The 2028 Presidential Draft | Ep. 022 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Welcome to the Lemon Hand, everybody.

How's it going?

Did somebody just crash their car in a fucking barrier, dude?

No, they perked up ready for the news.

If we kill a few patrons for a great product, I'm willing to do that.

He almost killed me.

Give me a heart attack, dude.

I'm too old for this.

That's wild.

Don't look at your paper.

Don't shuffle your papers like you're a newscaster after you said Blark

to kick it off.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Lemonade Stand.

Today we have a lot of big topics for you, including who's going to be the leader of this great nation.

Yes.

We're going to talk about who the Democrats and Republicans and maybe Elon Musk's America Party, who they're going to put up in 2028.

We're also going to talk about some open AI drama or okay, yeah.

It's spicy.

It is spicy.

It's not about AI, really.

It's funny business drama.

I have to clarify.

It's not AI.

It's funny business.

AI is the setting.

It's like AI Island.

You're not there for the island.

You're there for the weird drama.

I watched it.

It's not always love on Long Island.

And then you have,

what was your topic, Aiden?

Oh, just a little

adventure.

I wonder how the UK is screwed.

Into why the UK is fucked.

And I also want to talk about the U.S.-EU trade deal, which doesn't include include the U.K.

because they left.

So we got a lot of topics today, but the big one is the reason we have props for the first time.

We each brought in secret our picks for the Republicans and the Democrats in 2028.

And the reason I'm bringing this up now, even though we're three years away, is because they're already making moves in both parties.

Democrats are going to swing states like South Carolina.

Republicans are going to Ohio.

They're all starting to get the feelers out or beginning to say the right things.

And I think we'll kick off with Republicans because I think it's more clear-cut there.

If you could pull up the polymarket, Perry.

This is the current.

I think don't spoil it.

Don't spoil it.

You don't want to know?

I don't want to know yet.

I want to see what you guys pick first.

What are the polymarket-ons on the Whig party coming back?

That's a good question.

And we should set the stakes.

For those who don't know, Polymarket is an online crypto betting website, which has like blown up in popularity the last few years and is now considered one of the sources of truth for the state of politics.

Sad state of affairs.

Well, no, okay.

No, there's an actual reason for this because typically people go off polls and polls are in some ways like opinion-based or very like selective.

You have some pollster who goes out into some community and gets a poll and they're like, based off these 50 people I talked to in Iowa, this is what the country thinks.

And then the benefit of polymarket is people are putting money on this, right?

So there's a stronger incentive to like really believe.

that you think your guy is going to win if you're putting a million down on this person, right?

So there is, it's not that it is the truth, but it tends to have a little more like weight to it.

That's why the guy that that put 100 grand on jesus christ coming back this year he believed that guy at church is the true believer

uh yeah you're correct and and uh this happened in the last election where polymarket was more accurate yeah than polling a lot of polling was saying kamala was just going to crush it or it was really even and and polymarket uniquely was like no trump has like an 80 yeah was ahead of the game

way way way ahead yeah in fact somebody in france made a life-changing amount of money betting on trump early because he did his own poll You know, if you poll someone and ask them who they're going to vote for, it was pretty even.

But if you ask them who they thought their neighbor was going to vote for, 80% said Trump.

Most people said Trump.

And he did that poll and he's like, all right, I'm going all in.

And he went all in on Trump when it was flat.

He made millions.

It was crazy.

So anyway, polymarket, we're going to be using that today to see the rough betting odds on who's leading.

But I guess we could start with our picks.

If you got, if you think, I was going to do the safe picks first and then go to us.

Oh, oh, oh.

Okay.

To see who's the real because this is early.

Yeah.

It's true.

That's true.

Unless you really.

Okay.

Yeah.

Hit polymarket.

Let's take it to the front ride.

Over to the polymarket.

So we'll start at the bottom.

Well, there's only really three candidates here.

There's only three really in the running.

Can you hover that green line, Perry?

That's really

Donald Trump.

I see four.

I see a fourth guy.

So DeSantis is rolling out the ball.

DeSantis is polling.

Donald Trump's third term.

Those are our four options.

Again, people people have put money into this.

There are, it looks like, what, $170,000 put on Donald Trump being the president.

We're laughing now.

I'm just laughing now, and then we'll see that number spike.

Now, one thing is certain is that these numbers will be wrong.

I'm also certainly, if you look at all the polymarkets from way before elections up to now, they changed so dramatically.

Famously, the Canadian election was completely flipped entirely.

Australian election flipped entirely.

Like things will change a lot in three years.

But the current frontrunners are Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump's third term, Marco Rubio, and in a clear lead, J.D.

Vance.

J.D.

Vance is currently dominating the field and hasn't really changed much.

In fact, when they asked Marco Rubio if he was considering running, he politely said, no, no, Vance is going to be a great candidate.

Really?

However,

Nikki Haley, I believe, or maybe it was Laura Loomer.

Sorry, I'm mixing up Republican women.

I think Laura Loomer, she said,

She was very confident that closer to 28, the infighting is going to start.

People are going to start sniping for for their seat.

Like they're going to start making moves.

But right now, it's way too early to rock the boat.

Interesting.

So those are what the betting market says, but we're smarter than that here on Liminate Stand.

Yeah.

And worryingly, given that disasters happened shortly after us talking about them, one of these candidates is probably in trouble.

Well, if one of them was listening while driving,

you probably

just killed a politician.

DeSantis drives into a median with me here.

To our FBI spies, this is a joke.

And as Xi Jinping, please let us into China.

This is a joke.

We do not kill politicians.

I would love to hear your pick.

No, I want to start with Aiden.

Aiden?

I want to start with Aiden.

Aiden, who is your surprise pick for 2028 Republicans?

For the Republican nomination.

Republican nomination.

I believe the first person I have on my list.

You're going to flip your thing, right?

You have a list?

Wait, did I flip my thing?

This is your.

You show it.

You show it.

The red is your vote.

Oh.

I didn't know.

I thought this was a whiteboard and I was going to have to write it.

No.

No.

No, it's not.

It's broken.

Well, well, well, would you look at presumably Marco Rubio?

Marco Rubio.

I think he was just my best guess.

He was your best guess.

Why do you put him above Vance?

I think Vance doesn't make it through the next three years.

Not in anonymous way.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I didn't mean in a live or die scenario.

Secret Service.

To be clear.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

That's not what I meant.

That's not what I meant.

I did.

Hold on.

It's not what I meant.

FBI, who's still listening.

They've already clicked off.

They're in the car trying to driving to your house.

That's right.

That's not what I meant.

You said it so confidently.

No, Rubio seems like the more

maybe normal or reasonable candidate of the two to me.

I'm raising my hand.

Yes.

We live in the United States of America.

What makes you think we're going to get a normal or reasonable candidate?

That's a priority at all to voters.

Well, and I like his haircut.

for audio listeners.

Aiden is holding the poster board, looking at it himself, smiling.

He can't see it.

The camera can't see it.

He's just admiring Marco Rubio.

You're doing a good job.

Look, in all seriousness, I think that J.D.

Vance strikes me as somebody who lacks the Riz necessary to have the top position.

He doesn't carry the same authority or weight that I think Trump has been able to command through his past two campaigns.

I think a lot of people sort of lean in the direction of tolerating him rather than liking him.

I don't think people's feelings about him are necessarily super aligned with his actions,

at least on the Republican side.

And I mainly think that he is more likely to be tied to lack of success or controversy in the next three years while also also lacking that charisma.

Whereas I remember when Marco Ribio was campaigning

in the Republican primary in 2016, and I remember him being one of the people that stood out a bit more among that group.

And I also think he's in a position within the current administration to be less controversial to that base.

So that's why that's why he was my pick.

I feel like the opposite.

So, you know, again, I'm not deeply knowledgeable at the Republican stuff.

My knowledge largely comes from people on Twitter Twitter saying stuff because I just get fed a lot of that.

And

the perception seems to be JD is in line with Trump.

And so for the hardcore Trump believers, that's their man, right?

Like he will be the successor, the natural one.

And like you feel that that's the perception that people have.

That is the perception that I have seen from tweets when I'm surfaced random, you know, and Marjorie Taylor Greene type people who are like, love what JD Vance is doing.

And I think the thing that differentiates him from Rubio, Rubio,

again, seemingly is considered to be more competent and is like running stuff more effectively.

JD Vance is more like mouthpiece for Trump, but in a way that really aligns with like the base.

And in theory, that's kind of what you want as the president, right?

It's just, or at least that's what you want if you're trying to win is somebody who can just like talk well and go on talk shows.

And like his whole thing in the run-up to the campaign is he would just go on talk shows and just go into like confrontational environments and just hold his own, depending on how you view that.

How do you view it?

Just did that over and over where Rubio, Rubio feels like a more boring, like get the job done type of person to the right.

JD more feels like, yeah, he's another Trump fan.

You know, they, they didn't beef back in 2016.

So fair.

I think that's fair.

I will say, like, you, you brought up Riz.

Yeah.

I don't know that Vance has what Trump has.

And I think there's a fair case to me.

I read an article recently about Rohokin's 2028 problem, which is just that if Trump doesn't run,

he has been the one unique uniter of all these different groups.

I think like the tech right, for for example, is way more amenable to JD Vance than perhaps like the Bannon Wright.

That kind of, you know, I think they're less excited about him.

And I think Trump has been the uniter and his like unique brand of,

I don't know, he's, he's goofy, he's funny sometimes.

He's, he's, he's appealing to a lot of people.

I don't know that Vance has that in the same way, even if he says the same lines.

I also think it's worth mentioning, man, he just seems to

come off to me at least, and obviously this is biased, but he comes off as someone that will say anything for power.

But I think most people, because he did, you know, in 2016, say all this terrible stuff about Trump, compared him to Hitler, he said he's,

you know, he makes people around me afraid.

And then he's, now he's the biggest diart supporter.

I have some images that I send Perry, but like, this is him in 2021 saying like, we have to release the Epstein files.

Why would any government hide it?

If you're a journalist, you're not asking questions about this case, you should be ashamed of yourself.

