Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noela.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben.
Speaker 4: We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Speaker 4: Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here.
Speaker 4: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4: And Guys, I was thinking about this. We've talked a
Speaker 4: little bit off air about it. What a time to
Speaker 4: host a critical thinking conspiracy show.
Speaker 5: Man, We're not wrong.
Speaker 3: I mean, if we had known what we know now.
Speaker 5: Say something something we knew a little bit. I mean,
Speaker 5: you know that ebbs and flows, but boy is it flowing.
Speaker 2: We always knew that at the end of times there
Speaker 2: would be folks someway or in their basements or a
Speaker 2: room in their apartment going the end is coming. The
Speaker 2: end is coming, and we weren't doing that for way
Speaker 2: too long.
Speaker 4: Well, the world is ending for someone somewhere every day, right.
Speaker 2: And for all of us very soon.
Speaker 5: I'm gonnasy to change it too, Buddy.
Speaker 2: Flags on the way here.
Speaker 3: It's so cool. Everybody look up Gulf of Tonkin.
Speaker 4: In tonight's episode, we are going to explore a genre
Speaker 4: of conspiracy that we have often referenced, but we've never
Speaker 4: fully explained. We often speak about the nature power and corruption,
Speaker 4: but how do we explain the tendency of powerful people
Speaker 4: to compromise institutions. That's tonight's question. You know, what exactly
Speaker 4: is an oligarch? Do you guys remember our earlier conversation
Speaker 4: with Jake Hanrahan, the creator of sad Oligarch?
Speaker 5: How could I forget? I also remember learning about it
Speaker 5: in school, like in you know, Civics class, about what
Speaker 5: an oligarch was, and I just remember it was like
Speaker 5: it was not a good thing the way it was presented.
Speaker 2: Well, it was a great thing for the folks who
Speaker 2: were smart enough and had enough capital at the fall
Speaker 2: of the Soviet Union, it.
Speaker 5: Was great, for sure, I guess, I just mean the
Speaker 5: way it was taught, it was like, this is an anomaly.
Speaker 5: You do not want this, This is not something that.
Speaker 4: We have, sure, right right, yeah, but I don't want this.
Speaker 4: As we'll see the definitions of we versus them and
Speaker 4: your mileage is going to vary sociosifly at best, right,
Speaker 4: and often the oligarch is in the West associated with
Speaker 4: post USSR Russia, to be quite clear. But tonight we
Speaker 4: have to ask more importantly, is the United States itself
Speaker 4: an oligarchy?
Speaker 3: We'll be right back.
Speaker 4: Here are the facts, all right, how would we define oligarchy?
Speaker 4: I think we can do it pretty easily.
Speaker 2: Right, tycoons who reaped enormous fortunes in the collapse of
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union in nineteen ninety one. That's how Encyclopedia
Speaker 2: Britannica puts it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's a genre of oligarchy for sure.
Speaker 5: And I guess I would think of it as sort
Speaker 5: of like non government forces that are able to influence
Speaker 5: government through sheer wealth alone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great observation.
Speaker 5: My forces, I mean individuals, But now that can also
Speaker 5: include corporations, It can include powerful people within corporations, and
Speaker 5: it can include a lot of different within the you know,
Speaker 5: main flavor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, at the basis, folks, an oligarchy is
Speaker 4: a form of government in which all of the power,
Speaker 4: or the majority of the power is vested in a small,
Speaker 4: exclusive class for all our fellow etymology nerds. The word
Speaker 4: goes back through the French from the Greek oligarchia, which
Speaker 4: translates to government by the few. I think that makes sense, right,
Speaker 4: Most most governments are in practice oligarchical.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 5: It's also an interesting thing to try and suss out
Speaker 5: the difference between say a dictatorship or a more iron fisted,
Speaker 5: you know, singular ruler situation and how oligarchs figure into that,
Speaker 5: because oftentimes it's easier for oligarchs to flex that influence
Speaker 5: if they're tid end with someone that can unilaterally affect
Speaker 5: policy without you know, fear of pushback from lesser government
Speaker 5: forces like Stalin's.
Speaker 4: Stalin's Soviet Union was very much an oligarchy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always a little bit murky there. And I
Speaker 2: don't know that there's ever been a true, you know,
Speaker 2: single person dictator ruling a thing, because there are always
Speaker 2: folks around those people who are in their ear who
Speaker 2: are the uh maybe they don't wield the power, but
Speaker 2: they're certainly getting their way or having an idea, and
Speaker 2: then it kind of transmits through whichever person is in
Speaker 2: charge there.
Speaker 3: Phenomenal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, Like a recent example would be North Korea,
Speaker 4: an early example would be the Ottoman Empire. But I
Speaker 4: love what you're pointing out, Matt, because there is always
Speaker 4: a king of the hill, and we don't mean Texas.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Benjamin Nett Yahoo in the United States, all.
Speaker 3: Right, I'll say it on Netflix, not my favorite Ben.
Speaker 5: The people who are just starting to call him BB
Speaker 5: all the time. I had never really clocked that, but boy,
Speaker 5: am I hearing it a lot now. Maybe it's just
Speaker 5: because he's more in the news, but I am hearing
Speaker 5: people kind of diminutively referring to him as Bebe whispering
Speaker 5: in Trump's ear. And I thought it was being cute,
Speaker 5: But that's second nickname, I.
