Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we consider whether the huge sums of money being spent by billionaires and corporations in political donations are simply return on investment vehicles, and how this process eventually may make it impossible to run a government of the people.
Hello, welcome to the Call I Can See it podcast. I'm James Keats, and joining me today is a man whose takes can show you the whole scenario. Tunde. Ogunlana Tunde, are you ready to show them how we flow? Check the rhyme style?
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Yeah, man, let's do it. All right.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe, like the show on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps the show out. And we're recording on August 18, 2026. And Tunde, we all know that money going into politics continues to explode with billions and billions being spent by campaigns, political parties, and political action committees each cycle, seemingly increasingly.
But one thing that you recently pointed out to me is that for many wealthy Americans and also businesses, political donations operate more like investments in tax avoidance than anything else.
And this is in addition to the other ways that this can warp our system. But this one in particular, and the concept is illustrated by a recent analysis by Public Citizen that took a look at political donations of 88 corporations who made millions or even billions in profit, yet paid no federal income tax in 2025. And the analysis found that their political donations essentially generated a 3,000% return on investment in terms of the taxes they were able to avoid paying based on their political donations. And similarly, recently we saw a story about how Google co founder Sergey Brin spent more than $100 million to defeat a proposed billionaire tax in California. But which is a lot of money, right? $100 million, until you consider that the tax would cost him $13.3 billion. Then it's like, oh, well, it's a no brainer. Which is what you said to me. Well, yeah, that makes a lot of sense that somebody would do that. So, Tunde, what stands out to you in these stories about how much return you can achieve on dollars spent to buy policy that lowers taxes and prevents taxes from being enacted?
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Look, man, this is, I think, the debate of our time. And I think that this is politics.
This is really about us as a nation, a society, people trying to decide, you know, how do we govern ourselves?
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Can I say something real quick? I think you understated. I think this is the debate of all time.
This is all societies wrestle with this throughout history and so forth. And so I think, like, it's, yes, everything you're saying is true, but this is actually all. This is what you have to wrestle with as a society who's in. So I get it, but why you serve.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: What I would say is you and I were born into a world which had already settled that for that period of time which was the New Deal. Yeah, right. We, you know, did we've. You're saying all societies have this issue. I remember we did a discussion on Hammurabi's code and the oldest written text I think is 8,500 years old, that, that still divides society into different categories and you know, wealthy commoners from slaves and all that stuff. So yes, this is a forever kind of battle with humanity and populations. But definitely in the modern era, the New Deal was something that was brought about in the 1930s in the United States as a way to create a more equilibrium within the society, not to have such a huge imbalance between wealthy and poor. And I think that for many reasons, which I know we won't have time to get into for a full discussion, but we are back at a place where we were in the late 1920s going into the 30s, meaning this, this wealth imbalance is really stretched out and it seems to be now causing also
[00:04:19] Speaker A: how that integrates into power. You know, like I think that's a key piece of this because remember the Duke came after the Gilded Age, you know, when J.P. morgan is, because of his wealth, exerts a level of control over the US government. But go ahead.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, and that's what I'm saying. History is rhyming, right? I mean you could replace JP Morgan with Elon Musk. Right. Just, just. No, I'm being serious. Two men that had an outsized influence and who, you know, offer lend money to the US government, all that kind of stuff. Right. So, so it's interesting, but going back to specifically this one, that's why. Yes, Sergey Brin, the founder of Google or co founder, has a net worth approximately what I read of $269 billion.