And then I have a follow-up question of him talking about Wall Street Journal, asking questions about the case, being like, what the fuck?

This is bullshit.

You shouldn't be, but you should be doing, you know, it just feels like he...

A bit of a chameleon.

Yeah, he's a chameleon.

I mean, even within the scope of the current presidency, he's flip-flopped on a bunch of stuff,

which feels like the type of person who is less likely to

riz his way into the position.

Maybe that's exactly why he'll win is because he's willing to just go with the tide.

Yeah.

I mean, he let, you know, going into the election, he was like, absolutely, you should not pardon any January 6th protester who was violent.

Then Trump pardons them all.

And it's like, and then he just didn't say anything.

So it's like, he, he seems to be willing to just bite his tongue whenever something like goes against him.

He's very little.

Yeah, but then you're

I don't like it, but I think that's that is probably a winning thing when it comes to

a bunch of people.

And he is leading.

And I do think if they held it now, he would win.

You know, I do think one funny thing in the context of this conversation is Trump,

the idea of Trump running for a third term is just a thing that

we passively accept as possible.

It's not like impossible that he would do it, but the idea that he would get up on stage and announce it is not crazy.

It's not even considered that crazy.

Yeah.

It's not crazy enough for 5% of people to be putting money on it.

Which brings me to my pick.

I don't think Trump will run for a third term.

I think this entirely new guy,

this entirely new upstart out of the nowhere character.

Looks to me like a picture of Donald Trump with a mustache.

No, this is an entirely new guy.

This is Donaldo Trump, but he's going to help us get some of the Latino vote.

And

he's a character, charismatic, suave.

What?

Oh, Mike.

Sorry.

I'm Mike.

Yeah.

Sorry, I'm moving right here.

So this guy is going to make sure we don't have any constitutional crisis with a third term of the same president.

We're going to have an entirely new guy that still keeps that Republican unity, but with a dashing mustache along the way.

This is my semi-sincere pick other than the mustache.

I literally think Trump is going to consider it

as they get closer, especially if there's infighting.

You think he's genuinely going to consider putting on a mustache, bro?

That's what you're genuinely thinking about.

Wouldn't be the craziest thing in American politics.

No, I don't think he'll put on a mustache.

I am keeping open the idea of a Trump third term being floated.

If he wasn't old, I think he would do it guaranteed.

He might actually just be too old.

He might, by the end of this, not have the stamina or whatever to do it.

But if he was like a spry

71, I think he would do it in a heartbeat in 28.

Okay, that leads to my pick.

Okay.

Okay.

It relates to the youth.

So I was thinking about it.

Some of the most influential politicians are ones who left their lifelong party, right?

Think about like if you sacrifice everything to leave your party, it shows a genuine desire for your beliefs, right?

And so you're willing to lose everything for it.

RFK Jr., lifelong Democrat, massively a Democrat, his whole family, right?

He leaves the Democrats because he's frustrated, eventually joins with Trump.

They win the election.

Trump himself, lifelong Democrat, leaves, has now won two parties.

That's why, who's best positioned to leave the Democrats, who has a huge base of support, who's captured the hearts and minds of the youth?

That's right, Joe Biden.

Imagine, okay, fresh off the Hunter Biden interview.

Everybody's got fresh empathy for him.

It was humanizing.

And we all love him as a dad.

He's America's dad.

He'll have just beaten cancer.

I've never heard Joe Biden referred to as America's dad.

That's what they call him during his term.

That's what they call him.

We were all saying it.

I think this is our man.

Joe Biden, but more Republican and more old.

That's what people want.

That's what America's.

He is younger.

Wait, is he younger than Trump?

No, he's not.

No, he's older.

He's like a month or something.

They're both around.

They're both in a couple years.

He's got a year on him or a year or two.

Just so you guys are aware, he's eligible to run.

Unlike Trump, he can go for another term.

Dude, he's not eligible for like any regular job in the workforce, but he's eligible to run against him.

Dude, he couldn't get his forklift certification.

But he can lift his country

in the Republican Party.

This is my president.

Dude,

it would be funny if he ran and somehow got the nomination just to see everyone have to delete their old Joe Biden tweets in the Republicans.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

What if, okay, what if he just, what if it was just a bad cold?

Oh, he's actually like, he's doing great.

He just needed to take some

time

for like four years.

All right.

Well, that's my pick.

I think, you know, while Joe Biden is my dark horse, probably JD.

Do you think we'd have a revolution if we got the same election again, Biden Trump?

They just flipped some dude i would you think i think i think if they just flip they ran again i should dude if they did if they did that i stormed the capital i think i literally stormed the capital that would be the breaking point oh let's do a viewer meeting green at the capital on the journey inside of pelosi's office it's just come on out

peacefully open the windows with a whack we're just some boys and we're proud boys and girls proud boys

we're boys and we're proud that's good

boys all right joe Biden.

So Joe Biden, Trump and a mustache, and Marco Rubio.

This is a dream team.

A statue.

Wow.

And what a lineup right now.

Can the Democrats counter that?

Let's find out.

Can you bring up the polymarket for the Democrats?

This is a more

competitive field in fourth place.

Andy Bashir, 7.4%.

I don't know when he got that spike.

Around

early July or late July.

He had a big spike.

I think that's when he went to South Carolina and did a little bit of like.

Yeah, the Andy heads were going crazy.

Andy heads were going crazy.

Pete Buttigieg, flat at 12%,

AOC at 16%,

and our co-host,

our good friend and co-host, is the current frontrunner for the Democratic president of the world.

I have a criticism for your co-host.

Interesting.

What's that?

Every time he gets interviewed and they ask him if he's going to run, he gives the most annoying answer possible.

What would you know about interviewing Gavin Newsome?

I'm sorry.

We have two experts here.

You know how, like, a coach sees a game from the sidelines.

The thing is, when you're in his gaze, it's hard to focus.

You can't think.

Yeah, he does.

He's obviously running.

In fact, he says some line.

I'm trying to remember what, I know what you're talking about.

He says some fucking stupid line where he's like,

I think he literally said, like, it would be the greatest honor if I could serve the people, but I, you know, I'm focused on what I'm doing now.

It's just the most.

He drops like two paragraphs that leave you with, okay, so yes or no.

Yeah, but it's it's yes because it would be a no yes

no i think he literally said recently he's like i'm not considering it but it's not off the table which means you are considering yeah it doesn't doesn't mean anything you know so anyway gavin newsom to anyone's uh even untrained eye he's very obviously angling for the presidency he's doing a lot of out of california um well you guys know you guys would know because

he mentioned to me off pod actually he was talking off pod off pod he mentioned that to you he was like yeah president very close book.

I will say this: despite being close personal friends with him after that interview, I am hesitant

in his ability to be a

broad, America-wide, popular candidate.

I get the feeling that most people look at Gavin Newsom and see nice-hair, smarmy California politician.

Yeah, and I don't think he can overcome that.

He, I think, the stain of California bad is too big right now.

There is just a very pervasive idea that

without diving into the nuance of why or why not, it might not be true.

That California is one of the worst places in the country right now.

And it's just this thing in political and popular culture.

And he is directly tied to it.

And I don't...

I don't think I've ever looked at an interview with him on YouTube where the comments are really supportive at all.

Because from a California perspective, right?

There's a lot of people who are much more left-leaning in California who fucking hate Gavin Newsom.

And then the people on the right don't like Gavin Newsom.

So it feels like a path to disaster from my perspective.

Feels like a path to doing the exact same thing the Democrats normally do.

Yes, slightly younger, but the same thing.

Right.

It feels like if you're kind of like Democrat establishment, you're like, of these four, you're like, yes, Gavin Newsom.

That being said, I don't know who Andy Bershaw is.

Bashir.

Bashir.

I don't know who is.

I've only heard this guy's name.

I actually don't know.

I can't put the name to the face right now.

I can, but I don't know much about it.

Can we scroll down a little bit?

I feel like I'm failing the podcast as the political expert.

Yeah,

I'm actually failing this one.

He was crazy how you pulled up the photo and actually didn't help me at all.

He was one of the frontrunners to be Connell's VP.

Governor of Kentucky.

Look at that.

I don't know much.

He's like, he's got that Republican cred, my understanding.

He's like, you know,

he's in a red state, but he's blue.

Oh, is he?

Is it kind of the Bill Clinton vibe where you're a little bit southern charm, a little bit of, I can be bipartisan.

I don't think he has Riz in any way, but he's, he's got that going for him.

Aiden, who's your pick?

My pick.

I want to hear your pick.

It's surprising to not see this person in the list.

I didn't see them on the list at all.

That is weird.

It was interesting to me.

Because I feel like she still has so much further to fly.

Are you.

Oh,

it's Nancy Pelosi.

I thought you for sure were saying that.

Doug, it is time for this chick to leave the nest.

Nancy Pelosi, let's just check the age room.

Old age check on Nancy Pelosi.

Currently 85.

She'll be at risk 90 when we're

risk 90.

Born in 1940 during World War II.

1940.

A wealth of experience to bring to the table.

Yes, she's helped us fight

very important.

She was there for Hitler, and she's here for Trump.

She's here.

She's combated every issue of our time.

Dude, she's a shit.

And

at a personal level, I'd let her log into my Robin Hood account any day.

Dude, get her in the White House, let her manage our fund, our national sovereign wealth fund.

Just let her go hog wild with it.

She'd be incredible.

Get nuts, Nancy.

Nancy.

Imagine with her at the wheel of a sovereign wealth fund that we all get a little squish in.

Dude, Dude, it's infinite money.

Every

Fox News host that makes a living off of ribbing whoever the Democratic nominee is, you literally have like, it's like COVID for streamers.

You just made them, you just made them so much money.

I think that's an important thought.

Think about all the job growth in the right-wing media sector.

She was elected.

If Lucy was the candidate, it would be unreal.

Everybody, everybody would have a job.

It would be unreal.

That'd be awesome.

That's a good, that's a good pick.

You want me to go next?

Yeah.

Okay.

My pick for the 2020.

My pick.

Democratic.

