The Trillionaire Mindset - 56: Adam Conover Ruins Our Podcast! (ft. Adam Conover)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey guys, so we have a very special guest, we have Adam Conover on the pod today, we're so stoked to talk to him. That's gonna be in just one second. Before we do that, check the disclaimer, as always, you gotta read that, click see more, do whatever you gotta do for our Steve Slets, and then if you're here for the first time, you probably don't know what that means, but you should check us out. We are the Trillionaire Mindset, we are a fun show about all things finance,

Starting point is 00:00:21 anything stock market related, we talk about politics, big tech, whatever's going on, but we make it fun, it's funny, it's easy to understand. So if that's the kind of thing you might be interested in and you like too funny guys talking about that kind of stuff, stick around, hit subscribe button, like the video, share it with your friends, rate us five stars on all that kind of stuff. And keep an eye out because we're going be doing a live stream next in the next month Or so on YouTube, so be sure to have your notifications turned on for that. That's gonna be fun. That's gonna be the first time we've ever done that And here it is

Starting point is 00:00:56 Adam Conner Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha The queen of the thousand! Yeah! Wow, so without further ado... We have a very special guest here. Yes. You guys probably recognize him. Unless you're listening, you can't tell who's here. Yeah. Say something, maybe they'll recognize you. Hey, what's up? That's Adam Conover.

Starting point is 00:01:44 From Adam Ruins Everything, from College Humor, recognize you. Hey, what's up? You might recognize that's Adam Conover from Adam ruins everything from college humor from his he's he's got some later projects to you now. I got an M. For a project this year. G word. Yeah, thank you. Uh, factually. Yeah. My podcast. Yeah. Uh, big fan. Thank you for saying so. Yeah. And he's got, um, well, I guess you've had it for a while, but you've got a YouTube channel. I just hopped off right now. I just posted my first solo YouTube video in many, many years. I had a kind of more abundant YouTube channel. I'd use it to post podcast episodes, like old stand-up and stuff like that.

Starting point is 00:02:15 But I made a video for YouTube and yeah, it's blowing up. We love it. Thank you. Feels good. How's that dopamine? Oh, it's so good. Oh, that keeps you motivated. You just open's that dopamine? Oh, it's so good. Oh, that keeps you motivated.

Starting point is 00:02:26 You just open the phone over again to refresh and see the people see the number go up and it, you know, it's better than money, which is why they don't pay you. They instead just pay you in the number going. Yeah, you get you get some anonymous person telling you they hate you. Oh, that's all it takes is one negative comment to ruin my day. Tiktok nailed this the most when I post a TikTok I'm fucking hooked on it just like reload reload reload watching the number go up. Yeah, it's a fake number They God knows how many people are actually watching the video, but if they tell me oh a million

Starting point is 00:02:55 I'm oh my god walking around on cloud nine all day. Do you find yourself? Which one of you guys do I look at this is both you can do either whoever's talking this is actually a good experiment Because this is a brand new set and I was saying hey, maybe kind of tricky. Maybe we should do both of us on one side. This is a what you first to switch this is an isosceles triangle and I'm going to make a little more equal adder. Now it's a little more comfortable. Now that's innovation baby look at that. The the angle was a little obtuse, and you wanted to be a little bit more equal. Yeah, there you go. So, doing stand-up and doing like old, I shouldn't say old, but the college humor era of doing longer-form stuff, I don't know how to phrase this question, so I'll just try it anyway.

Starting point is 00:03:38 Do you find the internet age where you've got a, where you get immediate feedback, a detriment to your creativity? Like personally, you know, I have an idea for something and I just, I always reduce it to a tweet because I know that I'll get instant feedback of whether or not it's a good idea. Whereas years ago, it's like you could turn it into a sketch or you could turn it into a stand-up bit

Starting point is 00:04:00 and it was a longer process to eventually get to that level of approval. You can still do all those things. You can still turn it, you know, I still have a choice of which of those things I want to turn it into. Number one is you never want to turn it into a tweet. Fuck. That's a waste. Don't tweet anything. I know.

Starting point is 00:04:16 Twitter is not for fuck. Twitter is not for jokes. If you read a joke on Twitter, I think I'm still seeing comedians. I can't like do on this. Sometimes I see comedians write jokes on Twitter and as I was still seeing comedians. I do on this. Sometimes I see comedians write jokes on Twitter and I'm like, what is this? 2010? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:04:30 I feel like that's what it's for. No, God no. That's what he's saying is what is it? 2010? That's what I think, jokes on Twitter? What is Twitter for? What is Twitter for? Twitter is for promoting the shit you do on other platforms

Starting point is 00:04:41 and by going, some personal news, I got a job, blah, blah, blah. Or I did a thing. Or it's for doing an angry thread. I'll do an angry political thread. And I'll say, for instance, I had a big thread, I did a thread about the election here in LA that went like more viral than anything I've ever done on Twitter, like 10,000 retweets.

Starting point is 00:04:58 It was covered in the LA Times. It was all about how Rick Caruso was very close to winning the primary and how he's anti-abortion, right wing, like billionaire real estate. He's Trump and people weren't talking about that. But he's gonna put a fountain on every corner. Jim Gregg. He's gonna put a bigger fountain in the grove.

Starting point is 00:05:14 And he'll, but, you know, so that does well, right? Like, you need to pay attention to a serious thing. That does well on Twitter. But like a joke? No, because people on Twitter are really stupid. And most of them don't, if you write a joke, most of them won't know it's a joke. They'll just be like, I can't believe you said that.

Starting point is 00:05:32 Yeah, but see, that's part of the fun, is you get people like that. But when you put something serious out, you get a bunch of dumb people going, fuck you, I hate you. I can't believe you would say something like this. And then you're trying to respond and clarify. No, never respond. No, God, you guys don't know how to use Twitter at all.

Starting point is 00:05:45 I know how to use Twitter. Also, my followers aren't stupid. You guys are writing jokes and then you're getting into the replies. Oh my God. I'm not replying to people on Twitter. You're maniacs. You tweet one thing and then you have to treat it like YouTube where your first tweet is the video and everything else is the comments.

Starting point is 00:06:04 And you know, you don't read the, of course you do read it, but you don't ever let the people down there know that you saw the reprise. Oh, then you're giving up all the power of being the first person to tweet it. You still do read them? Oh, I name search myself possible.

Starting point is 00:06:19 Yeah, a hundred times a day. Do you ever name search with asterisk? Asterisk? Oh yeah. Replacing certain vowels. Oh, yeah. Because you know that that's how they try to hide from you. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:06:28 And then of course, of course we all do that. I try different, different variations on it. Yeah. That's when you want to see the really mean shit, which of course you want to see because it matches the horrible voice inside your head that's telling you you're a worthless piece of shit. Right. You want to, what, and this is the main thing the internet is for is to go find people

Starting point is 00:06:43 who are saying that about you, and then it validates the horrible voice you had, and then you feel like shit, but you feel like I'm right. Like I know. Like you also want to defend yourself and say, no, you're wrong, I'm not, this is a funny tweet, this is right, or I wasn't joking, or I was joking. I can't defend yourself, no.

Starting point is 00:07:00 That's when you lose is when you defend yourself. Yeah, absolutely, because everyone, again, I'm going to do a different, back to the earlier theory of Twitter, everyone underneath is the comments. You're not, you're, don't interact with those people. So you've got to put a boundary between you and them. The halves and the halves. This is why people quote retweet,

Starting point is 00:07:17 which I don't do, because I, you know, dunk, dunk retweets, right, which I think is like sociopathic to do that. But there are people who, their strategy is, anytime there's a reply they don't like, instead of replying, they quote retweet so that it's then topmost on their feed and they're just, now they're not replying,

Starting point is 00:07:33 they're taking the person's reply and like hanging it up in a little painting and say, look at this piece of shit, you know. Right, the fucking guy. Yeah, this guy think, but they're not getting into it with that guy. They're like, talk it. Twitter is so, it's so sociopathic.

Starting point is 00:07:47 It's such a cesspool. It's a horrible place. And so I use it. It's just like, oh, here's the video I made. Or whatever. Okay, good. That's the only way to use it. So you lost your show, Adam Ruins, everything.

Starting point is 00:07:59 Which sucks. Oh, thank you. Well, because we're gonna dub to, you can follow along with this outline that we've got up here. I see, but, you know, thank you. Well, because we're gonna dub to you can follow along with this outline that we've got I did you know which sucks, but so we talk a lot on this show about kind of the Financialization of everything the you know how corporate mergers just kind of make everything worse for us, but you actually Yeah lived through One of those

Starting point is 00:08:21 Restructuring I was an early victim and there are a lot more victims right now. But yeah, look, first of all, Adam Runes everything we did, 65 episodes of it over the course of like four or five years. The show was a success, I was not like wounded, I was ready to do new things by the time it ended. But the reason it was canceled, it was the second biggest show on the network, it was profitable for the network.

Starting point is 00:08:43 The reason it was killed was because AT&T bought Time Warner, which was the parent company of Turner, which was the parent company of TBS, TNT, TrueTV, all these other networks, right? And when they did that, the first thing that they did was like assassinate TrueTV. Every single person who worked for the network was fired, like 100 people, including the president of the network who you know Originally bought my show and then they put the whole thing under TBS and they just started canceling a whole bunch of shows and You know that was all happening during the writing of our last season and so we you know made the let me we made the I'm like I see what's going on here. We made the season finale a series finale and

Starting point is 00:09:28 you know month after the show, we can't, you know, ended the, the new dude in charge of TBS and TNT called me and was like, yeah, we're not picking up the show. And I was like, yeah, I figured that out. But, but like it would have kept going otherwise as would have other shows on true TV. And now here's the funny thing. That was, so that was the earlier WB merger. That's when AT&T, the phone company bought Warner Brothers. That merger took like three years to put together.

Starting point is 00:09:54 It was the whole time we were making Adam Ruins, everything it was like the merger, the merger, the merger, the merger's going to happen after the merger. Didn't even Trump's Department of Justice weren't they trying to stop it? They tried to stop it and they failed in court. They said it would be bad for consumers. Yeah court. They said it would be bad for consumers. Yeah, they did say it would be bad for consumers.

Starting point is 00:10:07 Now, I don't know the details of like what case they brought or why it failed. We can talk about, you know, the legal barriers to fighting monopolies where there's a whole like legal theory about mergers that's like largely wrong that like dominates the court system that leads to, you know, the Justice Department failing to stop mergers because like a judge will say, fuck you. Well, the argument becomes, well, we're gonna provide things cheaper for consumers, instead of actually...

