Iran Is About to Control the World's Oil — and You'll Pay for It
A nearly two hour live episode of The Tom Bilyeu Show recorded as a United States and Iran ceasefire came apart again. Bilyeu argues Iran is negotiating through violence to seize the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint for roughly 20 percent of the world's oil, and that if it succeeds it will charge tolls and raise energy costs everywhere. He uses Ukraine knocking 20 percent of Russian refining offline as a live preview, then turns the same mechanism lens on the California billionaire wealth tax, the productivity to wages split, 30 percent inflation, Europe's deadly heatwave and its refusal to allow air conditioning, and entitlement fraud. His organizing idea is that every grievance has a mechanism, and that anger aimed at the wrong mechanism makes the problem worse.
Published Jun 29, 20261:56:17 video35 min readAdded Jul 1, 2026Open on YouTube →
At a glance
This is a nearly two hour live episode of The Tom Bilyeu Show, recorded the weekend a fragile United States and Iran ceasefire came apart again, and Bilyeu uses it to argue one central thesis: Iran is negotiating through violence to seize control of the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint that carries roughly a fifth of the world's oil, and if it succeeds it will charge tolls, hold the region hostage, and leave everyone paying more at the pump. He pairs that with the Russia and Ukraine war as a live preview of what "20 percent of oil offline" actually does to a country, then turns the same lens on domestic economics: the California billionaire wealth tax jumping in the betting odds, the split between productivity and wages, and 30 percent inflation quietly gutting savings. The back half runs through Europe's deadly heatwave and its refusal to allow air conditioning, fraud in American entitlement programs, and a Thomas Massie clip that Bilyeu uses to make a point about how populist media works. Throughout, his organizing idea is that every grievance has a mechanism, and that anger aimed at the wrong mechanism makes the problem worse.
The rundown: one weekend, five fires
Bilyeu opens the show by laying out the docket. The United States and Iran exchanged blows again over the weekend, and he says he is not expecting the result of "negotiating via violence" to turn out well. Ukraine continues to smash Russian oil infrastructure while Europe backs it harder, which he frames as pushing Putin into a corner. China is trolling Europe with videos of air conditioned pig pens as thousands die in a European heatwave, even as European governments further restrict the use of air conditioning. The odds of a California billionaire wealth tax passing jumped after a video from Gavin Newsom. More than a million people, he says, were found on Obamacare without a social security number. And a "Mexican Batman" is hunting down motorcycle thieves. He notes the show increasingly uses prediction market odds as polling to read where the culture is actually moving, and says that is exactly what triggered him about the wealth tax.
The Strait of Hormuz becomes a weapon
The ceasefire, Bilyeu says, "just absolutely blew apart" over the weekend, and it started on Thursday. A drone hit a Singapore flagged container ship that was trying to go through the Strait of Hormuz while hugging the coast of Oman. That, he believes, kicked off the fight. When ships hug the Omani coast, Iran reads it as an attempt to escape its control of the strait, so it attacks.
He warns the audience they will be propagandized hard by both sides. Trump, he argues, wants everyone to believe Iran is a rational state actor with whom a clean deal can be struck. Bilyeu does not buy it. In his reading, Iran wants control of the strait and is willing to fight and die for it, and even during this supposed 60 day negotiating window it is exerting domination over the area. He describes the memorandum of understanding as "an absolute comedy routine," written so vaguely that both sides are essentially forced to clash violently to establish what it really meant. His paraphrase of Iran's position is blunt: the document says forget your inspectors, it says you will give us 300 billion dollars, it says we control the strait and can start charging fees after the 60 day window, and every time you violate that, we blow something up. Iran has said with its "full chest," he notes, that it will never go back to the way things were.
If that is how Iran behaves while United States troops are still in the region, Bilyeu asks, what will it be like once they pull out. He says he cannot find a universe in which the current path leads to peace in the Middle East. What he sees instead is the breakdown of the long standing freedom of the seas paradigm, with Iran charging tolls, attacking anyone who tries to route along Oman, and pushing to become the regional hegemon with the United States gone entirely.
Figure 1. Bilyeu's core geography. The Strait of Hormuz is the narrow gate between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil moves. Iran holds the northern shore. Vessels try to hug the southern Omani coast to stay clear of Iranian control, and Bilyeu argues that is precisely what Iran attacks to prove it can toll or close the passage at will.
Bilyeu concedes Trump will "bang the drum" that the United States does not need the strait because it produces more energy than ever. But from an alliance pressure standpoint it matters enormously, because every time Iran flexes control, allies will rightly point out they were in a far better position before the United States struck Iran. That makes it harder for Trump to build coalitions, and Bilyeu notes weak knees among both European allies and the Gulf partners. His punchline: the United States is not in a good place, and will not get to one unless it pushes the issue militarily. Whether it should ever have started is, in his view, now a pointless debate. The relevant question is how to get out.
Negotiating through violence: a stalemate with no clean exit
Asked whether this looks like the on again off again drone war between Russia and Ukraine, Bilyeu draws a sharp distinction. Ukraine is an all out conventional war where people die on the front line every day. Iran is "tit for tat diplomacy," negotiated violence. The two situations differ in kind, but he says they share one truth: you have to use violence to get the other side to behave, quote unquote, sensibly.
He strips Trump's reassuring narrative away and finds coherence underneath. Iran says it will control the strait, and then the moment a ship hugs Oman's coast to avoid Iranian control, Iran attacks it. The words and the actions line up perfectly. It only looks confusing, he says, when people tell you not to believe your own eyes. So his method becomes watching what actors do rather than what they say. What Iran is doing, in the middle of the negotiation, is exerting control to make its position unmistakable. He offers a deliberately uncomfortable analogy: sending a social worker into a house where the abuser beats his wife in front of them and still insists everything will be fine once they leave. Without enough military intervention to make Iran actually back down, he asks, what evidence is there that it will.
The only leverage the United States has, Bilyeu argues, is how far it is willing to go and how much it is willing to destroy, and Americans have no appetite for that, financially or politically. He splits Trump's position into two battles. The moral battle, whether the strikes were justified, he thinks Trump has already lost, because the public reads the whole thing as Israel pressuring the United States into a war it did not want. And yet the United States still went in and blew things up, hardened the IRGC, and, Bilyeu claims, killed the Supreme Leader's family members, so there is no path back to normal. He expects Trump to keep striking from a badly weakened political position, burning through capital fast as the midterms approach, especially if anything knocks the stock market off all time highs, where AI valuations loom large.
He keeps returning to a maxim: if you are not prepared for total warfare, you are essentially guaranteeing a quagmire. Afghanistan backed down both the Russian and the American militaries with "dudes in sandals with AKs," and Iran is far more sophisticated, so absent total war he does not see a way out. Addressing the chat's "sunk cost fallacy" question, he insists people are failing to separate two moments. Striking the nuclear site at Fordow is one thing, and if that were the whole story he would say cut losses and stop. But the larger offensive left Iran feeling truly aggrieved, doing what it believes is God's work, convinced America has no business in a region where Iran would rightfully be hegemon and where Israel has no right to exist.
Figure 2. The dilemma as Bilyeu lays it out. Neither door is clean. Staying demands a level of total war the country will not stomach. Withdrawing saves money now but, in his projection, hands Iran the strait, lifts sanctions, unwinds the normalization of the Abraham Accords, and finances the very regime the strikes were meant to weaken.
Withdrawal, he argues, is not simply cutting losses. Pull out and you save war spending, but you lose the strait, and a region that had been drifting toward the United States through the Abraham Accords and normalizing with Israel reverses course. Remove sanctions and let money flow back into Iran, let it charge billions annually in strait fees, and you get an emboldened, well financed Islamic Republic. He contrasts the noise Trump made about the roughly one to three billion dollars Obama released with the prospect of hundreds of billions, plus a theoretical 300 billion in outside investment. If the darkest reading is right, that the 300 billion is the United States funneling money to Gulf Cooperation Council nations who then pay Iran to leave them alone, then the United States is effectively financing Iran, which he calls a level of disaster hard to overstate. His challenge to anyone thinking it through is to run the scenarios honestly and ask what a well financed, aggrieved Iran openly controlling the strait actually looks like. He says the region is already showing the answer.
The Russia parallel: what 20 percent of oil offline actually looks like
To make the abstraction concrete, Bilyeu turns to Russia, which he says is simply further down the road. Ukraine has been hammering Russian oil infrastructure with long range drones, more than two dozen strikes since March hitting eight of Russia's ten largest refineries. He cites the International Energy Agency estimating that more than 20 percent of Russia's refining capacity is now offline, and he lingers on the number deliberately, because it is roughly the same 20 percent of the world's oil that moves through the Strait of Hormuz. Russian refinery throughput as of May hit its lowest level since 2009, and on June 20th a drone struck a refinery more than 1,200 miles from the front line.
The consequences he describes are a live demonstration of choking off a fifth of a supply. Russia is spending trillions of rubles trying to keep gas prices from skyrocketing, a top down price control that, spoiler alert, does not actually work. It can hold prices but cannot stop shortages, the same way freezing rents holds prices while creating scarcity. Shortages are sweeping across roughly two thirds of Russia, with restrictions imposed either to hide shortages or to accept them, and Crimea halted civilian fuel sales outright on June 21st. That, he stresses, is the power the world would be handing Iran if it lets Iran control the strait.
He says both independent and state pollsters report Russians growing fed up, with Putin at his lowest approval since the invasion, and he notes darkly that critics of the government keep "falling out of windows." His hope is that Ukraine's ability to hit Russia where it hurts forces Putin to the negotiating table rather than to bigger and bigger weapons, but only if there is an off ramp that lets Putin look like a winner to his own people. Bilyeu sides with Ukraine because Russia invaded it, and says you cannot let someone invade your country, but he warns this could escalate fast and uncontained, because war outcomes are never certain except that a lot of people lose their lives.
He drives the human cost home with a statistic: the average life expectancy of a new Russian recruit sent to the front line, by a recent breakdown, is 20 to 30 minutes. He invokes the Battle of Stalingrad and Russia's historical willingness to throw millions of bodies into a meat grinder to stop the Nazis, and argues that American World War II mythology understates how many lives Russia spent and how much its eastern offensive distracted and weakened Germany. Asked what options Putin has left, Bilyeu lists them: escalate with bigger bombs, attack a European city as a warning not to interfere, craft a better story for why now is the time to end the war and take an off ramp, or kill dissenting voices at home. Putin will not back out, he says, unless he can paint it as a win. And he cautions that this is not Hezbollah firing rockets from tunnels but one of the great nuclear armed military powers on Earth, so people should be very thoughtful about backing a nuclear power into a corner.
The California billionaire wealth tax jumps in the odds
Bilyeu pivots to what he calls the "K trade of the week," the California billionaire wealth tax, whose odds of passing jumped 18 points to a 36 percent chance on the back of a Gavin Newsom video. Newsom said he would not vote for it himself but thinks everyone should be allowed to vote for it. Bilyeu reads that as a politician trying to appease a growing radical base on the left while not angering the billionaires funding him, and positions Newsom as a national candidate walking that line toward 2028, signaling to big Democratic donors while pushing further left where the party's energy lives.
His central analytical move is the word mechanism. If billionaires really broke the economy, he argues, they did it mechanistically, and the real mechanism worth being paranoid about is money in politics used to create regulatory hurdles and moats that protect incumbents from competition. That mechanism, he grants, is genuinely dangerous. But a wealth tax is a different mechanism, and he says it will mechanistically break the economy. In a country where people can move states freely, it creates a hole in the tax base. He cites that California's billionaires represented roughly 2 trillion dollars in conceivably taxable wealth, but with so many already gone, including one of the founders of Google who left for Texas or Florida, that number has already dropped to at least a trillion, cut in half.
He walks the projection forward. Pass the tax and more people leave. The revenue models only ever assume one year, so a one time lump gets spent fast, and then the state, having chased billionaires away and now collecting less, drops down a rung and levies the supposedly one time tax on a wider base, from which some percentage, himself included, will also leave. Eventually the state cannot pay for its services and either rebounds off the bottom or becomes, in his phrase, "the next Michigan," having lost the only industry propping it up, with real risk of going bankrupt. He also notes such a tax would be litigated endlessly as unconstitutional. His conclusion is that the wealth tax reveals less about economics than about motive: it is not really about shoring up the tax base, it is about resentment and punishing the billionaire class, and once you map the radical left as driven by resentment rather than logical policy, everything it does becomes easy to predict.
Steelmanning the left: the productivity and wages split
At his cohost's urging not to minimize real grievances, Bilyeu agrees to steelman the other side, then plants what he calls his more controversial flag: wanting a tax on billionaire wealth comes down, in his view, to either ignorance or malevolence, because it does not work, history bears that out, it is not what the Nordic countries do, and he says something like 70 percent of countries that instituted a wealth tax have rescinded it. He then recites the grievances faithfully. Quoting AOC, there is no way to generate a billion dollars in net worth without doing something illegal, and it is grotesque for greedy people to amass wealth while everyone else struggles through an affordability crisis. And, he says, we genuinely are in an affordability crisis, one you can track mechanistically through the K shaped economy.
The cohost presses the actual arguments: that the billionaire class takes different routes than an honest founder did, that companies posting record profits, Walmart or Exxon, still refuse to pay a living wage, and that productivity has decoupled from wages. Bilyeu accepts the productivity to wages split as a real mechanism and says so plainly. The other grievance raised is the regressivity of payroll taxes: a worker under roughly 85,000 dollars pays a large share of income into Social Security that might not exist when they retire, while a 10 million dollar earner pays a tiny percentage of income into it, and even if that small percentage is a larger absolute dollar amount, as a percentage it does not feel fair.
Bilyeu's answer is that none of this is solved by taxes. Taxing the productive class will not close the productivity gap, partly because they find clever ways around it and partly because it dulls the productive engine, and he points to New York as the place about to demonstrate what happens when you make it impossible for people to be profitable as they see fit. The real fix, he argues, is to empower the worker, because an empowered worker can negotiate better terms and capture more of the productivity they create. The biggest lever he names is deglobalization: globalization broke the link, and forcing companies to localize, combined with mobile, highly educated workers and expensive H1B visas so cheap foreign talent cannot undercut them, puts leverage back in the worker's hands. He warns against the opposite error using Japan, whose lifetime employment stagnated its economy because you need growth for workers to have leverage, and says if people want unions back on the table, fine, as long as the goal stays empowering the worker rather than punishing the builder.
