Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 421: Cart Blanche

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

Aaron & Tom review the state of the holiday retail climate, the history of America's vapor economics, the CNN x Kalshi collab, and financing Air Jordans at 22% interest. Subscribe to our patreon today: https://www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Thank you. Well, Aaron, you'll be happy to know that consumer confidence and consumer power also, too, at an all-time high. Is that so? Yeah, I don't know if you've perhaps seen the latest news. The numbers coming in from Black Friday, but they tell a story, my friend. And the story is that things have never been better. They tell a retail. They retell the story that, you know, just speaks to how good things are going.

The breakdown of the Black Friday data comes in. This is from Adam Cochran on Twitter who notes that it was a 9.1% increase spend from last year. So that's good. That's good news. Okay. Here's the, here's where, you know, some of the doomsayers are saying it's bad, me. I kind of take it as a good sign that we're going to be financing our lunch through Klarna soon. 95% of the sales volume was financed on Black Friday.

And of that 95% roughly $1 billion was spent using BNPL, which I had to ask my economist friends what that meant. But it's just a shorthand for buy now, pay later. and uh can ask the obvious question is in these plans i'm assuming that there's a there's an exorbitant amount of interest right relative to like you know what uh like what you you know what you bought Aaron and fairness that's between the lender and the creditor or the lender and the lendee I'm sorry 67% of that intends not to pay off within 30 days so that's when the them entrance fees really start

racking up on you. Now listen I ain't casting aspersions on anybody I once bought a pair of Spider-Man Air Jordan 1s on a firm

The Mars Borrella shit Yeah yeah yeah Yeah And I don't know What that says about me That I was You know like 33 years old And still doing shit like that

But Hey brother I'm 30 Listen man I just bought I got to send through a picture But I just went to A vintage store

It's like kind of a pop-up In Asheville and this guy was selling this teal purple white track suit like nylon brother I bought that shit and I'm planning to buy a pair of a great Air Jordan 5s to go along with it

so just to just to give the fans a little bit of drip teas but also no shame there brother you know listen I think I got them for like a little above retail I think they were like 180 at the time I think I got them for like 210 by the time I paid them bitches off

I was in 360 on them Well, let's I want to get you your friend But this is something that you always say Is that, you know, we always talk about on the show Is that there in this country There always has to be a middle man, you know And the insidious nature of it is, you know,

During Black Friday, during the holidays When people don't have a lot of like, you know, income To spend like that is that Hey man, if I could find this this shit for like $13.65 cents For the next 27 months You know what I mean? Then maybe that I could get my girlfriend's iPhone 16 or something like that or whatever it is. I understand the mindset completely.

I do, I do too. Listen, man. Well, particularly as we're in this sort of rentier society now, you know what I mean. Right, right. The rentier society. Even if you've got sterling credit and you've never had to know the temptation of being like, well, should I bust this up into 24 easy installments? Even though I'm going to pay triple the price. well you know we don't own anything anymore anyway so you know nobody should be sitting on

their perch saying like okay you sir that's uh you know buying your wife that sweater on clorna and busting it i get it i get that's how i mean that's how they bum hooked this i mean of course you know growing up the way we did we were the testing round for these models you know even back in the 90s you know what about what about what about layaway i don't i know i know layaway is layaway like you pay a down was it you paid a down payment for them to hold the product lay away a little a little different because you don't get to go home with it immediately right right right right it's that you know you can go back and pick it up once you've paid it off you know i think that's a little bit right but i don't know if char's interest for holding that

i don't i don't think they did but i do think though not think i keep calling you up but i do want to say just to round out i do think that it it shoppers were prepared for that because like Living paycheck to paycheck, you can't cash out, you know what I mean, however much money it is to buy a flat screen TV so you could watch, like, you know what I'm saying, the Super Bowl before that shit comes on, you know what I mean? No. People can't afford to do that shit. Well, bro, I mean, listen, I don't think I got a Christmas present one in my entire

childhood. It wasn't. So I don't know if you, you might have. I never had a birthday by entire childhood, dog. Like a birthday party? None of that. I did have some birthday parties. I have to say, I can't act like I was a little orphan Annie or anything like that.

I got presents, but I never, you know, I never got a birthday party. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, I grew up in a single-parent house, so I grew up in the housing projects. I, you know, I've, I lived that whole catastrophe, you know. Right. And when I was a kid, I don't know if you, you might not be old enough to remember this, but there used to be a catalog called Fingerhut. Which is always kind of a funny name, Fingerhut.

That sounds like an early 2000s, like 480P port website. You know what I'm saying? Finger Hut was, yeah, that's exactly what it sounds like. What it was was an early 90s, you know, a catalog, but it was a subprime catalog. So, yeah, you could buy the shit straight up at like a markup or like what they wanted you to do is to like every fucking place is take out the finger. or a huck card and get a charge account or whatever and then you get charged like monthly installments but the logo was a finger like this pointing to you and it had like a bow tied around the finger it's very very insidious very ominous and things that that seems like that would be like the

iconography for like a petal flower ring you know what I'm saying well here's the thing that it did instead that was I had my eyes so when I was a kid you know Jordan was obviously the guy but Air Jordans, just like, I mean, I had a pair, I think I had the sevens or something like that, the first, like, BoG Sevens. And then I had the ones that Chris Cross, which one of those, the eights. The eights, yeah, the eights, yeah, based off the air raids. Yeah, them shit's a hot as fuck, like, literally hot, like, to make your feet really warm. It's not a lot of ventilation in those bad boys. Now, it's not an indictment on how good I think the shoe is.

