TRIGGERnometry - Zohran Mamdani and The Truth About Democratic Socialism - Kaizen Asiedu

00:00:00.000 he's the populist left whereas trump was the populist right if you continue to just demonize

00:00:07.080 the populist of any color what happens is people just feel oh well you don't actually care about

00:00:12.140 my problems so at least this guy's talking about my problems zoran talks about attaching richer

00:00:17.120 whiter neighborhoods i think that's a product of the democratic socialist worldview it very much

00:00:23.000 views things from an oppressor oppressed lens and explicitly views things in terms of racial

00:00:28.180 dynamics which i think is unhealthy what i challenge people to do who are critical of zoran is say

00:00:33.320 let's talk about specific policies assess whether they work but the overall worldview that he represents

00:00:40.620 i don't think works i have my concerns about what he opens up uh the overton window to allow

00:00:48.200 like even more far left policies what we know is that he's comfortable aligning himself with people

00:00:54.240 who actually defend extremists

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00:01:49.280 term supply kaiser welcome to trigonometry thank you great to have you on man tell us a little bit

00:01:55.140 about who you are before we get into it yeah so i guess i'm a thought leader now and i wasn't always

00:02:00.900 someone who was engaged with politics honestly until last year i didn't pay attention to politics at all

00:02:05.320 i was very much in the spiritual scene very la hippie topanga live-in life coach healer type person

00:02:14.280 and then last year i started paying attention to the 2024 election just because how could you not

00:02:20.240 at one point and the day that trump got shot um even though i wasn't particularly political i realized

00:02:26.580 humanity is in crisis and if people are getting killed over political beliefs and people are

00:02:32.320 excommunicating members of their family and their friends groups over their opinions of people that

00:02:37.380 none of us actually know it's time to just start speaking up and bring clarity and humanity to the

00:02:42.420 discourse so that's the super short version of my background well you are someone who thinks very

00:02:47.780 clearly and it's interesting we there's quite a lot of overlap about the stuff in terms of the stuff

00:02:51.840 that we talk about one of the things that you you probably would have seen there's a clip of me at

00:02:56.240 the doha debates talking about the history of slavery um that went super viral and you've been making

00:03:02.000 very similar points uh so what's your angle on what are you saying on all of that yeah so um i did see

00:03:08.320 your clip and i made my own video in response to that and what i was actually surprised by

00:03:14.080 was the reaction that you got when you said that out loud because from my perspective like this is

00:03:20.180 just truth like right this is a historical fact that great britain was the first major empire to bring

00:03:25.640 uh into slavery great britain is a majority white empire and white people didn't invent slavery to begin

00:03:33.500 with everyone participated in slavery every color did it to every color when they had the opportunity 0.84

00:03:38.740 and we've become so hypersensitized to taboo truths that it becomes impossible to talk about them

00:03:48.380 because people immediately assume that because you're making a statement about something it implies

00:03:53.380 a bunch of other statements so for example i took it that maybe the reason people were offended is

00:03:58.760 because they were asserting that white people are more moral or something like that and i don't think

00:04:03.000 you need to draw any conclusion at all like that i think you were just making a point about what

00:04:07.240 history actually says and i think what it actually revealed was there's almost this like there's this

00:04:14.500 culture of race essentialism that i think is really unhealthy that's been developing in the west more

00:04:19.840 generally where white people all have this sort of collective guilt for something that a specific

00:04:25.160 subset of people did in america i.e. slavery um where black people are entitled to some sort of 0.58

00:04:31.660 collective grievance against white people as a collective and it's really unhealthy and it 0.77

00:04:37.820 the only conclusion is that you have to form opinions about people based on their color

00:04:44.400 and that's not a way to actually build a society it's not a way to build a nation and i wanted to

00:04:50.000 point that out because what i've seen is this tribalism building up between racial groups where

00:04:56.360 it's not even about what people are doing it's about what tribe they're a part of and what that

00:05:01.680 tribe has done in the past and i think it was important for you to say that because what it

00:05:05.780 revealed to everyone is hey evil is not unique to any group it's a collective human inheritance

00:05:12.520 and we need to be honest about that rather than cherry picking and trying to compare the evils

00:05:18.900 that people of different skin color have done in the past it doesn't actually get us anywhere 1.00

00:05:23.520 well my big concern with with this way of looking at the world is it inevitably focuses focuses

00:05:28.920 everybody's mind on their skin color and their ethnic group and then suddenly everyone starts

00:05:33.580 looking around and going well what about our group what about what about white people what about these

00:05:37.360 people what about those people and suddenly we no longer have like america in your case or britain

00:05:42.200 it's like white people black people jewish people muslim people and the the the incentive to

00:05:49.380 come together is not there in fact the incentive is to go what are the differences between us

00:05:54.560 exactly yeah it's it's a degenerative form of identity politics and look identity is important

00:06:01.720 to people so i'm not saying that people shouldn't feel any affinity for people within their racial group

00:06:07.620 or their religious group or any of that but the thing is racial identity can't actually evolve

00:06:14.000 right it's inherently fixed whereas identities like i'm an american or you know i'm a british person

00:06:20.700 or whatever those can actually update and evolve and encompass people across fixed identity groups

00:06:26.260 so increasingly i see us focusing on immutable things that actually can't be changed rather than

00:06:32.220 focusing on universal principles that everyone can choose to adopt so i don't even really like talking

00:06:37.640 about race to be honest with you because uh not only is it inherently misunderstood but it's i just

00:06:43.400 find it very regressive to hyper fixate on that stuff but unfortunately because of how racialized

00:06:48.560 western society has become it needs to be addressed and my hope is that we can address it in a way

00:06:55.040 that's corrective and gets people to be less attached to the entire uh apparatus so that we can focus on

00:07:00.800 the things that we can actually unify around like western values it's it's interesting that you talk about

00:07:08.540 unification kaiser and being unified around something because i would have thought that now

00:07:14.020 i mean identity politics in politics is still an issue of course it is but it's far less of an issue

00:07:19.100 than it was three to five or even six years ago but you've just seen the language being used about left

00:07:25.880 and right being ratcheted on both sides and that's got to be a real concern it is i mean all sorts of

00:07:32.380 tribalism are severe concerns frankly even nationalistic tribalism can go too far right like

00:07:39.080 if you get to a point where you know i think people they look at what trump is doing with the

00:07:43.120 america first and maga movement and they're saying it's giving hitlerian fascist vibes and what if this

00:07:47.880 becomes about invading other nations or totalitarian control here it can go too far i don't think that's

00:07:53.980 where we are with the america first movement i actually think it's just a reaction to the globalism

