0:02 - Introduction to Philosophy
8:49 - Wealth and the Poor
9:37 - Expectations of the Poor
11:58 - The Reality of Poverty
21:07 - A Call for Gratitude
22:26 - Compassion Exhaustion
24:07 - Historical Context of Poverty
32:50 - Exhaustion with the Current State
43:07 - Multimedia Documentation of Society
46:51 - The Philosophy of Helping the Poor
57:35 - Personal Stories of Hardship
58:30 - Covering Up the Past
1:00:55 - The FBI and My Concerns
1:02:07 - Life Beyond the Threats
1:15:46 - The Cost of Eating Healthy
1:24:14 - Time vs. Money in Food Choices
1:28:52 - Value in the Workplace
1:36:45 - Leverage and Productivity at Work
1:40:41 - Homeschooling Insights
1:43:45 - Honesty About Poverty
In this episode, I delve into the complexities of societal views on poverty, dissecting the narrative that surrounds the plight of the poor. Drawing inspiration from personal experiences and historical contexts, I challenge commonly held beliefs about wealth redistribution and the effectiveness of governmental assistance programs like Universal Basic Income (UBI). Highlighting anecdotes from my time working in northern Ontario and encounters with the native population, I paint a vivid picture of the repercussions of ineffectual welfare systems and questions about long-term benefits.
The discourse shifts towards the philosophical underpinnings of poverty and individual responsibility. I articulate the idea that charitable efforts over the decades have not translated into improved outcomes for the poor, raising the question of whether continued financial support is genuinely beneficial or merely perpetuates a cycle of dependency. Citing statistics on the immense resources funneled into welfare systems, I argue that despite these efforts, poverty remains persistent and often worsens due to the decisions and lifestyles adopted by individuals within these communities.
The conversation further evolves into a critique of societal attitudes toward the poor, often romanticizing their struggles while neglecting the agency of individuals in making life choices. I emphasize the importance of self-improvement through education and stability, outlining the three crucial steps that can significantly mitigate poverty: finishing high school, delaying parenthood until after marriage, and maintaining steady employment for at least a year. Each point serves as a cornerstone of personal empowerment, dispelling the narrative that external circumstances are the sole determinants of one’s socioeconomic status.
As I field calls from listeners, the dialogue branches out to touch on various perspectives regarding the assistance provided to the poor, and the potential pitfalls of such support. The back-and-forth highlights the uncomfortable truth that sympathy and handouts do not equate to solutions, leading to a broader examination of how society’s efforts to help often result in unintended consequences. I advocate for holding individuals accountable for their decisions, urging listeners to recognize that charity should come with expectations of responsible behavior.
Towards the end, I engage with callers who bring forth personal narratives and questions about navigating societal expectations in the workplace, particularly regarding the influence of HR policies and the importance of value creation. I underscore that productivity and excellence must remain at the forefront of one's career, as they create leverage against the volatility often associated with the corporate landscape. I provide insights on building a strong work ethic, emphasizing the need to document accomplishments and communicate effectively with leadership.
This episode offers a compelling blend of philosophical musings, poignant anecdotes, and practical advice, all aimed at provoking thought and encouraging individual responsibility in the face of societal challenges. It aims to inspire listeners to rethink not only the narratives surrounding poverty but also their own roles within the frameworks of work and societal contribution.
[0:00] All righty, good evening, everybody.
[0:03] Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain at freedomain.com slash donate. Would super love your help in supporting philosophy, freedomain.com slash donate. And we are here to talk philosophy. My wife came back from a farmer's market and brought me a cup. For those of you, shamefully ignoring the glorious forehead and just listening, it says caution, no filter. Get it, get a coffee, and me, no filter, um, sometimes I wish I had one, glad that I don't at the moment, so, I'm happy, of course, to take your calls, overjoyed to take your calls, this is what the earbud is for, my friend, but, but, failing the earbud and the callers, I certainly do have a speech of my own to make, and I just forewarned is forearmed. It's going to be a little spicy, going to be a little bit spicy. All right. So just while I wait for the listener call cue to fuel up, I want to start with my little speech. Welcome to my little friend, called my esophagus. Um, right.
[1:22] So, uh, Toe Rogan was, uh, there was a quote where he was talking about, uh, UBI, UBI. And yes, let's ask the indigenous population of the, uh, United States and Canada how the old UBI is working out for them. Uh, for those of you who haven't heard this story, after high school, I worked for a year and a half up in northern Ontario, way northern Ontario, like where the tree line thins out, up north of Nikina. And one night I was coming back from town where I had a shower shite and shave, as we used to call it. And there was a woman about two o'clock in the morning, because I had been to the bar and chatted with some people. And I was driving back to the camp in the frozen woods, and there was a woman walking along the side of the road. And of course, I stopped my truck and asked her what the heck was going on. And it was a native woman, and she'd been in the back of a pickup truck with four other native guys. She refused to give them blowjobs, so they threw her out of the moving car.
[2:30] Of course, I took her to the hospital and all of that. She was really kind of messed up. Whenever we would go into town, I'd leave the bar, one o'clock in the morning, and there would be a lot of kids, like the native kids, running around the streets, even in the cold, with no pants on, maybe a thin t-shirt. It was crazy. Crazy stuff. UBI. So, you know, the AI, the robotics revolution, and everyone is like, but bro, what about the poor. What about the people? They're not going to have jobs. Okay. Well.
[3:06] Charity, I like. I give away my show for free. You don't have ads here. I don't have sponsors. So I'm pretty charitable with my time, effort, energy. Burn my reputation to the ground to bring a few scraps of essential truth to the planet as a whole. And I give what I do away. Give it away, give it away, give it away now. And I'm fine with that. I think that's the way it should be. What did Socrates do? He talked with the people about things that mattered. And he said, maybe you can buy me lunch. So that's sort of my business model. And you really can't do better than Socrates. So I'm following in his, I'm working in his footsteps. So the poor, every time there's an advancement in human society, people are like, whoa, man, stop. What about the poor? What about the poor, man? We gotta think of the poor. How are the poor gonna handle it? What about the poor? The poor. Okay, so you understand that over the last couple of decades, more money than has ever existed in all of human history has been poured down the endless gullets of the poor.
[4:16] We have given them many Earths times the resources that ever existed prior to, say, 50 years ago. Trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars has been handed over to the poor.
[4:39] Our future has been burnt to the fucking ground, into ashes because of the poor. We could be flying through the stars, bases on Mars, exploring the Oort cloud and mining the asteroids. We could have underwater cities. No! No, no, can't have any of that. Sorry, friends. The poor. You gotta worry about the poor. And I used to. I really, like, I grew up among the poor. I know the poor very well. I grew up among the poor in two different countries, in England and in Canada. I lived in England until I was 11, and then I lived in Canada after that, and we moved around a lot, and I have been, eyeball deep in the poor until I started to make a little bit of coin in my late 20s when I got into the business world.
[5:47] So, I used to have a lot of sympathy for the poor. I used to love the poor and the abstract. Oh, we just, we got all of the big giant ice cube tray building full of wealthy people. You know, in downtown Toronto, there's a building, I think it's by the Royal Bank. They literally have ground up glass and put it into the windows. It's got a nice golden sheen because you can't grind up Bitcoin that same way because then Michael Saylor will appear in your dreams and steal your soul. So you see a poor little guy living in a cardboard box under the giant vertical ice cube tray of a gold encrusted building. You're like, hey, man, we'll just take a little bit from the wealthy and we'll give it to the poor. The poor, man. Think of the poor. You want to have a car? Think of all the people whose jobs depend upon the horse and carriage and shoveling horse shit from here to eternity. Oh you want to actually rationalize the productivity of your agricultural land oh yeah think about the poor the enclosure movement they're going to get kicked out i think it's really tough the poor the poor man every time you want to do anything it's the poor, what don't you care now it's ai and robotics before there used to be these traveling theater troops. You can see them show up in Hamlet, of course, as a very key part of the plot.
[7:13] And then, of course, you got radio and then you got television. What's going to happen to all the traveling actors, man? What are they going to do? They're going to be poor. You got to have anything because they're poor.
[7:26] So we did. We took everything in society, every opportunity, every forward thrust in movement and motion just about every advancement, self-driving cars man what about the truckers they're going to be poor what about the poor, we all got to exist on a medieval technology because otherwise we're going to harm the poor, it's debate between Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald where F. Scott Fitzgerald said, the poor are different from you and I, said F. Scott Fitzgerald. I think it was him, one of the two. And Hemingway said, yeah, they've got more money. It's the poor. We can't do anything. What about the poor? Can't have robots. Can't have AI. Can't have space travel. For every pound of rocket fuel, you could feed the poor. The poor have been cock-blocking human technological, societal, and philosophical advancement since time immemorial. What did Jesus say? The poor will always be with us.
[8:49] So, we took about 50 planets, like looking at when Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto, right? Mid-19th century. We have taken about 50 planets worth of wealth from the 1850s and poured it into the mouth bellies and houses of the poor. A single woman with two kids on welfare in America makes the equivalent of well north of $100,000 in terms of benefits and free stuff. The poor.
[9:38] Now, my philosophy has been, since my early 20s, treat people the best you can the first time you meet them, and after that, treat them as they treat you. So I think it's time for us to have a look at the poor and say, well, how you all doing with 50 planets worth of wealth poured down your gullets and into your wallets? How you doing? How you doing? You know, there's a couple of things we'd like you to do. You know, those of us who are footing the bill as giant ass exploited, vampirically sucked, endless intergalactic void taxpayers, you know, just a couple of nice things we'd like you all to do. Because there's really only three things you need to do to not be the poor. One, finish high school. Not that fucking hard. Can you sign your name? Do you know the times table? Or can you fake it when you look it up? Can you spell some stuff? Be nice. So finish high school. It's not that hard.
[10:43] Stop having sex outside of wedlock if it's going to make a baby. Please, for the love of all that's holy, don't carry before you're married. No carriage before marriage. Just get married. Then you can have your babies. Finish high school. Don't have a baby before you're married. Those two things. And the third thing is, at some point in your youth, could you do us all the favor? And I really don't think this is a massive amount to ask. We're not asking you to cross the Alps with fucking elephants here. We're not asking you to climb Mount Everest using your ball sack and molars. Just do us a solid, poor people. Finish high school, don't have a baby out of wedlock, and get and hold a job for one year. We're not asking you to become a Tibetan monk or to get a black belt in jiu-jitsu. Just finish high school, don't have a kid out of wedlock, have and hold a job, I don't care, any job, for a year. A year. You do that, you got a 97% chance of getting out of poverty.