I think Democrats need someone different.

They need someone with broad appeal.

They need someone with a little bit of riz.

And they need someone who in four years is going to have some free time.

Ladies and gentlemen, LeBron James.

LeBron James's NBA career is about to wrap up.

Mine is serious, by the way.

I have a bitch in Canada.

Mine's serious too.

I love LeBron James.

He's my goat.

He's better than Jordan.

What better way to prove that?

Not with another meaningless basketball stat, but by becoming the president of the United States.

He can vote himself into more championships.

Becoming the president of the United States, LeBron James, I think is what the Democrats need.

Shut up and dribble.

No.

Shut up and vote.

Wow.

His VP.

LeBrony.

That would be an epitome.

This is crazy because I feel like I, so I made a full list of candidate ideas.

Yeah.

Okay.

He was online.

He's on your list.

He's also online.

But you know, if you go in the polymarket and you scroll down enough, not even that much.

LeBron's on there.

He's there.

He unironically could pull.

He could do great.

I mean, the other one.

Yeah, I'll tell you what, he'd do better than Stephen A.

Smith.

People make that joke.

I actually agree.

If they write hand-to-head,

I think, I'm sorry, I don't know.

Maybe you're on the wrong thing.

The other person on there that's not talked about, both Republicans and Democrats, the only person on both polymarket lists is Dwayne The Rock Johnson, who

is a dark horse candidate for both parties.

He's actually going to be at the forefront of the Whig party, the Whig revival.

Right, the Whigs needs to put on a wig.

He does.

He does.

He's going to have a big.

Hey, ball joke.

Let's go.

Let's go.

All right, Doug, who's your pick for the DNC in 2028?

This is a real one.

I really think this would be the best pick for the Democratic Party.

Now I'm starting to doubt that it's a real one.

No, it is real.

You've said it.

So we're at the Wall Street Journal.

All right.

What I'm trying to do is let the listeners listeners know look some of us actually took this seriously okay are you the wall street

journal serious about this pig what's not serious about this pig what's not serious about this pig wall street journal put out a poll okay and right now like right now The Democrats are the least favorable they've ever been.

They're like people dislike the Democrats more than they've ever been disliked in 30 years.

The Democratic Party is underwater.

The Republicans are not, they don't have a favorable rating, but it's still way better than the Democrats.

So you have a fundamental problem with the Democratic Party where even a quote I liked was the Democratic brand is so bad that they don't have the credibility to be a critic of Trump or the Republican Party.

You've got to fundamentally change the image of the Democrats.

That's why, boom, Mark Cuban.

Mark Cuban.

Okay.

You might think, what?

That's a little weird.

Okay, first off, the Democrats, they're trying to get traditional masculinity back on, right?

That's their big thing.

They lost men.

They lost Gen Z men.

They lost millennial men.

He's traditional mastian, right?

He's big into sports.

He loves the Steelers.

He's like, you know, he's your traditional kind of more manually guy on the shark tank, right?

Yeah.

Next, non-establishment candidate, right?

The reason Trump is so successful right now and people are so averse to somebody like Gavin Newsome, they're sick of the institutional kind of rot of the political party.

You can see it in this, right?

He comes from outside.

He's not like a hardcore Democrat.

He considers himself independent, right?

He's really popular with independents.

Okay.

Again, everybody hates the Democrats.

If he comes in and he says, I'm a billionaire businessman, like Trump did, I can handle the economy.

One of the things in this Wall Street Journal article is they say that even though people don't like Trump's tariffs, they don't like the way he's handling the economy, they still trust the Republicans to handle the economy more than Democrats.

So there's a perception, even with how much they dislike Trump, the country broadly thinks Republicans will handle finances and business and economy better.

You counteract that with Mark Cuban.

You say, look, this is a billionaire businessman.

This is somebody you've seen on TV all this time.

He's got that big brand.

He's well known just like Trump.

He's got that big, he's got, you know, he had the Mavericks.

Not only did he own the Mavericks, and everybody loves him for that, because he won the championship with his NBA team, because of that, he could win Texas for the Democrats.

Think about that.

Unironically smart.

I think before they lost Texas, I would not have traded Luca.

That's what he says.

He says stuff like that.

Everybody loved him.

Okay, check out this story.

He's good at PR.

He's like brash in a likable way.

In a nationally publicized incident in 2002, he criticized the NBA league's manager of officials, Ed T.

Rush, saying he wouldn't be able to manage a Dairy Queen.

Dairy Queen's management took offense to Cuban's comments and invited him to manage a Dairy Queen restaurant for a day.

Mark Cuban accepted the invitation, worked at a day, worked for a day at a Dairy Queen in Colbell, Texas, where fans lined up to get a blizzard from the owner of the Matavericks.

It's exactly how Trump's.

This is like the reverse Trump playbook.

He has a show like The Apprentice with a Shark Tank.

Yes.

He's a billionaire.

Okay.

He's doing the brash stuff.

He actually wants to run.

He commissioned polls in 2020 that showed he would get 25% of the vote.

The only reason he didn't is because his family vetoed it.

That's what he said.

And so, if his family, this would be eight years past that point, is like, hey, Mark, you're good to go now.

We're off in college or whatever.

He gets to go do it.

He's not too old.

He's 66, but by the time he's running, when he's 69, that's young enough to get the boomers on board, but not so old that he'll die.

That's super young.

He's supported transparency in healthcare through college drugs, fiscally conservative.

He's pro-crypto.

I don't like crypto, but a lot of young men like crypto.

Again, if your things are hemorrhaging young men, this is the man to take you back.

This guy will bring all the men into one tent, one big sweaty blue tent together and they're going to stay home.

I genuinely think this is such a smart pick.

Tell me I'm wrong.

Doug,

you might be wrong.

What?

That's such a smart pick.

Sorry.

Sorry.

And I say this as a political expert on this show.

Give me,

I'll pose a question.

Do you think this is a smart pick to win, or do you think this is a smart pick for the United States?

Both.

Because, you know, we could argue, say that there's no, maybe we completely transform the election process, right?

And we want somebody in power who's going to do the best job possible in terms of the actual like day-to-day decisions and direction we're pushing in.

I feel like it's probably some

quiet guy or woman who doesn't want to run.

That's what I'm saying.

So that's what I'm saying.

Do you just see this as a path to winning more than or do you think the answer is more?

No, I think even of the people who have a realistic path to winning, he then would govern.

So there's like, look, I actually looked into his policies to get curious about this.

He's like fiscally conservative, but he wants to increase taxes on wealthy and big corporations while minimizing them on small families, small businesses.

Yeah.

Like big focus on small business, but he still obviously has enough experience to get big business, big tech on board because he's been involved with that.

In healthcare, that's like a big thing he's pushed for.

If you've heard of Cost Plus Drugs, this company he runs that's all about transparency and healthcare.

So he has like concrete ideas and a track record to help fix the healthcare system, make it more affordable, make like super poor people be able to actually get stuff, even if they're uninsured.

So I think he actually has legitimate, likable, well-reasonable policies that are broadly appealing to both bases.

Yes.

Okay.

The two directions that I was pulled in here are one, an immediate revulsion to the idea that another TV personality billionaire is going to be the next president of the United States.

I feel like that is something that we need to get away from.

It feels like a movement in the direction of

like Linda McMahon being the head of the Department of Education.

What are we doing here?

But pulling back a bit and thinking about stuff that I've heard Mark Cuban say or

Mark Cuban advocate for, I'm not sure how appealing a billionaire is going to be, even at the surface level, to a huge portion of

the left in this country, or at least the Democrats in this country.

But

I feel like everything I've seen him say publicly about things like taxes, healthcare,

and like social direction of the country all feel

pretty progressive.

And this is, you know, I'm open to hearing quotes of how maybe he says we should, you know, billionaires should pay lower taxes.

And I didn't see that

explicitly.

He explicitly says

raise taxes on me, like taxes on the wealthy should pay for a bunch of social services that we do not have in the United States.

All of these things that I think are personally important, I think those, and he seems to stand behind that.

So I guess my open question to people listening is, besides the fact that he just is a billionaire straight up,

how many things has he said publicly that don't seem like they would be moving us in a better direction?

I don't actually think this is a great pick, but I do think that there is an interesting, like getting past my first like five, 10 second reaction, there's something interesting here.

Yeah, I mean, what I'll say is, you know, we're scrolling this list of options.

This is, this is all, it's a bad group.

You know,

I'm saying in terms of like,

I guess what I'll say is for the, almost all the elections of my lifetime since I've been able to vote, most people have felt like we've had two bad choices or they felt pretty bad.

So of this low bar, I actually think Mark Heeman's fine.

Like, I think

he can hang with everybody that he could, you know, him and Biden, I don't feel like, oh, I'm so leading for Biden or Kamala.

I'm so leading for Kamala.

Like, he's, he, I would pick him over either of those two, actually.

There's, there's a big problem that I see that you alluded to at the beginning.

And the next two people below Gavin Newsom were AOC and Pete Buttigieg.

And I think the problem right now, because the approval is so low, and this applied to Gavin, but applies to everybody else, is anybody that is tied to the Democratic Party in the past, you know, five to 10 years feels like they have to overcome a massive hurdle in order to get accepted into the position.

Like I think AOC and Buttigej might be decent options functionally, but my faith in their ability to win is actually rather low because of their association to the party at large.

The only person I can even think of that has a commanding place in, let's say, left-wing politics in the United States that I think could overcome this is Bernie.

And the reason I say that is because there is a strong narrative,

even among Republicans, that the Democrats fucked him the first time.

And he's got an outside.

He's also an independent

outside of that.

So I don't think he's the guy either because he's just too old and it's too late for his window.

But other than Bernie, all of the people that have had all this Democratic politician FaceTime in the last few years, it feels insurmountable for them to become the candidate that everybody likes.

And that's why it feels like this, weirdly, Mark Cuban Cuban feels more reasonable and that he's, he's fresh and new.

I think you have to go in two directions, either farther to the left to somebody like AOC, or I guess like

more center, but with an outsider.

And that's what Cuban would represent.

