0:08 - Welcome to Wednesday Night Live
1:01 - The Psychology of Pranks
6:42 - Adjusting to Pickleball
7:59 - Talking Politics
9:51 - Wild Experiences and Questions
11:17 - Economic Thoughts on Tariffs
14:29 - The Impact of Tariffs on Society
24:42 - Trade Wars and Market Dynamics
32:26 - The Ripple Effect of Job Losses
38:21 - Personal Development and Career Advice
48:29 - Cultural Observations on Tariffs
51:24 - The Importance of Universal Morality
57:35 - Navigating Job Changes
1:11:02 - Mentorship and Career Growth
1:20:16 - Dating Strategies and Social Dynamics
1:27:28 - Closing Thoughts and Farewells
In the latest episode of the Wednesday night live radio show, the host opens the floor to a variety of questions and comments from listeners, hinting at a potential debate regarding UPB (Universally Preferable Behavior) with Grok. This sets the stage for a lively discussion that ranges over current events, including mentions of a large Bitcoin reserve, the legal troubles of Donald Trump, and the implications of activist judges on political decisions. The talk quickly shifts to listener-submitted inquiries, launching into a deeper exploration of the psychology behind pranks, with one listener sharing a troubling experience in a social setting where pranks took an unsettling turn.
The conversation dives into the nature of pranks, with the host recounting light-hearted anecdotes about his own experiences with pranks in the past. He suggests that pranks often stem from a desire to exert control over others, particularly in social dynamics where trust has been violated. The complexities of human interaction are brought to the forefront as he discusses how teasing, as a darker form of humor, can manipulate an individual’s sense of self-worth and control. The host’s reflections extend to broader themes of vulnerability in human behavior, touching upon the societal implications of such interactions.
Transitioning from the topic of pranks, the discussion moves on to pickleball, a game the host plays with predominantly older women. He shares his strategies for adapting his play style to ensure a fair and enjoyable experience for everyone involved. This leads to amusing banter about age differences and the physical dynamics of the game, while subtly addressing the importance of community and shared activities for social health.
As the show progresses, listeners share various comments about political issues, notably a query on the Trump tariffs and whether they constitute an unnecessary economic aggression. The host breaks down the ramifications of tariffs, articulating that, contrary to some beliefs, they do not inherently lead to inflation but are rather a response to global market dynamics that may harm domestic industries. Using a plethora of relevant statistics and anecdotes, he emphasizes the importance of protecting American industries and warns against the repercussions of losing jobs to overseas markets.
In a particularly passionate segment, the host discusses the socio-economic consequences of unemployment and reliance on government welfare, elucidating the cascading effects on families and local communities. He argues that the essence of tariffs is to foster healthy competition and protect American producers, challenging popular notions that tariffs only inflate consumer prices. This part of the discussion reignites a deeper dive into the relationship dynamics between countries, emphasizing the need for smart economic negotiations, particularly between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
Listeners chime back with commentary about historical examples of economic control and how tariffs function within this framework. The host makes a compelling case for viewing tariffs as strategic tools in broader negotiations, arguing against passivity when facing nations that maintain far higher tariffs against American products.
The finale of the episode leads to the notion of individual experience and agency amidst larger economic conversations. Questions about young adults navigating dating and familial expectations arise, segueing gracefully into practical relationship advice. The host emphasizes the balance of confidence and vulnerability in approaching romantic prospects while deftly steering clear of conventional approaches that often lead to disappointment. His insights underline the importance of understanding and valuing oneself before entering into relationships.
As the episode winds down, the host encourages listeners to engage with the material, appreciate the complexity of issues discussed, and reflect on their societal implications. Insights about economic models, psychological behavior, and interpersonal dynamics create a rich tapestry woven throughout the discussion, making for an engaging and thought-provoking evening. Questions continue to flow as the host remains open to the audience, reinforcing the participatory spirit of the show. The night ends with gratitude expressed for the community and its contributions to the broader conversation.
[0:00] Good evening, welcome to your Wednesday night live. And looking forward to your questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems, whatever is on your mind.
[0:09] I think I'm going to have an argument with Grok about UPB. I'd be quite interested. Be quite interested in its comments, see how well it does. So that, I think, would be kind of cool. That, I think, would be kind of cool. All right, let's get to your... questions and comments. And yeah, it looks like the strategic Bitcoin reserve is coming. And that's good. That's good. The good thing is that is that it can't be stolen. Isn't it wild though? Is it a federal judge? Or is it the Supreme Court that has ordered Trump to pay $2 billion in stuff he wants to cut? Activist judges. Activist judges. Just wild.
[1:02] Just wild all right so uh if you have questions comments issues problems i am thrilled to hear them from you all right what have we got here just listen to the sunday show Stef goes to church, and bitcoin pumps lol consonants yeah uh right Stef says someone i'm in a remote area and unfortunately surrounded by people on different wavelengths. The other day, two of these misfits got to prank me. I often see pranks go wrong on social media, sometimes leading to death. What's the psychology of pranks? At 14, maybe okay, but if men are doing it in their 50s, there's something really off. The prank was going to be one man pretending to murder the other with a knife. Smash my head. I've made it clear to them that I will no longer hang out with them as a threesome? What a great, what a great question. Damn, that is scorching. Yeah, what a fantastic question. Thank you.
[2:13] Great question. Pranks. I think I've only done one or two pranks in my life, none of them particularly harmful. There was a guy I was working with, and I spent some time, and I was working up north, we spent some time in a hunting cabin, and I was in the basement of the hunting cabin for some reason, and there were a bunch of stuffed wolves down there. Pretty fresh looking, but stuffed wolves. And so I pranked a guy, we weren't getting along too well, so I guess It was a little aggressive, but I pranked a guy and there was guys up there from Wisconsin and they had a bunch of hunting dogs. So I had a little tape recorder and...
[3:01] I recorded the dogs, the hunting dogs growling, and then when this guy was sleeping, I snuck in, to his room, and I arranged three wolves around his bed, and I looked so that the reflection of the light through the window would reflect off the wolf's eyes, so that when he woke up, and then of course I left the tape playing, so then when he woke up, he would see, three wolf eyes see wolves in his room and hear growling. And, uh, I'm not saying it was the nicest thing. I'm not saying it was the healthiest thing, but it certainly was a thing. And, uh, he took it fairly well. It was in fact quite funny because it's harmless. He can't get harmed. He just got frightened. He pranked me back in some way. I can't really remember, but that was a prank that I did. It was, uh, it was kind of funny. Uh, it was wonderful to hear that, that cry out in, in horror. But, yeah, pranks. So, pranks as a whole are to do with punishing people usually for trust.
[4:17] Punishing people usually for trust. This guy and I, we didn't get along well. And it's funny because I generally get along with just about everyone. Except maybe editors at Wikipedia. But I generally get along but there's been a few people over the course of my life, just a few that I have just found gross repulsive I remember I was in a play I had to play a guy who went through a stroke and was paralyzed on his left side and the the director duct taped my entire left side so I could feel it and really remember it and And.
[4:57] The guy who was playing, the guy I didn't like in the play, I genuinely didn't like in real life. And it's rare for me, but just, I try to find the best in everyone, but there's some people you just, oh, I just rub you the wrong way. And it's like nails, their personality, everything they do is like nails on a black one. So pranks, pranks are to do with controlling the responses of other people, right? Like, so you're applying stimulus that they respond to, and it's funny because they're out of control and under your control. Like, they're out of their own control. It's like a possession. You are, like, you've seen these pranks, and they're kind of funny, right? Where there's a guy dressed as a bush, and he kind of jumps up when people are walking by, and there's, ah, right? So the reason it's funny, or the scare pranks, the reason it's funny is because the person is in a moment of real vulnerability. They've lost control of their body, and you are in control of their body. Body. And again, when you're young, you know, it's just kind of funny, I suppose. I guess I was 18 when I did my prank, but mentally you could argue much younger.
[6:03] So I would say that pranks are invasive in the way that teasing, that teasing is a much darker form of prank. My brother was an absolutely horrendous, relentless teaser, and teasing is the wrong word. It's just kind of like a mental torture. And teasing is sort of much darker because teasing is an attempt to rewrite the script of who you are with repetitive external stimuli, right? And so, but pranks are just a way of invading and taking over the other person so that you're in control of their nervous system. And it can, it certainly can be quite dark.
