The Michael Knowles Show - Friendly Fire： Rising Prices, Rising AI, and Rise of the Merlin World Premiere Trailer

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00:00:30.000 This is why you guys need me here as a community college dropout with all you Ivy League nerds.

00:00:35.180 You were just making fun of me because I brought that up.

00:00:37.040 And now you're bringing that up.

00:00:38.000 Well, I'm bringing it back to the real world.

00:00:40.760 No, no, no.

00:00:41.480 You're reading the study totally wrong.

00:00:42.780 That's not what the study says.

00:00:44.280 Okay, now I really want to move on because Matt's offering a moderate opinion and Ben is agreeing with him.

00:00:48.680 Friends are these cooties, enemies.

00:00:52.080 Friends are these cooties, enemies.

00:00:55.040 Everybody, welcome to Friendly Fire.

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00:01:08.140 Also stick around because we have the world premiere of the trailer of Pendragon.

00:01:12.560 The Pendragon Cycle, The Rise of the Merlin that is coming up at the end of the show.

00:01:16.080 But before we get to any of that, speaking of wizardry, I want to talk about AI and whether AI is really good like everyone seems to think it is,

00:01:25.380 like all the financial speculators have thought, which is why it boosted the MAG7 stocks until recently before our impending stock market collapse,

00:01:32.760 or whether AI is probably mostly bad for all of us.

00:01:36.840 To kick it off, the most optimistic person on the panel, Mr. Walsh.

00:01:41.200 Yeah, I'm very, I become more anti-AI with each passing day.

00:01:47.180 I hate AI.

00:01:48.660 If I could, I said before, if I could commit some sort of anti-AI genocide, I would totally do it.

00:01:55.160 I think that, and here's what blows my mind about it, is that we can all, most of us anyway, can see,

00:02:01.400 even people who are behind AI, like Elon Musk, can see coming this, like, potential civilizational level catastrophe.

00:02:10.340 And basically nothing is being done about it at all, because what is absolutely going to happen,

00:02:16.480 as far as I can tell, is AI, at a minimum, is going to wipe out many millions of jobs over the next 5 to 10 years.

00:02:23.740 How many millions, there's no way to say for sure.

00:02:26.680 I did ask, by the way, ChatGPT before we went on, I asked ChatGPT to estimate how many jobs it will take,

00:02:33.360 and AI will take from us in the next 10 years.

00:02:36.020 And I think the answer I got was 15 million or something like that.

00:02:39.740 15 to 25 million.

00:02:41.120 So, who knows?

00:02:42.020 It's millions of jobs are going out the window.

00:02:43.700 We know that because of AI.

00:02:44.920 And they're not going to be replaced by anything.

00:02:46.320 They're just, they're going away.

00:02:47.440 They're not coming back.

00:02:49.400 That's going to happen.

00:02:50.940 We're going to be, we're already, we're almost there now, but we will soon be in a situation online

00:02:55.300 where you just simply cannot tell reality from fiction at all,

00:02:59.100 where the AI videos are going to be so good that if anybody wants to smear any of us here,

00:03:05.020 I can't imagine anyone would want to smear any of us because we're so, we're all so beloved.

00:03:09.140 But if anyone wanted to do that, I could just make a video of any of us doing or saying something horrible,

00:03:12.980 and there'd be no way for us to prove it didn't happen.

00:03:14.600 That cat video radicalized me.

00:03:16.340 I don't know if you guys saw the cat playing the didgeridoo and everything.

00:03:19.020 It was very good.

00:03:20.480 If I didn't, if I didn't know that most cats don't play didgeridoo, I would have thought that was a 100% real video.

00:03:26.220 Well, that's, but Michael, that's the other, that's, that's the other thing that's going to happen with AI

00:03:29.520 is that people are just sitting there looking at this slop made by an algorithm all day, every day,

00:03:35.080 while their minds are melted.

00:03:36.640 And then on top of all those other things, it's going to completely destroy every creative industry

00:03:41.340 is all going out, out the window.

00:03:43.940 And so what are we doing about this?

00:03:46.780 Are we just going to sit back and let it happen?

00:03:48.720 Because that seems to be the kind of defeatist attitude that most people have is like,

00:03:52.340 well, we can't do anything.

00:03:53.680 So let's just, I guess, you know, we had a good run, human beings.

00:03:57.800 Let's, let's pack it in.

00:03:59.820 And I, I, I, Matt, I do want, Matt, I want to ask you seriously,

00:04:02.400 do you think that AI is going to kill all of us?

00:04:04.240 Or is this kind of your list of, because I know that's the sort of the most catastrophist take on this.

00:04:09.340 Is that AI is going to turn around and do gigantic murder to all of us?

00:04:13.080 No.

00:04:13.440 Terminator 2.

00:04:14.020 But you know, like this is your list of complaints.

00:04:16.040 I just want to make sure that that's the list of complaints that I can argue with them.

00:04:18.920 No, the, the Terminator thing, I don't, that's like, I'd prefer that.

00:04:22.420 I mean, at least that's, that, you know what, if, if, if AI becomes Terminator,

00:04:26.780 then that at least gives us jobs that we could do because we're fighting the AI.

00:04:30.340 So it's not that at all.

00:04:32.280 I'm not looking at any science, you know, sci-fi scenario.

00:04:35.120 It really is.

00:04:35.840 The main thing is people will not have much to do because AI is going to do everything and it's going to take all of our jobs.

00:04:42.320 And I don't think that we have the capacity to sustain that.

00:04:45.460 I don't think we have any plan for what we do when 20 million people all of a sudden have no job.

00:04:49.680 That's, that's the main thing.

00:04:50.860 Okay.

00:04:51.160 I'm going to argue with everything you just said.

00:04:52.600 Okay.

00:04:52.860 So I'm, I'm not a person who, who believes that AI is the cure for all problems.

00:04:59.120 I also do not think that what we are in right now is sustainable economically.

00:05:02.920 I've been saying this for a while.

00:05:03.980 I've actually been saying it for, for well over a year is that I think we are in a bubble.

00:05:07.280 I think pretty clearly we're in an AI bubble.

00:05:09.080 That doesn't mean AI isn't, is not important.

00:05:11.420 It just means that the overinvestment in infrastructure at some point is going to have to pay off in actual earnings or the entire pyramid is going to crumble, at least for, for most of these companies.

00:05:19.600 As far as I'm hearing kind of three arguments there.

00:05:22.480 One is the AI is going to take all of our jobs.

00:05:25.660 Two is that if the AI takes all of our jobs, what are we going to do with our lives?

00:05:28.860 And three is the quality of AI is, is demeaning to sort of the, the, the human being that what's going to happen to human art, what's going to happen to quality.

00:05:37.820 It's all going to kind of descend into AI slot mediocrity.

00:05:41.240 So one at a time, I will say that AI is going to cause job dislocation, but it's not going to take out nearly all of the jobs.

00:05:48.780 And in the end, what you will see is a job shift actually predominantly away from the white collar industries and more toward the blue collar industries.

00:05:55.680 So what you'll see is all the people who are telling welders to code 15 years ago, all those people are now going to have to go learn to weld.

00:06:02.180 That's actually what's going to happen.

00:06:03.240 There can be a lot of people who are going to have, have to be in sort of more physical industries.

00:06:06.680 They're going to have to do more nursing, for example.

00:06:08.660 Like there's certain things human beings want from other human beings that AI isn't going to provide.

00:06:12.120 It's going to be more of an aid than anything else.

00:06:14.560 And it's going to take slower to, to work its way into the market than everybody thinks.

00:06:17.780 Everybody always thinks it's going to be transitional boom, like tomorrow, all jobs replaced by AI.

00:06:22.140 And, and it's not true.

00:06:23.120 The people who it's first going to replace are the coders.

00:06:24.860 I've already started to see some of this happen at Google.

00:06:27.440 And I know people, friends and family to whom this has happened, but it's going to take a while for it to filter into all business.

00:06:33.320 And there will be transitional job loss, and then it will move into other areas.

00:06:37.460 This is what happened with the internet.

00:06:38.820 This is what happens with every, you know, kind of great industrial age invention is that there's a tremendous job dislocation at the beginning, and then the job market moves.

00:06:46.500 And I don't think AI is going to destroy wholesale all of these jobs.

00:06:50.340 But let's, let's move to part number two, which is sort of the idea that it will destroy all the jobs.

00:06:54.620 Let's take that as an assumption.

00:06:56.120 So here's my thing.

00:06:57.480 I was actually at a conference with a bunch of people who are like the creators of these systems.

00:07:01.060 And they were arguing kind of what you're arguing, Matt, that, that eventually AI will be better at everything.

00:07:05.920 And none of us will have jobs anymore.

00:07:08.000 And what are we going to do with our day?

00:07:09.220 And I raised my hand.

00:07:10.040 I said, you know what?

00:07:10.520 I know what I'm going to do with my day.

00:07:11.840 I'm going to take care of my family.

00:07:12.840 I'm going to go to synagogue more often.

00:07:14.300 I'm going to, you know, learn the holy books.

00:07:16.440 I'm going to actually spend more time getting in touch with God.

00:07:18.820 Like, I think that actually religious people and community-oriented people will be fine because we actually have a thing to do with our day.

00:07:25.080 I think that secular humanism is going to have a real problem determining what to do with its day in a way that many religious people will not.

00:07:31.720 And then just as far as the quality of it, I'm not sure that AI is ever going to be creative enough.

00:07:37.500 Visually, it will be.

00:07:38.160 It'll be able to fool you visually.

00:07:39.280 But in terms of the actual creativity of truly great writing, I don't think AI is ever going to be a great writer.

00:07:45.380 It's all derivative.

00:07:46.380 I think that AI, because it's predictive text mechanism, and you will end up with mid-range slop for the most part.

00:07:52.860 But the way that I've used AI in my own work is to save time asking a sophisticated question that would take me a while to research, for example.

00:08:00.260 Or if I'm doing a creative writing project, and I don't want to take a lot of time looking up the details of Soviet Russia in 1938 or something, then I can ask a multi-part question and it'll spit out an answer.

00:08:10.040 If I asked it to write dialogue, the dialogue would just not be as good.

00:08:13.000 And so I agree that there will be a lot of slop, but I think that the people who are best at their craft will actually end up benefiting from AI.

00:08:18.940 And usually when the best get better, that's actually good for everybody else because it tends to drag everybody else along in terms of quality.

00:08:24.880 So you point on the religious people who, you know, they'll know what to do with their time, or the educated people, or the cultural elites.

00:08:34.580 I totally agree with that.

00:08:36.000 But to me, this is what's really worrisome about Matt's point, that it's going to displace 15 million jobs, and most people are not going to know what to do.

00:08:42.820 Because I agree with you.

00:08:44.020 You will figure out what to do with your time.

00:08:45.780 No, no, no, but in the white-collar jobs, Michael.

00:08:47.160 In the white-collar jobs.