00:07:58.260 and the denigration of national identity and the national spirit but yeah i i agree this polarization

00:08:04.180 that we see between the left and the right is also really unhealthy because what it's doing is it's

00:08:09.760 causing each side to demonize each other and rather than viewing people as individuals who have different

00:08:15.180 values that they can filter the same information through and arrive at different conclusions it's like 1.00

00:08:20.200 no these people are crazy these people are evil these people are idiots and there's no merit to what 1.00

00:08:25.300 they say it's a battle of good versus evil and the only conclusion is domination like you have to 1.00

00:08:31.900 just dominate the other side and that just doesn't work like that's never been what the american project

00:08:36.400 has been about and it's also a lot of intellectual hubris that i'm seeing exhibited and um yeah it it

00:08:42.680 bothers me uh you know obviously i'm someone if anyone see my work who is more aligned with the right

00:08:47.940 right now but part of my journey is that you know i voted for democrats every presidential election

00:08:52.500 since i could vote i voted for obama i voted against trump i voted for biden i voted against

00:08:59.100 trump a lot and why why did you do that well i was honestly a low information voter not to imply that

00:09:05.660 everyone who voted against trump was low information but i didn't really have a strong thesis for why i

00:09:09.620 did it i just looked at trump i saw what he was saying or rather what people told me he was saying

00:09:14.260 and i thought yeah this guy is hostile maybe even racist misogynist i just bought all the narratives

00:09:20.180 around it and i just didn't like how he was coming across and when i started paying attention to the

00:09:28.360 state of discourse in 2024 i started to realize that people didn't actually have very deep convictions

00:09:34.760 about why they thought trump was the bad of the wrong choice for the 2024 election and then i started

00:09:40.980 looking a little bit deeper and inspecting my own beliefs about him and i realized oh a lot of what i

00:09:46.100 believe i believe because someone else told me so when i started looking at some of the things that

00:09:51.240 were objectively problems like the open border you know between u.s and mexico and i realized that the

00:09:57.580 current administration had been complicit in that issue only getting bigger um that was kind of one

00:10:04.000 of the gateways into just trying to view things a little bit more objectively and i still had my concerns

00:10:09.500 about him i still do but i thought he was a better choice last year and it's a really good way of

00:10:15.040 looking at the world essentially putting aside what people think and making up your own mind and

00:10:20.560 you've done you did a really good video actually where you were analyzing zora mamdani and comparing

00:10:27.680 him to trump because there are kind of similarities aren't there believe it or not absolutely i mean i think

00:10:34.040 that's why he's so triggering to a lot of people on the right because he is trump's foil he's a populist

00:10:39.560 that's why trump was ascended to begin with because he he had an instinct or an ability to actually

00:10:46.260 listen to and understand the issues of the common person and what's going on in new york well you have

00:10:53.060 this multi-ethnic multi-religious coalition building around zoran because he's able to say

00:10:59.500 yeah affordability is a big issue and corporate corporatized capitalism in new york is not actually

00:11:06.720 serving people there and he's even able to speak with specificity about stuff like people having

00:11:12.020 concerns about noise or parking illegal parking on their streets that's something that you can only

00:11:17.280 point out if you're actually in touch with the will and the issues of the people so he's he's the

00:11:23.060 populist left whereas trump was the populist right and then you can layer on these other identities like

00:11:28.580 socialist versus capitalist and and so on but i don't think most people they're that attached to any

00:11:33.660 economic system frankly i don't think people think oh yeah socialism's a solution they just hear a guy

00:11:40.380 who talks about the things that they're actually experiencing and they resonate with that and he's

00:11:45.920 also a really smart strategic politician because he's counter-positioned himself against trump

00:11:51.680 and if you're a democrat that's one of the smartest things you can do right now absolutely and also

00:11:58.100 what's really interesting about about zoran is that he like you said he's talking about the things that

00:12:05.140 really motivate people the thing and he really and this is what people on the right i don't think

00:12:10.640 understand is that new york is experiencing real difficulties around affordability and whether you

00:12:18.300 think he's going to do it or if he can't or if he can't or if he can't deliver it's kind of irrelevant

00:12:22.640 he looks like he could to a lot of people who feel that they've been ignored by the system which is again

00:12:29.040 quite trumpian isn't it yeah and what's the alternative right like it's basically a one-party state

00:12:34.920 you have andrew cuomo who resigned you have curtis liwa who's a republican and andrew cuomo even lost the

00:12:42.940 primary so if you think from a new yorker's shoes if you're a new yorker and you see that you're paying

00:12:48.480 forty five hundred dollars a month for rent and you see that the field is composed of a bunch of 0.98

00:12:54.580 people who are either republican or disgraced former governors and then you have zoran mamdani who's

00:13:00.580 talking about the stuff that you experience on a day-to-day basis what are you going to choose

00:13:03.760 so i have my concerns about what he opens up uh the overton window to allow like even more far-left

00:13:12.940 policies and people have complained or been concerned about islamic extremism i think there's a

00:13:18.160 healthy discussion to have about some of zoran's associations there but the solution is not to

00:13:23.960 name call and demonize him further the solution is to understand him speak in the way that he is

00:13:30.620 speaking to his audience but offer a different solution but if you just demonize him and then you 0.99

00:13:36.060 demonize anyone who follows him or you dismiss them as stupid well they're going to be polarized 0.97

00:13:40.860 against you even further so i think there's a massive strategic error that i see the right 0.97

00:13:45.120 committing in their prosecution of zoran and everything he stands for and this is so interesting

00:13:50.720 because these people made the exact mistake with trump yes and you're just going like dude you're

00:13:58.460 using the same tactics the left use against trump and it only made it worse because the thing that

00:14:04.820 zoran has whether you like i said i don't agree with his economic policies i think ultimately going

00:14:10.080 to lead to a disaster but he's a great communicator he's charismatic and he's he's funny just like

00:14:16.940 trump you saw him on the uh on andrew shorts his flagrant podcast he smashed it yeah he was

00:14:23.440 impressive and i like that you said that the people are committing the same error that was committed

00:14:28.140 against trump look let's look at what trump was called a fascist a white supremacist all these labels

00:14:34.760 that are pretty much just political swear words like i think the average person when they say fascist

00:14:39.300 they don't actually have a way of defining what fascist is and i think a better term is he's a

00:14:44.140 nationalist trump but you can always take something that you consider bad and make it sound even worse

00:14:48.840 same thing with zoran he's an avowed democratic socialist maybe he's secretly a communist i don't

00:14:54.320 know what is in his mind i can't read minds i can read words he said he's a democratic socialist

00:14:59.240 engage him there show why democratic socialism is an untenable economic model as opposed to calling

