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Rolling. All right. Mr. Andre. Good to see you, sir.
Great to be back. Thank you.
So, we were just talking about this wild crime spree that happened this weekend in Austin. So, it seems like it was teenagers that were doing this?
You're not on the microphone there, fellow. 15 and 17 years old.
15 and 17 years old. And terrible.
What was the purpose? Just going crazy, I think.
So, yeah, they stole cars and stole guns and switched cars and they shot at like 10 different locations.
One person's at least one person's in critical condition. They shot multiple people.
So, you were saying that the reason why they had a hard time catching them is because they had Flock cameras in Austin, but then they shut those cameras off for political reasons.
Correct. Yes. Yeah. So, please explain that. Yeah. So, these guys are driving around in cars and yeah, they're switching cars, whatever. Yeah. And they went to like a dozen locations and tried shooting at buildings and people and houses and all kinds of stuff. And so, okay, so these guys running around. So, there's this system called Flock, which is one of our companies, and what they do kind of like in the movies, you take all the municipal cameras and traffic cameras and everything, and you feed them into an AI, and the AI is able to first find a license plate in real time. So, you can find that, but second, you can actually find a car even if you don't have the license plate. You can find distinct markings of the car. It'll track the car. And so this thing is deployed. It's sold to city governments. It's used all over the country. It solves crimes every day. We get reports on carjackings with kids in the back seat and their lives get saved because they track them down. So a lot of towns and cities have this and they love it. In cities like Austin with the intense politics, they run into backlash on privacy and surveillance concerns. And so Austin had Flock and then turned it off. And as a consequence, they were not able to find these guys for several days. And then what happened, the late breaking news today is these guys drove into some adjacent town up against Austin and Flock was live in that town. And so Flock tagged them the minute they drove into that town and then they caught the guys. Subsequent to that, the mayor of Austin and your chief of police gave a press conference and said, 'We really need to rethink this.' Because it's crazy to have the ability to solve crimes and stop crimes and not be able to use it.
Yeah. So the concern is mass surveillance, right? And the concern is that someone's going to abuse this and use AI for nefarious purposes, right? Like what nefarious purposes would that be?
Yeah. So this is a system that could be used in bad ways, right? So bad people could use it in bad ways. And so if you had a corrupt chief of police and he had some personal entanglement thing and he wanted to track an ex, or if the mayor wanted to do this to terrorize her political opponents or whatever, like if you had corrupt city officials, then they could use it for bad things.
But wouldn't that be traceable though? Like isn't there a blockchain? Put that sucker so it's not on your chin. Push it forward a little bit. Yeah. Is there a blockchain for Flock so you could know who's doing what and how it's happening so someone couldn't abuse it? Is it possible to circumvent that?
Yeah, it could. But well, this is like the standard. Yes. And this, they log everything and I'm sure there's records of everything, but look, it's like anything else. It's why cops have to get a warrant before they search somebody's house, right? There's always the question of what is the legal authority and what are the safeguards that protect this kind of thing. But to take so I think there's a completely legitimate question which is how should that all be designed? What should be the controls? What should be the penalties if somebody abuses it? But then on the other side of it is like are you really going to give up the entire thing and disarm yourself in the face of what's been a big national crime wave for a long time. So the other thing is so the city of Chicago is the one that's pushed this even further. So there's an older system that's deployed in many cities called Shot Spotter. What's it called? It's called Shot Spotter.
Shot Spotter. Oh, Shot Spotter. Like spot someone shooting.
It sounds very like several very Nazi.
Several lots. Yeah. On top. So, Shot Spotter is an older system that works very well. It's deployed in many cities. And what it is, totally different system. What it is is they put these precision microphones on top of rooftops all over the city and then when a gunshot goes off they're able to instantly triangulate that a gunshot has gone off and specifically where the gunshot went off. This has two big benefits. Benefit number one is you have a better chance of catching the perpetrator because you can instantly respond to the gunshot. You don't have to wait for somebody to call it in. Number two, if somebody's been shot and they're bleeding in the street, you can immediately roll the ambulance to location and you can save lives. And so historically it's considered a double win. Chicago got so wrapped up on these political issues that they also not only did they not have Flock they also turned off their Shot Spotter system voluntarily. And so people now get shot in Chicago and they bleed out on the street and nobody knows and nobody cares.
And what is the argument that they make that it is um the so the so I would say there's maybe two arguments. The civil libertarian argument which is all around surveillance and abuse and control and you know all these things and like I say I think that's a very legitimate argument and then I would say there's like the woke argument right which is that the argument goes the American criminal justice system is clearly biased in favor of some demographic groups and against other demographic groups and if you have automated systems like Shot Spotter or Flock or by the same thing comes up with like traffic cameras that automatically give out speeding tickets that those will disproportionately affect disadvantaged people in society and disadvantaged groups. And so therefore they are racist. They are racist technologies enforcing a racist system.
Boy, the problem with that argument is the victims of violent crime are disproportionately also likely to be from those same disadvantaged groups.
And so woke politics are really fun. Yes. The other problem with a lot of this is there's a large chunk of people that are going to immediately think that even this mass shooting was organized by Flock so that Flock could get reinstated in Austin to bring in the surveillance state. Like this I guarantee you 100% there's a group of people listening to this right now saying, 'Oh, Andre's a shill. Rogan's shilling for Flock. This is what they're doing. They're trying to get the mass surveillance.' You know, this is automatically when there's a situation like this, any kind of a mass shooting, people think it's a false flag. This is where we're at.
How Chicago organizers managed to rid the city of Shot Spotter. Controversial police surveillance tech is often inaccurate, according to research that allowed activists to launch a fact-based campaign and a political model for organizers in other cities. Aha. So, they're saying it's inaccurate. So what it is and be fair to what it is, it's directional microphones, right? And so a shot goes off, it triangulates on a location. It's you know and look it's going to I'm sure you get that effect. Nevertheless, but at least you know when a shot went off. It went off in this general area. I would assume we're not involved in the Shot Spotter. I don't know for sure. I would assume at this point it's probably down to like it's probably pretty accurate at the level of a block at a street. It's probably generally quite accurate beyond that. But right. So exactly right. I mean I think exactly what you said which is like okay at least you know a shot went off.
And if you had both of those things Flock and Shot Spotter over 88.72% of incidents flagged by Shot Spotter ended with police finding no incidents of gun crime. Okay.
But think right. But that doesn't mean the gunshots didn't go off.
Exactly. That doesn't mean anything. They rarely produce evidence of a gun related crime. That also doesn't mean anything because it just shows that a gun went off. If you have, first of all, Chicago is one of the absolute worst places in the country in terms of gun violence.
Correct. I mean, there's constant shootings going on in Chicago and an enormous death toll every weekend.
And people are very accustomed to guns going off. Not only that, people are very accustomed to shooting guns. If people are accustomed to guns going off, that must mean that people are shooting those guns and they're getting very accustomed to doing that. So then you've got people that shoot people and then get in a car and drive away and then the cops come, there's no evidence. That means nothing. One of the things that we've learned when you deal with politicians in particular that want to talk about crime statistics like crime is down, incorrect, crime reporting is down. We have this and especially in Los Angeles, my friends in Los Angeles who still live there who deal with break-ins and home invasions and cars being robbed. They read those statistics or they hear a politician saying that crime is down. They're like, 'What the fuck are you talking about?' No, no one calls 911 because if you do, you just get put on hold. It lasts forever. No one comes. They do come. It's hours late. No one's coming to save you. No one calls. They just accept it.
San Francisco is the worst. People leave their car doors open. They leave the hatch open on their cars to let you know there's nothing in there. Please don't break my windows.
My car is here. Oh, crime is down.
Yep. No. Crime is more prevalent than ever before. It's just crime reporting is useless.
Yeah. Well, yeah. Look, if you know that you're not going to get backup from what happens in the system. If you know the criminals aren't going to get convicted, then you know they're not going to get prosecuted. If they're not going to get prosecuted, they're not going to get arrested. If they're not getting arrested, they're not going to get investigated. Yeah. And this I mean I live halftime near San Francisco and halftime in LA.
I'm is 100% true. But the other scandal, by the way, just as kind of also came out, I think last week was Washington DC has been they got caught the police got caught faking the crime statistics. Yes. Just like this is very important.