Starting point is 00:10:32 Here's the short version. There's a lot of reasons to stop mergers. There's a lot of reasons for antitrust reform or for antitrust enforcement. For instance, that when one company has too much market power, it is, it has too much power in society, not just in the economy, but for instance, if there's just one media conglomerate that owns every television station,

Starting point is 00:10:53 then the one person who runs that media conglomerate controls too much of the airwaves, and controls what people see in here. And we sort of think, there was a time in American life when we believed that that was bad. Just for one company to have that much power period is like, in each, I-democrat. For people.

Starting point is 00:11:09 Competition is good for people economically. And also in terms of a democracy, if you've got one person or one company controlling an entire sphere of the economy, then that person actually has power over everyone else's life beyond just the economy, right? Like if you've got one company that owns all the railroads or one company that makes all the cars or whatever, right?

Starting point is 00:11:28 Then that company can decide, I want the cars to work this way. I want the railroads to work that way. I want prices to be. Exactly, but I want to be really clear. It's beyond just prices. It's like literally how our society functions beyond just the economic side.

Starting point is 00:11:42 When we're finding out maybe a phone company managing a bunch of studios wasn't the best idea either. Didn't they buy it for like $86 billion? They bought it for a ton of money. Okay. The problem is that there has been a legal theory since the 80s that has taken over the judicial branch that says that actually the only reason to stop a merger

Starting point is 00:12:02 isn't because of all those other reasons that we discussed. It's because the only reason you need to stop a merger is if it would cause prices to go up. It's called the consumer welfare standard. It's all that matters. Yeah, basically boils down to, if the company can say this will cause prices to go down for consumers, then the merger's gonna be okay.

Starting point is 00:12:19 Is there like a window? Because we all know that eventually those prices creep back up. Yeah, like they can buy the prices. The prices don't even go down. Yeah, but no, like the Justice Department had its chance to stop the merger and a judge stopped them from stopping the merger and the merger went through. It's always a Reagan era policy while we're always. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:12:41 Something. And part of the reason it worked is because judges are not economists. And so it turned out to be a very easy test for them to understand. If prices go down, okay, if prices go up, not okay. And so the companies just know how to say, oh, this will cost prices to go down. Now, there have been waves and waves of media merger

Starting point is 00:13:02 throughout the country in the last five, 10 years, does anybody feel like prices have gone down? Absolutely not. Prices have gone up. Your cable bill has gone up. You're paying more, more money for more of these services. And they still ask for it. And they still ask you to upgrade to extra and more shit. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:13:18 Well, now that... That dream's calling me all the time. You're still seeing with the Warner merge, you know, now they're talking about the Discovery Warner. So that's the next part. The next part. The next part. The next part. The next part.

Starting point is 00:13:30 The next part. The next part. The next part. The next part. The next part. The next part. The next part. The next part.

Starting point is 00:13:38 The next part. The next part. The next part. The next part. The next part. The next part. The next part. The next part. The next part. The next part. Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to get to that merger in a second. What happened when AT&T bought Time Warner?

Starting point is 00:13:48 It was an immediate disaster. The Justice Department tried to stop it. It went through. They did the merger. AT&T almost immediately realized it was a horrible idea and tried to unwind the merger. So my show's canceled. I'm working on other things. Three years after the AT&T Time Warner merger, AT&T sells Time Warner to a different company Discovery Plus,

Starting point is 00:14:08 and now we've got the Warner Brothers Discovery merger, and that merger is now killing even more shows, like way more than we're killed in the AT&T. So for instance, I told you that when AT&T bought Time Warner, they killed True TV. After they sold Time Warner Discovery Plus, they also killed TNT, TBS, and a whole bunch of other stations. Cartoon Network, they killed true TV. After they sold time Warner Discovery Plus, they also killed TNT, TBS and a whole bunch of other stations, Cartoon Network. They just killed the entire animation studio. Adult swim looks like it's losing a lot of shows.

Starting point is 00:14:34 TBS is just gone now. Yeah. Ported turn. Well, that is not very funny. The champ. I grew up with that. God. Yeah. If only slogans like that still. I know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:14:51 I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:14:59 I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. They were doing like idea general idea pitch things or something it was like a strategy meeting Yeah, she said she just like said you know, it'd be a good slogan is it's funny because it's true And then they were like thank you Fuck it used it. Yeah, my ex girlfriend did if you see something say something so

Starting point is 00:15:16 Are you serious? Oh, no Yes, so TNT and TBS were the two original cable channels that had original programming. Those are named after Ted Turner. And TNT has had dramas forever, TBS has had comedies forever. We know drama. These channels have been around since the 80s. And yes, they have now been killed.

Starting point is 00:15:40 They still exist on your cable channel, but on your cable box. But what David Zazlov, the new head of Warner Discovery, has said is that they are no longer doing scripted programming of any kind. They fired the entire development departments, the entire marketing departments. TNT is going to have NBA and PBS. They might do some reality shows, stuff like that. But in terms of scripted programming, like fucking television shows, they just don't exist anymore. True TV is the same way.

Starting point is 00:16:09 True TV still exists. They have in practical jokers, and that's it. That's all that they air. Because it's cheaper to make, right? It's cheaper to make. It's a non-union show. Those guys are funny. I like those guys a lot,

Starting point is 00:16:18 but that's a dirt cheap show to make that they can air forever. It's basically air as though it's on demand. If you wanna watch in practical jokers, turn on True TV, except for there's one hour a week that they still show Adam Ruins everything reruns. So four a.m. on Sunday mornings and you know, I get a little bit of residuals and not quite enough

Starting point is 00:16:36 to earn my health insurance for the year, but I do appreciate it. So do you, could you argue that some of those, those TV staff writers are then going into Netflix and Hulu and stuff? Like are Netflix and Hulu and the other streamers like picking up the slack? Because now Netflix has to, no, judging by your face,

Starting point is 00:16:55 oh, you poor thing, no. No, absolutely not. No, well, so first of all, there's a lot we could talk about here. The entire entertainment industry is contracting by 30%. That, that's a number of top of my head But like that's what it feels like to everybody and the reason is that Netflix Sold everybody a lie that for $15 a month you'd be able to you know have access to every piece of media ever made Right add free forever. That's what they told the public was very much like the uber thing where we just have to undercut

Starting point is 00:17:23 Everybody monopolize and then you have to come to us for your entertainment. And then other people got in the game and they're like, oh, sure. Okay. And the same thing as Uber, they also lied to Wall Street. They said that, hey, we're going to grow forever because our value proposition is so great. There's never going to be any competition. The investor money that we're using to make all this content at a loss is never going to dry up and our subscriber number is going to go up forever. Then earlier this year,

Starting point is 00:17:51 they announced for the first time that they lost subscribers. For one quarter, they lost subscribers overall, and it made the entire industry freak out because all the other networks, like HBO, sorry, like Warnermedia, slash HBO, which is HBO Max, what they had all been doing for the past five years, was murdering a very successful business model, the television business model that they had all had. Oh my God, Netflix is gonna come and eat our lunch,

Starting point is 00:18:17 with this $15 a month thing. So we have to kill TBS, TNT, TrueTV, broadcast television. We have to murder all of it and shove it all into streaming. And then suddenly, as right as they're on the middle of doing that, Netflix is like, oh, oopsie, we lost subscribers. And everybody suddenly starts slashing costs. They all start making less shows, they start canceling shows, they start canceling shows that are in the middle of being filmed.

Starting point is 00:18:41 By the way, shows on Netflix and streaming also also they make less episodes for less you know seasons for a shorter you know what I mean instead of doing television used to be one season was 26 episodes and maybe you run for five years you know now you're lucky if you get two seasons of six episodes each yeah and you don't get residuals on the soon and you do not get residuals, I'm assuming. And you do not get residuals. You get little to no residuals in streaming generally, which is a problem with the union contracts because all the unions are working with contracts that were, they're all new media contracts that were negotiated in 2007, 2008, 2009

Starting point is 00:19:18 with slight improvements in the years since, but the contracts don't reflect the fact that netflix, Disney, HBO Max are now the ABC, CBS, NBC of modern television. And it doesn't cover so much like, or no, I'm thinking of shows that were once aired on network television that then get streams. There was like nothing, there was nothing that actually legally said that dictated how you were going to get paid for that residual

Starting point is 00:19:46 what? Like if it sign-filled, we're a terrible example, we're to go on Netflix, there was nothing yet. Well, it is, or what is it on? Who knew I think? It's on one of them. Yeah, so all of those actors and all those writers do still get residuals, but the residuals are a tiny fraction

Starting point is 00:20:01 of what they would make otherwise. So give up on your dreams of being a television writer out there or an actor because there's no hope. It's full. Well, look, what needs to happen to fix that is the unions need to step up and fight for the residuals that their members need. And some of the unions, I think, are beginning to do that. And that's a whole other topic we get into.

Starting point is 00:20:22 But that's a lot more than that of the next one. Are you allowed to be this Frank, even though Netflix is kind of cutting some of your checks? Oh, they're not cutting my checks anymore. I mean, I'm already paid for that. Yeah, fuck. And I was also, by the way, talking shit about them, while I was on press tour for the D word,

Starting point is 00:20:38 because that news that they had lost subscribers for the first time happened like two weeks before the G word came out. So all the reporters I talked to, like really wanted to talk about Netflix. And I was very happy to, because I mean, this is what I do is I talk about the show. You ruin everything.

Starting point is 00:20:52 Yeah, by the way, you cannot ruin these for me. This is not an ad placement. I just fucking love the Bel Vita. Bel Vita, if you're out there, sponsor me for Craig's date. Are you guys sponsored by Liquid Dan? No. What? I know.

Starting point is 00:21:05 What a waste. I assumed I was drinking this. What a, what a, what a, I got, I got a reusable. It's okay. It's okay. Why am I holding this? I actually would love to be sponsored by Liquid Death

Starting point is 00:21:15 because I love the product. So Liquid Death if you're watching, you know, they do watch. They do watch. If you're out there, hit him up. We're real. I love, I love Liquid Death. Are there any other sponsors you want to, shout out before? Cordova. We're real. I love I love liquid death. Are there any other sponsors you want

Starting point is 00:21:25 to shut up before? Just liquid death. We should talk about the G word though. It's great. I enjoyed it. I watched I watched all six episodes. You have a very you have this unique ability to stay positive about some of these things that just make you want to scream. Yeah. Which I appreciate because you also, you know, on your podcast, I think you have a series called like Fuck Hopeless Mess or something like that. That's what I ended up calling it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:21:55 Yeah. Fuck hopelessness series. We're trying to do some positive episodes. Which is great because it's hard to, it's hard to keep people motivated when it just seems like an onslaught of just everything is fucked. But this show is a six-part series that takes a look at what the government actually does, where the problems are, how it can be fixed, and you know, you're pretty honest about how fucked up everything is.