[6:43] Advice for playing pickleball with mostly women, a lot older and experienced in the game. Yeah, I mean, my wife is pretty athletic, but I mean, I'm almost six foot tall. She's a shade under five foot two. And I sort of will talk about her dino arms, you know, because I have, you know, fairly, fairly lengthy, lengthy grab sticks. And she has these, so, you know, I can't lob it too much because she's too short. I can't do wide shots too much because it's just kind of unfair, right? It's like playing pickleball with a T-Rex. So, I mean, you just have to adjust your, here's what you have to do. You have to adjust your play. You're not there to improve your skills. You're not there to get a super duper workout. You're there to exercise and enjoy the game with someone.
[7:31] So, yeah, just, um, uh, and, and the other thing too, skill can do a lot. I remember, uh, being on a, I went on a two week vacation on my own after a big project at work in the Dominican Republic. And I played with a woman who seemed very old. I don't know. She's probably in her seventies and I was in my twenties back then. And she slew me at tennis. She just knew exactly where to place the ball. I just, I couldn't, couldn't win. All right.
[8:00] Yes. Yes. Can we have a bank holiday one day and just talk politics, you know, just for a special indulgent event? Hey, Taylor, nice to see you. It's been a while. All right, from Odyssey. Hey, Stef, thank you. Truly making our world a better place. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Freedomain.com slash donate. If you would like to help out the show, I would really, really appreciate that. Some guys at the office prank each other by putting a gross picture as their desktop background if they leave the computer unlocked overnight. A little risky. A little risky.
[8:34] I can't wait for tennis season to be back. Yeah, have you ever looked into indoor? Indoor tennis? Indoor tennis is wildly expensive. Just wildly expensive. All right. So, let's see here. Somebody says, I remember the scary clown prank craze ended after someone severely got shot beating a run over with a car. Yeah. It's pretty easy to get addicted to pranks. See, human beings, we know this, right? Like, as you get more control over other people, your dopamine levels increase. Like, power over other human beings is addictive. And when you can invade, you know, invading other people, gaslighting them invades their sense of reality. Pranks invade their, you're taking over their entire nervous system. Teasing is you're trying to take over their brain and replace their self-evaluation with your own self-evaluation. So this invade, and this is what propaganda, propaganda is the attempt to replace sense data.
[9:52] With recreated reality. is it a thousand per season for the indoor clubs here in toronto a thousand dollars per season well plus you have to pay you have to pay now if you guys have questions i'm absolutely thrilled to answer your questions i did have a wild experience today hit me with the why if you would like me to talk about my wild experience today otherwise i'm absolutely completely totally thrilled and content.
[10:24] To talk about your questions, your comments.
[10:29] Somebody says, I know you don't generally talk politics, but can you give your latest thoughts on the Trump tariffs? Is it an unnecessary act of economic aggression? God, no. Absolutely not. Okay, I'll tell you about your wild experience in a sec. So there's more economics than politics. And I get, like, I get the economic purist argument in a free market for tariffs being bad. The idea that tariffs lead to inflation is just false, just false. Again, in a free market, yeah, they add to the price of things, but inflation is not the price of things going up. Inflation is inflation of the money supply. That's it. That's all. It is not the price of things going up. If everybody suddenly decides that they want to go gluten-free, then gluten-free bread, well, the price will go up. That's not inflation.
[11:17] Inflation is inflation of the money supply. That's all it is. Do tariffs inflate the money supply. They do not. They do not. Now, tariffs at the moment, it's kind of funny because Canada's, of course, all full of piss and vinegar, right? All full of piss and vinegar about America because see, attacking a white right-wing guy, it's just the height of courage these days, you know? Boy, you really just have to screw your courage to the stick in place if there's a white right-wing guy, a white conservative, a white Republican. Oh, wow. Aren't you brave? Aren't you brave talking trash about that? Go watch Richard Dawkins talking about Islam and see how you do.
[12:04] So, the fact that Justin Trudeau is talking all kinds of tough about Trump, it's just, it's hilarious. I mean, it's so pathetic. Anyway, so Canada has tariffs on American goods north of 270%, right? So, there's some American goods coming into Canada taxed at 240%. There is huge amounts of, Canada has these, certainly Ontario, or maybe Canada has these like eggs and milk boards and so on, it's all government-run, government supply side stuff. So a lot of it is you're not allowed to import and compete against it, right? So Canada has a lot of tariffs on the US. 20% of Canada's GDP is selling into the US. A third of Mexico's GDP is selling into the US.
[12:59] 1 50th of america's gdp is selling into canada and mexico right so just to reiterate canada 20 percent of the gdp is selling into the u.s mexico 33 percent of the gdp is selling into the u.s the u.s two percent of its gdp is selling into both countries it's completely asymmetrical and talked about this months ago access to the american market is the most important single consideration for anybody who wants to succeed economically and it is the single biggest market by far in the world. And the fact that tariffs haven't been imposed is pathetically weak. America holds all the cards with Canada and Mexico, and everyone can talk tough as much as they want, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. They'll talk tough and then they'll make a deal behind closed doors if they have any brains at all, or if they're petty and stupid. Like petty, immature, stupid people don't have a fucking clue when they have no leverage.
[13:52] Well, but enough about Zelensky. So yeah, they don't have any leverage. They don't have any control. And going into a trade war with America is like having a fucking hold your breath underwater contest with a sperm whale. Yeah, good fucking luck with that. It'll go down to 5,000 feet and then it's a mitisonic boom that shatters your fucking spine. So I just find it kind of sad, empathetic and ridiculous. And, uh, it is always the case that, uh, idiots, uh, don't recognize leverage and they just go on principle when they have nothing to back it up with.
[14:30] And, uh, it's really sad. And of course it is always other people who pay the price for this posturing, right? Uh, this posturing of like, well, uh, we can't give an inch to Putin. Uh, He's terrible. Okay, whatever, right? Still, Russia is putting far fewer people in prison for social media posts than, I don't know, say the UK and so on.
[14:53] So, uh, there's all this posturing, which makes everyone feel good. We've got an enemy and we're taking American whiskey and we're booing the anthem. We're taking American whiskey out of the LCBO and they're booing the American. Oh, our team, our team. The leaders all do the posturing and the people all pay the price. That's sort of inevitable, right? If Zelensky was on the front lines, you know, he is a fairly a fit dancer, comedian, TV star from Ukraine. If he was on the front lines, he might feel just a little bit different. So, with a trade war, it goes something like this. If there was a free market, I could understand the argument against tariffs. However, let's say China subsidized like crazy, subsidizes its steel industry like crazy, right? So then steel can be sold very cheaply into the United States. Now, the problem is, when steel is sold very cheaply when it's subsidized and it goes into the United States, the steel industry in the United States staggers and collapses. That's a huge deal. Because now you're dependent upon China, a hostile power for your steel. That's very bad. Also, of course, who pays the social costs of massive unemployment in what used to be the manufacturing belt that is now the rust belt? Well.
[16:17] Who pays the price is obviously the people, but it's the taxpayers. It's the government, really. It's the future generations because of debts and deficits. So what happens is 100,000 people lose their jobs in America. Then what? Well, the government has to pay 100,000 times unemployment insurance, right? And it has to pay 100,000 times welfare. Oh, and don't you know, those 100,000 people probably tend, oh, my neck. Oh, geez. Oh, my neck hurts, man. Oh, I think I've got whiplash. Oh, yeah. So they just go on disability, right? And then they stay on disability forever instead of paying taxes, they're not taking taxes.
[16:57] Also, when people lose their jobs, they tend to get kind of depressed. They tend to sit around a lot. They don't have a gym membership anymore because that's expensive. And they don't have tennis clubs memberships because that's expensive. So they kind of sit around, eat badly, and they get depressed, and they gain weight, and they get less healthy. So then you have additional bills. Also, when men lose their jobs, in particular, there are lots of divorces. So if there are lots of divorces, that's very expensive for society as a whole, right? I mean, there's trauma for the kids. There is, well, now you need two residences instead of one that drives up the price of housing. And there's lots of conflict, which lawyers drives up the price of lawyers. So lawyers are less available for other people. I mean, the ripple effects of 100,000 people losing their jobs in a semi-socialist economy like America has, or really most of the Western, all of the Western countries have, the ripple effects are huge. Some people who are older and they lose their jobs, they may choose to take early retirement. So instead of paying taxes, like they're 55, they retire at 55 because it's just too hard to get a job at 55. You can't retrain that easily and nobody wants you if you're 55, right? So a lot of people, instead of paying taxes until they were 65, they retire. And now they're drawing resources. I mean, maybe not social security, which you can't get until your early 60s, I think, but they're still not paying taxes and they're drawing resources away.
