GameStop： The End of the American Empire
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Summary
The stock market is in turmoil, and Reddit is to blame. A group of alternative investors, in effect, sold the short sellers short, and took down a multi-billion dollar hedge fund. Day trading bros are high-fiving, the Wall Street billionaires are crying, and the normies are scrambling to get in on the next 10X rally of a failing company or new cryptocurrency. But what does it all mean? Does the current volatility and casino-like nature of the stock market foreshadow dark days ahead? More broadly, is the whole American empire and its planetary financial dominion another GameStop?
Transcript
00:00:00.000
It's Tuesday, February 2nd, 2021, and welcome back to The Spencer Report.
00:00:12.960
Main topic, GameStop and the end of the American empire.
00:00:18.060
The stock market is in turmoil, and Reddit is to blame.
00:00:23.120
A group of alternative investors, in effect, sold the short sellers short
00:00:27.700
and took down a multi-billion dollar hedge fund.
00:00:38.820
And the normies are scrambling to get in on the next 10x rally
00:00:48.060
Does the current volatility and casino-like nature of the stock market
00:00:54.220
More broadly, is the whole American empire and its planetary financial dominion
00:01:10.240
I think I'm going to be a Dogecoin millionaire by the end of the week.
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I mean, aren't you already a Dogecoin millionaire?
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I was expecting you to be a Dogecoin billionaire master of the universe by now.
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And I think everyone has a lot of schadenfreude going on.
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And I think maybe it kind of reveals who you are, how you just feel about it, just on an
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Whether you are the people crying on CNBC or whether you are laughing at the people crying
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on CNBC or whether you think this is a terrible thing to our well-functioning market system
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I do not shed tears over the loss of Melvin Capital.
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And when a billionaire is, I believe his name is Cooperman, was crying on CNBC.
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You know, we had our Camelot and now it's a ruin.
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And, you know, I mean, yeah, I feel some schadenfreude.
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But I also can take a step back and not get lost in this thing because this is a lot of
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But at the end of the day, it's a crazy pump and dump scheme in a highly volatile market.
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And it might be funny, but I don't think it, you know, I've seen people get on this bandwagon
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And so we're now going to destroy the system through these kinds of things and hold them
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And I can only just kind of roll my eyes at that stuff.
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Yeah, I mean, I like the spirit of it, obviously.
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And the like, I think everyone, I mean, the only one I saw defending the hedge fund managers
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all week was Ben Shapiro wrote an impassioned thread about how, you know, on free market
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principles that the hedge fund managers actually benefit everyone.
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Yeah, less and less people want to hear that stuff.
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And I mean, you know, in this particular case, I think it was kind of effective sort of guerrilla
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I mean, I think what the short position on GameStop was like 140%.
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But yeah, I mean, what changed yesterday, I mean, when you start seeing people talking
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about we're going to inflate Dogecoin to the moon, it's like, there's a lot of people that
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I think have come on board and they think it's some kind of like infinite money scheme.
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I mean, it's kind of like, you know, like these people went to the poker table with the
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professional poker players and they won a couple of hands and they were sitting at the
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table and it's like, on the long run, you know, you're going to get burned.
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Like, it's not a strategy to just sort of go from one altcoin or one stock to another
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I mean, and eventually, surely the big investors will just start playing both sides of this as
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I mean, I think there was already some of that, like some of these people that were sort
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of cheering this on, like, what's that guy's name?
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He's like, that Indian guy that was invested in Facebook and he's like, this ethical.
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I believe he was claiming that this is like a, yeah, like this is socialism or something.
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Yeah, but at the same time, like he bought GameStop stock and tweeted about it, but he
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So he was kind of benefiting from this pump and dump scheme by getting everyone involved.
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But so, yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, it's, it's kind of uniting everyone against the
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And it's, I think it's done more than anything the last few years to expose like some of the
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corrupt practices that go on and some of the ridiculous ways that like parasitic finance
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In terms of this idea that like, oh, this is what Occupy should have done.
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It's like, you know, I mean, it's like gambling on all coins isn't really going to destroy the
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And yeah, they're just taking part in the casino themselves and kind of screwing over the
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So this is what Occupy Wall Street should have done.
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But no, I wouldn't get again, I support these guys like in spirit in some way.
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But I mean, what they did originally and inflating the GameStop stock to screw over the people
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I mean, they were basically filling the role of of what the regulators should be doing
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That you could you could argue that I think there are a couple other levels to it.
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There was some speculation that the the same people who were shorting GameStop were also
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Tesla has gone up 10x on basically speculation and that this was kind of like there was it
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That's an interesting conspiracy theory, I guess.
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But I think there's another level to it in the sense that they were also buying up AMC,
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which was getting shorted because movie theaters are obviously basically out of business during
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And these, you know, all these big movies keep getting delayed and they have no cash flow.
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GameStop, I think there was there is a kind of populist element to it in the sense that,
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you know, GameStop is like an old I don't know.
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It's not not quite a 90s business, but it's definitely a 2000s business of you.
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But, you know, you go in and you buy a gaming system or you buy games and you you know,
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it's kind of like one of those businesses where you kind of feel a part of it.
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And and same with AMC movie theaters, you know, I mean, every there is a communal element
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You go there and have popcorn and get on have a date and whatever.
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And it's like big Wall Street is trying to destroy these kind of like homey chains and
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and engage in just like the wild extreme speculation of companies that have no cash flow, but all
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investment, you know, in Silicon Valley or investing in other hedge funds or whatever.
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And it was almost like the little chain kind of punching back against, you know, Wall Street.
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I thought there was a little interesting element to that.
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It is illegal to conspire with a bunch of people and say, we are going to go buy this stock
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all at once and through that market mechanism, push up the price and then we are going to sell it.
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And they they were doing that with a kind of a company they liked and which kind of evoked
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The fact that they were defending this gaming platform, you know.
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It's just now done on Reddit and it's not done in a boiler room with a bunch of sharks,
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you know, on Wall Street who want to make their first million and they're going to do it by pumping
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And remember, whenever you pump it up, it goes down.