It's just literally just make sure the feet sweat. Jordans, I love Jordans, and I think there's some, like, good Jordans, but, like, I've never had a pair of Jordans that look good. on me like I had a pair of ones that in there with the right outfit maybe but like yeah I wore the black cat threes to basketball the other day because I bought them like 10 years ago on a whim back when I was just like well you know and that those shits look so bad on me you know what I mean what size you wear 11 11 okay so you look like you got boats on your feet then you got pretty you don't got really large feet actually I got boyfriend size for you yeah Well, you know her boyfriend dick?

Like, it's not small, it's not big, it's just, you know, that thing. Like, I could do, I could do well with it. Yeah, right, right, right, right. Yeah, so I had those, but none of those ever looked good on me, but one pair that I always wanted, okay, these ain't Jordans, but my other idol growing up was the rain man, Sean Kemp. Okay, I don't know if you know where I'm going with this, but I wanted the Reebok kamikazis,

which was the Sean Kemp signature show. Oh, is that that shoe with the kind of half ring, sort of like circle type designs? That's the shacknosis. That's the shack. Okay, okay, okay. The shacknosis. The kamikazes did a different thing. They almost look like, I guess,

like the floor of the black lodge in Twin Peaks. It's like that Chevron. It's not quite a Chevron, but it's like this swirly, like kind of zigzagging back. Swooping, kind of oscillating zigzag. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so those sheds were hard. hard body when we were kids and so I grew up playing in this like housing project league because

none of us ever made the school team because it was like none of us had enough money to like buy our way onto the team you know what I mean right so we started our own housing project league which was funny because we were mostly white housing projects and we'd go to like Louisville and play these black kids and get ran you know what I mean like sometimes we would put up a good fight but it's getting like skis versus shirts you know kind of that scenario but whites of versus blacks yeah yeah yeah my home boy reggie spay i don't know if reggie's out there reggie was like one of like three black kids on our team you know what i mean and i could imagine reggie just was like man i got to go travel to louvo with these crackers again and

get work by 30 you know because he could hoop you know we had some players that could hoop i'm being a little i'm not being as charitable as i should to us but it was funny dog we would go to practice and this is when wendy's had the super bar now if you're young listening to this the super bar was like a buffet line at windies and they had like this chili chips and cheese like you can make these nacho shits you know what i mean they had like uh all this different stuff you can make salads like whatever but the it was like open it was like open buffet bar type of style open open buffet bar type of style at windies yeah they've discontinued it now i guess in the era of worrying about you know communicable diseases and so forth also not in this

economy, brother. Well, the rumor was that being at Welch, our high school business teacher, got hepatitis A from the Super Bar. So that was the beginning of the end, you know. But we would go before our practice, like our little housing projects league, it would be like 12 of us. And we're like the radiest, like, fucking bad news bears looking bunch you ever seen in the world.

One of the guys on the team was this guy, Ricky Dean, who I was telling you about, I think maybe for the Halloween episode, So we were talking about how his, his mom believed he had psoriasis, but his mom believed it was because she got scared by a turtle on a fishing trip when she was pregnant with him and like the turtle somehow marked him, you know? I would say out of all the animals,

out of all the animals that could possibly mark a human being with a curse or possibly for death, I would put a turtle pretty low on that list, brother. Yeah. Well, his ricketts guy named Flint, who was a left-handed. I don't know if you know,

it's left, everything. Like, Flint's still to this day maybe the most visually stunning athlete I've ever seen. And I've watched a lot of Roger Federer.

I watched a lot of Michael Jordan. I'd still put Flint there and, you know, if he'd had an opportunity, he would have been very good. Yeah, anyway, there's a bunch of us. We'd roll in there.

And, like, we would pull the old maneuver where, like, we would pay for one super bar. It'd be 12 motherfuckers back in. They wouldn't say nothing to us. We used these ratty housing projects. Nowadays, they'd fucking had a shot probably,

like by the cops or whatever. who just germane to the last episode I do not endorse then nor now unless my position on that was not clear enough but like we were piling there we'd pay for one super bar everybody everybody would go up and order a cup a water cup you know so you get the free water cup

and one of us we'd pile our coins together and order one super bar and we'd just take turns because it was all you could eat we'd just take turns going up and let a different motherfucker eat and then Flynn I'd never forget took his water cup and he would there was like a direct line to the bathroom that like ran by they they had this dessert and it was like this like gelatinous strawberries and banana concoction and they also had like the chocolate pudding and the vanilla pudding and shit and you could get all the fixings in there too

flint grabbed his free water cup we went and just scooped a bunch of like with his hand in the shit as he was past a lot of it actually like in one clean clean move to the bathroom that's how he ate before the matches and shit though before the games and everything tournaments and all that shit but anyway I wanted to show up in the kamikazes the shan kemp kamikazes like I was so committed to this in the back of my head I had the razor straps on the side yeah and in the back of my head I had Kemp 40 shaved into the back like I was you were like those kids that they thought that uh that buy and jays would make them hoop like Mike, you know, like that famous, uh, what is the, like Lee commercial.

Yeah, I think, yeah, that's what, that's what I was on. But so I approached my mom about it. I was like, look, when we finger hut these bitches. I didn't say it that way, but that was my, in essence, my proposal. Hey, listen, I need to finger hunt these bitches. So we had like, basically had a 22% node on some, you know, Reebok high tops for about four years because I had to have them for this tournament. As long after I, like, because you're still growing then, you know.