Speaker 4: Guess, anything but him having to face the legal consequences
Speaker 4: of corruption, to be quite.
Speaker 2: Honest, right, we're at a point now where there are
Speaker 2: folks in charge where the moment they are no longer
Speaker 2: in charge, they're getting in big trouble. So you gotta
Speaker 2: grasp the reins.
Speaker 3: Baby.
Speaker 2: But there's a great clip of Benjamin Nett Yahoo going
Speaker 2: before the UN and before Congress here in the United
Speaker 2: States and making the claim I think starting in gosh,
Speaker 2: I think it was eighty five with the first piece
Speaker 2: of the superclip and in nineteen eighty five saying Iran
Speaker 2: is about to have a nuclear weapon. We're weeks away
Speaker 2: from Ron having a nuclear weapon. And then it happens
Speaker 2: every couple of years, and you can just see him
Speaker 2: making the same statements until finally he got his way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we were talking a little bit off air
Speaker 4: about that one. We know that any nation in Western
Speaker 4: Europe and Israel and the United States, we know that
Speaker 4: any nation calling itself a democracy is often a theoretical democracy,
Speaker 4: a place ruled by the public. But some people and
Speaker 4: families still have a leg up. I was thinking about
Speaker 4: this when recently here in the United States, someone with
Speaker 4: a last name like Bush, Kennedy, Clinton, or Roosevelt gets
Speaker 4: a certain unwritten boost, an unwritten buff to their character,
Speaker 4: more so than say a Fagan of Frederick, A Brown
Speaker 4: or whatever name I'm using now.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, it's also like those guys I think are
Speaker 5: more associated to me with the idea of political dynasty,
Speaker 5: which is another murky aspect of oligarchy, Like is that
Speaker 5: the same thing, like does the Is their influence and
Speaker 5: political power derived from their generational wealth or is it
Speaker 5: just right time, right place? You know, their fathers were
Speaker 5: in the same business that kind of situation.
Speaker 2: What I'm seeing, guys, is is kind of that right time,
Speaker 2: right place kind of thing in ingenuity and having an
Speaker 2: awareness of the economic layout and what's happening, because it
Speaker 2: does seem like the people were talking about who become
Speaker 2: oligarchs throughout time are the ones who have a bunch
Speaker 2: of capital already, and then they're watching what's happening with
Speaker 2: let's say, the economy of a country that they're in,
Speaker 2: as well as what's happening from a government perspective in
Speaker 2: that in that country. And then when those two things
Speaker 2: one kind of starts to get out bound balanced by
Speaker 2: the other, they make these really smart moves and they
Speaker 2: end up way on top. And that doesn't mean they
Speaker 2: can see the future, right, it means they understand maybe
Speaker 2: the way the market will change, in the way often
Speaker 2: things like inflation are going to operate. It's creepy stuff
Speaker 2: because it can happen anywhere.
Speaker 5: Yeah, also a lot to be said about just like
Speaker 5: you know, being first to market or like being in
Speaker 5: on the ground floor of something early enough, especially when
Speaker 5: family is concerned, and that kind of generational wealth and
Speaker 5: the influence that goes along with it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, said guys. And it's always been so strange that, Look,
Speaker 4: when you hear about oligarchs, now you're going to hear
Speaker 4: them portrayed as Russians, right, due to the fall of
Speaker 4: the uss Or. But it's so strange to realize that
Speaker 4: for the majority of human history, most civilizations were essentially oligarchies.
Speaker 4: You would have your tribe leaders, you have your despots,
Speaker 4: your emperors, your monarchs, your god kings, your religious authorities,
Speaker 4: of course, let's not forget about them. And people did
Speaker 4: not get to vote. Mainly, they were lucky if they
Speaker 4: were able to eat or drink clean water that didn't
Speaker 4: give them a bunch of really nasty parasites.
Speaker 2: Hey, and we're heading right back there, are we.
Speaker 3: What a time?
Speaker 5: We also just say, speaking of what a time, Matt,
Speaker 5: I'm really glad you got out of Cotter when you did.
Speaker 5: Just putting that out there, that was a timing situation.
Speaker 2: I hesitate to repeat myself, but I know that I
Speaker 2: spoke to several people there who basically said, yeah, it's coming,
Speaker 2: but it's not going to happen now because there's this
Speaker 2: big oil conference happening in Qatar, and there's also this
Speaker 2: huge tech conference. So all those the people that we're
Speaker 2: talking about today that play in those circles, they're not
Speaker 2: going to be immediately targets on unless, let's say, especially
Speaker 2: as somebody who's like European or American hanging out over there.
Speaker 2: The US isn't gonna isn't gonna fire missiles like that,
Speaker 2: and then because they know that Tehran would fire back.
Speaker 4: And as we're recording on Friday, March sixth, the airport
Speaker 4: in Doha remains closed. I don't know if you guys, yeah,
Speaker 4: checked in with any of our contacts on the ground there.