[18:21] So there is a massive ripple effect that goes through the entire American economy. It's not just 100,000 people no longer paying taxes. It's 100,000 people no longer paying taxes.
[18:32] Drawing medical resources, drawing housing resources through divorce, and they are drawing unemployment insurance and welfare and disability because, oh, my neck, man, it's killing me, right? So the ripple effect is absolutely monstrous. so if you allow a foreign country like china to subsidize its steel industry your steel industry gets destroyed and all of those skills scatter right people retrain they retire they go elsewhere they they move back home to some other country if that's where they came from so and the the um the factories fall into disrepair and get aged and so on right so then after china having subsidized its steel industry has destroyed your steel industry, then what China can do is it can crank up the price of steel, right? And you can't compete because you've destroyed your entire domestic steel industry. So it is a massive catastrophe. Oh, also not to mention, but also when people are unemployed, they tend to get depressed and anxious and they go through very tough times. Their health gets bad, their marriage is under the rocks or in there on the rocks or divorced. So what happens is they start taking drugs. I mean, you know, the rust belt, you follow, you follow the hollowing out of the American manufacturing environment. You hollow that out and the drugs come in and the drugs come in.
[19:57] And of course, because we have welfare and we have unemployment insurance, people don't tend to move. So you've got, I mean, I remember this in northern Ontario when I worked up there. There were entire towns where the mine closed down like decades ago, but people are still there. Normally, they should move to some other place where there's economic activity, but they kind of get stuck like a fly in amber. They get stuck. You know, like some guy frozen in the wall of a glacier from the ice age 10,000 years ago, they just get stuck.
[20:28] Also, when there's unemployment and there are drugs and there is lots of government money sloshing around, you get the breakdown of the family unit. You start to get a lot of births outside of wedlock because the men aren't needed anymore because the women are getting all their money from the government. So there's just a massive ripple effect that has a huge impact on the society as a whole. And then you end up under the thumb of a corrupt communist, but I repeat myself, government, say China, could be other places, and your entire industry is gone, and you can't bring it back. That's the problem. Once you kill an industry, it's really hard to bring it back. Why?
[21:16] For a number of reasons the the capital machinery has all decayed or been pillaged off and sold for parts how do you get new stuff it's gone the hundred thousand workers died retired retrained, like moved away whatever it is so you lose all of that expertise and that skill set right it takes.
[21:37] Decades to get a highly functioning team and an efficient supply chain in the manufacturing now Now, I know a little bit about manufacturing, of course, because I sold a lot of the software that I wrote was sold, or I sold it into, you know, Fortune 500 manufacturing companies. You'd know them all. I won't list them. It doesn't really matter. But yeah, you would know them all. So I got lots of tours of manufacturing facilities. I got lots of training and had to read up a lot and watch a lot of videos on a training for manufacturing because I needed to know who I was selling into. And there's this thing called just-in-time manufacturing where if you're making a car and you need the steering wheel you don't want to store the steering wheel right you don't want to store 10 000 steering wheels because that's very expensive so you're like you reach and i remember a guy describing to me what they want is you reach for that steering wheel it only materializes when they reach for it in the moment that they reach for it it's called jit or just in time so you don't so so that whole supply chain setting all that up six sigma stuff is just it's wildly complicated and wildly precise. And it really is like some Rube Goldberg machine that just goes on and on. When that all scatters and vanishes, it's gone. It's gone, you know?
[22:55] It's like if you need to reshoot a scene in a movie a couple of months after the movie has finished shooting, you can't. You know why? Because the actors are all off doing other stuff. They've gained weight, they've lost weight, they have makeup, they, you know, they're in some jungle, you know, filming Tropic Thunder 12 or something like that. So everyone's scattered and they're gone. You can't get them back. So once that, once that expertise is gone, man, it's gone.
[23:23] So what's best for America? Now, of course, I also understand the argument and I don't want to dismiss it. Like it's not all negative, right? There's no cost. There's only costs and benefits, right? Outside of moral issues, there's only costs and benefits. It's all trade-offs. So I also understand that if say China is massively subsidizing the steel industry, then you get cheaper steel in America and that ripples through. And that ripples through things based on steel become cheaper? Absolutely. However, the taxes are higher than the savings. So people subsidize their industries, of course, to buy votes in the local economy, but also to harm their ideological or economic competitors slash enemies. So China will lose money, like it will raise its taxes or raise its debt to subsidize the steel industry. But.
[24:20] It will harm America more than it harms China. Otherwise, they wouldn't do it in general, right? So that's the foundation of the trade war. Now, of course, any country that engages in tariffs has no right, no moral right to complain on tariffs being imposed upon them.
[24:42] But America, as I said before, has the biggest market. It's insane how big and expensive and wealthy the American market is. And again, I say this having spent many, many years selling into worldwide markets. I sold into Europe. I sold into China. I sold into Mexico and Central America, never got to South America. And the American market is staggering.
[25:12] It's multitudes larger, people have multitudes bigger budgets, and they make decisions much quicker. My God, try selling into Europe. Oh my God, it's insane. There's always some reason why nothing can happen. Well, it's spring, the weather's pretty good, people aren't in the office. Well, it's summer, everyone takes a month off in the summer. Well, it's fall, people are off seeing the leaves. Well, you know, around the month of Christmas, you really can't get anything done. Like everything's so slow it's like slow motion oh it's horrendous horrendous at china they'll do a lot of talk and then they'll just take your ip so because i did i spent about a couple of weeks in china uh selling the software as well and to be fair some of them were good and actually really liked the chinese people it's the old thing like never confuse the government for the people the Chinese people were great, very funny. I was referred to as the big nosed foreign person, which I actually found quite hilarious. So yeah, but really, really fun. And you know, when they whip out the ping pong battles that you're toast. And also what's interesting is that traveling to China to do business, at least when I did it back in 1999, traveling to China to do business is funny because it's like traveling back to the set of Mad Men. Like it's like traveling back to the three martini lunch 1950s advertised because they just drink all the time at lunch. And i'm not much of a drinker so but you know take one for the team to make the sale.
[26:37] So yeah you you put in tariffs to stimulate domestic production it's not inflationary, compared to no tariffs and having your entire industry hollowed out right because, When you lose 100,000 jobs and you have to switch from income, from taxes, from the government's perspective, you're not getting taxes from these people anymore. Instead, you have to pay out massive amounts of money. As I said before, like employment insurance, welfare, drugs, healthcare issues, retraining costs, like there's just so much that goes on. Now, all that you have to print money for, and that's what's inflationary. You have to print money to cover the costs of 100,000 people no longer paying taxes, but instead needing billions of dollars of resources. So, and a good chunk of them don't come back into the workforce or certainly don't come back at the same rate. So let's say you've got some guy, he's been in manufacturing for 20 years, makes $100,000 and then he's got to go get a job somewhere else. Well, can he get immediately a job outside of manufacturing for $100,000? He cannot. He cannot. So even if he gets back into the workforce, it's going to be at a lower rate and you're going to get fewer taxes from him. And he's still going to be kind of depressed and unmotivated because if you go from 100k to 50k, it's kind of depressing. I was deplatformed. I know a little bit about a bit of a dip in income, just a tiny bit.
[28:06] So yeah, so the trade war is Trump is sitting on the goose that lays the golden eggs, which is access to the U.S. Market. And he has absolutely every right in terms of the Chile international economic sphere of negotiations. He's got every right for companies that have a lot of tariffs on importing goods into exporting goods to their economies. The countries have a lot of tariffs. He's like, well, you've got a lot of tariffs on us. We are going to restrict your access to the incredibly wealthy, decisive, and productive American economy if you don't fix immigration and fentanyl. We don't want a bunch of people pouring across the border and we don't want a bunch of Americans to the tune of, what, 100,000 a year dying from fentanyl or other drugs.