And so if I have to go one of those two, you can't.

If I wanted to win, I would campaign, you know, whether I'm Mark or whoever, I would definitely take a piece out of Trump's playbook and campaign on a populist message.

I think right now you have to take like a a hard left populist message to

win in some way.

Whether or not that all of the messaging that goes along with that is 100% the solution to every problem, but I think the path to winning has something to do with Trump took populism in a bad time and won with it, and the other side needs to do the same.

And I don't think the Democrats, no matter who it is at the moment, really represent

the everyday man.

I mean, there's two routes this goes, and depending on that is how you're going to have to pick your candidate.

So there's the first route, which is that things mostly hold up okay over the next three years, and the Democrats need to pick somebody who's a little safer, who can pull over some center-right Republicans.

There's another route where things get so bad over the next three years, Democrats are almost guaranteed to win.

And in that case, you want to pick a candidate who's a little more,

I don't know, exciting or progressive or different because this is your chance to make, you can get real changes.

You can make really big changes because you're almost guaranteed to win because the economy or job or whatever is so bad that you're just going to win by default, which is kind of, to be honest, what Trump sort of had this last election, which is that people were so mad about inflation, he was kind of running with a, with a, a huge wind at his back.

There's a real chance that happens again.

And so there's a chance you could waste this opportunity by picking someone super safe, or there's a chance where it's a close relation.

You need to pick somebody who's like more broadly appealing.

I don't know what's going to be.

I don't know.

I have no idea.

We're three years ago.

It could be an AOC or it could be a Mark Cuban.

I really don't know.

To me,

we preface this conversation is more for fun than anything, right?

Because so much can change between

a political expert.

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

Political expert, Doug.

I mean, think about how much happened in the last three years.

It's insane.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah, a lot will change.

If you have your own suggestions or figures.

What I'll say is, like,

I feel there's a pretty strong chance that we get a Mark Cuban or LeBron type figure.

not to this degree necessarily, but somebody who's kind of like

a popular brand.

Because I feel, I don't see us moving away from that.

Mr.

Beast.

Mr.

Beast, dude.

Mr.

Beast.

I'm not saying I like that, but it feels like it'd be hard to move away from that after that's dominated the conversation for 12 years.

And you've seen how utterly, ruthlessly efficient Trump has been with like utilizing that.

Last to leave the White House gets a million dollars.

That would be a banger video.

Do you want to hear my other ideas?

Oh, yeah.

Do you want to hear my other ideas?

And also, not chat, sorry.

Viewers, please leave your comments on who you think might be a great Dark Horse candidate who thinks he's going to win.

I want to read them.

I'm excited.

It's interesting.

Well, I think it's tough to say what party some of these guys would run for because

it's just challenging.

So I've just kind of put a party on them.

I've taken a guess as to who would be the best fit.

So for the Republican Party, I have Jeff Teague.

Jeff Teague.

Yeah, yeah.

The basketball podcaster.

Jeff Teague, the basketball podcaster.

You think he would run for Republicans?

Yeah, probably a Republican.

Is he a billionaire?

Otherwise, I'm not interested.

Okay, not a billionaire.

Let's cross him off the list.

I have the corpse of Lee Kuan Yew.

Feels like it could go in either direction.

God willing.

God willing.

I'd vote for it.

So this is actually, this guy's his own party.

He'd be bringing something else to the table.

It's Xi Jinping.

Xi Jinping.

Are you imagining that he sort of does a flip like Biden might do for the Republicans?

Or that I think it's more like he just continues running for the CCP, but in the United States, and then he just sees how the cards fall.

I have

Elizabeth Warren.

Would we have her?

Would China become the 51st state, or would we become a new province of China?

Probably a province in that case.

It doesn't really seem like it would go the other way.

Like that's that's uh

and then my last pick.

Uh, forgive me here, Gerb, Gerbenguli Bur Burden Muhammado.

Burben Muhammado.

This is the guy who used to be the president of Turkmenistan, and there's that video of him riding a horse in a pre-planned race that he got to win every year.

And then he, on the final stretch of the horse race, face plants into the ground in front of everyone and is knocked out cold.

And then they pick him up off the track, delete all the video of the event, 30 minutes in silence, the arena sits, and then he walks back out, and then they just carry on as if he wants, and they award him a medal.

And then they had all of the journalists delete the footage off their phone.

That makes me think.

I think a good candidate would be Coney 2012.

Is that guy?

Yeah.

Is Coney alive?

Happening.

Coney28.

I mean, you said the corpse of Lee Kwan Yu.

Oh, yeah, that's true.

That's a pre-rec for you.

I actually, I didn't set that pre-record.

You're right.

You're right.

And then I had Mitch McConnell, but he, you know, what?

Dude, this makes me think how we have a country of 300 million and we just, I think we should just pick like the worst people.

That's pretty bad.

You know, there's got to be just some regular person who's like proud to be an American, works hard.

There's probably so many people who are like ultra competent.

Yeah, they would be great.

They'd be great.

They'd do a really good job.

They're not psychopaths.

And they're not willing to try to be the president.

They have to be like built for TV and the media environments and social media and debates.

What if it was like the mass singer?

Like, we don't, you can't see them and you can't hear them.

The mass president?

Yeah, but you just like they submit Mr.

Xin Ping reveals he got us.

Submit like a college, an anonymous college essay, and then our college admissions program decide who had the best one.

That person.

300 million Chat GPT washy president.

Fuck yeah.

I like this.

I like this.

Well,

you know, we can talk about campaign reform another time, but one of the big changes I would advocate for is corpses should be allowed.

Yeah, I think uh weekend at Bernie style.

This is the video, let me see, dude.

This shit is crazy, dude.

Wait, so we do have the video, so

some.

So, how it worked was that every all of the journalists and visitors that were there at the time got stopped and searched for their like SD cards and cameras, right?

But some people

managed to sneak out footage in their like in their bags or pockets or whatever.

Yeah, like not everybody got stopped.

Okay.

So he's winning.

Just face plants.

And he doesn't move.

This is the president of

like a dictator president of this country, right?

They take him off.

They make sure he's okay.

Nobody is sure what to do for 30 minutes.

And then he just comes back out.

And they just, all, the whole of society pretends that he won.

Dude, that's

so beast.

That's so beast.

And that's the type of thing that gets, you know, Gen Z men back to the other party.

Yeah, that's what I said.

That he could win for sure.

Yeah.

He's a great horse racer, is what I've heard.

Yeah.

Yeah.

From Turk Mason.

Men get emotional about horses.

You see that Nicola yuck and that's true.

That's our ticket back to the party.

All right.

Well, that's our political analysis for 2028.

We pretty much solved it.

We'll flash forward in three years and see how correct we were.

When it's Joe Biden for the Republicans running against LeBron James and the Democrats.

When it's my girl, you're going to be fucking the one thing we didn't mention, and this is worth mentioning, is by 2028, there could actually be an America party

by Elon Musk.

I mean, he's he's making moves to set that up.

He cannot run himself, though Trump can't do a third term.

Things could be crazy, but he can't run himself, but his stated goal is to try and win at least one Senate seat so he can be the deciding vote for things and possibly run a presidential presidential candidate for the American Party.

I don't know who he is.

So, Elon Musk can be the deciding vote for things.

Well, that's his party, yeah.

Yeah, I think he's gonna run uh big balls or or uh cat turd or something, like some he has so many people in the arsenal

who could run for president, uh, which would be you know worth mentioning insane because if he did do that, that would reasonably split the Republican vote, like pretty significantly.

Are Twitter bots allowed to vote?

We're screwed.

If

Tell us about trade.

What's going on?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I quote a huge W from Donald Trump.

I won't say

the person on the podcast said that exactly.

Could have been anything.

It wasn't just his new mustache.

I want to talk about Trump and bullying and trade.

I've been pretty negative on his trade policy on this podcast thus far, in that I thought it's been pretty effective, pretty lackluster.

But his general stance is...

Ineffective?

Sorry, pretty ineffective.

That's correct.

Yeah.

pretty ineffective.

Pretty lackluster and pretty damaging to America's trade partnerships and prestige and et cetera.

And the dollar.

However, the core philosophy of it, which is like America has the consumers of the world.

We spend a lot of fucking money.

If you want to shop here, you got to pay my fee.

This kind of like

mafia style bullying.

that he's been doing has been mostly ineffective thus far.

I want to say with yesterday's announcement of the EU trade deal, I think he got his first in his mind dub.

And I do want to say, like, it is, the deal is so stacked in America's favor and so bad for Europe that it is impossible not to mention that

his system in that way worked for this one.

In that they are now paying a across the board.

I mean, we have an across the board, 50% tariff on all goods from Europe, and they have no...

50 or 15?

15.

15.

Okay.

And they have no tariff on us.

Now, normally the problem with the trade war is you put tariffs on them.

They put tariffs back on you.

it escalates, it becomes a big problem, everyone gets poorer.

But they have agreed to do nothing.

They will, they just bend over and take it, and they're going to buy more natural gas, they're going to invest money in America.

This last part is pretty nebulous.

Everyone says this, and that usually doesn't happen.

But there's a 15% tariff on basically all European goods going in America.

And sorry, 15 to 50.

15, 15%.

Okay, that's all good.

You said 50 the first time, and I was like, that's a

no, 15, but but none on American goods to Europe.

And so, you know, I looked into this and this is pretty widely agreed, European sources, American sources to be a very, very one-sided deal.

And it's interesting to think about that because Europe as a whole is economically about the same as America.

Like they're roughly the same in terms of GDP output.

You know, it'd be like the China block, the EU bloc, and America block are roughly equally economic powerful.

However, political power is much more difficult to find in Europe because they're fragmented.

This is a negotiation by committee, and they kind of got picked apart is basically the idea that I'm seeing.

In that Trump went in very forcefully and kind of scarily, and they couldn't react fast enough.

Now, Canada and China both reacted

very forcefully.

China responded immediately with counter tariffs.

They banned rare earth metals.

They did a lot of things to like muscle their way back in the conversation.