The grievance Bilyeu grants is real
The mechanism he blames
The fix he argues for
Productivity has split from wages
Globalization broke the link between what workers produce and what they capture
Deglobalize, force localization, keep growth high, price foreign labor at a premium
Housing and everything is unaffordable
Money printing plus regulatory capture inflated assets while wages lagged
Asset ownership, balanced budgets, cut spending, break the moats
Tech pay is taxed below a doctor's salary
Two different things conflated: income versus capital gains
Keep them distinct, close the step up loophole on built wealth only
Billionaires abuse the system
Money in politics builds regulatory moats against competitors
Not a wealth tax. A flat percentage, a simplified code, no loopholes to buy
State budgets are in crisis
Spending, not a revenue shortfall
Cut the budget: Florida's population rivals New York City at a fraction of the spend
Figure 3. Bilyeu's ledger. He accepts nearly every grievance the left raises, then insists each has a mechanism, and that a wealth tax is the one response that mechanistically makes things worse by hollowing out the tax base and disempowering the worker. Green marks where he thinks the fix actually helps, amber where he thinks the popular remedy backfires.
He contrasts Florida, whose population rivals New York City but whose budget is dramatically smaller, cutting spending and thriving, against New York raising budgets and screaming about affordability. His prescription is to balance the budget without being predatory to business, cut spending, and above all grow through innovation, which he calls the great savior and the reason society reached its peak in whatever era you consider best. He argues punitive taxes disempower the worker by pulling people out of the job market with handouts, widening the gap between builders and the rest. On percentages, he says he would happily accept a flat rate, 20 percent across the board on income, not wealth, because there is nowhere to hide, and he notes he has personally declined sophisticated tax avoidance schemes his own team proposed. He adds that throwing money at problems does not solve them: the federal budget has nearly doubled in ten years while outcomes got worse, and the Department of Education outspends the world while producing middle of the pack, stubbornly flat results, all while fraud multiplies as more money enters the system.
His historical anchor is the post World War II top marginal tax rate of 91 percent. That high rate, he argues, is not why the debt fell. The country escaped its debt because it grew faster than it taxed, using financial repression, deliberately holding interest rates below inflation, while an un globalized, powerful American worker and relentless innovation drove real growth up. Taxes slow the economy, he says, and points to Europe: by a statistic he cites, the median European now earns less than the bottom 20 percent of Americans.
Step up in basis, the Scott Galloway argument, and the Mexican fisherman
The conversation drills into the specific tax mechanics people are angry about. Bilyeu explains the step up in basis loophole: someone can borrow against assets, pay only interest, and when they die their heirs get a step up in basis so the gain is effectively never taxed. His proposed fix distinguishes assets bought with already taxed money, where a normal step up is fine, from wealth built from the ground up, like a founder's stake, which he says should be treated as if transferred the moment before death and taxed at normal capital gains, so the tax that would otherwise be owed still gets collected.
The cohost reframes it as the Scott Galloway argument: a lawyer earning 300,000 dollars is taxed around 50 percent, while a tech worker paid 2 million in stock can borrow against it tax free and grow wealth untouched. Bilyeu argues this misunderstands how tax works. A founder starts at a cost basis of zero, so all of their gain is eventually taxed at capital gains, and only the gap from zero to the price at which an early employee received shares escapes, with everything above taxed at cap gains of roughly 20 to 24 percent. The genuine underlying complaint, he says, is simply that income and capital gains are taxed at different rates. And he defends that difference fiercely: to him labor deserves the lowest possible rate, but the idea that capital gains should be taxed higher than labor is, in his words, asinine, because it attacks the risk taking and innovation that hold civilization up. If you do not believe innovation is sacred, he says, move to Venezuela and watch buildings collapse in an earthquake for lack of it.
The cohost reads the parable of the Mexican fisherman in full, the tale of a content fisherman told by a Harvard MBA to scale up over 15 to 20 years, go public, get rich, and then retire to exactly the simple life he already has. Bilyeu calls the story out of context and stupid, not because he disdains the simple life, which he says he loves and wants available to everyone, but because that ease rides on the back of civilization clawing its way out of millennia of starvation, freezing, and conquest. He offers a counter parable of a Mexican immigrant who builds a landscaping business in brutal Los Angeles heat so his kids can be educated and, if they want, live the fisherman's life. The natural state of the world, he insists, is not leisure but scarcity and violence, and the modern miracle is that the fastest way to get wealthy is no longer to conquer a nation and steal its stuff but to invent something people value more than their money. Civilization repeats its cycle, he argues, because success makes people forget that some percentage must innovate and some must protect the rest, and people expand until they hit a sufficient moral or physical force that stops them.
The show takes super chats that extend the theme. To a question about universal basic income delivering a government tiny home with VR glasses, an Optimus robot, a Mac Mini agent, and a Waymo to the local Walmart, Bilyeu says the future will look distressingly similar to now, just with a raised floor, which he calls an unmitigated good. But once food and shelter are handled, people must contend with meaning and purpose, the evolutionary drive that made humans fight for the group, and scarcity will be reinvented to keep playing status games, because unique things like living in Manhattan or the Palisades cannot be replicated, so money reappears to allocate them. Raising the floor, he says, will not change the human psyche, though AI might one day. On a question about truth versus utility, he distinguishes physics truth from useful social truth, noting the United States Constitution rests on the useful proposition that "all men are created equal," which is a moral claim, not a physics claim, and defends telling children curated, framed truths that help them thrive rather than raw facts that spiral them out of control.
He riffs on other chats: a One Piece tangent about the Enies Lobby arc and the character Usopp representing courage as moving forward in the face of fear; a comparison of imperial Japan in World War II to Iran, where decentralized control of forces meant negotiators could not deliver, which was ultimately solved by nuclear weapons; and a claim that the whole wealth pump that makes billionaires is impossible without a central bank, which he says is a mechanism worth internalizing. To a chat framing wealth as "Schrodinger's money," where cash is the cat and selling opens the box, Bilyeu agrees the analogy is sharp and adds that opening the box is inherently poisonous, which is why you never want the coordinated selling a wealth tax would trigger.
How your money quietly lost 30 percent
Woven through the tax discussion is Bilyeu's argument about inflation and the central bank. Central banks, he says, are a trade off, not pure evil, but the human mind cannot steal just a little. Politicians refuse to allow a recession on their watch, so in 2008 and again during COVID lockdowns the answer was to print. What should happen instead, he argues, is that people who put capital at risk are allowed to lose it, so the system clears its dead brush, otherwise you accumulate the equivalent of a California forest fire, which in this metaphor is inflation. He states the cost bluntly: in the last six years there has been roughly 30 percent inflation, meaning 100 dollars of purchasing power is now worth about 70.
Figure 4. Bilyeu's inflation point made visual. He says roughly 30 percent cumulative inflation over six years means the same 100 dollars now buys about what 70 dollars used to, even though the number in your bank account never changed. He frames this as the hidden cost of printing money to avoid recessions rather than letting risk takers lose.
Europe is dying in the heat, and banning air conditioning
Bilyeu calls this his favorite story of the day. A heatwave is sweeping Europe, and his cohost reads figures from late June: 1,450 in Paris, 620 in London, 520 in Milan, 340 in Barcelona, and 310 in Berlin. Meanwhile China is trolling Europe with footage of pigs enjoying air conditioning in their pens while people die in the streets.
Figure 5. The human toll behind the segment, using the figures the cohost reads on air. Bilyeu's argument is that these deaths are largely self inflicted policy, because a hundred year old technology, air conditioning, could prevent most of them, yet European governments discourage or block its installation.
Europe looks like lunatics to him. The response to persistent heatwaves, he argues, should be to deregulate, open modern nuclear energy sites, and encourage people to install life saving air conditioning units, a hundred year old technology that should already be widespread. Instead governments bang the global warming narrative harder, admonish people for wanting AC, and tell families with hospitalized relatives to bring ice packs from home to stabilize patients after surgery. He grants the climate is changing, whether or not humans cause it, and says the answer to a changing climate was, is, and always will be innovation rather than draconian regulation forcing people to live like it is a hundred years ago. He cites the World Health Organization reporting more than 1,300 excess deaths across Europe since June 21st, and France's public health agency alone reporting a thousand excess deaths since June 24th, most of them people over 65.
He asks who benefits from a policy this deadly, wondering aloud whether the refusal to act reflects a wish for old people to die and free up tax dollars, a crisis not to be wasted, or a hope that suffering will make people accept more regulation. Part of the problem, he says, is that places like Germany have been taking nuclear power offline, moving backward, and lack the energy to support AC. He points out that Europe could stop emitting entirely and it would not matter given China's trajectory, so the regulations kill Europeans without changing the climate. His prescribed path is AC now to stop the dying, modern nuclear as the United States is doing and Germany should, and heavy investment in solar, noting the sun delivers more energy in a day than humanity needs in a year and that China, ironically, leads the biggest solar breakthroughs and adopts solar fastest even as it runs hot on CO2. He closes the segment on a cultural note, quoting a German woman who said her bloodline ends with her and she would take in all immigrants and refugees because "we ruined the world," which he reads as civilizational self erasure, and predicts the societies that got out of the gate first will be leapfrogged by those who entered the game late and are willing to innovate.
The closing rounds: Mexican Batman, entitlement fraud, NGOs, and Massie flips the script
The show lightens with a "Mexican Batman," a citizen vigilante in Mexico capturing bike and motorcycle thieves and duct taping them to poles with notes explaining their crimes. Bilyeu jokes that an alternate Batman suit should be a Mexican flag, then makes a serious point: vigilantism is obviously not the answer, but when a government refuses to prioritize law and order, people eventually protecting themselves becomes the only reasonable response. He praises that this vigilante uses minimum necessary force, Batman style, refusing to kill, and says the first appeal should always be to demand a government that makes safety priority number one.
Then the fraud thread. RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz held a press conference about shady insurance agents enrolling unsuspecting Americans in health plans they never signed up for, using people without social security numbers and zero premiums so the enrollees never see a bill while the enrollers collect government payouts. Bilyeu says fraud in America is so rampant that asking for more tax dollars is patently absurd, and pivots to NGOs, claiming they have hoarded 14 trillion dollars in US taxpayer money, much of it, he argues, tied to fraud. He cites Haiti, where he says only about 2 percent of intended NGO dollars actually reached Haitians while 98 percent leaked into what he calls the "overproduction of elites," administration fees and fundraising parties, and asks what decades of money into Africa actually bought. He delivers a recurring line as a public service announcement: you could tax billionaires at 100 percent of their wealth, leaving them with nothing, and if current trends continue you would still spend 158 dollars for every dollar you take, because the hole is spending, and there is no mechanistic way out without reducing spending.
Finally, the clip that gives the segment its name. A Fox News digital reporter presses Thomas Massie about tabloid allegations from his ex, an NDA, and a supposed relationship with Lauren Boebert. Massie deflects, asks when the outlet became a tabloid, and then flips the frame by asking the reporter to clear up a rumor that the reporter films porn, which instantly rattles the reporter. Bilyeu is delighted and reads the lesson: these reporters ask questions with no good answer because accepting the frame is the trap, and all Massie had to do was throw back something socially uncomfortable to collapse it. Asked whether media, TMZ, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox alike, should separate policy from personal smears, Bilyeu says yes, people should drop ad hominem attacks and argue mechanisms, but says it will never happen in a populist moment, because followers come to be made to feel a certain way, and the easiest way to do that is to paint the other side as less than human. Humans reason emotionally, he says, and emotionally powerful slogans like "tax the wealthy" and "make them pay their fair share" always beat patient mechanistic arguments.
He closes on his theory of civilizational cycles. Empires, he says, last somewhere between 150 and 250 years, and the country is going through this crisis on its 250 year birthday. Hardcore, disciplined people claw their way to success, Spartan style, then enjoy the halcyon post war boom, then start abusing it, reasoning that if a little debt is good a lot must be great, until it spirals into "total lunacy" of more free things and endless money printing, followed by implosion, hard times, and the return of the disciplined generation, and the cycle repeats. Then he thanks the sponsor, plugs a free AI masterclass, and signs off.
Key takeaways
Bilyeu's central claim is that Iran is negotiating through violence to control the Strait of Hormuz, the passage for roughly 20 percent of the world's oil, and that if it succeeds it will charge tolls, break the freedom of the seas norm, and raise energy costs globally.
He argues there is no clean exit: staying requires a level of total warfare the United States will not stomach, while withdrawing hands Iran the strait, lifts sanctions, unwinds the Abraham Accords, and could see the United States indirectly financing Iran through Gulf states.
Russia is his live case study. Ukraine knocking roughly 20 percent of Russian refining offline produced sweeping fuel shortages, price controls that fail, and Crimea halting civilian fuel sales, which he presents as a preview of a strait chokehold.
On the California wealth tax, his thesis is that it is mechanistically self defeating, driving billionaires out, hollowing the tax base, likely unconstitutional, and ultimately about resentment rather than revenue.
He steelmans the left's grievances, especially the productivity to wages split, then argues the fix is to empower the worker through deglobalization and growth, not to tax wealth, which he says disempowers workers further.
His recurring frame is that every economic problem has a mechanism, that anger is justified but must be aimed at the right mechanism, and that inflation of about 30 percent over six years is the hidden tax from printing money to avoid recessions.
On Europe's heatwave he argues the deaths are largely a policy failure, solvable now with air conditioning and modern nuclear and long term with solar innovation, and that draconian climate regulation kills people without changing a trajectory driven by China.
He ties it together with a cyclical theory of empires lasting 150 to 250 years, arguing the United States is in the late, undisciplined, populist phase of that cycle.
Chapters
0:00:00 Intro and the weekend rundown
0:02:00 The Strait of Hormuz just became a weapon
0:25:00 The Russia parallel: what 20% of oil offline really does
0:35:00 The California wealth tax just jumped in the odds
0:46:00 The K shaped economy and the productivity to wages split
0:58:00 Florida vs New York: budgets, growth, affordability
1:30:00 How your money quietly lost 30 percent
1:34:00 Europe is dying in the heat, and banning AC
1:50:00 Massie flips the script
Notable quotes
"What I see is we are building towards a breakdown of the long standing freedom of the seas paradigm. Iran is going to be charging tolls. Period. End of story." Tom Bilyeu, 0:05:00
"If you're not prepared to do total warfare, you are essentially guaranteeing a quagmire." Tom Bilyeu, 0:08:32
"How much of the world's oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz? 20 percent. So this 20 percent number is so meaningful because just look at what's going on in Russia when you choke out 20 percent." Tom Bilyeu, 0:11:36
"The average life expectancy of a new recruit for Russia sent to the front line, it's 20 to 30 minutes." Tom Bilyeu, 0:13:11
"Once you realize that the radical left is driven by resentment and jealousy, then all of a sudden everything that they're doing makes a lot of sense." Tom Bilyeu, 0:43:00
"Disempowering the worker is a speedrun of civilizational suicide." Tom Bilyeu, 0:55:31
"In the last six years, you've had 30 percent inflation. That means if you had 100 dollars, you now have 70." Tom Bilyeu, 1:32:29
"AC is a hundred year old technology. It should already be widespread across Europe." Tom Bilyeu, 1:42:36
"You could tax billionaires at 100 percent of their wealth, and if current trends continue, you will spend 158 dollars for every dollar that you steal from them." Tom Bilyeu, 1:47:43
"Empires exist for somewhere between 150 to 250 years, and how crazy we're going through this literally on our 250 year birthday." Tom Bilyeu, 1:54:24
It is worth separating what is established fact from what is Bilyeu's projection and opinion, because the show mixes them freely and by design.
