Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - A New Approach to Political Campaigns with Chris Petkas and Codie Sanchez | The TRUTH Podcast #12

00:00:02.000 One

00:00:23.000 of the things we're doing differently in this campaign is we're breaking the system of even how somebody goes about fundraising for a political campaign.

00:00:33.000 I was in a privileged position.

00:00:35.000 I've lived the full arc of the American dream.

00:00:37.000 We've kickstarted this campaign with a personal investment, significant one that I've made.

00:00:41.000 But this is going to be lifted up Not by the donor class, many of whom I even alienated, I would say, in Silicon Valley with the positions I've taken over the last week.

00:00:51.000 They've been very clear about that and that's fine.

00:00:53.000 The way we're actually going to get it off the ground is through a bottom-up grassroots uprising.

00:00:58.000 And I want to do it in a way that breaks the cartel of professional political fundraisers.

00:01:04.000 So one of the things that I've learned in this process is A lot of people are gonna make a lot of money off this presidential election.

00:01:13.000 Actually, more people on the outside are going to make money off of this presidential election than probably any election in human history.

00:01:22.000 Not exaggerating that because there's going to be billions of dollars spent on this election.

00:01:27.000 It's going to be the most money that's ever been spent by candidates on an election.

00:01:31.000 But the way the model works is the consultants who raise money, they get a rake of how much is raised.

00:01:37.000 Generally, the number is about 10%.

00:01:38.000 But there's only a small handful of them in the country because they know and have personal relationships with the people who have been historically donors to a, say, Republican presidential primary.

00:01:51.000 Well, I think we have an opportunity to break that system.

00:01:53.000 One of the things we're already seeing in this campaign is of the small-dollar contributions we're getting, we're getting like an off-the-charts percentage.

00:02:00.000 In our case, it's upwards of 15, maybe more percent.

00:02:04.000 That have never donated to the GOP or to a GOP candidate before.

00:02:08.000 That's like way higher than the normal, which is like low single digit percentages.

00:02:13.000 That's just one example of why there's an opportunity here.

00:02:16.000 So one of the things that I want to do is, you know what, I don't want politics to be an industry.

00:02:20.000 I don't like it as an industry, frankly, and I'm running for president to change the system in this country in a lot of ways.

00:02:27.000 But so long as the system exists, I don't want it to be run by a cartel.

00:02:30.000 I actually want to democratize that process.

00:02:33.000 That if somebody else is going to make money off this process, frankly, if you're part of this movement, it might as well be you as well.

00:02:40.000 There's no rule that says it only has to be some sort of self-appointed elite that gets to make a ton of money.

00:02:46.000 If they raise a million dollars, they pocket $100,000 in a given week.

00:02:50.000 That can be you too.

00:02:51.000 And so one of the things we're doing here...

00:02:54.000 Is basically anybody who wants to be a fundraiser for this campaign can be a fundraiser, but we're not just going to ask you to volunteer to do it.

00:03:01.000 If you sign up, you can actually just do it as somebody who makes your 10% as well.

00:03:06.000 So if you're not just going to the very wealthy people and getting $6,600 a pop, but maybe people who are getting $500 a pop or whatever, if you raise $100,000, that's $10,000 for you.

00:03:16.000 If you raise a million dollars, that's $100,000 for you.

00:03:18.000 That's the way the system works.

00:03:20.000 If that's the way the game is played, you might as well play the game.

00:03:23.000 And I'll tell you this too, from a matter of training, and I'm going to get to my guests today in a moment, who are I think going to have a lot of insight on this, but one of the keys to success is the ability to sell a vision.

00:03:34.000 And if you can get somebody who isn't part of the political donor class to donate to somebody who's running for office, even if it's the U.S. president, you're building a skill set that you can use to do anything you want in your life and sell a different vision, be it a business you want to build, be it Welcome to my

00:04:07.000 show!

00:04:08.000 Chris and Cody, who have traveled from Austin to be with me, actually.

00:04:13.000 Cody, in particular, has an entrepreneurship background, entrepreneurial background, as an investor, where I think we have some common cause as self-described contrarians.

00:04:23.000 And I'd love to get a little bit more into your investment thesis and how you think about being a contrarian.

00:04:28.000 I think that there's a lot there for not only how you succeed as a capitalist, But even the approach that we're taking to the political system and the cultural revival in this country being contrarian too.

00:04:39.000 And Chris, your partner in life, partner in crime maybe, who I think has some perspectives.

00:04:45.000 I'm really excited to learn from you, Chris, about your perspectives from your time in the military when you look at some of the objectives that I'm looking at advancing here.

00:04:53.000 How can we actually translate that into action?

00:04:56.000 I love your perspective on it.

00:04:57.000 And the theme, I was just thinking about The theme of this podcast, the theme of this campaign, even a theme of our conversation here is about how can reviving self-confidence at the level of the individual, maybe it's people who are in the military, maybe it's entrepreneurs, how does reviving self-confidence Lay the groundwork for our American revival, the revival of our country.

00:05:20.000 So that said, Cody, I think people who don't already know you, who might be many people who already do know you, but for the people who don't know you, it'd be pretty cool to lay out your background a little bit from Wall Street to what you're doing now.

00:05:32.000 And then maybe let's get right into that theme of self-confidence, actually.

00:05:36.000 I think you have something useful to say about it.

00:05:37.000 Yeah, totally.

00:05:38.000 Well, I like your framing there, first of all, about what happened this weekend with SVB. I think that's interesting.

00:05:45.000 One of our taglines is Main Street over Wall Street.

00:05:47.000 And it's not that I think that there's anything wrong with Wall Street.

00:05:50.000 I was on it for a long time with the humans who are doing the work.

00:05:52.000 It's just, I believe, like you, that centralizing power in the hands of the few is really dangerous.

00:05:58.000 So you do that with the donor class and saying, hey, we should probably decentralize this.

00:06:02.000 There should be more options and access for all.

00:06:04.000 And we feel that same way at Contrarian Thinking.

00:06:07.000 I run a media company that does, I don't know, 60, 70 million views a month.

00:06:11.000 And that all came on the back of me being in finance for a long time, building a bunch of businesses in finance and realizing that, man, if you go across any of the main sectors in the US, what you'll find is over any sort of 10-year period and then increasing over time, about 20 to 25% of the sector what you'll find is over any sort of 10-year period and then increasing over time, about 20 And so we're increasingly having this centralization of power in even business sectors, not just donors or politicians.

00:06:39.000 And I don't think that's a great idea.

00:06:41.000 Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and I don't think humans are meant for it.

00:06:45.000 And so we have this movement where we're trying to create 1 million financially free humans and 100,000 small business owners.

00:06:52.000 In America.

00:06:53.000 In America.

00:07:16.000 If we just taught them how to do microacquisitions, then you could be the owner of your plumbing company, having worked in it for 10 years, and you can learn the leadership components of it, and you could learn how to structure a deal to own it.

00:07:28.000 And so that's sort of our mission, is getting more people into ownership.

00:07:31.000 Because what does ownership mean?

00:07:32.000 Skin of the game.

00:07:33.000 If people raise for you, they've got skin behind the presidency, and they've got some ownership of this country, as opposed to right now, I think a lot of people feel like they don't have ownership over their life or the country.

00:07:43.000 It's interesting you say that – use that expression of skin in the game.

00:07:46.000 I mean the founding of the country – there's a controversial component to this, but the founding of the country was based on this vision of citizenship, participatory citizenship that said that actually to vote for a while in this country – you probably know this.

00:08:02.000 You had to be a landowner.

00:08:05.000 Now, I don't favor that policy, but let's just double-click on that for a second.

00:08:10.000 You – You can't care about a game that you have no skin in the game.

00:08:16.000 I do think that we live in a national culture where people just passively take for granted what they inherit as a citizen, as opposed to this idea of actually having skin in the game.

00:08:29.000 I'm not talking about voting restrictions for land ownership anymore, but there's something to the idea of actually having skin in the game in the country that you're a part of.

00:08:40.000 Is that synchronous with you a little bit?

00:08:42.000 Is that what you're thinking?

00:08:43.000 Totally.

00:08:43.000 I mean, across the board, I think if you own a house, you don't burn it down.

00:08:48.000 You build it up.

00:08:49.000 You redo it.

00:08:51.000 And it's the law of the commons, I think, across the country in a lot of ways, is because everybody is responsible for it.

00:08:58.000 Nobody's responsible for it.

00:08:59.000 And what happens to things that we have in common?

00:09:02.000 Well, nobody takes responsibility.

00:09:04.000 And so the idea is...

00:09:07.000 that we try to combat that.

00:09:08.000 I only can do that through business ownership because that's what I know.

00:09:11.000 You can do that through actual regulation and law as somebody who's in charge of our governing system.

00:09:17.000 But if all of us just figured out in our little lane, how could we get more skin in the game and then help others have more skin in the game as opposed to, sure, I could go out and raise another billion dollar private equity fund and I could buy all these businesses and I did that for a while.

00:09:30.000 But at some point, one of my CEOs, he actually said, I was starting to talk publicly about this.

00:09:35.000 And in finance, they don't really like when you do that.

00:09:37.000 They don't like when you talk publicly about how we make money.