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I mean, there's like an equal and opposite reaction.
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So, you know, there are people as Jordan Belfort himself said when he was interviewed recently,
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I mean, there are people who are going to hear about this now.
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Like there's your normie on Twitter or Facebook that hears about this and goes and buys into
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this and they are probably gets good because no one is really buying game stock because they
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think that it is a great investment that they need to hold on to and that it's business model
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I mean, they are playing a game and that game will end and it will be bad.
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It will likely be bad for all the people who got who get in now and get in after it's,
00:10:04.740
Well, I think it was that $4 last year at one point and it started short when this kind of
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celebrity investor came in and was put on the board.
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But yeah, like I heard someone talk about, you said like the amount of shortening that
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was done on it would suggest that investors were kind of gambling on it, going out of
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business this year, that it was probably going to be facing bankruptcy.
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I mean, I think GameStop lost something like half a billion dollars last year.
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So, I mean, like the, you know, what's the true price of the GameStop stock?
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You know, if it was like $6 for most of last year and, you know, then it was kind of inflated
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to over $20 when this sort of celebrity investor came in, that's when it was heavily shorted.
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So, I mean, like the true price of that stock probably is like under $10.
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So, you'd imagine eventually it's going to kind of reach an equilibrium and fall back to that.
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So, all of the people that have inflated it up to whatever it's at now, you know, $180 or $300,
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who knows what it's at now, but eventually they will get burned.
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I am interested in what's going to happen because I think there's a tremendous amount of euphoria
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right now and, you know, stick it to the big guy.
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This is socialism, you know, buy Dogecoin, buy GameStop and with your hundred bucks and
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I think there's a lot of euphoria and I am curious.
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I would imagine that in the next 72 hours or maybe a week later or a month later, there's
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I mean, we do not obviously give stock advice on this program, but, you know, if you've already,
00:12:02.940
if you've heard, just keep this in mind, if you've heard of it, it's already over, you
00:12:08.580
I mean, like to be fair, a lot of people were, you know, they did say they were
00:12:12.180
just buying it to basically screw over these hedge funds like Melvin.
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They were just trying to keep the stock ice so they could screw over these companies.
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I mean, I heard people saying like buy, buy GME and hold it forever as if that was like
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So there did, it does seem to be like catching people now that, uh, that don't really get
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the shot and think this is like a way to kind of next to Wall Street.
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The other thing about this that I think is interesting is that we had major stock market
00:12:51.080
downturns at the beginning of the pandemic, which was not terribly surprising.
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I mean, they, by about February and early March, you know, people in the know, at least
00:13:06.500
And I, and I think one of the impulses for Trump to engage in this kind of Corona virus
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denial for as long as he did was that he, he did grasp kind of intuitively that this
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Then that sends his own chances down, um, because those, you know, presidential elections
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and the stock market are correlated in interesting ways.
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Um, and, but the stock market kind of got it together.
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I think people realized by, you know, June or so that we're all not going to die, that
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It's going to be a detrimental thing, of course, but, um, we need to start looking out, you know,
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for the future when things come back and, you know, a stock market is a forward looking
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It is, you are not, you are not buying what the company did a year ago.
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You're buying what it's going to do in a year or in 10 years even.
00:14:02.380
Um, so there was a lot of volatility, but then we basically reached highs again.
00:14:08.680
And, um, I mean, while we're doing this, the Dow Jones and S and P and NASDAQ and so on.
00:14:14.240
And I, I would imagine you could find this, uh, around the world are down, you know, 2%,
00:14:23.900
Uh, there does seem to be some major volatility and worry going on.
00:14:30.560
Um, there was a lot of volatility with a stock like Apple, which is, you know, obviously they
00:14:35.900
have a business model of, of a highly profitable business model of iPhones and other things.
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Uh, so the fact that that's happening is a little bit strange.
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I, this is just my, also my kind of gut instinct.
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Um, things can get decoupled and the economy can be decoupled from the stock market and vice
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Um, and they're, they're related of course, but they can really be disconnected, uh, in
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ways, uh, particularly now where, you know, 99% of these equities are owned by financial
00:15:17.380
firms that they, they aren't really democratically allocated.
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And so you have a bunch of, you know, big money banks and hedge funds who have some connection
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They're getting that, all that money creation early and they're pumping it and to speculation.
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Uh, you can really have a serious disconnect between, you know, the stock market equity
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prices and, uh, the real economy, how people are actually living, but that can't really go
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And there are going to be ways that that is a massive bubble that is going to pop and
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you, you, you cannot have a situation where you have major unemployment, unrest, negative
00:16:00.640
social mood, lack of consumption, et cetera, and a stock market just rising infinitely.
00:16:07.660
And I, I, I don't know, I'm, I'm getting the impression that because there's so much, there's
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obviously a huge amount of negative energy and you now have, uh, you know, it's, it's
00:16:22.500
on, the stock market is again, on people's radar.
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I remember when I was actually living in New York city, uh, during the financial crisis of
00:16:33.160
2008, 2009, and there were all these signs everywhere, advertisements for the financial
00:16:39.440
And it said, we're, we're living in financial times.
00:16:47.940
Um, there was, you know, kind of a little bit of socialism in the air and, you know, let's
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slaughter the, the fat cats, you know, kind of thing.
00:17:01.760
And I think we might be headed towards really serious volatility and a stock market crash,
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You had big, some big box stores going out of business.
00:17:22.820
And then by September, which is when these things usually happen, uh, you had a major bankruptcy
00:17:29.580
of a financial institution, i.e., uh, Lehman Brothers, and then just the bottom fell out
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And I just get a very, I've lived through a few of these and I get a very strong feeling
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that we might be headed back into one of these things.
00:17:48.660
Uh, I mean, the, there was eight years between the dot-com bubble and the 2008 crash.
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If the, if the shoeshine boys are giving you stock advice, it's time to get out of the
00:18:10.980
So, uh, yeah, it's, it does seem like that kind of scenario again, you know, the, yeah,
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I mean, it is at the point, you know, the, the, suddenly the normies are talking about
00:18:19.560
stock prices and crypto and all these kinds of things.