The settled parts: the Strait of Hormuz really does carry roughly a fifth of global seaborne oil, which is why any threat to it moves energy markets. Ukraine really has been striking Russian refineries, and outlets tracking the war have reported large shares of Russian refining capacity going offline with real fuel shortages following, consistent with the roughly 20 percent figure Bilyeu cites. Wealth taxes really have been repealed in many countries that tried them, and the Nordic model leans far more on broad income and consumption taxes than on taxing wealth. Europe really did suffer deadly heat, and low air conditioning penetration is a genuine factor in European heat mortality.
The contested parts are where most of the runtime lives, and they are Bilyeu's analysis rather than reported fact. His specific characterization of the memorandum with Iran, including the 300 billion dollar figure and the claim that Iran plans to charge strait fees after a 60 day window, is his framing of a fast moving situation, and he says outright that everyone is being propagandized and that he is working with wildly imperfect information. His flat assertion that a wealth tax is "ignorance or malevolence," that the median European earns less than the bottom 20 percent of Americans, that NGOs are hoarding 14 trillion dollars in US taxpayer money, and that only 2 percent of Haiti aid reached Haitians are strong claims presented without sourcing on air, and each depends heavily on how the terms are defined. His theory that empires run on a 150 to 250 year clock is a sweeping historical generalization, evocative but not a law. And his read of motive, that European climate policy may reflect a wish for old people to die, is explicitly speculation he floats rather than evidence.
The through line worth keeping is his best idea, stated repeatedly: that grievances are real, that anger about the economy is justified, and that the useful move is to find the actual mechanism rather than the emotionally satisfying villain. Whether or not you share his politics, that is the frame he is inviting you to argue with, and the honest way to engage the episode is to test each mechanism he names against the evidence rather than against the vibe.
Full transcript
Everybody, welcome to another Tom Billy Show live. I hope you guys had a wonderful weekend. There certainly was plenty of drama to go around as the US and Iran exchanged blows once again. Uh we're going to discuss the details and what's likely the result from negotiating via violence, which I'm not expecting to turn out very well. Uh Ukraine continues to smash Russian oil infrastructure. Speaking of negotiating through violence, um Europe is helping them more and more push Putin into a corner, but the question is what does somebody uh who's put in a desperate situation, what do they end up doing? So, all eyes over there in addition to what's going on in the Middle East. China is now trolling Europe with AC videos as thousands die in European heatwave that's sweeping the continent. And their response is to further restrict uh people's use of AC, which is absolutely wild. The odds of the California billionaire theft tax passing go up dramatically after insane video from Gavin Newsome comes out. More evidence of masscale fraud as more than 1 million people are found on Obamacare without a social security number. And a Mexican Batman is hunting down motorcycle thieves. And you're not going to believe what he's doing when he catches them. It is amazing. Shout out to my man. All right, speaking of shout outs, Koshi, thank you so much for continuing to support the show. We appreciate it very much, you guys. There was a QR code on your screen right now. You can trade $10 to get uh you can trade $10 to get $10 with code impact. So, do your thing and also use it as polling. Man, this is uh something that we do more and more here trying to get a sense of what's really going on in the world. Uh and in fact that is exactly what triggered me when I saw uh what's going on with the billionaire uh theft tax. Uh seeing the odds there jump on the polling places. It's wild. So keep your eyes peeled to that stuff. It really does tell you where culture is moving to. Okay. US and Iran the ceasefire just absolutely blew apart this weekend. It all started Thursday. We talked about this a little bit on Friday. So you had that drone hit the ever lovely. It was a Singapore flagged container ship. They were trying to go through the straight of horror moves. They were hugging the coast of Aman. And I think that's what kicked off the beef. Iran sees when the ships are hugging the coast of Aman that that threatens their ability to control the strait. Now, you're going to get propagandized so hard on all of this stuff, both from the US and from Iran. So, what's really going on? Uh Trump certainly wants you to believe that Iran is a um rational state actor, that we can do these negotiations with them and everything is going to be hunky dory. But despite what the propaganda would have us believe, Iran wants control of the strait and they are obviously willing to fight and die for that control. Now, as we are seeing now, even during this 60-day negotiating period where this is supposed to just be peace, as far as the I can see, Iran is attempting to exert their domination over the area. And I think that is the right way to see this. The way that theou was written is an absolute comedy routine. I don't know if both sides think they're being clever, but it is written so vaguely that it is forcing them essentially to violently clash to say, "No, no, no. This is what we actually agreed to. We are going to take over this trade. We are going to run it the way that we see fit. We are going to charge uh a fee for it after the end of this 60-day negotiating window." And uh Iran has said very vocally with their full chest that they are never going back to the way that things were before all of this shook down as it relates to the strait. So imagine if that's how they're behaving now when you've got US troops just all up in their business what they're going to be like when they pull out. Now, I hate to say it, but as things stand right now, I do not see any universe in which what we're building towards is peace in the Middle East. What I see is we are building towards a breakdown of the long-standing freedom of the seas paradigm. Iran is going to be charging tolls. Period. End of story. They're going to attack if people try to hug the coast of Oman. They don't want anybody else uh being able to tell them what to do. They want the US out of the Middle East entirely. Uh they want to be the hegeimon of the Middle East. So even though Trump is trying to warn them, uh that he's not going to stand for any of that, they're just going to keep showing time and again that if the US isn't willing to fight over it, they're not just going to chill and go back to normal. So um uh yeah, I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the optimistic view that everything is going to settle down. So, we're moving into technical talks right now. So, according to Trump, Iran asked for a meeting which is going to be taking place Tuesday in Doha. It's a technical talk, meaning we're going to talk specifically about how this stuff is logistically going to play out. Uh, but given how far apart they seem to be in reality, I am not expecting anything to come out of this except more violence. So, uh, how long will the back and forth go before somebody finally breaks that? I don't know. But yeah, I don't have any belief in um the negotiated settlement working. So right now I think you have two regimes, the US and the Iranians that do not see anything the same. Uh Iran is moving into a uh new world where the straight of horm moves becomes a choke point that they can use strategically as a weapon anytime they want the leverage in a negotiation with the US or virtually anybody else that depends on the straight of Hormuz. And remember Trump is going to bang the drum and say that the US we don't need it. Straight of Hormuz doesn't matter to us. Uh we produce more energy than blah blah blah. But the reality is from a uh pressure standpoint from our allies, it matters tremendously. So that is going to be a problem certainly for Trump in that anytime that Iran goes and exerts control over that, people are going to rightly point out we were in a much better position before Trump struck Iran. So, uh, yeah, this is going to make it even harder for him in the future to be able to build coalitions and he'll say we have coalitions, but yeah, when push comes to shove, people are not siding with the US in great numbers as we've seen both from European allies. We've seen weak knees from our allies in the Gulf region. So, yeah, we're we're not in a good place right now. That is the punchline. And I don't think that we're going to get in a good place unless we push the issue militarily. It's one of those should we have ever started it? Probably not. Uh as we are in just an absolutely horrendous position compared to where we were before. But now that we have started it, all the hand ringing over we never should have done it in the first place is just completely nonsensical. Having that conversation uh is is a waste of time and energy on everybody's behalf. We are where we are. And so now it becomes a question of how do we get our way out of this and given the behavior of Iran in terms of being a quote unquote rational state actor I'm not seeing evidence of that. Uh so now it becomes a question of how far is the US willing to go to um bring an end to this. I don't think that we would put troops on the ground. So um yeah the ability to get this done from the air does not seem possible. So stalemate, stalemate, which at the end of this, if we are not able, willing and able to escalate to the point where um Iran no longer has the military willingness and ability to continue to fight. Um you can expect the US to just sort of eventually wash their hands of this, leave Iran in a situation where they use their control of the strait as negotiating power. and then we'll just have to see how far that takes them. Uh they've made it very clear they don't plan to back off their nuclear ambitions. So yeah, not in a great place.
Yeah. So stalemate. I'm immediately thinking of like Russia Ukraine where it's like this off again off again drone battle here. Some weeks it's strike every day. Some weeks it's months of quiet. Do you see it stalemate kind of in that direction? I'm trying to think what does this war look like?
Well, so the what's going on in Iran is not a conventional war. This is tit fortat diplomacy. It is negotiated violence. Um what you see in Ukraine is an all-out war. So Ukraine is we don't talk about it sometimes because there are other things that are popping off. But uh Ukrainians, Russians are dying on the front line every day and have been ceaselessly for four years.
So these are two very different things. Uh I if we're going to um speedrun, we've got more detail on it later, but to speedrun what's going on in Russia, it looks something like this. Europe is backing uh Ukraine harder. The US, despite Trump's protestations, are beginning to back Ukraine, at least verbally and with votes. You're getting people uh even Republicans that are signaling that they want to get back to supporting Ukraine. and it's a small number, but they're they're in open defiance of Trump's desires to do it. So that fracture needs to be taken very seriously. And so now with that assistance though, Europe is trying to stay as much in the background as possible despite Starmer's sort of very um high-risk support on his way out. Um they're really trying to make the average Russian citizen feel the pain. And so they're striking uh more than 12,200 miles into Russia. Dude, that's wild. So um Ukraine, they're doing it largely internally, meaning it's not like the US is shipping them a bunch of drones. It's not like Europe is shipping them a bunch of drones. They're building it internally, but they do clearly have the growing support of Europe. um and that's buying them the um things that they need to build the weaponry that they're going to need to continue to strike deep into Russia. Because of that, you're now backing a nuclear armed dictator into a corner who has signaled multiple times willingness to use nuclear weapons if he's put in a particular position. And so if his own country begins to turn against him, the dictator playbook is to uh suppress your own people with violence if you need to um and then obviously get more and more violent against Ukraine. So this is really going to this is probably rightly viewed as a standoff between Europe as the real backs stop and Russia. And so how far are they willing to escalate that? But while I'm I am really impressed with what Ukraine has done and I side myself on the pro- Ukrainian side of this because Russia invaded them. Uh but this could escalate quickly into something that gets uncontained really fast. And so um yeah, don't love it. But I I don't see another way for this to play out. You have to at a minimum try to get Putin to the negotiating table. and if he feels that he's in a superior position, he's going to push the advantage. And the problem is that's exactly what I see in Iran. So, while the war status of them are very different,
uh the reality of you've got to use violence to get people to start acting quote unquote sensible um is true in both scenarios.
Got it. So your point earlier of using violence through negotiation, that's the motivation you think or was this all retaliation because they struck that vessel and this was
well so what I mean by that is
you've got Trump who's saying listen
that we want to be calm in all of this. We want to get a deal done. I think there's a deal to be had here. They're saying all the right things. Don't worry. Uh yeah, they're gonna pop off. They've got to give their um their countrymen something to believe in. They've got to see that they've won this. But don't worry, it's just rhetoric. And the reality is that Iran is negotiating violently. And they're they are saying exactly what they're doing.
And Trump just keeps asking us not to believe them. But the reality is they're saying, "No, no, no. We're gonna control the straight." And then the second a ship hugs the coast of Aman to try to avoid anything that Iran might have done, they attack them.
So that is completely consistent there. There's like if you strip away Trump's whole no, nothing to see here, everything is fine and you just they say something and they do something, there's complete coherence. It is only when people tell me not to believe my lying ears that all of a sudden it seems confusing. So I'm like, "Nope, these guys are negotiating with violence. They're telling you, theou says this. I know you wanted to say something else, but theou says, uh, [ __ ] all your inspectors. It says, um, you guys are going to give us $300 billion. It says that we're going to control the straight and that we're going to be able to start charging fees after the 60-day window. It says all of those things. And every time we see you do something in violation of that, we're going to blow something up. And that is going to force the US to strike back. So now we're in a position where it's like we can layer a level of diplomacy on it to try to calm the markets, but the reality is that you are your diplomacy is at the end of things that go boom. So uh it it's just like I'm now trying to just go, okay, none of all the words are pointless. Let me just watch what happens. Okay, if you try to get around the uh mines, the military control of Iran in the strait, they attack you. Okay, so they see themselves as like having that whole bad boy. And if Oman isn't going to help them, then they're just going to attack. Uh and so now it's like, oh, okay, yeah, this is completely unsettled. Theou is [ __ ] Uh every word that I hear that we're near a deal. Nope. Iran is just buying time. This is them trying to get to a decrease in troops in the region and then they're going to run the show the way that they want. So, it's like if if you um let me let me just make a really horrible analogy. Uh if you see domestic abuse and you send uh a social worker in there to watch how things are going and the guy beats his wife while they're there and is like, "You guys need to leave the house." And when you leave the house, like, "Yeah, this is all going to be fine." but they're beating them right in front of you. Like, what on earth makes you think that by leaving things are going to get better? So, without sufficient military intervention, meaning without the US breaking enough [ __ ] inside of Iran that they finally back down, what indication do we have that they're going to back down? Other than our diplomats saying, "No, no, no. Secretly they're saying all the right things." What do you see that leads you to believe that that's really true? And I would say nothing. There's nothing. The only like minor thing you have is um we do get moments like now where they're like cool, we're going to stop. So my question is what is the US saying that to them privately? Like they're asking you to believe. No, no, they just say a bunch of stuff to us that they're not saying to you. What if that's projection and we're just saying meaning the US diplomats are just saying a bunch of things to us the American public calm the markets but in reality the the actual at the table thing just is exactly what we can see with the violence. So that's my instinct is that with wildly imperfect information, the only thing that I'm left to be able to do is go, but what are people actually doing? And what they're actually doing is exerting control right now in the middle of the negotiations to make their position clear.