00:09:40.000 And he was like, Cody, around here we get rich quietly.

00:09:45.000 Someone said that expressly.

00:09:47.000 Expressly.

00:09:47.000 It's very familiar.

00:09:49.000 I mean, I came from that world a while as well.

00:09:51.000 That sounds about right.

00:09:52.000 Yeah.

00:09:52.000 And I was like, no, no, no.

00:09:54.000 That doesn't sound like that fun.

00:09:55.000 Plus, that's how we get massive inequality, which leads to overreach in a non-positive way.

00:10:00.000 So I'm like, even from your own self-interest, you should want more people to have skin in the game.

00:10:04.000 Yeah, because also you don't trust something that you don't understand, right?

00:10:10.000 And so I think that, you know, populism is a bad word on Wall Street.

00:10:14.000 And You know, I think there isn't enough introspection about what role you play in creating it.

00:10:20.000 And, you know, we make money quietly sums it up actually pretty well as opposed to unapologetically embracing.

00:10:27.000 Say, hey, here's what we do.

00:10:29.000 Here's why we're proud of it.

00:10:30.000 Here's how that creates value and here's the cut that I take.

00:10:33.000 That's a very different approach and I think that maybe part of the reason that it's done quietly is that people aren't necessarily proud of exactly the substance of how it happens.

00:10:43.000 Well, and you said it like you're like, "I've lived the American arc," which I think was a really good line because that's true. 1.00

00:10:49.000 People love seeing you live the American arc if they feel like it's fair enough that they could get there too.

00:10:54.000 And I think these days there's so many paths where people don't feel like that's fair.

00:10:58.000 They're like, I got all this college debt, you know, like whatever all the narratives are, the victim mentality that's pretty pervasive.

00:11:04.000 So I can't ever get there, so I don't want you to get there because if you get there, it's a zero-sum game.

00:11:08.000 And I don't think that's true, but I do think we need different leadership and different education in order to realize that.

00:11:14.000 I certainly needed that as an immigrant.

00:11:16.000 I thought it was called- You were an immigrant from?

00:11:19.000 My father was an immigrant.

00:11:20.000 He's from Spain.

00:11:21.000 Okay.

00:11:21.000 But I remember when I started in finance, I thought it was called a mutual fund.

00:11:25.000 Like we all had fun together instead of a mutual fund.

00:11:28.000 So I get it, you know?

00:11:29.000 Yeah.

00:11:30.000 And, you know, your perspective is, you know, you're coming from a different angle, right, Chris?

00:11:34.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:11:35.000 Speaking to the point about there being significant problems, you know, within society that are, you know, considered societal problems instead of personal ones.

00:11:44.000 Like what?

00:11:45.000 Like the tragedy of the commons.

00:11:46.000 You know, like Cody had alluded to, you know, just a little bit ago about student debt, right?

00:11:52.000 I mean, there's choices to be made about the mechanisms in which you decide to fund yourself going through an education.

00:11:57.000 There's decisions, right?

00:11:58.000 There's certain aspects that you can, you know, take on board in order to decide like what is exactly the way that, you know, you decide for your future and your contribution.

00:12:10.000 And some people think that incurring a lot of debt at a very young age, which again, you know, is obviously the only type of debt that is inexcusable or non-forgivable, right, in bankruptcy.

00:12:20.000 And so we have people who think they're forced to make these decisions and thus they kind of become lost in a way of trying to find themselves and incurring so much debt while kind of searching for a purpose.

00:12:32.000 To just go to the military like you, huh?

00:12:34.000 I don't know if it's for everybody.

00:12:36.000 Well, that gives you sense.

00:12:37.000 I mean, just for your experience, I have not served in the military.

00:12:41.000 I, you know, have friends and colleagues of many who have.

00:12:47.000 Talk to me about what that does and maybe it's not generalizable.

00:12:51.000 I mean, it's different for different people but this idea of self-confidence that I was talking about earlier.

00:12:55.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:12:57.000 Tell me about that.

00:12:58.000 You come from a survivalist perspective in that when you're a 19-year-old thrust into the world of the military hierarchy, you think about your own problems a lot less and you think about the problems of those around you and those below you and those adjacent to you, right?

00:13:13.000 It becomes an onus of leadership.

00:13:15.000 And you start to feel that burden of leadership at a very young age, whether you're on the enlisted side or an officer, right?

00:13:22.000 The responsibility is just mounting and mounting in a very positive way.

00:13:27.000 And in order, I think, to contribute to society, to an organization, to a group, you have to have your own stuff figured out to a pretty significant level.

00:13:35.000 So it was a forcing function to figure out, like, what is my...

00:13:39.000 You know, hierarchy of needs, personally.

00:13:40.000 Like, where do ideologically do I fit within this certain paradigm?

00:13:46.000 And having those responsibilities thrust upon you, where you a lot of time have life or death decisions, maybe not directly, but second and third order effects, right?

00:13:56.000 Like, if I'm a logistician, and I don't have the ability to get food to this A group that's out in the Korengal Valley in the middle of Afghanistan who have no other means of resupply and were shut down for 72 hours because of storms or because of significant actions in the region.

00:14:15.000 Those are burdens that weigh on you really heavily.

00:14:18.000 Your ability to figure those out translate innumerably into the existing world outside of uniform.

00:14:27.000 What did it do for your sense of self-confidence?

00:14:31.000 Like how old were you when you were in the military?

00:14:33.000 So, I went to the Naval Academy at 19 years old is when I made the decision.

00:14:38.000 Out of high school?

00:14:38.000 Out of high school, yeah.

00:14:40.000 Okay.

00:14:40.000 So, you know, I didn't want a conventional experience in college.

00:14:45.000 I think I came from a family with a little bit of, you know, I didn't have a certain direction or forcing function and I kind of knew I needed the discipline at that age.

00:14:55.000 You knew you needed it.

00:14:56.000 I did.

00:14:56.000 Actually, it was funny.

00:14:57.000 I had these- Your parents didn't say you needed it.

00:14:59.000 You knew you needed it.

00:15:00.000 No.

00:15:00.000 Yeah, I did.

00:15:01.000 And at the end of it, I was looking at West Point and the Naval Academy.

00:15:05.000 I decided to go to the little college down south in Annapolis and Yeah, it was a very difficult experience for me for four years.

00:15:17.000 You know, you don't have music, you don't have television, you're not allowed to have games like for your entire first year.

00:15:23.000 Like it's incredibly strict.

00:15:25.000 No music.

00:15:27.000 I mean, a multitude of different things, right?

00:15:29.000 But then, you know, you look at it then, it's like, oh my gosh, this is the end of days.

00:15:32.000 This is what, you know, is a creative joy for me.

00:15:35.000 This is an outlet.

00:15:35.000 And then you realize it and you're like, I can do a lot harder things for a year than go without music and video games and, you know, entertainment.

00:15:45.000 And you just create this bond with the others near you that, you know, during a time of war, especially, that you know… Was it when it was?

00:15:53.000 Yeah, I was there 2006 to 2010. Got it.

00:15:59.000 That was when you were – That's when I was there.

00:16:01.000 Yeah.

00:16:01.000 And so, you know, you kind of know and it's unsaid, the people that you're with that, you know, you're all – you joined to go fight a war.

00:16:10.000 And that is a pretty significant responsibility to take upon oneself.

00:16:15.000 Let's talk about this.

00:16:16.000 I mean, you brought up skin in the game.

00:16:18.000 I mean, there's different ways you could manifest that.

00:16:21.000 I've gone back and forth on this, you know, since writing Woke Inc.

00:16:25.000 and, you know, brought it up in my second book, Nation of Victims.

00:16:28.000 Again, I actually have not, and I don't expect to make it part of my presidential campaign because I think there's a lot of practical difficulties associated with it.

00:16:36.000 But just in concept, right?

00:16:41.000 What do you think about Whether or not – you know, you said you knew you needed it.

00:16:46.000 Well, I think a lot of people who are 18 and 19 don't know they need it and they still do.

00:16:50.000 Right.

00:16:51.000 What do you think about some idea of Israel-style universal service?

00:16:58.000 Yeah.

00:16:58.000 In the United States and what that would do for our national identity and self-confidence?

00:17:05.000 I'm drawn to this.

00:17:06.000 I really am.

00:17:07.000 I don't think it's practically implementable in our country exactly, but I'm kind of drawn to it.

00:17:13.000 What would be your take on that?

00:17:15.000 It's funny you ask me this because I had a very similar question with some family friends last weekend where they have a very young child.

00:17:23.000 They're of Korean descent, Korean immigrants, and they've decided to keep dual citizenship.

00:17:28.000 In America.

00:17:29.000 In Texas.

00:17:31.000 Yeah, they're in the US because they feel that they want to have the option in order for their son and daughter to serve in the South Korean mandatory subscription army.

00:17:43.000 Well, in there, I think it's mostly boys.

00:17:46.000 I think in South Korea, it's only for boys.

00:17:48.000 But in 19 years, who knows?

00:17:50.000 So how old are their kids?

00:17:51.000 Their kids are, I mean, one and two and a half.

00:17:55.000 The parents are preserving their own dual citizenship.

00:18:01.000 They are.

00:18:01.000 So that their kids, because the kids get the option at 18. Yeah.