[29:00] Is that, and again, we can talk about pure free market theory, and that's fine, but we do have to deal with the real world. Is it unreasonable to say, if you're sitting on a massive gold mine, that people should deal with you fairly in order to access it?
[29:18] The purpose of tariffs is to eliminate tariffs and restore free trade. But you cannot eliminate tariffs and restore free trade by asking nicely. You can't do it by having no tariffs when other people are putting tariffs on you and have for decades. It's not inflationary because in the 19th century, tariffs were 98.5% of the American government's income. 98.5% of the American government's income in the 19th century was tariffs and inflation was functionally zero percent because there wasn't a big ass central bank just printing a bunch of money right at least not consistently so i don't know if you've ever if you've ever negotiated and i've done look obviously I'm no far from it, right? But I have done a lot of negotiations with big companies, both domestically and internationally, and negotiations are a carrot and a stick. They are a carrot and a stick.
[30:30] And the stick is tariffs. The carrot is access to the US market. Now is it fair to ask countries who want access to your golden goose u.s market to say control the fucking borders and stop killing our citizens with your fucking drugs.
[30:53] Tell me how that's corrupt insane evil i don't see it now again in an ideal world free trade absolutely but unfortunately in the world that is the world is controlled by vainglorious idiotic assholes playing for the mouth-breathing low iq domestic base what are you going to do.
[31:25] What are you going to do? It was like Zelensky, right? He craps all over Trump and Vance. And then, oh, it was so sad. It was so pitiful to see all through Twitter, Zelensky then running to all of the other leaders. Oh, oh, oh. And all the other leaders like, oh, we got your back, cell boy. Oh, we got you, baby. Don't you worry. We love you. Fuck Trump. We love you. Oh, that's just so sad, right? I mean, that's just so pitiful, right? And then, of course, he's got to come back because the Europeans are like, well, I guess we could dig you up some Neolithic era, flint bows in canada can send you know probably two-thirds of an f-16 and they're like okay right so it's just leverage that's all it is just leverage and um to to act in the best interest of american citizens is to prevent illegal immigration to prevent the flow of fentanyl over the border and to restore manufacturing because this is another reason why.
[32:21] When an industry, it's what's called the rust belt for a reason. It doesn't come back without extreme action.
[32:27] Because the other thing too is that investors don't want to invest in the newly resurrected smoking crater of a former industry. So if the steel industry gets wrecked in America, and remember, the oil industry in America in part was wrecked and undermined because Saudi Arabia, a massive oil producer of course, was funding environmental groups to oppose drilling in America, right? That they were literally working for a fundamentalist dictatorship and it was not organic, right? It was just funded by people who make more money if America doesn't drill its own oil, right?
[33:07] So what are you going to do? Are you just going to cling to abstract principles that nobody else is clinging to, and watch the whole country go down the drain. I don't see how. Like, if you're playing by the rules, and everyone else is cheating, you're gonna lose. You're gonna lose. So, if you want to look at it from a libertarian standpoint, you would look at it from the proposition of self-defense, right? Other people are initiating force against American producers by putting tariffs on exports from America. And so you are responding in kind, which is a form of self-defense. So I hope that helps.
[34:05] Yes, yes, yes. So good. Thank you, Taylor. FreeDomain.com slash tonight. If you find this helpful, I would really, really appreciate that. And let's get back to your questions.
[34:21] So when other people, like, retaliatory tariffs, I mean, in other eras, a country... You got to look at something like fentanyl as a bioweapon, right? It is an act of war to send fentanyl into a country because you are slaughtering its citizens. Oh, well, yes, but the people choose to take it. I get all of that. I get all of that. I really do. I understand all of that. I understand all of that. But nonetheless, 100,000 people are dying. So if you look at it that way, and you say, look, to respond to flooding our country with a deadly poison, slaughtering 100,000 people a year, we are only imposing tariffs, that's about as mild a response because there are a lot less mild responses that have taken place throughout the course of human history. Look what China did, and you can see this in my documentary, Hong Kong Fight for Freedom, freedomain.com slash documentaries. But, look at how China responded in the opium wars to opiates flooding their country. All right.
[35:48] Henry Hazelt's book Economics in One Lesson talks about how tariffs cause all sorts of problems, but quite frankly, it's the norm. Trump is doing reciprocal tariffs and he's using it to penalize countries that have done horrible things to the U.S. Yeah yeah well and of course the other thing too is it encourages people, sorry i forgot to finish this point my apologies so if the when the steel industry in our sort of theoretical example in the u.s when the steel industry is eviscerated because there are foreign tariffs and goods flooding in that are subsidized and there's a whole world trade organization you're supposed to be go to to get the subsidies taken off but it's slow and difficult so when the steel industry is destroyed because of the cheap influx of foreign goods, uh, foreign goods like a steel, then the only way you can resurrect it is with the.
[36:42] Investment, investment in the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars to resurrect the steel industry.
[36:49] Now, the problem is, in the spin cycle of American politics, you get, you know, Democrats, Republicans, Democrats. Now, Democrats are, in general, anti-capitalist, so they're going to do whatever harms the economy, so they're going to lower tariffs. And of course, the other thing that Democrats want to do is they want to do harm to Republican voters and people who work with their hands, people who work with manufacturing, people who work with actual tangible material reality, as opposed to doing the spinal massage on silky language for a living, they tend to be more practical. They tend to vote Republican. So they want to throw those people out of work so that they end up dependent on the government, right? So when you take manufacturers who vote Republican as the result of being practical and having an income, and you put them on welfare, maybe get them addicted to drugs, or certainly in need of subsidized or free government healthcare, well, they no longer one small government because now they're on the receiving end of government largesse. So the problem is you're going to ask a bunch of people to invest a whole bunch of money in the manufacturing of steel and to resurrect the moribund industry. The problem is that who's going to invest all that money if the Republicans get in and say, man, it's good for business. You ought to start up the steel industry again. By the time they get it up and running, the Democrats are in power and remove all the tariffs and you get flooded with cheap goods and hundreds of billions of dollars goes up in smoke. So thank you, I'd rather invest in AI, right, so.
[38:18] All right, so let's see here.
[38:21] What do you think of historical freak shows? Oh, I think they're gross, I think they're gross. All right, a question. How involved should parents be in helping young adult children?
[38:40] A date and find a spouse. Early things suggest the parents play matchmaker due to modern dating and marriage laws being so horrible. Well, you can play matchmaker, but you can't control your children, right? Once they become adults and you can't really do much to control them once they become teenagers. So I think it's a good idea. I mean, you can give advice and you can give feedback and so on. But, um, I mean, the best way to teach people is through empiricism, right? So if you've got a kid who's dating some, let's say you've got a daughter, she's dating some guy who's got a bad temper. Okay. Well, uh, she says, no, no, no, it's not really that bad. Well, you just invite that young man over and you provoke him till he explodes. And then, uh, she can see him. So you don't need to lecture if you can prove that. Lyonson says, I saw a video of Ukrainian troops kidnapping a man, walking his dog and sending him to the front lines. Yep. Yep. Yep.
[39:46] All right. Somebody says, all Chinese steel was once American steel. Finished goods come in by container from China, and then scrap is loaded into the empty containers and then sent back to China. Oh, yeah, that's interesting. And of course, the other thing, too, is that the whole goal, of course, is by shielding your industries from subsidized foreign goods, then you are encouraging the development of domestic industries. Again, with the sort of caveat before that you don't want the Democrats to come in and destroy the investment again. A lot of human capital is also wasted. Joe says, I used to work in the oil and gas industry until Biden shut it down. All the knowledge I learned, I haven't used in four years because I'm in a different industry now. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And of course, you know, manufacturing standards have changed and you're not growing with it. So would you want to get lured back into an industry that's subject to so much political control? This is another thing, the oil and gas industry, because of often foreign-funded environmental groups, is subject to such wild levels of random subsidies or punishments and so on. So people don't want to get into that industry because it can be shut down based upon environmental hysteria and so on.
[41:05] Somebody says, OEM and aftermarket car part quality has gone to crap. During COVID, it, all the foreign QA people in China went home and they haven't returned. All the foreign QA people in China went home. I don't know what that means. Do you mean that they went home from China or they were from China in America and then went home? I don't know what that means.