00:15:06.440 him a communist and if you have concerns about islamism or radical uh extremism or sharia law

00:15:14.820 being brought to new york then yeah you should be specific about okay i don't like how he's associated

00:15:19.720 with this imam that he took a picture with for example that specifically is my issue not say something 0.93

00:15:25.760 like well he's muslim and that's bad and all muslims are extremists who want to take over america 1.00

00:15:30.900 it just doesn't resonate with people who are certainly in the team zoran camp or people who 0.96

00:15:36.840 are more moderates and open to a variety of different viewpoints well the one area i don't

00:15:42.140 kind of agree with the discussion you guys are having is i think that and this isn't evidence of

00:15:46.780 my right-leaning bias just the factual matter when you look at president trump the things that people

00:15:51.960 said about him the mistakes they made are exactly the same but the difference i think is yes he was

00:15:57.460 speaking to people's concerns but he had a credible plan for addressing those concerns so for example

00:16:02.320 if you are concerned about the open border he had a plan which he's now implementing we can argue about

00:16:06.980 what you know the way that it's being done but in terms of effectiveness it's there right uh whether

00:16:13.560 you know if you talk about offshoring of jobs he is now doing a lot to try and bring jobs back to america

00:16:20.540 with zora mamdani the he is addressing people's concerns but the solutions that he is offering

00:16:26.620 verifiably do not work and that to me is a big difference which specific policies so if you if

00:16:33.740 your policy effectively is to give people free stuff as a solution to affordability that is not a

00:16:39.020 sustainable model for running anything right um you have to for example if it's housing you have to

00:16:44.380 create more housing you giving people a rent freeze doesn't work because there'll be some other way

00:16:51.880 to hike up prices in a place where demand massively outstrip supply do you see what i'm saying i see

00:16:55.980 what you're saying and now i have to be the guy who takes the devil's advocacy position it's not fun

00:16:59.820 because i do fundamentally disagree with zoran's worldview but just to steel man him for a second

00:17:04.160 you know i think a lot of the time people are they see socialists and then they they see the

00:17:10.000 headlines for what he's proposing and they say this is unworkable and uh i disagree with the

00:17:14.940 worldview like there's no successful socialist country on earth people say scandinavian nations

00:17:19.880 no those are capitalist systems with strong social safety nets they're not the same thing but if i look

00:17:24.700 at some of the specific policies that he's proposing like for example he wants to have a rent freeze

00:17:29.960 while also reducing the cost on the landlord side by addressing why is insurance so high what are all

00:17:35.920 these building codes and housing laws that are making it expensive and difficult to build housing

00:17:39.940 how do we incentivize both public like you know public housing but also private industry

00:17:45.580 to create more housing there's a logic there there's an internally consistent logic there

00:17:50.640 and part of it is just he needs to raise like nine to eleven billion dollars to fund this so if he gets

00:17:55.880 the governor on board and they just raise taxes on the rich and they find a point in the curve where

00:18:01.640 they can raise taxes enough to make more money but not scare them all away it can work in theory so

00:18:08.000 there are certain individual policies that he has that i i think they there's a there's a part a part

00:18:15.200 of the spectrum where they actually can work my concern is more of the democratic socialist worldview in

00:18:20.860 general because the whole idea of democratic socialism is they're going to try to control the means of

00:18:26.320 production that's the end goal and you can say it's democratically like people vote on nationalized

00:18:32.860 health care or nationalized energy systems or whatever but i just i think that centralizing

00:18:39.360 control of private industry is inefficient and it consistently has been shown not to work especially

00:18:44.520 in the western system yeah so i i agree with that but even here what i what i challenge people to do

00:18:49.900 who are critical of zoran is say let's talk about specific policies assess whether they work give credit

00:18:55.940 where credit is due like i think he has some reasonable ideas like okay maybe we need some

00:19:01.680 mental health workers in the mix to deal with a guy who's muttering on the subway as opposed to sending

00:19:06.860 a cop there it's like okay i'm open to that but please also be willing to increase the police force if

00:19:11.960 that's needed but i'm open to some of this but the overall worldview that he represents i don't think

00:19:18.800 works and i think so much is asking the simple question can you give me an example of a democratic

00:19:23.440 socialist country that exists today that's been successful and he can't produce that and there you

00:19:29.420 would probably get into some sort of very theoretical description of why it should work and i think

00:19:34.680 that's actually where he'd be most vulnerable because i don't think his association with the dsa

00:19:39.080 the democratic socialists of america has been uh scrutinized enough actually like why is this guy

00:19:46.300 giving part of his salary to these people what does that reflect about his worldview you go to the dsa

00:19:51.800 website it it's extreme they have a very racialized worldview it's a very hostile grievance-based

00:19:58.180 agenda and i think if people focus strategically on that that would actually be a much more vulnerable

00:20:05.360 point where i think he'll be much more likely to show uh that yeah he might have some policies that

00:20:11.480 could work in the short term but he's introducing a worldview that doesn't work in the long term

00:20:14.860 isn't that somewhat contradictory to the conversation we've had so far because

00:20:18.300 ultimately it's about addressing the concerns that people have whereas saying he's a democratic

00:20:23.920 socialist is not that far off saying he's a communist because those two things are not far

00:20:28.700 off from each other just in terms of the policies of those two groups advocate right you see what i'm

00:20:32.800 saying i see what you're saying do you think do you think a significant portion of zoran's audience

00:20:36.760 would be horrified to find out that he believes in the redistribution of wealth at a higher level than

00:20:42.420 they currently do or whatever um well if you look at the dsa's platform i think people would be

00:20:48.760 horrified to see some of the the excerpts from that platform really like what look starting a business

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00:22:16.960 so one thing they they talk about is ending white supremacy like that's like a big part of their

00:22:25.320 platform and i remember when i read that i was like oh wow these people like they're they're

00:22:30.280 fomenting more racial division but isn't that a mainstream left-wing position in this country that

00:22:34.680 that's what needs to happen am i wrong i i'm not american so i don't know i'm just i don't think it's

00:22:39.080 as mainstream as you think at least not in such explicit terms i mean this is literally in their

00:22:43.700 website they constantly talk about this and maybe you guys i don't know if you heard the headline where

00:22:47.820 zoran talks about attaching richer whiter neighborhoods like that's literally a part of his

00:22:53.100 platform i believe still you can go to the pdf and check it out i think that's a product of the

00:22:58.520 democratic socialist worldview it very much views things from an oppressor oppressed lens and

00:23:03.940 explicitly views things in terms of racial dynamics which i think is unhealthy no i agree but i guess 1.00