00:18:05.000 To serve in the Korean military, presumably as the father did.

00:18:08.000 Yes.

00:18:09.000 Wow.

00:18:09.000 And so, you know, they asked me this.

00:18:11.000 I'm like, I can't give you an insight on this.

00:18:13.000 Like, I would not feel right.

00:18:14.000 They're like, no, I really would like to know, you know, your thought process.

00:18:17.000 And the simplest analogy I can think of is if we all decide we need a building built, right?

00:18:22.000 We all need to agree on the foundation of it, right?

00:18:25.000 And there are certain necessary functions that every building has to have.

00:18:31.000 I think in the United States, I think we go further and further away from that foundation, whether it's, you know, responsibility, personal or societal.

00:18:42.000 I also think it has to do with how we view necessity, right?

00:18:48.000 A lot of the times, we're so obsessed with the decisions we want to make, not the decisions that we must make in terms of sacrifice.

00:18:54.000 And I think that's just taken us into an era of entitlement.

00:18:59.000 It really does, actually.

00:19:03.000 So you're favorably disposed is what I'm sensing.

00:19:06.000 No, I'm for it.

00:19:07.000 You're for it.

00:19:08.000 I'm for it.

00:19:08.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:19:09.000 But you're not for all military subscriptions.

00:19:12.000 You're for that it could be like Teach for America.

00:19:16.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:19:17.000 Or it could be some kind of civic service.

00:19:20.000 Yeah, sorry.

00:19:21.000 I didn't even answer your question.

00:19:22.000 Everybody gets a gun.

00:19:23.000 Yes, not yet.

00:19:25.000 Not quite that.

00:19:26.000 Not quite that.

00:19:27.000 But you know, everybody has to serve in society, right?

00:19:29.000 Everybody has to serve one of those societal functions.

00:19:32.000 At the age of 18 or something like this.

00:19:34.000 Absolutely.

00:19:35.000 You know, they constantly, they change their major, right?

00:19:37.000 They don't know what they do.

00:19:38.000 They go out, they need to take gap years.

00:19:39.000 They don't finish.

00:19:40.000 They take time away.

00:19:42.000 They see the rise of the gap year, yeah.

00:19:44.000 Yeah.

00:19:45.000 The hunt for meaning.

00:19:46.000 The hunt for purpose.

00:19:47.000 Yeah.

00:19:47.000 And I think that's the whole point, right?

00:19:49.000 You have these societies in which, you know, these third world countries and those who've, you know, descended into chaos because of conflict.

00:19:56.000 And none of them are worried about their social media followers.

00:20:01.000 None of them are – they're worried about where they're going to be.

00:20:03.000 So I think you're an adult.

00:20:04.000 It's another thing when you're a kid.

00:20:06.000 Right.

00:20:06.000 I mean – I mean you have a form – you're a fully formed foundation.

00:20:09.000 Great.

00:20:09.000 You make the choices that you do.

00:20:11.000 It's another when you're preying on a vacuum of – When those social media algorithms or whatever train you on the vacuum of identity, I mean we probably each have frailties as adults too, but it's another when you're 18. So you would say civic service.

00:20:24.000 In my first book, I think the way I thought about it was Changing life structure is always a challenge and we've always – we have this idea you're 18, then you go to college.

00:20:36.000 The irony is it's like the dress code in middle school where everyone says they don't want a dress code and then everyone like wears the exact same thing and so like that – I feel like that's what's going on with the gap year phenomenon a little bit is it's like, no, we don't want to – but anyway.

00:20:51.000 To avoid that objection, what I said was, why don't we maybe weave it into, just to be very practical about it, like weave it into summer break while you're in high school and or in college, right?

00:21:02.000 So you carry it over, you get the equivalent of one to two years of service, but by weaving it into, you know, what really, especially for many families, is a dead time summer break.

00:21:11.000 Actually, it's one of the areas where poor kids, and I didn't know this, actually.

00:21:15.000 My wife happened to have studied this and pointed me to it, so we did some more research on it.

00:21:19.000 It's in the book.

00:21:21.000 Actually, poor families, kids fall behind more over summer break.

00:21:26.000 It's like more regression than people come from wealthy families because they can afford summer break activities or whatever.

00:21:31.000 But put aside the equality-driven arguments, that's just a side point and a side benefit potentially.

00:21:38.000 But fostering civic commitment, skin in the game, in the sense skin in the game as a citizen, not as a landowner but as somebody who did service, weaving that in.

00:21:50.000 You could talk about whether it's one year off or whether it's that, but one of the practical questions that comes up is this question of what counts.

00:21:57.000 Absolutely.

00:21:58.000 Because you cut into it to say that it's not the military.

00:22:01.000 As I thought about this more, I've moved closer to it having to be something that clearly relates to the national interest.

00:22:11.000 And the military's task is to protect the country.

00:22:15.000 Law enforcement's task is to enforce the laws of this country.

00:22:20.000 I'm open-minded to something else fitting into that description and being broader, but to the extent this were an idea that I were in favor of implementing, I would say that military law enforcement may be working in the court system There's a multitude of different- What about the parks?

00:22:37.000 But what else?

00:22:37.000 Yeah, what about the- You have national parks.

00:22:39.000 I mean, there's not that many people.

00:22:39.000 I think national parks are actually a great example.

00:22:41.000 What about TSA? So TSA, this is where I- TSA meaning like the Transportation Safety Administration?

00:22:48.000 Oh, interesting.

00:22:50.000 Yeah.

00:22:50.000 I mean, something interesting that you see is you find a function in society for people.

00:22:53.000 If you've ever flown to Mexico City, if you've ever been in that airport- That's cool.

00:22:57.000 I have actually been to that airport.

00:22:58.000 Do you ever recognize something about the people who work there, all their TSA agents?

00:23:02.000 All the check-in people?

00:23:03.000 Oh, I did not know.

00:23:04.000 No, so tell me.

00:23:05.000 I did not know this.

00:23:06.000 They all have a handicap.

00:23:07.000 Yeah.

00:23:08.000 Really?

00:23:08.000 I never know.

00:23:09.000 I didn't register that.

00:23:10.000 Most of them are in a wheelchair.

00:23:12.000 So they don't have the ability- Yeah, you said that that actually is- True.

00:23:16.000 It didn't register to me that most of them fit that description.

00:23:20.000 Wow.

00:23:21.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:23:22.000 And I think there's a lot of different civic functions that we largely overlook that could absolutely be undertaken freely.

00:23:32.000 Give people the opportunity to serve in whatever functions they might.

00:23:36.000 Well, you have the most annoying saying that you say to me all the time when I don't want to do something hard.

00:23:41.000 With a saying that I always want to say like, hey, are we a good white shark?

00:23:47.000 And then I have to go, no, we're a great white shark. 0.96

00:23:49.000 And that's this ridiculous thing that he does.

00:23:51.000 But I think the point that I like about that and that you do a lot for me is just reminding myself of our capabilities.

00:24:01.000 And a lot of people, to your point, don't have maybe the parental units that could say, you can do a little bit more.

00:24:07.000 You can go harder.

00:24:08.000 You're more capable.

00:24:09.000 And like in your book, I think a lot of people instead say, Oh, it's not your fault.

00:24:15.000 We'll take care of you because you need it.

00:24:16.000 You poor, helpless, weak little thing. 0.69

00:24:19.000 In reality, it's so much more empowering.

00:24:20.000 I hate when people say to me, Cody, could you come speak at an event?

00:24:25.000 Because we need a woman business leader to speak. 1.00

00:24:29.000 Oh my god, yeah.

00:24:30.000 I'm like, how about just like, I'm a business leader and I happen to be a woman.

00:24:33.000 You should, yeah, exactly. 0.97

00:24:35.000 In other unrelated news, yes, my genitalia is different. 0.63

00:24:38.000 And so I never liked that.

00:24:40.000 And I think it's not very helpful.

00:24:42.000 And so with our kids, one of the things we think about is, you know, once you start- How old are they?

00:24:46.000 Well, we don't have any.

00:24:47.000 Okay.

00:24:48.000 So very young.

00:24:49.000 Future kids, yeah.

00:24:50.000 Very, very tiny.

00:24:51.000 But I think- You know, once you have some money, the game actually becomes, how do you put some hardship upon them on purpose?

00:25:01.000 Because otherwise, and we've all seen kids like this, where they were just given too much, and when you're given too much...

00:25:07.000 It's actually a burden.

00:25:07.000 It's a curse.

00:25:08.000 I mean, a lot of kids who I went to school with, even at places like Harvard, etc., I would not wish that upon myself.

00:25:17.000 I worry about it a little bit for our kids, and we think about how to address that, but...

00:25:24.000 Outside the political context or whatever, one of the things that I've said if I could snap it into existence is if you had a tax regime that was like literally as low as it possibly could be in flat while you earn – But it was like you just take it back at the end and then just sort of let every generation start kind of more or less close to a blank slate.

00:25:46.000 It's not about a high tax or low tax.

00:25:48.000 Some people want high taxes. 0.98

00:25:49.000 Some people want low taxes. 0.79

00:25:50.000 I would say that like whether you want high or low, you'd rather prefer it not while you were earning to allow anybody who wants to break through to break through to whatever level they want to and enjoy what they earn, but at the end of their life to say that actually – The next generation, you know, most people think about it as like, yes, we have equal opportunity.