So he's worth a lot of money. And you know, this is what I'm saying. There's an ideology that says that he earned, that he deserves to keep it. It's not fair to confiscate any of it or the major or a portion of it or whatever. And there's another ideology that says, well, it's great for him. He made it, he kept it, but he made it on the back of the American system and his employees went to public school and he takes roads and bridges to work every Day and all that. So he needs to kind of give back into the system that allowed him to become so wealthy. And the argument would be that at 269 billion, if he's asked to pay 13 billion, then he's still worth 253 billion. So he's still doing okay. But the state that he lives in would benefit from a lot of services because the federal government is cutting a lot of services like Medicare and Medicaid and certain things. So the state is saying we got to tax these billionaires now so that we can make up that shortfall from the feds. Da, da, da. And a guy like Sergey, Sergey Brin, like you're saying. I said it's rational. If I'm going to lose 13 billion and I have the money to pay 100 million to try and avoid losing 13 billion, that's a rational move too. So that's what I'm saying is that it's not, I'm not saying one or the other is I agree with or a superior. I'm saying this is exactly what politics is about, is about debating these issues and then for those of us in the electorate class and is why it's important to have free and fair elections because then we are supposed to be electing people who we think are going to take that message into power and leadership and make the effective changes that we like. So if we want billionaires to keep getting richer and not pay back into their society, then that's one thing we can have. And this guy Sergei will be worth half a trillion dollars in seven or eight years and that'll be fine. Or we can have months, you mean maybe, but trying to stress it out and make him work a bit.
Or we can have the type of society where you have more of that New Deal style, guys like this pay taxes and we have more roads and bridges and states like his could spend $13 billion on hiring people to go fix and all those roads and bridges and build infrastructure and all that.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: And you may want to actually, you know that where people can live a decent lifestyle, work an honest job, live a decent lifestyle, you know, because that's not something that is promised, that's not something that is automatic. That's something that was fought for. That again these concepts people should know, you know, the square deal, the new deal is the New deal because it came after the square deal which didn't happened but the square deal which Teddy Roosevelt pushed was all about you work, an honest day of work, you should be able to live an honest living. You Know, like you shouldn't. Working poor was something they were trying to get rid of where like when you're destitute and you work, but that's the, that's the natural state of the way wages will go without government intervention. And so the Square deal, they weren't able to get that off the ground. The New deal was the one that actually brought that in and it brought in the largest middle class in the history of the world. And, and you know, in the 20 years that followed and so forth, so, and changed the society. And yes, we were born into, into the remnants of that, so to speak. And we've watched it get taken apart and so that the, that, that wealth disparity could, could explode once more. You know, like if you go back to the mid-1900s, then the average CEO makes 30 times the average worker. You know, something, something around that way maybe it was 100 times, but nonetheless it was nothing compared to what it is now. And so, yeah, I mean, I think what we're describing here, we actually did a show a couple weeks ago and it talked about entropy in political systems. One of the specific ones was incentive entropy and how over time the incentives of people get warped in ways that serve either a part of the system or serve them personally, where by acting rationally they do things that bring about the end of the society that they're in. And so yes, if you're saying I spent $100 million to save $13 billion, then that is completely rational. That makes a lot of sense. Now that's from a economic standpoint. Now from, again, you bring in these other, do you owe any obligation to anyone but yourself? Type of thing. And what this, what the tax is by the way, just, it's the California billionaire tax. And it's in response to what has been observed where the, the people of extreme wealth will take loans against their stock portfolio, live on the loans and won't make an income so they don't end up having income tax, you know, more or less. And so with this California billionaire tax they're trying to do is take a 5% tax one time on the net worth of the billionaires.
And so that's why somebody who's worth 260 billion is stands to get taxed 13 billion. It's a one time thing, but they're saying, yeah, this will keep things afloat that the government's doing.
And so whether you believe the government is wasteful, whether you believe that people work hard for their money and you know, somebody like an Elon Musk can go from 300 billion to a trillion in 14 months was because of hard work by him.