[41:27] My only follow-up question. I'm happy to answer questions, but a donation or two, I don't mean to nag you, but a donation or two would not be the end of the world. Freedomain.com slash donate. come on it's good stuff all right let's see here, oh i lost my spot here hang on a second hang on a second we'll get it all right my only follow-up question because the domestic production on ramp will take years i.e. Auto manufacturing and steel production won't tariffs just increase expenses for consumers who have no alternative in the short term.
[42:12] But here's the thing. Here's the thing. And this is a tipping point. It's really, really important to understand. It's not just in America, but it's in the West as a whole. It's in the West as a whole.
[42:31] People are so disgusted by what their countries have become that economic considerations are no longer the forefront. You can see this in social media if you look carefully you know the democrats will will try any key right the manipulators will try any key to open the lock to control your heart so they'll say well you know the price of this is going to go up and people are like i don't care my country's going to shit i don't care if fucking eggs are more expensive.
[43:07] It's the end of the Roman Empire, bro. I don't give a shit. I don't care. I can't afford a house. I can't get a fucking job. I can't get my life started. Video games are getting tiring, boring. Even the video games are ugly and retarded now. I got nothing, Oh, but the price of eggs might go up I don't care, This is my last chance to reform before burning the whole fucking thing to the ground I don't care I mean, the expenses go up in the short run What do I care if the price of houses go up? If you need half a fucking million dollars worth of income to afford one, i don't care what's the what do i care if the price of cars go up if i can't afford a car, i don't care.
[44:13] People are there a lot of people especially younger people and tell me if i'm wrong, people are like i have no economy i have no future i have no capacity to consistently date to settle down to get married to get property i can't get a consistent job i mean especially the white male thing like a lot of white males shut out of the job market through various government and imposed quotas right so i don't care what do you care oh but economically it's like there is no economy for a lot of people there's no functional economy there's no functional economy oh no it's like it's so just for you and i it's like hey man if these tariffs go up the price of lamborghinis is going to go up like 20 i don't care i can't afford a fucking lamborghini what do i care about the price of lamborghinis.
[45:15] And certainly in America, it's like, okay, so if the price of X, Y, and Z is going to go up, but I can get a job, they're fine, right? Oh, well, you know, but if we put these tariffs up, then the price of goods coming into the country is going to go up. Yes, but I could get a job. So I'd rather have a job and have eggs be more expensive than have eggs be cheaper and not have a fucking job. Because if I have a job, but eggs are more expensive, I can still buy eggs. If I don't have a job and eggs are cheaper, I can't buy eggs, right? You see how this kind of works, right? Oh, the costs are good. It's like, no, no, no. Like there's a huge bunch of like lean, hungry, angry young people circling at a fair distance from the economic fires with no chance to get closer and they're like man whatever the fuck happens it's got to be an improvement because this is all a complete shitstorm and quicksand like i can't get ahead i can i'm working two jobs and i still have to take in fucking roommates and i can't afford a car and now they're hitting congestion pricing in places right so this well you know things could be more expensive you know can my price have gone up? It's like, I don't care. I don't care. I'm not going to sell my country for the sake of 15% cheaper eggs.
[46:45] I'm not going to have no future, no economic future for my children for the sake of cheaper cars in the here and now. You can't sell my children's future for the sake of 25% cheaper Canadian-made fucking cars. No. I make sacrifices for my offspring. And young parents are like, I don't want to live in a country where I have... Press 9 for English, right? Right. People don't care. People don't care. They're not moved anymore by the price of things are going to go up. If they have no income and no future and their children are facing economic, ruin down the road, right? Well, we got to bring the deficit down. If you don't bring the deficit down, nothing else matters because the deficit is just deferred taxation and inflation. You got to bring the unfunded liabilities down, and you got to bring the deficit down. Otherwise, nothing else matters. Nothing else matters. Well, but, you know, by bringing the deficit down, we might raise the price of eggs.
[47:59] I don't know what to say. You know, if I break out of prison, I might skin my knee. I'm unjustly imprisoned, but to break out of prison, I might pull my shoulder a little. You don't want to pull your shoulder or skin your knee, do you? How about we just get out of fucking prison? That's kind of the priority. All right.
[48:29] Number one reason my Asian girlfriend wanted to breed with me was because of my high bridge nose. At the markets in remote Asian towns, I'd be a celebrity because of my nose. Excellent.
[48:49] So, yeah, somebody just posted, I read this off before, just how much tariffs are going on in America. It's wild. Oh, yeah. Oh, bird flu. The bird flu that apparently only affects chickens. Don't you remember the whole thing under Biden? like meat processing plants chicken poultry farms like all the food they're all going up in flames i assume it's all domestic terrorism and i assume it's not unknown to the powers that be so, yeah it's crazy.
[49:38] Last time i asked a question everyone got pissy oh you're back right You just can't stay away to nag and complain and bitch and moan. How inspiring. This conversation on tariffs is so necessary to cut through the idiocy I read in the mainstream media. Thank you against a fan. Everybody, please share this live stream. Thank you. Wow, look at that mug. I've never seen anything like that. Yes, you might want to watch my video called The Truth About the Crusades.
[50:18] Did you know the Chinese have 70% tariff on American chicken feet? The Chinese prefer American chicken feet because they are much bigger and juicier than domestic birds. Now, where the fuck would I know that? I don't eat tadpoles or chicken feet. Why on earth would I know that? I mean, I'm glad you shared, I guess, but why on earth would I know that? The most informed on Ukrainian geopolitics was Gonzalo Lira. He died. I don't think he died. I think he was killed. I think he was tortured and he was killed, which is not great. Elon Musk, quote, tweets a video calling for Derek Chauvin's pardon. Well, as you probably know, it was a video I did with a black and white cop talking about how some people just die when you arrest them. Excited delirium, I think was the phrase. That was processing when my channel got killed because they needed that. For the summer of riots to get their election right.
[51:24] All right. I have not read the fourth turning. I'm guessing if this is true, the Canadian government does this to subsidize the industries within because taxes are so high here. If barriers to entry weren't in place, there may not be much of those industries left in Canada. 800,000 for a house in California. Yes, but I do hear that the house prices have dipped a tiny bit in Washington, D.C. Ah, sorry, clarity. Companies that produce products in China employed non-Chinese QA people for quality control. Chinese COVID policies forced them to go home and they haven't returned. Chinese car park quality has gone to hell because they're foreigners responsible for keeping the Chinese factories honest or gone. Right. There's only one thing you need to know when evaluating another culture. Do they have the same moral obligations for outsiders that they do for insiders? Are they tribal or are they universalists now? Christianity is by far, and this group, But of course, we have the numbers of Christianity. But Christianity is, as far as I know, the only truly universal belief system. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And where moral obligations are for everyone, not just for people in your group.
[52:45] Trump wants to increase entity production that would lower the cost of everything. Yeah, for sure. Thank you for sharing the call-in show. my father tore me apart. The call of his wife's for his age and excellent analysis, Stefan. Thank you. Peter Schiff, the crypto reserve is just another bailout. Are we going to see a huge exit after the pump? I mean, obviously I like Peter. We've done shows together over the years, but it's just a de-jerk response. Like he's just so all in on crypto. He's become a bit of a joke, right? Look, I've talked about the value of gold. I mean that the value of a tangible asset you can hang on to, the value of gold is considerable. Gold is a real asset. And, you know, when Peter and I did our debate like a decade ago on Bitcoin versus gold, yeah, gold has real value. Gold is part of a reasonable economic portfolio. But for Peter Schiff, crypto is just, you know, some sort of gay scam or whatever he would refer to it as.
[53:53] So, I mean, to me going to Peter Schiff for any objective response on crypto, it's like going to Jim Cramer for any objective response on anything. All right. Tariff is only on import price, not final retail. I vote for a company that imports a commoditized product. Our overseas vendor absorbed 35%. The US-based company absorbed 35%. Thomas Massey has officially reintroduced the end the Fed bill according to Telegram posts. If true, is it just hot air? look i mean the fed is not going to end um political political power, says soft political power and there's hard political power hard political power is just arresting the shit out of your enemies and throwing them in gulags right concentration camps mass slaughter cambodian shit that's hard political power soft political power, is bribing people with the entrails of their descendants right so you sell the children off to foreign bankers and then you bribe people with the money carved out of their children's innards, right? It's like organ selling their children's futures and then giving people money in the present. So soft political power is when you create the illusion that government is adding value because it can print money.