Speaker 4: But there's this crazy rush right now for people who
Speaker 4: can afford private jets to figure out whether they bunk
Speaker 4: or down, or whether they get a ride to Dubai
Speaker 4: or maybe take land routes to Oman and get a
Speaker 4: plane out of the country. I mean, this is this
Speaker 4: is a result of oligarchical reasoning. Most wars actually are
Speaker 4: in the modern era. I mean, scholars spend so much
Speaker 4: time figuring out this historic tendency. Like we could admit,
Speaker 4: we are humble enough to admit that the human being
Speaker 4: is one of the most intelligent animals on the planet.
Speaker 4: So it's kind of odd and counterintuitive that the inherently
Speaker 4: inefficient social dynamic of oligarchy would be so incredibly common.
Speaker 4: You know, if you think about it, and if you're
Speaker 4: a smart human, then you want to preserve your civilization,
Speaker 4: You want members of your civilization to succeed, and you
Speaker 4: want to expand the future opportunities of your overall civilization
Speaker 4: or species. I mean, logically from that, and I know
Speaker 4: this is a hot take, theoretical communism would be the
Speaker 4: best choice, right, Theoretical communism well.
Speaker 5: And a lot of this oligarchy stuff seems, or at
Speaker 5: least the way it's sort of filtering into this country
Speaker 5: and our system, it seems to have resulted from things
Speaker 5: like Citizens United, and you know, the increased ability for
Speaker 5: very wealthy individuals and corporations to wield political power. But
Speaker 5: there's this sense that it's good for these very wealthy
Speaker 5: people to have power because money makes more money, and
Speaker 5: it's this trickle down thing that I think has historically
Speaker 5: proven to be not true, and that these folks look
Speaker 5: out for their own and their own class, and that
Speaker 5: there is no trickle down. It's just about consolidating all
Speaker 5: that power and wealth in these top top top tiers
Speaker 5: and leaving everybody else out in the cold because you
Speaker 5: can't have you can't amass more if you don't take
Speaker 5: it from somewhere.
Speaker 4: A snowball effect. Yeah, the idea, Now we know it's
Speaker 4: a hot take, but the idea of theoretical communism has
Speaker 4: never really resulted in the practice of the things that
Speaker 4: people like Karl Marx wrote about. The concept would be
Speaker 4: each member of a society provides as much as they
Speaker 4: can according to their ability, and each member also receives
Speaker 4: all kinds of support commensurate with their needs.
Speaker 3: This is not the case.
Speaker 4: I mean, think about it. Let's think about it this way. Guys,
Speaker 4: say we have ten people in a society. We're in
Speaker 4: a tribe. There's ten of us, and every month we
Speaker 4: generate a collective one hundred dollars. All other things being equal,
Speaker 4: every member of that tribe would receive every month ten dollars,
Speaker 4: your little piece of the pie. But to your point,
Speaker 4: there noel. If of those ten people, one or two
Speaker 4: is a warlord, then that minority of the civilization one
Speaker 4: to two of the ten will accumulate the lion's share
Speaker 4: of a tribe's production. So it's like eighty bucks for
Speaker 4: me what is left maybe doled out to the rest
Speaker 4: of you, you peasants, deal down and pray.
Speaker 5: Well, do you think it's because this idea of communism
Speaker 5: never working out in practice the way it should in theory.
Speaker 2: Is it just the.
Speaker 5: Inherent corruptibility of people or the types of people that
Speaker 5: seek that those types of positions that it really just
Speaker 5: requires like a well meaning individual to ascend to that
Speaker 5: level of power, and it just doesn't typically happen.
Speaker 2: You also have to have policies in place or rules
Speaker 2: right in place that make sense to those benevolent goals,
Speaker 2: and they have to kind of fit along with that stuff.
Speaker 2: Then everybody has to agree, and then nobody can get
Speaker 2: greedy because you get greedy. But that's the thing, You're
Speaker 2: playing a game where nobody get greedy.
Speaker 3: It's the corruptibility factor. I think.
Speaker 5: I think it's just really hard to get to that
Speaker 5: level and not want to take a little more for you.
Speaker 3: You know, you.
Speaker 4: Also have to have timeline right. You have to be
Speaker 4: able to see perceivable significant results as a member of
Speaker 4: a tribe of society, a civilization right. You have to
Speaker 4: be if someone says, hey, give me ten dollars, then
Speaker 4: the person giving the ten dollars will naturally ask where
Speaker 4: does the money go? How does it benefit me? Qui bono?
Speaker 3: Right, I don't know, it's crazy.
Speaker 4: Because it's so normalized. We read a lot, folks, and
Speaker 4: most history books are written in the milieu of oligarchy.
Speaker 4: Most history books are coming from a perspective that acknowledges
Speaker 4: and inherently supports this a logical, bizarre beat me here, Dylan, Carie.
Speaker 3: And that's why, from fiction.
Speaker 4: To film, from policy to profit, we have normalized a
Speaker 4: very sad and cartoonishly stupid state of affairs. Like to
Speaker 4: your earlier point there, every communist country on planet Earth
Speaker 4: so far has ultimately done exactly the opposite of what
Speaker 4: communism is supposed to do. They have generated a de
Speaker 4: facto in practice upper class of corrupt rulers. I still
Speaker 4: you guys, remember when we talked about Dunbar's number.