00:18:22.780
Um, I mean, a lot of people, yeah, a lot of, a lot of people think that some of, I called
00:18:27.740
the Bitcoin top when I was, I went on Twitter and everyone was talking about Bitcoin.
00:18:32.940
This was like back in 2018, I believe everyone was talking about Bitcoin on Twitter.
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And then I, I was actually, uh, it was when I did that Dinesh D'Souza movie and I was
00:18:43.360
in, I think San Diego, or I can't remember someplace in California.
00:18:46.460
And I, I was out just eating lunch and normies were talking euphorically about Bitcoin.
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There was this guy on his cell phone saying, everyone needs Bitcoin, just buy, buy more
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And I was like, all right, this, this is just, this reminds me completely of, um, tech
00:19:07.380
Like when the normies are into something, they are, that is the end of it.
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I mean, this is that feeling on steroids where, you know, everyone are just declaring that
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Like we need to buy, you know, hold, stay strong, buy it now.
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Get your, you won't, you know, the government's not going to give you two grand, but you get
00:19:34.600
And that is the, that is the proverbial shoeshine boy.
00:19:39.640
And I mean, Trump will have played a role in it.
00:19:41.840
Like Trump undid a lot of regulation from the previous administration on wall street.
00:19:47.600
But, uh, I mean, like Elizabeth Warren, I saw she was getting bashed on, on Twitter
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I mean, I know you like to take up sometimes and, and offer kind of esoteric defenses of,
00:19:57.880
of, uh, the neoliberal types, but in Warren's defense, like she, she was making a fairly
00:20:04.140
sensible point that this is like a deeper problem of, of market regulation.
00:20:10.260
And she, she was actually the only person that was really talking about this problem,
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um, in her election campaign in terms of financialization and, and the growth of, of
00:20:19.960
wall street destroying, uh, business on the high street.
00:20:23.840
Um, you know, she proposed like a second glass legal act.
00:20:27.380
I mean, one of the, one of the big problems in the U S last few years has been, there's,
00:20:31.260
there's huge job losses in the retail sector because of private equity firms, which are,
00:20:36.260
um, you know, they, they come in, I mean, there was a report in 2019 that said that they've
00:20:40.940
cost one and a half million jobs in the last 10 years, uh, because they come in basically
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and, and they load these struggling businesses with debt.
00:20:48.900
Um, the actual firm invest very little money and mostly borrows it against the company.
00:20:54.160
And, uh, there's a huge rate of, uh, a huge rate of failure for, for these companies
00:20:58.580
to take over because it rewards kind of risky business practices and also, uh, laying
00:21:04.820
And then there's all sorts of, of loopholes for these people.
00:21:07.900
Um, you know, there's something that the, the private equity managers, they only get
00:21:11.300
taxed at, at 20% that pay capital gains tax rather than the, the income tax they should
00:21:18.040
Um, and they get these firms to pay all sorts of what they call monitoring fees, uh, which
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is basically like they're, they're just paying firms direct, they're paying fees directly
00:21:26.280
to the private equity firm to, you know, to monitor the company, whatever that means.
00:21:30.660
But yeah, it's very, um, it's very sort of parasitic, these relationships.
00:21:34.780
And this just seems to be sort of expanding exponentially.
00:21:37.860
But I mean, I don't see how you really solve a problem like that without regulation, but
00:21:43.000
it just seems to be this perpetual cycle where there's a crash.
00:21:46.560
And, you know, Joseph Kennedy is, is the person that I think created the SEC and responded to
00:21:50.860
the great depression with all sorts of these, uh, regulatory moves on, on the great depression.
00:21:55.360
I think it's bigger than Elizabeth Warren because Elizabeth Warren will often, you know, she'll
00:22:05.860
She'll bring them in and read them the right act and so on.
00:22:09.040
But her regulation seems to be about protecting retail investors.
00:22:14.920
So it's basic, it's built on the assumption that you should be able to go in and put a hundred
00:22:23.400
K of your life savings into wall street and they'll, they'll kind of prudently manage it
00:22:29.260
and it will slowly climb up every year and you'll retire.
00:22:32.920
It's a kind of, it's a, I, I, maybe this is a bit overstated.
00:22:36.820
There's a certain kind of last man quality to the way Elizabeth Warren thinks.
00:22:42.640
Um, it is very, a, it's a, from a middle-class retail perspective, as opposed to like looking
00:22:50.280
at the bigger picture, which is that what is, what is wrong with the economy that, you know,
00:22:59.300
profits on making goods are falling and collapsing.
00:23:03.240
Like real stuff is becoming very difficult to produce in this country and in, in, in the
00:23:11.620
And, you know, we, we're creating this kind of financialized economy and something like
00:23:17.220
Silicon Valley is just a kind of new version of this.
00:23:22.140
Um, they're not really even engaging in technology production.
00:23:27.400
You know, I mean like something, something like Uber, which loses money every, or at least
00:23:35.380
Uh, I don't know if it's now profitable, but it's just loses money constantly.
00:23:39.460
They Uber, you know, whatever you want to say about it.
00:23:43.140
I mean, yeah, it's great when you're out in a city and you can catch an Uber at, you
00:23:48.640
know, midnight and it's easier, cheap, maybe cheaper than a taxi, but they're not really
00:23:57.640
They're creating value, but they're not really creating any actual good.
00:24:00.840
The technology was created on your, by other people is created by people who made the servers
00:24:05.820
or made your phone or people who wrote the code.
00:24:08.940
They are basically converting, you know, average people into gypsy cab operators.
00:24:15.880
And it's not like, there is no real technological investment and there is no real creation of
00:24:24.840
Now there's creation of a value, I guess, arguably.
00:24:27.860
Um, but it's also something that, you know, at least a couple, you know, a year or two ago,
00:24:34.400
It was just kind of reconfiguring things almost like arbitrage and, you know, generating a
00:24:44.300
But that value was inherently speculative and, you know, it's just a kind of issue.