00:08:47.780 If you're a blue-collar person, those are the jobs, but those are the people who you're talking about, like largely blue-collar people who are, like you're saying, you know, all the people who are like the intellectual elite, those are the people who are now most likely to lose their jobs.

00:09:01.140 No, no, no, I'm drawing a distinction here.

00:09:03.720 There are plenty of people in white-collar jobs who are complete Philistines, who are secular humanists, who I don't know that they are going to figure out what to do.

00:09:11.020 Because really what it gets down to is a perennial question, which is what we do for leisure time, you know.

00:09:16.040 That's what the liberal arts were supposed to teach us how to do.

00:09:18.840 Now we think of them more as trade school, but it was supposed to teach us what to do with our freedom, how aristocrats are supposed to live.

00:09:24.640 We obviously don't really have that.

00:09:26.160 So my fear is that the promise of AI is really just an extension of the promise of the Internet.

00:09:32.280 The Internet was going to make us all smarter.

00:09:34.260 We were going to have all of human knowledge at our fingertips.

00:09:36.700 We were going to learn a new language.

00:09:38.760 It's all the same stuff we're hearing with AI.

00:09:40.200 And the reality is, for some people, the Internet did make them smarter and more productive and more thoughtful and have fuller lives.

00:09:48.220 And for more people than that, really for most people I think, it made them dumber and it made them more vicious.

00:09:54.400 And I think it made them more likely to look at porn and it made them more likely to ignore the great works.

00:09:58.880 And this goes all the way back to the Federis.

00:10:00.440 It's Plato's dialogue where Socrates is saying that written language, books essentially, are going to make people dumber because they're going to have the simulacrum of wisdom.

00:10:09.660 But they're not actually going to memorize anything.

00:10:11.300 They're not going to know anything.

00:10:12.420 And so I fear, I think you're right.

00:10:14.040 I think for people who have their lives in order and are religious and have a cohesive view of the purpose of life, I think it could improve their lives.

00:10:21.100 And I think for most people, it probably won't.

00:10:23.380 Drew?

00:10:23.500 Drew, well, if I could take you and Ben and mash you together just for my own personal pleasure, that would be great.

00:10:30.040 But also I think that what you're saying, you're hitting that.

00:10:33.060 The problem is not AI.

00:10:34.200 The problem is human beings.

00:10:35.580 And it's always the problem.

00:10:36.820 I mean, people talk about, are we going to have to regulate an industry?

00:10:39.860 You don't regulate industries.

00:10:41.240 You regulate human beings.

00:10:42.480 You have to regulate human beings because they're sinful and broken and will kill each other and rob each other and do all these things.

00:10:47.420 Because already we see with AI, I mean, recently, last week I think it was, they brought out an AI where you can record somebody and then after he's dead, you can continue to talk.

00:10:57.200 It will give you an AI version of your dead relative so you can talk to mom even after she's passed.

00:11:01.840 I mean, that is idolatry of the worst possible kind.

00:11:05.340 There have been AI dolls that have been put in children's rooms that talk them out of believing in God and tell them how to get drugs and things like this.

00:11:11.760 So the problem is not the AI per se.

00:11:14.720 It's what people are going to do with it.

00:11:16.720 It is going to make porn spectacular.

00:11:19.740 I mean, the porn is going to come out of AI.

00:11:21.660 I mean, I can already see that it will do anything you want it to do.

00:11:25.140 It's going to rob people of their desire to read.

00:11:30.520 I mean, it's already people are like condensing books.

00:11:33.240 Well, now I've got, you know, war and peace.

00:11:35.020 It's just give me two paragraphs.

00:11:36.640 But that's a complete destruction of what it means.

00:11:38.700 And so people who don't have the meaning of life or don't know where it lies, which is in the internal life, are going to be lost.

00:11:47.940 You and I, Knowles, had a conversation with a very powerful leader in AI just the other week or so.

00:11:55.100 And I went up to him and I said to him, don't you understand that when AI speaks, it's not speaking.

00:12:01.320 It's not conscious.

00:12:02.560 And I said, it's like it's like I quoted the great Louis Armstrong saying, I see friends shaking hands saying, how do you do?

00:12:08.740 They're really saying, I love you, meaning that when we speak, we deliver our inner selves to one another, even if our words are not precisely that meaning.

00:12:17.600 AI has no inner life.

00:12:18.920 And these guys don't know that.

00:12:20.360 They are convinced that because it can imitate an inner life, they think the Turing test, which is the stupidest idea anybody ever had, is indicative of an inner life.

00:12:29.640 If it can confuse us about its inner life, it has one.

00:12:32.480 So what I'm worried about it is it is in some ways the ultimate idol.

00:12:36.380 And we know what people do with idols.

00:12:38.100 You know, we know that when all Moses has to do is leave town for five minutes, they start worshiping the golden calf.

00:12:44.380 That's where I think the danger lies.

00:12:45.940 I think jobs will be created.

00:12:47.900 I think creativity will exist.

00:12:50.140 But I think human beings will use it.

00:12:51.260 You know, to your point, Drew, it's a really important point because part of that conversation, and I've had this conversation with other people too, is can AI write a poem?

00:12:58.560 And people get really, really, I don't know, vitriolic about this.

00:13:01.880 They're very, because it's really the heart of the AI debate.

00:13:04.540 And my argument was they can't write a poem because to write a poem, you have to have sensual experience.

00:13:11.120 You have to be able to describe a grape in a way that gives someone the sensory experience of that.

00:13:16.900 And you have to be able to take language, which is just full of dead metaphors.

00:13:20.760 It's like the graveyard of dead metaphors.

00:13:22.560 And you have to create a new metaphor, you know, something that's evocative.

00:13:26.540 And AI in particular cannot do that because it doesn't have any senses yet.

00:13:31.780 It's worth pointing out that with robotics, it actually might have sensory experience.

00:13:35.060 And two, it's just learning on dead language.

00:13:37.260 So, in my view, it can't make a poem, but I don't know, maybe it can.

00:13:42.180 And all of this is a little bit beside the question of, all right, if it's going to have these negative effects, what do we do about it?

00:13:47.460 Do we regulate it or do we not?

00:13:49.940 Do we let the market run its course?

00:13:51.280 What are we going to do?

00:13:52.240 You guys, hang on a second.

00:13:53.700 This is why you guys need me here as a community college dropout with all you Ivy League nerds who immediately, this becomes a, this becomes a, like, can AI make a poem?

00:14:05.080 And what will we, what will we think about in our leisure time about AI?

00:14:09.560 My question is, how are people going to eat?

00:14:11.740 Okay, I'm not talking about leisure time.

00:14:13.660 How are you going to feed yourself?

00:14:15.260 How are you going to make money to buy a house?

00:14:17.280 Like, that's the first question here.

00:14:20.240 Because, and if the answer is, well, we'll live in some sort of AI socialist dystopia where AI will provide all that stuff for you.

00:14:29.620 Well, I'm very skeptical that it will work out that way.

00:14:32.080 I think what's actually going to happen is you're going to end up with, you know, a handful of trillionaires off this AI stuff and a lot of other people who are totally destitute.

00:14:39.140 But even if it did work out that way, okay, well, then that's our life that now we're living as people that are totally dependent on this non-human algorithm to provide for us.

00:14:47.500 I think that's a pretty horrifying vision of the future.

00:14:49.480 Why should that happen now and it's never happened before?

00:14:51.340 It's also, this is, it's not just white-collar jobs.

00:14:54.760 It's also blue-collar jobs.

00:14:56.280 Okay, delivery drivers, truck drivers, Uber drivers, that's all going away.

00:15:00.360 That's gone.

00:15:01.060 That's finished.

00:15:01.760 And that's just the beginning of it.

00:15:03.240 And they're not being replaced.

00:15:04.320 This is not creating new jobs because this is different from any other technology that has ever existed on the planet.

00:15:09.860 It is not analogous to anything else because the whole point of it, the whole point is to take the human element out of it completely.

00:15:17.240 It's not a new tool for humans to use.

00:15:19.420 It's not like going from a carriage driver to now you're driving an automobile.

00:15:23.020 This is, the human is gone.

00:15:24.640 We don't need you anymore.

00:15:25.900 It's artificial intelligence.

00:15:27.740 And so these jobs are leaving and they're not being replaced.

00:15:30.160 For all the drivers who are not going to have a job anymore, there's not some new thing.

00:15:34.220 Oh, well, you'll go over here and do this.

00:15:35.800 It's, there's nothing for you.

00:15:37.500 You're out now.

00:15:38.280 Why do you think that's true?

00:15:40.240 They say this every time a new technology comes.

00:15:43.000 No, wait a minute.

00:15:43.720 I want to get, I want to get, no, Drew, it's fine.

00:15:45.460 I want to get to it.

00:15:46.200 But before we get to it, we need to, we need to eat.

00:15:49.160 Okay.

00:15:49.380 The only way we're going to eat is if I read this ad right here, this one.

00:15:53.300 So guys, just cut it for a second.

00:15:54.700 AI can do this.

00:15:56.500 I hope not.

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00:17:17.400 Okay, now, Drew, you want to say something?

00:17:18.920 Yes, Drew.

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00:17:19.640 I also have to jump in, I'm told, with another momentum-killing advertisement.

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00:19:12.900 So here's my problem with the no-job scenario.

00:19:15.620 It's that it comes up every single time there's a new technology.

00:19:19.200 Every time, and it's why government is so bad at managing economies.

00:19:23.880 It's why you don't want a top-down economy because when the cart and horse goes out of style,

00:19:28.680 the government says, we must save the jobs of buggy whip makers, you know?

00:19:33.220 And the thing is, there'll be new jobs.

00:19:34.880 There will be new jobs.

00:19:35.920 And the thing is, maybe we can't even imagine.

00:19:38.060 I think this has happened a million times before.

00:19:39.900 You can't imagine what the new job is going to be.

00:19:42.020 But there'll be jobs to do because people are endlessly creative.

00:19:44.920 It's like the people who worry about running out of oil, you know, you don't run out of energy

00:19:50.980 because energy is a product of the human mind.

00:19:53.520 The human mind turns things into energy.

00:19:56.400 And if we run out of oil, we'll turn something else.

00:19:58.500 You know, we'll mash up Knowles.

00:19:59.540 We'll use him for energy.

00:20:00.420 I mean, you can always make energy.

00:20:02.940 The human mind and imagination and creativity is bottomless.

00:20:06.020 It's endless.

00:20:06.660 I don't fear this about AI at all, although I do think Ben is right that there could be

00:20:10.720 difficult transitions and knowing how people are will handle that in the worst way.

00:20:14.920 Way possible.

00:20:16.100 But I do think I do think when you have a powerful new tool, you have to start to think about

00:20:20.560 human sin.

00:20:21.740 You have to start to think about the things we're going to use it for that are destructive.

00:20:25.020 And that's where I see.