Yeah. Just like overtly up to senior levels of the Washington DC police department and a whole bunch of people got fired, indicted.
Right. This is very recent.
And just flat out faking the numbers and it's like anything. It's like anything else which is if you measure it, it's no longer a good incentive. It's no longer good motivation because it's just the temptation is so high to monkey with the numbers.
And so in Washington at least they were criminally monkeying with the numbers. It raises the question of whether that's happening in these other cities.
Well, also Washington, didn't the mayor actually thank Trump for bringing in the National Guard, which is crazy. You have a Democrat mayor who said thank you to Donald Trump for bringing in the National Guard, which everybody thought was an outrage. Oh my god, you're bringing the National Guard into the cities. You're going to militarize the police force. Yeah, she said thank you because crime dropped off a cliff.
So I've also been spending a lot of time in DC. So what was happening in DC? So my friends in DC basically say they turned the city from a place where you couldn't be outside at night to all of a sudden you can just walk around and it's fine. And then what happened is like the violence basically went to zero in most of the neighborhoods extremely quickly. And so what happened was you have all these people walking around at night for the first time in years and they're just like oh there's a couple guys the National Guard. This is great. Go over take a picture with them. This is fantastic. Okay. Okay. So then it gets reported in the press as the National Guard is not doing anything. All they're doing is sitting around taking selfies with tourists. You know, they don't need to be here. They're not doing anything, right?
You know, they don't need to be here. They're not doing anything, right?
Why would someone report that? But can't we just come to an agreement that crime is bad? Yes. Regardless of political party, can't we agree that we all want to be safe?
One more thing. Well, let me give you one more. I'll give you one more thing and we move off this. So the other thing you mentioned is yeah drive by shootings the guy drives away you there's no evidence of the crime. The other thing if you talk to cops who work in high crime areas or people who live in high crime areas which I have in both cases a lot of people in high crime areas do not want to ever talk to the cops about things that have happened because if it's gang violence there's the very active threat.
100%. Snitches don't get stitches they get morgues.
100%. And so if you're relying on eyewitness reports you don't solve crimes, right? And so you need objective data. So, if you're a criminal, it's a pretty awesome environment.
It's great. And by the way, LA, I will say again, LA has been absolute ground zero for this kind of behavior. I mean, the gangs in LA have been going wild for the last 5 years, just like completely unconstrained. I mean, it's been crazy.
I just don't understand why anybody would want that.
Do you ever put your tinfoil hat on and going, what are they trying to do here? Cuz I know you wear a tin foil hat every now and then. We talked about nuclear bombs.
We did. We did. We did. Faking. Faking. Yes, exactly. The now well-known fact that all the nuclear test sites got faked.
So I mean, look, I don't think they got faked.
I know you're Well, you're a believer in the official story. A little bit.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You believe what Wikipedia says. So, you know, you're famous for. So, I look, the one wonders if there's a political motivation, right, which is basically to get the responsible people out of the city, to be able to change the voting patterns, right? And so if.
Yeah. And so you wonder you know Yeah. You look at these programs over time and kind of as the populations of the major cities have shifted like radically over the last 50 years like they have very little in common with the population distributions they had 50 years ago. And so you wonder how much of it is massaging the voter base.
God, that's so crazy to think that people would be willing to sacrifice the safety of their residents that are bringing in the majority of the tax revenue, by the way, so that they could somehow or another make it so that they could stay in power forever.
I mean, and then get money out presumably from the state, right? Like which is how New York City got bailed out. Yeah.
Which is a hilarious story. They balanced the budget, right?
Oh, congratulations. Mom Donnie's a genius. He figured it out. Socialism works. So you balance the budget and then you realize they got $4 billion from the state so they could balance that budget. So all these folks that are living in small towns with no crime and living in rural like West New York and like they had to pay.
Yep. 100%. And then by the way the states get bailed out right by the feds federally. Right. So fun.
It is very fun. So, so I just came from New York and so New York has their own version of this now with their new mayor. And the big controversy there last week was their mayor did a video standing in front of somebody's home.
Calling him out by name. Ken Griffin.
Ken Griffin, who's a very wealthy guy who brings a lot of jobs to New York City and was in the middle of a huge project. It's a $6 billion project and now he's considering tanking it.
Yeah, he's yeah, he's I think he spoke last week at a conference and you know, all but said he's going to he didn't say he's going to pull entirely out, but he said he's going to move much more of the business to Florida.
But the other significance Ken who I know Ken is a major philanthropist. Ken has donated hundreds of millions of dollars particularly to healthcare in New York City on top of being a major taxpayer and source of tax revenue on top of being a major employer. And so the new mayor has deliberately targeted him personally to try to force him out.
Yeah. Do you think that's why he's doing it or do you think he's doing it because that appeals to his base because there's these eat the rich people?
But it's kind of the same. It's what I'm saying like I would give people the benefit of the doubt. I would assume they believe everything they say and they feel very strongly about it. I would believe that they also have a political incentive. Because if you get somebody who's going to oppose you out of the city that's good.
The top 1% of New York aren't they responsible for 50% of the tax base?
Yeah. On that order. Yeah, something also roughly the case in California in the year 2000 1,000 individuals were 50% of the tax revenue. Was the all-time peak, but I think it's roughly 1% of the taxpayers are 50% of the tax receipts. And so one could imagine a position that says, 'Wow, we want these businesses to work. We want to generate all the tax revenue and we want to pay for all the programs.' One could also imagine a somewhat more let's say YOLO approach which is to drive out the revenue and then you know presumably count on bailouts.
I just don't understand. Well, I guess people that are not playing a long game. They're only thinking of their own political careers and staying in power that they wouldn't care.
Yeah, I think there's that. And then I think you just I mean obviously there's a lot of opportunism. And then the other thing is I think you just you have a lot of people you have a lot of people in politics have not run a business. They haven't made a payroll. They haven't right they don't have any what we would consider to be real world experience and so the idea of business is somewhat alien to a lot of these people.
I mean I'm not a businessman although I kind of am. I kind of am in some weird way. I become a businessman. But this idea that it's easy to become a billionaire and that these billionaires somehow or another are the problem because they're not paying their fair share is so weird that that's a narrative that actually gets pushed through when you look at the actual numbers of the tax base and how much they contribute and how many jobs they provide and yeah, they make more money than everybody else, right? You could do that too. It's like this is one of the things that America is really good at. You can come from nothing and become incredibly wealthy if you figure something out and we just assume that everybody who makes an incredible amount of money stole it, right?
That they robbed someone that the only like this is a narrative that gets pushed along democratic socialists that no one achieves that. I think I literally heard AOC say this recently that no one achieves substantial wealth without somehow or another victimizing other people.
Yeah. And then Jeff Bezos is the obvious counter example which is like every time you do the one click and the thing gets delivered to you two hours later at the cheapest possible price saving you and your family a lot of time and money.
But at the expense of small mom and pop stores allegedly.
Although a lot of them sell on Amazon. A lot of small businesses sell on Amazon. No look 100%. The other thing you can do is you can compare and contrast to other countries that have more draconian policies in the direction that those folks are suggesting. And so Europe in particular, many European countries have a much more draconian, much even more hostile to business and the result is they are much poorer. You know, their slower growth are actually shrinking. The people there are much less well off. There's much less funding for social programs. And so you can also do the cross country comparison and which I think kind of gives up the game.
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Well, that's the weird thing about the whole socialism thing is that it's never worked ever and they just go, 'Well, it hasn't been done right.' Yes, maybe it will work for us.
But it's crazy that that works. And I get Is that a failing of our education system? Is that a failing of the media explaining things to people in a way that makes sense?
Or is it just that people feel so helpless that they're making just enough barely to get by and they're living check to check and they see these people in yachts and they see these people in private jets and they say, 'They must have stolen this. This is impossible to achieve this kind of wealth. Somehow or another, the system is wrong.' Wealth inequality.
Yeah. So, I think there's two moral definitions of fairness. There's a definition of fairness, which is you get out of something what you put into it, right? Proportional. If I work twice as hard as you do, I get twice as much. And by the way, that could be, if we're in a race together and I run twice as far, I get to eat twice as much pie at the end of the race. Like, anything like that. I put in more effort, I get more results. The other version of fairness is everybody gets an equal slice.
