, as expansive and not yielding the results that it's supposed to, like the police force. Yeah. What would you decriminalize if you were to say one thing, uh, that should not be enforced the way it is?

I think, if anything. Decriminalization is a tricky subject to discuss because I think that decriminalization without anything else is just like you're not doing anything. You know what I mean? If, if you're decriminalizing a certain thing, you also have to have prevent. preventative mechanisms put in place. Decriminalization of drugs, for example, is profoundly successful in the nation of Portugal, right?

But what did they do? They didn't just decriminalize drug usage, right? They also, on top of that, created systems that they implemented immediately, like that eliminated needle sharing that basically offered up rehabilitation opportunities for people who were, you know, regular substance abusers. And that was profoundly successful

in cutting back both the usage and drug consumption in general, but it was also profoundly successful in cutting back on secondary complications that come from needle sharing like AIDS and, you know, hepatitis C and the like, like a lot of transmittable diseases that people get. And people were able to go to rehab. if you consider drug usage, for example, to be just a criminal act. And if you, if your only solution to drugs is, you know, the police force and jailing, then, you know, you arrive at the problem that we have with the war on drugs. Well, the drugs still won and the remnants of that still exist.

You know, think about it like the way we treat rich people. Like when a rich person has a substance abuse problem, they don't see. the worst impacts. They don't get fucking thrown in jail for the most part or brutalized by police. You go to rehab. And in a lot of instances, it might not even be successful,

but in plenty of instances it is. It's just a more ethical way of dealing with it and also a more successful way of dealing with it if you look to other countries that have implemented similar processes. So that's one area that I would decriminalize. Another one that I would decriminalize is sex work for sure. Again.

Yeah. I'd agree with both of this. Yeah. Why don't you think they've decriminalized sex work? Wouldn't that legitimize the industry, prevent a lot of sex trafficking, make sure that people are safer? Yeah, absolutely.

Why do you think we've not done that? Do you think it's more of like a moral, religious? America's very puritanical, and oftentimes we engage in like nonsensical acts, like even if the majority of the public doesn't agree with it, not saying that like the public loves sex work or anything, but the greatest example that comes in mind is abortion. You know what I mean?

It was such an insane, like such an insane thing to do. And you still have places like Kentucky where, you know, it's a ballot measure where they're like, we are going to codify abortion protections. And then the people overwhelmingly vote for that, right? That's the most democracy you can get. A ballot measure is the most direct democracy, right? You go in, you say, no, I want to protect abortions, and you fucking press the button or you fill it in. And Kentucky overwhelmingly voted in favor of, of, you.

codifying and protecting abortions, the Kentucky Attorney General, Mitch McConnell's very own guy, you know, who's turned around and said, no, we're still going to, we're still going to work to criminalize abortion. Insane. Why are we doing that? Well, because we need to have wedge issues. We need to have a culture war. We need to have a back and forth. Even if there is no such back and forth, and the overwhelming majority of people think it's like completely unjustifiable to criminalize abortion and allow women to have bodily autonomy and, and, you know, not have the government interfere with a medical procedure. But it doesn't matter because it gets the base riled up. It gets a very viable constituency that the Republican Party needs to hold on to riled up and go out

and vote for it. So that's why they have to keep doing it over and over again. And sex work is not all that different. It's something that a lot of people, both engage in or consume. And there's a sense of shame surrounding it because of our puritanical attitudes. And people don't usually care about it. They just have apathy for the most part. So it's a very easy group of people to tackle, especially when, you know, this is an industry. Like you also correctly pointed out where sex trafficking happens, right?

Exploitation, grooming and the like or rape happens in this industry, just like it happens in every other industry. but, you know, decoupling that from sex work, which is done consensually amongst adults, is very, very important. But instead, there's a deliberate effort by, you know, super conservative, ultra-Christian fundamentalists to never separate the two to make sure that there's a conflation so that they can consistently say, what, you want sex crimes to continue? You want sex trafficking to continue? we need to destroy sex work in its entirety.

It's every single time there is coercion happening, every single time that there is, you know, a crime happening anytime there's a, you know, any kind of pornographic material being shot. What are some personal values that you hold that is not also held by the political party that you associate with? I mean, there's a lot.

Pretty much everything I hold on to, I don't think the Democratic Party genuinely cares about. They claim to care about it, but I don't think they care about any of it. So I would say almost all of what I believe in the Democratic Party is not unsupportive. What do you think the Democratic Party is doing right and what do you think that they're doing wrong? And then can you also do that for the Republican Party? Yeah, they're doing everything wrong.