00:20:26.160 Yeah, I totally agree with this, Drew.

00:20:27.360 I mean, my worry about AI is the endless pornography, the endless narcissism, the things

00:20:33.760 that social media has done to human beings by exacerbating our worst qualities and that

00:20:37.340 getting even worse, obviously.

00:20:39.160 That's the thing I worry about.

00:20:40.300 But as far as sort of the economic point here, I'm significantly less worried about that for

00:20:44.260 a couple of reasons.

00:20:45.200 One, because I'm just less worried about it based on the history of technological innovation.

00:20:49.780 If you go back to the early 20th century, well over 80 percent of jobs in the United

00:20:53.200 States were agriculturally based or early industry based.

00:20:56.680 And obviously, very few people do agriculture.

00:20:58.880 Now, if you go to the middle of the 20th century, America was a manufacturing based economy.

00:21:02.280 Now we're a service based economy.

00:21:03.780 Jobs tend to move around and human beings are quite adaptable.

00:21:06.940 If the question is, you know, will I be endlessly poor while a few people are trillionaires?

00:21:10.580 That wouldn't work because they wouldn't be trillionaires if everybody is endlessly poor.

00:21:14.500 That's not the way that actually wealth distribution happens.

00:21:16.760 They don't take their wealth from a bunch of super duper poor people.

00:21:19.800 If there's no wealth for them to take, then they don't generate the product.

00:21:22.480 So the actual thing that would happen, the kind of worst case scenario that people are

00:21:25.640 talking about actually would be a sort of Star Trek replicator machine.

00:21:28.800 So in Star Trek, I know not a lot of Trekkies online here, but if you are Trekkie, my understanding

00:21:32.920 is that there is a replicator machine whereby you can literally generate any product from

00:21:36.860 nothing with no resource use, essentially.

00:21:38.520 And so you don't have to worry about anything.

00:21:40.560 Well, if you don't have to worry about anything, I thought that that was mostly the goal of

00:21:43.920 human beings because work, I mean, we all understand that work is important, but there

00:21:47.540 are other types of work, right?

00:21:49.480 Like, for example, spending time with your family, it's a different type of fulfillment.

00:21:53.100 It's not really work, but it's service.

00:21:54.900 What we would call in Hebrew, avoda, which is the same Hebrew, the word for work and service

00:21:58.820 is the same.

00:21:59.360 It's avoda.

00:22:00.500 The same type of thing, I think, is true in our lives, right?

00:22:03.900 When I think of like the things that I do that are important, my work actually comes maybe

00:22:06.520 third or fourth on the list after family and religion and the stuff that I'm doing in my

00:22:10.380 community and for the country.

00:22:12.000 So, you know, I'm less worried about the kind of how do I get my stuff?

00:22:14.960 If things work out great, we're all going to be way richer and have a lot more leisure

00:22:17.520 time.

00:22:17.980 If you're worried about the leisure time, that's a human nature problem.

00:22:20.140 That's what Drew is talking about.

00:22:21.960 And then there is the other problem, which is what's the alternative?

00:22:25.300 People keep talking about, okay, we could regulate it out of existence, right?

00:22:27.900 We're just going to regulate it, stop it from taking trucker jobs.

00:22:30.520 Okay, let's say that we were able to do that.

00:22:31.960 Let's say that we were able to ban all the self-driving cars.

00:22:34.040 Does anybody think that any other place on Earth is going to ban the self-driving cars?

00:22:38.480 So the actual thing that will happen is that China will gain complete economic dominance

00:22:42.460 over planet Earth, unless you are going to essentially make America autarkic and poor.

00:22:46.400 That is the way that trade actually works.

00:22:48.160 China will gain the advantage of every efficiency on planet Earth while we hamper ourselves.

00:22:52.900 And we will live in relative poverty compared to what we are now, while China gains significantly

00:22:57.960 more power globally, and then uses that power in order to cram down its terrible vision

00:23:01.900 of the world, which will eventually affect us.

00:23:03.600 Is your view then like pure laissez-faire, no regulation whatsoever, let the market lead

00:23:09.420 in it, and that way we'll beat China and we'll maintain our dominance?

00:23:11.840 Yes, except for morality and national security, yes.

00:23:15.140 So I don't think we should be selling NVIDIA chips to China, because I think China is our

00:23:18.940 enemy.

00:23:19.700 And I also think that we should be heavily regulating pornography, period, and that applies

00:23:23.820 also to AI.

00:23:25.240 But if we're talking about like, should we stop AI from generating healthcare solutions

00:23:29.820 because people in the healthcare industry are going to lose their jobs?

00:23:32.300 I mean, let's be real about this.

00:23:34.400 Much like it's easy for us living in a first world country with an average life expectancy

00:23:38.960 above 80 to talk about, you know, the evils of AI.

00:23:41.980 But if AI, for example, in medical industry extends lifespans by another 20 years, which could

00:23:47.360 easily happen, you know, that seems like a pretty good thing to happen.

00:23:52.360 And I think that one of the biggest mistakes I see people happen, there's a mistake that

00:23:56.940 I just generally object to.

00:23:57.920 And that is, I think it happens on the Marxist left, and I think it sometimes happens on the

00:24:01.220 populist right.

00:24:02.100 And that is, they take a spiritual problem, people's emptiness and inability to function

00:24:06.360 in the absence of particular guardrails.

00:24:08.480 And then they say, there's a material solution for that.

00:24:11.240 And it is very rare to me that there's actually a material solution to a spiritual problem.

00:24:15.320 That's a very good point, Ben, because it is true.

00:24:17.940 Sometimes people think like with the birth rate problem, you can just fix it with a lot

00:24:21.580 of material solutions, and there's not a lot of evidence.

00:24:24.080 However, there's a distinction between a material solution and a government solution, because

00:24:28.780 the government influences culture, it promotes certain ideas, suppresses others, it promotes

00:24:32.660 religion traditionally, and I think inevitably.

00:24:35.740 And so, you know, to use the birth rate example, the only thing that seems to reliably increase

00:24:40.500 birth rate is the promotion of religion.

00:24:42.200 But the government can do things there, either explicitly promote religion, or at least stop

00:24:46.960 the suppression of religion, like, you know, we saw under Joe Biden, and we see under a

00:24:50.360 lot of liberals.

00:24:51.280 So is there any role, just before we get to the other guys, is there any role for the

00:24:55.680 government here in maybe not providing a material solution to the consequences of AI, but some

00:25:01.420 role for the government?

00:25:02.320 I mean, I want to know the specifics.

00:25:03.700 It always comes down to the specifics.

00:25:04.960 And this, by the way, no one, the problem with AI is a bunch of unknown unknowns, right?

00:25:08.600 It's not known unknowns, it's just we literally don't know what's going to happen next.

00:25:11.720 How do you regulate for that?

00:25:12.720 Which is why the Calci markets, right, Calci is one of our sponsors, right now in the Calci

00:25:16.180 markets, like 5% shot that there's any serious regulation of AI, because no one even would

00:25:21.060 know what that looks like.

00:25:22.540 What does that even look like?

00:25:23.280 I mean, this is a question, honestly, Matt, this is a question for you, because you want

00:25:26.820 to regulate AI, I assume.

00:25:28.080 You want to do something to stop sort of the forward march of AI.

00:25:30.900 So on a practical level, what does that look like?

00:25:33.420 Well, I think that, and I don't have all the answers, I'll fully admit that.

00:25:36.080 That's why it's so frustrating to me that we're not at a serious level even having this

00:25:42.200 conversation, I mean, we're having this conversation right now, but including like our lawmakers

00:25:46.580 having this debate about what can we do, what should we do, and that conversation just isn't

00:25:52.060 happening at all.

00:25:53.860 And if I had all the answers myself, then I guess I wouldn't be frustrated by that, because

00:25:57.300 I could just say, well, here's the answers, guys.

00:25:58.780 I don't have them, but what I know, the answer can't be, well, whatever, we'll see how it

00:26:04.760 plays out.

00:26:05.300 That can't be the answer when you're facing something that is going to fundamentally alter

00:26:09.640 our civilization in the way that this is going to.

00:26:11.680 Now, there are some things that can be done.

00:26:13.200 I mean, people have suggested, and when it comes to, and this is kind of on a lower level,

00:26:16.520 but things like intellectual property, this is another huge problem with AI, and I think

00:26:21.840 some of you guys have already kind of touched on it, that AI cannot create anything.

00:26:25.940 It can't make a poem.

00:26:28.560 Like, it can't write a poem.

00:26:29.380 It can't do a screenplay.

00:26:30.540 You were just making fun of me because I brought that up, and now you're bringing that up.

00:26:33.660 Well, I'm bringing it back to the real world.

00:26:36.400 So the problem with the reason why I can't do that is because it's stealing from what

00:26:40.060 other people have done, and right now AI lives in this kind of like bubble where the rules

00:26:44.640 of plagiarism don't apply to it.

00:26:46.620 So there are things that you could do there legislatively.

00:26:50.920 Again, it's not easy to do, but I do think you have to do something there to protect people

00:26:55.520 from having their creative property, but I would flip it back the other way because

00:27:02.060 what I'm going to ask is, okay, the drivers are all going to lose their jobs, most likely.

00:27:08.800 Customer service, the customer service industry, a lot of that is just going away because when

00:27:14.660 AI is adopted, and I don't think this is not some kind of like sci-fi speculation.

00:27:19.220 It's just extending out a little bit.

00:27:21.820 It's like pretty clear that if we keep applying this stuff, there's not going to be anything

00:27:25.980 for people to do in a lot of these jobs.

00:27:27.240 So I think a lot of these customer service jobs are going to go away.

00:27:30.160 And then, yes, there's also the white collar, but I care about those people too.

00:27:34.800 Anyone who sits in a cubicle all day and enters data into computers, which is millions of people,

00:27:41.880 probably a lot of their jobs are going away, and I think that that matters too.

00:27:45.280 So my question is, if that were to happen, let's just say, and maybe AI all breaks down

00:27:50.960 and it doesn't happen, I think it probably will.

00:27:52.840 If that happens over the next five to 10 years and you've got tens of millions of people

00:27:57.000 who, not just their job, but really their entire industry just went away, what are we

00:28:02.560 doing with them?

00:28:03.400 What are we doing for them?

00:28:04.260 I want to go back to the question.

00:28:07.780 Hold on, let me just answer that.

00:28:09.140 It'll take me, I promise, like four sentences, okay?

00:28:11.400 So here's the answer to that.

00:28:12.680 If I had asked you that same question in 1998, the advent of the internet is going to kill

00:28:16.380 a bunch of jobs, and it will kill a bunch of jobs, you know, based on all the supply

00:28:20.060 chains being changed, everything getting a lot shorter, you won't have to go to the local

00:28:23.260 mom and pop shop, you can order off the internet.

00:28:25.120 And I said to you, don't worry, in 20 years, there will be literally millions of people

00:28:29.720 who are working on AI coding and database building, data center building.