00:26:07.000 But some people miss the fact that even the kids who – and sometimes especially the kids who actually grow up with inheritance hanging over their head.

00:26:18.000 It's a different kind of burden.

00:26:20.000 Oh, hugely.

00:26:21.000 Right?

00:26:21.000 Like I guess I would certainly choose that over somebody who grew up in poverty.

00:26:25.000 But like I would absolutely choose – The upbringing, maybe I'm partial to it because it's the one I had, of having a non-wealthy but stable family upbringing enough to be able to put food on the dinner table and put me through school with education, but like still some sense of room to achieve.

00:26:45.000 I think that that's something that – if you think about these couple of ideas here, inheritance over income as a framework for taxation – And the revival of civic duty and citizenship.

00:27:01.000 These aren't actually like strictly or even at all partisan concepts.

00:27:07.000 I actually have like – I actually have almost no idea how these ideas would land on – I'm running into Republican primary now, as you guys know.

00:27:20.000 Are you guys – how do you identify politically or – and not these labels to matter, conservative, liberal or like – I don't know.

00:27:26.000 Probably more Republican free markets.

00:27:28.000 Okay.

00:27:28.000 Absolutely.

00:27:29.000 I mean that's where we – Yeah, we like to say Republican.

00:27:30.000 How do these ideas land on your ears?

00:27:32.000 I guess like these are – Outside the orthodoxy, they're not part of my campaign platform, at least not now.

00:27:39.000 We've been very clear about what is on the agenda.

00:27:42.000 But just like outside of the formal politics of it, they're interesting ideas for reviving that national self-confidence actually.

00:27:51.000 Like maybe you derive self-confidence through service.

00:27:57.000 that pro-market people have with required service.

00:28:00.000 That doesn't sound right.

00:28:02.000 It sounds collectivist.

00:28:03.000 But what's your gut instinct?

00:28:05.000 Not for what the general population would be, just for yourselves, wearing your free-market, pro-market, individualist hat.

00:28:12.000 Let's take the service idea.

00:28:14.000 How does that land on you, on your ear, would you say, Cody?

00:28:18.000 Well, I think I'd want to see the data.

00:28:19.000 And I imagine that the national cohesion, which would be hard to determine if it's due to that one specific thing.

00:28:26.000 And Israel, it might be because they're surrounded by people who are... 0.98

00:28:30.000 Not a line.

00:28:31.000 It's survivalist.

00:28:32.000 But I think we're missing a lot of this group identity.

00:28:37.000 American group identity.

00:28:38.000 American group identity.

00:28:39.000 And so how could we bring more of that about?

00:28:42.000 Now, do I ever typically like the government to – I really don't like the government to be in charge of much.

00:28:47.000 I'm like a little bit more of a libertarian.

00:28:49.000 That's my gut instinct.

00:28:50.000 But there are some instances where you want to make sure the police force is centralized.

00:28:55.000 You want to make sure the military isn't privatized.

00:28:58.000 So I think there's some...

00:29:00.000 What I like about this conversation is typically when you're talking to political candidates, they're not open to not having incredibly strong views on something that are very on-brand.

00:29:11.000 And so the cool part, I think, is having a situation where you'd say, let's innovate on this.

00:29:15.000 What would these ideas be?

00:29:16.000 And that's almost like half the battle.

00:29:18.000 But I think...

00:29:19.000 I think it's interesting.

00:29:20.000 Yeah.

00:29:20.000 You know, devil's in the details, but I think that's an interesting idea.

00:29:23.000 Yeah.

00:29:23.000 I think the common thread, I mean, I think you might see it in other countries, right?

00:29:27.000 Japan, Poland, other areas of Eastern Europe as well, who have kind of stuck to a strong national ideology.

00:29:35.000 Some, yeah, bringing on nationalism, right?

00:29:37.000 Mm-hmm.

00:29:39.000 I don't think nationalism has to be a bad word.

00:29:42.000 No, that's true, right?

00:29:44.000 That's a really good point.

00:29:45.000 It can be marshaled, like many things, towards achieving bad things in the world, but I don't think it has to be so.

00:29:50.000 A belief in your nation, a conviction in your nation.

00:29:53.000 We would want our kids to do some sort of Service.

00:29:56.000 Selective service.

00:29:57.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:29:58.000 And that would probably be mandated in some way by us, at least.

00:30:01.000 By you.

00:30:01.000 By parents, right?

00:30:02.000 Absolutely.

00:30:02.000 Yeah.

00:30:03.000 And I think we do get into a world lately where there's so many...

00:30:06.000 I mean, gosh, we were listening to...

00:30:08.000 What was that guy's name who has an incredible school in the Bronx?

00:30:11.000 It's like Project Veritex or something like that?

00:30:14.000 No, no, no.

00:30:14.000 Project Veritas is something.

00:30:15.000 Not Veritas, like Vertex.

00:30:18.000 It doesn't matter.

00:30:19.000 Anyway, his point was that in this segment of the South Bronx, 90% of children born in this segment are born outside of wedlock.

00:30:28.000 And so he wrote this whole book about an MTV segment called Who's Your Daddy, in which these trucks came around and they were DNA collection trucks to try to figure out who was related to who.

00:30:40.000 And his whole mission was we need to get some sort of familial unit around these kids because that's how you develop ethics and principles and you have some safety nets from a family unit.

00:30:53.000 But if we've lost a lot of that family unit in the US, then I think as a nation, it's interesting to try to figure out how could we not just deal with the symptoms, but deal with the problems up front.

00:31:04.000 So yeah, you could do welfare and all of that for sure, but maybe you get the kids early on and then you solve some of the criminal justice problems long term by having some self-selective service up front.

00:31:15.000 I think it's interesting.

00:31:16.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:31:17.000 I think a lot of those problems get bred out of culture the longer and any earlier that they hit a child in their point in life.

00:31:26.000 I think it'd be incredibly interesting to see how people would gravitate if they had a choice to their specific area of civic service.

00:31:34.000 Yeah, I mean, I think it actually relates to the individualist piece of this too.

00:31:40.000 Cody, you might have a view on this, where you've been following the rise of stakeholder capitalism and ESG and what non-capital markets.

00:31:48.000 So, I mean, that's been kind of my core, one of my core areas of focus in the last few years.

00:31:53.000 But without rehashing everything that I've said and criticizing the rise of this trend, one of the things that I think psychologically accounts for it, that's not the main, I'm not saying it's the dominant story, but it's a strand that I think is interesting is that When you, let's say at the age of 18, right?

00:32:12.000 You've always been taught that service is intermingled with your self-interest, right?

00:32:20.000 So like volunteer to put on your college application, then do it to get into business school or like law school or med school.

00:32:26.000 It's like the standard operating procedure for getting to med school, do some sort of clinical service.

00:32:30.000 That you never built the muscle memory of either pursuing self-interest unabashedly, nor did you ever build the muscle memory of doing service for the sake of service.

00:32:45.000 They were always commingled in a way that you kind of never really learned how to either pursue your self-interest or to actually do service.

00:32:54.000 but it was just sort of this perverted hybrid of both.

00:32:57.000 And I feel like we wouldn't have these apologist instincts to say that, yeah, I'm going to enter the system of free market capitalism.

00:33:03.000 I'm going to make a ton of money.

00:33:06.000 Do it without apologizing for it.

00:33:08.000 Do it without feeling guilty about it.

00:33:10.000 I do it generally by creating value because you only generally make money in this country if you have something of value that someone else is willing to pay for more than it cost you to make.

00:33:19.000 And I have nothing to apologize for, but that doesn't deny that we're all Equal as citizens, and that we still have duties attached to our citizenship.

00:33:32.000 And that actually gives me like more self confidence, weirdly, as an individualist, then this weird pseudo individualist culture where yeah, we're individualist, but we have to kind of, you know, sort of apologize for our success.

00:33:47.000 I don't know.

00:33:48.000 Do you follow what I'm saying a little bit?

00:33:49.000 Yeah, totally.

00:33:50.000 Well, we kind of joke that I think a lot of the reason...

00:33:53.000 I think if you go back to the root of a lot of the people who are apologizing for their success, it's what you said originally, which is like, they're not that thrilled by the way that they got there.

00:34:02.000 And secondarily, I think a lot of people haven't really had a lot of extreme...

00:34:07.000 There's difficulty and self-imposed difficulty thrust upon them who are apologizing for their success.

00:34:14.000 Case in point, you have children of wealthy families that are on campuses like Harvard and Stanford, et cetera, picketing about XYZ issue that has to do with capitalism, but they were given everything and they come from a background where they feel a little guilty about that.

00:34:30.000 They're like, I haven't given so much, now I feel guilty about it.

00:34:33.000 Well, that's because They haven't ever had self-imposed difficulty.

00:34:37.000 I think one of the reasons Chris and I don't feel that way is because, Chris, being a Navy SEAL ain't easy.

00:34:43.000 And you also had a lot of stuff growing up with your family and familial issues you had to get through that definitely wasn't easy.

00:34:50.000 And then I was a journalist covering human trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border and saw people hung from the rafters and women mutilated and Juarez.