00:23:09.620 what i'm saying is as far as i could tell as an outside observer the democratic party has been saying

00:23:14.880 those things for the last 10 years i don't think is that wrong uh i i think the woke left which is still

00:23:22.220 relatively it's a relative minority does talk about that stuff a lot i don't think the moderate democrats

00:23:29.300 and like the andrew cuomo's of the world talk about that you're not going to hear gavin newsom

00:23:33.480 talking about racial dynamics i think they tend to avoid it and i think now when we talk about the

00:23:38.800 slippery slope concern it's that zoran and you know again it's in his platform talking about richer

00:23:44.180 whiter neighborhoods is now shifting the overton window toward racializing the problems that we have

00:23:49.780 and that along with i think the socialist worldview more generally is stuff that i think should people

00:23:56.000 should apply pressure on and what's interesting about zoran is that it's opened up the discussion

00:24:02.440 to talk about anti-semitism now related to israel like i don't really want to focus on israel

00:24:08.020 particularly but what i do want to focus on is how jewish people in new york say they're now worried

00:24:15.000 about zoran and the election of zoran that they're going to become targets etc do you do you think

00:24:21.200 that there's any credible how can i say there's any big credible basis to these worries or do you

00:24:27.220 think it's akin to people worrying about that trump's going to come in and all of a sudden you know black

00:24:33.280 people i saw one of your videos your hairdresser said that they worried that she was going to be in

00:24:37.780 chains for example yeah uh 100 i think it's a concern not because of what zoran is saying but because of

00:24:44.180 who's affiliated with because again there was that picture of him with that imam right this was an

00:24:49.980 imam who literally has defended multiple terrorists one in court and one by raising a legal defense fund

00:24:56.740 for him so whether zoran is sympathetic to the views of that individual is one thing but what we know is

00:25:05.160 that he's comfortable aligning himself with people who actually defend extremists so if i see that again

00:25:11.120 if we talk about like what are you not open to well you're open to taking a picture with an imam and

00:25:16.580 calling him a pillar of the community without explicitly acknowledging the really messed up

00:25:20.620 things that he's done in the past so i don't think that's an irrational concern that jewish new yorkers

00:25:24.760 have um and i think it's something that zoran should have to explicitly answer for because he gets

00:25:31.020 kind of evasive when he's pressured on these things for example in the entry shoals interview that

00:25:35.980 i forgot who brought it up andrew shoals brings up that topic and he says well eric adams and

00:25:44.320 uh bill de blasio campaigned with that same imam like what's the big deal and that's actually

00:25:49.640 misleading it's highly misleading because what happened was um i think it was bloomberg actually

00:25:56.360 met that imam and he didn't realize what his background was and then after he said he regretted the

00:26:01.320 meeting eric adams met that imam alongside a jewish community leader and a christian community leader

00:26:07.220 neither of those interactions were like taking a picture arm in arm with a guy who defended terrorists

00:26:12.460 so look i i get that zoran as a muslim probably he wants to show solidarity with the muslim community

00:26:20.880 in new york and it's a tricky thread uh needle to thread but at the same time when you bring

00:26:28.460 extremists into the tent there's concerns from other people in the tent that now you're going to

00:26:35.720 allow in more extremist views so if people were to say just because he's muslim this is a problem i

00:26:42.180 would say hey that's actually not being fair but when you look at the people he's actually associating

00:26:46.320 himself with yeah there's a reasonable concern i mean same thing with hassan piker right hassan piker

00:26:51.440 he said that america deserved 9-11 and yeah afterward he said kind of apologized for it but it's like okay

00:26:58.040 if you're gonna align yourself with someone like that then people are gonna have concerns hey do

00:27:03.560 you actually agree with this guy or is this someone who you're friends with and you agree with someone

00:27:09.160 with that they said and not others at least in the case of hassan he's denounced those comments by

00:27:14.500 hassan but in the case of the imam he he kind of just deflected and that's not what we need a leader

00:27:20.780 doing when yeah positioning yourself with people who are explicitly sympathizing with terrorists

00:27:27.040 and again that's the real concern because you look at america and i'm a foreigner here and all the

00:27:34.120 rest of it but i do worry that this current polarization is just going to continue happening

00:27:39.900 and now that you see it in new york with jewish people being saying that they're openly scared they're

00:27:45.800 openly talking about leaving and you you're kind of thinking to yourself where will this end where

00:27:52.840 will this end and how will this end because we can't keep going on this trajectory without something

00:27:58.760 significant happening yeah um you know i i'd actually hope that it would end when trump nearly

00:28:06.940 got assassinated it didn't end there uh i hoped it would end when charlie kirk got assassinated

00:28:11.920 didn't end there either and um

00:28:15.260 i think there's two paths we can take um one is the more pessimistic path where there's sufficient

00:28:24.380 violence that causes the leaders on both sides to find the courage to say hey enough and critique

00:28:32.060 their side directly which is what i i think people need to be doing like followers take cues from leaders

00:28:37.220 and if leaders are never critiquing their followers their followers are not going to change

00:28:40.500 um the optimistic path is that some people realize that the temperature has been turned up way too high

00:28:46.560 and they start turning it down and i'm trying to do that to the extent that i can that's kind of why

00:28:51.540 i try to do stuff like steal man zoran mamdani's position just to humanize the sides to one another

00:28:56.860 and i think that can work and i don't think you need everyone to do it at once i think you just need

00:29:01.500 the most visible leaders with the biggest followings to start doing that and be willing to take the heat for it

00:29:06.860 because look if i make a video steal manning zoran mandani i do not go viral it just doesn't end up

00:29:12.380 as well and it's like yeah it sucks and i also get criticism and people misunderstand me but i also

00:29:18.180 think it's really important and i also think there's a core of my audience and any influencer or

00:29:23.140 leader's audience who does see that and respects you when you do it so yeah the applause is not going

00:29:28.940 to be loud but there are going to be people who's like yeah you know politics aside this is kind of

00:29:33.620 crazy and i'm glad that someone is calling this out and just trying to not have some continuous

00:29:39.380 moral crusade against everyone they disagree with it's one of the things we tried to do on the show

00:29:43.940 as well and i wanted to ask you about immigration and uh ice and all the rest of it because this is

00:29:49.620 one of the things as an outsider again it's very difficult to judge um i don't know when in relation

00:29:55.060 to the other episodes this one goes out but we've talked to people on the show and off the show about

00:29:59.380 it and you get the full range from this is brilliant and the only reason the rights are

00:30:04.580 happening is that the local officials are interfering with ice enforcing the law through to this is

00:30:12.340 tyranny you know authoritarianism etc where do you come down on it yeah um i think it's important to