Starting point is 00:22:16 But I also think it's an important job of showing just how necessary it is for everyone. But I wanted to put up this tweet I think it came up on my feed like yesterday, but it just reminded me of and they talk about they're talking about libertarians But I honestly think it goes for everyone and so in your own words How would you describe libertarians in this person response house cats? They're convinced of their fierce independence Well utterly dependent on a system. They don't appreciate or understand. That's good good job. Jay Spalding photo I actually think a photographer wrote that? And it's his profile photo, Louis CK.

Starting point is 00:22:48 No. No, he just, he just looks like it. But I, but I actually think that's a lot of people, not just libertarians. I don't think people quite understand the depth of what the government does and how important it is in their daily lives. Yeah, I mean, a big part of my work generally that I try to do is show people like the invisible infrastructure that holds up your life or that created the circumstances

Starting point is 00:23:12 under which you live, right? Rather that whether that's like, when my favorite Adam Ruins, everything segments we ever did was about like redlining and how that created the suburbs and the racial, you know, housing divisions in America, shit that was done in the 40s and it still affects you today.

Starting point is 00:23:25 And most people don't know about it. They're just like, oh, why do all the black people live over there and all the white people live over here, you know, until you show them, like, no, this is the map, right? And that's, so that can be true of, here's why things are the way they are today. But also, there's a whole lot of, here's why, what you have exists at all.

Starting point is 00:23:44 And it's often because somebody like behind the scenes is like, has working really hard to make it work. Right, and you talk about some of these, you know, before some of these systems were in place, what it was like, and you kind of get scared because you, you know, you watch everything get sold off and privatized right in front of your eyes and you're like, Jesus Christ.

Starting point is 00:23:59 I mean, these things came for a reason because people were getting sick and dying because people were, you know, couldn't get the help they needed. And so you really worry that we're heading back that way. But I do want to know you. So Obama is a producer on the show. Yeah. They were. Oh, Barack. No, no, no, Barack Obama. Yeah, Barack Obama. Oh, okay. Are you familiar? I was. Yeah. But there was. Sorry. There were some very funny moments because you are. I would say you're politically pretty left. Sure.

Starting point is 00:24:27 Whatever you, whatever you wanna call me, man. I'm really happy whatever people wanna call me. Well, just, I would say you're probably further left than Obama tends to land. That might be true. But you are, you are very polite because there's a, the first in the last episode you end up talking to him.

Starting point is 00:24:44 I've seen it, see it. Like in the last episode, especially, you've, him since yeah like in the last episode especially you you seemed to very politely tell him you know you could have done more yeah and it's very funny I mean so are you in his Martha's Vineyard home no that was filmed we did film in his actual office okay and then we shot a scene that was you know in the fiction of the show or in the world making the sandwich, which is, which is like set in his living room. It's actually shot in his, in a friend of his living room in DC.

Starting point is 00:25:12 Okay. But it's funny. You ask him at one point like because he had that, you know, hope and change activism. Yeah. And you ask him, you know, is there a part of you that would have, would have liked to be an activist so you could do all these things and didn't get bogged down by the political system. And he was like, oh, absolutely. But yeah, he's like one of the richest people in the world just has his beautiful Martha's Vineyard compound.

Starting point is 00:25:33 And you're like, come on, man. You're going to want it up to the camera. You're glad you're not just the community organizer. I mean, my job in that segment was, so look, you know, he, he executive introduced the show. He had almost nothing to do with the show, right? He, um, uh, had option to Michael Lewis book that the show was based on. It's a book called the fifth risk. Michael Lewis, wonderful journalist, uh, wrote a book about how the government works. I had read the book. I loved the book. I was asked if I wanted to pitch, you know, what I would do for a TV show based on the book because Obama's

Starting point is 00:26:02 company had optioned it. I pitched it. They liked it, I made the show, and I said, I've got to make, you know, I got to do the show that I'm going to do. I'm going to do my own investigation and I'm not going to be doing the Obama party line. And they said, yes, I had to occasionally remind them of that as we were doing it, right? This is, I don't care what, you know, the Obama political machine thinks about this topic. This is, you know, my story that I'm doing my way. But I wanted to do that interview with him at the end because there's like,

Starting point is 00:26:28 shit, I've just always wanted to ask him. And I was able to in that interview. And yeah, the main, you know, as someone who, look, his election in 2008 was a part of my own political awakening, you know. Oh man, we were gonna do it. We were gonna fucking change the system. Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 00:26:47 We're all gonna be different. I have video of people like, you know, just dancing in the street in New York, right? When he was elected, it was- Hope it changed, baby. Hope and change. And then, you know, I think it's hard for not to feel disappointed by like what happened, right?

Starting point is 00:27:02 By the, and it's hard not to feel like he sort of narrowed his own aspirations as things went on. And, you know, if you asked me, you got one minute with Barack Obama, what do you wanna talk to him about? It would be that, and I was like, great, I have to do that on camera. So I definitely pissed him off in the interview.

Starting point is 00:27:20 He was like, why am I having this conversation with this guy? But I think we, the other goal of the interview was to, he's an incredible speaker, but you have heard him talk so much that if you imagine yourself asking him a question, you can imagine his answer, right? You know exactly what he'll say. He's so on message at all times. And my whole goal was just to give him a little shove and like shake him a little bit and like get to a real conversation. That was part of why I did that too, was to give him a little shove and shake him a little bit and get to a real conversation. That was part of why I did that too, was to press him a bit. He doesn't seem to be willing to take any real responsibility for missing the marker

Starting point is 00:27:53 falling short. And who was the Mitch McConnell thing? Well, you talked about how he won and then he was like, yeah, but who else got elected Mitch McConnell. I mean, especially because, you know, and so in the first episode, I think you take three shots at him. You say, because he says it's your show,

Starting point is 00:28:11 you can talk about whatever you want. And you say, we can talk about bank bailouts, and he was like, whatever you want. And you say, we can talk about drone strikes, and there's like one more. Forget what the third one was like. Yeah, but so like, that was very funny. But, you know, and you talk about it on, at one point, you talk about how much he expanded the third one. Yeah, but so like that was very funny But you know and you talk about it on at one point you talk about how much he expanded the drone program

Starting point is 00:28:28 Which I mean it's crazy and that's part of the problem, you know When you talk to him. He's he's the coolest guy. He seems so fucking cool Yeah, and you're like there's no way this guy's a bad guy every time I see him talking like wait that dude Fucking rocks and you don't want to you don't like you see him playing basketball at Jay Z and you're like yes It's got a killer jump. But then you're like, there's a lot going on here. And like so that kind of stuff, when he's like Mitch McConnell also got elected and yes, that's true.

Starting point is 00:28:56 So okay, there's going to be some obstruction there, but one of the main things the president does have a lot of power over his foreign policy and what did he do with that power is he fucking made the world the worse place, to be honest? Yeah, I mean, the drum strike program is one of the biggest stains on his administration, and it was something that, you know, we talked about on the show. It was, and it was important for us to talk about on the show. And, you know, by the way, some people might say, like,

Starting point is 00:29:20 well, why didn't you confront him in that interview about the drum strike program? And the fact is is it's pointless for me to do that because if you want to, you can go find footage of college students at whatever interviews that he gave where they go, how dare you with the Droneshites? And then he gives his answer, right? He gives the Obama version of, here's what? Here's what? We made the best decision we could at the time. We tortured some folks. Yeah, exactly. And so like, there's no point in me getting that answer out of him again.

Starting point is 00:29:48 But we gave a very straightforward mainstream analysis of the many problems with the drone strike program and how many people had killed, how many civilians had killed. And, you know, we did that on Netflix, right? Yeah, I mean, you also, you call him out on the, on, you know, on the Obamacare, on working with, you know, private companies rather than a government system.

Starting point is 00:30:12 You know, you, also, I love that I didn't realize, I was, it was driving me crazy because I'm familiar with the Ronald Reagan quote, the worst nine words you can hear is I'm from the government and I'm here to help with it. And so the first guy who comes on from the government, it's comedian playing a government worker, and he says I'm from the government and I'm here to help and so the first guy who comes on from the government it's comedian playing a government worker and he says I'm from the government and I'm here to help and I'm like is he doing that on purpose and then you had another guy do it and

Starting point is 00:30:31 then finally you go but a little bit of foreshadowing there yeah but it's a great it's a great little look at the American system we've built and everyone should everyone should check it out thank you man I really like it what was when did you like fully push into becoming very political? Because I know on Adam Runes everything, it was a bit of a mix, right? You would talk about the border wall,

Starting point is 00:30:53 but then you talk about like Adam Runes sex. And yeah. I mean, look, I, the way I think about myself politically is that in my work, I talk about policies. You know, I talk about facts. I talk about the policies that best respond to those facts. After you do that for long enough, you start to ask, how do you put those policies into place?

Starting point is 00:31:14 Right, if we all agree that, you know, the way that we've designed our cities is completely fucked up. We talk about why we got there, we talk about what needs to be done to fix it. Well, the next question is, how do we actually put the good policies in place and now you're talking about politics?

Starting point is 00:31:32 And so that's how, I think of myself as having gotten politically involved is like trying to figure out how to execute the shit that we're talking about. I don't know how you have that optimism because when I reflect on why our cities are structured the way they are, I just get so pissed off,

Starting point is 00:31:49 and then I think about how ineffective the government is at all levels that I just, I feel like there's no way we'd ever be able to get anything fixed. Los Angeles, for example, how the fuck would we fix anything? Oh, well, we can talk about the incredible movement that's happening for change in Los Angeles right now politically. That's like sweeping the city. At the same time, as the city is going through like horrible political turmoil because of these awful, the revelation of these, not just racist

Starting point is 00:32:22 remarks, but like racist exclusionary policies and politics are being practiced. They were doing the district redistricting, race helping each other. Racist redistricting, yeah, and backroom deals and shit like that. But at the same time, there's also like a true movement sweeping through LA that is like,

Starting point is 00:32:41 that you can go join if you feel like it. So, but what I'll say to the broader point about like how do we begin to fix anything? This is like one of my mantras. When you are born and you are a child and a baby, the adults in your life tell you, oh, the world was built on purpose, right? It was built rationally. Everything makes sense.