00:24:50.960
Now, obviously that, you know, something like Uber isn't entirely new, but it's, we're moving
00:24:56.940
to a world where these, how you're creating value is just kind of in the ether somewhere.
00:25:11.860
And this is also based on a massive inflation of the U S dollar.
00:25:17.340
Now we haven't seen massive price inflation, or we've seen lower velocity of anything of
00:25:25.680
on everyday items in the sense that people are going out less, they're spending less cash,
00:25:30.880
you know, over the barrel, buying a sandwich or a movie ticket or what have you.
00:25:36.220
Um, but so we, we're not seeing inflation as that's usually understood in the sense of,
00:25:41.880
uh, rapid price increases like Weimar era stuff.
00:25:46.160
Um, but we have seen dramatic, incredible inflation of debt and credit with the U S dollar
00:25:54.140
I mean, 90% of the dollars in world history were created in the past year.
00:26:07.040
And so we don't see it in, in the way that it would really bother people where, you know,
00:26:12.600
the price of groceries is going up 10% every week.
00:26:15.500
That becomes just totally unsustainable and, and, and actually absolutely chaotic.
00:26:24.040
We haven't seen that it goes up 2% a year, that kind of thing.
00:26:27.820
Um, but in terms of just the absolute creation of money, it is incredible what is being done.
00:26:35.140
Um, and I don't know the ultimate implications of that.
00:26:39.460
There's, there's actually an interesting tweet that I saw from, um, Claire Lehman, who is the,
00:26:52.000
Um, you know, it was like, well, the dollar used to be based on gold.
00:26:58.000
So there was some kind of limit to the amount of paper you could create.
00:27:03.560
And it was ultimately backed it up, backed up by something.
00:27:07.660
Now you're not going to go out and, you know, redeem your dollars usually, but there, that's,
00:27:16.340
And then it became, you know, after, after FDR, but mostly after Nixon closing the gold
00:27:25.200
It, the dollar was kind of based on oil in a way.
00:27:39.840
And there's also, you know, then we kind of moved off post cold war where, you know,
00:27:53.800
Um, and, and everyone wants to invest in the United States.
00:27:57.460
And so you're, it's kind of based on economic growth.
00:28:00.500
And, and I would say subtly based on, you know, geopolitical empire, but we are kind of
00:28:07.020
getting to a point where you can reasonably ask, what is this based on?
00:28:13.020
You know, I mean, there's no economic growth, you know, there's, you know, whether oil is going
00:28:20.400
to be just infinitely priced in dollars for the foreseeable future.
00:28:27.100
Um, Bitcoin, all crypto is, is a fascinating thing, but I, it's extremely volatile.
00:28:33.560
And I, I don't think anyone really sees that as like a hard currency in this way.
00:28:38.180
So, and, you know, it's kind of like, what, where are we moving?
00:28:43.020
Like what, where is the center to this planetary financial empire?
00:28:54.920
I mean, credit is the idea of it is credo that belief.
00:28:57.760
We're all believing in this thing and it, we, we all benefit by continuing to believe
00:29:03.760
in this thing, but is America the next like game shot stop or whatever, you know, it's
00:29:10.080
being pumped up for certain reasons and it's going to be pumped down.
00:29:18.020
I mean, well, you definitely had something in terms of, uh, this phenomenon of, of platform
00:29:24.000
Like, I don't think, I don't think anyone has really figured out like the implications
00:29:29.820
And I mean, a lot of those companies like Uber and Airbnb, uh, Deliveroo, all these kinds
00:29:34.800
of examples, like a lot of them have been able to make money, but basically being ahead
00:29:38.280
of, of regulations because it's such a, it's such a new model that countries didn't really
00:29:45.520
Um, but yeah, it's this, you know, I think some people have this idea of, of, you know,
00:29:51.100
like the free market idea that capitalism is going to lead to like greater and greater
00:29:55.060
production and efficiency, which you see these companies, like their main business model
00:29:58.500
is kind of skimming money through fees and licenses, uh, of people's labor and also data
00:30:05.480
There's this like sort of dual exploitation to have where like, you know, you go on Airbnb
00:30:09.880
and as you said, they're not actually offering anything except the coding of a platform and
00:30:15.340
And then there's this, there's skim fees off interactions between people and then steal
00:30:19.080
their data and sell it to advertising companies.
00:30:25.100
Which, which, which is in the news because they, they were protected by Google who erased
00:30:30.480
like a hundred thousand reviews or some crazy thing like that.
00:30:33.480
And they ceased trading on certain stocks that were being pumped up on Reddit reportedly, but
00:30:40.480
Robinhood was offering no fees transactions on, you know, equity trading and, and probably
00:30:48.140
And again, just the name of the company is Robinhood.
00:30:51.920
Like it's, it's like you're, you're stealing from the rich and you're, this is awesome.
00:30:56.020
It's, it's like Bernie Sanders stock company or whatever.
00:30:59.320
I mean, no, what they were doing, their business model was to collect massive amounts of data
00:31:05.200
by off being the Google of stock trading, by giving you a valuable information for free
00:31:12.880
And they were selling that data to their client, real clients who were these bigger players
00:31:24.020
So, I mean, you can, you, you, you know, all of these guys on Reddit using Robinhood, that
00:31:29.880
data is going to go to the Melvin capitals of the world.
00:31:33.680
If not Melvin capitals itself, and they're going to like decipher trends and animal spirits
00:31:44.100
And also one of their big investors was one of the funds that bailed out Melvin capitals.
00:31:49.860
So, I mean, there's an obvious conflict of interest.
00:31:52.840
Like they just, they took a lot of people's stock at $117 or something and just forced them
00:31:58.620
Like they sold it for them and it later went to like 350 or something.
00:32:02.720
So they, they cost people like thousands and thousands of dollars.
00:32:05.760
Like it's, it is an incredible level of corruption.