You know, whether you believe that stuff or not, the question does, I think, as you rightly point out, the idea of keeping the system going. Can we keep the system going? Because at a certain point people have to put money in in order for the next round of people to create amazing things. You know, like, who are the guys that are going to found the next Google? You know, like, are they going to be able to, to, to go, go to school? Are they going to be able to get places or because the roads aren't falling apart if, if, if a fire starts or is the fire department going to show up and, and put it out and so forth. So all these things that are happening that make our, our, our country conducive to these things happening, it's not, it's not a, a, like, it's not something that's unexplainable. Why Silicon Valley happens here and not somewhere else in the world where they may not have the level of investment, may not have the educated, the amount of educated people that can come in and work on these things and live a comfortable enough life that they can take a chance and say, hey, I'm going to try to start something, you know, without starving or starving my family and so forth. So it's about the ability to keep the system going on. And that to me is where this incentive entropy that we're seeing, where it's, it makes rational sense from a financial standpoint to avoid, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in just, you know, political donations. That money's not going to anything productive. We're just going to spend all that money so that we can avoid taxes. And so the state loses doubly there. You know, the state and their ability to continue to provide a system that more, more green shoots can grow from doesn't get the money that the donation that's going in somebody's pocket or you know, like whatever, and then they're not getting the tax money either. So it's like, well, hold up. That can, that seemingly can dry up the supply of funds from the winners in society pretty quickly.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: Yeah, man, you make so many good points, man, about, like, I just think Americans don't appreciate what you said about why Silicon Valley is here and not somewhere else in the world. The connection between things like the New Deal, the government spending money on research and development. I'm thinking of things like NASA, like
[00:12:14] Speaker A: darpa, things like the Internet.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I mean. But that's what I mean by like darpa, like these, these government and military, you know, think that they spent all this money over decades. You know, this like you're saying the, the, the Internet was created in the 70s by the US military and it was done off the taxpayer money. And I can hear someone already arguing with me. Yeah, but what about Elon and SpaceX? Let's be honest, SpaceX got over $38 billion of taxpayer money to blow up rocket rockets on launch pads because investors weren't going to really cover that stuff before it started looking like it was working. So this is, you're, you're absolutely right. And I think that, you know, we're going to learn the hard way, and that's my concern, is that when Humpty Dumpty, you know, cracks apart, you know, meaning this government, it's not going to be that easy to put it back together again because it was an ecosystem, this, this, this U.S. government. And if you break apart an ecosystem, it's hard to put it back together. Is that because it's an ecosystem, it's not just inanimate objects. And so I think that's very important. James, the other thing that as you're talking, it made me realize a couple of things. There's a few stats I have I'd like to share with the audience before we finish the show. But I want to say this first.
This is very interesting because if you think about it, our country dealt with this many times. New Deal was one example. We gave another example. We had a war over this internally. It was called the Civil War.
Civil War was, yes, about slavery, but at a higher level, you know, if you go 30,000ft from there, it's really about economics because what does slavery represent?
[00:13:43] Speaker A: Property. You know, like, so it ties into that the slaves were property and they were capital in that they were a means of production.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: Correct. And so, and also that's what I'm just saying is they were free labor. And it goes back to your point about capital is always looking to squeeze the most amount of labor for the lowest cost. And that's to your point about why usually a government is the only one that can intervene and control that desire of capital to squeeze everyone to nothing in terms of how they get paid. And so if you think about slavery being the ultimate form of that, I own another human being and they are not free. They don't have their own agency to act on their own accord. They have to do what I say and then do this labor.
And so you had two Separate economies that evolved over time in the United States between. Because remember the colonies had slavery and all that. So from 1789 when the countries formed to 1860, the Northeast was very industrious and the south was like feudal Europe. You had a few people with a huge amount of wealth. The planter class, you had the slaves that had nothing. And then you had a whole bunch of other people, the free whites who also had nothing and lived in the mountains and were hillbillies and all that.
The Civil War was caused because as the country expanded west through things like the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican American War, Congress was debating do we expand slavery or not? And most white Americans did not want to expand slavery. Not because they like black people, it was an economic reason. They understood that slavery was really bad for white Americans because it meant that there was no work and you had all this poverty in the South. And so I think that is, it's interesting. I never thought of it that way, but we had a war over this already and looks like people want to maybe, you know, go in that direction again to defend billionaires.