00:30:17.780 deport people who are here in the country illegally and i think in principle what people have lost touch

00:30:25.460 with is the fact that america is not just a piece of land it's not just an idea it's a community and

00:30:31.940 the value of the community is exclusivity actually any community that people desire to be in people

00:30:40.420 desire to be in because the community is cultivated with rules and principles and boundaries that make

00:30:46.340 everyone in the community get along unfortunately the idea of america being something special and

00:30:52.980 something worth holding on to has been eroded over time where people don't love america they don't 0.95

00:30:58.260 love what it stands for they think it's just some evil racist white supremacist place that's just

00:31:03.620 defined by slavery when it's like no people live here people love living here because we have rules

00:31:09.700 and norms that people follow and they work pretty well relative to other places in the world and if you

00:31:15.460 just allow people to violate the fundamental principle of what makes a nation state upon entry then every

00:31:22.740 other rule it becomes kind of optional and if you see people entering the southern border because they

00:31:29.620 just want to makes you wonder well why am i even paying taxes then that said i think there's better and

00:31:36.340 worse ways to execute the deportation effort and my critiques of the crump trump trump administration

00:31:44.500 are a i think that they're doing things in a very brute force way that doesn't actually scale because

00:31:51.540 if you truly think that there's 10 to 30 million people in the country illegally you're not going to

00:31:55.780 deport them all through ice you need to fix the incentives here and the incentive is if you come here

00:32:02.020 you're going to get at least a limited degree of health care your kids are going to get to go to

00:32:06.100 school you'll be able to get a job the employer that you get a job from is not going to go to prison

00:32:11.620 for breaking employment law and yet you get to experience a lot of the benefits that come with

00:32:16.980 being in america whereas if we said hey employers if we find out that you're employing someone illegally

00:32:23.140 you're going to go to prison all of a sudden employers would stop employing people illegally and

00:32:28.020 you remove one of the chief incentives for people coming here but instead of there being a crackdown

00:32:33.700 on illegal employment we're seeing yeah ice raids and there's gonna be a need for that no matter what

00:32:41.460 but i think it's a higher proportion of the overall uh pie than it actually needs to be and i'd like to

00:32:47.540 see them focus on the incentives so no it's not fair to say that the only reason people are protesting is

00:32:53.300 because local law enforcement is interfering or not complying with ice i live here i mean i interact

00:32:58.820 with illegal immigrants regularly i have friends who go to these protests in support of um you know

00:33:05.700 in solidarity with illegal immigrants it's it's not all manufactured i think that's a massive straw man of

00:33:10.980 the position and actually when i've spoken to some of my friends who are trying to defend illegal

00:33:16.900 immigrants or standing up to what trump is doing and i explain my position of hey look these people are not

00:33:22.980 many of them are not bad people they just came here to follow the american dream but the thing

00:33:26.740 that makes the american dream the american dream is supported by rules and when people are breaking

00:33:32.340 the rules the american dream kind of collapses for everyone and there's a way to deport people more

00:33:38.180 compassionately we can pay them to leave which the trump administration has done to a degree i think

00:33:44.180 we should be paying them more because it's so expensive to forcibly deport them so why not just 0.99

00:33:48.660 give them money you preserve some goodwill it's not so noisy you don't see crying mothers on tv and

00:33:54.980 yeah if you remove the jobs you don't allow them to avail themselves of health care unless it's like

00:34:00.900 a truly life-saving situation then yeah a lot of these people are just going to leave voluntarily

00:34:05.860 and it's still not going to feel good but it'll probably feel better than for the next three years

00:34:11.860 watching ice forcibly uh arrest people and deport them and eventually political capital runs out

00:34:20.100 so uh look i think it's just really important in principle to enforce the law and the laws if you're

00:34:24.900 here you have to be here legally uh i'm open to doing things like you know if the agricultural

00:34:31.220 industry for example relies on illegal immigrant labor cool let's make the legal immigration process

00:34:36.420 uh faster and more efficient so that they can get um seasonal worker visas and things that they need

00:34:42.180 to augment their workforce but no i'm not open to amnesty and these things outside of like maybe some

00:34:49.300 cases if someone's like really a senior citizen or something like that because look we're in a state

00:34:54.420 right now where we actually did that in the 80s in the 80s ronald reagan signed a bill giving people

00:35:00.020 amnesty and we're back in the same situation so at some point a boundary needs to be set

00:35:05.700 and a boundary needs to be set that's so strong that people won't allow this open border situation

00:35:10.580 ever again but because we haven't been willing to do that it's continued to perpetuate and before it

00:35:17.620 was actually the republicans being in favor of this kind of stuff it was like the whole idea of

00:35:22.580 you know then it was more to support the corporate uh the corporate reliance on well very much on that

00:35:27.940 do you think one of the reasons that the fairly obvious solution that you've outlined which is

00:35:33.060 you deal with this at the point of employment and you introduced fairly draconian punishments for

00:35:39.220 employers who employ illegal immigrants one of the reasons that hasn't happened is you talk about

00:35:44.420 political capital that's actually how you spend a lot of political capital because it's not going

00:35:48.740 to be you know juanita who's complaining about what's happening it's going to be somebody with power 1.00

00:35:54.580 with donations to your campaign etc yeah you're right and i think that's probably why they haven't

00:36:00.100 addressed it um but look i i think trump is serious about solving the illegal immigration problem

00:36:06.740 i wasn't convinced that he was serious until i saw that i was like oh wow he's he means everyone he's

00:36:11.140 actually trying to deport everyone not just violent criminals and then i saw he's you know doubling down

00:36:16.580 with 150 billion dollars to ice so it's like okay i think he's actually serious i think he's willing

00:36:21.780 to take heat why not take heat by dealing with the corporations who are employing these people

00:36:28.180 which i actually think could be a lot more unifying like i think there's a part of most americans who

00:36:35.460 hate it when they see the rules being broken by corporations i think the corporations who provide

00:36:41.060 money to uh the maga movement and political causes yeah they're going to be a lot more resistant but i

00:36:47.140 think trump can rally the base against those people and trump is in his last term anyway so what does he

00:36:52.740 have to lose well absolutely and let's be fair he's never been someone who's been afraid to tackle the

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00:38:22.260 heard about them so just say trigonometry that site again is superpower.com i think one of the most

00:38:29.940 difficult issues that needs to be addressed and it's a really tough one it is wealth inequality like it's

00:38:37.700 i came here 20 odd years ago and there was still a huge difference between rich and poor but in the

00:38:42.820 20 or so years i've been visiting your country it seems to have grown wider and wider and wider and