Yeah. The equality of outcome.
And those both feel right those both feel correct like there's something I think in our wiring right in our brain wiring where those both feel like they're morally correct but they are in direct conflict with each other. And it's like and you so when I really have this conversation, it's got to kind of lay those two ideas out on the table and kind of say, okay, pick one, right? And again, it's not like the caricature is, well, somebody's arguing then for like extreme libertarianism, whatever. And it's like, no, like we're these are all social democracies. Like we're going to live in social democracies forever. There's always going to be a progressive tax system. There's always you have to have business success in order to fund all the social programs. That makes sense. And really, very few people argue against that anymore, right?
It does make sense, right? It does make sense. But there is this fundamental question underneath that which is the level of degree to which you buy into that first definition of fairness. What you put in is what you get out versus that second definition which is everybody gets the same amount.
Well, the problem with the equality of outcome is it's not an equality of effort.
Right. That's right. And this is the beautiful thing about America is that you really can just work 20 hours a day and achieve something spectacular. And the idea that you working 20 hours a day like a maniac, literally wasting your health away, right? That you should get the exact same amount of money as someone who barely works, right? Just kind of shows up, does the bare minimum, leaves 5 minutes early, and that this person should achieve the same result as you. That's crazy.
Yeah. Well, I mean, it's sort of like anybody who's ever the teachers say one thing. Anybody's ever been in a class project with other students.
Yes. There are certain people who stand up and like lead the way. And there are certain people that like sit back and free ride, right?
There's no there's no old story when after the Soviet Union collapsed, reporters went in and try to figure out what happened and they interviewed somebody about what it was like to work at a socialist factory and the line that the guy said was, 'Oh, well, we pretended to work and they pretended to pay us.' Right. If you're getting the thing regardless because everybody's guaranteed equal outcomes. If you're getting the thing regardless, then you kill motivation. And motivation is everything for people achieving things.
No one achieves anything spectacular without some sort of motivation that's going to get them a result that's a reward for all their hard effort. If you really thought you were just working for the sake of the people, like no one's doing that. That's not human nature. And this is the problem with the concept of socialism is that it punishes high achievers and it rewards laziness. And that's not to say that everyone who's poor is lazy.
And there's a lot of people that are poor because of circumstances beyond their control. They're poor because of all sorts of conditions that they really had no say in. It's like a bunch of things happened to them. But the game is there's an opportunity if you figure it out to get out of that situation in this world. And you can get out of that situation. There's so many stories, these rags to riches stories, which is you don't get that in a caste system, right? You don't get that in socialism. You don't get that. There's a lot of places where that doesn't happen. In America, that is still a possibility.
Yeah. That's right. That's right. And the more you punish that, you're actually punishing the real concept of the American dream. Now, I'm not saying that you should work 20 hours a day and become a sociopath and get on Adderall and just only try to achieve financial wealth. And there are people like that. You know them, right? Of course, I'm sure you travel in those circles.
But you get lumped into those people even though you're not that person at all because you're extremely wealthy.
I cap it at 18 hours a day. Yeah.
Cap at 18. 18. Yeah. Is that really what you work? Do you really work 18 hours a day?
No, I don't. I don't. That's not Yes. No, not quite. But.
But you have to work a lot. You work a lot. You work a lot. You work a lot.
How many businesses are you involved in?
I mean, our firm, it's over a thousand. So yes.
God, something tells me you would not enjoy that as much.
No. I wake up every day going, should I be doing less? Yes, that's what I do.
Yeah. But I have a lot of recreational things that I'm obsessed with that don't pay me any money that I really enjoy.
So, I'm always like, maybe I should just do that. You know, but the point is choice, freedom. You should be able to do whatever you want. And if you want to be some psycho that works 18 hours a day and makes an insane amount of money.
The benefit of that to the tax base is massive.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The societies that don't have that are much poorer. Everybody's poorer. There are entire European I probably shouldn't name. There are entire European countries where they rank below our 50th ranked state.
Yes. That we consider to be fully developed. I was going to bring that up.
Yeah. And their per capita income is lower than all 50 of our states.
Right. And it's hard even it's like congratulations. Like is that going well? Are you happy with the outcome? And you know, you have that conversation I had those conversations with the folks over there and they literally the conclusion generally is, well, we need to do more of the things that resulted in that outcome.
My buddy Ari Maddie, hilarious comedian, he's from Estonia and he has friends in Estonia that have university degrees that choose to work in shoe sales because if you make more than $60,000 a year, your taxes are so high, it actually benefits you to make less money. Yeah. And so they just give up.
And they just exist. And that's why he fled and why he came to America. So those are the type of people that are the least accepting of any kind of socialism. They're the least charitable when people start talking about socialism. Talk socialism to someone who fled Venezuela. That's right.
You know, or Cuba, they'll stab you, you know, they get angry and crazy because they know what the consequences are, the real world consequences are. And it's also one of the beautiful things about America. You can have these utopian ideas of the world and you could get on college campuses and rant and rave and no one arrests you.
Yeah, I would say look we are in a time in which this kind of what you might call radical socialist politics is back. Like so this is going to be a big thing. It's I say it's going to be a big thing in the 28 election. It's going to be a big thing in the midterms. It's going to be a big thing. You know a lot of these cities and states, you know, some of these new you know this new mayor of Seattle is very radical. New mayor of New York City very radical.
The new mayor of Seattle's hilarious. He's very radical. It's kind of hilarious. She lived with her parents. Yes. Her parents supported her. She's in her 40s. Never had a real job. And now she's running what how many billions of dollars is the economy of Seattle?
Yes. A lot. A lot. It's a huge.
And her response to rich people leaving. Well, bye bye.
Like okay. Now, having said that, I have enormous faith in the American people. And I think that the American people do not ultimately want this. And historically, when the American people have been given this choice, they haven't taken it. I think they have to see the results, right? They have to see it fall apart. But the problem is once things fall apart, it takes so much longer to bring them back than it does for them to fall apart.
Like Los Angeles, for instance, Los Angeles, like you said, fell apart in like 5 years.
I mean, for me, it was leaving in 2020. I was like, I saw the writing on the wall. I'm like, I see where this is going and I know that things don't get better quick, if they get better at all. This is not going to get better. This is going to get worse. And that's it's headed in that direction. And if someone came in with sweeping change and pulled up all the encampments and cleaned up all the streets and made things safe again and actually started prosecuting crime and it would take so long to fix it.
Yeah. Yeah. But you know, you get we'll see what happens with So the new I will say this, the new DA, the new district attorney in LA is much better prosecuting crimes. And then Mr. Spencer Pratt.
Is that how you go you have your tips on? I would just say like his sudden rise is has to be considered a miracle. It's kind of fun.
It's incredible to watch.
He is doing such a great job and he's got really good ideas and people are saying what who is this reality star? Why should he like what about the other people? What about them? What is so great about their ability to lead that makes you think that they're going to be extraordinary choices above and beyond what Spencer Pratt's capable of doing? What are you talking about? I live, you know, we have a home down there and we fortunately didn't lose our home, but we were it was nerve-wracking for a while. And I, you know, I think everybody knows this now, but the city response was abysmal to non-existent. The state response was terrible. And by the way, none of that has been fixed as far as I know. Like we're set up for that fire, you know. So, the fire, what is it year ago? A little more than a year ago, took out twice the square mileage of the Nagasaki bomb. Obliterated. If you've seen like photos, it destroyed Pacific Palisades. It looks like a bomb hit like the cars were melted into the pavement.
Yeah. It was gone. And then Altadena, which is like a working-class neighborhood and then it took out like half of Malibu. And so, like it was like and it almost took out all of West LA. Like it came very close to jumping the freeways and just taking out like Beverly Hills, Santa Monica. Like it was all in the line of fire. I don't think any of that's been fixed. I don't think there's any plan to fix any of it. And so yeah, Spencer, you know, Spencer has been through this the hard way along with a lot of people in the city, which is his, you know, they burned his house down. And.
What is the response when Karen Bass is questioned about what are you going to do if this happens in the future?
You know, everything is remember the Lego movie? Remember the song Everything is Wonderful.