Like you said, a one time tax that could do a lot for a state, a lot for communities. But we're going to have a lot of Americans convinced that somehow Sergey Brin's wealth is more important than the well being of millions of Americans. But they will defend.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: Man, you said it earlier and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Him going from 260 billion to 250. 50 billion. Like oh yeah, that's going to, that's going to terrorize. That's going to be terrible for everybody. Like what? That's a drop in the bucket.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: He might have to dip, hey man, he might have to dip into his 529 plan to pay for his kids school. So you know, we got people only got 250 billion. Come on.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: We have grocery inflation. That's out of control for people, working people. And we're talking about a guy worth 260 billion and this guy might have to pay a tax of 13 billion.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Jim, can I, can I just side off some of these stats though?
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: Because they're just killing me. So the top one, this is brand new stuff. I just got the most recent stats. Top 1% controls 31.6% of the nation's wealth, share of household wealth. That's up from in 1989. The top 1% had 23% share of wealth. In 2000 it was 28. In 2010 it was 29%. 20, 20 was 31% and now it's 31.6. So it's a trend.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: That's quite a wealth transfer, that.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: That's a, well, transfer with unequivocally from the middle class working people to the upper class.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And so now the next stat I'll give you, we fall into this, I think, because we're in the top 10%.
So the top, the next 9% has 39.8%. So the top 10% of households in this country have 70.4% of the wealth.
The middle 40% of the nation has 25.3% of the wealth, and the bottom 50% of the country has 3.3% of the wealth.
So that's just an imbalance. Right.
And that's what I'm saying is, is it goes back to what we're talking about.
There's a state, a large state with 40 million people where Sergey Brin lives. That state is a net surplus payer in federal income tax to the US Government. That state is California. So every year California has a net surplus it sends to the federal government,
[00:17:58] Speaker A: which is the amount of money they're paying in federal income tax relative to the amount of money that the federal government is sending back to the state to pay for.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: Correct, correct. Thank you. And so as opposed to states like specifically Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, they're all net receivers of federal tax dollars, so they pay in to the federal government much less than they receive.
Now, those states that I mentioned also happen to be former Confederate states. So if you look at the culture of the south, it still has a little bit of remnants of those kind of economies where there's a lot of imbalance of wealth in those states. So the states outside of the old Dixie states have been covering a lot of that. And what happens is now that we're cutting federal benefits like Medicaid and Medicare, states are going to have to be on their own. That's when President, the President United States says we got to send it back to the states. That's what he means. So now a state like California is making a decision. All right. If you're going to tell us that we're going to be responsible for taxation and providing services and housing and health care for our own citizens in this state, then here's an idea of how we're going to do it. And so now, you know, some people will complain that, you know, that, that, that that's too much. Well, and so that's what I'm saying
[00:19:12] Speaker A: in itself, though, it's, it's an okay idea. You know, like the idea better if it was done federally because if it's done in a state, it actually again, it creates these incentives where, okay, people will leave or they'll want to still do business there because it's still one of the top five economies. California on its own is one of the top five economies in the world. But yeah, you know, it creates these, like it's. That type of thing is better done, you know, from the standpoint of a federal type of thing. But that's not gonna happen right now. So California is making do with the best it can. To say it's not perfect is not an argument against it. You know, to say, oh, it could be a little lower. Oh, it's the way they're doing it is like, okay, yeah, sure, you know, like it's not perfect, but they're trying to do something because generally speaking, California is trying to be sustainable. It's trying to sustain itself. It's trying to, hey, we got these liabilities, we got these things we got to do for people. You know, as a government, that's kind of what we do. And so let's figure out a way to do it if it's not perfect. Understandable. You know, like, one of the things that I think I want to tie directly is you talked about the wealth transfer that's happened to the top 1% of over since 1989. It's like over 8%, you know, of an increase in terms of how much of the nation's wealth they own. Now remember, one thing to keep in mind with this is a lot more. A lot of that stuff is earnings, the stock and stuff like that.
But when you go down to the lower levels, yes, there is wealth, but a lot of that is tied up in property, in homes, you know, like people's homes. That's a lot of that.