Starting point is 00:33:06 You know, everything was put in place to help you. There's a system. It works really well, right? Because that's what they would they want to believe. That's what they want you to believe. Everyone has a moment where they get older and they go hold on a second. No, no, this shit is fucked up. Like the work things are wrong. Everything, wait, this is horrible that it's like this. Then some of those people make the choice to go, you know what, I'm gonna try to fix some of the fucked up shit. Okay, and then they put their back into it, and they put the effort into fixing shit,

Starting point is 00:33:37 and then they die. Yeah, they blow your head off when you're driving through Dallas in a convertible window. Well, okay, that's some people. That's it. You try to go too far. But the only reason that anything good exists in the world at all is because some people made the choice to do that.

Starting point is 00:33:54 You know, that's the only reason that like America exists as a country is because fucking Thomas Jefferson woke up in colonial Britain in North America and was like, what the fuck is this shit? You know, let's, ah, fuck, let's try to do something, right? And then he died. And then, with the job undone, right, with a whole lot of slaves that he then, I don't know, butqueeth through his next of kin,

Starting point is 00:34:16 because he was a fucking asshole, just like everybody else. But, you know, you have the choice to do the same thing yourself, as to like, you to like grab a fucking shovel and make a little bit of a difference in some way that you can. And then you'll die and then other people will hopefully pick up the shovel. That's basically all there is to being human. If you don't want to participate in that, you can just be one of the lazy people who just I don't know, eats the food everybody else is growing.

Starting point is 00:34:45 You could go the kids and ski route and send some mail. I'm not saying not everybody who works is, not everybody is lazy who doesn't wanna, some people are unable to. Well, yeah, there's also a big part of the system we've created here is people are, you know, to get by they have to work multiple jobs, they have to, you know, there's no viable way

Starting point is 00:35:06 for them to have affordable childcare. So I mean, participating civically isn't really. It's not, it's not available to everyone. Yes, true. But I'm sure it's available to a lot of the people who are watching this show, listening to this show. Yeah. And, you know, you have, you have that choice.

Starting point is 00:35:23 I think that is one of the most realistic things you've talked about of, you know, fighting hopelessness, right, is just getting involved, finding a group. It's certainly easy in LA. I mean, there's a ton of chapters of any kind of organization you might want to join. Yeah. So to elaborate on that, like, one of the reasons that we feel politically helpless is that we've been sold a false vision of political action by the media and by those in power. And that false vision is you as an individual have no power, all you can do is vote and give us money.

Starting point is 00:35:56 And we all know that, well, okay, voting is, yes, I got a vote, it's better than not voting, but we all know that's just one vote among millions. And we all know that the money that we donate is not being spent in great way every so often a candidate comes along We're like, oh, I really want to give Bernie Sanders whoever my 50 bucks, but apart from that we know that that's not effective And we're not being told what the other option is The other option is how change has been made throughout American history and throughout a history of is how change has been made throughout American history and throughout a history of humanity, which is people working together in groups.

Starting point is 00:36:28 It's you joining something. It's you going to a meeting once a week or even once a month, there are even once every couple months. It's you becoming active in your union or starting a union. It's you like fucking starting a little like political working group in your fucking church,

Starting point is 00:36:45 you know, it's, you know, we used to have like, Masonic temples and elks lodges and boy scout groups and, you know, like Americans used to get together in organizations to do things and we have had a culture that's preached individuality at all of us for decades and as a result We all feel helpless because we're like I can't do it alone. Yeah, they build the cities that way too Like that's part of why Los Angeles is built to keep you cut off from other people. I hate it But so the reason so here's how I got involved politically in Los Angeles is I was really sick of Walking by homelessness every day and you know doing you avert your eyes thing I'm not gonna look, right?

Starting point is 00:37:25 I'm like, this is horrible. I don't like doing this. I would walk by the same woman every day on the same bench and like not make eye contact with her. I was like, what the fuck am I doing? I heard from a friend of mine who had a wonderful podcast called LA Podcast about LA local politics.

Starting point is 00:37:38 It's guy Hays Davenport. Oh yeah. You know, Hays? Hollywood Handbook. Yes, Hollywood Handbook. So he had a podcast called LA Podcast and he talked about, dude, he's sorry to cut you off, but wasn't he like a TV writer

Starting point is 00:37:48 and then he fucking left to work for Nithia? Exactly. It's fucking cool. He was a TV writer, he actually quit a show running job to go do homelessness outreach and local politics full time. And he inspired a lot of people, including myself. And he said, he said on the episode of the podcast, hey, we have a group, it's called SEALA,

Starting point is 00:38:05 it's a neighborhood homelessness coalition, and we go out every weekend with water and snacks, and we talk to the unhoused folks in our neighborhood, and we try to, you know, if we can, connect them with services and things like that, but really it's just like neighbors talking to neighbors. I was like, I wanna do that. I started doing it, I had, it was a little bit nerve-wracking,

Starting point is 00:38:22 but after a couple of times, I was like, oh, I know how to do this. Once you realize you actually can talk to someone and suffering in your neighborhood and you go, hey, how's it going? You want to bottle a water? It's like transformative. Then the people I met through that group were people who cared about homelessness. And a bunch of those people were politically active.

Starting point is 00:38:40 They started asking me, hey, there's a neighborhood council meeting. It would be really helpful if you would come and speak to your experience because there's a lot of neighbors riled up about homelessness. And they need to hear it from someone who's done engagement at these encampments. I said, yes, sure. And then one of the founders of that group was a woman named Nithya Rahman, who's eventually ran for city council here in LA. And I joined her.

Starting point is 00:39:00 I volunteered for her campaign because I knew her personally. And I knew what values she stood for in terms of homelessness which were rather than sweeping people from one corner to another. She's about like going to people one at a time saying what kind of housing you're looking for and using the power of the council office to try to find that person housing. And now that she's been elected, she's had a great success doing that throughout her district.

Starting point is 00:39:23 And like a lot of encampments are now gone, not because she's swept them away, but because she's like those people literally are in permanent housing now. But so because I knew her, I was like, I know what values she has and I campaigned really hard for her. And now she's fucking in office like she won. And because she won, there is three more, or four, depending on your one account, are running for city council. This year, one has already won.

Starting point is 00:39:49 Looks like two more are going to win. Hugo and... Hugo Sotomartines. And you can see this. A. Unisus already won in CD1. Hugo Sotomartines is running in CD13. There's also Aaron Darling in CD11 on the west side. And there's a couple other candidates too.

Starting point is 00:40:04 Which is a big deal in LA because the LA City Council has a lot of power here. Yes. In LA, we only have 15 council members for a city of whatever millions and millions. So each of them represents 250,000 people. And so they're basically mini-mayors. And taken together, they're more powerful than the mayor.

Starting point is 00:40:23 And the whole city has been run by. People like, you know, have been in the headlines on this tape that if you've filed the news at all of the last couple of weeks, these politicians were caught on tape saying horribly racist things and also scheming to redistrict basically gerrymand or the city in order to exclude black people's voices

Starting point is 00:40:43 from being able to elect their preferred representatives like saying, oh, let's give the airport to this guy. And you know, no, I want to make sure I have this because that'll help me get reelected. So that's the old way of doing politics in LA. And we used to have 15 people who ran the city that way. After Nithya won, we had 14. After this election, maybe we're going to have 12. You know, like the numbers are going down. We're building allies. And pretty soon, we might like be able to take over the city with people who actually give a shit and really want to make the city work well. And that won't be, I'm not gonna say that's gonna be a utopia.

Starting point is 00:41:17 Right, there's still gonna be problems at that point. But it really can make a difference. And the way it started was me joining, sorry, the whole movement didn't start from me joining the homelessness group started was me joining, sorry, the whole movement didn't start from me joining the homelessness group. No, no, my involvement came from me saying, I care about homelessness. Oh, let me join a group. I must say the Los Angeles Comedy Scene has been a pretty cool way to get involved.

Starting point is 00:41:40 The entire Comedy Scene has been turned on politically by Nithya's election and by people like, hey, it's like most comics I speak to now know who Ugo's sort of Martinez is. Whereas five years ago, they wouldn't know the name of a single city council person let alone a candidate. I don't know if you have you ever ended up at little secret those comedy shows. The last one I went to was a fundraiser for Ugo. Yeah. But it's great. I mean, Sarah Silverman is there trying to raise money

Starting point is 00:42:07 and you're like, this is, I don't remember this being like this just a few short years ago. Yeah, and that's the power of people paying attention at all. Right. Like, that's what you're seeing is that like, the public is now, especially after these racist tapes were leaked, the public is paying attention

Starting point is 00:42:21 to the city government in a way that they weren't before and like, shit is materially gonna change as a result. Like shit, like I live in Nithia's district and shit is different in the district now because she's been elected. But it can start with you joining something. So what I tell people again is that a union, is that a church, is there a local,

Starting point is 00:42:40 a lot of people get started by joining a local chapter of a group like the DSA or if you don't, if you don't wanna say I'm a socialist, like there's the League of Women Voters, right? Is one of these groups that has a chapter in almost every city in the country, and you can start going to the meetings, you know? And have you seen those tweets going around

Starting point is 00:42:59 of I think some big article came about about American loneliness and how people have fewer and fewer and fewer friends. Oh yeah, I just saw that. But yeah, this is a... It's like one out of ten people have no friends. It was so depressing. But and that's the thing, if you feel lonely, I mean, I go to meetings like this and it's... It not only makes you feel less hopeless, but you're just talking to people who have, who like-minded and it's a great way to meet people. And if you're maybe a little nervous,

Starting point is 00:43:25 I'm sure if you live in a medium to large city, there are tons of things like that are here where it could just be like a comedy thing that's raising money, it could be a concert. So get out there and meet people and fucking help change the world. This is how change happens, you know? When people talk about, just to give you

Starting point is 00:43:41 another example of this. When talking about guns uh... there's that there's that gun and you got to right there locked in loaded all time gun gun control advocates will often say and this is a mistake they'll say that the reason gun rights advocates have dominated america politically is because of all the money that the gun makers spend the gun lobby

Starting point is 00:44:03 and stuff like that and that's a part of it but it's not really true. The real reason that the NRA has so much power is because the NRA is a mass membership organization. The NRA has millions and millions and millions of members who don't just right do, you know, pay dues to the organization. They have meetings that you can go to where they will teach you how to, you know, fucking clean and fire a gun. And they'll do bake sales and whatnot. And they're like, members, like, it's a thing that you can join. And just, I don't know, have a good time talking with other people like guns.