[55:11] So without the Fed, you don't get soft political power anymore. Because if the government can print a hundred billion dollars and put it into the economy people feel that value has been added to the economy because the gdp goes up and then later there's this mysterious inflation right which people don't connect not one person in 10 000 can connect it back to the government printing money out of thin air so government creates the illusion that it's adding value to the economy by printing money if you end the fed the government can't do that and then when people who are physically addicted to power lose soft power which is the illusion of adding value through counterfeiting what do they go to they're just going to say well you know good run we had a good run no they'll switch to hard power, The debt I owe got to sell my soul. All right. Chicken farmers don't want to kill their chickens. They're forced to by the government to either take payout and kill or they will lose insurance. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Oh, sure.
[56:22] Birds in Mexico were okay from what I've heard. I really didn't want to be a troll, but I feel like Stef really needs me to be. I completely forgot about you from last week. Oh, dear. I did not see the movie The Fall of Minneapolis. The 2020 election was rigged in many ways. I mean, I've talked about this at the time. The 2020 election was altered to Biden's favor by something that everybody acknowledges, which was the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story. The suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, based upon a bunch of alphabet agency saying that it was Russian disinformation, change the vote. 60% of votes, 16% of voters would have switched their vote, which would have been enough to keep Trump in power. Good thing or bad thing, Trump has certainly come back roaring with a vengeance, but yeah, for sure. It's been a while since I caught a live stream. It's been a while since I caught a, donation.
[57:36] What do we got here? Hey, Stef. How do you know when it's time to look for a new job? When donations collapse? Should I interpret passive-aggressive behavior from my boss and narrowing my role as an exit sign, or should I try to stick it out? If your boss is not training you to be his replacement, you need a new job. I mean, in general. If your boss, your boss should be wanting to move up. So there are bosses that want to move up, and they're looking to train their replacement because they can't move up until they train their replacement. So that's a competent boss who wants to move up and is responsible for managing his own career.
[58:23] Now, if your boss, you know, the Peter principle that people get promoted to just one step above their competence and then they sit there, right? Because people get promoted and promoted until they no longer do a good job. And then they sit there doing a bad job, right? So if your boss has reached his peak competence and he can't move up anywhere, then he's going to resist you.
[58:47] He's not going to mentor you. He's not going to develop you. He's not going to bring you along. I mean, one of the things I love to do in the business world, the most of all, was to mentor people who worked for me. You know, I had a guy, it's like, hey, man, how do you do the sales thing? I'm like, come on, let's go. Let's go, come with me. I'll introduce you as a technical liaison and you can watch me do my magic. And you can watch me listen and negotiate and so on.
[59:13] And it's funny because I actually went to a bait and switch meeting, an ambush meeting. Not as bad as Joe Rogan number three. But it was, um, a meeting where the customer asked me to come down ostensibly to buy more stuff, but then wanted to complain about a bunch of stuff. So he got to see me, you know, listen and negotiate and calm their jets and all of that and figure out how to resolve the issue. And he was like, no, I don't want to do that. Just let me go back to my keyboard. I was like, okay. So, but no, mentoring people is really, really important. I've desperately wanted people, you know, I, I did like six years of business travel and that was great. Sometimes I was traveling two weeks a month, sometimes three weeks a month. It was a blast. I was a young single guy for the most part, and it was just great. I loved it. And then I got tired of it because, you know, get tired of this stuff after a while. So I was very, very keen to have somebody be able to do what I did. So mentoring people to get them to replace functions you're doing. If you have a boss who's sabotaging you, it's because that boss is no longer able to move up. Now, he's a fucking logjam then. It's like an artery killer, right? Like the widow maker by the hop. Dead, right? So your pipeline to move up is blocked by the PETA principle. It's blocked by someone who's got nowhere to grow to.
[1:00:26] So if you're at all ambitious, you want to keep moving up. And if some guy is up there and he's clogged because nobody wants him to move up because he's hit his peak competence, then you've got to go sideways. You could do a lateral transfer and try and find some way up. You find your way up, man. Find your way up. Keep reaching for the stars. Keep reaching for the top. Find your way up. You're like a bubble. Just get stuck somewhere. Just slide, move up, right? You're like water running down the side of a mountain. Hit a rock. Just go around it. Find some. Move up. It's fun. It's fun. It's exciting. it's challenging you know we are born to strive we are muscles born to strain and stress and strengthen try more risk more endanger more fuck up more all right if you're not fucking up you're not really trying i don't really try so if your boss is not mentoring you and encouraging you to develop your skills and encouraging you to replace them, you're stuck. And you got to, you got to find some other way up. You got to find some other way up.
[1:01:35] Does it not seem bipolar, Stef shitting on one comment, then reading the next unbiased? Wait, sorry, am I effeminate or bipolar or both? Or do you just throw out these terms because you've got a thesaurus and no particular conscience. All right. To be fair, Chinese domestic products are of worse quality than those exported in the past. All Chinese products that did not pass foreign QA testing got dumped on the local markets. The Chinese treats each other just as they treat foreigners badly. In mainland China, there is no China loyalty. No buy China. Chinese prefer foreign brands and products because they are of better quality than locally produced. Good to know. Thank you. I'm writing my resume right now, says a fine watcher. I feel like I could stick around, but I'm seeing some concerning signs. Lots of dishonesty all around me. Oh, sorry, I thought you meant the live stream for a second here. I'm back. Job increasingly less comfortable, maybe just a sign of the times. Well, you know, the body, organizations rot from the head down. If your boss is corrupt, then your time is a countdown, right? It's a countdown. Do you consider holding shares of a gold exchange traded fund to be the same as holding gold bullion i'm actually storing physical gold, i don't understand.
[1:02:59] Are shares of a gold ETF the same as physical gold? Well, of course they're not. One is a piece of paper or something on a computer, and the other is physical gold you can hold in your hands. Do you know the difference between pornography and a real woman? So, no, they're not the same, but they have pluses and minuses, right? I mean, it's just a matter of pluses and minuses. gold etf uh shares are you know you don't have to store them physically and they're a whole lot easier to trade and sell right it's the old question of cold storage versus having stuff having crypto on an exchange cold storage is more secure but you can't really trade it and having stuff on an exchange can be risky but you can actually trade it easier so it's just, costs and benefits man you just got to get this thing in life there are no answers outside of moral issues. There are no answers. They're just costs and benefits. That's all. Just costs and benefits. We all do this. Maybe I could get a hotter girlfriend, but this one's, she's really cute. She's very funny. So you could let her go and you could try and get a hotter girlfriend. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. Bird in the head, worth two in the bush. Who knows, right?
[1:04:11] So there's no answers for these things. Should I hold the gold or just hold shares? There's no answer. There's no answer. Should I keep my crypto on an exchange or in cold storage? There's no answer to that. There's costs and benefits to both. If you want to trade, cold storage is bad. If you want security, you're less secure on an exchange. There's no answer. Should I rent or buy? There's no answer to that. People who rented but put their money in crypto over the last 20 to 15 years did pretty well, right? So there's no answer. Don't look for these answers. And anybody who tells you there is an answer when there are only trade-offs is so full of shit the rise of brown. There's no answer. There's no answer. There's costs and benefits to gold. There's costs and benefits to crypto. There's costs and benefits to renting. There's costs and benefits to resting versus working. If all you do is work, you get burned out. If all you do is rest, you're broke. Life is a rhythm. Life is a pulse. There's costs and benefits to exercise.
[1:05:25] If you exercise, sometimes you'll injure yourself. If you exercise, it takes time away from other things. If you don't exercise, you get to usually not get injured and you have more time to do other things. If you waste that time, that's bad. There's costs and benefits to asking girls out. If you go up and ask a girl out, you might get shot down and feel bad.