[11:58] Apparently, that's just way too much to ask. Way too much to ask. The poor! it's why you can't have nice things like progress like solvency like not 200 trillion dollars in america of unfunded liabilities not catastrophic national debts not crappy violent schools, not unsafe neighborhoods the poor you don't worry about the poor the poor the poor the poor, and now it's like well we gotta we gotta give the poor ubi but because there's robots and ai, we've given them 50 planets worth of wealth in the last 50 years. They were poor in the medieval times when people lived on about a dollar, current value, about a dollar a day. People are now, people getting paid $50 an hour, and they're still poor. More money ain't gonna do it.
[13:05] And as long as the poor is something oh you can never speak negatively about these these poor souls you know well they turn to crime you see because they're poor no false the cause and effect has been studied for decades and it's very very clear people don't turn to crime because they're poor they're poor because they have criminals around you get the criminals and then you get the poverty. Oh, here's another thing, poor people. Maybe don't commit so many crimes. That would be excellent. Here's another thing, poor people.
[13:42] Because, you know, you're really poor, and you just don't have much, and you're so sad, and you're just poor. So maybe, maybe, maybe, just maybe, don't be. Could we ask that? Okay. Maybe finishing high school is just a bridge too far, even though it's been dumbed down to the point where a retarded dolphin could pass it. But maybe Maybe finishing high school is just a little, a little bit on the, that's Evel Knievel going over the Grand Canyon using a tricycle. Okay, fine. Maybe you can't keep it in your pants and you're just going to have babies outside of wedlock, even though it's shitty for the babies, shitty for the children, shitty for society. Fine. And maybe getting and holding a job is just, oh, you know, it's tough getting up in the morning. There was a good show one last night.
[14:39] And, you know, the boss can be, like, mean and stuff. Okay. But because you're poor, can you at least not be obese? Can you do at least that? Because then you're really expensive in terms of health care, and you are driving up the cost of health care for everyone else and other people who, whether they're poor or rich, are at least walking around and not stuffing their faces like cocaine to pigs, maybe, well, for sure, for certain what you're doing, of course, is you're denying health care to other people. Because, you know, it's a funny thing. In reality, you can't be in two places at the same time, hence the alibi, which so many of you need. but also doctors can't be treating two patients at the same time and surgeons can't be doing two operations at the same time. So every ounce of medical resource that you hoover into your toffee sticky faces is something that is not available for anyone else. So you're kind of getting people killed because you can't seem to stop eating and apparently you're not so poor that you're slender.
[15:59] So society as a whole Has bent itself backwards Broken The search for, Life in the universe Put aside countless advancements Innovations, technologies And healthcare.
[16:18] In order to help you, the poor, not become poor. See, that was kind of the deal. We give you money and you try to stop being poor. Stop having a bunch of babies outside of wedlock. Stop not having jobs. Stop being obese. Exercise a little. It's free. Just walk around, even if it's in your own house or apartment. And in return for us giving you trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars, at gunpoint, I might add, can you try not to be poor? Just a little bit? You know, if you're a smoker, you can't get certain surgeries if you keep smoking. If you want hernia surgeries particularly of the shoulders kind they require you to not be obese otherwise they're not going to operate on you so there's lots of places which says which say uh don't do dumb stuff don't do counterproductive stuff or you don't get resources.
[17:25] So when people are like oh slow your roll there tesla man what about the poor I'll be like, okay. So we've bent over backwards, sold off our future, put our children into a million dollars worth of debt and five million dollars worth of unfunded liabilities to help the poor. And how are they doing with that? How is the poor handling all the generosity that the world has destroyed its future to provide?
[17:57] Are they helping us back? Are they saying, oh man, gosh, you know, the fact that you've paid for all of this stuff, holy crap, I feel terrible. I feel terrible. I mean, I'm going to do everything that I can to stop being poor because being poor is a real burden on everyone else. I'm getting people killed by consuming health care. Oh, one other thing. Hey, poor people. When we give you free stuff, could you do us a wee favor? Just a tiny smidge of a favor? Could you not wreck it? You know, you get a free apartment or a free house. Can you not just like wreck it? That would be excellent because, you know, it's kind of expensive to provide. It's really expensive to maintain and repair. Could you just not wreck it? How about you don't wreck and destroy and graffiti up your entire neighborhoods? Just as a thought, a little thought experiment. Oh, oh, here's a good idea. Hey, poor people, how about you don't shoplift the living shit out of every store that opens up in your neighborhood and then complain about being food deserts. Just a thought. Just a thought.
[19:06] If you don't steal from everybody, you can get stores in the neighborhood, then you don't need to take three buses to pick up some ho-hos and ding-dongs. And, oh, here's another plus. You also can get jobs in your neighborhood because there'll actually be businesses there. That would be nice, wouldn't it? Also, if you could not disrupt the schools all the time, poor people, that would also be excellent because, you know, kind of being taxed to hell and gone to give you the schools. And it'd be kind of nice if, you know, the kids in there.
[19:43] Who want to get out of being poor, don't have to contend with all of this chaos, noise, and violence. That would be, that would be super great. Excellent. I mean, that would be, that would be lovely. We're not asking you for the moon. A couple of simple things. And, you know, we'll be good. And then, see, then the cool thing is you can join people in the middle class and then.
[20:14] You won't be taking all of our tax money because that would be really nice. You know, those of us who work hard, get up early, work hard. I know it may not seem like that because I only do six shows a week, but it's a lot of work and I'm working on a book and other things. So, that would be nice. Or, you know, here's the very least. Here's the very least. Can you just say thank you to society that has handed over trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars over the last 50 years or 60 years? Maybe a little thanks. I mean, I don't know about y'all, but I'm starting to feel a, not even a little, but a lot like, oh, but what about the poor, it's like, I don't care. I will care about the poor when the poor care about me.
[21:07] Because this one-sided shit, I'm done. I'm done with it. At the very least, a thank you. And maybe, you know, because this is what charities would require. Believe it or not, I studied quite a lot of Victorian charities back in the day for reasons that pass my memory at the moment. But Victorian charities would be like, okay, you mess up. First time, we'll totally help you. Absolutely. Second time, we're not going to help you very much. A little, just to keep you off the streets, but you got to shape up. Third time, we're done. We're done. And then people fall, and they wail, and they cry that they're victims. But it's sometimes the tragic cosmic purpose of some people's lives is to just serve as a warning to everyone else. But all you get is this anger. Who's going to feed my kids? You get this anger, this entitlement, this rage. Anytime there's any cut in payments, you get riots. And it's like, okay, so that's just another expense that we have to bear, which is the extra policing. Ah, yes, the extra policing. Super great.
[22:26] So I don't view them as the poor as much as the ruling class, because they generally have all the characteristics of the ruling class, which is entitlement, contempt, and violence when they're crossed. The poor. I'm tired of it all. Maybe I'm just aging out of infinite exploited empathy and compassion, of feeling like a spiritual well that people come to drain my blood on a regular basis while backhanding me across the face after they rob me blind. Maybe that's just how I'm feeling. Maybe that's just where my heart is settling as I... I turn 59 soon, pushing 60 with both hands. So when people are like the poor, I'm like, are they grateful? Are they working their way out of poverty? Are they thankful? Are they appreciative? Do they feel bad that they have to take all the society's resources or they feel they have to? Or are they just a new aristocracy that are entitled and angry and demand all of your savings and resources and your children's economic future being sold off to, in a conveyor belt of human flesh to foreign banksters? All the Pac-Man eating up the future.
[23:48] No, I view them as an entitled set of overlords in many ways. Can't be crossed, can't be reasoned with, ungrateful, entitled. It's.
[24:07] Compassion exhaustion, right? It's not working. It's not working. You know, in the post-Second World War period, and I'll take your calls after this, and I really thank you for your patience, but in the post-Second World War period, poverty was being reduced by 1% every year. White community, black community, poverty was being reduced. Like, we were, the government was in grave danger of running out of poor people. So they're like, well, we need poor people to vote for more government. Because, you know, people who are paying taxes want less government. People who are receiving taxes want more government. Look at you, single ladies. All the single ladies in your wallet and...
[24:46] So they put in the welfare state, so that you wouldn't end up with very few poor people because then the government doesn't have an excuse to take from you and buy votes. So this is the latest thing, right? It was Joe Rogan was like, well, poor people, jobs, we're going to need UBI. We've already thrown when the welfare state was put in, we've already thrown, many multiples of dollars at the poor, as was the entire world economy when the welfare state came in. We've thrown five or ten planets worth of resources at the poor. How's that going? Well, they're still poor and we're horrendously in debt. Horrendously in debt. So I'm just saying to poor people too, y'all better get out of poverty because the money's going to run out. Now, of course, I know we've got multi-generations of people who've grown up in poverty. They've lost all the job skills, the work habits, the negotiation capacities.
[26:08] I mean, they can't go to their grandparents and ask for advice on how to work, how to deal with bosses, how to deal with customers, how to save your money. But the money's going to run out. It's incredibly cruel. I mean, the welfare state at this point is just incredibly cruel. Because it's people, keeping people in a state of poverty to a large degree, I'm not saying they don't have a choice, but the incentives are so screwed up. It's keeping people in poverty, and those people, what is going to happen when the money runs out?
[26:43] Well, then what? That's just been cruel, hasn't it? It's keeping people in space until their limbs and bones deteriorate, and then slamming them down into gravity. And they won't even be able to crawl. All right, let's get to your comments, questions, issues, challenges. Save me from myself. I'm just following my coffee cups orders of no filter. All right, let me put on my squinty vision glasses and see who we've got up. Nolo, you've been very patient. I appreciate that. If you want to unmute, my friend. Where am I wrong? How can I be better? what I ask myself every morning. Hello, hello. I can't hear you if you are.
[27:40] Talking. I get these occasional reboots in my brain. At least it's a fast reboot. Some kind of SSD going on in here. Man, it was cold. You know, I heat up. I get hot flashes when I give speeches. All right. It looks like NOLO is a no-show. Oh, look at that. I'm about to start rapping. Remove from speakers. All right. Atlas, my friend, you are back on the air. what's on your mind and again i'm thrilled if uh people want to line up the chat i'm all ears hi.
[28:14] Stefan can you hear me
[28:14] Go ahead um.
[28:17] Just to play devil's advocate wouldn't the more humane thing to be to lean into the skid and promote accelerationism
[28:32] That was actually yeah that was my second article back on the lew rockwell site not that lew's responsible for anything I've done since, but my second article was worse is better, but yeah, go ahead and make the case.
[28:43] Well, yeah, like if our arguments against atheists is their own hedonism, isn't he, aren't we all just holding on because of our own hedonism? And shouldn't we, the ethical thing to do is just say, fuck it, and we all take UBI and we all crash the system faster? Break it, break it faster, because it's all fucked.