00:32:08.940
I mean, I think AOC and, and Ted Cruz were saying that they wanted to launch an investigation
00:32:15.180
So again, that's one of the positive aspects of it is that it's, it's bringing eyes onto
00:32:19.920
But yeah, the, I mean, that's the thing with like, when you look at like platform capitalism,
00:32:23.820
and this is the thing where like, there's this weird kind of conflict with, with the internet
00:32:28.320
and decentralization and the direction of technology, which is like, you know,
00:32:32.600
you have these people like the very early adopters of, of crypto and so on, the libertarian
00:32:40.380
So like cypher punk people that saw this as, as leading sort of inevitably to like a libertarian
00:32:48.380
ideal that it was going to lead to decentralization.
00:32:50.780
And like, theoretically you could have, you know, you can move everything to the blockchain.
00:32:56.640
You could move all of financial instruments onto the blockchain.
00:33:00.200
You could, you know, you could, you could have democracy on the blockchain.
00:33:04.180
You could run a voting system on there, all these kinds of things.
00:33:07.020
But at the same time, you know, we were getting this technology that should lead to decentralization,
00:33:11.120
but it's creating all of these complex networks and the network effect is to lead to complete
00:33:18.360
There's mathematicians that have studied this, like complex networks where you have interactive
00:33:23.160
nodes that have, that have freedom and that have, and that, you know, growth is paired to
00:33:28.200
system that inevitably tends to win or take all.
00:33:30.700
And it's like, you know, it's just, it's this thing that everyone recognizes, which is like,
00:33:35.700
you know, no one actually cares if, if Gab or if some other Twitter alternative has a better
00:33:40.380
interface than Twitter and is faster than Twitter and has less advertising.
00:33:44.120
You're just going to go on Twitter because it's, you know, it's the biggest.
00:33:47.560
And that's how, that's pretty much how all of these things work.
00:33:49.920
Same with Airbnb, you know, you're not going to go on 10 different websites that each have
00:33:56.520
You're going to go on the one that has like 500.
00:33:58.280
So, you know, it's this problem that, you know, as you have these sort of revolutionary
00:34:03.240
technologies that should lead to decentralization and localism and so on, it's just, it's having
00:34:10.020
the opposite effect and it's creating these new, like feudal oligarchs.
00:34:14.060
You know, you have Jeff Bezos making like $13 billion in a day last year.
00:34:18.400
What Elon Musk has worked like $200 billion now, Bezos is closed as well.
00:34:23.540
And yeah, it's just, I mean, as the market becomes globalized, this winner take all effect,
00:34:28.280
gets accelerated and gets accelerated even more by technology.
00:34:32.080
And you just have, everything is just being pulled into this gravitational center of like
00:34:36.880
the few sort of early adopter oligarchs that control these platforms.
00:34:41.980
And I don't think like our state model really is capable of addressing this.
00:34:47.560
I mean, maybe the US is, but it's like, what can any, you know, what can any state in Europe
00:34:54.100
I mean, Australia recently, I can't remember what it was they did, but they were going to
00:34:58.320
force Google to pay some tax they hadn't paid, or they were going to enforce some regulation.
00:35:02.300
And, you know, Google just threatened that they'd stop people using Google in Australia.
00:35:06.520
And it's like, you know, like countries just have no response to it.
00:35:12.000
So, I mean, like the nation state as like the ultimate sovereign is like, it's kind of,
00:35:19.840
You know, you have, like, you, vulture funds will just like sue a country in South America
00:35:25.260
for like hundreds of billions of dollars, and it'll get enforced by an international court.
00:35:29.440
Like you've this sort of personalization of, of sovereignty.
00:35:32.560
And, you know, a lot of the models we have to try and deal with this kind of thing are just
00:35:37.080
completely outdated now, but yeah, it gets to like, I mean, what do you do with oligarchs
00:35:41.960
You know, they've got their wealth offshored, you know, a lot of their business model isn't
00:35:47.480
It's kind of, it's in the ether, it's in the cloud.
00:35:52.440
If someone tries to, you know, like the kind of simple answer, like tax the rich, you know,
00:35:57.360
I remember what Occupy Wall Street finally came out with a list of demands.
00:36:00.340
And it's like, leftist idealism always turns into this kind of, it runs up against this
00:36:06.420
logic of capital where it's like, well, we can take back like the tax rates of the 1950s,
00:36:14.120
It's like all of the old sort of leftist answers, like all, you know, you've old school leftists
00:36:18.460
like Corbyn or Sanders resurfaced now and then, but it's like all of, all of their answers
00:36:23.460
work fine when you have like an embedded market and, and, you know, you can't have like
00:36:28.240
capital flight within 24 hours, but you can just move to Vietnam or something.
00:36:32.040
But when everything is so global and the state is just kind of one personalized piece of
00:36:36.560
sovereignty, that's weaker than, than these centers of capital.
00:36:43.020
And that's, I don't think anyone has really figured that out yet.
00:36:46.820
No, I think it will only be figured out when there is an actual reset and there has to be
00:36:54.980
a new center to this. That's the only way, because they're not going to just stop doing
00:37:00.360
something because we tell them to, or Bernie Sanders is popular or something. There's going
00:37:06.340
to have to be a new reset of the financial order on a new paradigm once this one ends and
00:37:13.320
they all do it. You know, I mean, the British empire had it going there for a while, but there,
00:37:21.700
there will be something new at some point. And that, that's the only way it will change.
00:37:28.480
Yeah. I mean, I mean, at the same time, even, even when you look at something like the British
00:37:33.220
empire, I mean, there was, there was a level to which merchants were always like somewhat
00:37:39.580
subservient to a greater order, but now it's like when you have, I mean, anything from,
00:37:45.960
from 10 to 50% of the world's wealth is, is offshore. They don't even know. Um, so like
00:37:50.920
it would, it would take like a massive, like global coordinated response, but again, um,
00:37:57.000
you know, how are you going to get the world to cooperate on something like that?