00:38:48.740 we talk about radicalization cars and that will radicalize people especially when you've got access

00:38:53.780 to instagram let's say you're dirt poor 20 odd years ago you didn't really know how the other half lived 1.00

00:38:59.220 now you all you do is go on instagram and it gets rubbed in your face you can watch cribs on mtv i remember

00:39:03.860 like that yeah i kind of liked cribs even when i was broke it was fun i don't know if that show's

00:39:08.980 still around yeah yeah i agree i agree and um man this is one of those issues where i actually think

00:39:16.660 there have been some democrats who have correctly identified the problem which is yeah corporate

00:39:20.900 influence like bernie sanders he talks constantly about the oligarchy the oligarchy and you know he does

00:39:26.580 it to the point where almost it feels like a bit of a meme but i think he's right like i'm pro

00:39:33.460 capitalism i think capitalism is the best system that has ever been invented or at least the least

00:39:38.500 bad of all the other economic systems empirically speaking but there's a point at which capitalism

00:39:43.540 can be co-opted by corporate interests who are influencing the laws and basically engaging in

00:39:50.100 regulatory caption capture where they basically rig the rules in their favor and i think that's us

00:39:56.580 also what's probably been going on in new york too hence the rise of zoran so yet wealth inequality

00:40:01.780 is an actual issue and i don't think the issue is inherent to capitalism i think the issue is corporate

00:40:07.140 influence and centralization of power among the few as opposed to distributed among the many and

00:40:15.460 that's what i think hopefully the right and the left can both get on board with

00:40:19.220 but that seems to not be happening yet well yeah exactly because the left of far better place to

00:40:25.220 actually exploit that because that's one of you know that's one of the things with being on the

00:40:29.300 left you you're concerned about that what worries me is that the right just seem more interested in

00:40:36.180 demonizing the politicians that talk about it than actually addressing the problems it's not everyone

00:40:41.860 on the right but it seems to be a lot of them and i'm and i'm thinking to myself if you don't actually

00:40:47.700 deal with the problems we are going to get a lot more left-wing populists because you know problems

00:40:54.820 aren't being addressed people's concerns aren't being addressed absolutely and that's why it's not

00:40:59.540 important to people whether it's a socialist or a capitalist they want populist first so if i was

00:41:06.180 running the rnc or whatever i would say hey we need to find a populist capitalist as a foil to the 1.00

00:41:12.580 populist socialist and communist and we need to meet them there and extol the virtues of capitalism

00:41:19.220 when it's well structured because if you continue to just demonize the populist of any color what

00:41:25.380 happens is people just feel oh well you don't actually care about my problems so at least this

00:41:28.900 guy's talking about my problems most people are not thinking deeply about the economic ramifications

00:41:33.540 they they don't really know how to assess these things nor should they really have to but if there's

00:41:38.900 only one person who's actually speaking about the problems they're going to go along with what they

00:41:43.060 say no matter what their solution is yeah well the thing with that though is it really fundamentally

00:41:48.580 depends no matter how important you think wealth inequality is fundamentally depends on where you

00:41:53.380 think it comes from and i think the corporate capture argument is obviously partially true i also

00:42:00.180 think to a large extent it's probably something that's been driven by technology i mean most of the

00:42:05.300 wealth that's being created in this state i would venture is in one city called san francisco where

00:42:10.660 people are doing ai right and and you don't need a lot of people to do that what you need is a lot of

00:42:16.500 money and a lot of energy and a lot of tips um so i wonder whether we're just going to live in this

00:42:24.020 long age of populism because the wealth is accumulating in fewer and fewer hands just by the nature of the

00:42:30.900 the technological structures of the society we now live in yeah yeah you raise an interesting

00:42:36.420 point um because now that i think about it more i think there's kind of two issues there's what's

00:42:42.580 this condition of the people who are the worst off in society and then there's what's the gap between

00:42:48.180 the people who are the worst off and the people who are the best off which is the wealth inequality

00:42:52.100 question i don't think it would get us all the way there to just address the situation of the people who are

00:42:57.700 worse off if you still had wealth inequality but i think it would get us a lot of the way there

00:43:02.740 and i mean if you look at california i mean you literally see homelessness everywhere uh many people

00:43:08.500 who are not homeless are like one paycheck away from being homeless and that's just an awful existence

00:43:15.300 like it's like bare subsistence and i think if you're that kind of person and you look at the

00:43:20.740 situation of like a billionaire or some san francisco ai guy you look at your situation is like man i can't

00:43:26.660 even be happy with what i have because what i have sucks where at least if their situation didn't

00:43:31.460 suck it would probably be easier to accept the fact that we're gonna have trillionaires in relative 0.99

00:43:36.020 short order so um yeah i mean it's hard like i think there's there's going to be more extreme 0.91

00:43:44.100 pulls i think in the future just because that's what technology does it allows uh

00:43:49.060 uh exponential transformations of the physical world and yeah you're just going to have some

00:43:57.940 people who are way way way way richer but i think if we can at least take care of the position of

00:44:03.540 the bottom of society it'll feel better for people and i think there's actually a deeper conversation to

00:44:08.900 have about the relationship between the rich and the poor uh in this country for sure but maybe in the

00:44:13.540 the west in general where now i've been thinking about the term aristocrat and the etymology of

00:44:19.620 aristocrat is the most excellent or the best among us and there used to be this relationship between the

00:44:25.700 rich and the poor where if you were one of the wealthy ones it would almost be like instead of being

00:44:30.980 at the top of the pyramid you're at the bottom of the pyramid supporting everyone in service

00:44:35.860 and at some point the social contract kind of broke down and i think people who became wealthy

00:44:42.500 became more selfish honestly and i think people who are poor became resentful of the rich and

00:44:50.100 if you're rich and you see people who are poor resentful you're not going to want to take care of

00:44:53.460 them and if people who are poor don't see rich people you know doing things for their everyone

00:45:01.220 else they're going to become resentful and it's just this vicious cycle so i remember a few years ago

00:45:06.420 mark zuckerberg he tried to like donate this hospital and you know just i don't know why he did it i

00:45:11.940 assume it's of goodness of his heart and maybe it's for social status but it's a good thing to do

00:45:16.580 and people rejected that like they didn't even want his donation and that shows me there's something

00:45:21.220 really broken about the relationship between uh the best off and the worst off and i i think look

00:45:27.620 i'm not one of these people i think we kind of have this fallacy of like everyone's equally capable

00:45:31.860 not everyone's equally capable right not everyone's going to be a billionaire not everyone's going to make

00:45:35.540 a world changing technology so there's kind of a natural aristocracy and if we can get honest about