[29:06] I mean, I hear what you're saying, and it is tempting. I get that. And I'm, you know, I get the temptation, and maybe it's because I'm a dad, but...
[29:17] And I'm a dad, too.
[29:18] Yeah, I mean...
[29:19] Let it happen.
[29:20] It ain't good. It ain't good when the power grid goes down, and it ain't good when you got bands of tattered warlords roaming the region, you know, attacking and raping at will. So I'd rather there be some kind of soft landing. And, you know, that would be preferable, but historically, it doesn't. People who don't listen to reason, people and societies that don't listen to reason, they end up having to listen to brute consequences. And, you know, the bad thing is, of course, that the people, the sophists and the, you know, horrifying, soulless mouthpieces of corruption who drew us into this mess, they were all going to fly out on their gold-plated helicopters while the rest of us fight over a granola bar, right?
[30:04] I'm just having a shootout at your local Walmart over the last can of beans.
[30:09] Oh, yeah, for sure. And, you know, you look at the people, the millionaires like Thiel and others, right? They've all got their elaborate compounds in New Zealand and on the other side of the world. And, you know, they know the math. And, of course, they have access. I don't know Peter Thiel in particular, of course, but I would assume that wealthy people have access to information that is not generally available to people like, say, you and I.
[30:34] What are you talking about? I have a wife and family. I'm the wealthiest man in the world.
[30:39] Well, yes, but you want to keep all of that. And so I get what you're saying with the accelerationism, you know, but there's so many unknowns going forward, right? So for instance, you know, who would have predicted necessarily something like Bitcoin, right? Bitcoin is something that kind of came out of nowhere and has given the opportunity to build some kind of alternate economy outside of the endless pillaging of central bankers. I'm sure you've seen these memes about what the minimum wage was back in the day and how much that denominated in silver and how much that silver would be worth today. I mean, we have been absolutely robbed fucking blind, man. We have been robbed blind. And of course, people don't see it because inflation, not probably one person in a hundred knows what the hell's going on. They think inflation means prices going up and inflation actually just means an expansion of the money supply. And of course, if you expand the money supply, like the Fed gets to type whatever it wants into its own bank account, you hand out that money to your close friends, they get it all at full value. By the time the poor people and the people on the fixed incomes get it, I mean, they're getting pennies on the dollar. It's just, I mean, it's the most regressive tax known to man in that the wealthiest get the most and the, The poorest get it in the short. Sorry, go ahead.
[31:54] It's the Cantillian effect, and I think Max Keiser refers to it as the interest rate apartheid state, where all of society is organized feudalistically according to the interest rate you're able to get to try to swim up the Ponzi scheme currency.
[32:16] Yeah. So, I mean, there's alternatives now. Things like, I mean, there's countries, what is it, Singapore, 15% tax and no capital gains tax, right? I mean, places like Singapore are going to attract the wealthy when the system begins to go down. So, at least, you know, like the new world got all the people who wanted to get out of the old world in Europe and there'll be places to go when the shite starts hitting the fan and Bitcoin is going to be, I think, pretty essential to that whole process.
[32:48] So who knows what's going to come along.
[32:51] But I definitely do have exhaustion with the poor. And having been given 20 planets worth of resources, they're still poor.
[33:01] And they seem to have worse habits than before. Like marriage rates have gone down. Obesity has gone up. Educational levels have gone down. And it's just absolutely wretched. Morality is necessitated by scarcity, right? Like you need property rights when things are scarce, like air is not scarce. So we don't need property rights in air. You know, when you go swimming in the ocean, it's not like you're short of water, so you don't need property rights in there. But scarcity is why we have morality. And the problem is, of course, that by borrowing and printing money, we've removed essentially scarcity. And this has driven the boomers insane, like literally mental. They're mental because they've never said, oh, we want a new government program. And people, the politicians have never said, okay, well, what do you want to cut then? It's like, yeah, we'll do it. And just keep piling on, piling on, piling on. And they've lost all sense of constraints. You know, northern climates, we got this brutal winter and we needed to weigh and make sure that we didn't overeat. And, you know, but in the tropics, there's, you know, new food everywhere and, you know, fish and fruit and game is plentiful and so on. So they don't really have that same kind of scarcity mentality, but we've got a kind of tropical abundance reality coming out of a scarcity moral mindset. And the collision of these two, uh, it's just brutal and it's not good.
[34:21] I, I live in Utah, so I'm thankful. I mean, it's the, the winters are harsh and brutal, but I'm thankful that it beats the stupidity out of people because right at Utah.
[34:32] Well, of course, you know, I'm not saying that I'm entirely in accordance with the Mormon beliefs, but they are some of the nicest people that I've ever met in my life. So, you know, it's one of these things, right?
[34:42] But they have their own tranche of annoying habits and things.
[34:50] But yeah, but that's community as a whole. Like you can't have a community if you can't handle people's annoying habits because Lord knows we all have them, but sorry, go ahead.
[34:58] Well, I was, you touched on boomers and like, I don't, you, you must be going through like a, we all go through these phases where you're like, God, you hate the poor. And I, I'm 36 and I just, I go through periods where I, I just fucking hate boomers. I, and I, and I wonder like, I've been thinking about, is it against UPB to incur, like, shame boomers into, like, medically assisted suicide?
[35:30] I mean, I think that's a little harsh. Well, I mean, like... Listen, hate is not anti-UPB, and, you know, criticizing people is not anti-UPB, as long as, you know, it's not specific individual and libel or slander, right? As long as it's not defamation. uh but yeah bullying people into suicide would be pretty close to a violation of upb so of course we don't want anything to do with that but uh and it's right because people are like you boomer and i'm like no missed by that much 64 i'm 66 yes i came in like indiana jones's hat under the door coming down i.
[36:07] Don't want to paint with a broad brush but there's
[36:09] There's boomers.
[36:09] And then there's bloomers there's there's wonderful people that you know that actually cared about their children. That's bloomer as in people who are flowers in a garden, bloomers.
[36:25] Oh, I see. Yeah, it's funny because the next chapter I'm writing in my book is going to be boomers and their relationship with grandchildren. Because I can't tell you the number of people who I've talked to over the years who's like, yeah, my parents, they don't really come by. They just went on another cruise and they don't really seem to have much interest in their grandchildren, but you know, they're, you know, my dad just bought a new sports car and it's just like, it's wild, man. It's a funny thing in society. And this is something that just really, really, really blew my mind when I was younger. Because when I was younger, I was told like, you know, family is everything, man. You do for family. The human bonds of blood are stronger than everything. Blood is thicker than water and all of that. And the boomers, the boomers and, you know, the women who are slaughtering billions through abortion and uh, the women who, you know, just two thirds of women who leave marriages, uh, two thirds of people who leave marriages are women. And the number one reason is, um, uh, I'm just, I'm just discontented. Like I just, it's not right. I'm just not quite there. And it's like, okay, so you just blow up your family for reasons of emotional dissatisfaction. And the boomers, like they've completely just blown that whole blood is thicker than water out of the water. It's like the heat map of like the people who care about their own families and then the people who care about outsiders. We used to just call them traitors, but I guess the new word is outgroup preference. Outgroup preference.
[37:52] And it's wild. So the boomers, I mean, they went crazy because of the psychosis of abundance. And they also went crazy because they got moral satisfaction with no risk or sacrifice. So to feel good, when we feel like we've done the right thing, we've done the good thing. It's an incredible high, honestly. Like they say that the heroin is better than your best orgasm. Hard to imagine, but all right. but doing good and and this is one of the reasons i keep doing what i'm doing despite you know obviously uh a couple of landmines thrown in my path over the years but i keep doing it because it is an absolute deep visceral bone marrow thrill to do good to do good is one thing to do good and thwart evildoers that's a two thumbs up situation wait i'm getting a woody right now so i.
[38:43] Get i get choked up, like, thinking about Sam Wise carrying Frodo up the,
[38:49] You know.
[38:51] I wept tears. Yeah, I wept tears. Yeah, I wept tears in those scenes. It's too bad that Viggo Mortensen is a rabid socialist. But anyway, you know, that's why actors play people who are virtuous, but they themselves are empty shells of ambition and conformity. But the boomers have completely, narcissistically gone up their own assholes and abandoned their kin as a whole. And I really do believe, you know, let me give you the white pill, like the happiness and the positivity and the optimism about what's going on in the world, which is, this is the first time, a society committing seppuku has been obsessively documented.
[39:37] Right?
[39:38] Videos, TikToks, YouTube videos, um, uh, blogs and, and like everything is obsessively recorded in perma crystal vision, 4k 60 frames a second clarity and perfection. You don't have these old hand cranked videos of people shuddering all over the screen. You don't have.
[39:56] Stuff in ancient Rome, you know, a couple of frescoes and some half-broken pottery. Like, you've got the entire fall of the greatest civilization in the history of the world obsessively documented. So what we are right now, it's not necessarily fun, but it is a fact. What we are right now is a giant, n-dimensional, six senses, multimedia, documentation, and inoculation about this shit ever happening again. What we are is, okay, well, we, you know, we tried, like the Nazis, nobody sits there and says, let's do that again, or very few people, or slavery, no sane person is like, hey, let's go do that again, like they've lost their credibility. And it's the same thing with forced redistribution of wealth. It's the same thing with using children as, you know, collateral for foreign banksters to bribe people's conscience into letting the government take over more and more power. Giving government control of children just turns them into status. You know, the old thing, when you send your children to Caesar, don't be surprised when they come back Romans. So it's all obsessively documented, which means it is a pure, vivid multimedia show about don't ever do this shit again. Never, ever again. Can you imagine like if the fall of the Soviet Union had as much footage over its fall or the average daily life under Stalin, as we have in five minutes a video uploaded to YouTube, we'd never be tempted by that shit again. So this is like vivid in your face. We can't see it now because we're right in the middle of the storm.
[41:24] But what we are is a multimedia inoculation against the future where people are like, it would get so ground into people's bones because they'll look back and see all of the horrors and selfishness and greed and entitlement and falsehood and manipulation and lives, they'll look back and it's all recorded. We don't see it, or at least the people making it don't see it, but they'll look back in the future.
[41:46] If we had video of, you know, the slave owners beating the slaves, right, then, now I'm not just talking about the antebellum South. It was like 400,000 slaves that went to America and like two millions white slaves that went to the Muslim lands. This is one of the reasons why people in Europe had to give up on being close to the ocean because they kept getting taken by the Muslims and put into slavery. And of course, there were millions and millions of black slaves taken of the Muslim lands, but the men were all castrated. And those that survived didn't reproduce, of course, which is why there isn't a big population of black ex-slaves in the Muslim lands. But if we saw these kinds of videos, if we saw, you know, people beating their slaves, then people would viscerally get this reaction. And people are going to look back. And of course, people beating their slaves just thought it was normal and natural at the time. Hey, he misbehaved. I'll beat him. Now we look back and it's like, God, that was horrifying. They're going to look back at all the stuff we're storing and posting, and we are an absolute advertisement of everything not to do. We are the smoker vividly dying in your face of emphysema and lung cancer and COPD, you know, coughing up a lung and puffing out squirts of blood through the hole in the trachea.