Same with Canada, which did like American good boycotts and tariffs of their own.

Europe was not able to move quickly and they were very

divided internally on how to respond, how forcefully.

There's a block of like France and Spain that were like, we need to respond incredibly forcefully.

We need to do huge tariffs on America.

And there's a block of like Germany and Italy that were like, if we get into a trade war, it's really scary for us.

We have a lot of manufacturing exports.

If they stop buying German cars or whatever, it's going to be terrible for our economy.

And because of that, they ended up in a place where they took the easy out that was the less bad option than a, you know, they took the 15% rather than maybe getting a 40 or 50 and getting into a trade war.

So in this case, the bullying, at least in the short term, kind of worked in America's favor.

And I want to like bring, I want to just be, it's a narrative violation a bit to what I've been talking about, but it's worth mentioning.

That being said, you know, the

social ties, the political ties have deeply frayed.

Like we're really making Europe an enemy or like at at least a sovereign bloc that is not tied in with America.

But on trade, this deal is pretty bad for them.

I don't know if you guys have any thoughts or anything you want to ask or whatever.

I have questions.

Yeah.

I'm wondering, so as it stands now,

you know, in the short term, seems not that good for Europe.

Yeah.

Good for the United States, right?

Longer term, what are the consequences to us that you might have been reading about?

And also longer term, what are the ways that Europe

can make up for the shortfalls of this agreement?

Like what you've talked about in the past, that decisions that the US is making and the aggression that the US is using towards Europe pushes them in potentially other directions in terms of who they work with more closely.

Like, you know, whether it be China or they're more like interlocked in.

Let me jump on that real quick because that is the big thing.

And that's what I might have gotten wrong in my earlier analysis, which is basically that my first take on this, which is that China is this rising power and this is going to push all the people into China's arms.

What has actually happened in practice is that Europe has found itself between a rock and a hard place because

they have a massive trade surplus with America.

They make a lot of cars and goods and pharmaceuticals and they sell it to America, but they have a massive trade deficit with China.

So they can't.

They can't run to China's arms because China is already dumping products on them.

They can't sell, China's not buying enough European goods.

So, you know, if they're like, all right, fuck America, we'll go to China.

They just, they just, their manufacturing still is lost because China's out-competing them.

They're getting out-competed by the companies in China that are dominating the Chinese market at all.

Like, I wish I had a graph for you, but it's, it's, you know,

with America, it's this massive surplus for Europe, and they need that.

That's their cut.

That's what a lot of their jobs are making things to sell in America.

They don't have a lot of jobs making things to sell in China.

And so it's harder for them.

In fact, they had a meeting with Xi Jinping and the Chinese delegation like four days days ago where Xi Jinping said, I'm urging you to make the right choice, Wink, in this upcoming trade.

But like they were calling him out because the deficit between Europe and China has gotten so big that they were calling him out.

Europe was calling China.

Von der Leyen, who did the EU negotiations with America, was calling China out and basically saying the deficit between Europe and China has gotten so big that we have to.

fix this gap.

We can't the negotiation.

They're saying China, if you want, to get what you want and for us to forge deeper ties, you need to do things that help us compete better in the Chinese future.

You have to buy more European stuff.

Like if we're going to buy a ton of Chinese stuff, you have to buy a bunch of European stuff because right now it's very one-sided.

Right now, China wants to manufacture for everyone in the world and basically no one else has manufacturing jobs.

They make it all.

You buy from them.

You get cheap goods, but you lose the jobs you had manufacturing.

Europe does not want to do that.

But this is the argument that I heard from Scott Besson, who's the Treasury Secretary, who's one of the, who's basically the guy in the administration, Trump administration who's leading this.

And I remember listening to him when all this tariff stuff started.

And his argument was, it's a bad idea for any country in the world to, you know, threaten us because we buy everybody's stuff.

We have the power here, right?

Like China, this is the argument from him.

Like China needs us because their economy right now is just based on manufacturing things and selling it.

And we, as America, are the biggest buyer.

And so we need them more than they need us.

And it sounds like that's kind of what's going on with Europe as well.

Or at least that's the argument in terms of being able to bully them into something.

I would say with China, it didn't work out the way you thought in that China, first of all, I think was more ready for it.

So they are still manufacturing for everyone outside of America, and they have found many, many ways to send it to Mexico or Vietnam or Cambodia, and it gets around it.

So it hasn't really impacted them in the same way.

Europe blinked is how I've read from European and American sources.

They just, they were too scared of this escalating and in the short term, having like empty factories in Germany and like just they don't have that system set up.

They're built for free trade with the United States and they thought 15% tariff won't change the price enough that everyone switches to non-European goods.

By the way, I do want to say very clearly, the data is now out.

Like, who is paying the tariffs?

It is still American consumers.

Like, 80% of the tariff is paid by American consumers paying higher prices.

So it's not like it's a great thing for us.

We're raising more money from tariffs, but it's not,

it's just, it's just less bad than it is for them.

So

I was going to ask,

when you look at this from an American perspective,

is the main downside or the only downside that we have to pay more or we have to pay more for European goods?

Yes.

But that's it.

That's the downside, yeah.

And what is the win from Trump's camp's perspective?

Tons of money raised from tariff revenue.

i.e.

from Americans paying more.

Yeah, Americans paying more.

It's like a VAT tax.

And then over time, the idea is that that that extra tax is going to make European manufacturers less competitive to Americans and we'll get some of that business.

Yeah.

Can I

maybe a cascading bit of logic here and jump in to correct me if I'm if I'm wrong?

My understanding, goods from Europe are usually

finished, higher-end products rather than things that are used to build or produce things, right?

Like a lot of what we get from China or Canada might be timber or oil or minerals, right?

Things that go into the base manufacturing of

something else in the United States that you go on to make a house out of the timber, for example.

But from Europe, you're buying more finished goods or higher-end goods like BMW.

Luxury goods, wine, pharmaceuticals, cars.

Yeah, those are like their big.

So even though the prices are going up on those things, the impact to American businesses might also be lower because they're end consumer products that are,

do you see what I mean?

They don't influence the cost of a bunch of things after the fact.

Whereas,

or do you not think that's I see what you're saying, but I, you know, I think economic theory would say that over time, like an American wine producer is going to have an advantage long term over the European one if they have to pay 15%, if there's a 15% tariff that makes them more expensive.

That should eventually happen.

What Europe is gambling on is that 15% is not big enough to change anyone's buying habits.

Yeah.

Like, they'll just take this smaller tariff.

It kind of sucks.

Their prices are going to be more expensive, but the structure of global trade won't trade, won't change.

They still have their leadership in the industries they have in pharmaceuticals and all that.

That's their idea.

We don't know exactly how it's going to play out.

Again, so far, outside of this deal, it hasn't really worked out on the Trump side for what they've said is going to happen.

Like, again, one thing I really want to mention is that China and the rare earth metals thing was the ultimate knockout punch.

Like that, that turned out out to be a really strong negotiating position because they own, again, almost the entire supply chain on rare earth metals.

They, until your company comes up.

But, but for now, when they did that, Trump had to back down and change some things and soften because that

cut off so much of American businesses that use rare earth metals to build things.

And it all goes through China.

Like once they cut that off, it was a, they had the balls in the vice.

I heard someone describe it as.

So that's what I mean.

there's nothing is there nothing like that that is being imported from europe that has equal stake in

in terms of security or economic value to underlying economic value to american businesses is that part of the reason why this decision can get made no i think the thing that europe had in its quiver they could have used was that trade between america and europe is actually more balanced than trump says it is but it's they buy services they do a lot of digital services basically our big tech dominates Europe.

And so a lot of money from there flows us, but it doesn't count as a goods trade.

So that's why we have a deficit.

They have rules they created after Trump won for this situation where they can really crack down on American big tech.

And they thought about using them.

And France was saying to use them.

They decided not to because they didn't want to escalate this trade war.

What is the

out

the

employment of that would be something like, I have a Salesforce contract with a company in France and they can add a tax to that contract.

Yeah, something like that.

Or, or, you know, they could put a tax on Google AdSense or on, they could

antitrust regulate meta and Instagram.

Or they could really make big tech's life hell in Europe.

And if they did that, the threat would be that is going to, you know, that's the seven stocks holding up America.

If we really hammer big tech, it's going to fuck your stock market.

And so they considered it.

It was a serious thing, but they got afraid.

They blinked.

And whether it's the right call or not remains to be seen.

Some people say this was the smart choice.

Tariffs are paid by Americans.

They can deal with the problem.

We'll hold steady and get American gets for cheaper.

I'm just saying like, this is the first time someone's got truly bullied with no response.

And

they're saying that, not just us.

Like European diplomats are saying we got rolled over, we got steamrolled.

France is saying this is submission.

We're agreeing to submission right now.

Like, you know, there's, this is what's happening.

And so, I don't know, what it'll mean going forward.

It's definitely a fraying of the relationship, but if this deal is signed and holds,

you know, it's a win for America on trade versus Europe.

Yeah.

This could be tough because I do love making fun of Europeans.

Let's cap this out with a quick test.

See if this whole thing that Trump's doing worked.

Okay.

Aiden, will you finally start manufacturing Ludwig's merchandise here in America?

No.

No, it wasn't really getting made.

You weren't making it in France.

It was only getting made in Europe sometimes.

Some things sometimes get made in Portugal.

Yeah.

So it might change that a little bit, but it's not going to move it to America.

You're not going to finally open up a factory?

Do you hate America?

I mean.

You're the one going to Sweden, bro.

All right.

Well, speaking of tech giants, I have some fun little information about opening up

Microsoft.

So I think there's an interesting dynamic that a lot of people aren't really aware of, which is the biggest AI company, OpenAI, and Microsoft, the biggest company in the world, have a very strange relationship that is maybe about to implode.

So the context here is that OpenAI is, in theory, rumors, going to release GPT-5 in a couple of weeks.

They've been saying that.

They've been saying that for a while.

So that's the most recent rumors.

It hasn't been fully confirmed.

But in theory, they're going to drop the big new model, GPT-5.

Right now, we're on GPT-4.5, arguably, there's all these different fractional things.