Speaker 2: The number of people that are truly human to you?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know it's a controversial idea, but maybe maybe
Speaker 4: human tribes reach a diminishing return of efficiency after they
Speaker 4: get past Dunbar's number. Maybe after like what was it,
Speaker 4: two hundred and fifty people, maybe you should close the group?
Speaker 2: Uh, can we talk a little bit just about specifically
Speaker 2: how the Russian oligarchs came into power, because there's there's
Speaker 2: two things that I think we need to be aware
Speaker 2: of before we even have our conversation about how does
Speaker 2: you know how could America get here? Just to set
Speaker 2: us up from a historical perspective, because I didn't realize
Speaker 2: there were two major factors. The first one was that
Speaker 2: hyperinflation was occurring in the Soviet Union, like as it
Speaker 2: was about to collapse, and then immediately after the collapse,
Speaker 2: like the Russian ruble was just in crazy hyperinflation every
Speaker 2: month it was losing like twenty five percent of its value.
Speaker 2: But people who already had a bunch of money and
Speaker 2: a bunch of capital had already transferred their rubles into
Speaker 2: other you know, things like US dollars, let's say, or
Speaker 2: something British perhaps, or just whatever. They're changing their money,
Speaker 2: their currencies from rubles as they're watching it happen into
Speaker 2: other currencies. Then they can buy things or make promises
Speaker 2: to pay for things in rubles. Let's say, sign a contract.
Speaker 2: There's a great example. Britannica gives of a contract that
Speaker 2: one oligarch signed to pay the equivalent of around three
Speaker 2: thousand dollars US for thirty five thousand cars. But he
Speaker 2: knew that hyperinflation is in effect and as continuing to go.
Speaker 2: So that amount of money that's he that he's contractually
Speaker 2: obligated to pay is actually going to become by the
Speaker 2: at the end of the term, three hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: dollars per car, So from three thousand to three hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty, and he ends up making one hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty million dollars on that. So just the people that
Speaker 2: have the money already understand the system and know how
Speaker 2: to kind of wiggle around it to end up continuing
Speaker 2: to make money. Then this is the second part that
Speaker 2: I did not understand. You guys, when the Soviet Union
Speaker 2: falls in nineteen ninety one, they privatize as or they
Speaker 2: begin to privatize, and they're like heading towards full privatization
Speaker 2: of all things like oil companies, nickel, deposit mining, con
Speaker 2: everything you can imagine as like natural resources, right, and
Speaker 2: even media things like that. Nineteen ninety four. Oh sorry,
Speaker 2: go ahead, no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: I just you're describing something very close to home and familiar,
Speaker 5: as I please continue.
Speaker 3: History has never been original.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here's where it gets a little weird, guys, and
Speaker 2: we're gonna connect it back up towards the end. Here
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety four, Russia isn't making enough money enough
Speaker 2: gross domestic product to pay off its debts and to
Speaker 2: continue to function as a country, so it needs a
Speaker 2: cash input. It goes to these folks who are already
Speaker 2: very very rich, who are who are controlling a lot
Speaker 2: of these companies, and ends up borrowing a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of money from them around one point eight billion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it could go.
Speaker 5: Wrong, right.
Speaker 4: Think about the somewhat obscure writing of famous amateur wrestler
Speaker 4: Abraham Lincoln about debts during the Civil War and paying
Speaker 4: the power behind the throne. Or think about the movement
Speaker 4: of tangible assets like gold in the lead up to
Speaker 4: the current stage of the Middle Eastern conflict.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh, do a lot.
Speaker 2: But the whole point of they borrow that money from
Speaker 2: these individuals, right, who are already so wealthy, and the
Speaker 2: way those individuals get paid back is through these these
Speaker 2: weird rigged auctions for control of certain things again, things
Speaker 2: like oil companies, gas companies, a.
Speaker 4: Small number of well connected members of business class, former government,
Speaker 4: and we have to say it the intelligence community.
Speaker 5: Oh sure, give those bids to the best you know
Speaker 5: candidate though, right, there's processes for these things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm sure there was a good faith process.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot.
Speaker 4: We're on video and everybody can see how cynical and
Speaker 4: sarcas I.
Speaker 5: Think we three hundred and sixty degrees, you know, and
Speaker 5: back around at the same time.
Speaker 2: The thing I've forgotten there, guys, that was ninety six
Speaker 2: when the at one point eight trillion was brow The
Speaker 2: crazy thing that happened in ninety four, which is when
Speaker 2: the government issued vouchers, which is really interesting because as
Speaker 2: things are going down, things aren't looking great. All of
Speaker 2: these state controlled things are beginning to privatize. The country
Speaker 2: offers vouchers and these things. It's kind of like money,
Speaker 2: but not really money. You could take these and you
Speaker 2: can trade them. You can sell them. You can just
Speaker 2: exchange them for other things. You could trade them for
Speaker 2: an employee's share of a company, like the shares that
Speaker 2: they own of a company. You can take these vouchers instead,
Speaker 2: and like I said, you can trade them, so people
Speaker 2: who already had a bunch of money could individually buy
Speaker 2: up let's say a controlling share of a nickel conglomerate
Speaker 2: by just going to all of these employees and saying, well,
Speaker 2: I'll pay you more for these shares than what they're
Speaker 2: worth right now, and now I will have a controlling
Speaker 2: share of that giant thing that is going to be
Speaker 2: massively important for the existence of the country. It's like
Speaker 2: playing the long game, I guess for people who already
Speaker 2: have the money.