00:35:00.000 And so seeing that Just gives you context to say, oh no, we're incredibly lucky.

00:35:05.000 Let's make as much money as humanly possible because it's a tool.

00:35:09.000 And I can use that tool to change whatever I think needs fixed in our society.

00:35:14.000 And whoever has the most money has the most power, I think, typically.

00:35:17.000 And so that was sort of our mission.

00:35:19.000 And I think there's been sort of this attack of excellence in this country that is gross and pervasive.

00:35:27.000 And by attacking excellence, we're actually attacking that each of us have it within us.

00:35:33.000 So I think you're right.

00:35:34.000 You know, if we can get more people to choose service because...

00:35:39.000 Actually, do I think that?

00:35:41.000 At a young age.

00:35:42.000 Yeah.

00:35:44.000 I think even if you go to Juarez and you see what I saw there and you're a part of it, if you're not a sociopath, you will be changed by it.

00:35:52.000 I think the same thing's true.

00:35:53.000 We have friends that went into the military and they were like, oh God, we hate this.

00:35:57.000 I thought I was going to be Rambo.

00:35:58.000 Turns out it's something else.

00:36:00.000 But they were changed by it.

00:36:01.000 Absolutely.

00:36:02.000 And so I think, honestly, who cares about intent?

00:36:04.000 Because I can't judge anybody's intent.

00:36:06.000 But I can judge whether you've done the hard thing or not.

00:36:09.000 It's hard to not learn from hard things.

00:36:11.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:36:13.000 I think you hit it so well in that it doesn't really matter the motive behind it, but the resulting factor of it, right?

00:36:20.000 In which you have that ability for civil service.

00:36:23.000 I think what you talked to is a term that's been adopted more freely, especially with General Mattis, former Mad

00:36:57.000 Dog.

00:36:57.000 Truthfully, they've seen what humanity is capable of in some certain lights and they know what can be lost and how lucky we are to have whatever it is, however small it is, it's still ours, right?

00:37:08.000 And I say ours as a collective.

00:37:10.000 Yeah.

00:37:10.000 I mean, I'm just thinking about imagining your future children.

00:37:15.000 We have two kids ourselves at home.

00:37:17.000 But let's say you did mandate that.

00:37:22.000 As parents, call it somewhere between service and experience.

00:37:27.000 Okay.

00:37:29.000 But most of their fellow citizens as they grow up didn't.

00:37:37.000 I have a hard time seeing social cohesion coming.

00:37:40.000 I have a good time seeing their own self-confidence being developed out of it.

00:37:44.000 But the social cohesion you're actually creating...

00:37:49.000 Two classes of citizens, really.

00:37:52.000 Those who do have some sense of vested skin in the game and those who don't.

00:37:57.000 In a certain sense, that's part of what we see in the country right now is actually those who are in some ways invested in their status as American citizens and those for whom it's just a passive fact that they don't really Particularly have a second care for.

00:38:18.000 And, you know, I just I just struggle with this.

00:38:20.000 I don't know.

00:38:22.000 I mean, like, it's possible.

00:38:23.000 I mean, it's an idea I've been drawn to for a long time.

00:38:26.000 It has all kinds of pragmatic challenges.

00:38:30.000 It may very well be a political death knell.

00:38:33.000 I have no idea.

00:38:34.000 I have no idea.

00:38:35.000 We haven't done any polling on this.

00:38:37.000 It's good to be part of the conversation, though.

00:38:39.000 I mean, it's a bipartisan issue.

00:38:41.000 I do think you're sort of right, though.

00:38:42.000 There's something about it.

00:38:43.000 I was not expecting to talk about this with you guys, but seeing literally the two of you sitting side by side, right?

00:38:48.000 Not to be reductionists, but you and I... Understand the power of pursuing our own version of the American dream through the system of free market capitalism, unapologetically, pursuing excellence.

00:39:04.000 And you know what?

00:39:05.000 We generally do create value by creating things for other people.

00:39:10.000 Let's own that.

00:39:11.000 And that's a version of ownership.

00:39:12.000 That's how you begin skinning the game.

00:39:14.000 But like, Chris...

00:39:17.000 Began by knowing at the age of 19 that this is what I, Chris, needed to become the fullest version of myself, and that was through service to the country.

00:39:27.000 And I just think those things are not...

00:39:30.000 They're incompatible.

00:39:31.000 Not only are they not incompatible, they might just be deeply intertwined, actually, as one gives you the foundation of psychological security and confidence that you are a citizen, that you don't have to apologize when you do the things that you teach people how to do, which is make as much money as humanly possible, to borrow your phrase.

00:39:49.000 Yeah.

00:39:51.000 And I feel like we've got this division between, you know, conservative movement that thinks of, you know, elevates as I'm part of this, right?

00:39:59.000 The individualist dream, and then like the collectivist vision of the modern left.

00:40:06.000 When, you know, put that to, you know, that's its own complicated picture.

00:40:11.000 But like, at least in the conservative movement, we don't have to I think you're right.

00:40:34.000 We talk about this sometimes and recently, right?

00:40:36.000 And we kind of put into two buckets sometimes about serve or be served.

00:40:42.000 And I think that's something in which people are inculcated at a young age, I think, into that type of – and I think it's pretty binary.

00:40:50.000 You know, with some of the people that, you know, you might surround yourself with or that you just kind of view every day in society.

00:40:55.000 But you look at it also, you know, from, I guess, a liberal or conservative perspective.

00:41:00.000 And, you know, I think there's a tenement with, you know, with a liberal perspective in that you want a lot of stuff done for you.

00:41:08.000 And on the conservative, like, you just want upward mobility.

00:41:11.000 You want opportunity to do it yourself.

00:41:13.000 And I think that's just like such a cultural rift, like, to talk about your classes system, you know.

00:41:19.000 Those who know they have an opportunity to achieve any of it, it's like, sure, great, class be damned.

00:41:27.000 Well, no, I think you're right.

00:41:29.000 But I think to your point too, the conservative segment of this country, I think historically had religion as that component of service.

00:41:39.000 And so we did have two tenets, right?

00:41:41.000 We had religion as our, you serve because there's a moral obligation and it's A gateway to heaven, but it's also just what it means to be a good person.

00:41:50.000 And you pursue capitalistic gains because within sort of religious context, you can do that and then you can tithe with the church.

00:41:56.000 And those things I think were deeply held by conservatives.

00:41:59.000 And now we know that religion is on the decline.

00:42:02.000 sort of across the country.

00:42:04.000 So it's an interesting take that if we're not going to have sort of these religious views as a cohesive type of religious view as a reason why we should serve, is there another thing to fill in for it?

00:42:17.000 And that's- - Like a national. - Right, exactly. - You know, and I think that, you know, a big part of the premise of our, you know, movement here is that there is this void in the heart of the American soul, right?

00:42:31.000 That used to be filled by things like God or country or family.

00:42:40.000 Even hard work really is a source of identity.

00:42:43.000 If you create something in the world, that's a source of pride.

00:42:46.000 Pride of the good kind can be a source of identity grounded in truth.

00:42:50.000 When these things have disappeared, you have a black hole of a vacuum that's left.

00:42:57.000 And that's what allows, you know, wokeism or gender ideology or climate ideology, whatever it is, to fill the void.

00:43:07.000 And I've got to be careful about saying that you're just going to substitute God with country because it's not like the same thing.

00:43:13.000 Right.

00:43:14.000 But it's cumulative though.

00:43:17.000 Yeah.

00:43:17.000 So even if country, national identity isn't going to get you 100% of the way there, it might get you – 35% of the way there.

00:43:26.000 And it's better that way than a total vacuum.

00:43:29.000 You know, somebody else's job, you know, it's a higher pay grade than me to fill that national vacuum with a religious, you know, revival in churches across the country, let that come through churches.

00:43:40.000 But I think that it's less that the citizen identity can substitute for the God-based identity, but I do think America is the closest thing to a civic religion because it was a nation founded mostly on ideals.

00:44:00.000 And our ability to believe in ideals is really what separates us from animals.

00:44:05.000 I mean, we are made up of mostly the similar genetic content, more similar than not to, you know, a monkey or whatever.

00:44:15.000 We're more in common than we don't.

00:44:17.000 It's true.

00:44:17.000 But one of the things that separates us, we think, to the best we know, is we can believe in something higher, something greater than ourselves.

00:44:23.000 We can have conviction in an idea.

00:44:26.000 Which allows for sacrifice.

00:44:27.000 Exactly.

00:44:27.000 Which creates the space for sacrifice.

00:44:29.000 But conversely, maybe sacrifice opens up the space in your heart to actually have the ability to believe itself.

00:44:36.000 It might be a two-way relationship.

00:44:37.000 Absolutely.

00:44:38.000 Have you ever been a society that has achieved like massive levels of wealth and success and abundance?

00:44:45.000 And then, because I think what usually happens is you achieve, at least through history, it seems like you achieve this level of wealth and abundance.

00:44:53.000 And then because of that, you have a lot of space for free time and, you know, things proliferate.

00:45:01.000 Has there been a society that's had that happen and then sort of come back to sacrifice and difficulty again?

00:45:08.000 Like, does that exist in history?

00:45:10.000 Because I'd be curious.