I feel like so that from that standpoint, they're negotiating from a place of strength where America is kind of slowly losing its leverage or does America need to just bomb more things? How do we reset to
uh America the the only leverage that America has is how far are you willing to go? How many things are you willing to destroy? Americans don't have the appetite for it financially. We don't have the appetite for it from a do we support Trump and think that he's doing the right thing. Um he's gone in and like done a partial job in terms of like there are two battles. There is the moral battle which I think Trump has already lost. Nobody's on his team from that side. Then like ought we have done it. People don't buy the nuclear thing. So they're like yeah well I agree with you that Iran shouldn't have a nuclear weapon. And I don't think that's what this was about from the jump. Uh I think this is about Israel putting a bunch of pressure on you to go in and do it. Uh and I think I mean I can do the like he was trying to get on Mount Rushmore and I can explain all the nuance, but if you just look at it in terms of how the public thinks about it, the public is is simplified the narrative down to uh Israel really pressured you to do this. You go off halfcocked anyway with this stuff. you just wanted to bully them around. And so now that moral battle lost, but you still went in and blew up a bunch of stuff. You, the current Supreme Leader, you killed his dad, his wife, I think one of his kids or multiple of his kids, so he's not on your team. Uh, so now you've got the IRGC more hardened than ever before, more angry than ever before, more willing to blow things up, and they've got asymmetric warfare. So now I want you to pull out of it because I don't think the average American has enough information to think through the political uh geopolitical ramifications of us backing out now. So they're just like, "Get out. I don't want to see you in foreign wars. I certainly don't want to see you in a foreign war that I map as Israel just sort of pushing you around." And so get out. So Trump has very little leverage. I think he'll keep blowing things up because he's
Anyway, we'll set that aside for now. But I think he's going to keep doing that for a while. Um, but he's going to run out of political capital very fast as we get to the midterms if anything happens to uh knock us off all-time highs in the stock market, which AI looms large uh there. So now you've got a Trump will strike back but from a very weakened political position and then Iran trying to negotiate purely through violent strength and whether they're in a politically tenable position is irrelevant because they'll kill their own people to quiet them down again. So um it it is one of those it always brings me back to the following statement. If you're not prepared to do total warfare, you are essentially guaranteeing a quagmire because if Afghanistan can back down the Russian military and the US military, the Afghanis, man, like that's dudes and sandals with AKs. And if they can back you down, then Iran is way more sophisticated. Way more sophisticated. So, you're now in a position where um minus total warfare, I don't see you getting out of this.
Um, somebody just said that is this like the sunk cause fallacy? Like, we already spent money, we're already losing. I don't think anybody thinks that we're being we're getting benefits from this war. What is stopping Trump from just packing up? Is it just ego at this standpoint? He doesn't want to come home with, you know, his tail between his legs. PE people are not doing a good job of differentiating between where we were before uh before we struck Fort. But that one maybe we would have been fine.
Separate those two.
But even if you're going to say bombing Fort was cool, but now that we have launched this offensive to where they feel truly agrieved. So remember, Iran believes they're doing God's work, that God wills what they are doing right now. And it they have had a long-standing belief that uh America is uh meddling in a region that they have no business in, that Iran would rightfully be the hegeimon of the region, that Israel has no right to exist. So when you put all that back on the table, they feel like you guys have really come in here, killed our citizens, uh destroyed much of our infrastructure, and all of it was unjust. And so now we're going to go ham. Okay. So if you're an American trying to like figure out is this sunk cost fallacy it between Ford and the big attack like I could see you going listen you you did what you you did your best to push back their nuclear uh ambitions it either worked or it didn't cool there I would say sunk cost fallacy Trump don't move any further now the the only way to understand the quagmire is to recognize that partial warfare no longer works. And what do I mean by that? Okay, so you now have an emboldened Iran for all the reasons that I just said. You have weakened relationships with all of your allies because you have not gotten the job done. The only person that maybe you could say is a stronger ally from their perspective would be Israel. But in recent months, Trump has really burned a lot of those bridges as well. So now you probably could say that you basically have universally alienated your allies, at least diminished your relationships with them. And so what would it look like at this moment to back out? So yes, you're going to save a lot of money in the short term because you're not funding a war for sure, but you're going to lose control of the strait. And so now you have an entire region which was moving more in your direction via the Abraham Accords, was normalizing relationships with Israel. That's all going to go away. And you've now got Iran is going to, if you actually uh remove your sanctions and allow money to flow back into Iran, let them control the strait. Let them charge billions of dollars in fees annually for the use of the straight. Dude, they're going to be like, how much noise did Trump make about whatever 1 to3 billion? I forget exactly how much that Obama gave. And it's like, oh my god, that money has allowed them to fund all this and create all this madness with three billion. And now we're talking uh removing sanctions, which would be billions and billions of billions plus some theoretical ability for the rest of the world to invest in Iran to the tune of $300 billion PS. If the regions around really do want to fund Iran, ask yourself why. Because they know they've got to tithe in some way to get Iran to leave them alone. So now de facto, you've got a huge signal that the region is saying, "Yep, Iran is basically the hgeimon, and that's why we're all investing in Iran." Like, it's so wild. And if the worst uh prognostications about what that 300 billion really is, which is the US funneling money to GCC nations so that they can then pay Iran, you've effectively got the US funding Iran. So, oh my god, like this would be a level of just disaster. So, I am certainly empathetic to anybody that doesn't want this quagmire to be the quagmire that it is, but it's like holy [ __ ] This this is bad news bears. So, anybody trying to think through this, they've they've got to run uh thought exercises and say, "Okay, US pulls out and doesn't give any money to the GCC nations, but does allow there to be a backtrack sanctions." What does that look like? What does a an emboldened well financed Iran look like? What do people think it looks like? They're showing you right now it looks like control over the straight of Hormuz, right? I don't think anybody's denying that. So you've now got a well- financed Iran, a grieved Iran going after the straight of Hormuz. So now that becomes we're we're seeing right now what happens to the global economy when Iran is able to choke out the straight of Hormuz. Okay. So keep in mind even if the US can protect itself if you end up with a global recession because of uh Iran's you know ability to ability and willingness to choke out the strait to um hold sway over the GCC for sure. I think that would be their first target but they can toy with just about anybody now that does have that. So you're going to have a very well financed Islamic Republic doing their theat theocratic madness. Uh so what are we willing to do to make sure that that doesn't happen? And I think that the answer from the US is very very little. So yeah, you'd have to run all of those scenarios. Then the scenario with we are funding the 300 billion through back channels. What does that look like? So yeah, this is not it's not easy to stay in and it certainly is not just, oh well, get out, cut your losses. It will be, I think, more traumatic than that. But but just ask the question, what does it look like when Iran just nakedly controls the straight of hormones?
Um, going back to Russia, when you brought it up, the Russia Ukraine war right now, Putin has announced that there are fuel shortages growing from the strain on Russia's energy infrastructure. And this largely is because Ukraine has been attacking their oil refineries. There's been arguments on the street and it seems like Russia is starting to feel the strain of the oil. Um it seems in this standpoint that Ukraine is doing strategic attacks now that are actually hurting Russia's bottom line.
They are. Uh gas shortages are literally sweeping across Russia as Ukraine just continues to hammer Russia's oil infrastructure with long range drones. More than two dozen strikes have taken place uh since March that have hit eight of Russia's 10 largest refineries. You've got the International Energy Agency estimating that more than 20% of Russia's refining capacity is now offline. Okay, let that sit out there. 20% 20% 20%. How much of the world's oil goes through the straight of Hormuz? 20% 20% 20%. So this 20% number is so meaningful because just look at what's going on in Russia when you choke out 25%. So um you've now got the refinery throughput in Russia as of May anyway. So I'm sure it's much worse now. Hit its lowest level since 2009. You can expect the data on June to make that look even worse. Ukraine is just going deep deep inside of Russia. On June 20th, a drone struck a refinery that was more than 1,200 miles from the front line. That's wild. Now, because of all of this, Russia is being forced to spend trillions of rubles to try and keep gas prices from skyrocketing. This is like you now get, what does it look like when you try to control prices from the top down? Does it actually work? Uh, spoiler alert, no, it does not. What does 20% of oil being taken offline? What does that look like as a parallel to what's going on in Hormuz? It's all bad because even though Russia is able to keep the prices down, they can't stop shortages. And by the way, that's what happens when you freeze rents, you're going to create shortages. You might keep the prices the same, but you can't stop the shortages. So now those shortages are sweeping all across Russia. They're putting restrictions um they're either putting a restriction to hide a shortage or just accepting that there are shortages across roughly 23 of Russia as a totality. Okay, Crimea halted civilian fuel sales full stop on June 21st. Just like sorry guys, you can't have a really think about that for a second. You choke out 20% of a supply and you get this kind of reaction. That's the power that we're getting now in we're giving to Iran if we let them control the straight. So using these as like parallel systems. So you see Russia is just a little bit farther down the road. The Russia Ukraine war is farther down the road. so we can start to get a sense of what this really looks like. Now, as you would imagine, this is freaking Russians out. So, it's a bit hard to believe state media and Russia, for what I hope are obvious reasons, but both independent and state pollsters are reporting that Russians are just getting fed up with the war that Putin now has his lowest approval since the invasion. Imagine if the polls actually show that and you know if you get caught talking [ __ ] on the government, you're going to fall out of a window, which happened again, dude. The number of times that military personnel fall out of windows in Russia is wild. It is wild. So, in light of all of that, the polls still show that Putin is losing favorability. Now, let's hope that Ukraine's ability uh to continue to hit Russia where it hurts is going to force Putin to the negotiating table instead of to the I don't want to over dramatize this, but instead of the bigger and bigger weapons table, which strikes me as a likely attempt before he just concedes unless there is some sort of off-ramp that's going to make him look good to the people in his country. Uh, so fingers crossed because I think Ukraine has to do this. I You cannot allow somebody to invade your country, man. You can't do it. So they're going to have to do this. They're going to have to be more aggressive. But the reason that war should be avoided whenever humanly possible is because the outcomes are never certain, man. Other than guaranteed everybody's going to lose a lot a lot of people. And if you guys have been paying attention, there was a recent breakdown of the average life expectancy of a new recruit for Russia sent to the front line. It's 20 to 30 minutes, man. 20 to 30 minutes for a new recruit sent to the front line. That's crazy. So you can imagine that that is going to send shock waves through the populace of Russia if you're sending people into a meat grinder and the only path forward that you see is a re repeat of World War II. If you guys don't know the battle of Stalingrad, holy Jesus, they just kept sending people to die to stop the advancement of the Nazis. And the crazy thing is it worked. But oh my god, the millions of people that Russia threw into that meat grinder is insane. That's why to be honest the US just telling itself the story that we stopped the Nazis effectively by ourselves that Europe had been clobbered and we went in and stopped it really denies what Russia did in terms of lives lost to stop to styy more importantly the offensive into Russia which caused a massive distraction for the Nazis and that helped weaken what they were doing in Europe. So, Russia has a historical legacy of showing that they're willing to throw bodies and bodies and bodies and bodies. So, yeah, this one is deeply distressing if you care at all about lives lost um and show the cost of warfare when everybody's trying to um push as hard as they can without going to total warfare. It's just grinding. So grinding.
Yeah. There's something interesting about the article too about that where so many of young people are dying. So many men are just getting thrown into the combat zone. There was at one point in time people are getting kidnapped just because they were trying to dodge and evade.
I fear it's still happening. But I don't know that
at that point though from Putin's perspective he has to feel the walls closing in on him. Like he thought this little country was going to be wrapped up in a couple months and four years later he's still battling with them and they're doing significant damage. they're consulting other big countries on how to do drone warfare and kind of change how war is played on the large on the world stage. What do you think Putin's options are at this point?
Escalate bigger bombs. Um attack a European city as a reminder that um don't [ __ ] interfere with this. Um come up with a better story for why now's the time to end the war. um and take that off-ramp, negotiate something, propagandize your people until the end of time about how it really was a victory. Um kill dissenting voices inside your own country. Uh throw a few more people out of windows. That that's really where we're at. He's not going to back out unless he can paint it as a win. Mhm.
Um, and I will just remind people, man, like the lives lost in World War II to the Russian willingness to throw bodies at a problem is it's a longstanding tradition. So, yeah, Russia is a formidable foe that should never be taken lightly. Um, and Putin is Putin is desperately trying to reunite the USSR. He said the greatest tragedy of uh the 20th century was the dissolution of the USSR. He is territorially inquisitive by um doctrine. So you've got a guy that's like this is the right thing to do. It's what we ought to do. Um and now you've got the West meddling in that. And if he sees it as an existential threat to himself and the regime, how far is he willing to go? And I don't know the answer to that, but it is certainly on the table. He has made mouth noises to let you know that he agrees that it's on the table. Um, and that he sees Europe as at least partially responsible. And so his rhetoric, which is going to be obuscated as much as possible by Western media, his rhetoric is um he's always very calm, which I find super unnerving about him, but he's like, "Listen, this is Europe. Europe is doing this." And so if Europe continues to meddle in this regional war with a country trying to rightfully reunite um its own people, then we will have to let them know the cost of getting involved. So we'll see. Th this isn't um Hezblah. You're not [ __ ] with people like firing rockets from tunnels. You're [ __ ] with one of the great military powers on planet Earth. uh one of the most nuclear armed powers on planet Earth. And so we're living in a time where people think no one's ever going to use a nuclear weapon. I don't know that that's the wise approach. I think people should be very thoughtful about backing a nuclear power into a corner.
Interesting. We we'll monitor and see. Um let's move on to our Ky trade of the week. This is based off of the California billionaire wealth tax. It jumped up 15 points at an 18% chance and now it's polling at 36. I lied. It's an 18% uh jump and that is on the backs of Gavin Newsome's video. He said he's not going to vote for it, but he thinks that everybody should be allowed to vote for it. It seems very strain the line. I want to appease my base without angering the rich billionaires who are funding me. Um,
welcome to political [ __ ] Like this stuff winds me up.
101. Um, I know we have the Chimov take uh to jump into about this, but just top level, is there anything specifically about the California billionaire tax, especially with where we are now, that you want to point out before we jump into that?