So, the average person who isn't super into the AI stuff, you probably don't give a shit, right?

GPT-5 coming out doesn't really affect your life.

Chat GPT will be like a little bit smarter in these ways.

Well, it's worth saying, I'm putting a link here for

Perry, if you could pull this up.

But Sam Altman, he does this every time, but he has been on a little bit of a press tour saying that he is scared of GPT-5.

It's so good.

It's scary.

Yeah.

This might this leads into it.

Okay, okay.

Okay, perfect.

Okay.

So why would you give a shit if GPT-5 is a little bit better, right?

You're probably, most people are probably like, okay, there's a, there's a hundred new models every month.

Who cares?

Okay.

Well, there's a very interesting thing between OpenAI and Microsoft.

Open AI started, again, they make ChatGPT 10 years ago, 2015, before the internet created

craze.

Back then, it's just a scrappy little group of AI researchers.

They're like, we want to try to make like crazy AI stuff.

They even got investment from Elon Musk and they called it Open AI because they were going to be open about it and it's a non-profit.

They're like, we're not trying to make money.

And they 1v1ed Dendi and Dota with.

Oh, they were the Dota guys.

Yeah, they did the Dota stuff.

So early on, they made a Dota bot, basically, using these AI

concepts and training.

And that was like a cool little test thing that they did.

The simpler time.

Yeah.

Well, it's sick.

I was there in person for that.

Really?

Really?

That's sick.

Damn.

So for a couple of years.

You could have stopped this.

Yeah.

You could have stopped the Terminator, bro.

So this is, if you guys remember 10 years ago or eight years ago, this is how most people thought of AI.

It's like, oh, that's funny.

Somebody made a chess AI or whatever, right?

But they start getting smarter and smarter.

In 2018, this big paper comes out on transformers.

The AI craze, as we currently know it with large language models, kicks off and they start developing this GPT models in earnest and start to really get some traction.

Most people don't know about it yet, but in 2019, they are like, okay,

we're starting to actually get something here.

And they go to Microsoft and they say, look, we need to raise a lot of money.

The problem is they're still a nonprofit.

So they can't really do that.

And so they then split from not not just a non-profit it's a non-profit who owns a for-profit company and the for-profit company is able to raise investment dollars for microsoft at like capped return so it's like hey microsoft you won't make a ton of money if you invest with us but you can actually make some and in return microsoft gives them a billion dollars that doesn't sound that crazy because we talk about big numbers all the time It's a crazy amount of money for any company, particularly a small research lab.

And the thinking was they were going, look, we thought this would be this cute little non-profit thing at the beginning, but it is now becoming clear that these models need a crazy amount of computation power.

We need a ton of money to throw out the problem.

We're going to start feeding all the data on the internet into it, et cetera, et cetera.

So Microsoft agrees, but there's some weirdness here because Microsoft needs to put a ton of money into a very early company with this like moonshot idea.

Nobody knows is real.

So a couple things go back and forth.

Microsoft will get a profit return, right?

So that's pretty standard.

They also get access to the IP.

So if OpenAI develops any AI, Microsoft gets it.

Microsoft is the only company still to this day, this is continued sense, that has access to the actual like mechanics of what OpenAI and ChatGPT does.

Nobody else can do that.

They also get to run their products like ChatGPT on their own servers.

So you can go to ChatGPT and buy stuff there, but you can also go buy the same services on Microsoft.

Yes.

Remember when we talked about open source models versus closed source models and we were talking about DeepSeek?

So they basically have the access that everyone has to something like DeepSeek, but for ChatGPT, and they're the only people that have.

Yes.

So OpenAI has been developing this thing and Microsoft's the only one who gets access to it.

Every time, every few months when OpenAI releases some crazy new thing, Microsoft has access to it and they get to incorporate it into all of their products.

So Microsoft makes this big gamble.

They're like, we are going to put more money in.

We're going to put all this money into OpenAI.

It's still early.

Put a billion.

But with this gamble, that if this goes really well, we have access to your stuff behind the scenes.

We're going to grow our businesses together.

And that's a kind of big risk for a big tech company rather than doing it in-house.

And this all sounds, you know, pretty decent, except they add something called the clause.

And this is where it gets really weird.

Okay.

So OpenAI convinces Microsoft to put a clause in the contract that says, if we, OpenAI, create artificial general intelligence, we create an AI that's like as intelligent as a person, the contract is null and void.

You no longer get access to any of our stuff.

It's only ours now.

That is an insane thing for an investor.

If you're a company offering a billion dollars and they're like, hey, we're partners, you get access to everything up until we make something that's really awesome, then we take it away and you get nothing.

That's fucking crazy.

And this is in the contract that they've had this is called the clause now you might wonder what does that mean that's the point nobody knows what that means a gi doesn't mean anything it means artificial general intelligence and every single tech company has a different idea of what that actually means it's like if uh it's like if microsoft was edging and they want to get

they can only they can edge closer and closer and closer yeah but if it if they get over the hump if they get over the hump if chat gpt gets over the hump if they really it's game over it's not like that

so but but getting over the hump is not well defined right right

we'll put a lot of legwork in for mine

so far they have not climaxed and we don't know if or when they will

so okay you might have heard people talk about artificial general intelligence the funny thing about it is everybody has their own definition for some people it means you've created a god being that's as smart as humans for some people it's like well they're just better at than a phd student for some people it's it provides a certain amount of economic value maybe it's like you run certain businesses.

Maybe it's like can replace a human at any job.

Maybe it's only at math jobs.

Maybe it's only at manufacturing jobs.

Everybody has a different definition.

And the problem with everybody having a different definition is that two of the biggest tech companies have a contract that says one of them gets to bail and take everything if they achieve AGI, which neither of them defined.

So that contract and that clause has existed since then.

Both companies have continued to grow massively.

Open AI is becoming bigger and bigger.

ChatGPT is now the biggest AI product in the world.

It's arguably one of the most influential things in the world.

They are the big dominant AI company, and Microsoft is their partner.

They've invested like 14 billion at this point.

They're 49% stakeholder.

And at any point, if OpenAI comes out and says, we did it.

We made the super smart AI.

We did it.

They get to cut the contract and run.

That's crazy.

And so Microsoft is very concerned that they're going to come out and do this.

And in fact, both CEOs are saying different things in the press tour.

Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, says, oh, there's a great quote.

He's like, us claiming some AGI milestone, that's just nonsensical benchmark hacking.

So he's trying to say, look, AGIs, that's just a concept.

Meanwhile, Sam Altman is like, yeah, we think we're getting close.

It's within the next couple years.

And internally, there was a memo leaked at OpenAI where they defined clearly what it is.

And it basically means an AI can manage an organization, which is not like that far off.

So they're both trying to pin the targets.

They can bail from the, it's crazy.

They can manage the vending machine.

So they can manage the vending machine.

And that's what it is.

And so, and to make this even crazier, then we'll, we'll cap it off.

Right now, OpenAI is having a problem because when they spun it into a for-profit company, that was still limited.

They're now trying to turn it into a full for-profit public benefit corporation.

They're trying to turn it into a corporation so they can give their employees stock, so they can raise more money from things like SoftBank.

They think this is vital to them being able to survive.

Microsoft can block them from doing that.

So OpenAI wants to turn into a for-profit company so they can expand even more.

Microsoft can stop them and is saying, you can't do that.

We're not going to give you approval until you get this fucking clause out of our contract that says you guys can run in bail.

All of this might, might climax.

We might finish edging in the next month when they release GPT-5, which, as you said, Sam Altman is going around being like, it scares me.

I couldn't believe, I felt useless as a human.

He's saying things like this publicly because Microsoft is like, oh shit, are they going to drop in quotes, AGI?

Yeah, there's two things I I want to say about this.

I have two links for you.

Number one is,

no, the two I just added.

Number one is Sam Altman video.

If you can play the one at the bottom, this is Sam Altman.

He's a sharp character.

He knows what he's doing.

He is.

He's been in this plan for a while.

The press tour being like, I'm scared of this.

Like, it's crazy.

AGI.

And then the other guy being like, it's actually dog shit.

It's actually not even that good.

What the fuck are you talking about, AGI?

This is an iconic thing of Sam Almond being growed by Congress where they ask him, do you have any shares in this thing?

Like, are you doing this for money?

And then ask him.

Okay.

You make a lot of money, do you?

I make, no.

I'm paid enough for health insurance.

I have no equity in OpenAI.

Really?

That's interesting.

You need a lawyer.

I need a what?

You need a lawyer or an agent?

I'm doing this because I love it.

Yeah, so that was a really nice thing to say.

He didn't have any equity in the non-profit form of OpenAI.

However, he's about to have a ton of equity in the for-profit spin-off that they're making to actually manage the whole thing.

And he's going to become a massively successful billionaire after this all is through and through.

So I thought that was a little bit of a funny thing.

Secondly, is this article that just came out eight hours ago?

Microsoft in talks to maintain access to Open AI's tech beyond AGI milestones.

Oh, damn.

Okay.

This is.

So exactly what you're talking about.

They are in deep negotiations right now.

And as you've said, Satya Nadella is very focused on getting this clause the fuck out because having this key man risk where someone says we have AGI and you lose your $300 billion valuation investment is

to take Microsoft stock.

It's not just that.

Like all the AI companies, our entire stock market as a country is based off of big tech jerking each other off about how AI is going to make everybody trillions of dollars.

That like that's going to be a staging metaphor.

Yes.

That's what's going on.

Microsoft is at the head of that.

I believe still they're the most valuable company in the world, right?

No, NVIDIA.

NVIDIA.

Oh, they got.

Oh, right, right, okay.

They got button.

Anyway, but they're up there, right?

And they briefly weren't valuable again.

Microsoft's the goon commander.

I've been saying.

And yeah, their valuation is, like the other companies, largely propped up by the AI concept of them saying, we're going to put AI into all of our products and everything's going to get way bigger.

I don't really think that's necessarily going to happen.

But if they suddenly lost access to the company that is supplying the AI models that is propping up this entire concept, this entire pitch, they're going to tank.