The wealth that you're saying from the middle 50 or whatever it is. But nonetheless, the when the point I want to make is that if you have that level of wealth transfer from 1989 to now that much, well, of the country's wealth, you know, and that there's inflation in that too. So there's. It's. Dollar wise, it's even more. But nonetheless, the percentage of the distribution of the wealth in the country, then of course we need to ask them for more money. Of course they need to spend more, pay more in taxes because they've got, they've. Their share of the wealth has grown a lot. So we need, they need to pay more than they are paying right now and that they have historically paid. If they want to pay less in taxes, they need to set up a society that distributes the wealth a little bit more and then, then middle class can pay more, you know. But it, it's, it to me, it's, it's an of course, type of thing.
The other thing, though, another thing I wanted to get into, though, and this is, this could be related news or maybe not just in general. The nation still seems to be spending like it has endless money. And this gets into that sustainability piece, like, what's the plan here? Like, why are we still spending more? We. So again, we have a new war, you know, like, hey, let's, let's have a new war with Iran. You know, we had, we had a deal with them as far as controlling the nuclear stuff. You know, the president ripped that up, you know, and now you can't get that saying, you can't even get that deal back. And so we got this war out here. Like you said, it's embarrassing. You know, we're taking losses. You know, we got carriers deployed endlessly much longer than they're supposed to be. And that's creating all types of morale issues and logistical issues.
So we're not doing the war well, but it's still costing a ton of money. And you know, in addition to all the borrowing that's being done, you know, that, you know, the deficit is outside of disasters. It's as high as it's ever been and still going up. So, like, why do we have this disconnect between, you know, there's a, there's people are spending, spending, spending, spending, and while at the same time the people with the most means of us are saying we want to pay less, we want to pay less, we want to pay less. You know, like, what, what do you think's going on here? Or what do you observe about this? You know, like. Because it's not like Sergey Brin is saying, yeah, I want to pay less in tax. And then I'm also only going to go after politicians that don't want to go into new wars. And it will lower the military budget, which is the largest discretionary part of the budget. We're going to, like, he's not pushing for politicians like that that will spend less at the same time and not to pick on him. Just kind of the thought process.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: Listen, man, there's so much I could say. I don't know where to start like that, man.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: I'm worried about where you're going.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: Yeah, no, you're definite worry, because I got a joke here that I wrote down, which is Russia, because I was going to say, you know, there's some Americans that, that. That really like Russia. And I think what you just described is we became Russia, is my point.
That's one. One joke.
The other is, is, well, no, you
[00:23:19] Speaker A: got to explain on that, which is meaning that kind of the oligarch class uses the government to further enrich themselves without any feeling of obligation to try to put into the government so that it can build up and build a
[00:23:31] Speaker B: better nation and also at the expense of the rest of the population. You know, I read a very interesting about the Sochi Olympics, and there was a highway from one part of Russia to Sochi that was built for the Olympics and all that. And that highway cost at the time, in 2010 or whenever this thing was built, like $7 billion, no bid. And the road should have probably cost about half a billion.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it was a no bid.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: The point was just that. It was just, yeah, all these contracts, all the cronyism and all. And I thought about that like, all right, so maybe even if it had cost overruns and cost $1 billion, that would have been $6 billion that the government otherwise would have been able to spend on the Russian people one way or another. And that didn't happen because of corruption. And I think that's the same thing we, you know, we're seeing in the United States. The reflecting pool at the monument is a good example. Maybe it was not as big of a contract as a Sochi thing, but the idea that that was a disaster.
It was clearly a contract given to somebody who didn't know what they were doing in that kind of environment, that kind of property, and that kind of the reflecting pool. And then instead of just owning up to it or just being quiet and getting someone else to fix it, the administration starts trying to prosecute people for vandalism. Right. And so it's just. That's what I mean by, like, Russia. It's just sloppy and it's transparent. What's going on. The other joke I would have is Atlantic City.