So, the thing to understand here is I'm glad that you pointed out you've got a politician who is telling you one thing, but making sure that the bill still goes forward. He's saying, "Look, this isn't a great idea. I'm probably not going to vote for it, but I think everybody should have the right to vote for it. And the reason that he's doing that is this is a guy who is trying to find a way to appease a growing radical base on the left and is still trying to become the president to that radical base on the left in 2028. So, if you want a glimpse into what politics are going to look like on behalf of the Democratic party, it's going to be this. They're trying to signal to the fundraising part of their base, which will give them the millions and millions of dollars that they're going to need to work against a very well-unded Republican party. So, the Democrat party has done a terrible job of um working with their big donors. So, that's what you're seeing in the rise of Nuome as a national candidate. He's got to walk that line now because they have to appeal to the radical base. You're going to see once they get into office, they're going to try to be normies as they march towards the election and then just like Biden before them, they're going to push farther and farther left. It's where the energy is in the party. Now, why does that matter? It matters because for instance, if you believe that billionaires are the reason that the economy is broken, the thing you have to understand is that if that is true, they will have done it mechanistically. Okay? So, as everybody maps all of this out, if we're going to say billionaires bad guy, then walk through the mechanisms that they have used to abuse the economy. And you will see that the mechanisms ultimately are the only thing that matter. Now I have made my opinions abundantly clear on the mechanisms. People are going to see that the way that the billionaire class has abused the system is money and politics to create regulatory hurdles so that they can get a moat so that they can continue to um make sure that incumbents can't come in and knock them off their pedestal. That is where you should be paranoid about the quote unquote billionaire class. That mechanism is very real, but you can point at it. It's a mechanism. Now, what we're talking about on the radical left is also a mechanism. And the reason that the billionaire theft tax is such a bad idea is it will mechanistically break the economy. And we're going to get into this as we talk about what's going on in the heatwave going across Europe. That again, same thing. It's mechanistic. It's regulatory burden causing a breakdown uh of actual things on the ground that are killing people, including hospitals not being able to cool the rooms of somebody that's just gone through cardiac surgery and them having to deal with the heat stress and that causing additional excess mortality. So mechanisms as far as the eye can see. So as you think about the billionaire theft tax, think about what is the mechanism that's going to be at play here. And the mechanism that's going to be at play here is in a country where people can leave one state and go to another, you're going to create a hole in the tax base. So the very thing that you're supposed to believe is what's driving for this tax, which is, hey, we want to make sure that we have the tax base to help the people in need. Okay, that is the propaganda that you're being sold about why you should be doing a billionaire uh theft tax is that hey, this is a one-time tax. Remember, they keep saying that this is a one-time tax. It's only on billionaires. It's to make sure that we short budget shortfalls. Now, the mechanistic effect of that is billionaires are already leaving, creating a bigger gap. So, the billionaires accounted for about $2 trillion in uh taxable dollars that they could conceivably get from them, but given how many have already left, that number's already dropped to at least a trillion. So, it's cut in half. Those are the ones that have already left, right? They've already left at least lost at least one of the founders of Google uh and a bunch of other people that have gone to either Texas or um Florida. And so you're already seeing now something that's going to play out over time as a widening hole in the California uh tax base. Now if this actually goes through, do you think more or less people are going to leave? Now the answer is obvious more people are going to leave and it then becomes a question of well this was only going to be one time anyway. So project out and what becomes the problem because you get a one-time lump of money that they're going to spend very rapidly because all the numbers they ever give you about what they could fund with this those are assuming one year. Okay? They don't assume forever years. So what ends up starting as a billionaire wealth tax becomes well first of all by doing this we sent a bunch of billionaires away. That created its own problem because now we're taking in less money. So now we're going to have to drop down a rung and we're going to collect this supposedly one-time tax again from a wider tax base because well these greedy billionaires fled which by the way they're going to litigate till the end of time because it is unconstitutional but setting that aside. So now you've got we've had to go wider and now what happens to that next group of people they're also some percentage they won't all leave but some percentage of them will leave myself included and I will go somewhere else whatever that means. uh I won't want to do it by any stretch of the imagination, but I absolutely will. So, you're going to have another hole open up there, and you will eventually hit an inability to pay for the services in your state, and that will force them to rebound off the bottom, or I mean, they'll they'll either just go into um failed state, become the next uh Michigan, where you're just you've lost the only industry that was propping you up. uh which I suppose is possible and people can stay crazy for a very long time but you will find California finding itself in a position of potentially going bankrupt uh which is a very real thing. So yeah it it is nightmare scenario for California because the radical left is not able to map the mechanisms by which all of the economy works and because of that they are doing things that are detrimental to the economy. Now, in the face of that, I think it reveals much less about the mechanisms of the economy and more about the fact that all of this talk about this is really about shoring up the tax base, uh, that's just propaganda. That isn't what's really happening. What California is doing as a representative of the radical left is entirely about resentment. It is about punishing the billionaire class. And that's why when Nuome is talking about we need to reset the economy, you can just know on its face that's an absurd lie. Because if you're trying to reset the economy by a quote unquote one-time tax on billionaires, uh what you're going to end up doing is realizing that you're going to get some money. You're going to send some people fleeing. You're going to hurt your tax base overall. You'll take in less money, but you will have been punitive. And that is what is really going on. This is meant to be a punishment tax. And once you realize that the radical left is driven by resentment and jealousy, then all of a sudden everything that they're doing makes a lot of sense. And this is exactly again we've seen this ideology play out in many places around the world. And it's easy to predict when you map it as resentment. It's impossibly uh convoluted when you try to map it as actually logical policy from an economic standpoint because it doesn't work out. It's never worked out historically. You can point to the mechanisms by which it doesn't work out. So, um only resentment will make this all make sense.
Um can we steal the other argument? Cuz I want to make sure that we're not minimizing people's grievances by just saying you're jealous of me. So, let's steal it so that way they know that you see them and then you're still choosing to use those words.
Okay. So, um I'm going to I'm going to plant the more controversial flag and I'll say this.
Mhm.
If you're on the radical left and you want a um tax on billionaire wealth, the only way to see you to to actually like get inside your theory of mind is ignorance or malevolence. That's it. Because it doesn't work. history bears this out a thousand different ways. So, it doesn't work. It isn't what the Nordic countries are doing. Uh I forget it's like 70% of all countries that have instituted a wealth tax have rescended them because they don't work. You can expect the other ones to do the same on a long enough timeline. So, it's like again, so it's either ignorance or malevolence. The malevolence being I just want to punish people. I'm caught up in my emotions. All of that. Now, I can give you the rhetoric that people are saying. they are mismapping what has actually broken the economy. So um I will say all the words that they say to show you that I can repeat the propaganda. Uh so it goes like this directly quoting AOC. There is no way to generate a billion dollars in net worth without doing something illegal. And it is absolutely grotesque that these greedy people are amassing this insane wealth while the rest of us are struggling to um afford things. We're in the middle of an affordability crisis. And by the way, we are in the middle of an affordability crisis. You absolutely can track what's going on with the K-shaped economy mechanistically to figure out how this has happened. Uh and so it's very possible that they just do not understand the economy and so they look at the fact that housing prices are getting completely out of control and they say I can't afford a house, American dream is dead and I can look at these other people who while I can't afford a house, they can afford mega yachts. Um, I'm looking at the um what they'll call the Epstein class donating obscene amounts of money to um manipulate politicians. And by the way, they're right about that. And I get the emotional trauma of watching wealthy people throw money around politics and manipulate the game, watching things become unaffordable. Um being getting no education whatsoever around asset ownership, which if you're going to allow a central bank is the only thing that matters. Um, and I also see Well, okay. So, do you feel seen yet or do you think people running that argument feel seen yet from a they don't like my emotion around it? That I totally understand. But have I said the um things that make it clear that I recognize the parts that are broken? Um, the people in the chat do not believe you have.
No, no, no. What now I need, this is where
this is me. You're asking.
No, no. Okay. I'm asking you on behalf of what Chad is saying. But here's what I have found. Every time I audit chat
is they will say he doesn't get it. He's in his ivory tower. But they won't give me an argument. So what is the actual thing that I'm missing where they're like, "No, no, no. But you don't understand that bread costs $7 or you don't understand that gas cost." like I'll say all the words so they understand I see it all but where we're going to disagree is it's going to come back to they don't understand the mechanisms
or they really just are in their feelings.
Um okay so you know how when we talk about like immigration we talk about the
we're going to do analogy give me the actual arguments that they're making. Um, you are thinking that the billionaire class is taking similar routes that you took when you grew your company and there are people that don't take those similar routes. There are people that can pay more and choose not to pay more. There are people that can invest in their employees and choose not to invest.
Correct. Correct. There are people that would rather buy a yacht than they would uh elevate the people behind them. Yep.
SpaceX 4,000 millionaires be high five that. That's great.
Okay. So, really fast, just so I can make sure that when I sum up their points that I'm hitting uh the really important ones, this is a great one. Um, okay. So, one thing that I did not expressly cover just now, though, I totally agree. Uh, but again, comes back to they just don't understand the economy. But, uh, what they're saying is, listen, man, in a time where, um, Walmart is posting record profits or Exxon is posting record profits or insert your favorite company here is posting record profits, um, these [ __ ] still aren't paying their employees a living wage. They could, they're choosing not to. They would rather be on their mega odds.
Um, yes. I would just say profit and productivity is not catching up with wages.
Okay. So, the decoupling between productivity and uh workers wages that Tom is a mechanism. [ __ ] you. I'm being very clear with my argument that has broken and you're you're just running cover for these billionaires by not pointing that out. even though you've pointed it out many times before, but like right now
in this thing, yeah, you're think you're minimizing it to you're just jealous because you are an unproductive citizen as opposed to saying there are mechanisms that the billionaire class has decided not to maintain that were maintained in the previous.
Okay, perfect. Very glad that we're saying that out loud. Again, I have addressed this before in the past, but yes, very important to address now. So, that's still they don't understand the mechanisms, which we'll talk about.
We address the Iran war time, so we should, you know.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you're so right. You're so right. You're so right. You're so right. You're so right. Totally agree with that. Okay,
that one's important. We'll get to that. But that still does fall into that first bucket. They just don't understand. But keep going.
Or was that the only one that I missed?
I want to get exhaustive where it's like, okay, we've laid it all out. So now,
okay, if I show you, I give you um
the percent that of taxes that we pay into a system does not match the percentages of taxes that other people pay into a system.
Sorry, can you be more specific? Who are the we and the other people?
Um people that the progressive tax that happens. So for example, if a person makes under I want to say 85 or 83, I don't know what the new number is, they pay 30% of their um income into social security. Yep.
A social security that might not be there by the time they retire. And then you have millionaires um who they pay or not millionaires a 10 million.
So the percentage of tax they pay.1% of their income when they into social security. And I understand that.1% of 10 million is more than 30% of 80,000.
Yeah. But as a percentage that doesn't
Yeah. They have that ability.
That doesn't feel good.
Yeah. We're paying a higher percent cuz we need that 30% versus them. They don't need that.1.
Yep. So cool. Again,
are is that exhaustive?
That would be the second thing I can think of. Uh let me scroll through the chat. So are you getting these all of them or
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The reason that
while you're addressing the first two, I can then look for if there's a
perfect. So the reason that I want to get all of these out is all of the problems that we can identify will have a mechanistic solution. Right? So either they don't matter and therefore there won't be anything to address. meaning they don't matter in that they don't actually affect the economy or they do affect the economy and now there is a meaningful mechanistic way forward. And so what my whole thesis is this anybody who's angry about the economy is so right. you should be furious about the economy. And then my hope is that I can help translate that into a set of policies that we can pursue that will actually remedy the economy. The problem is we're in a populist moment and people transmute that anxiety around the economy into rage and then they aim that rage at something right now from a where is the biggest ground swell they aim it into socialist policies. Uh and by aiming it at socialist policies they will further break the very thing that's creating that anxiety. And so I'm really trying to help us avoid that catastrophe. So I want to make sure that you guys see I see all the things that you see. I get it. However, we've got to be very careful about mapping it. Okay. So let's take them one by one. So the big one that I missed in the beginning though this is something I think a lot about is the breakdown between capturing the productivity versus the amount that are going into wages. Okay. So what you guys are putting forward is um you've got these greedy billionaire class. They could pay more. They choose not to. And this is exactly how they're f fueling their wealth. What I want everybody to understand is you're never going to solve that problem by doing taxes, okay? That it it won't work out. Partly because they'll find very clever ways around it. And I get why that's emotionally enraging. Um but also because what you end up doing is you shut off or dull down the productive class. And so if you disincentivize people's ability to win, and I get people don't like that this is true, but when you disincentivize or make it just outright impossible, which you're going to get to watch play out in New York, when you make it impossible for people to be profitable as, let's say, as they see fit, then they're not going to continue to take the risk because running a business is extraordinarily risky. And so um you end up breaking that engine. So insert every socialist country ever and you're going to see where that goes down. But there is a mechanistic way to ensure that that parody is closer where the worker is able to capture a much bigger portion of the productivity that they're able to bring. So now the question becomes what is that method? If it isn't tax, if it isn't being angry, how do we corral, excuse [clears throat] me, how do we corral the um natural tendencies of people to get greedy? Because, and here is something that needs to loom over all of this. Innovation is the great savior. It's the great savior. It is why we have the society that we have. uh think of society at its best, peak, wherever you think that was. 1950, 1960, whatever you think was peak, that was innovation. Okay? Innovation took us there. Then bad policy allowed innovation to um get to the point where just to stay focused on this where we break the productivity connection. So now the billionaire class is capturing way too much of that upside. So the question becomes what happened? what what policy was put in place? Now, I'm going to keep things simple because it is multivariate, but one of the biggest things is globalization. It's not the only thing, but it's one of the biggest things. What you have to do mechanistically if you want to make sure that workers are empowered, which by the way, that's what you want to do. You want to empower the worker. Okay? When the workers empowered, they're going to be able to negotiate better terms. They're going to be able to leverage their skill set to capture that upside. If if you hold on to that, that that's the mechanism. It's an empowered worker. Okay. Now, we can debate, well, is that just unions? Is it delobbalization? Uh is it tariffs, tax incentives? What does that look like? Or is it just taxing the billionaire class? And I will say that there's nothing in history that shows us that a tax on the productive class, the billionaire class, there's nothing that shows us that that empowers the worker. In fact, I will say that if you look historically, even just in America, that disempowers the worker further because it removes more people from the job market because they realize I can come with my hand out. I can just get something effectively for nothing. And now you're creating a further widening of the gap of people that are like, "No, I'm going to build. I'm going to innovate. I'm going to keep doing this thing." Okay? So that is where tax now is going to disempower the worker. So my thesis on that is you've got to balance the budget so that you're not doing all this crazy ass deficit spending. Even if your budget is quote unquote balanced, but is predatory to business, you want to cut spending. Okay, look at what they're doing in Florida. So Florida as a state has roughly the same population as uh New York City and yet their budget is dramatically less. So Florida has been cutting their budget and thriving. New York is rising raising their budgets and screaming about an affordability crisis. Okay? So just watch those two play out. So that's one thing that we need to be thinking about. So cutting the budgets, getting lean and empowering the worker. So delobalization is one big thing that is going to force companies to localize. So when you are forcing a business to say, well, I've got to find a way to be profitable here. I've got to find a way to be profitable with these workers. And you create an environment where employees are very mobile. They can move around, which by the way requires growth. So look at Japan. Japan stagnant, no growth. What happens to people? Companies to get you to stay. They say stay here. will give you a job for life. Sounds cool. Except for the fact that it stagnates their economy because when you stagnate the economy like that, you can't spur positive inflation. Jesus, this gets complicated. But it's nonetheless real. So now Japan shows us, [ __ ] you don't want to just like socialism this and say, get a job here. You're going to keep your job forever. You want growth so that an employee is like, hey, I'm a big part of the reason that this is growing. If you don't pay me what I'm worth, I know you can't go to another country. I know that because you listen to Tom and H1B visas now are more expensive. And so if you try to import foreign talent, you're going to pay a premium for that. And so now I know it's all eyes on us. You're trying to make sure that we're getting educated so that we come out of uh training, whether that's a technical degree or a traditional college degree that we're coming out this insanely educated populace. And now we're extremely valuable to you and we can go to the next company because you guys have stopped all this regulatory um burden [ __ ] so that people can use regulatory capture to stop innovation, to stop competition. So now all kinds of companies are popping up and I can leave at a moment's notice and I'm very good at my job. Okay, globalism plus that that's putting deglobalization, excuse me, plus that huge. Then if people want to put I'm not a fan, but if people want to put unions back on the table, awesome. Cool. Now we're empowering the worker. But empowering the worker is the mechanism. Punitive taxes do the opposite. With me? I see the same problem. I feel your pain. Dismpempowering the worker is a [ __ ] like speedrun of civilizational suicide. What the [ __ ] are we doing? It's so stupid. I'm just saying that the tax on a billionaire's wealth, remember, we're talking wealth, not income. Taxing a billionaire's wealth, does not empower the worker. Now, I don't even need you to believe me that it disempowers the worker, but I think it does. I think there's plenty of evidence there, but it certainly doesn't empower the worker. So, we've got to be saying, what do we have to do to empower the worker? Okay. So, seen, heard, felt, and if I take out all of my like [ __ ] tone and I just say that clocks back to the economy is complicated. It's not self-evident what the mechanism is. But you can always track it back to a mechanism instead of just going to [ __ ] those kids, right? So, if we stick with the mechanism, this will get a lot easier. Okay. Uh there was another mechanism that they brought up that I had not talked about or did you find another one?