[42:58] And that's going to scare people away from smoking, and our society is going to scare people away from statism from here to eternity.
[43:05] We just got to grit our teeth and find some way to get through it.
[43:08] But we are going through the massive inoculation against all of this evil crap of the future.
[43:17] All right. Who else? Come on, come talk to me. Peter Gabriel style. He gave up music, right? He stopped music now, I think. He has given up. He has stopped himself. He has stopped himself. I don't know. How can I... Let me just see. If you have questions and you don't want to talk, well, you don't have the equipment to talk, that's fine. You can put your questions... Can we put the questions in, in the text? Uh, yes. Yes, we can. Everyone needs to grow their own berries. I think that's fine, but you can't exactly get a lot of food off your apartment balcony. Uh, I talked to you on the phone in 2013 during your show. LOL, fun times. Ah, yes, back when we had hoped that reason might win. LOL, apartheid. I lived it. I'm still in South Africa, hoping to leave soon. Yes, I think that is probably a wise thing. I was talking to someone the other day. I spent a lot of time in China. He said as a white man, he was treated far better in China than he is in the West. It was wild. Forced redistribution of wealth seems to be the norm in South Africa. Yep.
[44:38] Yep.
[44:39] Wait, there's a video of these spaces? Where is that? Hopefully it's playing right now. Hopefully it's playing right now. If you make it easy to be poor, there will be more poor people. Yeah, it just doesn't work, right? It just doesn't work. And again, we've tried it, you know. We've tried it, and it didn't work, right? So there's an old, I think it was Dave Allen, the guy with the half a finger. Dave Allen used to have a joke. I think it was Dave Allen.
[45:17] And it was like there's a guy in the bar goes up to another guy in the bar Bob, let's call him Bob the other guy in the bar and says hey, do you want to play some darts? He's like, nope, tried it once, didn't like it oh, alright you want to play some pool? Nope, tried it once, didn't like it oh, got some cards oh, tried cards once, didn't like it well, what are you even doing here? I'm waiting for my son well, your only son, I assume and so tried it once, didn't like it. Tried it once, now we know. It no worky. It no worky.
[45:53] There are many places around my state, says Paul, sorry, I'll go sideways here, where people live in poverty because there's nowhere to work. How do we get them out of BFE and onto brighter pastures? Legalizing casinos on those counties would be helpful. Oh my God. It. See, here's the thing, right? Here's the thing. This is what happens. And listen, I sympathize with this. I understand it. And I still pray to it myself sometimes, although I fight it like a beast, like a demonic possession, which is, what are we going to do with the poor? All these poor people, how are we going to help them? And it's like, hmm, you don't. I mean, it's funny because I say, you don't. And what I mean by that is you certainly don't advocate for the use of force to help the poor, like forced redistribution of wealth and all that. You don't do that. That you don't do.
[46:51] But, I mean, I've taken 60,000 hours of philosophy and distilled it down into hopefully some, reasonably engaging and entertaining speeches and presentations and conversations and all that kind of stuff and free books, like I give everything out for free and just freedomain.com slash donate if you appreciate that. So, I mean, you know, and I've certainly talked about Bitcoin forever and ever, amen. So, you know, I've done quite a lot to help the poor as a whole by giving this philosophy that I studied to people as a whole. And I've done that kind of stuff, and you can make resources available to people, but getting involved and trying to fix them, the more energy you apply to people, the weaker they become, right? So, one of the tricks of the poor is to make you feel guilty and bad, like they're really trying, they just need a little bit more help, but helping the poor in that kind of way is like saying, oh man, it looks like you're kind of weak, and you're kind of flaccid, so what I'm going to do is i'm going to go and work out for you i think except by helping the poor you end up weaker too all right jeffy jeff what is on your mind my friend don't forget to unmute and um all ears well year and a half
[48:09] hey stefan
[48:12] can you hear me
[48:12] yes sir
[48:12] oh.
[48:13] Finally he's very you know i tried to get hold of you uh you know a few days ago i think you don't you
[48:19] Well you can be unhappy about what didn't happen, or you could be happy now that it is happening. I invite you to the lateral perspective.
[48:27] Yeah, I had one of these apps take over my shit, you know, then. But, yeah, I've been trying to talk to you for a while. We have a little kind of common, let's just say a common deal with our mother many years ago.
[48:41] I'm sorry to hear that. I'm sorry to hear that, brother.
[48:44] Mine may be a little worse because she tried to murder me for the insurance. Okay.
[48:50] I can't help but ask you to unpack that story and I'm, I'm going to get comfortable if I had a stogie, actually I hate stogies, but it would feel like I should light one up, but go ahead. What's the story?
[49:01] Well, she, uh, you know, kind of screwed my father over and, uh, he divorced her. He almost bankrupted her. And, uh, she started dating some guy who was sort of a crazy. And, uh, let's just say, uh, she cared more about money than anything else. And she, uh, convinced her boyfriend who actually tried to murder me. She actually paid a guy $2,000 that my father murdered. And she got caught. the guy kind of decided not to go through it because he was drunk and he told my father about it and then she came after me at the town well
[49:37] Hang on hang on hang on so the guy confessed that your mother paid you paid him two grand to murder your father and then didn't she go to jail.
[49:47] No i can never figure that out my father didn't uh well there probably wasn't any proof though is what what it was i'm
[49:55] Sorry say again.
[49:57] She was dating one guy okay and she worked in a bar she she was actually a very good well i'm not gonna get in there but anyhow the guy dumped her um he walked out the door he went to my father and said hey uh i called these guys up and told him not to fucking kill you she gave me two thousand dollars to give him when i sobered up you know i dumped her i'm just filling you in i'm letting you know this immediately she started dating another whack job because bill willett was not exactly a whack job that's why he but immediately she started dating another guy who actually at that point tried to kill me a few years later and to prove it well i had to shoot him in self-defense at 14. Yeah, I had to shoot him at 14 years old, man.
[50:44] Okay, tell me the story. Like, he came into your place, he had a gun. Like, what was it?
[50:51] Well, the first time it happened, she set me up. And he tried to beat the living crap out of me to death. And he'd hit me so many damn times, it ended up downstairs and everything. And let's just say I had a little voice in my head just before I went unconscious. It told me to tense up and headbutt his fist. When I did, I tensed up. It broke his damn hand right in half.
[51:16] It what?
[51:17] It broke his hand in half. Broke his hand. You know, broke his hand on my head.
[51:24] Okay. That's a very interesting jujitsu move. So that's appalling. Now, this because you had life insurance and your mom wanted to get a hold of it?
[51:35] Well there was life insurance i assume where she worked my father um some years later before i even turned 21 her and my grandmother removed a savings account that my great-grandmother put away it would have been probably 30 30 000 and then my father and his evil wife did the same thing and took out another savings account they forged my name to it and i didn't find out till i was 21 when I want to take this stuff out.
[52:07] So, so hang on. So, so you break, you break the guy's fist with your head.
[52:11] Let me back up to that.
[52:12] Okay.
[52:13] Eight months later when, well, before his hand healed, I told him if he ever put his hands on me again, I'd shoot him. He laughed at me and told me I was, uh, uh, not man enough. Eight months later when his hand healed, they set me up again and I had to shoot him. Okay.
[52:32] Well, we'll tell him, tell me what, what happened.
[52:34] About three o'clock in the morning he comes home they claimed at least the hospitals claimed that he had drank you know probably a case of beer uh some downers uh he had cocaine in his system god knows what else but he came in the door pretended this is what you know because i'm asleep this is downstairs it appears that he made it look like my mother again made it look like he like i was going to beat on my mother or something but he was smacking around and stuff You know, and she was screaming. I grabbed the gun. Okay. Ran downstairs. And, uh, it came after me. He said, you're not mad. I actually ran up to the, the top of the stairs into my room, locked the door, backed up to the wall. He came busting through the door and I pulled the trigger. It went through his right lock or right long and out his back. He's a clean shot. He's still alive. But I've actually talked to him even more recently on the phone, because I still have his phone. His parents were very rich yet.
[53:38] Sorry, his parents were very what?
[53:40] Fairly rich.
[53:42] Huh. So he wasn't doing it for the money, but just for the shits and giggles?
[53:45] Like, what do you mean? I don't know. I could never figure it out. His father was about as corrupt as hell. I mean, there's a lot more to it than that. His father actually tried to have meat kill. I ran away at 15, ended up in North Carolina, changed a couple of numbers on my social security number so he couldn't find me and got a job and stayed down there for two years. And nobody knew where the fuck I was at for two years at 15. Well, it's a crazy story. And it gets even crazier even later.
[54:13] Hit me.
[54:16] My grandfather and my father did not get along. Okay. Obviously, my father was an asshole. You know, he was the, okay, very intelligent person.
[54:28] Let's, uh, let's try not to do too many identifying details if you don't mind, but yeah, go ahead.
[54:32] Okay. No, I know, but it is kind of important, but anyhow, um, my grandfather had some family heirlooms. He lived in Florida, very valuable family heirlooms that had been saved in my family for years. And he got fed up with my father. They hadn't talked for many years and he decided he was going to leave me the house and everything.
[54:53] My father sabotaged some jobs, tried to make me, uh, what to say, keep me a pauper. And when my grandfather died, I believe I was in 79, I was about 18. Uh, he didn't tell me that he died. I didn't find out till three months later. And when I found out, well, I found out that the house had been sold and the family heirlooms he claimed had been stolen out of the back of a rental car. It was 21 years later before I found out who he sold them to and got them back. They were very important, very important. That part I'm going to keep to myself if you ever want me to, let's say, talk to you about it privately. I'll talk to you about it because of what I'm going through right now. I had to get a DNA test to prove who I am with my ancestors. The other thing is my mother and father, their ancestors are extremely famous, and that's why this stuff was worth so much. On both sides of my family. It goes back over 300 years. Take a look at my story. Okay. Later on, you know, I've got it posted and pinned it. Scott Walters is the History Channel. Did you know America on Earth? Have you ever seen that story?
[56:04] No.