Speaker 4: The rubyl version of pennies on the dollar right, this
Speaker 4: is what we call regulatory capture. Please check out our
Speaker 4: earlier interview segment with friend of the show, legendary conflict
Speaker 4: journalist Jake Hanrahan. He has a series called sad Oligarch
Speaker 4: which examines in depth the stories the rise fall, sometimes
Speaker 4: from a third story window, of specific Russian oligarchs. We're
Speaker 4: not blowing rainbows here, folks. Jake is one of the
Speaker 4: best in the game. Sad Oligarch is a phenomenal show.
Speaker 4: And the privatization, the massive privatization of a post Soviet
Speaker 4: economy in Russia is still one of the biggest provable conspiracies,
Speaker 4: and it's definitely the reason that here in the West,
Speaker 4: when you hear Oligarch, you think Russia but that's as
Speaker 4: we're going to see. That's not quite the entirety of
Speaker 4: the conspiracy.
Speaker 3: I mean, we all.
Speaker 4: Remember the United States from earlier, founded in the late
Speaker 4: seventeen hundreds to escape the trappings of things like oligarchy
Speaker 4: and things like monarchy. Our founding fathers far from perfect.
Speaker 4: They had a weird thing with wigs and stockings, for instance.
Speaker 4: Several in practice were themselves oligarchs. But they had a
Speaker 4: noble idea, or they had a beautiful idea, which was
Speaker 4: to eschew the old, historically unfair systems of government in
Speaker 4: favor of a meritocracy. All people coffeat asterisk can be
Speaker 4: considered equal, and all people likewise are guaranteed. This is
Speaker 4: our favorite part, by the way, folks, the pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 2: Try all you want, baby, roll you can do it.
Speaker 4: Roll those dice. Some people have more dice. Some people
Speaker 4: get to roll twice. But uh, the US is still
Speaker 4: working on it.
Speaker 5: It's like a dog chasing a ball. You wouldn't know
Speaker 5: what to do when you got it.
Speaker 2: Do you remember did we do a I think it's
Speaker 2: just a video. I think we've ever talked about it
Speaker 2: on audio. Guys about the city of London conspiracy, that
Speaker 2: the United States is still controlled in some way by
Speaker 2: Britain and specifically through like Washington, d C. And some
Speaker 2: weird I forget the tethers there are, like what it
Speaker 2: actually is? We should we should revisit that.
Speaker 5: It's a weird one. I don't know if I don't know,
Speaker 5: if I if that one has too much sand well,
Speaker 5: if I'm not mistaken, it's does the.
Speaker 4: UK still control the United States? Wait?
Speaker 2: Do we have an audio episode?
Speaker 5: I wonder?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, I was so fascinated by that, just thinking, Okay,
Speaker 2: we've learned, guys over all these years that we're not
Speaker 2: really told the truth about things often when it comes
Speaker 2: to what happened in history, no matter you know, well,
Speaker 2: because we know there's so many lensing effects there and
Speaker 2: depending where you are and what powers want you to
Speaker 2: think and all that other stuff. I just I still
Speaker 2: wonder about the founding of the United States.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you should.
Speaker 4: Also, the massive disadvantage of most canonical history is that
Speaker 4: it's written by the winners, right, That's why we don't
Speaker 4: know as much.
Speaker 3: As we should.
Speaker 4: It's it's so true as in millennia, past evenings past,
Speaker 4: and as in the present evenings.
Speaker 3: You cannot escape.
Speaker 4: You cannot argue against the sheer fact that people descended
Speaker 4: from other people in the political class are going to
Speaker 4: have a much higher likelihood of achieving later success in politics,
Speaker 4: just like the children of famous actors are statistically going
Speaker 4: to have a higher chance of finding their own success
Speaker 4: in entertainment, competence, talent.
Speaker 3: It's all nice.
Speaker 4: It's widespread or wide rife, as our pal Frank likes
Speaker 4: to say. But those connections can be your edge. And
Speaker 4: I mean, can we really blame people for taking advantage
Speaker 4: of that?
Speaker 5: And then that's not to say that some of them
Speaker 5: aren't good at it. You know, some children of actors aren't,
Speaker 5: but they also have access to all of the best
Speaker 5: schooling and not to mention all of those connections which
Speaker 5: can be so key. But the way that flies in
Speaker 5: the face of this notion of a meritocracy does kind
Speaker 5: of call into question a lot of things.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, it's not the bill of goods we were sold,
Speaker 4: nor the bill of right. The bigger question on everyone's
Speaker 4: mind right now is this, with all we know about oligarchs,
Speaker 4: and with all we know about the historical tendencies of
Speaker 4: human civilization, is the United States becoming an oligarchy. Is
Speaker 4: it already an oligarchy?
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy on paper. No, everything's fine
Speaker 3: on paper.
Speaker 4: The United States is a big deal democracy. It's to
Speaker 4: our earlier point, it's a meritocratic government by and for
Speaker 4: the people.
Speaker 3: I know, I know.