You know, you said something important just in your rant before about when we were talking about California, because I thought about it when he said that they need to sustain themselves with some of this tax revenue that they're asking for. And I realized, yeah, you know, we have a pretty serious financial, economic ecosystem. These states issue bonds, right? And when the federal government just goes wheels up and says, we're not with Doge, we're not going to give you any money anymore, or as much money. They still got to pay interest on those bonds, pay back bondholders and all that. So that is something that you would want to be responsible about and not collapse the American financial ecosystem behind the scenes by defaulting on a bunch of bonds, you know, trillions of dollars worth of municipal bonds potentially. So those are a little thing. And that's what I thought about it was, yeah, we're being run, James, by the same mindset that did things like bankrupt Atlantic City. People who are. And that's what I mean by like Russia. Just people that are saying, oh, I'm here, oh, I'm get mine. And I don't really care about the long term consequences. I'm not here to actually be a link in a long term chain of leadership and push the country forward. And even though I have my own ideology, and maybe I want that ideology to, to change the direction of how the country's going and all that, I still want it to sustain. Yeah, this is all about. I'm just gonna peel out whatever I can while I'm here and leave everyone else holding the bag. That's what it appears to be.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: That's what it looks like. That's what it looks like to me is that the people that are at the top of industry and not everyone, you know, I think it was like the CEO of Nvidia is like, yeah, I'll pay the, you know, pay the tax. That's, you know, a part of having the benefits of being here and building up and so forth. So not everyone but our, our business, many of our business elites, many of our political elites do seem to have this mindset of let's, let's take as much out of this system as we can while we're here and leave people after that to just, you know, pick up the pieces afterwards. Like, it seems to be zero regard for leaving things better than the way you found them. Which is just so. It's remarkably selfish to me because most people have kids, you know, and it's like, like, who does that with, like, nobody does that with their kids. Like, yeah, I'm going to make it so that, you know, like, I'm going to live it all up and then when my kids come on, like, then I'm going to saddle them with a bunch of debt and have them like, be, you know, like, have them be struggling just to pick up the pieces from my life. Like, that's a crazy mindset to me, you know, But I think this also, you Go into that wealth trust.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: Yeah. That's why the culture wars are so important.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: That is why the culture was.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: That's why, that's why. Because if you can convince everyone that the schools are bad and this is bad, right, Then in the mindset of, especially of a wealthy person, it's, well, my kids are better off anyway with my wealth because this did the world, you know, this country is so messed up anyway, you know, like, so, yeah,
[00:27:39] Speaker A: well, sorry, I mean, but I think part of the, you know, part of the mindset and this goes into what you were just going to say or what you were just talking about is the idea that I'm going to, this system is broken, so I'm going to pull all our stuff out or I'm going to pull as much out as I can. It's going to collapse no matter what. There's a fatalism to this. It's going to collapse no matter what. It's broken. All these people don't want to work. All these people want to do this and that. So instead of saying, like a caretaker would, you know, like a steward would, okay, well, how can I make this better? Better? You know, like a Lincoln or an fdr, like somebody saying, okay, here's what's going on. Let's figure out how to make this better. These people are like, oh, okay, all this stuff is going on. Even if all the doom and gloom is true, then it's not about how can we make it better, how can we set, put the country on the right track to more prosperity in the future. Not let's hoard as much as we can so that when things collapse, you know, we'll be okay. And then, you know, we can be opportunistic at that point as well. Kind of like what happened at the end of the Soviet, Soviet Union. So, but ultimately, I, I, it's yes, money in politics is a big problem. And we started the show talking about that and how influence with money, like the constituents for our politicians, ends up being the money a lot of times, but there's enough information out there at this point. And it's hard, it's hard to sift through and find good information, but there's enough information out there at this point where you still can't turn away from the voting populace, the voting populace. We still get to vote and we might not get to vote forever, you know, because as things get crazier and crazier, more things will come into play to try to limit who can vote, who can participate and all that kind of Stuff to where you know, you may not always have that, that ability, but you have to. The, the voters are the ones putting in self centered people.