00:28:33.660 You would say, what the hell are you even talking about?

00:28:35.800 What do those words mean?

00:28:37.020 I don't know what those words mean.

00:28:38.220 If I said to you, there would be legitimately thousands of jobs that were people who were

00:28:42.540 social media editors and marketers.

00:28:44.340 You say, what the hell, what's a social media and how do it work, right?

00:28:47.660 Like, this is the whole point of the market, is that jobs that we don't even know exist

00:28:51.580 will come about because that's what the market does.

00:28:54.060 The market generates innovation because human desire is endless, and the human desire for

00:28:59.940 new and innovative things is also endless.

00:29:02.220 I want to hear from you.

00:29:05.940 Yes, yes, we can't, you know, we can't imagine these things.

00:29:08.420 I totally agree with Ben.

00:29:09.620 I think there are going to be jobs that we have no idea could possibly exist.

00:29:13.020 But the question that Knowles asked and actually Ben referred to is the really important

00:29:17.620 question.

00:29:19.060 When, back in the day, when you wanted to get a pornographic magazine, you had to walk

00:29:23.720 into a store, shame yourself, you had to make sure no, but none of the neighbors

00:29:26.720 saw you, you know, you went home with this piece of paper that you could look at and all

00:29:30.980 this stuff.

00:29:31.280 Not that, Drew, not that you have any experience in describing it.

00:29:33.280 No, I'm talking about the one right on.

00:29:35.500 Theoretically.

00:29:36.160 A friend of mine, theoretically, right.

00:29:37.960 So, but nobody, when people said, oh, we've got to ban this, and they did ban it, and you

00:29:42.040 know, they censored things, and then they said, oh yeah, we got to censor Ulysses too.

00:29:46.100 It was silly.

00:29:47.200 You had to get rid of it.

00:29:48.320 Now you've got this sewer of porn wiping people's lives away with no regulation whatsoever.

00:29:54.760 And so now conservatives, when I come out and say things, for instance, like, you should

00:29:58.760 not be able to censor opinions on YouTube, conservatives go, oh my, regulation, regulation.

00:30:04.520 Well, no, it's a new thing.

00:30:06.500 It needs new regulations to make sure the freedom of speech lives, because if you censor things

00:30:11.000 on YouTube, you have virtually taken them out of the public square.

00:30:14.220 So what do you do with pornography?

00:30:15.760 I mean, I, who would have said, you know, so what, pornography, 30 years ago, now think,

00:30:22.720 holy, this is a toxin being pumped into the human psyche like never before.

00:30:29.200 Dude, I wrote a literal book on pornography.

00:30:31.040 Yes, you did.

00:30:31.480 And what it was going to do to destroy young people in 2005.

00:30:35.040 Absolutely.

00:30:35.200 And I was mocked for it.

00:30:36.000 I was 21 years old when I wrote that book.

00:30:38.100 No, I've written many words of pornography over the years.

00:30:40.600 These are the questions that we're not addressing now, where we know the danger, we can see

00:30:45.140 the danger, it's only going to get worse.

00:30:47.040 These are the issues I think we should be addressing, not whether jobs are going to disappear, because

00:30:51.160 everything will change.

00:30:52.820 We don't even know what that's going to look like.

00:30:54.680 All right, Matt, last word.

00:30:55.940 Yeah, on the regulation side of it, I mean, obviously, the most, the most, you know, the

00:31:00.200 sort of the most heavy-handed and obvious thing, if we're talking about regulation, is,

00:31:03.940 you know, the government saying that, hey, okay, you want to wipe out all the driver

00:31:08.380 jobs, you want to wipe out, you want to, you know, you want to get rid of all your customer

00:31:12.320 service jobs if you're McDonald's, and it's, it's a law saying, well, you can't do that.

00:31:16.820 We're just, you're not, you can't do that.

00:31:18.800 We're not going to let you do that, because we're not going to let you put millions of

00:31:22.040 people out of work all at the same time, because we just can't, we can't sustain that

00:31:25.220 as a society.

00:31:25.960 We can't, it can't happen.

00:31:27.560 And now, that's very complicated.

00:31:29.100 That's the kind of thing that I normally would not support, and there is this tension between

00:31:34.440 like free markets and then this other huge civilization level concern.

00:31:38.620 So that's just, that's, that's the thing.

00:31:40.220 That's what we're dealing with.

00:31:41.240 And I do think, and I just go back to that this is a different kind of thing.

00:31:45.180 I think any analogy breaks down.

00:31:47.120 Ben, you brought up the internet.

00:31:48.080 Well, the internet is a different kind of thing.

00:31:49.920 The internet is a, you know, a very high-tech, sophisticated form of communication.

00:31:55.820 It's just a way of, for people to communicate and connect with each other.

00:31:59.120 And, and so that in and of itself is not going to take away jobs.

00:32:02.560 It might change what the jobs are, but you still need the, you still have humans who are

00:32:06.780 on the internet, commuting with, communicating with each other.

00:32:09.260 And that's the case with all of these technological innovations, that it's just a different tool

00:32:13.020 for people to use.

00:32:14.600 And so, yeah, maybe the job where you use the, the more primitive tool goes away, but

00:32:18.340 now you use the more sophisticated tool and that's the job.

00:32:20.940 And I think with AI, it's just different because, as I said, it's artificial intelligence,

00:32:25.440 which means the entire point of it is that we don't need a person to do this at all.

00:32:29.900 It's not a new thing for you to do.

00:32:31.300 You're not needed.

00:32:32.200 And because we're facing this totally new kind of thing, which I really believe is unprecedented

00:32:37.140 in human history, I think we might need to embrace solutions that otherwise would make

00:32:43.540 us uncomfortable.

00:32:44.440 In fairness, we don't know if that's even Matt really talking right now.

00:32:48.260 That could be Rock or Gemini or something.

00:32:51.220 Now, I want to get to, it was something we touched on though.

00:32:53.420 It's related, but it's a totally separate topic, is affordability.

00:32:57.500 It's the word, it's the meme that everyone's taught, it's the new six, seven, everyone's

00:33:01.160 just saying affordability all the time.

00:33:02.640 I want to get into what that actually means.

00:33:04.500 But first, I want to restore a little balance to this conversation.

00:33:07.380 Yes, I want to say there's, here is something that AI cannot do.

00:33:11.120 It cannot eat your vegetables.

00:33:12.840 It can't even eat my vegetables.

00:33:14.260 In fact, I can't eat your vegetables.

00:33:15.760 It's a very, very complicated thing, these vegetables.

00:33:18.500 And if you want to get enough of them, you need to use balance of nature because I love

00:33:22.320 vegetables, but if I ate enough, the kinds of things that, you know, nutrition experts

00:33:26.940 recommend, it would be all over my beard, my face.

00:33:29.460 It would be just disgusting.

00:33:30.680 So instead, I have balance of nature, fruits and veggies.

00:33:34.980 And you may say, well, if you use them all the time, which I do, why aren't they open?

00:33:38.920 It's because I have so many of these dead things that I don't even have to open them.

00:33:42.880 I got more downstairs that are open.

00:33:45.180 Balance of nature, what they do is they freeze dry fruits and veggies, then powder them

00:33:48.680 and blend them into the most convenient nutritional value.

00:33:52.180 You can take the fruits and veggies supplements with water, chew them or open them up and mix

00:33:56.180 the powder into your food or drinks, which just sounds silly to me, but it's still, it's

00:33:59.880 made from 100% whole food ingredients.

00:34:03.220 You wonder how an animated corpse like myself can look like a 30-year-old man.

00:34:07.240 It's because I use balance of nature.

00:34:08.800 So go to balanceofnature.com and get a free fiber and spice supplement.

00:34:14.040 You didn't even have time to talk about the fiber and spices.

00:34:16.200 Plus, you get 35% off your first set as a new preferred customer by using discount code

00:34:21.860 FRIENDLYFIRE.

00:34:23.280 Go to balanceofnature.com and use the discount code FRIENDLYFIRE.

00:34:27.300 Now, Knowles, what were you saying?

00:34:28.580 Well, I was saying with the rest of your money, you need to go to dailywire.com slash subscribe

00:34:33.040 because we have the biggest deal of the year right now.

00:34:35.360 This is the Black Friday deal, 50% off.

00:34:37.900 It's really, really big.

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00:34:41.040 Obviously, we have Pendragon coming out.

00:34:42.460 You're going to get the world premiere of that trailer coming out at the end of the show.

00:34:46.620 Really big stuff, though.

00:34:47.620 New docs, new hosts, new everything.

00:34:49.400 It's very exciting.

00:34:51.080 You guys are who empower DW to build culture.

00:34:54.880 And so right now, you can save 50%.

00:34:56.700 I love building culture, but I also like doing it on a good deal.

00:35:01.360 You know, I want to build culture frugally.

00:35:03.980 And so when you can do it for 50% off, it's a great time to do it.

00:35:07.400 Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe.

00:35:10.580 Absolutely fitting, apt way to talk about affordability, which is a very serious problem.

00:35:16.000 You know, usually sweet little Elisa does the shopping in the house.

00:35:19.220 Occasionally, I had to go out the other day to get lemons for a cocktail that I was making.

00:35:23.160 Not even for food, just for a cocktail I was making.

00:35:25.500 And so it was a great cocktail.

00:35:27.800 That's a story for another time.

00:35:29.220 Anyway, I go to the grocery store, and the prices are insane.

00:35:32.500 I see why Elisa had been keeping me from them, largely.

00:35:35.040 I mean, you know, the affordability problem is very real.

00:35:38.740 It's not that it's not being pounced on by political actors,

00:35:41.340 and it's obviously become a big political talking point.

00:35:43.260 But it's very, very real.

00:35:44.660 A ton of Americans are hurting.

00:35:46.840 A lot of the fundamentals of the economy are a little shaky right now,

00:35:50.100 even though those MAG-7 stocks that we were just talking about, AI, is pumping up the market.

00:35:54.260 It's really, really tough.

00:35:55.640 And so there are a bunch of related questions.

00:35:57.740 One, can the government do something to fix this?

00:36:02.000 Or is the government only going to make things worse?

00:36:05.640 How is this going to affect the midterms in the 2028 election?

00:36:08.860 Are we headed for an economic disaster?

00:36:11.820 And Ben, you got in a huge amount of trouble,

00:36:13.780 because there was a short clip of you going around saying,

00:36:17.000 yeah, listen, you know, if you can't afford stuff, move out of your town.

00:36:20.900 Even if it's your hometown, even if your family's been there for a long time,

00:36:23.460 just get, you've got to get out, you've got to be mobile.

00:36:25.840 And you were variously exalted and pilloried for this comment.

00:36:30.220 So what's it mean?

00:36:31.740 Yeah.

00:36:32.160 So let me start with what that comment meant.