Speaker 4: The politicians again in theory, are public servants. They work
Speaker 4: for millions of people who are supposed to be their bosses,
Speaker 4: and they are acquiring this very important role based on
Speaker 4: their personal ability rather than their lineage or their corporate connections.
Speaker 4: But in practice, not so much the case. You know,
Speaker 4: all the way down, it's just super packs the turtles
Speaker 4: all the way down, man. I mean, we've we've said
Speaker 4: it before on previous episodes. If you travel outside of
Speaker 4: the United States, which can be a difficult thing, it
Speaker 4: can be cartoonishly awkward to say, yes, we are a
Speaker 4: democracy and then have a very nice friend of yours
Speaker 4: from abroad say, well, how come so many of your
Speaker 4: presidents are related to each other if they're really the
Speaker 4: best people for the job.
Speaker 2: You know, Hey, it's in the genes, man like, it's
Speaker 2: nature and nurture, but mostly nature. Did you guys, are
Speaker 2: you guys following this what's his name, James Tallerico character
Speaker 2: that got a lot of buzz in National tax News. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of buzz. The whole Colbert thing on YouTube happened.
Speaker 2: We talked about it on Strange News. His big boast
Speaker 2: tall Ico was that everything is grassroots in his campaign,
Speaker 2: and then as soon as he got a bunch of attention,
Speaker 2: there are all kinds of stories coming out of Texas Tribune,
Speaker 2: coming out of other places where there's what they call
Speaker 2: dark money aka super PACs aka where did it come from?
Speaker 2: It's just flooding into this dude's campaign and he currently
Speaker 2: I think he just won the primary there against somebody,
Speaker 2: so now he's gonna be on the ticket. But you
Speaker 2: just see how as soon as someone's on that precipice
Speaker 2: or like or is chosen, they just just money y.
Speaker 5: Like when the little microbreweries get bought up by bush mills,
Speaker 5: but they don't don't change the branding so that you
Speaker 5: still think you're getting a little local brew, but it's
Speaker 5: actually you're just putting your money in the pocket of
Speaker 5: this giant corporation that doesn't want to be you know,
Speaker 5: acknowledged as part of the part of the equation.
Speaker 4: Another example would be Barnes and Nobles. The I said
Speaker 4: Barnes and Nobles. It's Barnes and Noble, the local brick
Speaker 4: and mortar bookstore outfit. Right, it's a bookstore chain here
Speaker 4: in the US. They saved themselves from corporate extinction by
Speaker 4: quietly buying up other companies or other stores that appear
Speaker 4: to be independent things.
Speaker 5: Channel we.
Speaker 3: Both have the same call.
Speaker 2: So no Cumulus Media guys, they just they had to
Speaker 2: file Chapter eleven. But they're going to be fine.
Speaker 4: Spare me, Exfinity x E, Blackwater and so on. In practice, though,
Speaker 4: we do know that the United States has a lot
Speaker 4: of very smart people who have done a lot of
Speaker 4: troubling studies and indicate that there's a growing there's a
Speaker 4: skyrocketing amount of wealth, inequality, corruption, nepotism. These have indeed
Speaker 4: eroded democratic principles. They have created a civilization that, despite
Speaker 4: all its proclamations, sure seems to function like an oligarchy
Speaker 4: rather than a democracy. Oh do we want to talk
Speaker 4: about nerds? I got two nerds. I know you got.
Speaker 5: Candy the rope.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about both of those. Oh man, I love those,
Speaker 3: I love.
Speaker 5: It like the rope crunchy sweet sour. Sorry, carry on,
Speaker 5: I'm distract.
Speaker 2: You gotta love nerds ropes.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 4: So back in twenty fourteen, these two boffins, political scientists
Speaker 4: named Martin Gillens and Benjamin I. Page started looking into
Speaker 4: this question. They asked themselves theory and paperwork aside, is
Speaker 4: the United States a democracy or is it an oligarchy?
Speaker 4: How does the system function? And they did this based
Speaker 4: off Martin Gillen's earlier book, Affluence and Influence. They analyzed
Speaker 4: almost two thousand policy outcomes over twenty years. You know,
Speaker 4: by policy outcomes, we mean what does the average Johnny
Speaker 4: blue jeans want and what did the US government do?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: So, if a bunch of people say, hey, I want
Speaker 4: free lunch for all the kids in the United States,
Speaker 4: what did Congress do? How did they and the executive
Speaker 4: branch respond?
Speaker 5: Well, they say that there's no such thing as a
Speaker 5: free lunch.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, which is it's a real initialism in economics,
Speaker 4: you guys.
Speaker 2: Well that's the real thing in real life. You get, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you don't get a free lunch. Somebody wants something.
Speaker 4: And then we also, yeah, we're idiomatically, we're a very
Speaker 4: lunch centered culture. Are we not eatcause someone else's lunch,
Speaker 4: someone else's lunch.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what I'm say.
Speaker 5: Bad move, Ben, I'm excited to the chart you dropped
Speaker 5: in the infographic into the research doc here is is staggering.
Speaker 5: But I would just jump back really quickly what I
Speaker 5: was saying before. How it's so easy to explain away
Speaker 5: a lot of this stuff by saying no, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: it's not that they're doing what.
Speaker 3: The wealthy people want.