That's unavoidable right now. The self centered people, the self centered mindset is rejuvenated at this point. You know, like the current president has, has laid the blueprint for other people to say, hey, I can be selfish and run for office. It's. I don't have to be a steward. So, you know, I think that ultimately it's in a democratic system, the public has to look at itself. Yes, it's hard. There's a lot of very difficult with the amount of money, one person, one vote is destroyed with the idea of unlimited wealth and money being speech because money, money being speech ends up being money being able to use to manipulate more people or to close off more avenues for people. But taking the attitude of it's all broken and so therefore I'm going to opt out is the exact attitude of the people who are doing this. And so I think you got to have a different attitude. What can I do? What can I do to help? And whether that's who you support, who you give money to, all that kind of stuff or whatever it is, you know, who you vote for, just showing up, you know, like me, it matters. And having the idea that that's something that we can't get away from even as we are surrounded by people who all they're trying to do is get as much out of it, take as much out of it and leave, leave other people holding the bag like you said.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: That's why I love my boy James all fired up, all fired up with his positivity and stuff. So let me give, let me talk to the audience here. We're gonna go over here, audience, you're
[00:30:44] Speaker A: about to hit us with the last half 50, man.
[00:30:47] Speaker B: Oh man, it's not only half empty, it's just empty now, man, I'm, I'm, I'm as funny as you're talking. I'm feeling bad because I'm like, oh man, he's describing me.
I might have to burst his boat.
All this beautiful eloquence. He's trying to tell people to get all involved.
It's funny, man. I, they got me, bro. I'm a nihilistic and I have the other feeling. I mean, it's funny. I wouldn't say you, it's. I'm not trying to say you have a feeling. What I'm saying is I appreciate your focus on a serious note and your Desire to tell everyone to stay focused and don't get emotional and all that.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: Really what I'm saying is don't give up and keep trying.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: And it's a collective effort.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: What everybody, what everybody can does is different. You know, what somebody does is different than somebody else. Somebody might just vote, you know, somebody. But also try to pay attention a little bit to the wool that's trying to be pulled over your eyes is really what I would say more than anything.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: But yeah, you know, go ahead. I can appreciate that because it's difficult for a lot of people, I think too, with the Internet to feel like they have a handle on where the wool is that's being put over there. So I can appreciate, especially younger people and all that, but especially older, you know, I'll speak. Yeah, don't get me started talking about, hey man, I'm so. I was about to start talking about my cat catfishing videos. I've been, I've been down rabbit holes on you. So you keep going about these old people. But, but not. But, but with the nihilism. But on a serious note, because there is a part of the emotional state that does get in seeing everybody. Like, you know, some of these faithful videos I've seen, like the latest one I've seen is this chef in Miami who's Haitian who is now saying, well, I voted for the president and now my, my shops are, you know, my restaurants are all basically out of business because ICE is raiding Miami and there's a lot of people online, man, you know, like, basically with that FAFO stuff, right? Like, like, hey man, you know, you're getting what you deserve and all this. And that's kind of my point. I'm looking at like, yeah, like people are that naive or don't pay attention. Like they had a, they had a rally at the RNC with tens of thousands of people with signs that said mass deportation now. And I believe them. Yeah, I didn't think it was a joke. And that's what I'm wondering. I'm looking at people like this saying, you don't take this stuff serious.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: No, it's related to what you just said though, with the catfishing videos. It's the want to believe. They want to believe so bad that they overlook all these things. They're willing to overlook all.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: I agree with all that. It's just that the idea for someone like me watching it, right, Someone who wants to be good minded and wants to see the society do well and like I've been saying these, these kind of Words, the equilibrium to be healthy in our. In our financial ecosystem and not to have these huge imbalances. And like I said earlier, I'm in that top 10% of wealth households, and sometimes I'm looking at some of these videos and people, how they act, and I'm like thinking the same thing in my head. Why am I going to be myself on the wall helping these people that don't seem to want to help themselves? They don't pay attention, they don't read, they don't. They don't do anything. Maybe I should go use this tax code the way Sergey Brin does and some of these other wealthy people and pay no taxes and get mine. And so that's the sad part is because I feel like that and I don't want to feel like that. And the other. And the reality is, James, is because Sergey Brin is showing us something very important, which is this is not a meritocracy, just like our defense Secretary or the Secretary of War has shown us. The misdirection was that DEI and all this stuff was the big thing that was unfair. But the reality is these guys are all about nepotism.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: Nepotism.