[56:05] Okay. America on Earth is on the History Channel. Scott Walters is a host of it. He came down to my house more than once to prove what, you know, when he got here, you know, to prove what was going on. And then he paid for a DNA test. Who I am. Who my ancestors were. There was a big secret hidden in my family heirloom. That's one of the biggest problems with my father, me, my grandfather, and the value of this stuff. One of my great-grandfathers died at the Alamo. Okay? And that's not even the most famous one. All right, you'll have to read the rest because the rest, I prefer to keep myself. Uh, people, let's say kids are giving me a lot of hard time. Even now, I had some people who tried to murder me over this shit a while back and the FBI had been covered enough. It was a Democrat politician and his heroin addict nephew. Uh, I had a home invasion in here and had to get in a fight and you know, damn near, you know, well, let's say damn near got killed or well, I'm still here. There is a big story about it. I don't want to get into that part of it. My part of it was the earlier part about my mother. You know, your mother was kind of similar to you. She would actually make people think that I was the craziest. She was so crazy herself, so pathological and good at it. She would make me sound like I was the one that was crazy. It was impossible to do anything. That's why I just chipped.
[57:32] What could I do, man, all these years? And she got away with it all.
[57:35] You know my father got away with a lot of shit too i think he i think that's why they got married together because it was so close you know what i mean but um yeah i've lived quite a strange life i'll tell you what over the years you know i have a very high iq uh i built the stealth bomber test platform in garland texas you know so yeah wow
[57:58] And and what's your i mean are they dead now i mean And what's your relationship like with your parents?
[58:03] My father died in 2013. That's when I came on the internet to finally try to get my story out because I had some people that tried to rob me and murder me. The police were covering up because he's a Democrat politician. His brother lives across the street from him here, which luckily he is down dead. But this went on for some years and the police kept covering it up. I've been dealing with the FBI on some of it even more recently. They're still covering it up.
[58:30] And it's for, sorry, it's for these family heirlooms that you're in danger?
[58:34] Well, for that, with those guys, yeah. With that, yeah, that's what they wanted. Glenn, I think he was going to do more than that. He was going to try to even get my property off me. They tried to buy this house before I even bought it. And when I paid cash for the house, oh, they were upset because they were trying to own this whole street here. You know, the whole village here, their family is like really corrupt, man. I mean, they've killed some people, believe me. That's why I was kind of quite concerned about it. That's why I came back to the FBI here even more recently, hoping that maybe I could get hold of somebody else that wouldn't cover it all up. I mean, this ain't some crazy shit. Now, they're kind of scared of me, you know, but.
[59:15] Okay. Can you please just stay off the names? Do me a solid if you don't mind. Thank you.
[59:20] Go ahead. Yeah. Okay. But that was just a last name. Okay. Yeah. I'll stay off the, I have on the internet here. Okay. Okay. I know what you mean. But uh yeah you and it would probably be better to talk to you about any of that in private let's say some of this stuff you know you know what i mean and i don't want to get anybody involved to the point where it might put them in danger i mean i put a gun in every one of my damn rooms i put a gun in my bathroom you understand to make sure that i have one in case i'm taking a shower or something uh the
[59:52] Good old shower gun yeah yeah.
[59:54] Yeah yeah oh shit yeah you know it went crazy this shit.
[59:57] Wow.
[59:58] You're still causing me a little problems. The FBI were corrupted shit down here in Pittsburgh, PA. Oh, by the way, you know where Trump got assassinated at almost?
[1:00:07] Yeah.
[1:00:07] I was there because I live there. Huh? He literally, yeah. Talk about a coincidence there. Literally live about, well, within walking systems.
[1:00:20] That's wild. That's wild. And how's your life now outside of all? I mean, now I think my mom's pretty classy. Looking back, no hitman involved to my knowledge.
[1:00:30] I actually have to joke a little bit about it just to keep myself sane. You know what I mean?
[1:00:34] Oh, yeah. Now I know. Gallus humor is a way of coming back from the dead, right?
[1:00:39] Oh, yeah. These guys tried to disarm me. There was a psychologist that they tried to set me up with. I caught on to the little deal here because I had heard about him. I had to go out of the county, went to three psychologists, okay, over an incident because they were trying to disarm me.
[1:00:56] I almost shot one of these guys, you know. I mean, this happened numerous times here. So what they did were they were going to try to claim I was crazy and try to take my firearms off, make it a little easier. So I went to three psychologists outside the county, independent, got an evaluation from them, which was not only like top 10% of the same people that they test and very high IQ. And then I went to their psychologist and set his ass up. It was bad, man. Oh, yeah. That guy wanted to run and hide out of the courtroom. I had to fire three attorneys out of three cases that they put me up with. Fired three of them on the first day and then ended up defending myself. As they say, you know, you're a fool if you defend yourself as an attorney. Well, I still wanted it. Yeah. All three times over 10 years.
[1:01:45] Wow. Well, that's very impressive. Listen, I mean, obviously, I'm incredibly sorry for everything that you've gone through and suffered, you know. Oh, you know, fire, hot, and steel, and you can't make a gem without polishing. And it's like, yeah, but this stuff sucks as a whole, and I'm just really, really sorry about all of this.
[1:02:03] Technically, my life, you know, well, my life has been pretty good.
[1:02:06] I've tried to make it pretty good.
[1:02:08] But, you know, you've got a lot of outside forces here with me that keep wanting to destroy it and might keep having to beat them at it.
[1:02:14] Right, right. game.
[1:02:15] Of chess with them you know and i'm gonna do that chess
[1:02:18] Well i'm i'm certainly glad you came through and i'm sorry that you had to do the self-defense stuff but i'm very glad that you you aimed well because it's better to have you here on the planet than guys who'll murder children for money so all right matt then yeah do you can if you want to talk privately uh sorry go ahead yeah.
[1:02:36] Um yeah yeah just get in touch with me you know because i'm open anytime you want and i don't want to go too far with it. I want you to, you know, have fun with everybody else there now. All right.
[1:02:47] Well, thanks, man. I appreciate it. And just for those of you as a whole, if you want to set up a call, I do calls that are free. Those are public calls. Just, you know, you just stay off names and places. You can talk to me about whatever you want. Sometimes we disguise people's voices. And if you want a private call, if freedomain.com slash call, you can set up public or private calls and I'm happy to chat with you about whatever is on your mind. All right. Let's go with people we haven't talked two before, and we've got a Dorbens. I think your news of the chat, if I understand this correctly, what's on your mind? Hello, hello. Well, it's a mystery. It's a mystery. All right, Tyler, what is on your mind? I'm just going to pop you in here to the chat. No, I missed. Sorry, I'll get you next. A name? Do you? Yes, go ahead.
[1:03:46] Hey, how's it going? I was wondering if you could, I'm sorry, I'm wondering if you have heard the argument about how it's generally more expensive to be poor. And I'm wondering if you could more or less just kind of monologue on that.
[1:04:00] Sorry, more expensive to eat poorly?
[1:04:03] Just more expensive, just being poor in general. What I mean by that is the goods that you purchase are generally of lower quality. They break down quicker. They require more replacement versus slightly more expensive, slightly more qualified goods that last longer.
[1:04:23] Yeah, I mean, I remember my wife's father said at one point, you know, we were too young to buy cheap stuff. Sorry, we were too poor, that we poor and young, we were too poor to buy cheap stuff. So it's not so much that the poor can't afford expensive stuff, it's that they tend to think a little bit more like in front of their noses, right? They don't sort of look over the hill of consequences, which is why poor people make a lot of bad decisions, is they tend to be kind of impulsive and not look at the long-term consequences or second-order effects of what it is that they're doing.
[1:04:58] So there are a lot of poor people who were like, well, you know, I had to buy a good vacuum cleaner because it's going to have to last for 30 years and I have to take care of it and I have to make sure I oil it and so on. Because you can take stuff that isn't super high quality and you can maintain it by just learning some basic fixer-upper stuff, right? Like if you have a lawnmower, you got to sharpen the blades, you got to clean it, you got to oil it, you know, So you just take care of your stuff. You just take it. Like, I remember, of course, I had to put together, I couldn't afford bikes when I was younger. So, you know, my friends and I, we would just go garbage dump picking and hopping and we would get the bikes of seven colors with different sized wheels and so on. And you just, you take care of it, right? You disassemble the bikes, you take out the ball bearings, you clean them, you oil them, you put them back together, you make sure you get good quality brakes so that you don't run out of brakes and go into a wall or something like that. So it's not that it's that much more expensive. It's just that if you're poor, you, let's say that you're right. You can't afford as expensive as stuff for sure. I mean, you can't afford the top tier stuff, but what you do then is you substitute labor for money because that's all it comes down to in life, right? I mean.
[1:06:10] You could write your own newspaper, but you probably prefer to buy one for a buck, right? You could make your own movies, but you probably prefer to go and watch something on screen. You can, you know, if you're a business owner, you could try and figure out how to do your own taxes, but it's probably better to pay an accountant. You know, the guy who was just here talking, you know, most people will hire a lawyer rather than trying to figure out the law themselves. So if you decide that you, I mean, if you're poor, you have more time usually, and you should apply that time into maintaining and keeping your stuff in tip-top shape. You know, I mean, everybody knows the poor guy who's around, who's got the car for 20 years. And what does he do? Well, he checks the tire pressure and he changes the oil and he makes sure he walks around to see if there are any leaks and he gets stuff fixed quickly and he gets stuff patched up. And then you can make stuff last for a long time, but you got to put the labor in. But, you know, a lot of people are poor, frankly, because they're kind of lazy.
[1:07:06] And, you know, I know it's, oh my God, the poor have been turned into like secular saints. They're just noble and poor and wonderful and heroic single motherism. Like it's just become a complete cliche. And the left does this. They make all the victims into heroes in the same way that they turn all of these sort of most primitive savages in the world into people communing with nature and they use every part of the buffalo and all this kind of absolute false and defamatory to civilization nonsense. So you can do all right. you know, uh, you can take care of your stuff and really, really make it last. But that means you gotta learn how to do it and you gotta do the work. I mean, if you look at the poor people with their own bodies, like how do the poor people treat their own bodies for the most part? Well, they don't tend to exercise. Oh, well, but you can exercise like, I mean, I bought, um.