00:36:35.440 That was a piece of personal advice to people that I think every single young person that I know

00:36:40.080 has at some point taken, which is if you're living in a place that you can't afford,

00:36:43.640 and the policies aren't going to change, and you want to make your life better,

00:36:46.640 you do have to make a significant calculation as to whether you think your life is going to get better

00:36:49.960 where you are or whether you're going to have to go pursue a dream someplace else.

00:36:53.260 And you've seen this.

00:36:54.360 You've seen tremendous population movement in this country right now,

00:36:56.460 out of New York to places like Austin, Texas.

00:36:59.020 You've seen tremendous population movement from the blue areas to the red areas of the country,

00:37:02.460 specifically because people are seeking economic opportunity.

00:37:04.780 So what I thought I was saying was something that's fairly obvious,

00:37:07.400 which is that if you are on a personal level in a place where you're stuck and you can't afford to live there,

00:37:12.540 you have to make the best decision for yourself and your family,

00:37:15.120 and that does include the possibility of actually moving as opposed to shouting at the wind

00:37:19.300 if the policy isn't going to change.

00:37:20.400 That's a separate question from what sort of policies could be pursued in order to make things more affordable.

00:37:25.220 I mean, I'll start with this.

00:37:26.480 If you're talking about Manhattan, Manhattan will never be as affordable as Des Moines.

00:37:30.100 It just is not going to.

00:37:31.160 And anybody who says that it is going to is totally lying to you.

00:37:33.620 It's just a flat-out lie.

00:37:35.620 The reality is there are only two ways to make things more affordable.

00:37:38.980 One is to drop the demand for a product and retain the same supply.

00:37:42.280 The other is to radically increase the supply of a product and to retain the same demand.

00:37:46.040 That's it.

00:37:46.520 Those are the only way that things become more affordable.

00:37:48.260 There is no magical third way.

00:37:49.460 The only way things become more affordable is if the supply greatly outstrips the demand,

00:37:53.520 and the only ways to do that are to increase supply or reduce demand.

00:37:56.480 That's it.

00:37:57.040 So if you're talking about how to make things more affordable,

00:37:59.560 one of the things you can do to increase supply is remove regulations.

00:38:02.480 You can get rid of tax structures that disincentivize investment.

00:38:05.980 You can get rid of a lot of the difficulty in building, for example, in New York.

00:38:10.080 But are you ever going to build enough units so that suddenly the real estate prices there reflect

00:38:13.740 what it would be across the river in sort of rural parts of New Jersey?

00:38:17.080 The answer, of course, is no.

00:38:19.340 And when people talk about affordability, the thing that makes me totally crazy about this

00:38:22.500 is I'm totally sick in politics.

00:38:24.520 I'm sick to people in politics doing this routine where they say the problem over and

00:38:29.260 over and over.

00:38:29.760 We're providing zero solution.

00:38:31.660 And then when you say, you know what?

00:38:32.700 I don't really see a solution to the thing you're talking about.

00:38:34.500 They pillory you for noting the obvious like, OK, if you're not providing Zoram Amdani is

00:38:38.600 not providing a solution.

00:38:39.760 Him saying affordability didn't make affordability magically appear like Beetlejuice if he said

00:38:43.500 affordability three times.

00:38:45.640 And also politicians are in the business of lying to you.

00:38:48.680 OK, when when the president of the United States, who I generally agree with, he made

00:38:52.540 a mistake when he came into office and said, I'm going to make things affordable again.

00:38:56.020 The answer is, no, you're probably not.

00:38:57.780 And the reason you're probably not is because all of the inflation that Joe Biden embedded in

00:39:01.800 the economy already made things so wildly unaffordable that the best you're probably

00:39:05.400 going to do is keep prices stable.

00:39:06.940 Right.

00:39:07.340 What the Federal Reserve seeks to do is keep the inflation rate at like two percent, which

00:39:11.480 is an increase in the prices just by the very nature of it.

00:39:14.460 And what people actually want is for there to be deflation.

00:39:17.400 They want the prices to be back at 2019 levels.

00:39:19.800 And they're not talking about going back to 2024 levels.

00:39:22.500 They're talking about 2019 levels.

00:39:23.520 The only way to get back to 2019 levels is probably an economic recession.

00:39:28.140 That's just the reality.

00:39:28.920 And so, again, saying unpopular things, the best that the inflation rate could look like

00:39:33.880 for President Trump is like this under Joe Biden and then like this under Trump.

00:39:39.820 OK, so here's OK, this would be Biden, this gigantic spike.

00:39:44.000 And then Trump stays steady.

00:39:45.260 The problem is people are looking at the prices here and they're saying, well, they don't look

00:39:49.080 like the prices here.

00:39:50.560 Well, yeah, what's Trump supposed to do about that?

00:39:53.200 Absent a radical increase in the interest rates that would sink the that would sink the

00:39:57.420 economy.

00:39:57.740 So one thing that has happened, everyone was predicting that Trump's tariffs were going

00:40:02.060 to be inflationary.

00:40:03.240 And the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, was doing a little victory lap because when

00:40:07.520 he was being confirmed for his position, he said, no, I actually think tariffs are going

00:40:11.300 to be deflationary.

00:40:12.340 And the San Francisco Fed just came out and said the tariffs are deflationary.

00:40:15.300 No, no, no.

00:40:15.840 You're reading the study totally wrong.

00:40:17.120 That's not what the study says.

00:40:18.160 I read the entire study.

00:40:19.080 It's 150 pages.

00:40:19.980 What that study says is that when you look at tariffs over time, there's a spike at the

00:40:27.420 beginning because things get more expensive because you're reducing the supply and the

00:40:30.140 demand retains the same, right?

00:40:31.180 So the price goes up temporarily and then people start to lose their jobs.

00:40:34.380 And when people start to lose their jobs, the demand goes down.

00:40:36.780 And when the demand goes down, the prices come down.

00:40:38.600 No, no, no.

00:40:39.100 So you can say it's deflationary.

00:40:40.340 There was a big caveat, even in the popular reporting, which is the caveat is it hurts

00:40:44.480 employment and it hurts economic growth.

00:40:46.760 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:40:47.040 So there's obviously a big caveat to it.

00:40:47.940 That's been the traditional.

00:40:48.920 There's one further point on it, just to why I think your video went viral, Ben, is because

00:40:54.480 one thing people are hearing is they're missing the context of you're giving personal advice

00:40:59.760 to someone who's asking, you know, but at a macro level, at a political level, what people

00:41:04.000 are hearing is, hold on, you're telling me my family's been in this town forever.

00:41:07.520 I'll use my own example.

00:41:08.600 I got dozens of family members buried in the local cemetery in my hometown.

00:41:14.180 And even before that, the Knowleses initially were from New Hampshire and they arrived here,

00:41:20.060 the Knowles side, in 1660.

00:41:22.400 The Knowles family home stood from 1660 until 1994 when the home burned down.

00:41:28.500 There are still Knowleses all over that area in New Hampshire and Maine.

00:41:32.780 And what I think a lot of people are looking around at is part of the reason that housing

00:41:37.260 in particular is unaffordable right now is because of government decisions, government decisions

00:41:42.840 to flood the country with a bunch of like Venezuelan criminals or Somalis or something and increase

00:41:47.740 the cost of housing or government decisions that are going to compromise certain industries

00:41:52.940 or certain jobs because of trade deals or whatever, going all the way back to NAFTA or

00:41:56.240 even further.

00:41:56.840 We don't need to litigate those in particular, but you're saying, no, there's part of this

00:42:01.400 political order that has led to this crisis, at the very least with migration.

00:42:06.360 And so why is it that I'm just supposed to say, oh, shucks, I got to lose my hometown

00:42:10.600 because, well, you know, Republicans and Democrats together flooded the country with aliens.

00:42:16.480 Isn't there a good to having, you know, long family histories in a single place?

00:42:22.340 Of course.

00:42:22.840 Sure.

00:42:23.300 And there's a single and there's a good to having your family live near you.

00:42:25.980 I have tons of family that lives near me.

00:42:27.580 I'm a person who grew up in L.A.

00:42:29.740 I spent my entire life living in L.A. until I was 35, one mile from my parents.

00:42:33.220 And then I moved to Florida and I still live one mile from my parents because I took them

00:42:35.700 with me.

00:42:36.020 So I'm very much in favor.

00:42:37.160 One of the things I talk about on the show all the time is having family structures nearby

00:42:40.360 because you need those supportive family structures.

00:42:42.300 That's not the case that I'm making is that you should abandon this sort of stuff or that

00:42:46.200 mass migration should replace you in your hometown.

00:42:48.260 I think everyone here is very much against mass migration, is very much in favor of what

00:42:52.240 President Trump has been doing on the immigration program.

00:42:54.560 The problem that I see is not any of that.

00:42:56.760 I agree with all this on policy.

00:42:58.100 But if there's a mentality that sets in that says, I bear no responsibility in changing my

00:43:01.880 own life if I can't change the outside circumstances.

00:43:04.400 And now I'm just going to sit here and bitch about it.

00:43:05.880 Like that doesn't seem like a specific recipe for individual success.

00:43:09.480 But Matt, I want to know what you take because I think you and I are

00:43:12.080 as usual, we are on opposite ends of the spectrum in some ways.

00:43:15.300 I agree with your practical point.

00:43:17.180 And I agree also with maybe I'm somewhere in between because I agree with your point.

00:43:21.620 I also agree with some of the criticism, the more the more rational.

00:43:24.960 You have a moderate position, Matt?

00:43:26.460 Well, no, because here's the way I put it.

00:43:28.520 Ben's correct.

00:43:29.220 And I've said the same thing many times that especially as a young man, I also think there's

00:43:33.220 a gender element to this that is a sort of a different topic.

00:43:36.040 But as a parent, I want my sons when they become adults to move out of the house.

00:43:41.480 I don't want them to move 10 hours away, hopefully.

00:43:43.580 But if they have to, they have to.

00:43:44.800 I do want them to move out and experience living on their own a little bit before they

00:43:49.420 become husbands and fathers.

00:43:51.520 My daughters, I would love for them to just stay home with me until they get married many,

00:43:56.940 many, many years in the future.

00:43:57.980 So I do think there's a gender element to it.

00:43:59.280 But that's a separate thing.

00:44:00.320 I think if I totally agree that if you're in a spot, particularly if you're a young

00:44:05.920 man and you can't afford anything, you can't get a job, can't afford to live anywhere while

00:44:11.820 you're single, you have no kids, you have no dependents, you can go anywhere and do anything

00:44:17.040 and you can take risks.

00:44:18.720 And, you know, the stakes are pretty low.

00:44:21.400 I mean, worst case scenario, you go somewhere, you end up sleeping in your car or something

00:44:24.940 for a while.

00:44:25.460 I mean, that's not good, but it's like, well, it's just you.

00:44:28.000 You can handle that, especially as a young man.

00:44:29.840 And so you could take risks, you can go out and pursue opportunities.