You know what I mean? Like long after, like, I quit wearing that size shoe, you know. And so we probably ended up paying like $500 for those shoes that were probably retail like 100. Because Reeboks weren't like quite as expensive as Nike's in those days. But, you know, in any case, I have no short experience financing very dumb things out of not necessarily. I would call it necessity. But, you know, sometimes when you're poor and you have some wants, you know, sometimes a month is important so you gotta make some concessions you know listen man um i was i wanted to buy

lego finally released a star trek set uh which is a model of the uh the ship from the next generation um the one with uh patrick stewardess john look piccard and it's like 400 bucks man you know and i got it you know but i also want to shop around you know for a couple other people for christmas i don't just want to splurge it myself But, you know, if they had offered it, man, and maybe if I was in the position, you know, that I really, really wanted it, like something that I really wanted, I could totally see, you know, being like, yeah, man, I'll pay $1999, you know, for the next, like, nine months to get a Star Trek Lego set, you know? Right, listen, you know, something we've talked about on this show, ad nauseum, especially in the last, say, year or something is the idea that, like, this U.S. economy is built on vapor, you know what I mean? like that it's all sort of smoking mirrors and whatever and that you know we have this engine has been coasting on like our post-World war two dominance in manufacturing long long after

that shit has already sailed for the most part you know and what's funny to think about is like like it's been vapor for a minute like when I think about it like the ways in which like in the 80s it was like the access to easy credit which kind of started this whole model in in motion right you know while Reagan was doing what he was doing is well documented all of us were getting like you know master cards and visa and everything and then like that was kind of like you didn't have that before that I mean I was talking with a mentor of mine the other day and I didn't know this but the owner of the San Diego or did the Los Angeles Chargers was this guy Baron Hilton who launched a credit card company called carte blanche and he named his team the Chargers

One, because he would go to the USC and Dodgers games and they would go, one, two, three, charge, like when the team would come out in the field and stuff. But that became shorthand for why we charge something, like if something's called like a charge card or whatever. Wow. So anytime you see that, if you really wonder how much in the fabric of America is woven, the idea of easy credit, look no further than one of the teams of our Sunday ritual that is so powerful, it's usurped God. for that day. It's called the chargers. Not because it's like, you know, a lightning.

They're mascots, you know, or they're like insignias or lightning bolts or whatever. But it's actually named because the former owner of the team had a credit card called carte blanche that was really and truly back in those days. It was like, you know, you would go charge something. They would like put your shit down and like run that little machine over. Did you ever do that? There's like. Yeah. I've seen it in older movies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've actually had that happen. I had that happen in, like, the early 2000s in Pikeville, Kentucky, where I was like, what is this shit? Were they actually? So did they not just transition over to, like, I guess, like a modern, what, POS system or some shit like that? It wasn't, it wasn't digital. It was like they put the thing, put the imprint on there and gave me a receipt of it. I guess they would, like, turn that in or whatever.

They would call the credit card company. Really and truly, I think that was the hallmark of a tax cheat. If you were still in the early 2000s with one of the 80s style, like, you know, imprint. rent machine credit card things. But basically it was, the credit card initially was billed as like for businessmen or like salary men to like give their wife so they could just go like, you know, do whatever frivolous shopping, you know. Basically, Baron Hilton was the guy that came up with the concept of women be shopping early

on, I guess, or something like that. Not that's, again, I think I get to make these things straight. Not that's a position I agree with because. Hey, niggas be shopping too. I buy niggas. I mean, man. Not just black men. I'm shopping too, you know.

So, anyway. So, yeah, we go from that, you know, kind of kicks off the vaporic and out. Well, it's probably even before that. I mean, you know, I don't even know what motherfuckers were doing with, you know, merchant seaman insurance and shit back in the 1600s. That seemed like a racket then, you know what I mean? I mean, how would you, what would the merchant, the maritime, the ancient maritime sea version be of like a credit card or,

getting something like and having to pay off like a load bro you know that's what they tried to sell us that's what they that's the that was their example they tried to sell us on with obamacare which is men you both know it just ended up being a yeah yeah a huge handout to the insurance companies and like the insurance itself is varying degrees of effective or useful you know what I mean but like you still have to carry it otherwise you get the tax penalty so there's that you know so which i'm going to be paying it this year I guess you know it kind of it kind reminds me of um maybe this is a really bad analogy but I was just thinking of like um earlier forms of credit and it's like you know it's like you know

they would send all these uh like folks like Columbus and these conquistadors right and they'd give them all the shit all the ships that they need and all the men that they need and the supplies that they need and the hopes that they would go to the new world and bring back spices or gold you know yeah and um i guess that's what the way it is man you know we get we get we get we get all this shit and uh we're supposed to you know and we're left smallpox in the... We're like, yeah, we're left with a smallpox and we get ruined off the island of Jamaica

and die from like, you know, some gastro intestinal disease. Yeah, scurvy. Rick and die for guidance. And scurvy and other nutrient deficiency related... I mean, we die essentially like Christopher... I don't know if Christopher Globus died in debt, but we essentially die in debt and, you know...