They're not doing anything right. The Democratic Party we're talking about. Yes. Okay. Yes. They're doing everything wrong. They are, they basically play the role of a bottleneck for like any kind of genuine progressive momentum. They don't offer nearly enough labor protections.

like at all, they have not refunded the NLRB after Donald Trump, you know, defunded it. They are, I mean, there are notable exceptions to this, but overall, the party view and the party attitude towards like even increasing the minimum wage or things like that that could technically be done through budget reconciliation, never came down to it because they looked at the first tiny marginal hurdle and said, oh, we can't do it because the Senate. parliamentarians that we can't do it. And it's like fucking bullshit. Like, if you get down to the thick of it or the weeds of it, when you look at all of these structural hurdles, the Republican Party eviscerates them regularly. Okay? They routinely will say,

fuck precedent. I don't give a shit. We're going to do it. I mean, look no further than the federalist society, from its development to its inception to all the way to now where they have been able to dismantle abortion protections in the Supreme Court. That took like it was 40 years long effort, but it was successful. You know, they don't give a shit about what the impacts of this might be on the ground. So I think in many respects, the Republican Party does a very good job of, one, creating culture wars to fight and setting the terms of that battle. And then two, implementing measures that make it feel like they're actually successful and that they're giving something to their audiences, that they're giving something to their constituencies.

Whereas the Democratic Party constantly is in a state of panic and defense, but that defense, whenever they're in positions of power, never actually comes to fruition. And they just kind of let a lot of it slide, let a lot of it go. So as far as that goes, I think whether it be environmental protections, Joe, Joe, I was going to call him Joe Brandon, because that's what I do on stream all the time. Joe Biden, Joe Biden talks a big game about environmental protection, but then offers, you know, a litany of pipelines to open up. And, you know, no such genuine effort to, like, take away subsidies in the fossil fuel industry

and, like, refocusing our efforts to become competitive against China in the field of, like, renewable energy is ever truly made because the oil industry has America in a stranglehold. You know, they can do whatever the fuck they want. But under the Obama administration, the Democratic Party had a supermajority in the Senate when they were trying to implement ACA. And then a senator died. He was replaced by, fuck, what's his name?

Oh, this is the worst. Okay, well, I can't figure it out. There was one senator whose name is literally, I'm blanking out on right now. It's very frustrating. Who played the role of the one guy who was not going to vote for it? And, you know, that's why the Democrats

had to set up a litany of compromises and couldn't go far enough. But the reality is that as a unit, as a whole, they do not want to make genuine system-breaking changes that they advocate for that I consider to be a necessity because they're still funded by the same corporate benefactors for the most part. So you're of the mindset that there are like the small group of elites that basically run the everything to a certain extent. I mean, if you consider that to be capital owners in general, then yes, I do. I think that this country was built

by capital owners for capital owners. This entire system of governance is built for corporate owners to get whatever they want, whatever their desires are. And it's not even like individual. Like it's more so the structure itself benefits those who are wealthy. Whether it be tax incentives when you're richer, and I see it in my personal experience as someone who made $21,000, the first year, my first year of employment to now, like I see the many different opportunities where like it is significantly cheaper to be wealthy than it is

to be broke. It is much more expensive to be broke. But don't you feel like that also gives you opportunity of upward mobility, no matter where you start from? Because you would be a great example of that of coming to America, starting off, earning very little, but finding a category that you excelled in and innovating in that and providing value in that and reaping the rewards of that. Well, luckily for us, we don't have to speculate on this because upward social mobility is something that people track regularly. And the United States actually falls far, significantly far behind other countries that have social safety nets. Every European social democracy absolutely destroys the United States on upward social mobility.

Because when you don't have access to amenities, you are shutting off a massive talent pool of people that might be, unimaginably creative, but they never get a chance to even express that because they don't have the economic freedom to do so. But then if that's the case, why wouldn't like rich kids predominantly produce more than people growing up in poverty? Because from what I've seen, just anecdotally, people who grew up poor without a lot of money or resources often have a drive that people with resources don't utilize or appreciate. I think that that probably comes from having so much security that your your drive is diminished like i think you see a similar thing with immigrants that are coming into this country especially um by the third generation full assimilation has happened and you know

test results go down you've become a full-blown american uh you you you don't have that same motivation of like you know working super hard i think that that's a byproduct but it doesn't bear itself out in the data in a similar way. Like, yeah, sure, super wealthy people and their children oftentimes are fucking fail sons, you know? It's a very common thing that you see. Now, of course, they're fail sons, but they still end up making their way through society in a way that, like, a poor person's child would never be able to. You know what I mean? Like, they're still, I mean, George W. Bush was the president. He is the ultimate fail son. You know what I

mean, he got to the fucking tippy top. Donald Trump was a major fail son. Every business that he got into, he fucked up. Every single one. His father, Fred Trump, famously had to consistently keep loaning in money for his casino operations in Atlantic City over and over again. And then he still ended up defaulting it because there were measures set in place for the wealthy to never truly fail. Right. and if you take advantage of that, you can become president one day. So, you know, as far as the data goes, it certainly shows that, you know, sure, there might be fail sons who are abject failures ultimately that come from like really wealthy backgrounds. But ultimately when you give more opportunity to people, more economic freedoms to people,