[1:05:47] But you've got to never let that stuff accumulate. Never let rejection accumulate. It's not fucking barnacles. It's not layers. It's not sediment. Never let rejection accumulate you get rejected shake it off reset to zero fucking start again do not let rejections accumulate well this girl said no oh now i feel like minus nine bad, or minus nine good yeah minus nine good because it's a minus right not double negative right plus minus nine bad is plus nine good so oh that's this girl there i feel minus nine bad, okay I feel a little better okay now I'm at minus two bad okay now I'm okay oh ask this girl again that's a pattern man that's a pattern now it's minus 10 it's minus 11 it gets worse paralyzed done forget it forget it don't do it don't fucking do it do not let negatives accumulate it's a bad idea you ask some girl out she says no yeah that's negative of course right, reset to zero ask her out ask some other girl out now if you keep getting rejection it's your fault.
[1:06:53] If you keep getting rejected by people, it's your fault because you're aiming in the wrong place. Listen, there's some girl out there who will go out with you for sure. But if you're aiming too high, if you're aiming too high, right? If you're overshooting your mark, right? If I went to go and get a job as a neurosurgeon, I would be rejected 100% of the time, except maybe in India, because I'm not a neurosurgeon. I have no training in the matter. I can't do it. I'll often cut myself while peeling an apple. Not my thing. If you aim too high, it's your fault that you keep getting rejected. So, if you're just some average looking guy and you keep trying to ask out these uber hotties, they're going to look at you with scorn and reject you. So why are you getting rejected? Because you're an idiot.
[1:07:50] You've got to aim at your level. But don't let negatives accumulate. If negatives are accumulating, your system is telling you you're aiming wrong. Hmm. Twitter shut the New York Post story immediately. Yep, absolutely. This is a really useful and great answer. Yeah, there's no way to move up at all. yeah if you can't move up move out i'm moving out, when should i change careers when donations collapse aha i get probably 20 of the subtle jokes Stef is so funny yeah low donations laugh i thought i'd cry, oh with regarding the job they treat me like a kid even though i'm highly competent but walking on eggshells. Promotion is only lateral movement to other departments. They moved me from one department to another downgraded role.
[1:08:58] The Peter Principle. And so people get promoted one level beyond their level of competence. And you can't downgrade them because they'll get too bitter, but then people have to live with bad stuff, right? You know what it's like? The best way to remember it is, let's say you're the fastest runner in your high school, right? And then you're the fastest runner in your group of high schools, and then you're the fastest runner in your county, and then your state, and then you get to the nationals, and you just get smoked. Like you just left last. You're left in the dust, right? I mean, I was definitely the best actor in my university. And I say that, you know, it was not a huge university, so it wasn't like a huge deal. But I always got cast in the lead role and I never even had to audition. I always got cast in the lead role.
[1:09:44] And then I went to theater school and I was kind of middle of the pack. There were definitely better actors, definitely actors that weren't quite as good. That's just kind of the middle of the pack. I hate being the middle of the pack. I hate being the middle. For me, win big, or crater. That's it. Everything on red 22. I'm, I hate being in the middle. I hate being in the middle of the pack. I'm going to win or I'm going to crater. I don't want anything in the middle. That's just my preference. I'm not saying it's a good or bad thing. I'm just, I'm the kind of guy, right or wrong, good or bad. I'll go for broke. I'll go for everything. I will fly high. I'll reach the moon or I'll create her endophobus.
[1:10:29] Now, if a manager isn't going to mentor you, he's going to sabotage you, right? Because a manager who's insecure, a manager who's, you know, the pointy here, like the faking, the faker manager, the guy who doesn't really know what's going on and is past his level of competence, he doesn't want other people to show him up. So he's going to constantly sabotage employees.
[1:11:02] All right. If your boss is looking at you under a microscope and ignoring his own mistakes, he's probably trying to take you out because you're a threat to him. Yeah, for sure. And the other way you know that the guy's never going to promote you or mentor you is if he steals your ideas. All right. Eric says, Stef, I have a dating prospect. How do I transition from a friendly conversation to getting her to go out with me? Is that really only worth 10 bucks to you? All right. Probably going to spend a lot more than that on the date, but that's all right. I'm just a little surprised. Maybe don't you? No, I won't say that. Oh, every now and then I self-censor. It's rare. It's rare. Normally there's no filter, but a little bit here. All right. I have a dating prospect. How do I transition from friendly conversation to getting her to go out with me? Well, of course, that's the wrong language. You can't get someone to go out with you. So I'll tell you what women like. I know this because I just watched Baby Girl. Repulsive. Anyway, so you don't get her to go out with you.
[1:12:08] The way to do it, in my humble opinion, women don't want you to stare at them and get lost in their eyes. Women want you to be having a great adventurous life and invite them along. So you say, I'm going to go and do this cool thing. Be great if you came along. Would you like to come along? I'd love it if you come along. I'm going to a renaissance fair this weekend. Want to come along? Or it'd be great if you came along. I'm going. Do you want to come along?
[1:12:41] Not, well, do you want to go to a movie this weekend? So then she realizes deep down that you going to the movie is dependent upon her saying yes. In other words, if you don't say yes, if she doesn't say yes, you're not going to the movie. So now she is in control of what you do. Women do not want to be in control of what men do. Because if women are in control of what men do, men can't go out there and compete with other men.
[1:13:14] And don't chicken out from calling it a date because that's bad, right? Because the last thing you want to do is go out and have a fun date. Then she mentions her boyfriend at the end, right? That's, that's terrible. Like you don't, you don't want to get involved in that. Thank you, Joseph. Yeah. You don't want to get involved in it. So, um, yeah, I'm going, uh, I'm going rock climbing this weekend. Love it. If you came along, uh, I'm going, uh, treetop tracking this weekend love it if you i'm going to a party this weekend love it if you came along um and if she says yes just just so you know this is a date no obligation but it's a date right i don't want to be hearing out of boyfriend later on but it's a date right so i just just be aware right and that's uh exciting for women all right um.
[1:14:11] What do you think about silver?
[1:14:17] I don't really think about silver, I'm afraid. All right. The debt I owe. Need some more tips to keep this stream going. That's kind of true. That's kind of true. You might get poached by another boss if you're useful to them, but end up in the same position where you can't surpass them.
[1:14:37] Don't give me this paralytic bullshit. Come on, man. All due respect. Well, you know, you might. you might if you know let's say you have cancer you might cure your cancer but then you just get MS or get hit by a bus or an asteroid, no no don't do it man don't do this well you know, you might you might jump off the sinking ship into a lifeboat but then the lifeboat could itself sink oh god it's so depressing, I just I can feel like The sand of my testosterone pouring out through the hole in the base of my spine, carved by that sad little statement. You know, you could try another route, but you could get blocked there too. Is that what you do when you're driving and the GPS says, there's a huge accident, traffic has stopped for hours up ahead. Here's your alternative route. You say, well, there could be another accident on that alternative route, So I guess I'll just stay here for hours.
[1:15:50] Well, I could brush my teeth, but the problem is, maybe I'll just get punched randomly on the subway tomorrow and lose my teeth anyway. So, I mean, what's the point? You can invent any scenario to paralyze your sorry ass. Don't fucking do it. Don't do it, man. Don't do it. You got to try something. You got to try something. If you're lost in the woods and no one's coming, you've got to go somewhere. Well, but you might go in the wrong direction. Yeah, but you can't stay. You've got to go do something. You've got to make some decision in life.
[1:16:32] All right. Now that I'm older, I wonder why I was so afraid of rejection. Yeah, for sure. Thank you, Dylan. What do you think about Trump's crypto reserve, Stef? I have some friends who were upset that it wasn't Bitcoin only. Yeah, well, Sabita Schiff went a little nuclear, and I'm not saying entirely wrongly. It's like, okay, so Trump put out this announcement about a strategic crypto reserve mentioning every dog crap hawk to a coin except Ethereum and Bitcoin. I'm sure that caused the prices of those to rise. Was he handed a script? I don't think Trump knows about all of this stuff and there's no reason why he would. Was he handed a script so that other people could do a pump and dump? Oh, I don't know, man. It looks a bit odd. It looks a bit odd. So the crypto reserve, I think it's great. Oh, but the government, I get that. I understand that. But here's the thing. You want.