Starting point is 00:44:34 And then when it's time to go yell at a congressperson, they'll send you an email and you go show up and you scream at whoever is trying to put in place a pretty sensible piece of gun control legislation. Well, now you have like, you have a stake in it you're like yeah these are my those are my friends you're talking about exactly that's why I can beck you we do the big sale exactly because you take away her right you're a member of something right and and so that's the important thing is to join because there is a local group that you can join in your area that needs you to be a part of it

Starting point is 00:45:00 you know there's one club that that very few people can get to call themselves a member of and that's the billionaires club. Right. So switching gears here. Just a little bit. Thank you so much. So smooth. We, uh, we talk a lot about billionaires on here and we have our favorites. We love, uh, let's see, we love Jeffy B. We love Elon Musk. Oh, we're going to get the bad heads of all these guys and love Jeffy B. We love Elon Musk. Oh, he's the best. We're gonna get the fat heads of all these guys and pick them up. God damn, we should get- That was very funny. That's not a bad idea.

Starting point is 00:45:31 That'd be very fun. But you had your Patagonia video. Yeah. It kinda made us look like assholes because when it first happened, we both were like, like everybody, everybody felt the same. That's cool. We were also roasting him a little bit.

Starting point is 00:45:43 I don't know if you read the New York Times article, but I just couldn't get over the fact that he's a billionaire and he was like, look, I'm not like these other billionaires. I don't drive a Lexus and I'm like, I do love that that's the nicest car he could think of. Yeah. Yeah, he says, I don't drive a Lexus.

Starting point is 00:45:56 I drive a Subaru. Oh, what'd you say? Three grand? And what do you, probably got the Eddie Bauer, it didn't mean any way. Is that the old Trails Eddie Bauer edition? Yeah, you know what it is.

Starting point is 00:46:05 That's like the fully loaded $80,000 one. He's got a Subaru, don't you? Yeah, but I got the base model. Okay, yeah. Don't come for me on a YouTube video. I got the base model. It fucking drives me nuts. Every time he stops,

Starting point is 00:46:17 it does that new fangol thing. That's every new car. I hate that. What is the new fangol thing? Where the car stops. Oh yeah, like, and then when he hit the gas, it's a car. Yeah, it starts up again. I hate it. I'm and then when you hit the gas, it's a crumb.

Starting point is 00:46:25 Yeah, it starts up again. I hate you. I'm glad that they're saving the gas, but I also find it unsettling when I'm in a car that does where the engine starts once they hit the gas. It's gotta be terrible for the spark plugs or something to be. Don't worry about my spark plugs.

Starting point is 00:46:37 I gotta worry, because if I don't, who will? Okay, so. I don't know where. But so you're taking aim at a good billionaire and In the name of the video is there are no there is no such thing as a good bill. Have you read a non Geo boss winners they go. Yeah, I have read it. Yeah, okay. It's very much this you know billionaire philanthropy is not gonna save us Yeah, it's very easy to fall And like I mean come on Ivana cool. Patagonia's cool.

Starting point is 00:47:05 We love our fucking Nano Puffs. But so what is the problem with billionaire for the P.ex? Well, so the problem is with, so Avanchinard donated the company to fight climate change. What he actually did is he, I believe solely, or he and his family solely,

Starting point is 00:47:21 own all of the shares of Patagonia. It's a privately held company. So he donated the voting shares, which is only 2% to a family trust that he and his family will continue to control and perpetuity, paid a small amount of tax on that. And then he donated the rest of the shares to a 501C4, which is a technically a nonprofit,

Starting point is 00:47:41 but a 501C4 status as opposed to a three status means it can make political donations and do direct political campaigning. And so what that means is this 501c4 is now forever going to receive about a hundred million dollars a year as the estimate in Patagonia profits that they say they're gonna use to help the planet, and we just have to take

Starting point is 00:48:03 their word for it on that. Now, let's say that they do. Let's say it's a good, you know, they're not lying and they actually do use to help the planet. Couple of problems there. First of all, Avanshan Arden as family will unilaterally control exactly what that money is spent on. And, you know, that's not the best way to help the world

Starting point is 00:48:20 is to let one billionaire and his family decide what they think is best. That's fundamentally undemocratic. It's the opposite of democracy. As opposed to if you tax it, well then we decide democratically how the money is spent. Now that's not a perfect process, right? Our control over taxation, but I would argue that part of the reason is not a perfect process is because rich people have so much control over the political system that they're able to make sure taxes are spent in ways that they like.

Starting point is 00:48:49 So I think it's part and parcel of the same problem. The other problem though is that part of the reason he's doing this is because it maintains political power for him and his family forever. Like they are going to be, as I say in the video, they're gonna be flown around the world to meet elected leaders, they're gonna be, you know, headline conferences, they're gonna be able to, they'll certainly be able to make lots of personal profit off the fact that they control a hundred million dollars a year in charitable donations.

Starting point is 00:49:20 And, or charitable, I should say, charitable donations, because again, we don't know what they're gonna be spent on. And that's not good to let billionaires like hoard power and money that way. Like it's, the fundamental motivation for him doing it is not just that he, I believe that he cares about the planet, right, and he's looking for ways to help it. But his original motivation is that if you were to die

Starting point is 00:49:46 and give the company to his children, he would have to pay $1.2 billion in give taxes, and he doesn't want to do that. He wants instead to, how can I make sure Mike children will continue to be the people who control the company, and I don't have to pay any tax on it? Aha, I can do this complicated 501c4 structure, no taxes, and my kids will be rich and powerful forever.

Starting point is 00:50:06 And there's a lot of other examples of this that are not, that are either neutral or very bad, right? Even if you wanna say what Iván Sénard is doing is gonna be a net good for the planet, okay? Maybe it is. However, there are tons of other billionaires who are doing the exact same thing for evil. I talk in the video about this guy Barry Seed,

Starting point is 00:50:24 where side who did the exact same thing for evil. I talk in the video about this guy Barry Seed, or side, who did the exact same structure, but all of his money is going to Leonard Leo, who's the guy who stacked the Supreme Court with the radical conservatives, who overturned Roe versus Wade, and by the way, also banned the EPA from regulating climate change emissions. So, you know, and this guy's money, the billions, just like in Iván Sénard's case, is going to go directly towards making sure the Supreme Court is still stacked with those conservatives so that no environmental regulation will ever withstand the court system.

Starting point is 00:50:57 So I would say that allowing billionaires to make donations like this is overall a net negative to the planet massively. Sure. I agree with you, but I think sometimes, I mean, it goes negative to the planet massively. Sure. I agree with you, but I think sometimes, I mean, it goes back to the helplessness thing and the hopelessness thing of, you know, so sure, we would be able to tax him his billions and what it's just going to go to, you know, drones. You know, it's in drones and it's, well, why do you, why do you make that assumption that

Starting point is 00:51:21 we go to drones? No, drones was a, you know, it was a joke, But it doesn't seem like our taxes are allocated in the way. She gives us the choice. I don't think they go where I would want them to go. Right? It seems like no matter, you know. Right. And so let's just go down that road a little bit.

Starting point is 00:51:37 Why don't you feel that you have a say over where the taxes go? Because I've never seen it, you know, when I look around things get worse and worse, I don't see investments in public infrastructure, I don't see investments in healthcare, I don't see investments in education. And you don't feel that the government is responsible

Starting point is 00:51:54 to, is responsive to democracy, right? That it's a, you don't feel it's democratic enough. Right. So those are the same problem. The problem that we allow a Von Schennard to amass money and power and his family in perpetuity and never say, no, that's the public's on some level and it needs to be responsive to the public

Starting point is 00:52:12 is the same problem as the government not being responsive to the public. And so if we were to get serious about the one, we have to get serious about the other. That would be my argument. Right. Like it's, you know, it- And a beneficent billionaire is not going to solve that.

Starting point is 00:52:28 Yeah. I mean, cynicism leads to cynicism leads to cynicism leads to cynicism. And so if we're going to, if that's all we're going to do, then yeah, sure, you can say, well, nothing is ever going to change, nothing is good, let billionaires do whatever they want, but then you're just accepting a shit world, and I don't think that we should do that. Yeah, but sometimes it seems like, okay, that's closer than we've got. Like, I remember people trying to, so did you see that Mark Cuban is trying to do the,

Starting point is 00:52:53 Mark Cuban's to trap against a healthcare pharmaceuticals. The discount pharmaceuticals. Sure. And ideally, the government should be able to provide cheap pharmaceuticals for people, for people who need these things to live, right? But not manufacturing them, but paying for them, you mean? Yeah, and, you know, putting caps on insulin, making sure people can get these at a affordable price so they don't have to ration them, ultimately, end up in the hospital or dead.

Starting point is 00:53:19 But instead, it's like, wow, this is, this seems like the best shot I've seen for people to get cheaper pharmaceuticals. His like cost plus 15. Yeah, but, this is, this seems like the best shot I've seen for people to get cheaper pharmaceuticals. His like cost plus 15. Yeah, but, okay. So, Mark Cuban is using some little scrap of his billions right to help how many people in America get cheaper medical care.

Starting point is 00:53:39 Tens of people. 10,000 people. I don't think it's more important than that. What if we fucking taxed all of the billionaires and then had single-payer fucking healthcare? That'd be great. Oh, I mean, I see I would prefer that. But when I'm so why is that not the thing that people that we try to make happen? Because there's money in politics. So then your argument comes down to, well, that's not gonna happen.

Starting point is 00:54:05 Right. So we should just let Mark Cuban do whatever. And I'm like, all right, I don't think we should set our sights that fucking low. I think we should say, no, it's unacceptable the world that we live in. And we want a better one. And let's fight for it. Like, what is the, yeah, no, I mean, I'm with you. I just think, what, like, what these billionaires do?

Starting point is 00:54:21 You know this guy, his name is like, Pultie or something. He's on Twitter and he gives away money, he's like a millionaire or a billionaire. And he has this, he does this thing where he like gives out $200 to people who tweet him. He's a billionaire who spends his whole time on Twitter going, if you're struggling at me and I might DM you 200 bucks, And he has created a cult of people around him who are like, oh my goodness, you're gonna generate your wonderful, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. Cause this guy is giving away scraps of money to needy people in America, right?

Starting point is 00:54:53 That is what all of these billionaires are doing. That is what Mark Cuban is doing. He says, you know what? I've got how many billions does it, does it, it was probably like five. Let's say he has five billion, right? He's like, well, guess what? For 10 million of my billions, I have 0.1%, I can make, five billion. Let's say he has five billion, right? He's like, well, guess what? For 10 million of my billions,

Starting point is 00:55:05 or a 0.1%, I can make everybody love me. Oh, 4.6, we were right on. I can make people love me by devoting just a tiny fraction of my fortune towards something that, yes, is helping a small number of people. But the only reason he's able to do that is because nobody's taken the rest of his fucking money away.