The productivity and the percentage of tax from social.
Okay. So uh percentage looking at um what do we want to do in order to make sure that we can take care of people when we look at um contributions we will often get ourselves in a crazy twist over what is the percentage. Now, I don't see a lot of positive reaction whenever I say this, but if people said they just wanted to charge a flat percentage and like let's say it's 20% across the board. You make a dollar, we take 20 cents, you make 20 billion in income, by the way, not worth, but income 20%. Cool. No problem. Like, I totally get a world where we want to do that. Now, there's probably complications there because every time I bring this up, people everywhere hate this idea. But at least there's nowhere to run. There's nowhere to hide. There's no way to get out of it. And as somebody who has been approached by my tax team many times, been like, "Hey, there are more sophisticated things that we could do." And I have assued doing that. I'm not trying to hide from my taxes. Let's pay taxes. I've paid an obscene amount of money in taxes. Okay. So, percentage, I'm on board with it. Um, and when you do it across everybody, you at least have a um mechanism that stops people who aren't paying taxes at all or pay very little from trying to weaponize taxes in a punitive measure. Okay. The other beat of this is we're seeing that throwing money at a problem doesn't solve it. So, in the last 10 years, remember the US government budget has almost doubled in 10 years. That's crazy. But things haven't gotten better, they've gotten worse. So, how people don't look at that one stat and go, "Okay, cool. Nice idea, but it doesn't work." Um, I I'm shocked every time. Throwing money at the problem doesn't solve it. You can also look at the Department of Education. Uh, we spend more than anybody on planet Earth on our students. And yet, we're middle of the pack in terms of results. And by the way, the results have been stubbornly flat. So, no matter how much additional money we throw at it, it doesn't actually solve the problem. And guys, we have a fraud problem. a massive fraud problem. So the more money that you pump into the system, the more likely there is to be leeches unfortunately that will innovate, if you want to use that word against me, that will innovate in terms of fraud and they'll get more and more clever. So again, throwing money at the problem doesn't solve it. Being disciplined with your dollars always a good idea no matter how much money you have. Uh so be disciplined, be focused about where you spend your money and insist on results which we are not doing. So, uh, if people wanted to put forward something that said, "I really want to see everybody pay the same percentage," I would totally get that. Simplify the tax code, which is the very loopholes that people use. When you create a complicated tax code, you make it possible for people with a lot of money to hire the smartest people on planet Earth to both lobby the government and find very clever ways. So, I'm just saying it it mechanistically it doesn't work. We've had a top tax percentage of 91% post World War II. And by the way, World War II is a phenomenal example of how we get out from under massive debts. Um, and the great irony is the way that we did it. So, we had a top tax rate of 91%. But that wasn't positive. Remember, we collect more per taxpayer now by a lot than we did back then. Why? Because of growth. How did we get out of the [ __ ] show that was post World War II? We grew faster than we stole from people. So, we were stealing like crazy. We used something called financial repression. Okay. We we intentionally used the central bank to hold interest rates below inflation. Okay. Devastating. Devastating. We're about to do the same thing now. By the way, uh the problem is back then we had more economic growth due to what? Drum roll please. Innovation. Okay. We innovated our way. We grew our way out of World War II even though we were using financial repression to make the debt to GDP drop. But it required that the growth go up up up up up. Okay? And we hadn't globalized yet. So the American worker was powerful as [ __ ] Okay? So super empowered worker. Yes, they were being financially oppressed which is brutal. But the government was growing even faster than that. So, the average person felt great because their um the amount that they were making in real terms, like real I can buy more [ __ ] was going up. Okay, everyone feels good after World War I, everyone feels terribly now because we've we've let regulatory burdens and all that stuff, money and politics just completely disempower the average worker. Okay, that's a real thing. You guys should be mad as hell about that. But you've got to deal with it at a framework level because the taxes at 91% didn't work back then. They're not going to work now. That's that it's growth. Okay? It's growth. You've got to grow the economy. Taxes slow the economy. Look at Europe. If you don't believe me, look at Europe. Europe. Now, I can't believe this is true, but it is. In fact, I think I pulled the stat. You can pull it up. Europe right now, the median European is making less than the bottom 20% of Americans. Okay, the median means 50% of the actual humans. Okay, 50% of Europeans are tied or below the bottom 20% of Americans. So, I get how mad you guys are. I get it.
Plenty of abuse. However, taxing slows the economy. It doesn't grow. So if we want to look at our historical example of how the [ __ ] do we get out of this ridiculous position, it is to get growth happening again, which is going to be a lighter tax burden in the right places. It's going to be tightening your spending. That's hugely, hugely important. And obviously innovation, innovation, innovation while empowering workers by del globalizing making sure that companies have an incentive to build here that we can't import cheap labor at the low end or the high end with cheap H-1B visas. I think we still want to be a country that attracts the best and the brightest and most entrepreneurial from the world over because for every successful entrepreneur that you bring into the US, they're going to employ, you know, a lot of people compared to them. And so there you want to force it to be at a premium though so that you're never choosing it over an American that could have gotten that job.
Okay,
I got one more. Um, right now we incentivize people to grow and hoard wealth. We don't incentivize people to grow their income.
The more you in the more you raise your income, the higher your wealth tax rate, the more you invest, the lower your tax rate.
Okay, so now we're back on to uh we've got a mechanism. I think this is really powerful to look at. So, um I think people may have a distorted view of how much tax wealthy people pay. So, I know that there is a um there is a loophole that says I can borrow money against my assets and then when I die, I'm not going to pay it back. I'm just going to pay the interest. When I die, my kids get a step up in basis. And let me know how much depth people want to explain this, but they get a step up in basis. So that money is effectively never taxed quote unquote appropriately. Now, couple things on that. One, I think there's a very significant argument to be made that says um you're taxing things that were purchased with money that was already taxed if it's um anything essentially other than a company that was built from the ground up. And there's a very simple way to close that loophole in my opinion, which is you do something like the following. Uh, hey, if it was an asset that you bought with post tax dollars, cool. Then step up in basis, all the normal stuff, that works just fine because you're handing something down to your kids that's already been taxed. But if you built something and you're now, you know, you're one of the founders of Google and you've got this insane gap, you borrowed, you got to spend all that money and now with the step up in basis, basically the loan is wiped out. Nobody has to repay this one second. So what you end up doing is there you say that should be taxed normal um capital gains. So we're going to treat it as if they were transferred the moment before this person died and so you're going to pay cap gains on that. So just like it would have been paid otherwise. You get the tax that you would have gotten. So that to me is perfect. All right.
I think you you derailed a little bit from that. I'm talking more so the Scott Galloway argument where a lawyer who makes $300,000 is taxed at 50% but a tech bro who gets 2 million in stock um payment doesn't get taxed at all. He could borrow against that stock payment. It doesn't hit he could borrow 100k against that stock payment um pay it back a year later with the increase in stocks uh um with the increase in growth from that stock. Whereas this person their real income on that 300k they get 150 that hits their bank account. So I I literally in that example I don't see the problem at all. If that person paid back their loan,
the increase in value, you're saying we don't want people to be advantage.
You're saying that right now this person is is growing wealth tax-free. The Steve Jobs method,
they are because you're getting paid in stocks.
They're not. That that's completely illogical. So when you sell a share
before you sell though, I'm saying before you get to the sell,
but I just gave you how to close that loophole. So, first of all, I don't I don't even think people use that loophole. Debt is so dangerous,
but it's the loophole that you just gave me is a step up basis as if I'm passing it down to my kids. You're talking about people who are who already have retired. You're talking about the Bill Gates and them. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about actual tech bros now who get paid.
This is a misunderstanding of how tax works. So, if if I found a company, I know because I've done it. If you found a company, then your uh your starting point is zero, right? Because you the company was worth nothing. you created it and so your wealth all of it is taxed at whatever cap gains tax is. Now when you're talking about when you pass it on to your kids
I'm not I'm talking about employee number three at at Facebook.
Understood. Let me just walk through the whole thing. When you're talking about passing it on to your kids, they then get the tax as if whatever the worth is today. So if it's $300 or $3,000 or whatever, then they're only going to get taxed from that point moving forward. So that gap from 0 to 3,000 or whatever, that's people's beef. So now let's say
that's not the beef that
bear with me. I'm getting there. If if you don't understand all of these beats, you're going to forever be lost. Got it?
So now your employee number three, whatever. They still only get So let's say founders at zero. The employee gets at what's it at? $12 a share. Let's just say it's headed towards 3,000, but their clock starts at $12 because that's where it was when they started. Now 12 to 3,000 they're going to get taxed on cap gains.
So the only beef is the 0 to 12.
What's the cap gains percent?
Uh it's probably in the neighborhood of 20 to 24%. So
okay. And then a lawyer and a doctor who are working 9 to5 to keep uh pedophiles in jail and to uh do heart surgery to keep people alive, they get taxed at 50%.
On income.
Yes.
So again the B
these are two totally different metrics. Okay. So if the emotion is my income is treated differently than cap gains, that's that's the flip. Income should be treated at a different rate than cap gain should be treated. And that's the beef. You just me lay out the beef.
Completely illogical. Perfect. Love it. Clear.
Uh labor is sacred and therefore should be taxed at the lowest rate possible. Um capital gains that's all [ __ ] That's fake news. So that should be taxed at the higher rate. Right? Have I understood the Okay, that is asinine. So that is somebody who does not like you. I lost you back at innovation is the sacred thing. And so if I've lost you at innovation is a sacred thing, [ __ ] like move to Venezuela and watch the building collapse around you during the earthquake because there's no innovation. Have fun. So I if you believe that prosperity just comes out of thin air that um the kind of tensil strength steel that's needed to keep buildings from falling or the wheels that they put buildings on in Japan that allow it to sway without breaking. If you think that all just [ __ ] happens and doesn't happen only because there is somebody who took a huge [ __ ] risk at some point, poured their life energy into innovating, taking big capital risks, etc., etc. Uh yeah, then then we would have to go back to like that initial framework because if you don't believe that somebody taking that risk with their time, capital, energy, all of that, um we don't want to incentivize that then [ __ ] like now really all hope is lost.
Um I would like to play this tale about the me the parable of the Mexican fisherman and I think we might need to have an update of our perspective on life.
Have you ever heard the parable of the Mexican fisherman? Have you heard this?
I don't know. Okay. An American investment banker was at a small pier on a small coastal town village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat was several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them. The Mexican replied, "Only a little while." The American then asked, "Why didn't you stay out longer and catch more fish?" Mexican said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs. The American then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?" The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, Maria, and stroll into the village every evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life." The American scoffed. "I have an MBA from Harvard and can help you," he said. "You should spend more time fishing. With the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats and eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you could sell directly to the processor and eventually open up your own canery. you could control the product processing and distribution. He said, "Of course, you would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City and then Los Angeles and eventually to New York City while you will run your expanding enterprise." The Mexican fisherman asked, "But how long will all this take?" To which the American replied, "Oh, 15 to 20 years or so. But what then?" asked the Mexican. The American laughed and said, "That's the best part. When the time was right, you would announce an IPO. You could sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions, millions. Then what the Americans said? Then you could retire, move to a small coastal fishing village where you could sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife and swole to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play guitar with your amigos. Life is often simpler than we make. [laughter]
Yeah, dude.