Yeah.
[00:34:28] Speaker B: Yeah. It's about favors and all that stuff. So none of these guys are about really earning it and competing with the rest of us. They're about pulling up the bridge after they got across it themselves and burning it down for the rest of us so we can't cross it. Yeah, so that's the sad part is like, I see that and I say, well, shoot, I want to get across that bridge quickly before it burns in the end. No, seriously, man, I'm 48.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: I get it.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: I'm going to be alive for another 30, 35 years. And in the end, you know, what's it going to be about? Because I see where it's going. Is this Darwinianism we're going into because people seem to have given up on the idea of this shared system.
[00:35:03] Speaker A: Well, not all people. I mean, it is some of what you. Some of what you notice because it bothers you, though. That's kind of the thing. And I'll say this. I mean, I am a person generally.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: Stop me from walking off the ledge.
[00:35:13] Speaker A: Hey, I'm a person generally.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: Tell me why I'm wrong.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: Well, I'll.
But I can't get you all the way there. But I'm the kind of person that likes to focus on the things I can control.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: You sound like an old girlfriend talking like that.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: But you focus on the things you can control. And you try not to focus as much on the things that are beyond your control, because you'll go crazy doing that or you become nihilistic doing that. Now, I will say to you, though, that a large part of me does believe and acknowledge that this may be something to some degree we have to go through. Like, why did the people in the 1930s have the will to really bring in line the Gilded age class people was. Because the Gilded Age class people were wilding out for 20, 30 years. You know, they say it's so they saw enough to be like, look, nah, we know you guys games. We know what you guys are doing. And so enough people, not all people then like, you know, Hoover still got a bunch of votes after the Great Depression, but enough people then had the will to see that through, to make sure they could change the society. So in order for more people to develop the will, we might need to see the wealth class take, pull up the bridge, rub it in our face and all that. Like, that may have to happen. All I'm saying is to people individually, try to not allow the wool to get pulled over your eyes. You know, like, there are. There's a lot of things going on to try to keep your eyes off. Off of what's happening in society and whether or not we're building a society. Because the word here is a sustainable society. That's the. If the goal here is we just want something that'll be here tomorrow and then it'll be here the next day. And we're not doing things that make it so that this could all fall apart. Like, it's one thing if it falls apart because it's something we can't control. But if it's stuff that we can just like, hey, let's, let's not, you know, this is. You manage your monthly budget, don't spend all your money on day one, so you can't pay your mortgage at the end of the month or the beginning of the next month. Like, it's like, hey, let's just keep this thing going, you know, if we can make it better, great. Or at least let's not make it worse.
So that's all I'm saying, really. But yes, we may need to. What you're seeing may be the stuff that more people need to see and see consistently in order for the will collectively to build in people to say, all right, we gotta get this under control for. And another example would be. Or the example of the contra would be after the financial crisis or, yeah, the financial crisis you know, 2008, 2007, 2009, the will wasn't there amongst enough people to say, we gotta get these people online. Like, that happened so quickly that people were like, oh, you know, eventually they let the bankers off the hook, you know, golden parachutes and all that stuff. If that had been going on for 30 years, then at that point, people might have been like, no, no, we're done with this. We've seen this too long. So. So, yeah, this may be part of the process. It's not fun to go through necessarily when you. When you're aware of the game that's being played and you see other stuff happening, but, you know, this may be needed for us to get through on the other side. So that's as close as I can get you, man.
[00:38:04] Speaker B: Well, yeah, you got. You got close, but no cigar because. I see. I see. Since I'm observing the game, I'm just gonna go play it with him. Nice. Hey.
[00:38:12] Speaker A: What? I guess I'm not knocking you for that, so. But we appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call. Like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, Send it to a friend. Till next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:38:24] Speaker B: And, yeah, I'm nihilistic today.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: This has been fun.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: Like, I might try this more often, man. But on a serious note, too, if you're still with us, thank you for staying with us. Please comment and like our show.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: All right, so we'll talk soon.