00:45:11.000 You know, I think that – so I don't have all the answers right about it.

00:45:15.000 You know, I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of global history, for sure.

00:45:20.000 I think of a couple friends, we probably need to have a couple friends who probably fit that category.

00:45:24.000 I'm not one of them.

00:45:25.000 But I do think the Roman Empire is pretty interesting.

00:45:28.000 I mean, there was no one rise and fall of Rome.

00:45:32.000 There were actually many rises and many falls.

00:45:36.000 And like the Punic Wars were pretty interesting because it had this disciplining function to sort of snap them out of this decline.

00:45:45.000 And so there was no rise and fall.

00:45:47.000 And then it split.

00:45:48.000 And then there was, you know, lived on for, you know, whether the Roman Empire lasted hundreds of years or thousands depends on how you count.

00:45:54.000 Because there was the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire.

00:45:58.000 And so...

00:46:01.000 I do think that there's room for a country where – I mean, it hits close to home in America, right?

00:46:06.000 Are we in some inevitable national decline as a product of our own success?

00:46:11.000 Where does it go?

00:46:12.000 Success breeds entitlement.

00:46:14.000 Entitlement breeds laziness.

00:46:16.000 Laziness breeds victimhood. 0.98

00:46:18.000 Victimhood justifies laziness. 0.91

00:46:20.000 And so is that an inevitable national decline?

00:46:26.000 It's like that quote that's often attributed to the founder of Abu Dhabi, but it was actually an American author, the founder of Dubai.

00:46:34.000 Where does it go?

00:46:37.000 Hard times create strong men.

00:46:39.000 Yeah, strong men create easy times.

00:46:41.000 Easy times create weak men.

00:46:42.000 Weak men create hard times.

00:46:44.000 So is it like a line or is it like a cycle?

00:46:47.000 And I think that's a choice.

00:46:49.000 I don't think it's an automatic.

00:46:50.000 I think it depends on leaders, actually.

00:46:52.000 I mean, nations are shaped in the shadows of people who lead them, not just politically, but in every sphere of life.

00:46:57.000 So I think it will be a choice, actually, is kind of where I land on it.

00:47:01.000 What are you going to say, Chris?

00:47:02.000 I think it's interesting because you also think about like how inheritance and entitlement, right, equals weakness.

00:47:08.000 And you kind of think about it, I think, in private industry as well.

00:47:11.000 Like what company do you know that inherits success without innovating?

00:47:14.000 And I think on the ideological front, like where is that happy medium?

00:47:19.000 Oh, I like that corporate analogy too.

00:47:20.000 Absolutely.

00:47:21.000 Yeah.

00:47:23.000 Staying with what has worked, right?

00:47:24.000 What's your nucleus of ideologies versus what do we become more freeform about?

00:47:28.000 What do we innovate around to ensure prosperity, you know, socially, economically, and, you know, military-wise as well?

00:47:38.000 I think it's just like a really interesting problem to look at.

00:47:41.000 It's like, all right, like where does the innovation end?

00:47:44.000 As a company, for example.

00:47:46.000 Yeah, like what do we keep sacred, right?

00:47:47.000 To our core values.

00:47:49.000 Because I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a company who has, you know, not innovated but has stuck around for hundreds of years.

00:47:57.000 Yeah.

00:47:57.000 And to your point, but you see new leadership come in.

00:48:00.000 I mean, you see like some of the activist leadership at GE come in and completely restructure the company.

00:48:03.000 Now you have a ton of innovation there.

00:48:05.000 Yeah.

00:48:05.000 Or you see, you know, return of some of the previous strong leaders at like Starbucks.

00:48:09.000 They go away, they come back, the company kind of like rejuvenates again.

00:48:13.000 So that's interesting.

00:48:14.000 Yeah.

00:48:14.000 I mean, it's definitely much more beneficial, I think, and a positive outlook to look at it like it's in our hands.

00:48:20.000 Yeah, it really is.

00:48:21.000 It really is, actually.

00:48:23.000 But yeah, you're served by one aspect, though, and that's like economic prosperity, right?

00:48:27.000 I mean, that's the end of the day.

00:48:28.000 That's a goal of a corporation, right?

00:48:30.000 Just to add value.

00:48:30.000 For a nation, it has a different...

00:48:34.000 There's a different resulting factors, right?

00:48:36.000 Yeah, but there are lessons in there, but it's not quite the same thing.

00:48:40.000 I mean, GE is an interesting example where...

00:48:43.000 I think it's a combination of innovation and being reborn, but the soul is still the same.

00:48:49.000 Yeah.

00:48:52.000 And I think that, you know, we could debate about corporations, but I think nations can be reborn so long as the soul remains the same.

00:49:00.000 And it feels like we have an opportunity to go through our cycle of rebirth right now as a country as well, right?

00:49:08.000 So the easy times created weak men.

00:49:12.000 Weak men created hard times.

00:49:13.000 That's where we are right now.

00:49:15.000 That's true.

00:49:15.000 Well, I ran a business in Chile years ago.

00:49:18.000 In Chile?

00:49:19.000 Yeah, in Santiago.

00:49:21.000 And I remember it was in finance and economics.

00:49:24.000 And I just had only then learned about the Chicago boys.

00:49:27.000 I didn't know that part of history, how we basically brought economists down from the US from University of Chicago To reinvigorate and reimagine the Chilean economy post Pinochet who was a dictator, right?

00:49:40.000 Lots of stuff surrounding Pinochet and maybe were involved, but the moral of the story, it went from communism to Pinochet to us bringing in the Chicago boys to ushering in then a peaceful democracy and Chile then becoming with the least people In the US, in Latin America, and very far away from things.

00:50:00.000 So completely disconnected from the Andes, the most economically viable, the highest salary range for people.

00:50:07.000 And the untold story is that most of it was done through something really boring, which is just free market economics and freedom of economics.

00:50:14.000 Yeah.

00:50:15.000 I think about it that way and I think, huh, Chile might actually be an example where they became a really wealthy nation.

00:50:20.000 Yep.

00:50:21.000 And then they sort of went to communism and then they went to nationalism.

00:50:26.000 Autocracy.

00:50:27.000 Autocracy.

00:50:27.000 Yeah.

00:50:28.000 And then they were sort of reborn into democracy through that.

00:50:31.000 Not that I hope we would have to mimic that at all, but it is a cycle, interesting enough.

00:50:35.000 Yeah.

00:50:35.000 I mean, I think that- Kind of at the national level, you were alluding to this at the individual level.

00:50:42.000 It's the expression I sometimes share with young people, like hardship is not the same thing as victimhood.

00:50:48.000 It doesn't have to be.

00:50:49.000 Right.

00:50:49.000 Hardship can be what teaches us who we really are.

00:50:53.000 Totally.

00:50:55.000 And the question is whether we use that opportunity from a national perspective.

00:50:58.000 We're in for a tough economic time, right?

00:51:01.000 Inflation, you know, you've got actually on one hand, but struggling economy on the other.

00:51:08.000 There's no free lunch.

00:51:09.000 I mean, you got to raise rates.

00:51:11.000 That's rough for inflation, but I mean, that's maybe what you need to do to fight inflation, but then you get more Silicon Valley banks and signature banks that were used to easy times skiing on artificial snow.

00:51:22.000 Well, when the snow machine turns off, I'm talking about the Federal Reserve printing money, you know, there's no free lunch.

00:51:29.000 There's no easy way out.

00:51:31.000 But I think that on the other side of that, we can actually We can actually recognize that, all right, we learned that actual productivity is what drives sustained national growth, not artificial mark-to-market accounting driven by a lot of money flooding the system.

00:51:57.000 I also think that there's a longer history of nations that end that way.

00:52:01.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:52:02.000 And, you know, I think the Roman Empire did split up at some point.

00:52:07.000 And, you know, I think this conversation about the national divorce, I don't know if you've been paying attention to that lexicon a little bit, but I'm running for president because I don't want to go to a national divorce.

00:52:19.000 But I think times of economic hardship might actually get us closer to there as opposed to An actual national revival.

00:52:27.000 It's funny how much you don't hear either party talking about GDP growth anymore.

00:52:32.000 It's like not like a thing.

00:52:32.000 I mean, you know, national debt.

00:52:34.000 Okay.

00:52:35.000 Is it spending cuts in a conservative solution?

00:52:39.000 Is it, you know, tax increases because we've got to pay our bills versus how about this radical idea of just raw unleashing of productivity and growth itself?

00:52:53.000 It's almost like we've forgotten that's an option.

00:52:56.000 If GDP growth was over 4% in this country all the way through 1971, if that had continued at that rate through today, we'd have $20 trillion in excess value that would make all of our other problems, spending cuts, et cetera, tiny by comparison.

00:53:16.000 And I think that it sounds like obviously who isn't in favor of growth, but actually I think there is this strain in America that is sort of an anti-growth strain, an apologist strain that says, no, no, we should learn to live with less.

00:53:28.000 Well, actually – That's actually what creates a lot of travails for people when – I think the anti-nuclear agenda is about.

00:53:34.000 I think it's a lot of what the anti-fossil fuel agenda is about.

00:53:37.000 And I think that that – unlike the civil civic service stuff, which I was more just me still just thinking as a citizen, no, no, this is very much going to be – is part of the presidential campaign, is GDP growth.