00:45:41.780 that then we can have a conversation about okay well what should the aristocrats be doing and what do 0.50

00:45:46.740 we give them in reward for doing what is good for the collective and we should be celebrating people

00:45:53.380 who are doing things that benefit all of humanity like mark zuckerberg should have been celebrated when

00:45:58.500 he generated enough funds to create a hospital wing but yeah there's like just like there's like

00:46:05.220 this right left divide there's this poor rich divide and they've always been rich and poor but i don't

00:46:10.500 think it's always been this level of animosity there's a really interesting point i think it was during

00:46:15.300 certain periods of ancient greece the rich and uh powerful were expected to almost dedicate their entire

00:46:21.300 lives to actually doing things for their community and for society um and yeah you're right like you could be a

00:46:28.100 billionaire now who pledges to give away 99 of his wealth and people still hate you yeah

00:46:35.860 because you're a billionaire right yeah um which is interesting your point about inequality by the

00:46:40.820 way i look i haven't seen the latest research but i remember reading the spirit level and the argument

00:46:45.060 they basically made is actually once you get past a certain basic point which this country is way past

00:46:51.620 it doesn't actually matter how well off the people at the bottom are what matters is the gap between

00:46:57.140 the rich and the poor and that ruins everything for everybody including the super rich weirdly enough

00:47:03.140 because all of the metrics like of social disease population in prison teenage pregnancy interpersonal

00:47:10.100 violence those things go up as inequality goes up um so i i it's actually going to be you're going

00:47:16.900 to get this wave of populism from both sides and i i suspect both of them are going to struggle to

00:47:23.300 actually fix the problem well if that isn't depressing yeah well that's what we do here

00:47:31.060 depressinometry um yeah i mean i i think it's a it's just a difficult problem to solve and um

00:47:39.140 you know this there's kind of this like hedonic treadmill effect i think that maybe is going on too

00:47:43.620 to be fair because i mean if you were to talk to the average person who's working on nine to five or

00:47:48.980 they're making like 15 an hour and say well you're actually at the point past which there's diminishing

00:47:54.260 returns and you actually have enough i don't think they would feel that way i think they would feel

00:47:58.180 no if you doubled my salary it would make my life tangibly better so and they'd be right

00:48:04.500 i think they'd be right right like i i think it would be nice if you didn't have to

00:48:10.180 worry about if you get fired you're going to be homeless the next month like i think many people are

00:48:14.580 below that threshold so yeah i don't know the research i've heard these stories like past

00:48:18.660 eighty thousand dollars like you know more money doesn't make you more happy and that's all

00:48:22.340 bullshit man okay cool i'm like it sounds like best to me that's total okay the idea that money 0.98

00:48:27.860 doesn't make you happy is a story that rich people tell poor people so they don't feel jealous that's 0.97

00:48:31.860 it yeah yeah absolutely yeah i actually heard a good quote from tony robbins actually i went to one

00:48:36.660 of his events recently and he said if you think that money doesn't make you happy you haven't

00:48:40.820 given enough enough enough away i was like oh that's actually really interesting framing which

00:48:45.460 kind of goes back to the whole natural aristocracy idea you get to a point where you have so much

00:48:49.620 wealth that the fun part is giving it to good causes so um i think again we need to address this at

00:48:58.260 the bottom and also the gap but i think we can at least start with what's going on at the bottom

00:49:04.180 and a lot of people are just in conditions where it's like yeah resentment's natural

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00:50:35.700 the more we talk about these issues the more time i spend in america

00:50:39.780 i kind of think that the americans and maybe the west in general needs to go through a

00:50:44.820 de-radicalization program do you know they don't work yeah yeah i mean kind of true but if we were

00:50:54.660 let's play a little thought experiment if we were to kind of design a de-radicalization program for

00:50:59.620 the average american the average person in the west what do you think it would mean what do you think

00:51:04.340 we should do in order to just ratchet everything down well i think a lot of this is a lot of the

00:51:10.980 division is because instead of socializing we have social media and you even see this um along racial lines

00:51:19.060 pre-2013-2014 perceptions of black people of white black race relations was at a high high 60s

00:51:28.340 perceptions of white people of black white relations was at a high too it was also in the 70s

00:51:34.100 what happened after that well people would say it was events like trayvon martin and then eventually

00:51:38.900 george floyd but the rates of police brutality against minority groups didn't radically spike what

00:51:45.940 happened was people's awareness of it radically spiked because we all have instant access to view

00:51:51.940 any extremely negative event in our pockets at all times so the rise of social media in combination with

00:51:59.940 the fact that you know the pandemic led to everyone being in their houses and we have this whole generation

00:52:04.980 of kids who didn't go to college or they missed out on school in their key developmental years has meant

00:52:10.420 that people don't even know how to talk to each other anymore and because of that when you don't talk

00:52:16.260 to people who disagree with you it's easy to form a demonic avatar of them in your head where it's

00:52:23.300 actually dehumanizing so if we were to start de-radicalizing people it would start by just

00:52:28.660 as corny as it sounds but i'm an ollie hippie right to talk to each other like we need to get people

00:52:33.620 talking to people who disagree with them but instead of that i mean not only are i i think

00:52:39.540 people are just interacting less in person in general these days but people are interacting

00:52:44.260 online in algorithmic echo chambers where you're fed views that feed into your confirmation bias and

00:52:51.220 the only representation of the opposite side that you ever see is the worst examples of it we saw this 0.99

00:52:57.700 with charlie kirk right after charlie kirk passed away i wasn't even that familiar with his views

00:53:02.900 until after he died and people started talking about his views in a way that was grossly exaggerated

00:53:09.700 and cherry picking clips out of context and saying that he believes that black people shouldn't have

00:53:14.340 the right to vote or that he believed that people should be stoning gays all massive distortions of his

00:53:20.420 view but then i realized oh wow like that's literally the only exposure they've ever gotten to him

00:53:26.180 these five second clips that have been selectively edited and they might not have even met someone who

00:53:31.620 was a conservative i mean here in la if you're conservative you have to be quiet it's it's

00:53:37.140 it's socially dangerous if not honestly physically dangerous too and as a result people think that

00:53:43.460 conservatives are like this weird thing that only exists in nebraska when no there's people who have

00:53:48.660 different views from you but because we're not socializing you don't actually get exposed to that

00:53:53.620 and it's kind of like i believe they have these de-radicalization experiments i think maybe coming

00:53:58.420 out of um maybe like the mid-20th century i forget who exactly had literal white racists talk to black

00:54:06.340 people and pair them and yeah what happened was you know when you get exposed to someone long enough you