This is a huge deal for Microsoft.

Yeah, it's just funny that OpenAI went from like, this is a pure non-profit to get us to AGI safely, to we're a for-profit spin-off that is managed by the non-profit.

And that's because we have to make some money, but it's all for this plant.

And then it's just going to be a for-profit company.

Technically, it will still be owned by.

So they tried to do that.

They received pushback.

Basically, it turns out legally, the states were not going to allow them to just turn their nonprofit into a for-profit.

So the the now attempt that they're trying to do is to keep the nonprofit with ownership of the for-profit, but the for-profit becomes a proper corporation with shares.

Yeah, but it has all the right, like owns the IP now instead of.

Yes, but the nonprofit would have control, like can set the board of directors and veto things.

They still have a lot of control, but

it's been a pretty blatant shift towards profitability.

I thought

maybe this is what you're talking about when there was a group of people on the board of OpenAI.

The original group of people had labeled themselves primarily as ethical altruists, like Sam Bankman-Freed, and they had a different outlook of the company.

Wasn't there already a power grab within the company and change of the board in order to transition it to a private company?

No, there was an attempted, I don't know if it's called a power grab, but they tried to force Sam Altman out.

They kicked him out as CEO.

They said he was a liar.

And they said he was trying to make things into not what they agreed on as their mission.

Yeah.

And all of the employees revolted because they want their stock to be worth something.

They do not want.

So everyone said, we're just going to leave if this goes through.

And so they brought Sam Altman back and everything went.

But through all of that, it remained a non-profit.

Yes.

Actually, because of that, I think is why they got the AGI clause.

I think that was like the one thing that

really?

That started in 2019.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's a long time.

Okay.

So, yeah,

there's a weird history.

And basically, Sam Altman is the CEO has kind of like gotten control.

And it's funny because like Elon Musk, Musk, if you enjoy following him on Twitter, every few days he'll be like, Scam Altman, and just tweet something about what Sam Altman has done.

He is like super bad.

He's so mad.

Yeah, because Elon, again, at the very beginning of this in 2015, when it's a little scrappy research company, to Elon's credit, for a long time, he's talked about the importance of AI regulation and the necessity for it to be like open and safe.

So he invested, I forget how much, but at least millions of dollars into the original open AI.

It was like 100 million, wasn't it?

It was something crazy.

It was the first 100 million.

Actually, I think he promised 100 million and didn't give it all.

He didn't give it.

Yeah.

But, but he did give money for free.

The thing is, my understanding of the story is that Elon Musk puts this money in, and then as it's growing after the Dota stuff, he's like, I need to have soul control.

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then

he saw Dandy lose that 1v1 minute, and he's like, this is getting out of his.

Everybody involved with the story is not right to be able to do it.

I mean, they have their own incentives, and

they all pretend they don't, but it's all comes back to money.

$45 million?

Whoa, that is way more than I thought is what Musk musk put into it apparently so yeah he put into that being like ah it's gonna be this open source thing and they they are one of the most closed source ai companies out there they have nobody has any access to it except for microsoft right now asterisk yeah so there's a bit of war there and now they're both competing to see who can give jens and vlog more money every day yeah

it's so weird it's so weird to put a clause like that to be like hey if the spooky ghost shows up it's all con like it's all canceled well i think you know it's weird i feel like we've like as a society We've given up on regulating it in just one year, but in the crazy before times of 2019, it was like one day we'll have AGI.

We need to be ready for that.

We need to be prepared.

It needs to be not-for-profit.

It needs to be, but now everyone's like, I like ChatGPT.

They're going to make money.

Like, I feel like society has already given up on the fact that anyone will slow down at all for any reason.

Anyway, we'll see.

I don't know.

The drama is crazy.

It was wild when the CEO of Twitch was Open AI CEO for two days.

During the drama, Sam Altman got ousted very briefly because, again, the board was like, You're a lying scumbag.

We don't want you leading the company anymore.

Emmett Scheer gotten

a new former CEO of Twitch.

Imagine that stuck, and it's been open AI under Emmett Shear this whole time.

Chad GPU have a hearthstone for non-the company would have failed rapidly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

People didn't like him.

Funny stuff.

Funny stuff.

Funny stuff.

Aiden, what's funnier than open AI drama?

It's making fun of British people and their collapsing society.

One of my favorite time.

And it really is.

I mean, I thought ever since Beans on Toast, they've been screwed, but you're telling me it's got evil.

The London bombings?

Yeah, I'm going back all the way to 2005.

Hey, what's going on?

Yeah, I'm going all the way back to 2005.

All right.

I think

this was an interesting thing that I'd see reported across a bunch of different videos.

And in general, I think we have this idea that the UK economy is not on the best track, right?

They have

a YouTuber POV,

saying the UK is failing is printing money.

It's the new China.

It's the new China collapse in 30 days.

I've seen it in my niche, all these business finance channels, they just make a video saying the UK is a failed state, the UK is in trouble, the UK is about to collapse, and you just print views.

So everyone's doing it, and it's all over.

Everyone's talking about it all the time.

So that is the context with which you're telling me this, this story.

Okay.

Yeah.

So as the country is in this pretty rough spot, right?

One place in the UK is doing relatively well, at least from an overhead economic view, right?

London is still a place that people go to.

Like if you're in the UK, you often need to go to London for opportunity, London for jobs.

That's where things still are in the country.

And over the past,

I mean, more than decades, London has always been a global center for finance, right?

And until the global center for finance, until New York surpassed it.

But it's still a really important place within that context.

And the place that, you know, London Stock Exchange, much, much smaller than New York Stock Exchange.

So, what is the economic value of London?

They have found a niche of supplying very wealthy people with specific services to

store and hide and invest their wealth.

That is the market that is primarily in London.

If you want to figure out, if you're an internationally rich person and you wanted to go somewhere to strategize how to structure and store your wealth abroad in order to avoid paying taxes, you go to London.

And they have spent a lot of effort.

uh supporting this industry of finance within london over the past decades and that's why so much of the opportunity in Britain is centralized in this one sector, in this one city.

And it's the one thing that still has a lot of movement behind it, basically.

However, in recent years, there has been a spike of millionaires in the UK choosing to leave the country.

They have the most millionaire flight, at least as of last year, of any country, more than China,

more than China even.

And where are all these UK millionaires going, right?

This wealth is choosing to flee the country for a variety of reasons that they say they go to places like the UAE, maybe they go to places like Switzerland.

It's also important to note that a lot of these millionaires that have been choosing to leave are not actually British citizens or not originally British citizens.

They're people that came to the UK for the economic opportunity of how to structure or hide their wealth in certain ways.

And now they are choosing to leave as more and more time passes.

And there's something interesting here in that

the UK leaned really heavily into designing an economy that supports these really wealthy people, right?

And they made a lot of concessions along the way

in other ways that leave normal people behind, right?

Wealth inequality is increased.

Opportunities in other cities are really low.

It's difficult for anybody to afford a home in a place like London where all this wealth is congregated.

And

these people

are now choosing to leave an economy that was like specifically designed to support them, right?

And

why would they go to a place like the UAE?

At a base level, there's just no tax, right?

They're offering a better version of the service that was available in the UK prior to this.

Or for other people, they don't like where their tax money in the UK was going.

So they might be not fleeing to a country with no taxes.

They're just fleeing to places where where the taxes feel more representative of something impactful.

Maybe they wind up going to Norway or Denmark

or Switzerland.

The Aiden, yeah.

All right.

We don't have to give it a V or anything.

I think as this is the reason I wanted to bring this up is while I was kind of exploring this story and learning about people's place in the people moving to the UAE because of this or moving to other countries for various reasons.

That

there is sort of this two-layer structure to the economy that comes into existence in these places.

So in London, right, there is an economy that services rich people and is leaving the

poorest behind and also increasing wealth inequality the longer it exists.

And then in places like the UAE, this might be even more dramatic, where they've specifically structured their country in a way that invites businesses and invites wealthy people to come and get residents there or set business up there because of their really friendly tax laws.

But all of the services and economy in the UAE is built on very cheap imported foreign labor that is, you know, in practice basically slavery.

Like getting people coming over from Southeast Asia, revoking their passports so they can't leave.

They can't change jobs so they they have no negotiating power and they're just trapped in the UAE to build buildings and operate services and basically service this rich person economy that exists.

This structure of you let really wealthy people run rampant.

You change a bunch of rules to accommodate the wealthiest and attract them from all over the world in order to create this vision of success or a seemingly successful economy.

While it's supported by people who have very little resources or very little autonomy or increasingly bad economic circumstances.

And it's a bit of this race, this interesting race to the bottom, right?

Where London was this hub and is this hub in so many ways still until things,

the strain on the system breaks and people start, they just go to the next rich person place or the next tax haven, right?

They don't stay and stick it out and try to fix things.

They just go to the next place that can accommodate what they're looking for.

And then the country that remains behind them is this broken place that has no economy,

you know, built for normal people anymore.

And this, you know, this happens with

a bunch of other places and tax havens.

And I'm still learning more about this.

But I wanted to just bring up this interesting idea of like two-tiered economic systems where wealth inequality has been stretched to the extremes.

And so these countries are incentivized to make things better and better for the remaining rich people that have money or to attract outside wealth into their country.

And then eventually they pay the price because they have to make some sort of concession or something about the system breaks.

And then all of those rich people that you spent all that time building a system for and attracting just jump ship and go to the next best place they can go to, and you're left with nothing.

Why are rich people more loyal?

That's a great question.

No, I actually want to read about this.

So I read a book called As Gods Among Men, a history of the rich in the West.

And it was a pretty boring book, but it did talk about something very similar to this that I think I want to bring up.

And it was just talking about how for the longest time, there was a bit of a social contract with the wealthy because there's always been some form of the wealthy in almost all societies.

The social contract was they're getting a larger slice of the pie, but a lot of that is being reinvested into the place they live.

So they are like, they they did a lot of beautification efforts.

They would build fantastic public libraries and they would improve the area around them because they wanted to live in a nice place.