00:53:53.000 Without apologizing for it.

00:53:54.000 Like, that's American excellence and let's structure an economic agenda around actually delivering that rather than small ball of, you know, by spectacle accountants for how much cost we're going to cut from the system or how much we're going to increase taxes.

00:54:06.000 That's small ball.

00:54:08.000 We actually lost the self-confidence to play big ball.

00:54:10.000 It's actually – that's one of the things that motivates me to do this thing.

00:54:13.000 I have a question for you, which is, I think part of the reason why tax cuts or tax increases play so well is, one, the government can press a button theoretically and increase that one way or the other, and then they can say, yes, we've done it, yes, we've done it on the other side, and so it's like an easy win.

00:54:29.000 But the other reason is also because for most of the population, if I was to say on Instagram, my platform is positive GDP growth, people would be like, what?

00:54:39.000 Yeah.

00:54:39.000 You know, it's like not...

00:54:41.000 Right.

00:54:42.000 What does that mean?

00:54:42.000 It doesn't just like roll off the tip, like tax the rich, you know?

00:54:45.000 That's like, get it.

00:54:46.000 Got it.

00:54:46.000 Yep.

00:54:47.000 So like, how do you make...

00:54:49.000 How do you proselytize?

00:54:50.000 How do you make that great for the average American who reads at a sixth grade reading level?

00:54:55.000 What's the commentary?

00:54:56.000 We're thinking...

00:54:56.000 This is real-time stuff right now, as we're talking about.

00:54:59.000 Yeah.

00:54:59.000 But I mean, the way I think about it is unleashing the American economy.

00:55:03.000 Yeah.

00:55:03.000 Because we've got this inner animal spirit.

00:55:06.000 Yeah.

00:55:07.000 It's like we have it in a cage.

00:55:08.000 It's domesticated.

00:55:09.000 What's in the cage?

00:55:10.000 Everything that incentivizes workers to stay home.

00:55:13.000 We have a worker shortage crisis in this country.

00:55:15.000 Anybody who's been to a restaurant in the last three years or tried to have a plumber come to their house knows what this means.

00:55:23.000 You have created economic incentives.

00:55:25.000 That's one cage.

00:55:26.000 You have – I think – I mean I don't know where you guys are on this, but I think it is a suffocating climate cult in the United States that shackles our ability to produce energy in this country.

00:55:38.000 That's a wage on GDP growth.

00:55:40.000 Same thing with respect to – same hostility to fossil fuels.

00:55:43.000 Also to nuclear energy, great.

00:55:45.000 Best known source of large-scale replenishable carbon-free energy production known to mankind.

00:55:50.000 No, don't want that either.

00:55:52.000 Incredibly oppressive regulatory regime when it comes to nuclear energy.

00:55:57.000 So you just sort of go down the list from broad business regulation to unshackling energy to actually a worker shortage in this country.

00:56:06.000 To just a revival of self-confidence, too.

00:56:08.000 A belief that you can produce things actually makes you more effective at producing things, which goes to the themes of reviving national identity that I launched the campaign with.

00:56:16.000 But to me, what I think about is like untaming the American beast, unleashing the inner animal, unleashing the American economy.

00:56:23.000 We've got it.

00:56:24.000 We've had it for most of our history.

00:56:25.000 Here are the numbers.

00:56:26.000 If we do that again, you don't have to give up Social Security, Medicare, and you don't have to pay more in taxes either.

00:56:33.000 We just deliver more productivity as a country.

00:56:35.000 How about that?

00:56:36.000 Yeah.

00:56:36.000 I don't know if that works, but that's the way I think we're going to roll that out.

00:56:39.000 I do, but I think you have to push it to the individual then.

00:56:42.000 Because if you say, we're going to unleash the American economy, then people go, okay.

00:56:46.000 What about for me?

00:56:47.000 And I think the answer there is when the business that you work for makes more money, you make more money.

00:56:52.000 You make more money.

00:56:54.000 If the animal gets unleashed, then you get freedom.

00:56:57.000 I kind of like that as a slogan for this, is make more money.

00:57:00.000 Yeah, you, yourself.

00:57:02.000 Like you.

00:57:02.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:57:03.000 Not like society as a whole, but like you make more money.

00:57:06.000 Like what does this mean?

00:57:07.000 It means you will make more money.

00:57:09.000 So it's not like we're going to lower – I think lowering taxes is part of this.

00:57:14.000 Right.

00:57:14.000 But it's not just the net effect of like the lower taxes that you take home in your paycheck.

00:57:18.000 Right.

00:57:18.000 Yeah.

00:57:21.000 Yeah, should and will be higher.

00:57:22.000 Absolutely.

00:57:23.000 Actually, reform of the Federal Reserve is actually a big part of this too.

00:57:25.000 I don't want to put everybody to sleep here.

00:57:27.000 But like, yeah, I mean, the Federal Reserve is actually hostile to wage growth in this country because they take wage growth as a leading indicator of inflation.

00:57:35.000 Right.

00:57:36.000 And so every time you've seen wage growth in the last 20 years, they'll tamp down with monetary policy because they think that's a leading indicator of inflation.

00:57:42.000 They've actually been terrible at even predicting inflation.

00:57:45.000 I think the Federal Reserve needs to go back to just stabilizing the dollar as a unit of measurement.

00:57:48.000 But it goes back to this point where if that's part of unleashing the American animal, what does it mean? 0.53

00:57:53.000 It means your wages go up.

00:57:55.000 It means you make more money.

00:57:56.000 I kind of like that.

00:57:57.000 Do you think that lands?

00:57:58.000 Yeah.

00:57:59.000 Especially because you can say the other guys just want other people to make less money.

00:58:03.000 Their platform is these guys make less.

00:58:06.000 And tax less, yep.

00:58:06.000 My platform is you make more.

00:58:08.000 But even some of the Republican platform as well, and I'm not blaming these guys.

00:58:11.000 They're looking at, you know, like accountants.

00:58:13.000 Okay, well, we've got this national debt problem.

00:58:14.000 Yeah.

00:58:15.000 So you get less benefits at later age in Social Security form or Medicare or whatever.

00:58:20.000 And like, I guess if we don't make any changes at all, I suppose that becomes inevitable.

00:58:24.000 But what if we make a change that we literally just increase our productivity as a nation?

00:58:31.000 You make more money without actually giving something up for it.

00:58:36.000 Smart.

00:58:37.000 Yeah.

00:58:37.000 It's kind of actually...

00:58:38.000 I think something that a lot of people would want to get behind.

00:58:42.000 It does require people to work hard.

00:58:44.000 I mean, I think...

00:58:44.000 Or be willing to sort of...

00:58:47.000 Join the labor force, as you would put it, with productivity.

00:58:50.000 I mean, you know, I guess if you prefer to get a PPP loan and a payment and a stimulus package and stay at home and play video games in your mom's basement, like, is that a real source of happiness?

00:59:00.000 I don't know.

00:59:00.000 It's what we've incentivized people to do in their early 20s over the last year.

00:59:06.000 But I do think that if we, you know, the worker shortage is a big part of an impediment to GDP growth.

00:59:12.000 But if we actually embrace the idea as a nation, Maybe GDP growth is too abstract.

00:59:20.000 The way I think about it though is deliver five plus percent GDP growth.

00:59:24.000 Like all of our problems, like 90% of our problems are like out the window if we can do that.

00:59:27.000 Why wouldn't we just make that the core of our economic agenda, the core of just like our national agenda and then derive pride and self-confidence and meaning?

00:59:36.000 Out of that.

00:59:37.000 So then you've got national identity, but you also have hard work is now back.

00:59:40.000 And then you start to fill that identity void too.

00:59:43.000 I don't know.

00:59:44.000 These are the things that are actually a core part of the campaign.

00:59:47.000 And then maybe I'll just shoot myself in the foot at some point when we talk about national service and then everyone's like, no, we can't deal with that.

00:59:52.000 Absolutely.

00:59:53.000 I think, you know, hardship with a growth-minded end state.

00:59:56.000 Yeah.

00:59:57.000 Exactly.

00:59:58.000 Like understanding the trickle down effects towards them.

01:00:00.000 I mean, I just don't think it's explained well.

01:00:02.000 And I think that's what doesn't land sometimes.

01:00:04.000 It's just the understandability of what's required of me to work a little bit harder.

01:00:08.000 Yeah.

01:00:08.000 Well, even, I mean, I always have a little beef with Dave Ramsey because he always talks about like, don't get the Starbucks, you know, don't buy this, don't buy that.

01:00:17.000 And my point is you can only save your way to zero.

01:00:19.000 There is a bottom limit of zero and all of us have to exist on something.

01:00:23.000 So zero is actually not possible, but there is an unlimited upside to earnings.

01:00:27.000 And so you can skip the Starbucks and go to zero and we can have our elderly people die with no medical healthcare whatsoever.

01:00:33.000 Sure, we could do that.

01:00:35.000 Or we could unleash the American tiger.

01:00:38.000 Exactly.

01:00:38.000 Uncapped upside.

01:00:39.000 Blue sky possibility.

01:00:41.000 Yeah.

01:00:41.000 And we're starting from like – I mean GDP growth is like pretty low right now.