Speaker 5: It's that those are just the right things. What the
Speaker 5: wealthy people want is what's right, and so of course
Speaker 5: they're doing it.
Speaker 4: Hang on, let me break out, do this on camera.
Speaker 3: Let me break out, Mike. Can guys see this this.
Speaker 5: Isol having some tiny violin, beautiful tone?
Speaker 3: Okay, keep going.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, hey, guys, can we actually get in
Speaker 2: the budget Dylan to get Ben a td tigh violin.
Speaker 2: It would be hilarious if Ben could just play that
Speaker 2: every once in a while, Like I have.
Speaker 5: A regular sized violin.
Speaker 3: I'm going on Etsy right now, phenomenal.
Speaker 4: We'll get to accounting, and Noel does have a regular
Speaker 4: sized violin.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that is true.
Speaker 5: I mean interrupt Ben. I'm just I can see I
Speaker 5: can see where this is going, and I just I
Speaker 5: love the rhetoric justifying it.
Speaker 4: It's just okay, So this, this study, especially this is
Speaker 4: of interest. So twenty fourteen was more than ten years ago,
Speaker 4: just to quick splash of cold water for everybody.
Speaker 3: The study is titled Testing.
Speaker 4: Theories of American Politics Elites, interest groups, and Average Citizens,
Speaker 4: and it reached these disturbing conclusions. It doesn't matter what
Speaker 4: your demographic is, what your political again tribal identifiication is,
Speaker 4: you should be.
Speaker 3: Very bothered by what these guys found.
Speaker 4: They looked at what we call political influence through various
Speaker 4: groups in the United States, and then they checked this
Speaker 4: against the technical definitions of democracy, oligarchy, other forms of government.
Speaker 4: And I think, what really stands out to all of
Speaker 4: us here something I cribbed from the study who holds
Speaker 4: the raids of democracy? This infographic? Can we summarize this
Speaker 4: real quickly?
Speaker 5: Well, the title of the article kind of says at all,
Speaker 5: because it's inn order of prominence, Testing Theories of American
Speaker 5: Politics Elites number one, interest groups number two, and average
Speaker 5: citizens a distant distant third. We're talking. I mean, you
Speaker 5: look at this thing. It's that the bar is the
Speaker 5: highest big old thick bar seventy eight percent controlled or
Speaker 5: influence belongs to the wealthiest of Americans the top ten percent,
Speaker 5: followed by business groups forty three percent, then interest groups
Speaker 5: twenty four percent, and then ey lavender periwinkle sliver for citizens.
Speaker 4: And then this does add up to more than one
Speaker 4: hundred percent because of the Venn diagrams largely between the
Speaker 4: business groups and the wealthy top ten percent.
Speaker 3: Time e fourteen.
Speaker 5: By the way, all before stuff got real whacky.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean okay, So to have political influence in
Speaker 4: this case means that the United States Congress responds to
Speaker 4: you by passing the laws and policies you desire. Right,
Speaker 4: So Max Powers, astronaut with a secret says that like
Speaker 4: canther b should be legal in low earth orbit. If
Speaker 4: he's an average voter, Max Powers maybe gets a nice
Speaker 4: form letter. If he is an oligarch, he throws a
Speaker 4: couple hundred mili over to the Senate and they say, yes,
Speaker 4: forget everything. We got to make werewolves legal in low
Speaker 4: earth orbit.
Speaker 5: But that's not a bribe, and they certainly there would
Speaker 5: be no presumption of direct influence just because you donated
Speaker 5: to a political group, right, I mean that would be
Speaker 5: the argument. That would be the argument because this pay
Speaker 5: to play thing that's illegal, that's a bribe.
Speaker 2: But well, so I know, I know, I know exactly.
Speaker 5: Figuratively, you know, I mean, you're.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right. It's just it we see every day,
Speaker 2: more and more every day that the rules don't apply, right.
Speaker 2: It's what Ben was saying right there? What was it?
Speaker 2: Some people? What is the phrase been? Everybody's equal but.
Speaker 4: Animal farm, Yes, yeah, yeah, than others, which is inherently
Speaker 4: a logical fallacy of what equality means exactly.
Speaker 2: But we see that that's just the fact, like that's
Speaker 2: just what how things are, and we become almost accustomed
Speaker 2: to it because it's hammered home with us every time,
Speaker 2: every time we read the news, we see laws past.
Speaker 5: It's almost like they taught us animal farm in school,
Speaker 5: not to teach us to revolt against the status quo,
Speaker 5: but just to understand.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 4: And also, by the way, I don't I don't know
Speaker 4: if we're all read up on this, but George Orwell
Speaker 4: hated a lot of people that you would think agreed
Speaker 4: with him. I mean, he's like, I don't care for
Speaker 4: these namby Pambies, I want to communicate to the not
Speaker 4: the fancy white collar types. I want to communicate to
Speaker 4: the working class. I want them to read animal farm.
Speaker 4: I don't care you know what the Ivory Tower is
Speaker 4: going to say about it.