What this book pointed out is our recent crop of mega-rich in our lifetimes, something has changed dramatically and that is the internet and private jet travel.

And it has created a new global super rich that no longer see themselves as part of one individual country.

They see themselves as a jet-setting elite that are, they have more in common with another billionaire from Dubai than they do than someone in their own country.

That is their cohort.

And so they just kind of move around, as you said, to wherever they can get the best deal.

And they don't feel a particular allegiance to any town, state, region thing.

And so their money is no longer, even a portion of it, flowing back into the area they live.

And so it's purely extractive.

And that is.

That is breaking the system that has at least somewhat worked in other areas in the past where you would benefit from having a wealthy person in your area.

But now it's almost purely parasitic in that they are just finding the deal where they could pay absolutely minimum tax possible.

I think the analogy that came to mind is

there's ultra-wealthy people that are moving around and they're wringing out the towel of wherever the system they're in is.

the government of that place is doing whatever they can to like increase the size of the towel or add water to the towel but eventually there's no more water to get out and then the rich person or the rich entity just cuts and runs throws it out and runs to the next place that has towels available because in a previous time if you lived in the uk and you were wealthier uh seeing society start to crumble around you is an incentive for you to not want to like you'd have to do something to invest in where you're at yeah because it just ruins your quality of life, even purely from a, but now you can get on a private jet and you can go anywhere.

You really don't have have any reason to stay in that spot and that that is a fascinating change and i and i i do think the uk has been just i mean you talk to people in the uk it just feels like it's been looted it feels like it's been pillaged bro but of course what happens everywhere it feels like the second this happens the number one thing to blame is immigrants like they're they're in that they're in a huge anti-immigrant wave right now like that's the problem that's what's looted the uk And it feels like that's not the case.

I think there's some messaging online that is pushing against that a little bit.

Like, uh, I think that's the core of Gary Stevenson's messaging that is getting really popular there and getting traction there.

Uh, there are way more layers to this that I have been touching on as I've looked into this or listened to videos about it that I find really interesting right now.

But, uh, one thing I wanted to mention was this idea of the city of London that I think a lot of people don't know about.

There is a city, an area within London that is literally called the city of London that is legally distinct from London, the larger city.

And they have their own mayor and their own, and a bunch of exceptions for how the laws are treated.

The ter or like the laws of this area go back to medieval times, and the lord or like the mayor, the lord mayor, excuse me, is chosen by like a board of companies that operate within that place.

It's not an elected official.

And then they also get a seat in the House of Commons.

This is not an elected person.

They are selected by companies that operate within the city of London.

And then they get a seat in the House of Commons.

The thing that reminded me about this earlier was when we were talking about Elon trying to win a seat under his new political party that presumably would vote in whatever way he wants.

And the city of London is this interesting vehicle for all of these wealthy foreign people and companies.

And, you know, not all foreigners necessarily, but a lot of foreign interests that have flown it come in there over time.

And they're

using the different laws of the city of London to escape taxes and form relationships with like offshore, kind of in the British, like kind of in the UK islands, like Jersey and Isle of Man.

And

it's a very interesting world of like global finance and ways that people dodge taxes that I want to spend more time digging into.

But a lot of, I think a lot of this is what the, do you remember when the Panama Papers came out?

Yeah.

A lot of that,

it's about stuff like this.

London has been used as this vehicle for hiding money and avoiding taxes.

Yeah, I saw a documentary.

It was called like the spider's web.

And it was basically saying that after World War II, World War I, basically, Europe, I'm sorry, UK realized that it was no longer the financial center of the world.

They are losing their colonies.

London was replaced by New York, and they decided to pivot 100% into creating a global spider's web of wealthy tax avoidance.

Like you said, they're just fully leaning into the fact that you can go to London and you can hide your cash in Bermuda or in Jersey or it's part of the UK, but nobody checks and it's off the books.

Yeah, and then if some foreign entity, if some foreign entity comes to the UK and they're like, hey, can you check up?

You know, we think this loophole is being taken advantage of, or we think this citizen of our country is hiding money in a shell company or a shell company in a trust in Jersey.

Then the UK just goes like, well, they're independent and we don't really have any like poll here.

Like, there's not really anything we can do.

And it's just functioned on the basis of that for so long.

And it's, uh, it feels like something that is hitting the UK particularly hard in the last few decades.

And I'm really interested.

I talk about all of this.

And

I'm spending a lot of time looking more into this right now so I can kind of present something more code.

I would also love to hear how the corporate side of this works because you hear about Ireland being where everybody sets up corporations because of the low taxes.

Would they suffer a similar thing at some point where another country comes in and says, we'll do it for even less.

And then people start fleeing there.

I think, yes, yes.

So I could give you a short answer to that right now.

There's a really interesting thing with Ireland where if you look at their GDP figure, it goes through this massive jump in a really short period of time in recent years.

And the reason this is the case is Apple sort of lobbied in Ireland to create this specific law where if you formed a corporation in Ireland, but brought in revenue through an outside asset, it didn't have to be corporate, it didn't have to be hit by their corporate tax anymore.

And then Ludwig, Ludwig, Jesus, oh my God, I'm leaking.

And then Apple sets up a corporation in Ireland, right?

Their new like global headquarters or their EU headquarters, and then gets a patent or like sells the copyright to the Apple logo to a foreign holder for Apple in an offshore

or account in somewhere like the Cayman Islands or something like that.

So it's coming from the Cayman Islands.

And then they just attribute a ton of the value of the sales of iPhones and other products to the value of the brand, which is not

copyrighted in Ireland.

And because they basically paid Ireland to write the law in this way, take in all of this revenue through the company in Ireland as untaxed.

And that was, and because they created this loophole, a bunch of other big tech companies followed suit and like set up in Dublin because of this, right?

And that's why GDP has skyrocketed in Ireland, but it's totally disjointed from

actual individual wealth in Ireland.

Ireland's GDP has absolutely skyrocketed in the last 15 to 25 years of Norway.

I think they're just more productive than

the factor you want to look at is GDP per capita.

It is insane, the leap leap that is taken.

Yeah, but the quality of life is not.

That's what I'm saying.

The quality of life for the average person in Ireland is not very well represented by that number anymore because of the fashion in which it was inflated.

So that's an example of a corporate loophole that's being, that was or is being taken advantage of.

I think there's a lot more layers to this, and I want to spend more time looking into it.

But I was particularly fascinated about this idea of, you know, two-tiered economic systems where the rich take advantage of a system at the expense of like the poor in that country.

And then when the system is absolutely exhausted and won't work for them anymore, they just cut and run and jump to the new place.

Super

just at the risk of sounding pandery, and I said this last week on our Patreon episode.

One of the beliefs of mine that's changed over the last six months since we've done this show and done a lot of research and read books is the belief of like, seems like you really need to raise taxes on corporations and particularly wealthy people, because there's just so many weird knock-on consequences of not doing that that don't benefit people.

And I know that, yeah, it's, I know for many people and certain political ideologies, that's that's obvious, but I think it's taken a lot of us looking at many, many, many different examples of how it harms things over time to be like, yep, this makes sense.

Like, you have to, yeah, it's like a short-term thing to not let me villain share.

Really?

Let me villain share.

Why do we let the rich run?

You're the most no,

the struggle that I I see here, and this isn't to say that

raising taxes or combating these issues is not important.

But what you said about people on private jets cutting and running and going to wherever is convenient, the difficult part for at least the wealthiest of the wealthy, right?

Or companies.

Because they can just bail from any

harder to hold it down to hold them accountable.

Because I do think one, maybe one thing to note here is that

here's

one thing before I go to the next part the idea of capital flight because of taxes being raised I think from my very limited understanding is

is a little bit of a myth because these people the taxes have been high in the UK for a while in the case of corporate taxes I think they've gone down and but the spike in millionaire plus you know wealthy people leaving has happened in recent years right it's in reaction to something deeper than just the tax rate being high, right?

I think when people live, like rich people in Scandinavia aren't leaving in droves, even though the tax rate is ridiculously high, right?

In Denmark, they have an insane top-end tax rate on the wealthiest people, right?

But millionaires aren't fleeing Denmark.

It's because I think they have a very conscious view still that their taxes pay into a system that is working very well for them.

The society around them still is

good.

So I think there is a degree of people choosing to leave eventually when things get bad in the surrounding area.

I think for the people who are the wealthiest of the wealthy and can like move mountains with the amount of money they have, I do worry is like whenever there's one country willing to break off from the rest, you need an agreement from all nations, right?

That you're going to supply a base level corporate tax rate, a base level income tax rate.

And as soon as countries choose to start breaking off from that, you create an avenue for those people to leave and take advantage of it.

And I think it's like that global unity part that is really, really challenging.

I think there's already been efforts to raise the OECD, like corporate tax rate, which is just, you know, a bunch of developed countries coming together to establish like what the minimum corporate tax rate should be.

Right.

And I think they wanted to raise it.

And Ireland didn't want to do it because they are not.

They're in a beneficial position because of it.

That is the challenge in the future as people can move around way more easily is how do you plug all the holes?

How do you prevent one country from deciding, hey, actually, we're going to let these people in?

Letting these people in being the fucking ultra wealthy

billionaires.

So I think this whole thing has so much more to dig into.

They're like cats.

They're hard to find what'll keep them around, but

there's new toys being introduced every month.

You can be like, no, stay here in America.

Don't go outside.

Come here.

Yeah.

Come here, Jeff.

We got a new massage chair.

Come here.

It's only in America.

Come here.

We have a city-owned grocery store in New York.

Come eat, Danny.

We'll give you free food.

Stay here.

Pay us taxes.

Sound like Jeff Bays.

You can get free food in New York.

That's what pulls him in.

Guys, thanks for watching.

I appreciate you.

Oh, you have a good topic.

No, thanks for coming to the lemonade.

Since you come to the lemonade stand, we served up some good lemonade today.

We've picked the candidates for 2028 and we solved taxes.

It was easy.

Appreciate you.

Nancy Pelosi, 2028.

Get on the card now.

See you next week.

Bye, everybody.

Bye.