[1:07:58] For, for where I live, uh, I, I was at a garage sale and I bought like a gym, uh, for, I think it was like 400 bucks or something like that. And I've been using it for years. Uh, And it's, I originally had one that was elastics, but that wasn't particularly good. And, and so now I have one and you know, it's, it's kind of rickety, honestly, like I have to keep getting out and punching in the, the, the little thing that goes in for the weights, like the little, little peg that goes in for the weights, cause it keeps falling out and then I can't move it and, and so on. Right. And I, I have this old bike machine. I mean, I've tried to take care of it and all of that change, change the oil and stuff like that, but I have this old bike machine and, uh, it doesn't anymore do variable. Uh, I, so I just put it at the heaviest thing and just grind my way forward until I can barely walk. So you can do a lot, you know, um, I have a secondhand car, uh, that I bought that I just, I make sure, you know, I, I got a little log and I make sure that I take it in for all the preventive maintenance so that it's just going to last. So you, you can take care of your stuff. You can take care of your body and it's going to last for a long time, but, uh, people often don't. They say, well, I didn't have expensive stuff. And I said, but that doesn't mean that you have, that it has to break. That doesn't mean that it has to be worn down. You can get careless with stuff, you know? I mean, it's like the people who, uh, they, they don't get a good case for their phone and then they drop it and it's like, oh man. And it's like, but a good case is like 40 bucks and the phone is a thousand bucks. Like for heaven's sakes, it's not that complicated.
[1:09:27] Uh, the, the, um, the stuff that I'm using here is, is years and years old. Uh, and I've just really tried to take care of it. You know, I mean, uh, if I have stuff with a vent, I'll open it up and blow it out and clean it out or whatever it is. You can, you can keep all of this stuff running. You know, if I've got, I've got a notebook, I put a cooling pad under it, you plug it into the USB thing and it keeps the notepad, uh, the notebook cooler so that it lasts longer. Like you can just put the time in to make stuff last and you can do that. Poor people have more time, usually, and they choose to use that time to sit on the couch and eat Cheetos rather than take care of their stuff. So I don't think it's 100%, but I'm certainly left to hear what you think about it.
[1:10:09] Uh, sure. Um, so my thought, I guess it could be a little bit more specific. Um, let's say like shoes, right? Get a really cheap, low quality pair of shoes and they don't have the footing. They don't have the comfort. And so you walk on those and, you know, not, not only did they break down a little bit quicker, so maybe they don't last as longer, but because of the poor footing, maybe the posture, maybe the way you're stepping isn't as great as if you had a really high quality footing and insole and things like that. And so not only might you be replacing those shoes a little bit more often, which could be possibly more expensive than if you had just sucked it up and got the better pair, but now you're walking on things and you have poor foot quality and maybe you have arthritis in your feet a couple of years earlier and maybe you need to get that checked out a little bit quicker because you didn't have the nice quality shoes just had really poor quality shoes maybe you don't even have shoes but you know what i mean well
[1:11:12] Okay but i mean let me ask you this and obviously don't answer anything you're not comfortable with have you ever been really poor in your life.
[1:11:21] Uh i wouldn't say poverty stricken uh but i did have to you know earn income for myself and i did have a part-time job and And the other thing I want to talk to you about is food, because, you know, I'd get low quality food because it was cheap and it was high calorie count. And that's unhealthy for you in the long run.
[1:11:41] But OK, so hang on. Let's get let's get to we'll get to food in a sec. So, I mean, I've been completely broke, like can't pay rent, completely broke. And I've been paying my own. I'm not trying to like one up or like, oh, my upwards upwards through the sleep both ways to get to rent. But I mean, so when it came to shoes, yeah, I mean, you can't afford the $1,000 Air Jordans or whatever it is. But what you can do is you can, you know, read up a little bit about shoes or ask people about shoes or find out what's a good brand or good quality. Or you go to the store and you see which ones are expensive. And then you just go to secondhand stores, right? I mean, I would go to Goodwill where you could buy clothes by the pound and you have to invest time. I would go to these giant clothing and shoe warehouses downtown. They'd have these sort of weekend things in the summer. You could go down and, you know, like 98% of it would be absolute polyester crap, but you'd find these absolute gems and these beautiful soft sweaters. You could get cashmere stuff and you could get, but you have to put the time in. You have to put the time in to invest in it. So again, if you're poorer, generally you have more time and you have to put the time in to get the kind of deals that you want. And it's funny, you know, like I'm still obsessive about this stuff to some degree. I hate buying stuff online. God help me if there's a coupon code box, you know, cause then I'm just like, Oh great. Here goes 20 minutes of me trying to find a coupon code. And they probably only work about 20% of the time. And I don't like the plug-ins because I don't want them to track what I'm doing.
[1:13:10] But I still, you know, I go to a, there's a coffee shop I work at sometimes. I have the little stamp thing. So, you know, every 10 coffees, I get a free coffee.
[1:13:21] And so, you know, I've got a credit card, which gives me some free stuff. And so you just have to get into the habits of smart spending and budgeting, and you have to put the time in to find the quality stuff. Like you go, it's like the old thing. You go to antique stores, a lot of it's crap. But if you know what you're doing, which I don't, by the way, I'm just, you know, I know that this happens. There's some friends of mine have happened with their whole shows about this, like Antiques Roadshow. If you know what you're doing and you're willing to put in the research, you can go and find stuff that's actually really good that even the people who are running it may not know the value of. And it was the same thing when I was a teenager and broke that I wanted nicer clothing, couldn't afford it at all. You know, this is back in the day, like when polo shirts were a big thing, the little horsies, and if you had the polo shirts, right? And so I would go to these bazaars, I would go to these used stores, the Goodwill stores, and you just would look and look and look. I eventually did find a polo shirt and got to wear a polo shirt. And you can find cool stuff there, but it just takes a lot of time. Now, if you don't want to spend the time and you don't have the money and you don't have the common sense to say, I better buy quality because I don't want to replace it, then you're toast. But it's not an automatic function of just being poor.
[1:14:32] Yeah. It sounds like at the end of the day, you're saying that you have to put the work in. And ultimately, that's
[1:14:37] What we all have. But it's the same. If you have money, you can just buy the stuff and you don't have to put the time in, but you have to put in the time to make the money. If you have less money, then you have to put the time in that the rich guy is using to make his money. You put the time in to get the quality deals and make your buck stretch further. So again, in life, there's all of these just trade-offs, right? I mean, I don't have the time to go to Goodwill and sort through things for an hour, so I'm just going to buy something expensive because I spent all my time making money. Oh, I've spent less time making money, so now I have more time to go and comb through the boxes at the local thrift store to find something cool. And my daughter loves doing these thrift store stuff. She's inherited the art of the deal like nobody's business. She couldn't be happier when she finds the perfect thing and 70% off or whatever, right? So you just have to spend, you just have to spend the time. And you know, it's the same thing with returns, right? I mean, if you're a lawyer, and you ordered something for 20 bucks, and it's going to take you half an hour to return it, probably not worth it, you know, but if you're poor, it is. So with the poor people, I mean, having been there myself, you just have to
[1:15:43] put the time in to get the good deals, and you can.
[1:15:47] So as far as food goes, I mean, I've been poor too, with regards to food. And I mean, I would just eat like, I would eat pasta with, with, uh, meat sauce. Uh, you can get that stuff dirt cheap. Uh, I know Mike Srinovich has a whole thing about bone broth. I never did that because it sounds vaguely vampiric, but I'm sure it's fine.
[1:16:03] But yeah, no, you just, you just cook up a whole bunch of stuff. You freeze some of it and you just sort of eat. I would go to, um, when I was a student in Montreal, I would go to a Subway and they had these coupons two for one. So I'd get, you know, the big extra meat sub, two of them, I'd pay like six bucks for two subs. I could get four dinners out of that, and that wasn't even cooking.
[1:16:24] So, you know, you just get a bunch of cereal that it's not heavily sugared, and then you get, you fill up on that kind of stuff. Toast and peanut butter is fantastic for filling up on stuff, at least when I was younger. So you just figure out what works for you. And again, you just, you get the dented cans, you get the half off stuff. I used to be a big fan. I'd have the spider sense of when the fruit cups were one day away and just get a couple of fruit cups and mow down through those. You get Yogurt and fruit, really cheap way to fill up, especially if you can get the later stage fruit. And so, I mean, you can eat well. I mean, what's more expensive, a candy bar or a banana, right?
[1:17:01] The candy bar and the banana might cost the same.
[1:17:04] No, a banana is cheaper. A banana is cheaper. As if you're at a grocery store.
[1:17:08] It's like less than a dollar.
[1:17:09] It's less than a dollar. You can usually get a banana for like 40 cents and a candy bar is a buck and a quarter.
[1:17:14] Yeah. Okay, so it sounds like you're pretty good on the food thing. I was wondering, and this will be my last question.
[1:17:21] Oh, and the library. I said this in the show the other day because I hated being home. I lived at the library and I don't like libraries insofar as the writers aren't getting paid. They just get one and everyone. Like when the music industry was like real mad about Napster and stuff like that, it's like those artists, they were from the 60s or 70s or 80s. They've already been paid. And it was precious to me that society was freaking out about free downloads of music. And I get the copyright stuff and all of that, but it's like, you know, libraries have been around forever and ever and amen. And the library buys one copy of the book and like a thousand people read it. And how is that different from copy pasting CDs or downloading stuff from the internet. Somebody had to pay for that originally. Now I was getting it for free. And libraries have always seemed to me pretty predatory that way. And they've, you know, stolen probably tens of billions of dollars from authors over the years. But you can go to the library and you can get all the books that you want. You can take them out. It's free. You just have to get them back on time or you can sit and read and it's really nice and comfortable and all of that. So you've got free education. That was the original internet. Free education, cheap food, quality clothes. You just have to put the time in. But sorry, go ahead.
[1:18:32] I was just going to ask whether you would agree or not that overall to eat healthier, I'm wondering if you agree whether that is more expensive than eating unhealthy.
[1:18:51] I'm looking to see if that might be a false dichotomy, like one has to be more expensive than the other.
[1:18:57] Well, like you can go to Wendy's or McDonald's and you can get a full meal. You can get, you know,
[1:19:01] I know, no, no, come on. You, you, you can't, you can't talk fast food when it comes to eating. I mean, that stuff is, I mean, I indulge from time to time, but it's, it's, it's garbage, right? I mean, it's like a Diet Coke and, and fries and, you know, the burgers are usually pretty, pretty bad. But in terms of going to the grocery store and being able to get food that is pretty decent for a pretty cheap, you can definitely do that. But sorry, go ahead.
[1:19:28] Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is, would you typically find that poor people tend to eat more unhealthy foods because it's generally more accessible?