Yeah. Everything is wonderful. Everything is amazing. There's a viral AI video which is Spencer Pratt, one of his fans made, which is it's everything is awful. And it's LA. It's like the Lego movie set in LA. It's with like Lego junkies bleeding out of the street.
Oh, his AI videos have been amazing.
The Lego cities on fire. And so I think there's just an advanced level of denial. I mean it just I think I don't know if it came out today. I just saw the report today, but apparently the head of the LA water department, you know, is a super high paid person. And apparently she apparently according to the information was unaware that the key reservoir was not full. Didn't have water in it. Do you know that? So the fire hydrants didn't have water in them, right? So the fire trucks would pull up and they would plug in and there would be no water coming out. I mean so it's a level of dereliction that is cosmic and to your point Spencer is articulating that in a way that shockingly nobody else has been able to.
There's also talk about the Palisades about them selling the land about acquiring the land selling the land. Like what is going on with that?
It's nuts. So I don't know all the details. I do know right out of the gate there was a state ban on quote unquote predatory land sales predatory offers and so there was a ban the state put in place a ban on anybody making an offer on the land at less than the last appraised value which included the value of the house on the land and so they chilled the because a lot of property owners so you lose your house in LA okay so you lose your house in LA by the way it's been almost impossible and I think for a lot of people actually impossible to get fire insurance in LA for years because of all these issues because the insurance companies aren't stupid they don't want to left holding the bag, right? And so there's a lot of people whose houses burned down and their first thought was screw it. I'm out of here, right? I'm just going to sell the land. I'm going to go someplace sane. And then all of a sudden the state moved in and basically said you can't they didn't say you can't sell your house. They said people can't bid on your house at your now destroyed house below its previous value. So the previous value, so if you had a $10 million mansion on a lot in the Palisades and it's worth $15 million while it was there and you say, 'I'll sell it to you for five.' You can't do that.
You can sell it. The prohibition was on offers.
What the prohibition was I don't know the exact I remember the exact details. The prohibition was. So because immediately there were people, you know, say speculators, right, investors, right, who immediately came in and they're like, 'Oh, this is prime land.' And, you know, surely at some point the city will be governed rationally. So we're going to buy up all these lots. We're going to build new houses and we'll make money. And so the state immediately stepped in to make sure that that didn't happen by preventing the offers. That's one. Step two is it was almost impossible to get a permit to build anything before this. It's certainly harder now. How many houses have been rebuilt?
Oh, I mean it rounds to zero effectively. None. I mean we're talking I don't know up to 15 years. Maybe for the rebuild maybe. And by the way maybe never in a lot of places.
15 years for individual homes or 15 years for all the homes?
Oh 15 years. 15 years all in. Like I haven't seen any prediction that's less than 15 years to rebuild everything because any individual home could be I don't know 5 years, eight years, 10 years.
Why so long?
Because it's almost impossible to get permits to do anything in these cities on a good day. They don't let you build things.
Because of the local politics of not ever changing anything. Everything's historic or everything is this or that. To rebuild, the other thing they do is if you want to rebuild something you have to do some other trade. And so this is the other thing that's kicked in is now the politics of what they call affordable housing, which means government housing. So now there's demands that a certain percentage of the land be devoted to government housing projects in the middle of what had been a residential neighborhood. And so that's a whole snarl. And then on top of that there's all the logistics of actually building anything, which is there's only so many general contractors around to be able to do it.
And how many thousand homes were destroyed?
Many. I don't know the exact number. Many thousands. I mean, for people who haven't, by the way, experienced this, there's this really good movie on Amazon called Crime 101 that just came out with Chris Hemsworth. And it's a great LA crime caper. It was filmed in Pacific Palisades right before the fire. And so, you watch this, it's gorgeous. It's a gorgeous movie. And you watch this movie and if you're in LA, you're just, you know, it's hard to not literally tear up seeing because that's just gone. It's all totally gone. So, you can get a sense of the devastation. Just imagine everything in that movie got destroyed. And so yeah, so it's completely snarled up. You know, and I don't know. Look, we'll, you know, it's back to the age-old thing. It's a single party state. Spencer Grass running as Republican. You know, the voters have a choice.
A lot of people whose houses burned down are not coming back. Like, you know, this and again, this goes back to the thing and like I don't think the, you know, we now know who the fire was set by this crazy guy who had his own political agenda, right? But like who was a fan of Luigi?
It was Luigi terrorism. Like we now believe that based on the reporting and the indictments. And so like I think that was likely the real cause. But like you do wonder politically if a side effect of this is to get responsible homeowners out of the city permanently to change the voting composition. So God, you know, like you can probably explain the dysfunction without that, but you do wonder if that's a motivation somewhere in there. Yes. So, we'll see. You know, look, I maybe I should also say, look, because I can sit and I can do this for hours beat up on California. California is also the most spectacular place on earth. Like, it is amazing. I mean, it's a natural wonderland. And then on top of that, you know, we have two of the great global industries in culture in LA and tech and Silicon Valley. We have an apparently infinite gusher of money coming out of these two industries that can fund both amazing things and horrible things.
But aren't both of those industries kind of leaking out of LA right now?
So, so, so LA, so my understanding is there's less film and television production happening in LA than there was during the last strikes. And so it's become related. It's become almost impossible to shoot anything in LA. And you know, many of the great movies and TV shows in history of course were shot in LA. That's where all the big studios built their lots. It's the whole point of being there. And that's almost all gone. So the local economy's just been destroyed completely independent of the fire. It's been destroyed by the crushing of the production side of it. And so yeah, so LA was already reeling from that and that continues to be a big problem. And then you know, look, there's this new ballot proposition for an asset tax. And the number of people in Silicon Valley who are leaving the state is quite large. And I would say it was a trickle and now it's a stream and it's becoming a flood. And I know a lot of people who are leaving the state because they feel like their assets are going to get seized.
Let's explain this asset tax because people are thinking it's just as simple as you get an additional x amount of percentage of your income but it's not. It's unrealized income as well.
So yeah. So there's lots of different kinds of taxes that one can have and there's the obvious ones sales tax when you buy or sell something. There's property tax based on paying property tax on property you own. There's all these theories in this. There's tariffs which are taxes on international transactions. So you have to get tax revenue somewhere and you can decide from among these taxes. Historically the US didn't in the old days the US didn't have an income tax and then the income tax was introduced about 100 years ago. And it was a big deal at the time. It was like oh wait a minute I'm getting a salary. I'm getting paid at the time whatever it was $100 a month and you're going to take a percentage of my income of money that I earned and so that was like very controversial. It started out if I'm remembering properly it started out it was like a 3% tax only on rich people. You know this is a but what happens is they got the mechanism in place and then before you know it 30 years later it's 50% tax rates and then by the 1950s the marginal tax rates on high-income people were up in the 90s right and so it was a very big deal to get the ability to seize a percentage of somebody's income. But we're all used to that now. And so we all pay federal income tax in California. We pay a lot of state income tax. We pay local income tax. I mean, my income tax rates something like 60%, maybe at this point, 62 or 63% all in.
You're not paying your fair share.
Exactly. Exactly. It ought to be 99 clearly if not 100. But we're all used to income tax. Okay. So, park that for a moment. Then there's this concept of an asset tax. And so, in various terms, asset tax, wealth tax, or you might think of it as a property tax that applies to everything you own, right? So, not just the land that your house is on, but everything.
Car collection, art collection.
Art collection, all the stuff on the walls, all your clothes, all your jewelry, all your everything. Your house pets, like the whole thing.
Stocks, bonds, yes. Everything, crypto.
How did this get proposed? How is it possible that someone proposed something this insane?
So, this has been running, this idea has been running around for a while. By the way, there are other countries that have done this with disastrous results because all of the people with any level of assets flee the country. And so Europe has been through this multiple times and we don't pay attention to that, but there's case studies from that. It's worked out poorly every time. It's been kicking around for a while. It almost passed. There was almost a federal wealth tax asset tax in 2022 that almost passed that didn't pass. And then the Biden administration said in their 2024 fiscal plan for 25, they said they were going to come back and do a federal wealth tax asset tax in 25 if they had gotten reelected. And then now in California, there's a ballot proposition that a specific union has put on the ballot specifically for itself. The politics are weird because it's a bad ballot proposition because it's one union where all the money just goes to it and its causes. And so it's a weird one, but this is the first of what's going to be a flood of these. And again, you can imagine the story. The ballot proposition is it's a one-time tax, 5% of assets for people with a net worth above some level. And then that level kind of moves around depending on who's talking about it. And by the way, depending on what's included and what's not included. And so I think in the current proposition, for example, they exclude property, they exclude like real estate.