That's so [ __ ] stupid. Okay. Uh, so let's walk through it. So here here are the mechanisms. Um, may may you all live in a country that has clawed and scrabbled its way out of poverty and being abused by stronger powers such that you may fish a little, siesta and hang with your amigos, that really is beautiful. And anybody that wants to um work a job and love their spouse and raise some kids and relax, dude, I love that. And I want everybody to live the life that they want to live. And I love that the human race has people in it that are wildly ambitious and strong and want to uh prosper more than most and they want to innovate and make something that people want so that they can uh have an easier life. And I love that so many people are like, I'm willing to suffer now so that my kids may have it easier. In fact, let's let's uh tell another Mexican parable. Shout out to the Mexican that finds his way to America and works in landscaping and builds a landscaping business and works his nuts off in ridiculous summer heat in Los Angeles uh to make sure that his kids get educated and that they're able to grow up in a prosperous America where their dreams really can come true because we have freedoms that the rest of the world doesn't know and if my kids want to siesta and play music with their friends, they're going to have that ability because I got us here and I worked hard to get us into a middle class life where that's possible. Shout out to all those [ __ ] that work like that. You guys truly I'm willing to fight for that. I love that. And if your kids, some percentage of them want the life of the um Mexican fisher, that's [ __ ] dope, man. and watch watch a season of alone and ask yourself how many people had to create new innovations in uh shelter and fishing to make it possible such that there was so much surplus that people could fish a little when they want play music with their friends have a siesta that's the glory of civilization and how far we have come the sad downside of how far we have come as a civilization is that we think the ability to fish a little and siesta and play music with our friends is a natural state of the world. It is not. The natural state of the world is starvation, freezing to death. Um, seeing your women raped by the neighboring village that comes to conquer you and take one of the only um assets that have mattered throughout human history, which is women's ability to bear children. So yeah, I it's both simultaneously beautiful that we've been as successful for as long as we have that people legitimately don't understand what the world really is and terrifying that the reason that history repeats is we become so successful that people forget that some percentage of people need to innovate. Some percentage of people need to make sure that we're protected from others. that the economy is exactly how a thriving economy is how we fought back against nature because we are able to inspire and incentivize the people that are ambitious. Not that everybody should want to be ambitious, but the people that are ambitious realize I don't have to steal my wealth. I can make something beautiful that people really want that they value more than the money that they've worked their asses off to gain and they want to buy this thing from me and that unlike hundreds of years ago where the only way to get wealthier was to conquer a nation and to take their stuff to steal it by force. Now the shest way to get wealthy is to invent something that is better than everything else that's out there that innovates and pushes the world forward and adds value. And that is how people can now get wealthy. But we've lost sight of it. And so people will listen to that [ __ ] stupid outofc context story as if that doesn't ride on the back of civilization pulling itself out of millennia, hundreds of thousands of years of pain, suffering, toil, rape, pillaging. It's [ __ ] wild. And so wherever you start the story is going to determine what you see. But the mechanisms underlying all of it are the human psyche. And the way that the human psyche works is people will expand until they hit a sufficient moral or physical force that stops them. And that's it. And so you let your society break down at your own peril.
All right, we got some super chats.
Yes, we do. First up comes from Marushia Dark. Instead of cash, do you think UBI looks more like here's your governmentissued tiny home complete with VR glasses, Optimus 3D printer, and Mac Mini agent to DIY all your remaining issues, plus a Whimo to the local Walmart and clinic. That's pretty dope. Uh, that's dystopian and very likely to hit a certain percentage of the population. Here's what I really think. The world's going to look distressingly similar to the way that it is now. It's just that the floor will have been raised and that is an unmitigated good and thank God. But the problem is once you don't have to think about uh food, shelter, entertainment, all of that, you're going to have to contend with meaning and purpose. Because meaning and purpose was evolution's way of making sure that you went out and fought for the group, willing to die for the group, willing to do whatever it took to get the fish and uh build the shelter and uh fight against the invading army. all of that and that algorithm still runs in the human brain even we don't you don't have to do any of that. And so there are still going to be some people that are ambitious. There are still going to be people that are jealous that somebody else has more than them. And because of that we will invent scarcity if we need to to still play status games. But there are some things that will make that obvious. So if you want to live in Manhattan or if you want uh to live in the Palisades, eventually it becomes this thing is unique and I can't replicate this down the road. I can only get it right here. And so then the question will be asked, well, who gets these things? And the answer will be something like some sort of currency. And so we'll be right back at we allow people to earn more of this thing that we make up called money. And then whoever has more of it, they can pay for that thing. Uh, and you're you're gonna be right back here. We've been raising the floor on what the bottom has to deal with. Think about it now. You can be homeless. You get a tent. Uh, people come by and give you clean needles. Like, it's [ __ ] wild. So, even a homeless person is way better off than people 10,000 years ago. So, you're in a safe and stable society. It's just it's wild. So, raising the floor, unfortunately, won't change the human psyche. Um, now will AI make breakthroughs that allow us to change the human psyche? Maybe. But until you change the human psyche, this is all going to look pretty familiar, just with a much better floor. Again, unmitigated good. Thank God. So excited. Can't wait. Uh, but nonetheless, people will still have to contend with other things. And one of the things that people will do is numb themselves out. So, could be drugs, could be VR, whatever, but they will numb themselves out. Marishia Dark says, "Previously, you told me that between truth and utility, to always choose truth because it's the highest utility. How does that square with you telling Drew last week to lie to Lynn if it's useful in producing better outcomes?
He will have to show me um the exact words that I said. Now I'm I have a feeling that I was being very loose with the word truth because truth can mean two different things. There is uh physics truth. There is my truth truth. uh much of what humans see as truth and by the way it's a very um useful way to think about the world that yeah we think these things are all true. Um so the United States Constitution is founded on a lie that we all accept as truth and it's very useful. For instance um we hold these truths to be self-evident. All men are created equal. Now, we know that that isn't true. So, you could say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa." It is true. It's We use the word created, not born very intentionally. They are created by God to be morally equal. Okay, cool. I love it. I love it because it works so well and it's given us America on the back of that. But that isn't physics truth. So physics truth is certain muscle fiber contracts harder than others, can move faster than others, and when the two of you meet on a battlefield, if you were equally trained, the person with the better muscle fiber is going to win. Uh, so that's physics truth. So that's where I'm sure I was just being a little bit sloppy with those two things and I will continue to do so in the future because Jesus Christ, having to walk people through that every time that I want to use the word truth. I Yeah. Anyway, so that's how you square it. I'm talking about when Drew and I were talking is something I find deeply uncomfortable. I hate that this is true, but he may be actually better if if his goal is for Lynn to thrive uh emotionally and economically moving forward in her life. he may be better off lying to her in a highly strategic fashion such that when she uncovers the truth, it feels like more depth on a true thing that he told her and not an outright fabrication so that he shown a spotlight on some things and not others. So when she discovers the other thing, she'll be like, "hm, dad really framed this. Uh, this is a far more complicated world than I was led to believe." And then you go, "Yeah, that's just the way life is." You give a kid what they're able to swallow and a vision of themselves in the world that they live in that's useful in helping them fall in love and raise families and do well in terms of a career and all those things. Um, and we don't do things that might be more accurate to just raw facts but spiral people out of control. Especially the humans just very humans have a very hard time parsing the full complexity of things. they are far more likely to at some point wrap it up into a narrative anyway. Uh, and oftentimes a narrative they wrap it up into, at least in the moment that we're living in. Uh, the narratives that people are wrapping things up into are self-destructive. So, in this particular moment in history, that would be why I would say Drew should at least explore that. Um, I find it uncomfortable enough that I can't just give a hardcore screed about it. Screed, screed, I'm not sure what the real word is there, but hopefully you know what I mean. Um, period. We'll stop there.
Delivery Boy says, "Sorry for the bad TV, but I need a One Piece update. Episode you're on. Favorite least favorite character and arc so far. Sub or dub? Love your show. Keep it up."
Uh, the episode is going to be roughly like 760, I think, somewhere in there. So, I'm [ __ ] deep. Uh, favorite arc is Enis Lobby. How could anybody have another favorite arc than that? Uh, especially when you get Water Town followed by Enis Lobby. Those two back toback are just beyond uh emotionally powerful. I'm really really incredible what make One Piece one of the greatest pieces of IP ever. Uh Marine Ford is good, but I can't believe that people prefer that. Like that's wild to me. Uh so period.
What about character?
Character.
Uh so Usopp I think is the best character. Uh Usopp represents that courage is not the absence of fear. It is moving forward in the face of fear. Uh, so yeah, I I spotted him early on as being I think this is going to be my guy and he has continued to be my favorite. I mean, he's like the core of Water 7. Uh, echoing into Enis Lab. Yeah, it's all amazing.
Uh, I'm on Arabasta right now.
Let's go. Alabasta's early days, man. Enjoy it. It's a great ride.
Subra dubs.
Oh, yeah.
Subdub.
Sorry, you guys are doing a good job of cataloging the nested questions. Uh, I am all about dubs. So, um, I don't understand why people, look, I get it. The performance of the Japanese feels like music and so they're very like emotionally all over the place, but you have to read. You can't intake the visual imagery as strong as you can if you're just watching. So, for me, it's like crazy that people will when they have a choice that they would do uh subtitles. That's wild. So, if I don't have a choice, I'll do subtitles, but if I do, dubs. I'm sub usually first watch and then I flip it when I come back is usually how I do it because then I'm getting two experiences. But
wow, there's two people. There's too much anime out there to do twice. I just can't fathom.
Uh, next up, Superman says, "Japanese was similar to Iran during World War II. They would negotiate, but had to own actions of their troops. They could be saying the correct things in the room, but don't have a centralized control over their forces." Just a thought. Yeah, I hate that thought because the way that we solved that issue was nuclear weapons. So, let's hope we don't find ourselves in some stupid ass position like that.
Daniel Wards says, "Tom, what are the chances this had something to do with installing a central bank?"
It it it is 100%. It you can't do this without a central bank. I so want people to internalize that. Uh this is a mechanism. The only way to create the wealth pump that makes billionaires billionaires to get to get that upward spiral um you have to have a central bank. It it it isn't mechanistically possible without a central bank. I just can't stress that enough.
Uh MAD GP45s says wage equals show up. Capital gains equals invest risk and bismakers. We reward people that take risks and makers. Fisherman's story is selfish. He didn't help or build for others. My Mexican uncle started the B2B, wholesale biz, and a store from nothing.
I I agree with all of that. The only thing I will say is don't [ __ ] on a worker who wants to do their thing, add value, and is willing to accept that they're not going to make as much money. Um, I it's it's a beautiful existence. Are they riding on the shoulders of all the giants and all the sacrifices that came before them? Of course they are. But at the same time, man, like to just want to be Sparta forever is not interesting. So we need to be in like this banded reality. I don't want everybody to have to live a Spartan life such that even when wealth is available that you're seemingly not fighting for everybody. Everybody has to be on the wall. Everybody has to be as hard as you. Like that that's not interesting. Let the people that want to be hard, let the people that want to innovate, let them do that and celebrate them and be grateful for them. When you see somebody in the military, thank them for their service. I thank parents for their service. I am so grateful to people that raise kids well. Uh so listen, you should want a society where things are better for the next generation, but you should also demand of your society that you can't get that soft. Like from a what do we celebrate perspective like you've got to celebrate the people that go hard. And right now we are vilifying people that go hard. Now remember, part of why we end up vilifying them is we have allowed the economy to be weaponized against us by who? By politicians and bankers. Okay, that's how this is all weaponized against you. The billionaire class then leverages politicians and the upward spiral of a system that was broken by people voting for free [ __ ] electing politicians that will give them free [ __ ] and then a central bank that's like, "Don't worry, fam. We got you. We're just going to print money if we need to to keep things humming." And the bad news is it really works. It really works. Remember, central banks are a trade-off. They're not pure evil. If the human mind were such that we could go steal a little but not too much, we'd be just fine. The problem is we get to the point where politicians are like, "No, no, no. We're not having a recession on my watch." So 2008 comes, we're like, "Nope. We are going to print our way out of this." And COVID comes and we can maintain lunatic lockdowns because we're just like, "No, no, no, all good. We'll just print the money." what we should have done. You have to let people who put capital at risk, you have to let them lose their money. You have to otherwise the system never clears the dead brush and you get a California forest fire uh which is inflation. And I know people like to think that inflation is no big deal, but in the last six years, you've had 30% inflation. That means if you had $100, you now have 70. I know it doesn't look like that in your bank, but that's the effect in terms of what you can purchase. It's insane. That's six years. Six.
Jaywalk 92 says, "Wealth is Schrodinger's money. Cash is the cat. Stock markets and assets in the box. And wealth is the probability of that cat being alive. Value up or dead, value down. Selling is opening the box."
Wow. I like that. That's bang on. That's really interesting. The problem is you poison the cat no matter what because opening the box by its very nature is poisonous. That's the bad news. So you always hope that people do it very little at a time. But that's volatility in the market. When a bunch of people sell, price drops. Then people go, "Oh, no. I think this is valuable. These guys are fools to sell." And they buy and the price goes back up. So uh yeah, you don't want coordinated selling like you will get with a wealth tax. All right, we got to jump over to Europe because everybody's dying because it's so hot outside.
This is crazy.
There's more heat thefts than there are gun deaths in America. And I just thought that that was a fascinating stat and we should talk about that. Um, but here are the stats as it is as it stands right now from the last week 24th to the 26th of 2026. 1450 people in Paris, not 620 in London, 520 in Milan, 340 in Barcelona, 310 in Berlin, and the numbers keep going on. Um, there's a lot of different speculation about this, saying it's coming from their China, their climate policy. There's videos of China trolling them, putting AC in pig pens and things like that while people are literally dying in the streets of Europe because it's too hot.