[1:19:42] No, it's not more accessible. It's more work to have quality food for the most part. Right? Because you have to buy the raw ingredients and put it all together. Whereas if you just DoorDash or you go to your local fast food joint and just pick up some, you know, grease burger and fries and a Coke, that's easy, right? So it's not so much that it's more expensive. It's that it's, again, it's the labor thing. Like if you're wealthy, I guess if you're wealthy enough, you can order food in every night. And if you're at a hotel, you can do, you know, everybody's frightened to approach the minibar. The minibar is like data used to be. And when you're in a foreign country, it's like, I can't open up data. It could cost me you know, I'm on the leg and I can't take anything out of the, uh, the mini fridge in the hotel room because they're going to take a kidney out of me with a spoon. So, uh, if you're wealthy enough, then you don't, you just order food in and do all of that. But, uh, if you're poor, then to have the quality food, you just have to put the work in. You've got to buy the raw ingredients and you've got to, uh, make it yourself and you can get really good stuff and, and eat pretty well, but it's not going to be a bunch of packaged crap. It's not going to be a bunch of, uh, uh, you know, stuff in crinkly bags and in human colors. Like you just have to buy the raw materials, put it together yourself, which takes more time, but you can still eat well and cheaply. I mean, you're not going to have like, you know, prime sirloin steaks and stuff like that, but you can still have meats. I mean, you can get meat pretty cheaply if you know what to look for.
[1:21:10] Okay. Okay. Yeah. So, so you're, you're basically saying that if I'm hearing it, you know, just right. Um, it sounds like you can, you can meet your nutritional value with about the same amount of dollars.
[1:21:23] So it doesn't really matter. More time. No, it's, it's, the rich people will get quality food that takes less time out of their day because their time is proportionately more valuable.
[1:21:38] So let's say that you're a lawyer. And again, you're making like, I don't know, 250 bucks an hour. I know that's low for lawyers, but maybe that's your whatever party, you're making 125 an hour because you make 250,000 a year, it's about 125 an hour. So if you're a lawyer and you work an extra hour at the office that nets you $125, and then you can Uber in some food for 50 bucks, you're still up 75 bucks, right? So for them, it's better to stay at work and have other people do the food preparation labor because their work is so valuable. Like if you're a surgeon, right, you're making a lot more money doing surgery than, you know, cooking your food, right? Unless it's your, you know, relaxing or whatever it is, but in terms of time. Whereas poor people, their time is not worth nearly as much as well-paid people. So for them, they put more time into food prep because they're not cutting into it. Like if you're making 20 bucks an hour, which 40,000 a year, it's not the end of the world. So you're making 20 bucks an hour, then getting the $50 Uber for your dinner, you're out 30 bucks. Whereas if you're making 125 bucks an hour, you're up 75 bucks. So it's just an economic calculation at some level.
[1:22:54] Well, I agree with that between, you know, rich and poor, but I guess what I, the heart of what I was trying to get to is if you have two poor people and you give them both 10 bucks and one of them goes out and just gets junk food for 10 bucks and they get 800 calories and they're good for the day.
[1:23:12] I'm wondering. Well, not the day. You can't live on 800 calories, but go on. They're good for the night.
[1:23:17] Yeah, sure. They're good for the, the lunch. Okay. I guess the heart of my question is, could somebody who is poor that has the $10, the other person, if they put in the time and effort, can they also meet the same caloric intake, 800 to 1,000 calories with the same amount of money?
[1:23:38] Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, so, no, because you don't obviously get $10 like Pac-Man dots. So what you would do, and we've all had these choices when we're working, is do I make my lunch or do I buy my lunch? Right? Those are the big choices, right? So, you know, if it's a bottle of water and a sandwich, you can go to the food court and for 12 bucks, you can get a bottle of water and a sandwich. Or for way cheaper, you can make it at home. It's just going to take you 20 minutes to put it all together. And then you've got to remember to take it and put it in the fridge and so on, right?
[1:24:15] So you can... Eat a sandwich and drink a bottle of water way cheaper if you bring it in from home and make it at home and bring it in from home because you obviously are going to spend the time to put it together and have, you know, the minor inconvenience of taking it into work. So, oh yeah, no question. I mean, everybody has, I mean, you have those choices too, right? Do you, do you buy your lunch out or do you, I mean, it's the same thing like if, if you have a little coffee maker at home and it's like, I don't know, 75 cents for the coffee, right? But if I go out, it's, you know, two to five bucks for a coffee, right? So if you make it at home, it's way cheaper. Otherwise, nobody would make it at home.
[1:24:58] Yeah, yeah, I think I can see that because, you know, if you were to buy like a loaf of bread and a package of meat for 10 bucks, you get 10 sandwiches or whatever it is, right?
[1:25:06] Yeah, and they're not going to be quite as good for sure, But nutritionally and health-wise, it's probably maybe even better because you're not getting all the, you know, you get these sandwiches and you get this like, well, you get the mayo mustard goop and, you know, then you got to get your shirt dry cleaned and all that kind of stuff. All right. I appreciate the questions. And I move on to, yeah, thank you, man. Very, very interesting. It's given me flashbacks to back of the day. The other thing too, of course, if you're broke, it can be tough to work out because you need more food. You need more food even when you're not working out. all right uh choking lobster you're my lobster choking lobster i don't know what that refers to everybody's usernames has got a whole bunch of backstory but hopefully not quite as dramatic as the my mom tried to get me murdered backstory choking lobster unmute speak now if you have to use clickety clacks with your pincers that's fine with me i know morse code yes yes.
[1:26:04] Um yeah well uh first time here first time speaking welcome glad to be here um Yeah, I just have a few questions. I'm an engineering student, and yeah, I'll be in a workplace soon. And yeah, how should I go on with that? Because there's HR now, and it's basically a nightmare. There's thought police, basically.
[1:26:35] Oh, so you have non-woke opinions that you're concerned about? Bing! Getting the laser targets of HR on your forehead?
[1:26:44] I can be quiet. It'll be fine. But just the workplace can be a really good place if HR never existed, in my opinion.
[1:26:54] Well, come on. You got to hire the women who aren't in STEM and put them somewhere, right? Because you've got a mandate to hire women. So you've got to create this whole pink ghetto.
[1:27:01] Put them away from me because I want to have fun.
[1:27:06] Right. I mean, you don't want to be like that meme where it's like when you tell a joke so good that HR wants to hear it too.
[1:27:13] Yeah. Yeah. Basically that.
[1:27:15] Yeah. So, so here's the thing. Here's the thing. If you want to, if you want to have leverage at work, first of all, you got to keep politics and stuff out of the workplace. I've been a business owner. I mean, I guess I still am, but I've been a business owner with like 30 plus employees and it's not a political forum. It's not a political debate issue. And that is not the place for politics. The business is a place, obviously a business, and you don't want to create left-right divisions. You don't want to create male-female divisions and ethnic divisions. You just want people working together as a team. And that means keeping politics out of it. And of course, as the political gap widens, the costs of bringing politics up in the workplace tends to go up and it is not good. So your employer will not look upon you kindly and neither would I if you started messing up the delicate structure of workplace productivity by bringing politics and divisive, controversial, problematic, you know, left or right opinions into the workplace. So, uh, if you want to have your, um, political battles, fantastic, you know, do them anonymously online. Cause I know even now, if you've got your face and name attached to it, it could be a problem, but, uh, from, from that standpoint, but would you like, would you like me to tell you how to have the most leverage at work? Should you ever get into trouble?
[1:28:38] Yeah, I'd like that. It would be quite nice.
[1:28:40] Right so the only way to have leverage at work is to be incredibly freaking valuable, to be, you know, the 10x, yeah, the 10x, the 20x kind of person.
[1:28:52] I have had people go to bat for me when I worked, I worked as a temp and I was, I was, I was such a good temp when I was in the business world before I became an entrepreneur. I was such a good temp, like people would hire me for two weeks and I finished the job in two days. And so I just got this incredibly great reputation. And then uh at one company i rather unwisely you know looking back in hindsight this was not a great idea but the company was being threatened with a bunch of tariffs and um i i made some political suggestions uh that were you know obviously i was just a temp so they didn't listen to me too much and i wrote a letter and i was going to send it to the ceo about this that and the other, how to deal with this politically, how to deal with this from a sort of leverage standpoint and so on. And I got fired like that day, right? And anyway, so I thought, oh man, they're never going to send me out again, right? And I called my guy and he's like, yeah, sorry about that, man. We'll get you out as soon as possible. Here's this job and that job and the other job. And if I'd been a marginally productive guy and I'd gotten fired with extreme prejudice, I think that was the, was that the only time I ever got fired? I think it might've been.
[1:30:09] Um, but it came out of enthusiasm for, for freedom. But, uh, if I had been marginally productive, they might've just washed their hands of me and say, ah, you know, whatever, right? This is, this is not really worth it. And so on, cause I'm sure they got an earful from the client. What kind of radicals are you sending out to this place, man? I'm not here for political speeches. And I learned my lesson and so on. So if you're just insanely valuable to people, then you have leverage. So going above and beyond the call of duty you know there's some people who say, well i'm only i'm only getting paid you know let's say i'm getting paid 40 bucks an hour so why would i produce 400 worth of an hour well a job security and b leverage and c, you produce where you want to end up in your career not where you are or where you want to be a year from now, you produce the kind of value that you want to have as your income in 10 or 20 years. Because that's the only way you're going to get there. It's just produce relentless value. As an engineer, it's easy to forget who you work for, right? Because as an engineer, as most employers think of this, you think you work for your boss, right? No, that is not who you work for. You work for the customer. You and your boss works for the customer, and your boss also works for you. So, I used to say this to my employees, and I would say, look.
[1:31:37] You're getting paid less because of me. If you didn't need me, you each would get, you know, 10 or 20% more or whatever because, you know, of my cost. Not just me, but the office and everything, right? So, let's say, so 10% of your salary is coming to me. Now, I need to provide value to you because you pay me from your salary, right? I pay you from the customers and you pay me from your salary. So, if you've got a difficult customer, if you have a technical issue, if you're stuck on something, if you're having a problem with productivity, having a problem with a coworker, you're paying me anyway, you might as well use me. So come into my office, we'll close the door, we'll go for lunch, we'll have a chat about it. If there's something you want to do, and one of my employees was very keen on learning about the sales process. So I said, absolutely, come with me on the sales, I'll teach you the sales stuff. And he became fairly good at that kind of stuff. And he loved to travel like most young people. I mean, being paid to be in a nice hotel when you're in your 20s is like a dream come true.
[1:32:33] So I think I see a problem with becoming more valuable for the company. If the company is becoming valuable or is already valuable, yeah, it has more leverage over you, of course.
[1:32:49] Why is that?
[1:32:50] Over time. Well, it already has so many employees. It has so much influence because it's becoming a bigger company. It can replace you easier over time.
[1:33:01] No, no, no, no. You're missing what I'm saying. I apologize for that. For, I apologize for being unclear. So, No, no, let me, let me, let me make my point. Let me make my point. And then, then I'll, then I'll be quiet. So when you go see a movie, right? I went to go see Superman because I'm a sucker for Superman movies. God help me because of Clark Kent as played by Christopher Reeves back in the day. I love that movie. So in, in the movie or Godzilla movies or whatever, there's the star, right? Whether it's Godzilla or, or Clark Kent or Superman or something like, and then there's a whole bunch of people running and screaming in the background, right? That the city's getting wrecked and they're all running down the street. You've seen those kinds of movies, right?