00:38:00.080
Right. It's going to have to crash. Yeah. That's the only, it's going to have to crash and
00:38:05.580
be replaced. I think that's the only way. And, you know, I can support a lot of the Sanders
00:38:13.280
Corbin platform just because I have a heart, but I, I, I never think that like, it's going
00:38:22.040
to be something new. I mean, I'll sometimes see these left wing, uh, people on, on YouTube
00:38:28.560
or whatever, and they'll, they'll bash like neoliberals or whatever, as if there's like
00:38:33.660
some, they're just like a, a couple of people out there benefiting from this and they blame
00:38:39.560
everything on neoliberalism. Like they'll blame bad movies on neoliberalism and, and, and all this
00:38:45.460
kind of stuff. And I, I think it is rather short-sighted. They're, they're not seeing the
00:38:51.380
big picture and the, you know, just monumental changes that have occurred since the 1950s.
00:39:00.140
Like we're not, I mean, too, in order to go back towards, you know, something where we're
00:39:07.560
taxing their, you know, marginal income taxes at 99% at some level or, or whatever you, you
00:39:14.720
need a different world for that kind of thing to even make sense.
00:39:19.360
Yeah. I mean, you have to think like the U S and the 1950s, I mean, like the rest of the
00:39:24.180
world was like bombed to oblivion. Like where else would people want to go? You know, like
00:39:28.520
Africa in the 1950s, you know, Japan was a wasteland. Europe was a wasteland that was
00:39:33.280
reliant on, on USA to rebuild itself. So, yeah, I mean, to, to isolate a period like that and
00:39:39.060
say, well, you know, look, the, the highest rate of income tax was whatever it was, 90%
00:39:43.580
or something under Kennedy. Yeah. Like, unfortunately conditions have changed and there, there really
00:39:49.740
isn't a way to, there's, I mean, but there, you know, the right falls into the same thing,
00:39:53.600
but there isn't really a way to freeze capitalism and one. Right. And even when they, when they say
00:40:00.160
things like, I mean, again, I, I ultimately support UBI or something like that. And I obviously support
00:40:06.480
the 2k checks, but you know, you see a lot of these, the kind of liberal, like the crystal ball
00:40:12.880
types or, or, you know, these people like, Oh, we need to fight neoliberalism by giving people money
00:40:19.020
or whatever. I mean, keep in mind, um, the Steve Mnuchin supported all this stuff. Like Steve
00:40:24.360
Mnuchin was like the most, he was like our guy behind the scenes. He was like, we need more
00:40:30.440
stimulus, like 4,000 over the barrel. You know, he was, at least that was what was reported. Um,
00:40:37.240
neoliberals are not opposed to something like UBI and they're not necessarily opposed to,
00:40:43.020
you know, 2000 check, $2,000 checks. I think there's some people who are, who want
00:40:47.920
everyone stuck on this hamster wheel, working, working, working. They don't want you to be
00:40:52.300
free from that, but giving people a thousand dollars a month with UBI or 2000 stimulus,
00:40:57.440
that's not really questioning anything. You know, they could create that money and you are now
00:41:05.300
spending it in this financial world order that we could call neoliberalism if you want to,
00:41:11.860
but you're not really questioning anything. And you might actually be saving it
00:41:17.160
from collapsing by doing something like this. And so I think especially, especially when there's
00:41:24.200
such a transfer of power, uh, just with, with, with the way the systems are going in that like,
00:41:30.340
this is another thing is like increasingly no one owns anything and everything is rented.
00:41:34.280
And in the case of Uber and Airbnb, your personal property is now a means of income. You know,
00:41:39.440
your spare room isn't a spare room. It has to be turned into a way for you to generate $500 a month
00:41:44.620
or whatever. So yeah, I mean the, maybe the more short-sighted oligarchs would, would oppose that.
00:41:48.920
But I mean, in the long run, you know, you have, I mean, there was news last week, like Bill Gates
00:41:53.280
is the biggest private landowner in the U S now, which is like, it's getting into weird,
00:41:57.660
like sort of a cyberpunk like territory now with the oligarchs, like, uh, but yeah, it really is.
00:42:06.740
But yeah. So, I mean, at the, at the same time, you know, it really isn't, it isn't a fundamental
00:42:10.740
change. If you have this kind of power shift on this unprecedented.
00:42:14.880
And I think it's actually inevitable. I think, I think UBI, something like UBI is inevitable and
00:42:20.840
that at the end of the day, the oligarchs will support it and they're going to spend that money
00:42:27.280
on Amazon and they're going to continue to rent. I mean, a lot of these technological changes,
00:42:32.920
you know, have, you know, for you in your twenties, like you probably couldn't imagine
00:42:37.980
having a record collection. It just wouldn't make sense unless you're some hipster who owns
00:42:42.700
vinyl or something like that. You know, every song is available on YouTube or Apple music
00:42:48.380
or Spotify or whatever. Um, you know, you might not need a car. Uh, you can't afford because
00:42:56.000
of the financialization of the economy, you can't afford a house because house prices have just
00:43:01.220
ballooned because no one actually buys a house in a weird way. No one even owns a house.