And I think they did that.
But stocks and bonds would be included. And so yeah, if you were above a certain and you know, it's starting out with a high threshold on wealth. And so today, just like the original income tax on day one, it doesn't hit anybody. And then it's a 5% and of course the argument is these people make 5% a year anyway and so more than that and so they'll make up for it and then they say it's a one-time tax but we know from the history of the income tax that this is how it starts and then we know where it goes right.
And then you know you smash cut in the movie you smash cut 10 years later and everybody's getting hit with it and people are losing their houses because they can't it's just you know you can't.
Okay so let me give you the twist on this in California the twist on this is it's a specific punitive strike aimed at tech founders and tech companies and so they have the calculation of the value that you owe is based on the greater of your economic interest in your company or your voting interest in your company. And so if you are the Google founders as an example, you have what's called super voting stock, right? And because you want the company to have a long-term outlook and you want the founders to stay in charge. And so let's say I'm making numbers up. Let's say the Google founders own 3% of the economic value of their company, but they own 15% of the control value of their company or say 55% of the control value of their company. The tax gets calculated based on the higher of those two numbers. And so for founders in the valley, particularly private companies, but also public companies where they have controlled stock, if this tax passes, they instantly go bankrupt.
But they can't possibly pay the tax because their tax bill by definition is a multiple on top of their assets. And so this is on the ballot proposition. We just filled out our ballot at home. You know, this is happening right now. This is the first of these. There will be I am positive a dozen more of these the next time in California. I am positive that this will arrive in every blue state that has any sort of ballot proposition thing where you can put things directly on the ballot. I'm positive this is going to get proposed in every other blue state over the next few years. It's the obvious thing to do. And then I am virtually positive that this is going to be a big campaign platform issue for the 2028 election at the federal level.
And isn't it also set up that they can completely move the goalpost for what is the threshold that you would get taxed at? So if it's a billion dollars now, it could be $500,000 in six months.
Yeah. Once it's in, they just patch it. They just patch the law.
And they don't no one votes on that.
Yeah. They just Well, it's a Democrat. So it's a so California is a Democratic supermajority in both houses of the House and the Senate in California and a Democratic governor and of course the judges are all Democrats and so the Democrats can pass anything they want. And so they get in with the force of law from the ballot proposition and then they modify as they see fit.
So it's a Trojan horse for a lot of these people that are like yeah fuck the billionaires like what about the thousandaire buddy?
100%. Well, you know, this is the classic thing where Bernie's stump speech used to be I'm against the billionaires and the millionaires until he became a millionaire and all of a sudden the stump speech is right. This is that. Okay. So, a lot of people have gone to our governor and said, you know, this is going to be very bad news for the state. And so, you know, Gavin, to his credit, says, yes, I agree this is very bad news for the state because if you're in California, you can easily go to Nevada or Texas or Florida.
Uh no, he can't veto it because it's a proposition, not a law. So there's no veto power. However, what he's doing is he's sort of signaling indicating in his statements that basically his position running for president we all believe what his position is going to be is obviously you shouldn't do this at the state level, you should do this at the federal level because the problem with this tax at the state level is you can flee the state. You can't flee the country. Practically speaking, you can't flee the country. And so my expectation is that this is going to be a very big leftist populist campaign measure on the part of basically all the Democratic candidates in 28 and so an asset tax I think is coming federally.
Unrealized gains asset tax.
Important to understand yes this is unrealized gains and so this is in the fullness of time as this expands you own a small business you own your business sitting here.
By the way what's your business worth? Who knows, right?
You know, unless you have like, I don't know, active secondary transactions in your stock or you take your company public, who knows what your business is worth. And so, a government, this is go down the rabbit hole. A government appraiser is going to show up and decide what your business is worth.
Yes. Guess what their incentive is, right? To have it be as high as possible, right? And so, and then they're going to do this. And then, by the way, they're going to look around and they're going to say, 'Whatever, what other assets does he have?' And they're going to go through your brokerage accounts and they're going to go through your art collection. And then next thing, then they're going to want to know what's in your safe. Do you have jewelry in your safe? Does your wife have jewelry in her safe? You know what? You go right down the rabbit hole. You know, oh, nice guns you have are any of them antiques. We need to get those appraised.
Yeah. And so, and that's actually a whole separate argument against this is the level of invasiveness on the part of the government to be able to actually figure out what your assets are. And of course, what's going to happen is every person with any level of assets is going to do anything they can to hide, right? And so you're going to try to like do whatever level of shuffling.
And then you're going to be looked at as a criminal trying to evade paying your fair share, especially by the proletariat.
100%. Right. Exactly. And you can never It's a funny thing in the current tax system that you have this thing where you estimate what you owe in taxes and you send it into the IRS and then they tell you whether they think you're right or wrong. They don't tell you what you owe, right? They leave it to you to quote fill out your tax return to estimate what you think you owe and then they judge you on it. But at least with income, it's like relatively straightforward because it's like I have a salary or I have whatever interest payments or whatever. For a wealth tax, asset tax, like you're trying to judge the value of your assets. They're trying to judge the value of your assets. Third parties are trying to value the value of your assets. Like who knows what these things are worth.
Like who knows? And so as a consequence it slides towards a very totalitarian outcome which is how do you prove that you're not guilty? How do you prove that the thing on the wall is not worth twice what you say it is?
Well, or the only way you could is you could liquidate it, right? Which you probably have to do anyway to be able to pay the tax but people say it's worth not even what you paid for it.
Exactly. Right. Because sometimes you buy something and then 10 years later it's worth way more.
So now you have to pay taxes on something that you paid a fraction of.
Yeah. Well, and then think about this compounding over time, right? So let's say it starts out as 5% one time and then let's say it goes to 5% annually. Okay. So now you own a small business.
So now they're coming and taking 5% every year.
The one-time thing is bullshit. Everybody knows it's bullshit.
Of course. Right. Because of course they immediately come back.
Once they get addicted to getting that money and then they have to balance that budget again.
Yeah. That's right. That's right.
And so and then just do the math on the compounding. Let's say it stays at 5%. It's 5% every year for 10 years. What percentage of your business is gone after 10 years? They just chew it apart.
Where are you moving? So, where are you moving to?
So, my partner Ben and his family have moved to Las Vegas. They are extremely happy.
They are extraordinarily happy. I have a lot of friends coming to Texas.
Good restaurants in Vegas.
They're very good restaurants in Vegas. Very wonderful place.
Yes. Also that. A lot of outdoor.
You can buy a lot. You can buy a lot of things in Vegas. It's a very entertaining place. A lot of people going to Florida. A lot of people going to Nashville. A lot of people going, you know, all kinds of places. In Europe, what they do is they just go to another European country, right? So they just and they have all these tax havens they have like Malta and these crazy places that you can escape to. In the US, there's nothing like that. And if you try to leave the I only have one friend who's ever left the US and you have to pay an exit tax of like 45 you have to pay an asset exit tax already today. You have to pay like 45% of all of your assets to no longer be an American taxpayer and to leave the country. And so that's why.
That's why they think the well and then you get to this. And so my answer is I'm not leaving the US and furthermore I'm not leaving California. Having said that, you know, I.
So you're not leaving California.
I am not leaving California. Having said that, you know, you do start to wonder, okay, if like half the tax base leaves, you know, what happens to the other half? And then if these other taxes pass, what happens? And so like the situation is fraught. Like this is the single most activating thing I've seen happen in politics that has people in the valley cranked up. And again literally it's not even so much the money. It's they see their ability to actually have a company destroyed. Can you start a tech company, work on it for 10 years and still own any of it at the end of the process? And why would you do that? And so that's the thing in the valley that's really harsh. And then the other side of it is like how many if everybody else is leaving, do you want to be the last man standing and do you want to be the last remaining target, right? And so the game theory on that is getting tricky. And so like I said, I think we're definitely from trickle to stream and we're entering flood territory.