[1:33:41] Right.
[1:33:42] You have, right?
[1:33:43] Okay.
[1:33:44] So if you are the movie producer, is it easier to replace one of the extras or to replace the star? Yeah, the extras, who cares, right? It's just some guy in the background and, you know, if he stumbles and falls and, you know, breaks his ankle or whatever, you just say, you know, get me another extra and you know put them in the same hat i'm sorry when.
[1:34:08] The company is bigger it will have multiple stars
[1:34:11] So be one of those stars what i'm saying is don't be a back yeah you don't be a background go.
[1:34:18] Ahead so many stars uh that at least one of them will be disposable eventually there'll be so many stars that you can
[1:34:26] Okay so you're a yes but guy so let me ask you this. If the company wants to cut its employees, is it better to be a star or one of the extras?
[1:34:38] The star.
[1:34:40] So why are you fighting me on this?
[1:34:42] Well, there'll be so many stars that even...
[1:34:45] Is it better to be a star or an extra?
[1:34:50] It's better to be a star.
[1:34:51] So be a star. Does that mean you're invulnerable? No. Even Superman has kryptonite. If the entire company gets hit by an asteroid, yes, you're going to be dead. Or if the entire company goes completely tits up, Enron style. But even then, you have to keep documentation, right? This is really, really, really important. Your boss isn't going to know how productive you are. You need to document it. You need to document it and you need to tell him.
[1:35:20] Right?
[1:35:21] I finished this. You said it was booked to take a week. I did it in a day. Just wanted to let you know for when my performance review comes around. Keep stuff documented. Now, the great thing about that is, let's say the entire company, for some reason, fires all of its stars, keeps all the extras, fires all of its stars. You have the documentation to prove to some new employer that you're a star. So aim to be massively productive. Of course, it doesn't make you bulletproof, but I mean, nobody's bulletproof. but it gives you your best chance for having leverage in the company.
[1:35:50] You still need contingency.
[1:35:52] I'm sorry?
[1:35:53] You still need contingency in case it goes bad.
[1:35:58] What do you mean? Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean.
[1:36:00] The documentation is contingency for in case you get fired, you have proof that you're doing really well.
[1:36:06] Well, no, it's not. I said it's not just contingency. It's also, no, it's not just a backup plan. It's useful for that. but primarily you want to keep documentation so that you can sit down with your boss and say, well, on this project, it was booked to take a week. It took me a day. This was supposed to take two weeks. It took me only one week and you keep them informed about these things going forward. And so you have to make your boss, like do not hide your light under a bushel as an engineer or anyone. You have to let your boss know.
[1:36:36] How valuable you are on a continual basis. And that way you have leverage over him because if he doesn't even know how productive you are, then it's going
[1:36:43] to be very tough to have leverage with him.
[1:36:46] And then that gives you negotiation leverage, right? When it comes to raises or what you want to do, because I'll tell you, man, I mean, as a manager, I knew exactly who the stars were and I would do anything for them. I would do anything to keep them. And I would like obsessively ask them, you know, every couple of weeks, hey, are you happy? Are you enjoying what you're doing? Is there anything I could do differently? Anything you want to change? And all of that. And I remember once when I was a chief, the official title was director of technology. I had like 30 people and they all sat me down and they said, we think we're underpaid. And I hired a consultant to evaluate that. And I then made a huge presentation to the board. I got them a million dollars extra a year in pay. and that kept them around because a lot of them were looking for work and it was a complicated code base so we couldn't replace them very easily, you know who your stars are.
[1:37:38] And, you know, if it was some QA guy who was just, you know, clicking around looking for bugs, pretty easy to replace. But the QA guy, there was one QA guy who came up with some automated testing thing and it worked beautifully. Okay, that guy's a star. I want to keep him. And he actually might get rid of the other guy because he automated a bunch of stuff. So the only job security you have or that you're capable of having is massive amounts of productivity. Go above and beyond, work extra, be enthusiastic, be happy, be somebody fun to work with, always say yes and figure it out. And don't complain and don't stir the pot and make your boss's life easier, make him look better and make him fully aware of the value that you're providing. Now, some bosses will view you as a threat and try and get rid of you, but you don't want to work for those guys in the long run anyway. You want to work for the guys who are constantly looking for the guy who's going to replace them or the woman who's going to replace them so that they can move up. So does that help?
[1:38:33] Yeah, that'd help.
[1:38:35] All right, thanks, man. And best of luck in your new career. Engineering is a very noble profession, and I really appreciate everything that you guys do. And generally, I mean, guys, to keep the lights on. Thanks, man. All right, Jamie James, take us home, brother. What's on your mind?
[1:38:53] Sorry, am I out?
[1:38:55] Yes. Everyone sounds so surprised. This is a college show, but go on.
[1:38:58] I mean, I guess there was a lag. Your thoughts for homeschooling our children? Or oldest is six. We're just about to start. We're going to use Charlotte Mason's material. Have you ever heard of it? It's like a lot of heavy reading literature. Actually, a decent amount of history. Some of it's kind of, I wouldn't say dark, but like early Christian, early...
[1:39:21] I'm sorry. Is it a son or a daughter?
[1:39:24] Two boys, six and three. The three-year-old will obviously listen in.
[1:39:28] Oh, no. Boys love the dark history, man. Are you kidding me? Because we're born to prepare for war, man. So they absolutely love the dark history. I mean, as long as it's not like videos of vivisectioning, you're probably pretty good to hand them the dark stuff because it's really going to thrill them.
[1:39:44] Yeah, like there's a thing on like the Vikings and stuff. And at first I was like, ah, but then, yeah, like kid runs around making fake swords like.
[1:39:51] Oh, yeah. Like what kid, what boy, what red blooded boy doesn't want to learn about Vikings and pirates and the Wild West and Roman legions and war. And oh, yeah, it's the best stuff ever.
[1:40:01] Do you have any other, like, I've read that maybe don't teach philosophy to a kid. I'm not a philosophical person, but they need a little bit more maturity. Do you have any other resources or... Curriculums that you'd recommend?
[1:40:17] Oh man, like, yeah, I wouldn't have any that I mean, I recommend I would, I have at least three times every year, I think about creating philosophical curriculum for children, honestly, because you can teach kids philosophy. I've done it with my own daughter, and it's a lot of fun, and they really, really enjoy it. But I don't have that. I don't have available yet. It's something that's been on the back burner of
[1:40:37] my brain forever and ever. Amen. But congratulations on the homeschooling choice.
[1:40:42] The other thing, of course, is that are you joining? Are you a Christian family? Would you have sort of Christian homeschooling groups, or would you have other kinds of homeschooling groups you could join?
[1:40:50] So my wife is spearheading that. She comes from that kind of background. I'm your typical non-atheist. What is the other word?
[1:40:59] Agnostic.
[1:41:00] There you go. My favorite joke is, thank God I live in a Christian country as an atheist.
[1:41:07] Nice. I'm sure the Christians will stone you last. That's really great. That's really great yeah.
[1:41:13] So no we are looking at that obviously you got a lot more reaching out you know the immediate circles like wow but whatever so no we got to look into that
[1:41:21] Okay i've heard good things talked about there's a place called time for learning which might be worth uh checking out um that you know never underestimate walking and talking like just walking around and talking about stuff is really cool you're like you know if you know something about botany, you go into the woods and you talk about this and that and the other, you know, bringing stuff up in conversation about history, if you know stuff about that, the reasons why you're an agnostic, cowardice, no, I'm just kidding. So, the reason, like, you know, what you think about God and why, and, you know, why do you think there might be such a thing as ghosts or why not, you know, just how do you determine things that are true from things that are false and so on, right? And you can just, in general conversation, you can just, You can transfer so much information to kids because they're absolute sponges at that time.
[1:42:12] Yeah, one of the cool things, we did a little, like, I don't know what we would call it a conference, but it was just, like, learning from other homeschoolers was, like, this idea that kind of, like, let your kids, like, have a curriculum, but, like, let your kids, like, run with things and if they find really big interests in different topics, like, let them, like, dive into it themselves.
[1:42:30] Oh, yeah. My daughter found an animation program, and she ended up animating two full-length movies and writing the script and just amazing stuff. When we played some fairly sanitized Dungeons & Dragons, she created entire worlds and murder mysteries and just amazing stuff. So, uh, yeah, really let them dive into that kind of stuff and, you know, just let their passions take them as, as far as they can. And, you know, they may not end up doing it. My daughter did a lot of art when she was younger, but she doesn't really do it as much anymore. Uh, but you know, she still had all of the skills that she learned from that kind of stuff. So, um, yeah, really let them do the stuff that they're most passionate about, because Lord knows if you can end up making any kind of coin out of your passions, as the old saying goes, do what you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life. Right.
[1:43:16] Yeah, I got to get back to my kid, but thank you for your...
[1:43:20] All right, thanks, man. I appreciate it. And thank you all, my friends, for a glorious evening of Chitty Chats. I really appreciate it. I look forward to the incoming horror that I have any criticisms of the sainthood of poverty that currently characterizes how we look at poor people in the West. But there's a certain amount of honesty that we need in society,
[1:43:43] and we're not getting it.
[1:43:45] And a lot of honesty has to do with avoiding.
[1:43:49] Over-empathetic sentimentality and turning people into saintly caricatures. The poor, look, the rich have their faults. Don't get me wrong. The rich have their faults. You know, greed and status obsession and often infidelity and so on. The rich have their faults. The middle class have their faults. We talk about that with the boomers. And guess what? In the human pantheon of good and evil, the poor have their fault as well. And treading on the toes of the secular saints of the left is a dangerous business, but it's really, really worthwhile. Single mothers have their faults. Sometimes they just made really, really bad decisions at the expense of their children. And the poor have their faults. Sometimes they're poor because they're making really, really bad decisions, often at the expense of their children. I like holding people to account. I don't think we should carve off any section of society and turn them into secular saints that it's completely beyond the pale to ever, ever criticize. I think that actually dehumanizes people and cuts them off from the very criticism that might help them the most. So the one thing that, you know, it's a white male blessing and curse, which is nobody gives you any excuses. And it's worked for me. And I really think it'll work for other people too. So thanks, Emil. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Really appreciate that. Check out my documentaries, freedomain.com slash documentaries. They're free and freedomain.com slash books. And I look forward to, I look forward to atheists telling me how grateful they are that I proved secular morality.
[1:45:10] I'm still waiting. Put it out yesterday. day. I'm not expecting it to come back and thank me, which is really sad. For them. I got the ethics, and they got the hedonism and the void. Take care, everyone. Talk to you Friday night. Bye.
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