especially people that are coming from much poorer backgrounds or middle class backgrounds, they make more with less. Who do you think are political commentators on the left that you don't have a bunch of respect for? You think that they're basically too aggressive or they lie or something like that? And who are some on the right that you do and don't have respect for? I don't have an issue with like any political commentators on the left overall. I, you know, there might be people that I don't really talk about in just. general, but other than that, like, I, I, I, no matter what people say, or no matter what they

even say about me, whatever their particular opinion might be, I'm often of the mindset that there's too much sectarian infighting over like marginal issues that people get very passionate about. And as long as someone is united in, you know, trying to tackle the problems that we talked about, I don't care what their political ideology is, as long as they're open-minded and charitable. So I don't really have an issue with like any, I guess, leftist commentators. There aren't that many to begin with. A lot of them are my friends. You know, the Chapo boys come to mind. You know, they're great. They have a podcast at Choppotrapp house. If you guys are unfamiliar. And that's it. As far as right-wing commentators goes, I think that there are a lot of,

there is a predisposition to exaggerate or even. in, you know, advocate for things that you might not necessarily believe in in your real life on the right. People say that about me all the time, which is funny. But I think that it is a much more viable industry to be in if you want to just like say whatever to an audience that's like really, really excited to hear it. And that's why you see a lot of what it is known as grifters on the right or people who would like claim to be centrists, for example. Tim Poole would be a good example of this. He always says he's a liberal or he's a centrist, but then he's like, you look at his commentary and you're like, are you really a centrist? So, you know, I think that the,

the entirety of right-wing commentary's fear, I have no respect for if that's the right way to go about it. I mean, they're great businessmen and women, but I think that they're the way that they view the world or at least the propaganda that they cut is genuinely bad. I don't agree. And I think that it stands against everything I believe in, stands against everything I advocate for. We might find common ground on certain issues. But even then, I think that that partnership is one that is like short-lived for the most part.

I asked that because we're releasing this episode back-to-back with an episode. We were just in Nashville. We shot with Brett Cooper, if you know who she is. Yeah, that's Femm Shapiro. Yeah, sure. Yeah, young, yeah, young, uh, young Ben Shapiro. It's funny. I, um, many, many moons ago, someone was like, yo, this person is like, look at this young,

young Ben Shapiro, uh, cut out a daily wire. Uh, and she was doing like a fake live stream and it looked kind of weird to me because it was like not a real live stream like, but she was like responding to chat and whatever. and I've seen some... No space in memory card. Oh, let's just... That's totally fine. Yeah, we'll just...

Okay. Well, I've seen some materials from, like, Turning Point USA where they, like, openly are talking about how they want to make sure that their influencers resemble certain commentary and certain styles of commentary, and, like, they use me as an example.

So I was like, that's kind of funny that they're, like, doing, like, a fake live stream instead of a real one. And, you know, making it seem like this person is, like, in her room and talking when they're in a studio. but yeah, I don't know what her perspectives are at all. I assume I would not agree with them, given what I know about the daily wire.

There might be some common ground maybe, but yeah, I don't really know too much about her. Yeah. She said it was hot and so, you know, thank you. She said you were hot? Yeah, on a lie detector. No, really? Yeah, they were doing like a light detector test. I saw the clip.

and you know so thanks our our goal is really not to take a side but to hear both perspectives and let the audience come to their own decision and be like a hundred percent respectful to every person that comes on the show and hear out other opinions that are you know even if they're not our own but we give them a chance and we listen to them and hear them out yeah all right so i got two more questions they're going to be rapid-fire questions started off with something light, okay, something easy. What's the meaning of life? What's the meaning of life?

The avoidance of pain and the maximization of pleasure for all people, not just individually, but for everyone. Life is short. I think we should enjoy things. We should allow ourselves to enjoy things. And we should help others in that similar pursuit. Okay. But of course, I'm not saying like fucking eat donuts every goddamn day and become

Mushlove. I got a lot of pleasure from that though, man. Well, true, but having said that, being healthy is also very pleasurable and it will allow you more opportunities to seek pleasures on top of that. So you're not cutting your life off, you know? Finally, if you were to become president, what would you do? I would. Yeah, that's a rapid fire question. That's not a rapid fire, man, rapid fire. There's a lot. There's a lot I would do. I don't think the president has all that much. power against the like pre-existing and like very well-defined almost fossilized institutional rules and regulations. But I guess one of the things that I would try to do is make it much, much easier for

workplaces to unionize and develop workers' councils at least so that the working class can get at least some percentage of the profits that they generate back. because I always say it's not about being left, it's not about being right, it's about what's fair. And I think that collective action in that regard opens up the opportunity to at least advocate for fairness in the workplace.

Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Asan. This has been absolutely incredible. Thanks for having me. It means a lot that you came over here. I know. I really appreciate it. Not streaming, too, to come on here.

It's an honor. Thank you, man. Well, no problem. I really enjoyed this. I like going in front of different audiences, you know? I appreciate it. So thank you guys so much for watching. and until next time.

Nice. Thank you for this, man. I really enjoyed that.