00:43:06.240
I mean, you're paying a mortgage. You don't really own it at some level. And, you know,
00:43:11.620
you could also make a case, you could also make a case that like, in a way like UBI is a kind of
00:43:17.740
concession to lead in that it would be, it would move people away from said demand and, you know,
00:43:25.800
universal healthcare, uh, you know, universal sort of basic services, you know, this like paradigm of
00:43:32.080
social democracy that we've had since the second world war, where, you know, just in virtue of you
00:43:36.480
being a citizen that you're entitled to all these benefits, because that does bring with it a kind
00:43:41.460
of, you know, national consciousness. Like, you know, you see, you can see all, you see like the
00:43:47.180
libertarian ideas tend to grow in, in more multicultural societies. You see like in,
00:43:51.500
in countries in Western Europe, um, blood donations were never a problem. People would
00:43:56.240
donate blood for free. And in the U S it was a big problem for them to get enough blood and plasma
00:44:00.400
there to offer financial incentives. So, you know, you see how, how having that, that kind of, um,
00:44:06.540
you know, basic sort of Norweic model of, of, uh, of social welfare in a state can lead to a kind
00:44:11.560
of social cohesion that doesn't benefit neoliberalism. And so you can see how it is a kind of concession that,
00:44:17.460
you know, instead of giving you free healthcare, free education,
00:44:19.940
cradle to grave benefits, this kind of thing that you, you just, you take your check as kind
00:44:24.460
of an atomized consumer that everyone in society gets, regardless of, of race, religion,
00:44:29.500
It makes demands on you, the state. I mean, this is, I mean, there's a massive difference between
00:44:35.000
FDR work programs where, you know, and again, you could make a libertarian argument against these
00:44:41.220
or whatever, but you know, of employing people to build roads or build, I've actually visited places
00:44:48.180
in the United States that were FDR projects that were, um, you know, kind of public lands or little
00:44:53.380
wilderness areas or hiking trails and things like that. And, you know, you are employing them for
00:45:00.160
the better, betterment of society. Um, you know, our national park system, which is actually a really
00:45:05.420
great thing was, you know, created as a, you know, not just to conserve wilderness, but, but, but also as
00:45:11.120
a kind of nationalist agenda, um, by people like Theodore Roosevelt and Madison Grant and, you know,
00:45:17.700
other people like that. I mean, fascism was a way of, of almost like forcing people to participate.
00:45:25.140
You know, it's like, we're going to make you get out there in the center of Rome and hold a dagger
00:45:31.240
above your head and declare your allegiance to the state. That, that is fascism on a basic level.
00:45:37.140
Now that you, that word is obviously overused, but at this point in civilizational decline,
00:45:43.920
it's just kind of like, yeah, give me my money, bro. You know, and buying weed and ordering shit
00:45:51.580
on Amazon and hanging out and working less, but you don't have to work as much because, you know,
00:45:58.980
McDonald's is automated and it is a, like, I, I, I think the paradigm of the last man where there
00:46:06.780
are no demands, he is absolutely content and there are no demands made on him by the state or the
00:46:13.960
family or the church or whatever. And he does not make any demands on himself. That is where we're
00:46:20.360
headed. And I don't, you know, I can, I do support UBI because I realize the like level at which people
00:46:30.080
are getting screwed over, but I'm not going to ever claim that this is like a new paradigm or like
00:46:36.740
we're saving the white race or whatever, or this is going to be so great. No, this is UBI is the next
00:46:43.940
neoliberal trick. If you want to use language like that, it's, it's the next stage of this
00:46:49.920
financialization of the economy, the end of production, the end of the state as a center
00:46:56.560
order that, you know, that you owe, you have a responsibility towards, uh, and so on. It is
00:47:03.260
generating a last man. It's generating a kind of sleeplessness. I, there's the famous scene in,
00:47:08.580
uh, uh, inception, maybe not so famous, but I thought it was one of the most
00:47:13.860
amazing scenes, um, where, you know, Cobb or the protagonist walks in and there are these just
00:47:20.440
people who are just asleep all the time. They're on this cocktail where they are just living a
00:47:28.660
amazing dream. Um, that is the kind of world that we're headed towards much more than, you know,
00:47:37.500
the, the, the way it's presented by left-wing YouTube or, you know, these people where it's
00:47:43.120
like, Oh, let's just go back to the fifties where everyone's, you know, proud to be an American and
00:47:47.780
everyone's middle-class. And, uh, we, you know, you can have a family of four or whatever. That's
00:47:53.360
not where we're headed. And, and all of these systems that are now possible, you know, UBI has
00:48:01.180
like 40 or 50% support or something. It's remarkable. Um, all these things are now possible because
00:48:07.040
they're, they're sustainable within the current paradigm. And, and I, and I would say that they're
00:48:13.140
kind of like the last gasp of this paradigm. They're not even pretending to be bourgeois anymore.
00:48:18.920
You know, it's like, we're not even pretending to say work hard. You'll get a gold watch after
00:48:23.800
you've been in the corporation for 30 years, you might have a summer home, but you'll definitely
00:48:27.360
have a car and your wife can stay home and take care of the kids and use her dishwasher.
00:48:31.420
They're not even doing that. They're now basically saying, you know, hang out with
00:48:37.060
your beds, uh, video games, masturbate, and we'll send you $2,000 instantly into your
00:48:44.620
checking account and you can buy more stuff you don't need on Amazon.
00:48:49.700
Yeah. I mean, you still, you still see sort of remnants of this in Europe anyway, which
00:48:54.360
is like, you know, you'll find like the, you know, there's like a certain type of sort
00:48:59.160
of old school person that like, they might be out of work and they'd be entitled to unemployment
00:49:03.120
benefits, but they just, it had never even crossed their mind to apply for them or like
00:49:07.000
a common complaint you'll get from people in, in, well, in Ireland anyways, like they'll
00:49:11.820
complain about all the, you know, like the immigrants that just arrived and they've got
00:49:15.540
a social house and they've got all this benefits and they've, you know, they've replying for
00:49:20.260
five different social welfare checks. And it's like, well, you know, you know, you're
00:49:24.720
probably entitled to half of that yourself. Like what, why haven't you applied for
00:49:27.560
that? But it's like, there's still that kind of, you know, there's still that way of looking
00:49:31.420
at social welfare as like, you know, this is our collective pot and it's there for the
00:49:35.060
least fortunate. And it's like a terrible thing to draw on it if you're not entitled
00:49:38.940
to it, which I mean, in some ways it's kind of, yeah, it's, it's admirable. But I mean,
00:49:45.760
it's, it's one of those things it's like, there's, there's a lot of white people I think
00:49:48.720
in the U S are probably entitled to a lot of benefits and they're just not drawn on them.