00:44:35.120 However, at the same time, it's also true that you shouldn't have to do that.

00:44:40.300 Like something is wrong that so many people have to do that.

00:44:43.960 You should be able to, to Michael's point, if you're a young man and you're looking at,

00:44:48.540 okay, well, my parents were born here, they lived here.

00:44:50.900 My grandparents lived here.

00:44:52.520 Maybe my great-grandparents lived here.

00:44:54.700 So generations of a family lived in the same place.

00:44:57.140 And now all of a sudden, and I'm, I have the same kind of skills that they do.

00:45:01.020 I might even be more, more educated than they were.

00:45:03.480 So I'm in many ways more qualified for a job than even any of them were.

00:45:07.000 And yet all of a sudden everything's broken down.

00:45:09.120 It doesn't work for me to live in this town anymore.

00:45:11.380 Something is wrong.

00:45:12.360 Something is broken.

00:45:13.180 It should not be this way.

00:45:14.420 We need to fix it.

00:45:15.480 So, but on the practical level, well, it is this way now and we want you to still succeed.

00:45:20.620 So you might have to go somewhere else, hopefully with the intent of eventually coming back to live

00:45:24.900 around your family, because I totally believe, I mean, we, we emphasize the nuclear family so much,

00:45:29.200 which is important, but also the, the quote unquote extended family is also important.

00:45:33.360 So getting back to them and that's what, you know, what a lot of us do, what I kind of did move

00:45:37.180 around, move around, end up back with your family.

00:45:39.100 Um, so you might have to do that practically.

00:45:42.360 You shouldn't have to, it shouldn't be that way.

00:45:44.660 That's the policy end of it.

00:45:46.560 And so we need policies in place that make it possible for people to live with their family and then move next door

00:45:53.020 and stay with generations of families their entire life.

00:45:56.200 You should be able to do that in a functioning and thriving society.

00:45:59.180 One of the ways to make that happen is the thing we all agree with, uh, get all the illegals out.

00:46:04.600 There's a lot, we've been, they've been saying 20 million illegals in this country.

00:46:07.540 They've been telling me that since like 20 years ago, they were saying it was 20 million.

00:46:11.180 It's way more than that.

00:46:12.140 We don't know how many get them all out, shut down immigration.

00:46:15.620 And, uh, that's one of the policy changes that can be made and we need to do that.

00:46:19.020 But until that happens, yeah, you got to figure out what you're going to do in your own life.

00:46:23.940 I want to hear Ben's point.

00:46:25.340 And I want to hear from my great, great grandfather, Andrew, play this.

00:46:28.420 I wasn't even going to make a point.

00:46:30.520 I was just going to say, I agree with Matt actually.

00:46:32.040 So Matt and I are actually in total agreement on this.

00:46:33.900 Okay.

00:46:34.180 Now I really want to move on because Matt's offering a moderate opinion.

00:46:37.140 And Ben is agreeing with him.

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00:47:02.940 They introduce babies to their mothers.

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00:47:10.480 When a woman is considering abortion, it's, they provide amazing care and work.

00:47:15.060 Not only do they introduce the babies to the mothers, they also take care of those mothers

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00:47:37.560 down with, on the AI train, you dial pound two 50, you say keyword baby, pound two 50 keyword

00:47:42.800 baby, or you go to pre-born.com slash fire, pre-born.com slash fire.

00:47:46.900 Every gift is tax deductible.

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00:47:52.400 It's a, your money can be put to good use and not be put to bad use.

00:47:55.780 Okay.

00:47:56.500 Ben agrees with Matt.

00:47:58.180 Matt has a moderate opinion.

00:47:59.640 I'm totally scandalized.

00:48:01.360 And I want to hear from Drew.

00:48:03.060 So I disagree with Ben in a couple of ways here.

00:48:05.640 I mean, first of all, Zoramandani is, is one of the scummiest politicians I've ever seen

00:48:10.800 in my entire life, but he did do half the job.

00:48:13.520 He did raise the issue.

00:48:15.100 And when you raise the issue, people, people perk up.

00:48:18.020 No, it's, it's a terrible thing.

00:48:19.460 He raised the issue and then offered socialist solutions that we know will be utterly, utterly

00:48:23.900 destructive.

00:48:24.660 It's not plain candy man to say the word that people are thinking about.

00:48:28.760 The worst thing a politician can do, and the thing will destroy any administration is to

00:48:33.440 show people a chart that shows them they're not suffering when they can't afford Christmas

00:48:37.460 presents for their kids.

00:48:38.580 Like, here's this chart.

00:48:39.500 You're doing great.

00:48:40.500 You know, and people know exactly how they're doing and it makes them incredibly frustrated.

00:48:45.040 What they're frustrated with Trump now is he's doing something I think is urgently

00:48:48.720 important.

00:48:49.440 I think we're going to be very grateful to Trump for what he did five, six, seven years

00:48:53.200 down the line when China finally invades Taiwan.

00:48:56.020 I think he's totally rearranged America's priorities in absolute great ways, but he didn't

00:49:01.540 pay attention to the thing that's right there on the table and he has to pay attention to

00:49:04.960 it now.

00:49:05.540 The other thing I disagree with is normally it is true that you have to put people out of

00:49:09.420 work to bring down inflation.

00:49:10.640 That's what Reagan did.

00:49:11.780 And he lost the midterms.

00:49:13.200 He didn't lose that, the houses, but he lost the midterms because of it.

00:49:16.860 And everybody said, oh, this is a disaster.

00:49:18.780 And then the economy turned around for the next 25 years because of what Reagan did.

00:49:23.040 But the other thing that there is a third way of dealing with inflation, which is raising

00:49:29.220 the investments and the salaries of people.

00:49:32.820 If you can steady, you know, if you can cut inflation off and make the prices level out

00:49:37.460 and then wages start to rise, then you can actually, that is the same thing as bringing

00:49:42.000 down inflation because now people can afford the things they couldn't afford before.

00:49:45.780 So Matt is totally right that we got to get rid of all the illegals.

00:49:49.880 And as far as I'm concerned, I don't care who it is.

00:49:52.160 I've lost all sympathy with the illegal immigrations.

00:49:55.120 I know some of these people are great people who snuck in.

00:49:57.520 They got to go.

00:49:58.220 Everybody's got to go.

00:49:59.160 And we got to give the country back to the people who are here and who were born here.

00:50:01.960 No question about that in my mind.

00:50:03.740 I cannot have compassion for 20 million people.

00:50:06.500 I can only have compassion for one person at a time.

00:50:08.380 If one guy sneaks in, I can have compassion for him.

00:50:11.300 I can't have a compassion for an invading army, which is what the Biden administration

00:50:15.160 gave us.

00:50:15.900 But the other thing is we have to have capitalist solutions.

00:50:18.880 And I think there are capitalist solutions.

00:50:20.520 For instance, I think a lot of companies are now offering people stock.

00:50:24.780 A lot more companies are offering people stock and investment as payment, as part of the

00:50:28.760 payment.

00:50:29.060 I got that when I worked for Coca-Cola.

00:50:31.600 I was a reader for Columbia Pictures and Coca-Cola owned them and they gave me Coke stock.

00:50:35.960 It was transformative.

00:50:37.200 All I had to do was hold on to it.

00:50:39.900 And now I had an investment in the company and in the economy.

00:50:43.020 And I think that's really important.

00:50:44.420 Trump is talking about personal savings accounts that I think is also a really good idea.

00:50:48.920 Some of his ideas, like the 50-year mortgage, I'm not too happy about because it's going

00:50:52.020 to double the price of homes.

00:50:54.220 But still, it might bring down the-

00:50:55.740 Lifetime debt slavery.

00:50:56.620 That's right.

00:50:57.280 Yeah.

00:50:57.500 Lifetime debt slavery.

00:50:58.740 Exactly.

00:50:58.900 Yeah.

00:50:59.040 But I think that there are ways for capitalists to increase people's participation in the economy

00:51:06.280 so that when things work for the bosses, they work for the people too.

00:51:11.040 I think it's a wonderful thing that this country, when it is working on all cylinders and when

00:51:15.960 the capitalism is in place, it makes so much money that the big guys can afford to share

00:51:21.360 a little bit with the little guys, not by having the government redistribute it, but by saying,

00:51:26.420 here's a piece of what you're working for.

00:51:28.020 Starbucks did it.

00:51:28.840 It worked really well for a long time.

00:51:30.640 And I think a lot of companies should do it.

00:51:33.240 And so I think that there are ways of dealing with this.

00:51:35.220 But I think that dealing with it is something government has to do.

00:51:38.580 It is a policy problem.

00:51:39.740 Government creates inflation.

00:51:41.720 People do not-

00:51:42.560 It's not the greedy banks.

00:51:43.880 It's not the greedy drugstores or whatever.

00:51:46.160 It's the government that creates inflation.

00:51:47.960 They can actually do things to bring it down.

00:51:50.360 And I think one thing, you're right that we don't want deflation because it means the

00:51:53.500 economy is tanking, but you can get wages growing in a lot of different ways, one of

00:51:57.800 them by reducing the workforce, by getting rid of the people who shouldn't be here, would

00:52:01.500 be a great first step.

00:52:02.760 I don't disagree with some of those policy prescriptions, but I think that the thing

00:52:06.700 that I am kind of stuck in, and it's driving me a little crazy, and I think it's the reason

00:52:10.980 why the country is penduluming side to side incredibly wildly.

00:52:14.360 You'll see, like, right now, you know, Kalshi is one of our sponsors, so I'll mention them

00:52:19.520 again here because I did on my show earlier.

00:52:21.180 But if you look at the polls, like the Kalshi markets right now, Democrats, according to

00:52:25.080 that market, and I kind of agree with this, are actually the favorites in 2028.

00:52:28.540 And I think the reason for that, and I think the reason that the country just keeps swinging

00:52:31.680 wildly poll to poll, is because when you have politicians who are actually saying the

00:52:36.900 same thing, but none of them are saying what is true, this is what you end up with.

00:52:40.200 So if everybody says affordability is- I agree, affordability is a problem.

00:52:43.300 This is why I'm kind of waving that away.

00:52:45.600 Labeling problems is the easiest thing in the world.

00:52:47.320 You can do it in your life all day long.

00:52:49.340 And I can agree with my wife on every single problem that exists in our life.

00:52:52.340 It's when you get to the solutions that things get a little bit complicated.

00:52:55.400 And when you have politicians who always say the same thing, but from different sides

00:52:58.660 of the aisle, which is, you're right, it's government's job to solve it.

00:53:01.220 Okay, there's only one problem.

00:53:02.760 If the thing that you're saying is not going to solve it, and you're asking for additional

00:53:06.760 centralized power in order to solve the thing, what you are going to end up with

00:53:10.220 is failure, and then the other guy is going to say, give it to me.

00:53:13.300 And so they're just passing the ball side to side.