And what do you think is going to happen with this?
The professionals telling us it's basically a 50/50. So what the professionals tell us is that California is naturally prone to be in favor of this kind of thing because of the composition of the voter base. It's the same reason we have a Democratic supermajority in the legislature and so forth. Having said that, the American people, including Californians, don't like socialism. They don't like asset seizures. And so, this thing started out life polling at like 45 or 50%. What the pros say is for a proposition to pass, it needs to start up polling at like 60%, because the initial poll is before there's been a counter campaign and the counter campaign can almost always knock the support down at least 10 or 15 points. And so the pros say there's a chance that this doesn't pass because the 50% goes to 40%. And then doesn't pass. The counterargument to that is this is part of the national mood, right? And this is a rolling thing and all the narratives and all the issues that you're well aware of. So I think it's 50-50 and then by the way there will be like the mother of all court challenges following this because this is going to get litigated and then there's going to be all the specific I mean the number of people I know who are like figuring out all kinds of advanced maneuvers to try to figure out how to shield their assets. It's amazing. So there's going to be all kinds of crazy stuff that happens from that. I don't know what happens, but I kind of think this one is not the issue. The issue is what follows this one. And so the issue is what all the other states and cities do. What else happens in California? And then I think the big issue is what happens federally, which is where I think this is headed. By the way, Elizabeth Warren has already come out advocating for a 6% annual wealth tax at the asset tax at the national level.
Unrealized gains. Unrealized 6% national level.
National level. And I believe Angel. So that's the opening gambit. A fair number of people in Washington have already signed up for that. Like I said, the Biden administration wanted to do this. They tried twice. So this is not crazy. Like this is.
The Biden administration tried this.
They tried in 22 to do a federal asset tax. And for some reason it was during COVID and all the craziness and people weren't paying attention, but they tried and they got close. And then they said in 24 in their official plan for 25, they said they were going to do it in 25 if they had won re-election. And so.
Well, what would that do to businesses if they did it on a federal level?
It's everything we've been talking about. Yeah. You know, nice farm you have here. We're going to take 6% a year until it's all gone. Nice house you own.
But what's the endgame, though? This is what doesn't make any sense.
Fairness. A complete dissolving of massive businesses is fairness.
I mean that. And then what happens? How where do you get your iPhone?
Well, what actually happens is everybody gets poor. I mean, what actually happens is everybody gets poor, but that of course that's not the sales pitch. So.
I know things are getting sporty. Sorry. I did not mean to come in here and be a little black raincloud. That wasn't my.
Well, then also there's a problem that we people look at what's going on right now with the Republicans, the Iran war, which is extremely unpopular, very unpopular. I mean what is it polling at now? It's something like low 30% of people that think it's a good idea. So the Democrats come along, you know, and they win in 2028. And then you have these ideas pushed forward because people want something different than what you have now. And then it just opens the door to this stuff.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean look this is playing out in the UK right now. So you know the UK government just blew up. So the Keir Starmer is the prime minister a very very so in this direction like he's got AOC Mamdani sort of style politics. He just blew up because actually because an Epstein scandal catalyzed it but he just blew up and so he said he's stepping down. There are four candidates for UK prime minister to replace him. All of them are to the left of him.
And so there and you know same thing is happening in France, same thing is happening in Germany. You know so there's something in the water that's pushing in this direction and then yeah and then you have to.
So what could be done to counter this? I mean you have obviously the narrative has to change. People have to understand what the ramifications of these things are, what the repercussions are.
Yeah. And then look, I think you have to and again, this is where I have a lot like I'm still extremely optimistic about the US specifically and here's the reason is because I would imagine anybody who's listening to this is like there's two ways to listen to everything we've been saying which is oh these guys are out of touch and the other way to think about it is I own a home. I own a small business. I own a store. I own a farm. I want to leave something to my kids and they're going to come and take it. And so I think that like inherently that's a bad sales pitch. And so I think as that becomes clear like this isn't because right because specifically right now it's only in California and everybody just kind of thinks California's crazy anyway. But I think as this becomes a national issue my expectation would be people take a look at it. They're like oh that clearly is leading in a direction I don't want to see it. And then like I said and then as they think through the implications of like okay guess what they're going to be coming and looking at my wife's jewelry. Like.
Do you think that things like this that they have to get this bad before people get rational that sometimes you need an enemy that's so obvious that people sort of unite and realize like oh this is not the direction we want things to be headed in. Let's figure this out in a better way.
I mean that has happened a lot. I mean that is a sustained pattern. I mean Eastern Europe you mentioned that is a lot of people there do not hold any of these ideas because they've been through it. They have the direct experience. You know, yeah, these things are easier to kind of not think about hard if they're not right in your face. Yeah, there's that. But again, like I said, it's just, you know, look, the US has had multiple Oh, okay. 1948, 1948. So, 1944, the vice president of the United States almost became a guy named Henry Wallace, who was an actual communist. Who was an actual communist, like in league with the Soviet Union, like for real. And he almost became VP instead of Truman. He almost became president in 45 and then he ran in 48. And didn't win. And so that was like a great example of like America had a choice. And by the way that was after the Soviets were our allies during World War II. So they were not you know they were actually quite popular. There had been a ticker tape parade with Joseph Stalin I think in New York City. Not shortly before that. Not long before that. And so you know like at least in 1948 they took a hard American people took a hard look at it and said no not here. So.
The amount of propaganda that people are subject to in 2026 though is very different and the social media propaganda is wild because people live in these echo chambers and they you know especially like go to Blue Sky. You want to think the world's falling apart? Go read what people's opinions are on Blue Sky. Like Jesus Christ they're advocating murder for people that don't agree with what they believe. I mean, I saw after Charlie Kirk got killed, there was all these people that were like, 'Do him next. Do this next. Do not this is horrific. Someone just got murdered.' It's like, 'Yeah, do someone next. Do this person next.' And no punishment, no banning, no taking it down. It's like you've got these social media echo chambers that get people thinking that these are good ideas and then there's no one around them that gives them a counternarrative. And anybody who does is a fascist.
Yeah. Now the good again I'll try to be the bright spot. The good news of Blue Sky is they've self-isolated to Blue Sky.
How many people are on Blue Sky?
Do you know the concept it's probably I'm gonna guess a couple million.
Even Jack who created Blue Sky is like yeah it's a fucking dumpster.
Yeah, he's disowned it. So do you know the term heaven banning? Have you heard of this?
This is an old term for people who run like chat groups and forums online which is okay. You've got somebody in a chat group and they're being a pain in the butt. There's two things you can do. One is you can ban them from it and that'll make them mad. And it'll be everybody will be miserable. The other thing you can do is you can promote them to heaven, which is you just let them interact with bots that just agree with everything they say.
Yeah. And so you just let them like every day they have the best experience of their life because they're right because they're in heaven. They're just saying every crazy thing and they've got 30 people right there with them are like absolutely they are absolutely correct on everything.
And so in the industry the joke is that Blue Sky is real life heaven banning. It's all these people have ascended into their own private Idaho.
That's a good question about like how many people are on Blue Sky that that's a bot. Jamie and I were just having this conversation about how many of these conversations that we deal with with political issues are bots.
Yeah, that's also true. There's tremendous amounts of bots and then there's also, by the way, just payola is running crazy right now.
So influencers getting paid.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's weird.
And there's a legal loophole which is you have to disclose political campaign finance laws you have to disclose political contributions. If you're advertising a product you have to disclose that for consumer fraud reasons. But if it's just an idea you don't have to disclose it.
Even if you're getting paid to promote ideas.
If you're getting paid to political ideas social ideas.
Yeah because you know what I'm saying it doesn't fall it's not a candidate and it's not a product it's something else.
And so it's actually legal today to pay an influencer to say whatever you want as long as it's not an explicit endorsement of a candidate or of a product and then there is no disclosure requirement.
And so I think this is right. I think a lot of social media now unfortunately I think it's paid influencers on the one hand and then it's bot campaigns behind that. And I think the environment has gotten very and obviously Elon's doing everything he can to fight that on X but at Facebook they're doing the same thing. But.