Starting point is 00:55:25 And then potentially launch a political career later in life on that goodwill he's getting. Absolutely. It's a very weird thing. It's, and I'm not putting any shame on like fucking shack or anything, but I just saw this video because it's weird. Why'd shack come up? Because I'll tell you, but it's, let's hear him out. I'll tell you what, but, but I like his or all my sentences with

Starting point is 00:55:46 and no shade to share. Well, I just wanted to clear that up so people know I don't care what Jack does. I don't think he's like, I don't think he's our biggest problem. There was a video where he goes around and he's like, he's like, I love, whenever I go somewhere, I like to buy someone something. So he's like, it's a video where he's a kid, maybe it's in a Walmart something, he's like, do love, whenever I go somewhere, I like to buy someone something. So he's like, it's a video where he's a kid,

Starting point is 00:56:06 maybe it's on a Walmart, something. He's like, do you have a bike? And the kid's like, no. And he's like, go pick out whatever you want. And then, you know, it's him to the camera talking about how like, you know, I just have too much. And so I got to, and I'm like, these people don't even seem to enjoy this.

Starting point is 00:56:19 It seems to like rack them with guilt that they feel terrible. They're like, people have too little little and I need to do something. And so, you know. And so all they do is they go around hand to $10. Yeah, I'm like, it's not good for people. Like, I've seen the, have you seen the Helpful Honda ads? Oh, God, the radio ads, yeah. And on TV, these are ads where, I don't know if it's

Starting point is 00:56:40 throughout the country, it's certainly all over the place in SoCal, where the, you're Southern California Honda dealer, Helpful Honda. And they just, they're Honda ads where they just go up to people and give them like a $20 bill, and then the people go, thanks Honda! And then the idea is, now we should go buy Honda's because they gave one guy a little bit of money. I saw once where they went up to a college student, and they said, it's finals, right? It's hard to get good enough stuff to eat, right?

Starting point is 00:57:05 Like you probably don't have that much money because you're a poor college student. Well guess what? We here at Helpful Honda got you a whole case of instant ramen. And the students like, what the fuck? This is like $5 worth of ramen. Give me some real fucking food.

Starting point is 00:57:21 Why don't you give me, why don't you give me like a living fucking wage? Why don't you give me $10,000? You know, instead, and the 100s are like, we're so, oh, we helped out so much today. And also, we're helping you out with a new fucking Honda Civic. Fuck you. You know, that what is, we're such suckers for falling for this shit time. And again, a big part of the video that I made is that we've been falling for it since

Starting point is 00:57:44 the literal late 19th century. Because this is the same shit Andrew Carnegie did. Like it's the oldest fucking trick in the book. So which begs the question, and I think about this often is, so what do we cap it at? A billion dollars, 500 million? Because even 500 million. What do we cap wealth at? Yeah, like, and also when you're, so to you Jeff Bezos is an example, he first hit $1 billion, $500 million, because even $500 million. What do we get? Well, that's. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:58:05 And also, to you, Jeff Bezos is an example. He first hit a billion dollars, however, 20 years ago. It's like, and when most of your wealth is tied up in the stock, your ownership of a company, is it, so when the market cap of the company reaches however much that gives you a billion dollars, does the government take enough away that it drops it back down below a billion? And then if the stock keeps appreciating, does the government keep taking away stock?

Starting point is 00:58:32 Like what is your opinion? I don't, I look, I am not the person should be crafting the policy. Sure. I will say that there's this claim that's often made that you can't tax the billionaires because their wealth isn't liquid. And so, you know, it's like Elon Musk, he's the world's richest man,

Starting point is 00:58:53 but most of it's Tesla stock. So how is he supposed to pay 30% of that, right? Here's the thing, all of those billionaires take loans out against that equity to fund their lifestyles. Like you on. Yeah. The bike borrowed dye thing, where you like, you just keep getting loans based on your collateral.

Starting point is 00:59:09 And then you end up, once you have that much money, you can get money out with it. But those loans can also be taxed. Like they're living off that. There's ways to figure it out. But I also would say they got here through like decades of bad policy. And so yeah, it just needs to be.

Starting point is 00:59:24 Yeah, I mean, like, so in the video I talk about how we put in, you know, during the new deal era, put in lots of different policies of different types, stronger labor unions, a much higher rate of taxation on income, a bunch of other shit. And as a result, like the age of robber barons, like ended for 50 years, we didn't have Mark Zuckerbergs and Jeff Bezos', if you look at, there was Carnegie, Rockefeller, DuPont, people like that, and now we've got Bezos and Musk and people like that in between. There's nobody because we put in a bunch of different policies that caused power to be distributed more equally

Starting point is 01:00:01 among mostly white people, but still like more equally in a lot of different senses, right? And that's something that we can do again. Like it's not, it's, when people start going, well, how are you gonna do it? I don't know, man, we'll figure it out. Let's agree on the principle first. That's a good point. And like, let's agree on the principle first. Yeah, but they're so cool. Do we really want Elon Musk to go away? Come on, man. That's cool. He's so happy. The most epic guy. That is part of the problem too. I do think, I mean, we're joking. We make fun of a lot. If you haven't noticed the title of the show is ironic. We like to poke fun in a lot of this stuff. But Trilina reminds us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, what's the, what, was it John Steinbeck with the, you know, the problem

Starting point is 01:00:48 with Americans is they don't see themselves as poor people, they see themselves as like disgraced millionaires who haven't made it yet. I think everyone's like, oh, well, if we institute these policies, I'm not going to be able to be that fucking guy someday and someday there's that, there's that. And then there's also the fact that people feel so alienated from society. They feel so hopeless. They feel like nothing they do matters.

Starting point is 01:01:13 That then when they hear about a billionaire doing something good, they're like, oh, maybe everything will be fine. Because Elon, I remember feeling that way myself. Like before I really started looking into Elon Musk, you know, this was like eight to 10 years ago, and I just heard about like, oh this guy is like investing so much money in like green technology and stuff like that.

Starting point is 01:01:33 I was like, I was like, oh, that's great. And I know that people felt that way about the Patagonia guy too. Oh, that's wonderful. Oh, a good one. Oh, oh, I feel relief. But like, the reason we have that emotion is because we've accepted this vision of our own powerlessness that is not true.

Starting point is 01:01:54 Like we have so much power, where we to get together, form into groups, get politically organized and fucking use it. We don't need these motherfuckers to decide how the world is supposed to run. We can do it together. We could also probably the three of us kick any one of their asses.

Starting point is 01:02:11 It's true. I know I could take Elon one on one. Look, Elon Musk is such a, he's such a fucking moron. He's one of the stupidest men to live. The guy stumbled into making some money on PayPal. Right? There's like five guys out there who could be so mad. We have found it.

Starting point is 01:02:30 He half that, look, by the way, I'm so sad that everybody hates Elon now, because I was the first, all right? And I was saying this back when everybody thought he was incredible and I was, there's nobody else seeing this. The guy is like partially responsible for PayPal, the the payment service that sucks. That's great job then he

Starting point is 01:02:50 Purchased as he purchased an interest in Tesla after the company started kicked out the original founder who sued them And then got an arbitrator to decide or maybe I forget exactly how they decided But he got himself listed as a co-founder invented nothing with that company SpaceX, you know why SpaceX exists? He bought it from guys. He bought it, but also the federal government decided it was gonna get out of the business of itself doing, you know, putting money, doing NASA

Starting point is 01:03:18 and sending people to space. And it said, we're gonna start like paying private companies to do it. And SpaceX was just like, we'll take that money please. And that's it. So it's a profitable company. But that's because it's just a fucking government space.

Starting point is 01:03:30 It's suckling at the government's team. And that's part of the reason why he is so fucking untouchable is because of their reliance on SpaceX at this point. I think, I mean, that's part of it. That he's been so, you know, he can do and say whatever he wants. He can just piss a little bit of money at whatever lawsuit comes his way. I mean, he's able to $44 billion to buy Twitter, which is great, by the way. I mean, he's like, that whole Twitter thing is just like, how fucking stupid can you be?

Starting point is 01:03:58 Like, every step of it was him making the stupidest decision anyone's ever made, right? Just like... I don't know, I feel like it by in parlors, it's up there. But I feel like maybe you just don't see his vision, because it's leading to X, which is the internet of everything. And it's gonna, he just cut three to five years off of X, so maybe you just don't see it. The tunnels are what drive me fuck tunnels. Oh, the fucking, you put a Tesla under Las Vegas and just drive through a tunnel at 35 miles an hour. Yeah. Like Like fucking cool. He, he, he, the guy destroyed so many public transportation projects. There were people forget the hyperloop, right?

Starting point is 01:04:32 Which was a fake plan that has never been built. When he announced it, it was specifically him saying we shouldn't build a bunch of other public transportation projects because I have a better one. And a bunch of projects were canceled because of the hyperloop which was fucking fake. Yeah, right. Like it's never been built and the boring company like it's just building a couple tunnels already existed motherfucker. Yeah. What the- what is your- what is any of this?

Starting point is 01:05:01 Thank you. Yeah. Oh man, when we saw that, I mean we were talking about the show We were like has this guy never seen a fucking subway that's gonna He's had to get explode when I mean that's what everybody. Yeah, like way do you hear about train? I mean Ridiculous, but I mean that lends itself to the stuff you talk about on the show of you know You talk about how basically since the 19 years and it started before that Carter was deregulating things and and it's been going on forever but there's been a complete loss of confidence in government and everyone's pushing that message

Starting point is 01:05:32 of like the private sector can do it better. And we're now living in the apex of like, this is what we trade it and we're getting to see. Not just government, because I think, look, that show is about the government and so of course we focused on that, but I think people get a little cut up on government. It was a loss of faith in public goods period on things being for the public. Things being public used to be a good thing in America, public pools, public transportation, public parks,

Starting point is 01:05:59 that used to be like a value. And if you go to some cities, you know, the reason I am a fan of, you know, I reason I am a fan of, you know, I grew up in New York and I love New York City. One of the reasons is there's still a lot of public shit in New York City. New York, you know, I was just there and people were like, oh my God, you got to see the park that they built under the Brooklyn Bridge. Domino Park too. They built, they built parks everywhere. They started public water taxies, like public fairies. Like it is a city that is still built on you know what? Everybody needs this. Let's make a really good one for now a lot of stuff still sucks in New York

Starting point is 01:06:30 But like when was the last time Los Angeles created something that's for the public and said wow look at how great this is You know it's a new New K line is good. They do that the same time that is they're cutting bus service Which is LA actually has a fantastic bus system that goes all over the city. And that's what most people rely on, but they're cutting bus service at the same time that they open the K-line,

Starting point is 01:06:53 which they're building for the Olympics. But even, I mean, during the pandemic, I went to go visit friends and... Oh, so you've got friends. Yeah, in New York, and they've got all these fucking public streets closed off, people are going down walking around, seeing each other outdoors in like a safe way.