You know, it's often said that somebody died broke and penniless in France. Usually it was syphilis, but not always. You know what I mean? It seems like Columbus may have died one of those deaths. I don't know. no or maybe that was oscar wild who also had the best parting words of anybody i've ever heard of where he said where were they get he hated the wallpaper in the room that he was dying he and as

he was getting ready to die he said either the wallpaper goes or i do honestly pretty good that's pretty good but yeah i mean so this shit is all america's i mean from the foundation has been you know funny money factored in heavily into it all you know so and then like now receive now i paid off later right yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean like now you know it's okay so we talked about the access to easy credit and how that's all woven in and culture and then now into like AI and all this stuff it's just like a continuation of the dot com boom and all that stuff motherfuckers been getting like insanely wealthy and by extension insanely powerful frivolously in this country like for time immemorial you know what i'm saying

100%. That's how this kind of was founded. Yeah. So, like, you know, if you're like, great, great, great, great, great, grandfather was like a fruit baron or something, you know. He was probably a horrible slaver, but, you know, like, you know, that's a whole thing. But, you know, there was fruit there. You know what I mean? This ain't even.

Like, now they got motherfuckers hemmed up, you know, financially dead the rights, but we ain't got nothing but fucking air. Yeah, at least there you have fruit ed slave. he was not I was not listen you got to be you got to be careful on this program these people are

ballhawks man you gotta say I'm not endorsing fruit slavery either you're being a slave apologist god damn man now I'm I'm in my head now

because these motherfuckers you know anyway how you good bro yeah so no man but I'll tell you what though

Ben. I think that it's only, it's only going to get worse because nobody can afford to buy anything, you know. And again, people are constantly, I mean, it's not as if, like, especially I was thinking about this with technology, with phones especially, consumer electronics. You don't need to buy a new phone every year, you know. Or even every four years. Or even every four years to be four years, to be honest with you do. So, yeah, man, I can only imagine that these ingenious financiers like Klarna, because that's been offered to me and I thought about it before I went buying something online, you know. You can, you can, it's a safe space. You ever succumbed to the temptation? Not yet, man. I was thinking for some sneakers, bad, but I was like, I did what I have to say probably you did with

the Capacazis. Just like the idea that I'd be paying maybe more, you know what I mean, than I'd be able to. But I'm like, no, y'all can pay off like 13, 65 and like 13 months, dude. That's nothing, you know? Yeah, shit, I can do that standing on my head. It's like doing a bid. you know what I mean it's like like five years if I can make it off of five million like shit I can do five years standing on my head motherfuckers dead in three months nobody's as tough as they think they are yeah nobody is man we all we also cope you know so anyway news to exactly nobody that the u.s. economies held up with popsicle sticks and

fucking construction glue but nobody can afford it by shit but at least at least I'm transitioning to a new news item here at least our news organizations our watchdogs and society are now following the ESPN slash fan duel route and integrating gambling

into the wholesale experience of watching the fucking news this is did you see this Aaron no you know what call she is oh the fuck is up call she is basically a sort of i don't know how you would put it exactly it is basically a stock market for you know how like uh stock x is the stock market for sneakers i'm just trying to put it in terms

that maybe you find more related you know what i mean and like the price fluctuates based on how sought after a particular sneaker is or whatever call she does that before For politics, sports, entertainment, crypto, weather, and the ever popular, many, many more. So now and now. So basically it does this for everything happening now. Where basically you can like, it basically creates, or like, it's like an app-based, like, sort of market for goings-on. Yeah, for current events. Yeah, for current events.

So when the big short came out, you know, and, you know, we've seen like examples. of this, you know, like the, like the, you know, the shorting of game stop a couple years ago when all these captains of industry got mad at these little ragtack. And granted, a lot of those guys were annoying. Yeah, they were annoying. But, and a lot, I think a lot of those guys, too, thought they were doing some, I don't know, some cyber anarchist sort of thing, you know what I mean? And probably a lot of them were, you know, or thought, or, I mean, I thought they were. You know what I mean? But, again, tech gets in there and, you know what I mean? But, again, tech gets in there, and fucking makes everything miserable with their stupid-ass fucking aesthetics and worldview.

And so, you know, they took a Dave and Goliath story and made it very fucking annoying. So anyway, Kalshi is now partnered with CNN to integrate prediction markets into its global newsroom. The release says. So hold up. What can you make money off of and gamble off of like is, you know, is this person going to die you know is Israel going to bomb another hospital there's another police shooting going to happen like I mean I don't who's going to win this election one of these two I think my hunch is that it will it's going to be a little more geared toward okay who's going

to win this race in whatever state for the house or whatever and then you know it's going to give real time you know positions and stuff like that and then I think what it'll end up well what we'll get to as we dive further into this hellscape is there will be like live live betting on whether the president gets assassinated or not and by who dude you know you know what that reminds me of there well two things i went to say one that kind of reminds me of this ballard story j g ballad where um the president's i think he's parodying ragan um but the president's physical condition is actually sort of like live streamed i guess so there's like a kairon role at the bottom of the screen, updating you on his bowel movements and shit like that.

You know what I mean? And this is all to distract people from World War III, which is actually happening. What is this now? This is the J.G. Ballard short story. Oh, okay. It just reminded me of you. Yeah, it just reminded me of. I was like, that doesn't seem like too hard to, that doesn't seem like a big reach now.

It does not at all, actually. It does not at all. He wrote this shit like the 80s. But also, too, man, I blame people like Nate Silver for shit like this, you know? for sort of the predictability and it's not the gamification what can I well how is it I guess it's sort of like this empirical data driven you know like way to look at politics you know that's completely dematerialized you know it's just complete it's just this really cold logic and rational kind of way that doesn't really explain anything at all you know and he's also frequently

wrong so I don't know I blame people like Nate Silver for us. for giving that that sort of, I don't know, sort of analytical edge to our politics, you know? Yeah.