[1:17:31] You want the government to be invested in crypto so the government protects the value of crypto like in other words if the government is something i talked about months ago that if the government wants to pay off its i don't know about unfunded liabilities it's a different matter but if it wants to pay off the debt then it accumulates crypto the value of crypto goes up and it exchanges crypto for debt that that's that's the only way out other than complete default or money printing to weimar levels of zimbabwe dollars right so, so a crypto reserve is is great you you i want politicians to own crypto i want the u.s government and all governments to own crypto that way they will not destroy the value of crypto plus the government owns crypto, I hope it's going to be public so people can see if anyone's sneaking it out, right? They should absolutely publish their holdings so that people can see if any of it's being pilfered. That would be like a real-time corruption index. Glad to see your Rumble Live viewers growing. Wishing you the best, Stef. Thank you very much. Uh, and thank you for the tip. A little something for your excellent work tonight. I make all my donations at month end, but I want to give you something tonight. Thank you. Thank you.
[1:18:52] Uh, thanks, Stef. Let me grab more coins. Thank you. Appreciate that. I bet Stef plays a solid game of pickleball. Well, you know, I've won tournaments. I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. Uh, what were you going to say, by the way, before you self-censored, I can take it. Well, if somebody basically says, I'm really attracted to this woman, how do I get her to go out with me? And he gives me 10 bucks for how to do that. What I was going to say is, well, maybe don't be so cheap, right? Because let's say the woman knew this, right? Let's say the woman knew this, right? Well, I asked a guy who knows, listen, I know a lot about dating. I know a lot about dating. I really do. I know a lot about dating and asking girls out. I won't go into all of the numbers, but I know a lot about dating and asking girls out. So if you were to say, well, I was going to ask a guy who's like a really smart guy, great philosopher and fantastic at figuring out how to ask girls out, I asked him how to ask you out. And I even gave him a donation. And she's like, oh, wow. You went on a live stream and asked a great philosopher how to get me to go out with you. And you donated to him for that? What was I worth to you? And you say, 10 bucks.
[1:20:17] You better hope your sorry ass. she never ever watches this this live stream brother you better hope i'm so desperate to go out with you i asked a real dating expert on how to get you to go out with me and that was worth like getting you to go out with me was worth 10 bucks, maybe you're broke and i sympathize with that lord knows i've been broke in my life on a fairly regular metronomic basis so i get all of that and i sympathize with all of that but since you asked, i wonder why donations are cratering i don't know actually i don't know sometimes it just kind of happens sometimes it just kind of happens and kind of comes and goes and yeah i don't know what it is i don't know i don't know if i'm doing anything wrong if i am um my family interjected all that paralytic crap with anything i wanted to do oh yeah oh it's terrible it's terrible.
[1:21:22] Uh, I, somebody says, I asked a girl out at the gym and later on found out she has a boyfriend. She doesn't realize I found this out. She still won't tell me she's taken. She probably likes the attention. Could be, could be something else. She might want to be a Genghis Khan, right? She might want to be taken away from her current boyfriend. And if you really, really want to have an exciting life, you know, if you really want to have an exciting life, and I'm not saying it's necessarily bad or wrong. Because until there's a ring on the finger, it's just 1v1, right? If you want to have a really exciting life, you take a girl away from her boyfriend. You make the case and you get the transition. Now, if she's been going out with him for years, blah, blah, blah, it's probably a bad idea. But if it's not that long a relationship, they're going out for a couple of months, once or twice a week or whatever it is. They're not moved in together, right? But, you know, then you're Genghis Khan, right? You go and you take her away from, I mean, obviously she chooses, blah, blah, blah, but, maybe she hasn't told you about her boyfriend because you're on her list bro you're on her list of maybes so go make the case if you think she's great go make the case.
[1:22:36] Stef i'm gonna donate as soon as i get a new job i feel good donating to you when i can mr streams a lot well thank you i appreciate that i ask girls to have dinner with me on the spot sometimes if we're at a food court and they make eye contact with me or we have a quick convo yeah for sure yeah all's fair in love and war man all's fair in love and war.
[1:23:04] Have you ever done the uh thank you for the dip have you ever done the extraction you ever done the uh airlift right ever done air i was close once i've never actually done it because i don't want sloppy seconds but um but yeah i mean there was a girl i was interested in and she had a boyfriend who was a drummer on a cruise ship so of course i told her um at nick uh nick uh, oh nicholas cage movie where he's like some angel and the woman's like are you homeless He just stares at her and she's like, are you a drummer? What's worse to be homeless than being a drummer? What do you call a drummer without a girlfriend? Homeless. So he's a drummer on a cruise ship. And I was within sight of sealing the deal and I was just like, but she did choose a guy who's a drummer on a cruise ship. So even though she's real pretty, there is that judgment aspect. I don't want to be the guy after the guy on the cruise ship. That's not a thing that I want to do. But I mean, yes. I mean, if she hasn't told you, she has a boyfriend. It's because you're on a possible list.
[1:24:22] It also means things aren't going well. Sorry, I don't mean to make this face. I have the most repulsive drink no demand. I mix some protein powder into my decaf. And let me show you the dog's breakfast that I have going on here. Look at this. It's my drink. Oh, my God. It looks like a machine gun Indian ass. I mean, good Lord. Look at that drink. And unfortunately, it is not. What if she's engaged? I wouldn't do that yeah i wouldn't get involved with that because her recovery time is going to be it's going to be huge so yeah i have this is my this is my drink oh my gosh it looks like, somebody took a cheese grater to the biceps of somebody who over tanned, so i keep taking this drink and it's like satan shat talcum powder between my teeth.
[1:25:23] Look at that i've still got you don't need to know all of this but i still have, vomit powder but there's got to be easier ways to build muscle well i'm actually i'm building my muscle because i'm basically doing ab work here because i keep i'm about to dry heave but no holding it back the things i do for philosophy actually that's not even for philosophy that's just for a few muskles. Can't believe Skype's going down, man. Skype is gone, baby. Skype is going, was it May? Something like that. Microsoft has this uncanny ability to buy cool software and to turn it into pure, unadulterated ass. You notice that? It's like this wild alchemy. Do you have something that's not us? We at Microsoft want to pay you an ungodly amount of money in order to transmogrify your non-ass into pure, unadulterated ass. And not of the BBL kind, but of the forgot-to-wipe kind. It's wretched.
[1:26:29] Wretched, my god it's almost an hour and a half time flies how would you do call-ins now without skype stuff oh we'll figure something out, i'll figure something out there's uh it's just the problem is much though i love all of my listros no matter what this weird powder between my teeth oh oh, it's like i swallowed the pillsbury doughboy turned him into ash and accidentally sneezed into my sinuses. Come on, we've all had that experience, haven't we? I'm just one among many. Yeah, the problem is if I say, oh, let's use XYZ platform, I'm going to have some older listeners who are like, huh? Is it built into Windows? Well, first you just need to install Linux in a virtual machine and then Linux, Linux, Linux. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what I'll use, but I got a little bit of time to figure it out.
[1:27:29] All right, last questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems, whatever you lack. I'm here for you. I'm here for you.
[1:27:41] I just was reading a story. My wife, my daughter, and I will sometimes, I'll sort of read a book, a short book whenever. And we did a, I did outrageous Italian accent. Enzo di italiano. No, I just did outrageous Italian accent. It's about as accurate as Luigi the plumber, but, uh, I do enjoy exaggerated accent time is, is fun and funny. All right.
[1:28:09] Microsoft software assassins. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, but an assassin, I guess Skype is finally being assassinated, but yeah, to, to fumble an early lead in video software prior to COVID, that's, that takes some real skill, man. That takes real skill. That's like having the only piece of cheesecake in a vegan menu at Fat Eats Anonymous and nobody eats your cheesecake. Like, that's really, really something. That's really something. But, yeah, if you're subscribers, I did a show today. We did about 35 minutes on various interesting topics. And so if you're subscribers, I'll try out some platforms over the next month or two. And we'll do some shows that way. So, freedomain.com slash donate to subscribe. You can of course subscribe at fdrurl.com slash locals or at subscribestar.com slash freedom and i hope that you will help out the show thank you so much for your time today it's a great pleasure to chat with you if you're listening to this later of course freedom.com slash donate if you appreciate the show as it is you can go to freedom.com slash donate lots of love my up here my friends take care i'll talk to you soon.
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