Starting point is 01:07:09 And I was like, it is nice out all year round in LA. Why? I couldn't think of a place in LA where I could go do that. I was like, what the fuck? Why do they hate us having any sense of community? You know where you could go do that? There's a couple places in the Los Angeles area where you could go do that. You could go to Disneyland. No, for real. You could do it at the Grove at the Americana. You could do it at one of our many outdoor malls. And when

Starting point is 01:07:32 you think about it, where do people like to go to relax with their families? They like to in Southern California, they like to go to a place where they can park, and then they can walk around an area where there's lots of little shops and it's to eat and things to look at. A fucking city in other words. That is what Rick Caruso was running for mayor. That's what he's built his career on building for us. We could have that.

Starting point is 01:07:54 We could have that just all around us all the time and we wouldn't need to drive an hour and a half to Anaheim in our hot fucking bubbles. Because yeah, we could just do it if we were willing to build that world for ourselves. So part of the show, well, part of the show, I would say 60% of the show, the intent is to educate people on the stock market

Starting point is 01:08:17 and everything they're in. Yeah, and teach people, you know, because it's so much a part of what drives things politically, societally. Is that a word societally? Yeah, let's say it is. I'm just curious, do you own any stocks yourself? I have a bunch of index funds that are, I have a retirement account with a bunch of index funds in it. I'm a big, just, I just do that. The Vanguard shit. I do the Vanguard shit. Yeah. I read one blog post about the Bogelhead thing. You know this?

Starting point is 01:08:51 John Bogel, that's the guy who wrote it. Oh, the Vanguard. He's the founder of Vanguard. There's community of people online. They're like the Bogelheads. And the idea is, it's just Vanguard shit. It's like you get a really low cost index fund. You balance it out and then that's it.

Starting point is 01:09:05 Part of it is, too, he said, I think he was the guy who was running the numbers of, like, most investors aren't beating the market. So why aren't you just investing? Most investors aren't beating the market and they're paying like 3% in fees. Right, so you're just getting fucked when you can just said, pay 0.2% in fees

Starting point is 01:09:19 and just try to match the market. Right. And that is what, in fact, I do. What do you think of that? I can't remember his name, but there was this billionaire who famously gave away all of his fortune down to his last three million dollars because that's what he and his wife decided was just enough for them to skate by for the rest of their lives. You heard of this guy? I have not heard of that. Oh, shit. He'd be a great thing for you to ruin. Well, that's, that's an annoying thing. I mean, look, that would be,

Starting point is 01:09:46 if that's what he actually did, right? I believe it did. If he gave it to organizations run by other people that are good organizations, and if he didn't say, hey, here's what I want you to spend it on and stuff like that, if he actually gave up power in addition to money, then that is interesting to me.

Starting point is 01:10:04 You know, the, maybe there's a dark secret to her because I haven't looked into it, but Jeff Bezos' ex-wife. Mackenzie Scott. She can't give it away fast enough. If she is doing at least a better job than most of them are, because she's just like giving the money away. The alternative is you start a foundation that has your name on it, And then you're hoarding power, right?

Starting point is 01:10:27 Like when all these, you know, Zuckerberg, Buffett, all of them, they donate money to their own foundation and the foundation lives after they die. So sucking. Yeah, it's so suck. I mean, look, Lorraine Powell jobs, right, Steve Jobs's widow, is one of the most powerful women in America.

Starting point is 01:10:43 You never hear about her. Yeah, but she's incredibly powerful because she has this entire fortune that she is managing charitably, right? I'm sure she's putting it towards things that are, that are, I don't have any ill will towards her particularly, right? Because he died, she just, you know, inherited the money, right? But like, she, she has enormous power. So if you give up the power in addition to the money

Starting point is 01:11:05 then maybe we're talking so we need to seduce these women it's very frustrating to though cuz he didn't even let me finish well I didn't think it was gonna be serious I thought we got the joke I mean Mackenzie Scott just divorced that pathetic teacher guy I mean what was he thinking Mackenzie I don't know what's going on there but listen I'm young and I got so into that. I'm very fucking forget it. Sorry.

Starting point is 01:11:31 I'm glad we let you go through. Yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad we let you go through. That's the other 40% of the show is us doing that, can I say it? There's a charity called Give Directly. Have you heard of Give Directly? No.

Starting point is 01:11:41 They do direct cash transfers. And what they do is, you know, impoverished folks, they just literally give them like $1,000. And people in Africa, people in the United States. And it seems to be a very good model for helping people generally, because the idea is, well, you don't decide what is in their best interest they do.

Starting point is 01:12:01 The problem is they don't have money. So give them some fucking money, right? So if a Von Schenard said, I'm donating three billion dollars to give directly, and I have nothing to do with it anymore, I don't touch it at all, then I'm going to say, you know what? I still think a billionaire is a policy failure, if billionaires existed all, that's a problem, but he has given up power, right? But it's the power over the money and the political power that comes with it that I object to. It's also important to note that a lot of these non-profit ventures don't exactly work out, right?

Starting point is 01:12:33 So these billionaires, they get a lot of good will on the announcement. They're like Bill Gates and fucking Sergei Brinn, our teaming up, they're gonna fix education. And then- I wish they'd fix that YouTube algorithm Very good Ben and then And then everyone goes wow we love that they're turning on his money to fix it

Starting point is 01:12:54 But what they what doesn't get a lot of publicity is then three years later when they turn in their results and they go We didn't make any meaningful impact and it's just so frustrating because everyone assumes that okay This got made a billion dollars. Let's ask him about education. Let's ask him about transportation. Let's ask him about all these things. But no one's going to a fucking teacher and being like, hey, you know, did you see the numbers, the quarterly numbers for Google? What do you think about that? And it's because it's just fucking insane. And it's because these people are idiots. Like, I'm sorry. Okay, like Zuckerberg, right? Zuckerberg had a whole bunch of headlines,

Starting point is 01:13:27 he's gonna fix education, et cetera. The man can't even run a website. Like, Horizon, this new meta thing is, it fucking sucks ass. Can't even fix the YouTube algorithm. You can't even make legs. This is a better version of what you said. But like, he's currently face planting over and over again.

Starting point is 01:13:46 Announcing stuff that nobody wants that's failing on him massively. Right? So why should we, why should this guy have any power over our society? If we want to fix education, maybe we should ask, I don't know, the people who are using the education system, the students, the parents, we could perhaps get everybody together and have them all have conversations about it and then vote in some way to decide how to spend the fucking money. Yeah, right. You know, we're going to have to pay the greedy teachers and the teacher unions in a way.

Starting point is 01:14:15 You know, when you said a policy failure, billionaires are a policy failure. There was one stat that I saw and I'm butchering this, but I believe that in like 1980, the wealthiest American was worth something like two or three billion dollars. Mm-hmm. And the fact that like that blows my mind to think that back then, that's it. Like that's all you could pathetic 80s guys

Starting point is 01:14:37 were able to come up with a Paltry three billion dollars and that worth, we got Elon Musk, who's worth what, at his peak, like $300 billion. That's that right there should, that alone is, I mean, how do you argue with it? Just looking at the averages is the real, when you look at the average of CEO pay to worker pay

Starting point is 01:14:58 and how far they have gone, it is breathtaking. All you need to live like a king and never have any worries for the rest of your life is What 50 million dollars, you know? Right probably less I mean So much money. I'm so like a Right right right right Tiny fraction. Yeah, so if we're talking about a cap. It's like I mean, I'm very generous. I'll give him 50 million That seems like quite a lot, But who are you to decide, Adam Conover,

Starting point is 01:15:27 if I should have a 20-foot yacht or a 50-foot yacht, what if I would like five yachts? This is America, and I should be able to do as I please. What if I- What if I- What if I'd like a yacht so good? Well, then we have to dismantle a very old bridge that a lot of people love just to get it out

Starting point is 01:15:43 of the fucking shipyard. That is your God-given right. that is your god given right that is your god given right as a tax paying America as a tax dodging American excuse me we I I did want to bring up that that what we touched on in the beginning about about Twitter and dooms well actually no I really fast we we there's been a lot of talk about what the fed is doing with raising rates, and I'm curious what your opinion is only. Good, bad. Look, no opinion. I'm no expert in macroeconomics, so I... You seem like you know a lot about macroeconomics. Well, politics, I guess.

Starting point is 01:16:16 Hey, but there's a lot of experts out there who are completely fucking it up, so... Yeah, I mean, I guess that what I will say is that I think there's a growing awareness in America that the entire field of economics might be total bullshit. Oh, yeah. That, you know, economics has presented itself as a hard science for years when in fact, can physics or chemistry. Sure. When in fact, it's closer to, I don't know, psychology

Starting point is 01:16:46 or sociology, it's just like, it's all vibes, man. Of course, when a bunch of guys from the University of Chicago figure out a bunch of policies that can enrich a lot of people, they're like, yes, that is science now. We're gonna follow this. It's like theory made fact. You know, it's like, here's all I'd like the world to work,

Starting point is 01:17:03 and if everybody agrees with me, we can make the world work that way. And, you know, there's no, like, look, when I go look at Karl Marx, I'm like, wow, interesting writer, but I'm not sure that we should like follow this to the letter when we're building a country. You know what I mean? It's like, this is philosophy, this is poetry, this is interesting shit, but you know what I mean? And I feel the same way about the people who are deciding our macroeconomic system today, but it's not something that I've studied thoroughly enough myself to say, I think the Fed should

Starting point is 01:17:36 or shouldn't be doing this. I think that, but if you were to tell me, hey, the entire monetary system of capitalism is fucked up and we should sweep it away and bring in something new, I'd say, yeah, that's pretty sympathetic to that argument. Tell me more. Yeah. Do you think that we're going to have any hope of Congress self-regulating in terms of like

Starting point is 01:17:58 not being able to trade stocks anymore? Oh. Like, it should all be, I think that it should all be put, all their money should be put into blind trust, where they have no idea because there's such glaring conflicts of interest. There was that art, I think this is this Wall Street Journal thing. Yeah, the Wall Street Journal just, because I'm sure you heard that all the Congress members were trading on information, but the Wall Street Journal just did an investigation into

Starting point is 01:18:23 the executive branch. So people on all different departments trading on regulations coming through and all this shit, it's insane. You know, I have to say that I'm not sure that that is the biggest conflict of interest happening in Congress. I'm sure it happens to an extent, but like, I mean, like what's more likely that somebody is going to push a policy in Congress because they own stock or is it because as soon as they leave Congress, they're going to get a job for a million dollars a year as a lobbyist. That's a good point.