Yeah,
China is literally trolling Europe, guys. Footage of pigs with AC in their pens uh being spread all over the internet as thousands die in another heat wave that is sweeping the European continent. Europe looks like lunatics to me. I th this this is so dumb and so crazy. What they should be doing is responding to the persistent heat waves that they've been experiencing uh in recent years. They should be responding by deregulating. Uh they should open up modern nuclear energy sites. They should be encouraging people to install life saving AC units. Okay, you could you could literally save lives just by installing ACU units. But instead, they're banging the global warming narrative harder and harder. They're admonishing people for just wanting AC, even though people are dying, for not having them. And they're telling families, this is a real story. They're telling families with members in the hospital to bring ice packs from home to help stabilize that person after surgery. Now, if you told me that this was somewhere in rural Africa, I might be like, "All right, well, [ __ ] I mean, you do what you can. If you've got a freezer and ice packs, [ __ ] bring them." But the reality is that they have done this to themselves. I understand the impulse. The climate is changing. Okay? Whether we're doing it or not, the climate is changing. So now the question becomes, how do you respond to it? So if I can get you all to just assume for a second, climate change is real. Okay? The answer is was and always will be. The way that you solve that is through innovation. It's not draconian regulations. It's never meant to it's never going to be that. Right? So if you've got draconian regulations that are trying to force people to live their lives like it's a hundred years ago, that is dumb by its very definition. Get those politicians out immediately. This is so [ __ ] crazy. You should be asking who benefits from this kind of policy because it is pure madness. Now, if it's hotter now because either we did it or just the world changes. This is what happens to the climate. It just moves. It doesn't matter whether we cause it or not. If it's hotter now, it's hotter now. What do you do about it? Now, the WHO is saying that more than 1300 excess deaths have been recorded across Europe just since June 21st. Okay. You need immediate intervention if that's true. Now, it's AC is a 100-year-old technology. It should already be widespread across Europe. And when I talk about regulatory capture, this is the kind of thing that I'm talking about. These are regulations brought to you by a stupid idea because again, if we're causing the problem, we have to innovate our way out of it. Because if you haven't seen the graphs, like Europe is like this in terms of like what they're doing on a CO2 emissions perspective, China is like this. The the discrepancy is so massive. No matter what Europe does, it isn't going to matter. So now the question becomes, are we just going to let people die? And so far Europe's answer is yes. They're actually stopping people from putting AC units in, which is absolute insanity. Partly because they don't have the energy to support it because in places like Germany, they've been taking nuclear energy offline, which is one of the great tragedies of the modern world. They are literally moving backwards from an innovation standpoint. Right now, France's public health agency alone has reported a thousand excess deaths just on its own since June 24th. Okay, most of these people are over 65. So now the question becomes when you have a solution like AC that's so obvious. Is the refusal to do anything about it because they actually want old people to die to free up tax dollars? Is this never let a good crisis go to waste? Or do they hope that by forcing people to stew in the heat that they'll finally accept more draconian regulations? Because look, see, we really are making the planet warmer. And by the way, if you want to say that, see, we really are making the planet warmer, just look at the math and go, Europe could literally just stop emitting anything. And given the trajectory that China's on, whatever I if we are the ones driving this, China will just keep driving it anyway. So you're not going to stop it, but you are going to cause people to die. So if you're in a situation where it's like, okay, it is hot now, regardless of what caused it, is there anything that we can do? Can we innovate our way out of this? One, we have a technology that allows us to immediately address the problem of people not dying, of being able to cool hospitals, being able to cool homes, but also we have nuclear, modern nuclear facilities that we could be spinning up, which the US is doing now. Germany should bring their old ones back online and put new ones in place. So, we should be leaning into that. And then also, what are you guys doing to incentivize breakthroughs in solar? So, there's more energy falling on the earth in like a day than we need all year. It's crazy. The gap is so massive. So, focus on getting that energy captured in an efficient manner. And by the way, guess who's leading the biggest breakthroughs in this? Now, I hope that the answer is obvious. China. So, China is like, "Listen, we're going to [ __ ] run hot. We're just going to pump CO2 as fast as we can into the atmosphere, but we get it. We don't want to do this forever. So, we're going to leverage the uh financial winds here to make sure that we can incentivize breakthroughs in solar. And so, nobody is adopting solar faster than China." So wait everybody, you've got one country that's like, "Yes, we're we're going to pump a lot into the atmosphere for now." But we do recognize the problem or at least that it's way too risky to keep doing this. And so we're going to focus on innovation. Europe should be doing the same. America should be doing the same innovation. This is one of those I you guys are going to start memeing me. But the reality is the the just core foundational fact of life is that innovation is the holy grail. It is the thing that allows you to overcome the problems. Even when those problems are a thing that we created, you can innovate your way out of that problem. And that's why when you look at the trajectory of the world, there are moments where we dip down. But when you look at the trajectory of the world, life just keeps getting better. Life expectancy gets longer. Wealth gets more extreme. We pull more people out of poverty. Less people die young. I mean it is just a neverending string of improvement. And now all of a sudden things have been so good for so long that the places for whom it got good first, those people now have lost faith in themselves and are running civilizational suicide. But the people that have lag behind are like, "All right, well, [ __ ] you guys. We're gonna innovate and we're just going to do the thing that you're unwilling to do, which is pump CO2, get better, innovate, move into the next region." and they'll be more than happy to run the globe. And I literally, by the way, this is so crazy. There was a woman I pulled the link. There was a woman who said, um, she is, God, is she French. She's, anyway, a woman feminist who said, um, I she's French.
German.
German. Thank you. Uh, German woman who said, and I quote, "My bloodline ends with me. I would take all immigrants and all refugees in because we ruined the world." So she is saying that basically white people should stop existing. That's so crazy. That's so crazy. Uh so but that's where some people are at that because Europe for very complex and utterly fascinating reasons. They got out of the gate in the modern era faster than other people were able to uh colonize and do all that [ __ ] They're now going to get colonized by people who came in the game late and who will now leaprog. It is wild how this sequence plays out, man. It is wild. So anyway, I don't know that we can escape it. The human mind is what the human mind is, but the answer is always going to be the same. Uh focus on innovation. Um focus on getting better, improving, set your sights on an outcome that you want and then go for it. And if your outcome is that you want less deaths across Europe, you're going to have to put AC in. You're going to have to put energy in place to do so, innovating all the while. And if you want to solve the CO2 problem, it is not asking people to move back in time to make life worse. It is to instead innovate in things like solar. Um, okay. We are rounding the corner of this busy news day. I feel like we've been talking about a lot of different things. This has been my favorite story so far. I've been secretly been waiting to talk about this and all this other stuff was just the precursor. Mexican Batman is out here
and he's saving the day. He's capturing thieves. I want to play this video game. Um, Ubisoft, EA, I don't know who has the Batman rights. We need to do this immediately. Um, and one of the alternative suits should be a Mexican flag. That's my hill to die on. I get to sit down.
I like where your head's at.
U, but yes, a citizen vigilante in Mexico is now capturing thieves and criminals across Mexico and duct taping them to poles, but notes that they were caught stealing bikes and motorcycles. Uh, this is like legit. Like there's like six or seven examples of people duct tape. This [laughter] is incredible.
Duct tape to the pole. But is vigilant the problem? Do we need to start taking crime into our own hands, Tom, and taking ownership of our communities? Is that's what needs to happen,
man? This is one of those where the answer is obviously no. But if people are going to refuse to do the thing that actually needs to be done, which is to get a government that prioritizes law and order, then the fact that you will hit a point where people start doing this is the only reasonable response, that is going to happen. So, if uh mom and dad are not going to protect you, then the kids are going to have to protect themselves. So, that's where we're at here. Now, that's not me condoning vigilanteism, but that that is me condoning you've got to stand your ground at some point. So, um yeah, man. Like, this is just a reality, boys and girls. You cannot let people uh just take over. You can't do it. Now, the first appeal should be to your government to say, "Listen, law and order, safety is priority number one. If you're not going to do what it takes to keep us safe, then we're going to get you out of office. If corruption makes it impossible to get people out of office, then protecting your own. And what I like about this is literally this is somebody using a Batmanike approach. If you don't know Batman, uh he refuses to kill. So Batman is always trying to do things with the least amount of force necessary. So the fact that this guy is somehow getting these people duct taped to a pole is [ __ ] incredible. Uh, so I'm very sad that we find ourselves in a situation where this is necessary, but I love that people are doing it in a uh minimum force necessary type way. It's rad. Shout out to those guys.
Wild. And then RFK and Dr. Oz had a press conference yesterday where they were talking about shady insurance agents and bad actors who are enrolling unsuspecting Americans in health plans they never signed up for. So they have been using people signing up people without social security numbers and zero premiums just so that way the people who are signed up don't know that they're signed up. They don't get a bill or anything and these people are then going to the government expecting a payout. Um another side of fraud in the government.
Yeah. The fraud in America right now is so rampant that asking for more tax dollars is patently absurd. Stop the fraud. Reduce spending. then we can actually assess whether we have an actual shortfall where we want to make sure that people don't fall below a certain line and as a society we're all going to agree to pay for it. But when you're funding the uh NGO networks guys right now NOS have 14 trillion dollar in US taxpayer money that they've managed to hoard. That is the most insane [ __ ] ever. If you want to talk about don't fund foreign [ __ ] stop spending 14 trillion dollars via NOS's, that is so [ __ ] crazy. And if you don't think that a lot of that is coming from fraud, you are out of your minds. You don't aggregate $14 trillion just by being like, hey, we're a good cause and really doing a thing. I don't even think people argue that. We were talking about this with Haiti. something like 2% of the NGO dollars that were meant to actually end up to improve the lives of Haitians actually made it to them. 98% leaked out into what I will clock as the overp production of elites. All of the administration fees, all of the [ __ ] fundraising parties and [ __ ] that they use that money to throw. It is wild. You are funding the lifestyle of the [ __ ] American elites and elites in other countries all saying like we're actually going to go help these people. It's not helping. You can look at what have decades of money going into Africa actually bought you. Certainly not African prosperity. So this [ __ ] is crazy. This is crazy. Fraud is rampant. We've really got to tamp this down. And the fact that places like California are passing legislation to make it harder to detect fraud that is so unhinged. It's so unhinged. But hey, shout out to the the radical left. The radical left has done such a good job. I had I had a crisis this weekend because I realized that the propaganda around billionaires are the problem has been so effective. So effective that people aren't even asking about the fraud. They're not even asking about how much money the government has added to the budget in the last 10 years. It's almost double. No, nobody's freaking out about that. So crazy. It's so crazy. No, remember your daily PSA. You could tax billionaires at 100% of their wealth. So they literally now have $0 and zero cents anywhere, nothing hidden. You could tax them at a 100% of their wealth. And if current trends continue, you will spend $158 for every dollar that you steal from them. It is your spending that guarantees you will be in this hole for ever. You must in in no uncertain terms there is no mechanistic way out of this hole other than to reduce your spending habits. There is no mechanistic way out of this hole without reducing your spending. There's no way. It's not possible. So, uh that's where this is just maddening. Maddening. Um, and Thomas Massie flipped the script on a Fox News digital reporter. This whole exchange was just hilarious to me.
Clear up the stuff your uh ex is saying about you with the NDA that you pressured her to sign an NDA for wrongful termination. What is that true? What she's saying about you?
Who are you with
Fox Digital?
Uh, it's all false.
And what she said about you and Bober having a intimate relationship
if you're looking at your screen.
False.
Watch. Watch what he's doing with his phone. is out there saying it was because of the primary ahead of the primary. What do you think is motivating it?
When did you all become a tabloid? Seriously,
he's going to start looking at his phone.
No, is he bored?
Thought I would give you a chance to respond.
Is he moving on? Is he checking his text messages?
That's all.
Or is he doing something else?
But anything you could say.
So, let me ask you. I heard that you filming porn.
Is that true? Carsman, I'm not I just want to give your chance your your side.
Giving you a chance to give me your side. I'm not going to get into Are you a real news organization or not?
No. Come on.
I can't believe this worked.
All you got to say is you don't like it that you haven't been to those websites.
Of course I of course I don't like it.
Really?
I really can't believe this worked, man. How does this guy crumble that fast? Like at least have a sense of humor about it and be like, "I love gay porn the most or whatever." Like, dude, that's so crazy. And he's like, "Walk."
Dude, mad respect to Massie for this. Mad respect. I love this so much.
That's very impressive. I just really can't believe that guy folded that fast. But that was incredible.
Last room on life, man. Thomas.
But here's the thing. It Yes. By the way, it shows you that uh that's exactly what these guys are doing. They ask you a question to which there's no good answer because you accept the frame. Once you accept the frame, then they've got you. And so all Thomas Massie had to do was randomly He doesn't know this guy. He just had to say something that he knows will be socially uncomfortable. Uh uh do you deny that you like gay porn? That's so wild. I can't believe that works. That's really crazy. And just shut it down. That's crazy.
Is there something to Cuz TMZ recently got into politics and people were all up in arms about like how T is he covering politics that's like nasty. But our 24-hour news cycle, our media landscape, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, all of them, they have dipped into this personal tabloides news. Um, do you think that there should be, and this is a alt question, I know, but do you think there should be a separation of like we only talk about politics and the actual policies versus personal attacks, smear attacks, and things like that?
Uh, yes. I think people um should stop immediately with ad homonym attacks and lay out the mechanisms of the things that they're bothered by. But we're never going to do that.
We're certainly not going to do it in a populist moment because from a populism perspective, the follower, the aderant is coming to you and saying, "Make me feel the way I want to feel."
And the way that you make them feel the way you want to feel is by pointing out that the other person is bad. They're less than. They're a cret and a creature, whatever, and they need to be stamped out. That's how you make them feel what they want to feel. So, um, expect a lot more of it. And because humans reason emotionally, like deep down at our foundation, like it's so hard to pull people up into the neoortex and get them to go, "Okay, I'm going to set my feelings aside for a second and I'm going to reason through this um with actual chains of logic. It It's just It doesn't work, man. It doesn't work. not not at the level that it works to repeat uh adnauseium, uh billionaires are evil, tax the wealthy, make them pay their fair share, freeze the rent, um dignity of workers, like all of those things are way easier because they're way more emotionally powerful than um the actual like, hey, let's talk through what how does this actually work at a mechanistic level. It's so wild. It it is one of the things that I think caused the vacasillation between um the reason that governments exist an empire specifically exists for somewhere between 150 to 250 years and how crazy we're going through this literally on our 250 year birthday uh is because that's roughly the period of time that it takes for the what once was really good like really hardcore people are like we have to be disciplined and [ __ ] you we're going to be Sparta and they Spartan their way to success. And then some people, you get sort of the houseion days of like post World War II, we just did the really hard thing. We're super disciplined. We're very patriotic. Everybody's doing the thing for the country. Uh and we've got massive growth because we still have these hardcore [ __ ] that have come home from the war and they really want to build something and build build grow becomes like the, you know, the cry of the day. Families are strong. Like, you know, it's all about that. The government's doing its best to get small again. like it's just [ __ ] golden times. But then what ends up happening is you start abusing it and you just like, well, if a little bit of debt's good, then a whole lot of debt must be great. If a little bit of a handout's wonderful, then a whole lot of handouts must be wonderful or even more wonderful. And it just spirals into madness. And then you get where we are now, which is just total lunacy of more free things, more money printing, debt, debt, debt. There's never going to be a problem. Anybody that tells you we've got to be disciplined is an [ __ ] Uh they're just being greedy. and you implode and then you'll bounce back and you go through the hard times again and then you get the Spartans again and the whole cycle repeats.
Faxo. That's all I got.
All right, boys and girls, thank you so much for joining us. Do we have any final super chats? We good? Okay, so Koshi, we love you. Thank you so much for supporting us. There's a QR code on your screen right now. You can trade $10 to get $10 by using code impact. And we have an ITU AI master class coming up Thursday, July 9th at 1 p.m. Pacific. So, make sure that you sign up. It's a free class, free as the day is long, and I'm going to show you how to launch your company using AI. Sign up is in the description. All right, guys. We'll see you Wednesday. Have a great day. Love you. Bye.