Yeah, but how can you fight that on X with people that are being paid? That's why it's so effective, right? Because it looks organic, right? And by the way, every once in a while, people will see this. Every once in a while, a campaign will roll out and there will be 30 influencers of particular kind and they'll all kind of say the same thing and somebody will do the screenshot and they'll show combine. So, sometimes people will accidentally cut and paste the solicitation.
Uh they'll cut and paste the text message in without removing the part that says, you know, if you tweet this, I'll give you $5,000. And so, every once in a while it pops out like that. But the answer is generally you don't know. And if your influencers are creative, you're not going to find out. And so.
And if you're one of those influencers, all of a sudden that becomes your living.
If you're getting paid $5,000 to post something and you could post 20 things a day.
Now, again, it's like, look, I mean, there have been sponsorships forever. There have been campaigns forever. There's always been guerilla marketing is the term that used to get used for kind of these underground marketing campaigns. You know, for example, lots of brands hire college kids to go try to get their friends to use products. So there's always been versions I use the term payola. Remember payola used in the old days was record labels paying radio stations to air new music because you would try to fabricate a new successful pop star by paying the DJs. That was called Payola. That was actually banned decades ago. But yeah there have been lots this so in one sense this is just the new version of that on the other hand this is a very difficult version of that because the assumption is you're dealing with real people.
But if you made that a law where you have to disclose whether or not you're being paid to espouse opinions that would change everything.
I think so now again it's one of these things you'd have to catch people right.
Right but if you made it a law and then you could catch people yeah.
Then people would go to You have to put some scalps up. Also, I believe on X, I think according to X's policies, I think you have to disclose if you're paid. I think there's a tag you have to really even for an idea, I believe. So, again though, it's not a law. And then again, there's a big enforcement problem, right? And then by the way, again, it's I would say it's the influencer thing and then it's but it's also the bots. So, the influencers and the bots go together, I think, is the full picture because the bots show up and make the influencers look like they're more successful than they actually are, right? And a tip off there. You may have seen is you'll see these tweets or posts on whatever platform and they'll have like 22,000 likes and they'll have like 15 replies, right? It's like.
But and then again the it's evolving and so now you're going to get a lot of fabricated replies as people.
Absolutely. Yeah. We were just talking about that too. These crowdsourced campaigns that you can do where you can hire a company and that company can promote an idea and they have all these accounts that just start pushing this idea.
And it's very easy to do. You could attack a political candidate. You could go after this, go after that, promote this, promote that and it's legal.
Now, let me give you positive side of this, which is go back to Spencer Pratt, who by the way I've not met, haven't donated to, but like he's using this, I think, in exactly the right way, right? His entire campaign exists because he's able to go viral on social media, right? Because he didn't start out. I mean, he's literally a guy whose house burned down like that's the guy, right? And he's able to he's been able to go out with his message and he can go out, you know, he goes out minute to minute and then he does his official videos and then he's got all of his fans doing their videos and the whole it's all that's all free. Like to him that's all free. It's all zero. And out he goes. And so the fact that it's an unconstrained environment also lets people do it the right way. And so I think there is that side of it. And I think there's some balance here that has to be struck to contain the bad behavior but also make sure the good behavior is still possible.
Right? Because right now it's almost impossible to find out who's a bot or who's being paid. And there you often times see people commenting on different political issues in the United States and you go look at their page it says they're from Taiwan, correct? You're like, 'Oh, that's interesting.' And that's a good thing that Elon did, but can't that be circumvented somehow or another and make it look like you're in America with a VPN or something?
Yeah, that's right. You can use a VPN for that. So, it's a cat and mouse thing. By the way, a lot of this happens frequently. Both scams and these kind of bot campaigns, it'll be some other country and it may not even be an organized thing. It's just somebody who's getting paid. It's just pure financial self-interest. And so yeah, and then there are certain countries where there's a lot of that activity because you know it's a country with a low per capita GDP this could be a very good job for them right. So.
Right. All right. And so that's a challenge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, this is what you know, the folks at these internet companies, you know, obviously spend a lot of time on this.
Um, do you go online? Do you fuck around and go on Twitter and read things? Do you all the time?
How do you have the time to do that?
I mean, it's just it's an incredible information source. Like, if for what you know, everything we're doing is trying to keep up on every new trend, every new development, right? Trying to track all these smart people and everything that they're working on. And it's just.
So how do you separate the wheat from the chaff?
So there's two. So I go back and forth. So I use X and Substack. I use Instagram. I use a bunch of these things, but I spend a lot of time on X and Substack in particular. On X, both of which we're involved in. On X. I use both. I let the algorithm do its work. But then I also keep curated lists that are clean where I hand curate every person. And then I'm sort of a semi-notorious on Twitter. I have a one tweet policy. I follow you based on one tweet and I block you based on one tweet. And so for me it's like a real life video game or an online video game and I'm just on a hair trigger.
And there are people, by the way, there are people where I will follow them based on a tweet and then block them based on a tweet and then refollow them based on another tweet. So I saw one yesterday that says there's an Andre Samsara Circle of Life on Twitter of how often you get blocked, unblocked, followed, unfollowed.
And what do you block people for? Just being an asshole.
Yeah. Just I don't want to see it, which covers a lot of bad behavior. But I mean, it's an incredible cross-section of information.
I mean, we have this incredible resource with social media feeds. We have this incredible resource now with talking to AIs to get information. And I'm not a utopian and there's downsides to both of those. And you can use them in dysfunctional ways. But for me, they're great.
What percentage of what you're interacting with online do you think are bots?
I think most of the people I actively follow on my curated lists, I think they're real people.
So how do you do this curated list? Do you use different software by hand?
No, it's all just in the Twitter UI. It's all just the standard thing.
Yeah. I've got three on different topics.
Yeah. And so you just go and check that and see what's going on with this list.
Try to read the whole thing. That's smart. I don't do that.
But I don't really, I don't go on it anymore. It's just to me it just got too much of a bummer.
Well, you have a different way of satisfying your curiosity.
Yeah. I mean, but it's also when I go on, it's like I read so many things about me. I'm like, I don't want to read anything about me. So, I don't go into my mentions, but then things about me are not even in my mentions, just in the regular feed. I'm like, I don't want to read that.
So, I get that. What I finally figured out, and it used to bother me, what I finally figured out is you have to think of it like it's a Call of Duty lobby. So when Call of Duty first came out, it was one of the first games that had the multiplayer lobbies, and everybody was on their headsets with the live audio for the first time. So you go in, this is like 20 years ago, you go in the Call of Duty lobby, and there'd be like 12-year-olds just cursing you out, right? Just calling you every horrible thing they could think of. And it's part of the art. They're trying to psych out their opponents, right? And just be general assholes. And so if you view it as I'm entering the Call of Duty lobby and it's like, bring it, in theory, you can moderate your emotional response.
Oh, you could definitely moderate your emotional response, but I just choose to get my world view from other places. Understandable. I just don't think it's healthy for you. And I just see way too many comedians in particular, but I think other public figures as well who become very mentally unwell by engaging with it all the time.
Okay. So my friends and I have a theory on this. We have a theory that there's two ways to live life right now. It's either you're too online or you're too offline.
And those are the two choices, right? You have to find a comfortable medium, but nobody ever does. There's only the two. And so too online is exactly what you're describing. And you get too wrapped up in the fads and this and that and you know Twitter's not real life and you get completely disconnected. And by the way, I think that's happening to lots of politicians. I think it's as you said, it's happening to a lot of media figures. It's happening to a lot of people in my industry. But I also think there's too offline. Somebody once said the definition of a baby boomer is somebody who believes what's on the television set.
That's a problem. Yeah. The baby boomer problem is real.
Right? And so if you're not online enough, then you tend to believe, you literally if you believe what's on the TV and what's in the newspaper, that's another kind of problem.
Yeah, it is. If you're only getting mainstream media narratives, that's a giant issue.
That's right. And so I think the problem is at least everybody I know they're one or the other, right? And by the way, as a consequence, they live in two totally different worlds. It's almost impossible for somebody who's too online to talk to somebody who's too offline and have a productive conversation because the too offline person has no idea what they're talking about because they lack all the context. The too online person is too wrapped around the axle on things that are like these crazy online dramas.
Right. And so I think that's actually a big part of what's happening in the culture independent of like left versus right or independent of whatever. It's just simply two completely different mediated realities.