And we kind of talked to about this a little bit when Mandy was on a couple weeks ago, but like, also too, it's like just not that different, not that dissimilar

like we just discussed about like, ESPN has incorporated the gambling apps into the wholesale experience of watching sports now. And it's like up to the second. You know what I mean?

Right. And like how that, and now we're taking that model and, transposing it onto the news it's hard not to see the world as i mean i hate to sound like when those people's like it's all simulation but it's almost like they're trying to make it appear so do you know what i mean like to where like we're taking things in real time and like we're going to apply like sort of a uh a casino logic to it is like crude in a way that i that like discuss even me

and you know i had a cousin that once worked for a guy named billy walters okay this is what reminds me of so i've talked about my cousin on here before but he's a professional game where he's widely considered one of the best pot limit omahats of poker players in the world he was in one of the world series events last year and finished like six like he's like really really sure and prior to like really rolling up the stakes and given all that ago he worked for this guy named billy walters who is from kentucky actually from munferville Kentucky and he describes himself as like just a hillbilly that done good and he started out and sort of the little you know backroom gambling parlors in the south and stuff like making

little wagers on different things like what in new york you would call numbers you know the numbers yeah yeah yeah so a similar deal and so bill billy wrote a book i guess probably two years ago it's called uh gambler and it's like uh the memoir of a life at risk and he basically just talks about like his whole existence in gambling down to professional golfer Phil Mickelson selling him out to the Saudis and wanting his revenge on Phil Mickelson but my cousin worked for Billy and the way Billy did it did things is he would have a guy in every city and I think maybe I'd even talked about this with mania a little bit but he would have a guy in every city that has like that has casinos basically in America

my cousin was his guy in Cincinnati on the river. So he would show up at a, at a, like, an expected time to get the best lines, you know, the best odds when they first come out at the best, you know. So that's another way that, like, the gambling apps have their thumb on the scale is like by the time it comes downstream to you, like Mr. Draft Kings or Fandle, like the odds have dramatically changed and you're already getting the worst of it. Right. That's why it's like, you know, you don't have that insider knowledge. just objectively, you know, kind of a dumb thing. But part of my cousin's remuneration for running basically wagers for this guy who's widely considered the most successful gambler in the world in the history, okay, was he got access

to his brain trust and his models and stuff. And these were like honed not only by him, obviously, but by like these MIT grads and all this stuff. And there was like this big elaborate thing. think so even people who were old school like him were kind of transitioning to these models that you know i don't think a i factored in at that point i'm not sure now because he doesn't work for him anymore obviously and i don't know what's happening with the billy walter's brain trust but there are no there at that time it was like mostly like math nerd shit combined with like

sort of billy's old school approach and one thing that they had that was like just objectively they were going to win every timeout was on these dumb prop bets so prop bets are propositions short for propositions where you can just bet on happenings right it's not sometimes it's just like sort of ancillary to the game that you would be betting on so it's like the color of the gatorade they dump on the coach after they win the game right or what's the first song lady gaga is going to sing at the halftime show what color of shirt is she going to wear? This is shit that has nothing

I'm just saying this is shit that has nothing to do with the actual game, especially if you're a sports fan, right? And especially if you like the team, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just, yeah, ancillary things, which to me, you know, isn't without its merits. I think part of the interesting thing about following sports is, you know, sometimes it's less to do with what happens

in the game, although, like, for example, I love basketball, I love tennis, you know, like, I like the game. But sometimes the cool stuff is sort of the ancillary stories around it you know what i mean like but go ahead go ahead i don't want to touch you up time no like i was just i was just going to uh you know uh this clinic in rural germany in the mountains to get like blood rich plasma platelets put into his aging knees like and that sends me down a rabbit hole like well i'm what's sad about you know and then as my own knees get rickety could i afford

such a you know what i'm right you know what it just you know what it just reminds me of though man is that um a dark a dark this is already incredibly dark but it reminds me of it been manny's article when he was talking about being at this bar and this guy was actually cheering against his team or i guess railing against his team that he favored and i think betting against the other team you know because obviously there were financial stakes involved with the bet that he had made and that like could you imagine a situation where that sort of translates into politics where people are already disillusioned and alienated and they don't they have their lack of trust right in in politicians is completely like i don't know it's like an all time low i guess right

did you imagine people like already already just being like all right well the only way that i can invest in politics is if i get some weird financial gain out of it i mean i can't imagine that this is going to be something that'll be peddled out to the masses that you're going to have people i don't know bro i don't know maybe maybe they could be maybe they maybe while people are watching glued to their screens, they'll also have their phones in their hands or the computers while they're betting on the news. That sounds like a dystopian story, I know, but many story just had me thinking about that. How would this change in colors people's perspectives? Because there's a personal financial investment involved. You know, it's really creepy.

I think there is, I think what it is in an attempt to normalize stuff like insider trading and all that kind of stuff. But it is like a sort of perversion of art imitating life in a way where like are you going to have people en masse bet on absolute reprobate long shots to win office and go vote accordingly and actually go canvas for these people not because like even because you support their genocidal worldview or something but because you got money on the line like you're going to go canvas because you know like and I guess in a real sense if you extrapolate it out further like we got money on the line that's why we're betting on Bernie or. in 20 or whatever 2016 because we need the relief that he's sort of like campaigning on like I literally donated I donated money to Bernie Sanders in the hope that he would win and make my own economic reality welfare well-being a little bit better you know so I could keep making those $27 donations on Act Blue or whatever exactly yeah like you know like we cost some scuttlebut obviously on the Patreon this week

for a number of reasons that I'm not going to dignify or get into here but like what's funny is like you know people like we always get into this discussion on the left about like is it electoral politics or is it violent revolution and it's like these two things are two

separate things right right like I view electoral politics not as like some sort of revolutionary gesture or like in a way even in this gamification age it's almost divorced from politics in a way, it's actually just about how can I shrink my monthly nut? You know what I mean? Like, how do I improve, like, however minutely, like, material circumstances.