00:54:11.460 get to see their humanity and you stop demonizing so much so that's how i would try to approach de-radicalization

00:54:17.620 right and especially if you if you are solving a problem together yeah that's one of the other

00:54:22.900 things right it's like if you get people who are predisposed to dislike each other in a room where

00:54:27.140 they have to solve a common problem that's when you actually get proper kind of de-radicalization

00:54:33.620 if you like yeah um and that's i think really comes back to the beginning of our conversation which is

00:54:38.660 if you don't all feel like this is one country and you ultimately at the end of the day you're all british or

00:54:44.500 you're all american that's where you actually start to see this break down completely exactly and you

00:54:51.060 know that's why the space race was actually so healthy right for america and the cold war yeah

00:54:58.420 honestly yeah it's like it's like the best war you could possibly have no one actually got you know no

00:55:03.460 countries got nuked and everyone got a little bit more tribal in a way that is actually kind of positive 1.00

00:55:08.180 and we need something that gets us beyond our tribal identities and focuses on a hard problem

00:55:15.060 that if we solve we'll all benefit from and unfortunately we don't really have that right

00:55:22.500 now in america and i think in the west more generally there's not a collective project that

00:55:26.580 everyone can feel inspired by i think we got to find that like we need to like i think there's humans

00:55:32.260 there's always going to be war but the war should not be man against man it should be man against 0.97

00:55:38.260 ideas and man against restrictions and man against the limitations of the physical world

00:55:43.860 that's why i think elon trying to get us to mars is a tremendously healthy thing

00:55:48.580 and i was actually excited when the president president trump during the inauguration said we're

00:55:53.540 going to get to mars i was like oh cool actually make that a bigger piece of the platform because

00:55:58.100 that's something that elevates us beyond whatever quibbles we have as individuals and gets us on

00:56:06.420 board with doing something as a generation that would be truly epic yeah well the other thing coming

00:56:12.020 back to what you were saying as well about what how social media works and you mentioned charlie kirk

00:56:16.020 what was interesting is you say this is people's only exposure to this guy i there was a guy in our

00:56:22.100 country called alistair campbell who you're probably not familiar with uh he was tony blair's uh been

00:56:27.620 talked well i didn't want to use a loaded Chinese blair like media relations guy let's say um who he

00:56:35.540 he tweeted a thing about charlie kirk making those kind of completely inaccurate allegations

00:56:42.020 and then he took it down and a lot of people are now you know i'm a big fan of the fact that online

00:56:47.940 content is monetized it's how we make a living it's how we do what we do it's great once you create

00:56:52.180 monetization of content now the incentive structure is well let me just say this thing that my tribe is

00:56:58.500 going to agree with that my people are going to share without checking anything at all yeah yep

00:57:06.500 and uh look i'm going to say something unpopular we as individuals have to change our consumption

00:57:14.980 patterns correct because why is their media bias because they're supplying a demand for bias content

00:57:22.180 there's always going to be bs that we're fed if people keep eating bs so we can complain that

00:57:31.700 people are incentivized financially to spread misinformation but if we all take it upon 0.51

00:57:37.380 ourselves to slow down verify information for ourselves unfollow people who are spreading garbage

00:57:44.740 call it out when someone's spreading garbage and vote with our wallets and our attention this problem

00:57:50.420 can get solved very quickly overnight literally if we all just raised our standard for the information

00:57:56.020 that enters our mind like instantly the industry would disappear but that requires a level of personal

00:58:03.780 responsibility that is very hard to have and you know that's

00:58:11.780 i think that would actually create the tectonic shift that people are looking for it's not tweaking

00:58:15.380 the algorithms it's not regulating the companies none of that stuff is going to work we all have to just

00:58:20.340 get fed up enough that we take it upon ourselves and say look i'm tired of hostility i'm tired of nonsense

00:58:26.420 anyone who is rage baiting and sensationalizing and spreading garbage i'm literally just not going to pay

00:58:31.620 attention to them anymore and if you don't pay them attention then they don't get paid money well that's

00:58:36.180 actually a really good point i did a video video recently in which i addressed that point with a

00:58:40.660 couple of people that i think are really out there on that stuff and that was my point is like the great

00:58:46.100 thing about the internet the way it's developed is it's ended gatekeeping the terrible thing about the

00:58:53.380 internet is it's ended gatekeeping and now ultimately the only way of gatekeeping that i think exists and

00:59:00.260 some gatekeeping is necessary is you gatekeeping yourself yes you are your own gatekeeper now

00:59:05.860 and you have to go okay this stuff is it's it's like eating that's bad junk food right

00:59:13.460 like you can eat it but at some point if you want to have a healthy life you go i'm gonna have to resist

00:59:18.900 the urge that i have to eat this stuff yeah and while eating we're eating mental junk food that's right

00:59:25.380 okay and then we're getting constipated from eating all this mental junk food and not processing it

00:59:30.660 and then we're sharing it with other people so it's like of course we're in this situation where 0.85

00:59:35.220 there's so much garbage out there and we're wondering why we keep getting more garbage because

00:59:39.940 we keep on consuming it so i think this actually can be an empowering message because look not to hold

00:59:47.780 myself up as some sort of paragon but it takes me like six hours to make that three minute video that you

00:59:53.540 see on your x feed and in passing like every single time it takes me hours and hours and hours

00:59:58.900 and most of that time is spent refining and researching what i say because i take it really

01:00:04.900 seriously because i know if i'm going to reach millions of people i want to be saying things that

01:00:08.420 are correct and even if i'm giving an opinion i want to make sure it's substantiated and if we all

01:00:13.060 held ourselves to a high standard for when we say something when we comment on something when we share

01:00:19.940 something everyone who is providing this information to us would be forced to step it up because they'd

01:00:26.580 be like oh this is not working anymore kaizen it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show

01:00:32.100 the final question is always the same what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should

01:00:36.580 be you know often i think people are talking about rights but we're not talking about responsibility

01:00:47.620 and a commensurate amount and just like we talked about it's important for you to take responsibility

01:00:55.780 for the information you consume i think that's important in every single part of life and anytime

01:01:00.500 there's a conversation about what you deserve there needs to be a conversation about what you'll give

01:01:05.460 in exchange for what you want and if we take that approach as individuals then society itself

01:01:12.340 transforms because we are society society is not this thing imposed on us it's a thing that we're

01:01:17.940 reinforcing or revolutionizing with every single thought word or action there we go thanks for

01:01:25.300 coming on thanks for coming on thanks for having me guys

01:01:36.180 you

TRIGGERnometry - November 05, 2025

Zohran Mamdani and The Truth About Democratic Socialism - Kaizen Asiedu

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