I always wonder like what is it going to look like in 20 years? Like what is this going to be like? And 20 years seems like a long time, but it doesn't if you realize that 2006 was 20 years ago, which doesn't seem like that long ago. 2006 is like modern times.
It is. I think the next 20 years is going to change a lot more than the last 20 years. And I think AI is the reason why.
And so I think if we're back here in three years, we're going to have a very different conversation. And certainly if we're back here in 20, it's going to be a very different conversation. And by the way, I think very exciting in many ways, but very different. I'm reading a book right now on the yugas, the cycles of civilization.
Ah, yes. Yes. The Kali Yuga. Yes.
Yeah. I thought we were in Kali Yuga, but according to this book, we're not. We're in the next stage. And so, it's got me very optimistic.
The rebuilding, the rebuilding after the end of the...
Rebuilding and like that we're entering into an age of enlightenment. Yeah. And that there's going to be some significant breakthroughs with technology in particular that allow people to have a much more balanced life and perspective and a much more balanced civilization.
Like this is, there's the doom or gloom, right? When it comes to AI, there's a lot of people that think this is going to be the end. We're going to be enslaved. It's going to be over. And then Elon's like, 'No, universal high income, you know, no longer there's no more poverty. There's no more. Everyone's going to be, there's massive resources. You're not going to have any problems with all the things that people are hung up with in today's world,' right? In particular with communication. You know, if we do develop some sort of technology-based telepathy, you think that the internet is a game changer, technology-based telepathy is the ultimate game changer because...
There will be no more frauds.
There's going to be, I mean, you're not going to be able to exist as a fraud if everybody could read your mind. You're not going to be able to exist as a grifter. Everyone's going to know your motivations. Everyone's going to know everything. It's going to be very strange. But that could literally call in the next cycle of humanity if you really think about it.
Yep. I mean if you wanted to be completely optimistic of course.
What do you think though?
Yeah look, I mean so obviously that's a very big change. The technology path for that is this so-called neural mesh, you know, Neuralink is a step in that direction, right? So Elon is serious about, I mean not specifically about what you said but he's serious about integrating so-called brain interfaces. And they're working, right? And it's amazing because he's accomplishing miracles along the way, like the lame can walk, the blind can see, the deaf can hear. It's freaking amazing what that company and the other companies in the space are doing. And so that's headed in the direction of, you know, you've probably seen this, you have people now, quadriplegics who can play video games with their brain. And if they can play video games they can write messages. And then people are also working on the input side of it. So that's coming. But I would even say look, a lot of this is going to change even without that technology. And so I don't know if you've seen, the Meta glasses, they just added the heads-up display in the Meta glasses. And so now you can have a heads-up display, if you remember Google Glass way back when that kind of had that but it was too expensive, it didn't quite work right. So they now have in the Meta Ray-Bans they have the ability to have a heads-up display. And so you can be sitting talking to somebody and be getting messages. And then they have this thing, have you seen the neural wristband? So they have a wristband that can pick up the nerve transmissions from finger movements. And so you can type, in one mode they can just pick up your finger motions and then there's another mode where they can actually pick up your intention to move your finger even if you don't move your finger by picking up your nerve impulses off of your wrist. And so at least in theory you could be sitting completely still and you could be receiving messages in the glasses and then you could be responding with basically, you know, sort of...
So using your mind to pretend to type.
Effectively. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, triggering the, it's like a small training thing you have to go through and then you can start to do it. And so you'll start to have that.
Here's where you just played Doom.
Yeah, this is the new, so they just added the screen recording. They just added this Doom. Videos have started to go crazy.
So you just played Doom while talking to people.
Oh and then yeah. So he's wearing the neural wristband. So that's the neural wristband and then he's moving, that's his hand there and then he's moving and playing the game with his thumb and with his fingers.
Looks like he kind of sucks.
Well, it also doesn't work. I mean to just control it with just your thumb is pretty crazy, right? It's not that accurate. So he's like scrolling forward to move.
Doom is a very old game. He's out of practice.
Yes. Yeah. The fact that it works is kind of nuts.
There's another one. There's another one that's really funny, that got people all fired up, which is somebody doing one of those, it's like a Mario jumping game. And they're playing it as they're jogging in real life. And the joke was, 'Yeah, I love this because I can finally like pay attention to the great outdoors.' Because you're actually running outside, but you're playing the game at the same time. So, God.
Yeah. So that's, yeah. So that's all starting to work. My favorite, I'll give you my favorite dystopian, I'll give you, okay, I'll give you lie detectors. So I don't think you need telepathy to do lie detection. I think you need very high resolution cameras and that might be, you know, that could be mounted on your face or on headphones.
And then I think if you could get like infrared, if you could get high enough resolution cameras and if you could get like infrared sensing you could pick up somebody's physiological change.
What if they're a sociopath?
Well then they have a huge edge.
That's a problem in the world.
Isn't that a problem? That could definitely be a problem. And then look, AI is going to overlay on all of this, right? And so, you know, a big use for things like the Meta glasses is talking to AI. The Meta glasses serve as input for AI because the AI is able to see what you see through the cameras and then you can talk to the AI through the microphone and the frames and then the AI can talk to you through the speakers and the frames.
Right. And so all of these devices are going to start to become very magical because they're all going to light up with intelligence. That's basically what's happening right now.
So what's the dystopian perspective of the introduction, like the wholesale adoption of AI through everything?
I mean so I would say the doomers have an excellent marketing campaign. So I think you've probably heard all the dystopian scenarios, right? So it's the end of it. It's sort of they're all going to kill us, but at some point before or after they take all the jobs, flat cameras, surveillance, new forms of surveillance, right? All the jobs. And then, you know, now apparently we're destroying all the water, which is actually news to us in the industry because...
So this is the big, there's a big anti-data center push. There's a big populist kind of revolt in the country against building new AI data centers.
Yeah, I watched Kevin O'Leary argue with Tucker Carlson about that.
Yeah. So Kevin has this huge project in Utah and he's bought, I don't know the exact, I think he's bought like 40,000 acres of land and the vast majority of it's going to be just pristine land but he needed for the water rights and then he's building the data center. And it's a weird, it's taken my industry by surprise because it's a bit of a weird issue because if you're ever going to build anything, a data center is like the most benign thing you could ever build because it doesn't do anything. Like...
It just sits there. It's to, you just rack up thousands and thousands of computers in racks, right?
To run anything that runs in computers, but specifically to run AI. The thing that has people freaked out is to run AI. I mean, everything else, every other kind of software runs in these things also. But AI is the thing that's activated the...
But this data center is the size of 2,000 Walmarts.
Yeah, that's right. It's going to be very, you know, it's going to be in the middle of nowhere. It's going to be surrounded by natural beauty. You know, it's going to be in 39,000 whatever 900 of the acres are going to be preserved natural beauty, right? And so you're never going to see it out in the middle of nowhere, right? In the Utah desert somewhere.
Sounds like you're selling it.
I'm not involved in it. I'm not involved in it. I was just going to say, did you see Marty Supreme?
Did you see the movie Marty Supreme? No, I didn't. Oh, so Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank plays the bad guy in Marty Supreme.
Oh, does he? And kills it. It's a legitimately great performance. He plays a mid-century American businessman. He absolutely nails it. I'll spoil it. At one point he literally spanks Marty. Like he literally, because Marty needs him for funding for his crazy dreams and Kevin O'Leary's character turns out to be a total...
I don't even know what the movie is about. Do you know it? Marty Supreme.
Yeah, sort of. It's a great movie.
It's actually based on a true story. It's about a hustler. It's a movie about hustlers making it in America.
And so it's like right after World War II and there's this young immigrant family, Marty Mouser in New York from the outer boroughs and he decides that his path to fame, he has many plans and scams for how he's going to make it in America but his big plan is to be the world's champion ping pong player and he's going to make ping pong into a giant sport like basketball or football. And by the way, the actor actually trained to play ping pong for like six months heading into this movie and is just amazing. It's incredible. Most incredible ping pong matches you've ever seen.
So it's like the American dream. And then he gets to make it with Gwyneth Paltrow along the way. So it's like a...
Uh-huh. It's her return to movies after a long break. And when is this movie out?
This is out last year. It got cheated at the Oscars.