Like, if I were to vote for a Democrat, it's not because I'm convinced that they are Che Guevara or that, like, or that they're even going to contribute meaningfully to the world that I want to see. It's because of, like, well, that's better than the person I know that's, like, not going to. I mean, these are two, you know what I don't view. It's a neoliberal. It's a neoliberal. We live in the South. Let's be real. It's, and I mean, this is me, personally, like in my local elections, I do not partake in, but I voted for the senator, right? Um, Ossoff and Warnock. But it's a difference between voting for, like, a neoliberal or a neo-confederate, you know what I mean? And those two may seem like they overlap a lot, but, you know, living in the South sometimes,

we can understand that this is like just a tactic in a large tool box, you know. Yeah, yeah. And then, like, sometimes you get the the the the Biden-Trump schematic where both are insanely horrible you know what I mean it's like they're both genocidal they're both this the both that and it's like I don't I'm not trying to take a detour here but I just don't moralize about voting anymore because like to me that's separate from revolution that's separate from a political project is that's weird to say but I just view those as two different things you know what I mean like right right right As opposed to like a long no long no you make sense a long term political project that involves that hinges on more than just like an election like every two to four years to six years whatever the case may be you know what I mean yeah yeah in any case I'm jumping around a lot here I'm so sorry yeah wait what the fuck were we talking about us now where were we at I just I took it I took I got stop taking these detours because my mind's not capable of taking detours anymore now you're talking about that I'm just still kind of like tripping out about that um that um that speculative market.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was talking about the Billy Walters thing. And the thing that's so dystopian about that, I hate to say even dystopian, but the thing that's so wild about it is this. It's like when my cousin was part of that syndican, right, they got, and what he told me, what it redounds to is they just have,

the reason that he's the most successful gambling was because he has the best information. Right. And he has the best information earlier than everybody else. and so like the stuff that they would like make a lot of money on that was like a lock is billy would have personal like relationships with whoever was organizing the halftime show at the super bowl and they would know that prince was going to wear blue sneakers or whatever blue blue high hill boots my bad i don't think prince even hooped and sneaker

he did he did so and then they would make prop bets based on that you know what i mean just dumb things like that and it's like the thing about that just kind of jars me about the call she CNN merger is like it doesn't matter if you think like we are just like patrons of this market that are just kind of harmlessly betting on events like somebody's going to have the better information and make money on the way our lives unfold and the way the news unfolds which when you understand America like that and from that perspective it's like so are we going have shootings? I mean, look, look, check this out.

That, like, that, like, are in some betters' interests? Are we going to have, like, yeah, exactly, exactly. Horrible things happen that are in, that are in the betting public's interests? Like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's maybe, and it is maybe the greatest perversion I've seen in society with the exception of, like, genocide and famine. But check, but check this, dude.

Like, so you're, like, the implication that someone would be, and I don't mean to be sound conspiratorial like I have my 10th world hat on here but the if you just game this out right like the logical kind of end game is that yes you would have people engineering situations right and notice so that they could financially benefit off of

which already fucking happens you know yeah yeah yeah people like fucking Dick Cheney and Halberton right fucking billions of dollars off the suffering of how many fucking Iraqis you know but it just it just sort of like reminds me something

you had just said where and I guess I'm sort of repeat myself, but I don't know to that is it just reminds me of like you kind of, I think said like art imitating life. And it seems like the economic system sort of starts to like, I don't know, it starts to kind of pulsate out in these weird ways that actually shape social reality. I mean, I know that sounds obvious to people, but I don't know, man. I hate to bring up another reference, but I'm sorry for reference, but Jorge Luis Borges has this weird short story about people who create a map of the world, right? That's, kind of like that kind of grows with the world right and eventually becomes that the map becomes

more real than the world itself right i think bojriara talks about this in simulation and simulacrum you know what i mean yeah yeah so that's just erie in and of itself right that this representation you know what i mean this gamification of the real world actually becomes more real than the real world itself political social reality because people have a stake in it you know and they they want to they want to i don't know they want to they want to they want to manipulate things you know so i don't know that sounds crazy but people we already people they're powerful people that already manipulate events and the current events in their favor you know that's true we just don't all have the ability to do it this is just like sort of it's a a grotesque development but

speaking of since speaking of grotesquery's in simulacrum the same cousin that was part of that syndicate that would you know figure out early on who you know what color of the gatorade was going to be they're going to dump on the coach at the roseball brought something to my attention, and it was the Dale's, Michael Dell and his bride's, you know, investment in the future of America's youth, where they so generously took $6 billion of their like $300 billion fortune, wherever the fuck it is, you know, maybe less than that, I don't know. I don't keep up with that kind of shit. Maybe it's $30 billion, maybe, whatever.

You know, after, after, after $6 million, how much more fucking money do you need, do you right you know 100% but you know did you see this the social welfare where like all the tots are getting a 250 um basically fund from the dales that they have to invest back into the market so i don't know is this a rebuke of the causification of markets and how that they're all going you know in the casino direction or is that some sort of weird your oh my god have you seen you these people? No. They look insane.