Starting point is 01:18:55 Like, the revolving door, I think, is to me the more glaring conflict of interest. I so I think, yes, it's like a problem and it's good that people are mad about it, but it's, I think it's probably not highest on my list. Right, like someone from Goldman Sachs heading the SEC is more a problem. Yeah, absolutely. Or somebody like, you know, who's about to go work at Goldman Sachs in a second, you know?

Starting point is 01:19:16 I mean, it's like all the Obama people immediately went to go to work for Uber, you know? Like that shit. And then when Joe Biden got elected, they were like, hey, everyone come back. Yeah, we're doing it again. Exactly right. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:19:28 Well, folks, we're being told, well, we're not being told anything, but we're near, we're now, oh, Bob Boo. Yeah, that's a good time. Uh, you know, should we talk? What, what are you? Are you seeing how much my shorts are hiking up back here?

Starting point is 01:19:43 Yeah, I'm seeing it. It's the only thing I'm seeing thing you're seeing is the camera. I'm blinded by this. Like it. I mean, it looks good, but I don't, you know, I don't know how it looks from that angle. It looks great. You got some thick quads and hammies there, my man.

Starting point is 01:19:57 Look at those. Geez, you must be able to slam them in the basket right here. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. You can see it. This man has a half. You know, I think this out. And he's put that. He's putting them right on. Look, I, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, got so mad about this, I wrote an article about it for Defector. I got so mad.

Starting point is 01:20:25 We can't get into it, but go look it up on there. A wonderful sports website Defector. If you want to hear how the fucking, might be a billionaire at the very least mega millionaire owner of former owner of the Dodgers, who still runs the... Frank McCourt. Yeah. Totally fucked up the marathon just to save a little bit of money by changing the course that way. Thank you. Yeah. totally fucked up the marathon just to save a little bit of money by changing the course that way. That guy. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:20:45 I'm using how many things you can trace back to a rich dude. To Frank McCoy. Pretty much all of them. Which is entirely the point, you know? Right. Yeah. Well, so, is there anything you'd like to plug? I can think of maybe like one or two things.

Starting point is 01:20:59 There's some Netflix show, right? Yeah, I got that Netflix show, the G word. Check out my podcast, Factually. I talk to a different fascinating expert from around the world of human knowledge Every single week and learn all the shit that they know that I don't know and that you might not know and We hang out. We're about to have We've all know a harrari the guy wrote sapiens on the show We had resa oslana on for our first video episode a couple weeks ago

Starting point is 01:21:24 Oh, the Iranian with the Iranian Revolution. The Iranian Revolution. Yep. We are starting to get elected. Zontalk to Pete Buttigieg a couple weeks ago about transportation. Are you going to ask him if he's ever going to let the airline industry stop putting them over his knee and spaking his little heiny? Already had him on.

Starting point is 01:21:41 I did ask him about that. And his answer was not totally complete, but it was interesting, you can listen to it. Okay. He's like, oh, we need a passenger's bill of rights. I'm like, you need to fucking kick some ass in there, Pete. Well, they always do that, and you always have to go, I don't know if you know this, but you're actually

Starting point is 01:21:59 the head of the Department of Transportation. You're the guy, that's dirt. It's like when Newsom was standing in the middle of the wildfire, the forest all burnt out, and he's like, we need someone to do something. You might be like the third most powerful guy in the country. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:22:15 Yeah. That's a problem. Yeah, and it takes, look, that's leadership is to, everybody else sees constraints. It says, oh, we can't do anything. And leadership is to say, hold on a second, we're gonna change political reality. And that's what FDR did.

Starting point is 01:22:31 We're gonna bring a new world into being, we're gonna convince people, we're gonna do what people previously thought was impossible. That's my main criticism of Obama actually, is I think he had the opportunity to do that. And I think he allowed himself to be constrained by what he was told or what he believed were political realities rather than saying,

Starting point is 01:22:50 no, I can change the center of political gravity. And I can get things done that no one thought was possible because he was elected in the first place. You know, no one thought that his election was possible. That's my backseat driving, you know. Uber passenger driving. Uber passenger driving. Uber passenger driving. You guys want to talk about Uber, do you want to talk about it?

Starting point is 01:23:07 Yeah, tell us real fast, you're, you're, you're gripe with Uber. Uber sucks, right? You know, here's the problem that Uber has. We were talking on the way over, is I had to take an Uber here because I was tightly scheduled. I'm gonna take the subway back.

Starting point is 01:23:19 But you, I hate taking Uber's. You hate taking Uber's. I can't stand it. You hate them because, because I am seriously the best driver in Los Angeles. I'm great, I'm courteous, I don't accelerate too hard, I don't break too hard, I keep it cool, it's constantly in the middle. The low 60s in my car, because I keep the AC on,

Starting point is 01:23:38 I'm not, if you've got hot coffee in your lap without a lid on, it's not getting on you. You're not spilling it. Uber drivers, it stinks, they don't, they're skimpy with their air conditioning, You've got hot coffee in your lap without a lid on. It's not getting on you. You're not spilling it. Uber drivers, it stinks. They don't, they're skimpy with their air conditioning. They don't know how to fucking drive. They take turns too hard.

Starting point is 01:23:51 They're gas break, gas break. If you're in traffic with the Uber driver, God bless you. Good luck. Well, there's a couple of things going on here. So, the first one is that it's a lot more fun to drive than just to ride in a car. So sometimes people say, I love hitting the gas. That's really fun for the driver sucks to be the passenger.

Starting point is 01:24:07 So that's a problem that all drivers have. That my dad drives that way. But the other piece of it is that Uber pays the drivers so little you literally cannot make money doing it. I have many friends who have driven Uber and they did it for two weeks and they're like, oh, I realized I was losing money between the gas, between the waiting around.

Starting point is 01:24:27 Put in the miles on your car. Put in the miles on your car. Absolutely, they pay so fucking little that that means the only people who can drive Uber are people who are living on a fucking edge. These are people who are, you know, like borrowed their cousins, shitty old Honda Fit. You know, they're like, if I just like pop pills and drive for 18 hours without stopping, I can make enough to afford rent, you know, like borrowed their cousins, shitty old Honda Fit, you know, they're like, if I just like pop pills and drive for 18 hours without stopping, I can make enough to afford rent, you know? That means that every time you get in an Uber,

Starting point is 01:24:50 you're getting in the car of somebody who like is living really precariously, you know, I'm making the jokes, but it's like you get in an Uber in LA. And like sometimes I get in one and I'm like, I feel so bad for this fucking person, they're driving an Uber, like sometimes I'll just hand the person a 20 as I get in one and I'm like, I feel so bad for this fucking person. They're driving an Uber. Sometimes I'll just hand the person a 20 as they get out of the car

Starting point is 01:25:08 because I'm like, you fucking need the money so badly. So, and I think that contributes to a lot of the discomfort of being in an Uber, right? Now, I don't put that on the driver because I'm like, this is the fucking, sorry, situation that our economy is in. But I also think it's a problem for Uber as a company because Uber got its start catering to rich people, right?

Starting point is 01:25:27 Saying it's everybody's private driver. You can get like a black car service. And they eventually like slid down the slope until now they pay so little that it's like really impoverished people driving Uber. And guess what? Rich people don't want to ride in poor people's cars. He told me.

Starting point is 01:25:42 Just like fundamentally, they don't want to. And so now there's other services, there's like a service called alto that's like a much more of a black car experience that's riding. Oh yeah, they'll have to be Buick on claims. They're all Buick on claims. They cost like, you know, they cost like about twice

Starting point is 01:25:57 as much as a newbie or sometimes more, sometimes less. But that's like, you know, and by the way, that's the high margin part of the business, right? That's how Apple makes money. Apple makes their money because they don't sell the cheap phones, they sell the ones where, they sell the phones to the rich people because they make a higher margin that way.

Starting point is 01:26:13 So Uber has like somehow tricked themselves by wanting to pay their labor so little that they have like slid down the slope. So the product is so bad, people fucking hate using it, and people when given a better option will. And the whole appeal of all of these services used to be, hey, Uber is better than driving, it's better than public transportation,

Starting point is 01:26:35 it's better than a cab. Now it's worse than all three of those. And it makes traffic worse. And it makes traffic worse. So I think they've really like they've really gotten themselves to a really bad spot as a company where they're both being cruel to the drivers and to the customers and everybody fucking hates the service. Now they just take it because like, well, I have to because you know it eviscerated every private cab company. It killed public transportation. A lot of cities.

Starting point is 01:27:01 They ended up cutting back on public transportation services because a lot of cities they ended up cutting back on on public transportation services because you know a lot of people were taking new burs instead and now we're stuck with the service that we all hate anyway my podcast is called factually that's what you asked me to do 10 minutes ago please please listen we love it go check it all out his new his new YouTube page I imagine you're gonna do more videos oh yeah I have the first one I am here. And go watch his latest one. It's great.

Starting point is 01:27:28 Subscribe to Factually. Check out the G-word on Netflix. Is there gonna be a season two? No, that was a mini-series, but I'm hoping that I will be able to find a new spot on television somewhere that wants to hear rants like this and pay union wage to let me hire people to help me write them. Hell yeah, we love that.

Starting point is 01:27:46 Maybe Obama's looking to collab again. If you know, ask him for this interview, sorry. Ask him if he wants to come on the show. Oh, if you can never... On the this show, oh, that'd be so great. Do you have his phone number? I'd also be. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:27:58 Yeah. Well, thanks so much for coming on. This was so much fun. You guys, thank you. And if this is your first time watching us, we hope you fucking press that button. You better press it. And as always, we say on this show,

Starting point is 01:28:12 kill your job, wait, kill your, fuck, I haven't said it in so long. Quit your job, kill your parents, shit your parents. That's the sign off? Yeah, well, it's, it used to be a lot of, does it always leave you hanging like that at the end? No, no, it's... Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha So long folks, thanks guys. This week on After Hours. It's After Hours, anything goes. Everybody on the fucking ground.

Starting point is 01:28:47 Yes, now! Get on the ground now, come look at me! Ow! I'm pregnant and I'm mad even more. Not yet! Not yet! I can't believe this. Sign up on TMGStudios.tv to watch the full bonus episode.

Starting point is 01:28:59 watch the full bonus episode.

The Trillionaire Mindset - 56: Adam Conover Ruins Our Podcast! (ft. Adam Conover)

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