01:00:45.000 We're talking about like 1-2%.

01:00:46.000 If we just go back to historical pre-1971 level of like 4 – I mean it's like out of the ballpark.

01:00:52.000 I mean even if we're in the – with a 3 plus percent GDP growth, all of our – Nearly all of our problems, both domestically and from a foreign policy perspective, go away.

01:01:00.000 Why not just do that?

01:01:01.000 And I think, you know, say what you'll buy Kennedy, plant a flag, so we're going to the moon.

01:01:04.000 Yeah.

01:01:05.000 Good point.

01:01:06.000 We're going back to 3% GDP growth and we'll just figure out how we get there.

01:01:09.000 There's a lot of obstacles.

01:01:10.000 Some of them are obvious.

01:01:12.000 If that's a freight train and you're on the train tracks, we're running through you, but we're still getting there.

01:01:16.000 That's a national mentality, I think.

01:01:19.000 I'm biased, but I would get behind.

01:01:22.000 Mentality is cultural, right?

01:01:23.000 How do you change the cultural message around what it is to contribute to society again?

01:01:29.000 Yeah, and this could be one way to do it, actually, too.

01:01:32.000 Well, that's how China got to where it was today. 0.67

01:01:33.000 Totally.

01:01:34.000 Yeah.

01:01:34.000 I mean, they've been at 8 plus percent for decades.

01:01:36.000 It's GDP growth or nothing.

01:01:37.000 And they're still at 5% now.

01:01:39.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:01:39.000 I mean, and China also thinks they're the only ones that are not going to become the next superpower, right?

01:01:44.000 Yeah.

01:01:44.000 I mean, that's kind of the common health notion.

01:01:46.000 And I sort of do joke around that inner animal in that cage.

01:01:49.000 It has leapt oceans to lift up places like China. 0.95

01:01:51.000 Well, their culture of Maoist victimhood actually came here to hold us down.

01:01:55.000 It's true.

01:01:55.000 Yeah.

01:01:56.000 I just think that, you know, I mean- I think there's a certain strain of when many of us may have rallied behind the cry to make America great again.

01:02:05.000 I think the thing we hungered for more than any one man or whatever was...

01:02:10.000 The unapologetic pursuit of excellence in America.

01:02:14.000 That's what it means to be American.

01:02:16.000 I don't actually remember the metrics, but I was in China for a while working with a company called State Street back in the day.

01:02:24.000 State Street, the asset manager?

01:02:25.000 Yeah, the asset manager.

01:02:25.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:02:26.000 I mean, this is my old world.

01:02:27.000 Oh, that's right.

01:02:28.000 I mean, Strive is competing against – one of the firms I found is competes against BlackRock and State Street.

01:02:32.000 Oh, that makes sense.

01:02:33.000 Yeah.

01:02:33.000 I mean, I was like a little nobody, but I – I'm really bad at dates, but I was there.

01:02:40.000 It would have been like 2010, 11, 12, somewhere in there.

01:02:43.000 Is that when they did the she, the little like the statue? 0.72

01:02:46.000 Yeah.

01:02:46.000 Wait, that was right after I left.

01:02:47.000 Okay, got it, got it, got it.

01:02:48.000 So that would have been right after I left.

01:02:49.000 Yes, on Wall Street.

01:02:51.000 That was a hilarious story, but okay.

01:02:52.000 Yeah.

01:02:53.000 They put this girl who's like the statue that was like- It was like standing in front of the bull.

01:02:57.000 Standing in front of the bull, but then they were just marketing their ETF, SAG was the ticket.

01:03:00.000 It was like really funny.

01:03:02.000 I've It's like a classic example of virtue signaling capitalism.

01:03:05.000 It's such a finance thing to do.

01:03:05.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:03:06.000 They went even further and made like a statue of Xi, like Xi Jinping.

01:03:09.000 Oh, no.

01:03:11.000 Might have been sponsored by him from the note, but you know, exactly.

01:03:13.000 Basically, same thing.

01:03:14.000 Yeah.

01:03:14.000 But I remember they were explaining to us the scorecards that the governors had in China, and I thought it was such an interesting thing.

01:03:21.000 They were explaining how every single governor – I'm not sure if that's what they called them there, but let's call it a mayor or a governor – Of a particular area got a scorecard that was like GDP growth, employment, something else and something else.

01:03:33.000 And they were tracked by their growth.

01:03:35.000 And then they realized, oh, gosh, when we only do GDP growth, and when we only do unemployment numbers, then we have some societal or some environmental issues.

01:03:43.000 But I can't believe – I mean, I remember I was driving in a car with our chaperone that basically meant that we wouldn't go places we weren't supposed to go.

01:03:52.000 And I was like, gosh, you know – This doesn't feel very communist.

01:03:55.000 It feels very capitalist.

01:03:56.000 Oh, it was.

01:03:57.000 They used it as a tool.

01:03:58.000 Yeah.

01:03:59.000 And he said, you know, we have a saying in China, which is, if it works, we call it communism and we move on.

01:04:07.000 And I was like, that's clever.

01:04:09.000 That's actually very funny.

01:04:10.000 Is it?

01:04:11.000 Let's call it on the joke.

01:04:12.000 That's really funny.

01:04:13.000 Now, then you get an autocrat who then – whose head gets too big and then he kind of ruins the party, which is what Xi Jinping is doing now.

01:04:19.000 And that's to our advantage, by the way.

01:04:20.000 I think it creates an opportunity for us to seize on, which the US needs to wake up to and get on top of.

01:04:25.000 That's a discussion for another day.

01:04:29.000 This is cool.

01:04:30.000 I agree.

01:04:31.000 Yeah.

01:04:31.000 So super unexpected.

01:04:32.000 It's not what I was expecting to talk about, but we'll keep the conversation going, guys.

01:04:38.000 Sounds great.

01:04:39.000 I love it.

01:04:39.000 I'm really glad you guys came out to hopefully enjoy your time in Columbus.

01:04:43.000 Our first trip just to see you.

01:04:45.000 Thank you.

01:04:45.000 We're excited that we were here.

01:04:46.000 I appreciate it.

01:04:47.000 We're excited about following what your ideas are on a go-forward basis.

01:04:50.000 I think it's really cool.

01:04:50.000 I appreciate it.

01:04:50.000 I want you guys to be a part of it.

01:04:52.000 100%.

01:04:54.000 I think we care.

01:04:55.000 I mean, forget the politics of which candidate and the who.

01:04:58.000 It's the what and the why.

01:04:59.000 Yeah.

01:04:59.000 100%.

01:05:00.000 Advancing this message.

01:05:02.000 It's really synchronous, Cody, with a lot of what you put out on a day-to-day basis.

01:05:06.000 I think it's a big part of why we were drawn to you guys.

01:05:08.000 I love it.

01:05:08.000 Obviously, you know, we were intersected, but I think- The American hero of it.

01:05:11.000 I love that.

01:05:13.000 It's such a great combination that you guys bring together.

01:05:16.000 We'll harass you on your TikToks and Instagrams so that we can up the level.

01:05:21.000 We're new to this game, so teach us how to play it.

01:05:25.000 We'll do some fun stuff with this fundraising mechanism, etc.

01:05:28.000 Democratize it.

01:05:29.000 If other people are making money off the process, it might as well be you.

01:05:33.000 Honestly, I think there's actually going to be a lot of money to be made if people actually are able to sell this.

01:05:39.000 You know, it doesn't have to be people who have been historically donating to the Republican Party.

01:05:43.000 If this is a vision you want to advance, great.

01:05:45.000 Donate to that.

01:05:46.000 But if you donate to it and then you just, you know, if you donated $10 and you raised $100, you already got your money back.

01:05:50.000 The rest is upside.

01:05:52.000 That's kind of what we're thinking about doing here.

01:05:53.000 I didn't even know that's how it worked.

01:05:54.000 Oh, it's crazy.

01:05:55.000 It's crazy.

01:05:57.000 That's wild.

01:05:58.000 Yeah, but it stops being a racket if everybody can participate.

01:06:01.000 A hundred percent.

01:06:01.000 Yeah, that's a good point.

01:06:02.000 Then the people are just striped.

01:06:04.000 Everybody's taking a processing fee.

01:06:06.000 Exactly.

01:06:07.000 Yeah, everybody gets to have their own little stripe machine.

01:06:11.000 They have their own little square.

01:06:11.000 I like it.

01:06:12.000 Yeah, it's kind of easy.

01:06:13.000 So I think that's what we're going to do.

01:06:15.000 So we're working through that next couple weeks.

01:06:16.000 Hopefully we roll that out.

01:06:17.000 I love it.

01:06:18.000 It's amazing.

01:06:18.000 We'll follow along.

01:06:19.000 Yeah, thanks guys.

01:06:20.000 Spread the word too.

01:06:21.000 Might as well.

01:06:21.000 Make some people join the movement and you don't have to apologize for making a little money in the process.

01:06:26.000 There we go.

01:06:27.000 Cool.

01:06:27.000 I'm Vivek Ramaswamy, candidate for president, and I approve this message.

Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - April 14, 2023

A New Approach to Political Campaigns with Chris Petkas and Codie Sanchez | The TRUTH Podcast #12

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