They look crazy. I mean, I know like a common refrain is, oh, it damn isn't this wild. Damn, isn't this insane. This is where it truly is. They look. Wait, what's the names again? It's Michael Dell and his wife,

D-E-E-L-L at the computer. Go look up, go look at shit up just for a second. Speaking of, again, speaking of Simulacrum. Is he the, is he the CEO of Dell Technologies? Oh, him and his wife? Jesus Christ. Yo, I saw this picture.

Yo, his wife looks like... Jarring. Jarring in appearance, aren't they? Bro, I won't... They look like AI, dude. His wife looks like she's wearing a prosthetic mask, like, of a human face. Like, I can't describe it. They're skin suit in it, dog. Yeah, that does look like human skin suit.

So anyway, these grotesqueries have just put money in the coffers of every child in America, I guess, for... I guess it's... So how much is it? $250? $6 billion, and that equals out to about... If you just like, you know, like I just said earlier, it's like after this, like I don't have a concept of it.

But look, really, just to figure out, like, you know, common refrain is like billionaire shouldn't exist and it's a contention I agree with, especially when you think about it, this. But $6 billion, which accounts for only a small part of their fortune, okay? Mind you. Is enough to give every child born after a certain time $250 in America with, without it being any skin off their nose. I mean, do people, do people, I know that we think.

It would have been any skin off their suit. We think about the shit, but I mean, just, it just seems like an incredible indictment of not just just charity and of itself, but just like the system, the fact that someone has that amount of money to, you know, to give to every child in America or possibly solve poverty, you know, hunger in America rather and it's just like yeah no one should have I know it's an obvious point but no one should have

that amount of money due to even be able to do these things if they didn't have that amount of money they wouldn't have to if they couldn't accrue that kind of money under this system they wouldn't have to do shit like this you know yeah you know I was thinking about this this morning I was walking over to the pet store to get some

cat food for my cat and I was thinking about the sort of opening salvo and I can't remember which is the first of the Robert Carrow books about LBJ but he basically talks about it starts in Appalachia which is interesting to think that like

the Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia was once considered quote the height of American opulence which is I love West Virginia but not typically a place that's considered the height of anything other than that you would associate with opulence.

Not a place that like, well, I mean, I would because it's, it's beautiful. I mean, driving through West Virginia, I think there's anything like it really. But like, you know, John Q, whoever thinks places like where I'm from, West Virginia are just like, you know, populated by copper thieves with beards, you know. And it's part of it. But they're overrepresented in culture. And he starts there and they're in the elevator of the Greenbrier. And a guy that was the elevator man had been in Congress before, like several years ago. He was like a congressman, I think from Texas, because I think that's how LBJ had spotted him or knew of him because LBJ is from Texas.

But I'm not sure. I'm not going to swear to that because I'm calling all this back from memory. And he's basically telling, you know, I guess presumably Carrow and whoever else is like he's there with basically that there's something like power, right? like sometimes power is the better currency than actual money and like he makes that case he's like because look at this guy you know like he had power and now look at him he's like a elevator man like back when we had those or whatever you know and basically just to create this illustration of like like what you mortgage once you give up power once you lose power in this case or whatever and I'm curious like which which currency spends further is it power or is it money i think part of like

something we always say in politics is like well there's too much money in politics there's this there's that but like as our conceptions of power changed as like we've become more well adjusted to just grift and vapor as we've been talking about this episode gambling and the casino sort of occasion i love i love i love i love taking a word just put occasion on the end of vacation casinification like like how have our conceptions of power change since lbj was you know the master of the senate or whatever before his presidency i think is when this starts you know versus now where it like nancy Pelosi makes a hundred thousand dollars a year and yet she's like exorbitantly wealthy but like nobody should look into that further it's just her just people

wanting to give nancy money because she's so good at things you know right right and also i mean and also to and i don't know i'm sure you'd have people that could push back and say, well, I wouldn't assume it would be like people on the left, but people to push back and say, well, Nancy Pelosi has said an illustrious career, but she's done this, that, and the third. But if you just, like, ask, like, oh, just wonder about, like, what she could have done to wheel that power, like, what she actually could have done besides, like, in rich, she kind of held a similar role as Mitch McConnell did, like, kind of funneling that money,

right, into the Democratic Party and making sure that everybody got a little piece of the pie, you know? but instead of actually like wielding any power to do anything like materially and politically for people you know I mean at some point it just seems like that power at least for I will let's see let's say maybe I'm just talking about Democrats here maybe that's a big change from that's a big change from someone like LBJ right but it just seems like yeah now money has more purchased right you know like what's the point in actually when did that when did that when did that flip is that like is that like a vestigial organ of the 60s where like the money was going to take care of itself is that kind of what he was saying you think or the money's going to take care of itself as long as you're in power or whatever but like it back then there was more purchase in like bringing stuff to your congressional district whatever and there still is to some degree i'm not saying that like that politics is just wholesale altered but it seems

like one like you got to obviously just have more money off the rip to obtain any power usually right this is something this is literally something that this is something that josh talking about in the last episode like you need a least what like 10 million dollars I think to run like a congressional race like to even really sort of get in the ball game yeah to even get and that's just yeah at the entry at the bar at the entry entry entry bar yeah yeah a lot of that has to do with tv contracts and like right ad markets and stuff like that it's a lot like i guess it's it to me it kind of mirrors like what they call the nil era in college sports the name image and likeness where the kids used to not be able to get paid off of their name

image and likeness, but now they can. And now all these schools have these NIL funds to basically make guarantees to kids when they come there, like, oh, well, this is your valuation. This is what we're going to essentially pay you to come here and play for. You know what I mean? And like, like, so for example, it might be cheaper to run in West Virginia than it is to run in Manhattan. Well, obviously it's going to be.