00:49:52.940
It's not something to even consider. So it's, it's almost becoming like a hindrance
00:49:56.640
for the white working class. But yeah, I mean, that is something, that's something we're
00:49:59.580
going to lose. And it's another thing that makes people more atomized and harder to organize
00:50:04.480
because like you said, you know, when everyone has their $2,000 check and they're all watching
00:50:08.680
Netflix and smoking pot, it's like, you know, on what collective interest you even organize
00:50:13.680
them around, you know, everything, it's just a further reduction of everything being to
00:50:17.380
economic units, everyone being an atomized consumer, you know, someone even conceiving of
00:50:22.380
themselves as part of a race or an ethnic group when they're in a country that's a, you
00:50:28.160
know, a hodgepodge of different groups that are all getting the $2,000 check, all buying
00:50:32.060
the same things. Yeah. It's a, it's a further, you know, it's a further step down that, that
00:50:37.340
road of atomization. But I mean, at the same time, I wouldn't, at the same time, you know,
00:50:42.260
like you said, this is kind of an inevitable process. You know, I do see like people on the
00:50:45.740
right constantly coming out against UBI, like, oh, they'll, they'll turn it off for white
00:50:49.680
people. And if you say, if you say something racist on Twitter, you'll stop getting your
00:50:53.800
check, which is like, you know, for all of the private platform and we've seen, you know,
00:50:59.920
I kind of like try and think of like major sort of, you know, like what, what major, like
00:51:04.480
alt-right figures and getting their posts delivered or something.
00:51:07.360
Exactly. Last time I checked, my PO box still works.
00:51:11.140
But yeah, I mean, it's that thing again, like it's, it's, you know, it's like, what's your
00:51:14.860
word? However, I can't use PayPal or YouTube, you know?
00:51:18.760
Right. I mean, you know, Mark Collette and Laura Taylor recently had their bank account
00:51:22.340
shut down in the UK, which is like, you know, that's a problem of a lack of, of government
00:51:27.160
interference. So, I mean, it should be an issue. It's one of those things that's like, if we're
00:51:30.360
moving to a post-industrial economy and these things are inevitable, like, you know, are you
00:51:35.320
going to just sort of scream on the sidelines about whatever, whatever the latest conspiracy
00:51:41.260
is that this is Bill Gates doing it to like, you know, starve right-wingers or something,
00:51:47.720
or are you going to try and be ahead of the curve and sort of make this an issue that you
00:51:51.380
can frame around identity? Yeah. It's, it's one of those things like you have to acknowledge
00:51:55.780
that this is kind of, you know, this is another step down the road of, of a long process that's
00:52:00.600
really bad for us. But at the same time, you know, what, what really are the options
00:52:06.660
And what's the alternative? Well, it's going to collapse and
00:52:12.300
something new. I mean, I, I, I, that, that is the only alternative. I mean, I'm, I, and I'm not
00:52:19.320
trying to be depressive or something by saying what I said about things like UBI. Cause I, I think
00:52:25.040
there, there is, there's also kind of like an interesting development over the past four years
00:52:29.500
or five years with, um, with Trump to a large degree, but on the alt-right where you have a lot
00:52:35.880
of people sounding like Bernie Sanders, but they, they do have a sense of identity and so on.
00:52:40.740
And I, I am throwing cold water on that to a large degree. Um, I'm not prepped because I, I see this
00:52:48.880
as kind of, I see a lot of these, you know, latest things as kind of like a late stage of this current
00:52:55.620
paradigm. And that means that we're going to have a new one maybe in our lifetime and it's going to
00:53:00.920
collapse and we'll have something new and it's going to be amazing. And I hope we can, uh, have
00:53:06.940
a say in what it looks like. So I, I'm ultimately very optimistic, but, um, I'm, you know, highly,
00:53:14.920
you know, I, I don't know, I'm not pessimistic. I'm just realistic about what all this stuff actually
00:53:25.000
I probably wouldn't be as pessimistic about the, the sort of embrace of sort of old school
00:53:29.680
economic populism among national leaders. Because I mean, what you've seen the last few
00:53:33.880
days is like everyone is, you know, you get an event like this, a black swan event, or maybe
00:53:39.240
this is a gray swan event. I'm not sure how you start the swans out again, but, and suddenly
00:53:44.380
you have like millions of people, um, turning to economic populism and getting this sort of
00:53:50.340
anti-elitist sentiment. And it's like, what's been offered on the left is so terrible because
00:53:55.140
the amount of leftists and, and like mainstream left that has been like sort of subtly counter
00:54:01.740
signaling this because, uh, you know, because the anti-semites got involved or, you know,
00:54:06.980
it wasn't like the coalition isn't gender queer enough or something. Um, you know, if you can
00:54:12.400
forecast that, that kind of collapse that is coming, it seems like the best way to be ahead
00:54:17.420
of the curve is for the right to kind of own that position. Um, that there's clearly,
00:54:22.100
there's clearly like a kind of market demand for, but the left isn't satisfying.
00:54:27.720
Yeah. This is a great conversation. I'm glad. Cause I think we went deep and, uh, but then
00:54:33.680
also went shallow, you could say, and talked about what was happening immediately. So, um,
00:54:38.020
yeah, it was a great conversation. Thanks, Keith.
00:54:47.420
Yeah. And we're both, uh, we're both approving that everyone listening and put all their money
00:54:51.920
into, into Dogecoin. Oh yeah. Or some even more esoteric or bizarre cryptocurrency that has a funny
00:55:00.660
name. I would just, just put it all on red. Yeah. All on Doge. What is Dogecoin? It's like a dog.
00:55:09.580
Is that what it is? Like, yeah. Is it a Shiba they call it? Like a Japanese Shiba is the name
00:55:16.800
of the dog. Oh, is it that famous dog? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think the coin is just like a copy
00:55:23.120
of another coin, like light coin. And it was openly just started as, as a joke. Yeah. But it's like,
00:55:29.180
it has as much value as any other. But it's that famous dog that was like at a train station.
00:55:34.600
Isn't there some like story about him? They did a movie or something. I think,
00:55:38.980
I don't know. Maybe I'm conflating famous dogs.
00:55:43.220
Yeah. I'm not sure. I mean, Doge is such a part of the internet now. It's just like,
00:55:47.920
yeah. Yeah. Put it, put it all in Doge. Just, just don't sue me for saying that because I'm obviously