00:53:14.880 The only thing that is going to create affordability is a dynamic and innovative economy, which

00:53:19.800 means a few things.

00:53:20.920 One, a consistent level of regulation or less regulation, right?

00:53:24.440 Like actual certainty, what's going to happen tomorrow in the economy?

00:53:27.060 Two, you're actually going to need innovators to innovate, and you need to leave them alone

00:53:30.960 and allow them to innovate and actually capture the profits that they're creating through

00:53:34.920 innovation.

00:53:35.860 And then you're going to need to get the hell out of the way.

00:53:37.400 I mean, the magic of the Reagan economy, I know Reagan has now become anathema for some

00:53:40.760 reason that I cannot even imagine.

00:53:42.620 I can't imagine why the right has decided that Reagan was suddenly bad, other than because

00:53:47.100 we need to cast up a false villain in order to elevate, you know, whatever the new-

00:53:51.560 The mass amnesty irritated some people in retrospect.

00:53:53.680 I'm not saying everything about Reagan was wonderful, but I don't think everything about

00:53:57.320 Trump is wonderful either.

00:53:58.340 I do think that the Reagan economy generated more job growth and pulled us out of a greater

00:54:03.240 economic morass than any president in history, probably.

00:54:07.560 And so I think that is worth something.

00:54:09.840 And so if you look at, you know, Reagan's pitch, his pitch was, I can't solve all your

00:54:14.720 problems for you, but I can get the government out of your way so you can solve your own

00:54:17.640 problems.

00:54:18.180 And I just want one politician who will say that, like just one, as opposed to this kind

00:54:22.160 of centralized government bullshit where everybody says, no, no, don't worry.

00:54:25.480 You sit there and I'll solve all your problems for you.

00:54:27.080 No one is going to solve the vast majority of problems in your life.

00:54:30.040 No politician will do it.

00:54:31.320 The best they can do is get rid of the obstacles that are in your way, the systemic obstacles

00:54:34.620 that are in your way.

00:54:35.620 And then most of the decisions in a free country ought to be up to you.

00:54:38.780 And that is scary because it means that actually your success or failure is largely on your

00:54:42.340 own shoulders.

00:54:42.980 I agree with you 100% on this, Ben.

00:54:44.920 This is different.

00:54:46.060 I agree with Ben 100% on all of it.

00:54:47.620 No, but in defense of those who are critiquing, Ray, obviously I still love St. Gipper and politicians

00:54:52.920 come and go.

00:54:53.680 You know, Nixon was in the crater for a while.

00:54:55.880 Now Nixon's making a comeback.

00:54:57.460 Coolidge was the man for a while.

00:54:58.760 Now people are looking more toward, I don't know, they like Teddy Roosevelt.

00:55:01.100 They used to hate him.

00:55:01.760 So this happens as we rethink history and as we move on to new circumstances.

00:55:06.100 Part of the reason that there's a little more of a critical lens, you know, as opposed

00:55:10.380 to just exalting St. Reagan as being perfect in all ways is because, you know, in the 80s,

00:55:17.040 mass amnesty for illegal aliens, for example, wasn't really all that big a deal.

00:55:21.240 But it did set the stage for a major problem.

00:55:23.120 And so we're rethinking that.

00:55:24.720 In the 80s, you know, obviously Reagan was massively successful in his economic policy,

00:55:30.380 as was Thatcher, as was that whole kind of movement.

00:55:33.080 We do live in a different world today.

00:55:35.340 And so it's not to say we throw out all of their solutions.

00:55:37.380 It's not to say that we throw out all of their solutions, but it's to recognize that

00:55:40.120 there are more difficult economic problems that we have to deal with.

00:55:42.860 And so one of, you know, Drew actually offered some real solutions here, which is he, you

00:55:47.780 pointed out, Drew, that having people really bought into the economy, you know, Coca-Cola

00:55:52.180 giving you some stock back in the day is helpful.

00:55:54.540 Back when we were rethinking some of the problems with industrial capitalism 100 years ago, you

00:55:58.980 had writers, especially Catholic writers like Chesterton and Belloc saying we need some

00:56:02.900 option, not socialism and communism, not pure unbridled capitalism, but some other option.

00:56:08.160 They propose something called distributism, which is too complicated to get into here and probably

00:56:11.840 isn't all that practical.

00:56:13.060 But part of it, a lot of what it comes down to is give people some ownership, give people

00:56:16.700 some stake.

00:56:17.820 And I think that's really, really important.

00:56:19.720 And so here's another criticism maybe of what came out of the Reagan era is that we

00:56:23.120 judge the health of an economy purely by GDP.

00:56:26.480 And GDP is a fine economic indicator, but it's not the be all and end all of everything.

00:56:30.600 And I think what a lot of people are looking around at today is saying, look, you can show

00:56:34.360 a lot of economic activity in all sorts of ways by the pornography industry, to use the topic

00:56:39.240 we keep coming back to.

00:56:40.120 You know, the pornography industry is booming.

00:56:41.880 Look at that.

00:56:42.360 GDP is going up.

00:56:43.400 You know, there are all sorts of very destructive industries.

00:56:46.220 We brag now about how women's employment is the highest ever.

00:56:49.880 I'm not sure that's a great thing.

00:56:51.320 You know, I mean, who's taking care of the kids?

00:56:52.760 Who's watching the home?

00:56:53.780 Isn't there some cost to that as well?

00:56:55.500 And so I just, I wonder one slightly practical solution might be to say, all right, look, maybe

00:57:01.060 GDP isn't the be all and end all of everything.

00:57:03.140 And maybe there are certain areas of the economy that are legitimately immoral and destructive.

00:57:07.340 And we used to heavily regulate them like pornography, for instance, but all sorts of other kind

00:57:12.320 of vicious and degrading avenues.

00:57:15.020 We've liberalized gambling.

00:57:16.400 I don't know that that's really great.

00:57:17.780 Maybe that maybe it takes up GDP a little bit, but it doesn't.

00:57:20.180 I don't think that's really great for the true health of an economy.

00:57:22.140 Maybe we need to rethink what economic health really looks like, because the changes that

00:57:27.300 came about in the late part of the 20th century did have some negative side effects as well

00:57:31.880 as positive outcomes.

00:57:33.280 Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door, expertly cleaned and folded.

00:57:38.060 So you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue

00:57:42.280 a whole new version of you.

00:57:44.100 Like tea time you.

00:57:46.060 Mmm.

00:57:46.580 Or this tea time you.

00:57:49.580 Or even this tea time you.

00:57:52.000 So did you hear about Dave?

00:57:53.260 Or even tea time, tea time, tea time you.

00:57:56.200 Mmm.

00:57:57.220 So update on Dave.

00:57:59.120 It's up to you.

00:58:00.160 We'll take the laundry.

00:58:01.620 Rinse.

00:58:02.240 It's time to be great.

00:58:03.360 Can I address the Reagan thing for a minute, though?

00:58:05.300 Because a lot of this, I think, started with that Caldwell book, The Age of Entitlement,

00:58:09.220 in which he blamed Reagan for things that Reagan actually didn't.

00:58:11.740 Reagan said he failed to cut down the government.

00:58:13.460 That was the big failure of his administration.

00:58:14.960 But we've edited the Cold War out of history.

00:58:17.860 And, you know, Reagan, like, won the Cold War.

00:58:20.200 He freed, like, a huge, huge section of the world, of the globe.

00:58:25.180 He set people free.

00:58:26.320 And what they did with that is up to them.

00:58:28.080 But he actually did that.

00:58:29.980 You can't imagine how unheard of that was, how unexpected it was, how nobody thought it

00:58:35.340 would ever happen, how we were dealing with the Soviet Union for the rest of our lives.

00:58:38.440 Not just people who thought that communism was going to work, but people who thought it's

00:58:42.380 just never going to go away.

00:58:43.480 He made it go away.

00:58:45.180 And I think for that, he's a hero.

00:58:47.160 And yeah, what Knowles is saying is true.

00:58:48.940 We now are living in an absolutely new economy.

00:58:52.080 And while the basics of deregulation...

00:58:52.980 Oh, I totally disagree.

00:58:53.420 I totally disagree.

00:58:55.140 There's no such thing as a new economy.

00:58:56.400 Oh, wait, let me finish it.

00:58:59.040 The basis of deregulation and freedom and free markets are absolutely the same.

00:59:05.220 They don't change at all.

00:59:06.040 You know, but the problems that arise because no system solves human problems because human

00:59:12.260 beings can't be solved.

00:59:14.080 The problems that arise in the places where the peaks of problems are change.

00:59:18.040 And then we have to address those.

00:59:19.280 And one of them, you're absolutely right.

00:59:21.180 One of them, one of the key ones is the role of women in our society, which I think is screwed

00:59:25.800 up so badly that it's destroying everything.

00:59:28.440 We've actually stopped reproducing, which to me is always a bad sign.

00:59:32.160 You know, that economic indicator, another indicator.

00:59:35.540 I mean, so actually, this teaches me a lesson.

00:59:37.860 I should let Drew finish his sentences because when he finishes them, I'm more likely to agree

00:59:41.100 with them.

00:59:41.520 But at the same time, you know, Knowles, I'll pick on you a little bit.

00:59:47.720 When we say, you know, terrible, we shouldn't look at GDP.

00:59:50.000 It's not a good indicator of economic...

00:59:51.800 Neither we shouldn't, but it's not the be all and end all.

00:59:52.760 Okay, it's not the be all and end all.

00:59:53.680 But it's the be...

00:59:54.420 Okay, so there's no such thing as an economic be all and end all.

00:59:57.060 Okay, but I think that we are mixing up a few terminologies here.

01:00:00.280 And I think that we ought to tease out the strain for one second.

01:00:03.000 There's a difference between economic health and societal health.

01:00:05.080 These are not the same thing.

01:00:06.560 You can have a very economically healthy society that is breaking down in a lot of social ways

01:00:11.640 with tremendous pathologies.

01:00:13.040 I think that's what you're actually seeing.

01:00:14.800 And so, yes, it turns out that we are materially significantly better off than we were in the

01:00:18.960 1980s.

01:00:19.660 In fact, we are materially significantly better off than we were in the mid-2000s.

01:00:23.100 When people talk about the unaffordability of homes, that's because an average home in 1950

01:00:26.920 was a 980-foot, you know, square-foot brick house with no insulation and no heating or

01:00:33.060 air and maybe a bathroom outside.

01:00:35.060 Like, this kind of idea that we're living worse than your parents or grandparents is

01:00:38.240 just belied by every available fact.

01:00:40.340 Maybe you're living worse than your grandparents are right now, but you're not living worse

01:00:44.300 than your grandparents were at the same age, right?

01:00:46.460 If you're a 20-year-old living in 2025, you're not worse off than your grandparents were

01:00:50.780 living as a 20-year-old in 1958 or 1960.

01:00:53.480 You have an iPhone, but you don't have a house.