You know what I mean? And like people like understand that. Like, oh, I might need three million in Branson, but in Brooklyn I'm going to need 20 you know or whatever the case may be you know i'm just curious i mean that's it's it's a curious question that i've been thinking of like a little bit lately it's like has has as has as money just supplanted power as like the primary engine of of whatever you know i don't know or you know maybe not mutually exclusive but yeah yeah yeah so with the dells so uh it's what six 6.25 billion to Trump's, what, what is it, is Trump's, what Trump's kids fund or whatever

foundation, is that what is? So what is that? You said that parcel's out to what, $250? I think, I read that it's like $250 per child that they will then use to invest in the market. It's like, it's kind of funny because it's like basically what it is is like an injection into the market that babies are making. I mean, I mean, I guess the guess, I guess, I guess what I think is is kind of morbid about it is that it seems as if, like, this society just, you know, you get funneled into school so that you could become a little automaton so that you can, like, you know, become a little worker bee and participate in this economy, you know, in society in whatever way, right? But now it's like, it's almost like they're shooting it way far back, you know what I mean? Like, you just, I get out of the womb, right? and you're already like kind of plugged into this shit you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean

of course controlled by your parents obviously in those you know but that's uh you know and guardians but that's so yeah it's not good man man it's you know there was the gerbert remember you seen on tv the gerber baby food life program yeah which was essentially i guess the same thing sort of a savings account for a child you could start whenever you know they would always promote that kind of stuff and i'm not exactly sure what you got in the gerber life program saving or whatever so it's just you get a little white they gave you a little white baby they gave you a little everybody got a little white baby everybody like you know what we've stole too many native babies let's just give everybody a little white baby that's what you get

with the gerber life that's what you call the great replacement brother yeah so yeah it's so weird but especially you understand like just the demoralizing experience of like to have any dignity in retirement in this fucking country you have to loan an already rich man your money decades in advance and then you have to trust him to be a good steward

of that and for the weather to remain you know climate right clement and for and on top of that no seismic events happen in American life which

I don't know I've lived 40 of it 40 years of it by now and it's like if i can set my watch by anything it's that something fucked up's going to happen and that's brother i'll be before we move into the next story because i know we got to we got to close out to uh so point but i think that that del's the the dell story the um the kind of the clara financers story and i forget we were talking about for like the things we've been talking about basically it seems like people are really confident you don't understand why because you can't imagine like things are going to end and nothing will really ever end will transition into just something else you know um but people are really

confident in the future man americans tend to be really confident in the future brother you know you might not even be allowed in the next 36 months to pay off that uh nintendo switch too you know or maybe that is the maybe that's the prevailing mindset it's like fuck it we the fuck it we ball uh theory right of financing consumer goods you know what i mean right get it now because tomorrow we might hope to be done. Like, shit, I'm going to have to clare into my lunch tomorrow. Fuck it. I'll just get something I like that's nice to look at and let the chips fall where they may.

Can I clare to my rent? Oh, damn. Yeah, dude, it ate. Terrence sent me something grim the other day. He was looking for a new place and he put in like $1,400 rent as like his threshold. You know what I mean? And it popped up. It yielded zero results.

god damn you know like a room for the baby and all that kind of stuff yeah and i was like okay well the value proposition on living anywhere you know like a lot of people in the province have spent a lot of time being like you dummies living in brooklyn for you know paying $2,000 a month in a broom closet well that's coming to everywhere so we ended up yeah people that were doing that eating their words you know now because 100% is out of control everywhere but anyway to finish the thought I was going to close us out on is like that dignity and retirement. It's all predicated on, again, loaning a rich man, an already rich man, a not insignificant portion of your income for decades in advance. A dying rich man, by the way. Yeah, a dying rich man who will probably

outlive most of us. You know, he takes our money. You got to trust him to be a good steward of it. Okay. He gets to generate interest off that for 20 years that you're not generating. interest off of it. And he breaks you off a little bit of what he's generated off of it. And through the magic of compounding interest, then you get to basically retire with some dignity off a pittance of what he made off of your money that you loaned him in advance. And so really, when you think of building wealth in America as, like, essentially

a carnival game for rich people, like, it's not hard to see why that, like, you know, we might be able to bet on school shooters in the not too distant future. Right. 100%. No, 100% did. I mean, at the end of the end, no, at the end of the two, it's either, you know, you do that or you work for the rest of your life, you know, until you're like a 90-year-old greeter at Walmart.

And you're still paying up that guy. And you still be paying off your Miles Morales, Air Jordan, Spider-Man once. Anyway, Aaron, thanks for being. course down to ride yet again today and thank you for tuning in here if you like what you heard or if you even like you know thought there was a nugget in here worth holding on to you can get more of those nuggets for just five dollars a month you get four at four sometimes five more nuggets for just five dollars a month over at patreon.com slash trill billy workers party all one word no apostrophe

T-R-I-L-L W-R-K E-R-S P-A-R-T-Y That's Patreon.com You spell good on this show, bro. True Billy Workers' Party. Yeah, I've cut my own throat here

by misspelling the Patreon. Thanks again, Aaron, and thanks everybody for being with us. See you next. See you. I'm going to be the I'm going to be. I'm going to

I'm going to I'm going I'm going to be I'm the and I'm You know,