01:00:55.600 I mean, I agree that houses are nicer now, but you don't have one.

01:00:58.000 Dude, your apartment is nicer than their house was.

01:01:00.420 Okay, that is a reality if you're living anywhere except for New York City.

01:01:03.680 And by the way, the idea that you couldn't move somewhere and get a house, now you're

01:01:08.340 getting back to my original point, which is on a personal level, if you want to live

01:01:11.160 a life like your grandparents, you might have to do the thing that your grandparents

01:01:13.740 did.

01:01:14.140 Okay, your grandparents went to a war and then they came back and moved to a town that they

01:01:17.380 actually probably did not grow up in.

01:01:18.800 And then they got a house that was like off the lot from some big corporation that built

01:01:24.540 a bunch of standard box-looking houses that now you drive past those on the freeway and

01:01:27.780 you say, I can't believe somebody ever lived in those.

01:01:29.520 So it's kind of, you know, rose-colored glasses about the past.

01:01:32.220 Drives me a little bit insane.

01:01:33.720 And again, I think that if we want to look at the real problems in our society, we shouldn't

01:01:37.020 create a mythical past and we shouldn't create a mythically terrible present.

01:01:40.200 We should actually look at the problems in our society.

01:01:42.440 And one of those would be people not having kids.

01:01:44.540 One of those would be deep depression and unhappiness.

01:01:46.640 People killing themselves with opioids, you know, people being, yes, people having their

01:01:50.540 jobs taken by illegal immigrants in certain industries.

01:01:52.720 Like those are actual real solvable problems, but I don't have a DeLorean.

01:01:56.000 All I have right now is the way that people are living right now.

01:01:59.620 And so now we have to look at the problems in front of us and how do we solve those?

01:02:02.000 Yeah, but that's the one part where I, so at the buzzer, I get to disagree with you,

01:02:07.380 Ben, on, I remember there was one thing you said in that, in that clip that I did disagree

01:02:11.560 that I couldn't remember, but then you just said it again.

01:02:12.860 And so the, the, the one part about, well, this is, you know, America is how America has

01:02:18.120 always been that you, you, you leave and you go somewhere else away from your family.

01:02:22.400 And I think that like back in the pioneer days, I mean, that there is something about that

01:02:26.820 that's in the American spirit of like literally going out into a wilderness and building your

01:02:32.300 own life, maybe a thousand miles away from anyone that you know.

01:02:35.380 And so there's, that's American in a certain sense, but that was back in the pioneer days.

01:02:39.980 I think for most of it, for most of, for most of American history, it's like anywhere else

01:02:44.260 in the world.

01:02:44.640 People, they, they grew up in a place.

01:02:46.860 They didn't move that far away.

01:02:48.060 They, they stayed where their support systems were.

01:02:50.220 We are less mobile now.

01:02:51.760 And by the stats, we're less mobile now than we have ever been anytime in American history.

01:02:55.180 Quick, raise your hand.

01:02:56.020 If you are currently living in the town where you grew up.

01:03:00.020 You're saying, but you're saying we're less mobile now.

01:03:01.840 I'd be, and I'm saying that we are a unique breed in that we actually like, we're a little

01:03:06.240 older than the Gen Zers.

01:03:07.440 Okay.

01:03:08.260 Like we, but the, the people who tend to be more successful and again, as a piece of

01:03:11.960 advice are the people who tend to actually move in pursuit of opportunity.

01:03:15.560 And if you look, historically speaking, it is not true that in 1920, everybody is living

01:03:19.120 in the town where they grew up.

01:03:20.300 In fact, in 1920, there were more people who are moving across the country at great expense

01:03:24.440 and difficulty than there are today in, in 2025.

01:03:29.540 Exceptional people, exceptional people move.

01:03:31.840 They go into the wilderness, they build new towns, but most people are not exceptional.

01:03:35.540 Sexy, handsome people.

01:03:36.760 Yes.

01:03:37.160 Yeah.

01:03:37.440 Yeah.

01:03:37.560 Yeah.

01:03:37.720 Right.

01:03:38.360 So, and you want us, and you want a country filled with communities and filled with, you

01:03:42.540 know, people with traditions and things like that.

01:03:44.520 So I, I kind of half agree with you on this.

01:03:46.120 I do believe that exceptional people should and will move, but I, but I think that, that Matt

01:03:50.340 is right, that it shouldn't be like that for everybody.

01:03:52.460 Sorry, go back to Matt so Matt can finish this degree with me.

01:03:54.440 I'm being a jerk again.

01:03:55.260 Uh, no, I, I think, I think, uh, I think that's, I don't know the, the claim that, um, people

01:04:02.080 were more mobile in the 1920s.

01:04:04.320 There's also, there's a technological side of this too, that, that for a lot of American

01:04:07.940 history, you know, moving away from your family, uh, and going to another state over

01:04:12.880 was like a three month journey.

01:04:14.560 And, you know, people are going to die along the way.

01:04:16.740 So, so that is one of the reasons why we know that, that, that for a lot of, you know, American

01:04:21.820 history and human history, people didn't tend to do that.

01:04:24.580 I mean, sometimes they did, but that was, again, that's like, you're a pioneer.

01:04:28.340 Um, I think that the, at the very least, and I, and I don't think we're disagreeing

01:04:32.060 on this point that the desire to stay in your community, where you were born, where your

01:04:38.680 family is stay with your support system, with your families and your, and your family

01:04:43.120 and your friends, that's a good desire.

01:04:45.520 There's nothing wrong with that.

01:04:46.700 I know that.

01:04:47.260 And, uh, and, uh, and a healthy country is one where people, if they want to do that,

01:04:52.340 are able to do it.

01:04:53.400 So, but I think that's the part, I think we all agree on that, right?

01:04:56.660 That's, that's the agreement.

01:04:57.960 You know, this gets back though, to this point of, uh, uh, the neat and pat distinction between

01:05:02.160 economic health and social health.

01:05:03.900 I'm not sure that we can, obviously they're distinct concepts, but I'm not sure that we can

01:05:08.000 totally separate them, you know, especially as increasingly in the modern age, we think of

01:05:11.840 ourselves as homo economicus, you know, we're like primarily, uh, economic creatures.

01:05:16.400 And I, I don't, I think we're just an integral creatures that, and we, we have all of these

01:05:20.560 things together.

01:05:21.460 And so, you know, especially at this kind of moment, you look now, compare it to 1980 or

01:05:27.480 1880 for that matter.

01:05:28.740 One of the major problems that we have is that social solidarity has really frayed, that

01:05:33.920 religiosity has declined precipitously, though there are some signs that that's turning around

01:05:39.080 and you can't divorce that from the birth rate problem.

01:05:42.820 You know, you can't divorce that, divorce that from the fact that people aren't having

01:05:45.300 kids.

01:05:45.760 These are great predictors, you know, stability, tradition, and religion are, are predictors

01:05:49.620 of people having kids.

01:05:50.480 And you can't divorce that from the economic problems because if we don't import the entire

01:05:54.680 third world, we're told that our, our economy is going to collapse, the GDP is going to collapse.

01:05:59.100 So that's the whole argument for mass migration.

01:06:00.920 And so these problems are all so deeply intertwined that it seems to me that there has to be some

01:06:06.420 firmer political solution to, rather than just say, look, we're going to let the free

01:06:12.740 hand of the market, you know, work its way and we'll let the chips fall where they may.

01:06:16.660 A lot of people are looking around and saying, I don't like where the chips are falling.

01:06:19.120 Well, I mean, this is a great place to, for us to conclude, because I'm going to disagree

01:06:22.960 for one second with Knowles and just say that there are many, many more impoverished countries

01:06:27.880 than the United States that have less severe pathologies than the United States.

01:06:32.200 And in the past, we were a less wealthy nation with less severe pathologies.

01:06:36.560 And so this is why I say that trying to tie the economic situation to the pathologies,

01:06:40.300 I think in some cases, I think in most cases, actually, it can be a fool's errand, but we'll

01:06:44.880 have to save that for next time because here's the deal before we leave folks, our biggest

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01:07:07.260 And that, of course, includes the Pendragon Cycle Rise of the Merlin.

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01:07:38.280 Well, in just a moment, we are going to bring you the magical, mystical trailer for, finally,

01:07:44.400 the Pendragon Cycle Rise of the Merlin.

01:07:46.280 It's coming January 22nd.

01:07:47.580 Guys, thanks for stopping by.

01:07:49.140 We will see you here, hopefully never for the rest of us, but actually we will see you here

01:07:52.920 in a couple of weeks and we'll get together and disagree in friendly fashion on Friendly

01:07:57.220 Fire with one another.

01:07:58.620 Without further ado, here's the trailer.

01:08:03.340 All of this is an illusion.

01:08:05.540 An echo of a voice that has died.

01:08:10.080 And soon that echo will cease.

01:08:11.540 They say that Merlin is mad.

01:08:29.760 They say he was a king in Dovid, the son of a princess of lost Atlantis.

01:08:35.980 They say the future and the past are known to him.

01:08:41.800 That the fire and the wind tell him their secrets.

01:08:45.360 That the magic of the hillfolk and druids come forth at his easy command.

01:08:51.500 They say he slew hundreds.

01:08:55.280 Hundreds, do you hear?

01:08:57.060 That the world burned and trembled at his wrath.

01:09:00.100 The Merlin died long before you and I were born.

01:09:09.360 Merlin Emrys has returned to the land of the living.

01:09:15.260 Fortigan is gone.

01:09:17.060 Rome is gone.

01:09:18.920 The Saxon is here.

01:09:21.660 Saxon Hengist has assembled the greatest war host ever seen in the Island of the Mighty.

01:09:25.800 And before the summer is through, he means to take the throne.

01:09:29.200 And he will have it.

01:09:32.280 If we are too busy squabbling amongst ourselves to take up arms against him, here is your hope.

01:09:38.740 A king will arise to hold all Britain in his hand.

01:09:42.620 A high king.

01:09:43.780 He will be the wonder of the world.

01:09:46.720 You.

01:09:49.060 To a future of peace.

01:09:53.580 There'll be no peace in these lands till we are all dust.

01:09:56.580 Men of the Island of the Mighty.

01:09:59.660 You stand together.

01:10:02.460 You stand as Britons.

01:10:05.540 You stand as one.

01:10:07.000 Get them down!

01:10:09.540 Great darkness is falling upon this land.

01:10:11.900 These brothers are our only hope to stand against it.

01:10:17.980 Not our only hope.

01:10:20.820 They say Merlin slew 17 men with his own hands.

01:10:25.020 And Gathay, he slew 500.

01:10:29.100 No man is capable of such a thing.

01:10:31.980 No mortal man.

01:10:33.360 They say Merlin slew of shit.

01:10:34.660 I never

The Michael Knowles Show - November 19, 2025

Friendly Fire： Rising Prices, Rising AI, and Rise of the Merlin World Premiere Trailer

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