Speaker 2: But dorblic school kids. That kind of makes sense, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he wants the great school kids. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And look these guys. In this study again from twenty
Speaker 4: fourteen a while ago, they conclude that quote economic elites
Speaker 4: and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts
Speaker 4: on US government policy, while mass based interest groups and
Speaker 4: average citizens have little or no independent influence. And they're
Speaker 4: not being like manifesto type, you know, they're not writing
Speaker 4: their opinions. They are looking at statistics, traceable numbers, traceable records,
Speaker 4: and documentation over the years, things that have no opinion
Speaker 4: of their own.
Speaker 3: The good news.
Speaker 4: For some of us, Dylan Matt Noll. If you are
Speaker 4: in the upper ten percent of US society in twenty
Speaker 4: fourteen and now, your desires will have fifteen times the
Speaker 4: impact on actual policy in comparison to the other ninety
Speaker 4: percent of the three hundred and something million people who
Speaker 4: live here.
Speaker 2: There's something I can't square you guys. We know that
Speaker 2: maybe it's certain acumen. It's something that's taught to you
Speaker 2: because you have enough wealth. This concept of tax of asia,
Speaker 2: or being smart, being very careful with your taxes and
Speaker 2: with business creation, all that stuff where you end up
Speaker 2: not having to pay a lot of money from the money.
Speaker 5: Live Nation paid zero tax. Live Nation zero tax.
Speaker 3: Really you did get even a convenience fee. They love
Speaker 3: those big story.
Speaker 5: Live Nation, the company that you know owns all these
Speaker 5: venues and is just you know, historically been very uh
Speaker 5: monopolistic in terms of the entertainment Live entertainment. They paid
Speaker 5: zero tax, and they would argue, we have that that's
Speaker 5: doing the good, that's doing it right.
Speaker 2: They have sponsored or show, they have whatever.
Speaker 5: Live Nation's fine. I'm just saying that's just an example
Speaker 5: of what you're describing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Also, also everybody could see by Larry David come out
Speaker 4: just a little bit because I did pay taxes.
Speaker 3: Eye contacted the camera and the NSA guy. I did
Speaker 3: pay taxes.
Speaker 2: We pay taxes. Everybody listens to this show pays their taxes, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, shout out to our intern Steve.
Speaker 2: Once you get to that level, you understand how to
Speaker 2: manipulate the system, so you're not actually contributing to the
Speaker 2: shared system that is the taxes thing where there are
Speaker 2: shared services. But if you are just having to live
Speaker 2: within this system and you are making ends meet, you
Speaker 2: have to pay taxes, and you have to pay a
Speaker 2: good amount a percentage of your taxes. Like what, I
Speaker 2: don't understand. I don't understand how we ever let it
Speaker 2: get to this point because if this thing was a
Speaker 2: little different in citizens, let's say we're in the forty
Speaker 2: three percent, even just the forty three percent versus the
Speaker 2: top ten percent of humans, we would have something like
Speaker 2: universal health care. But there's just there's no money in
Speaker 2: supporting the good things that would help people.
Speaker 5: No, And that's what the same thing. It's seen as weakness.
Speaker 5: It's seen as weakness in a way, you know, this
Speaker 5: idea of philanthropy or like helping people less fortunate, just
Speaker 5: just so really quickly. The way that Live Nation did
Speaker 5: manage to pay zero in US federal income tax was
Speaker 5: through the Big Beautiful Bill that allowed them to claim
Speaker 5: one hundred percent bonus appreciation which offset their taxable income
Speaker 5: in a year where they made twenty five point two
Speaker 5: billion dollars in revenue and one point thirty billion in
Speaker 5: what they're referring to as operating income. The Big Beautiful
Speaker 5: Bill is a BBL for the United States, by which
Speaker 5: I mean a big beautiful loss for you know, for
Speaker 5: like the long term sustainability of the society, because we're
Speaker 5: telling you folks, statistically speaking, right opinions aside statistically speaking,
Speaker 5: Uncle Sam doesn't seem to care very much about what
Speaker 5: ninety percent of Americans think. And then from this study,
Speaker 5: we see our authors define four possible systems that might
Speaker 5: exist in the United States, not in theory but in practice,
Speaker 5: and they go, is this a democracy? Is this a
Speaker 5: semi democratic system dominated by interest groups or dominated by lobbyists?
Speaker 4: Two separate options. And they look at the fourth one
Speaker 4: is the United States and oligarchy, and that is what
Speaker 4: they found. It most closely matches what's happening to you
Speaker 4: now today, most closely matches the model of an oligarchy.
Speaker 4: And ever since twenty fourteen, virtually all credible research has
Speaker 4: indicated this pattern continues to escalate in the modern day.
Speaker 4: We're at the Gilded Age, you guys, Gilded age levels
Speaker 4: of financial desperation. And we all remember the Gilded Age, right,
Speaker 4: It was guilted.
Speaker 5: To the twist ending you're talking about Yeah.
Speaker 2: Mar Alogo remembers they just had a party about that.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 4: Also, it was a series of dumb names in American history.
Speaker 4: Gilded Age not Golden Age, right, because it's fakeal whatever,
Speaker 4: and then Great Depression, right, another terrible name or a
Speaker 4: terrible thing.
Speaker 2: Ben, you said something and then I think we probably
Speaker 2: fixed it in the edit, so nobody ever heard it.
Speaker 2: But you said something that I think you should coin.
Speaker 2: You said democracy, like dumbocracy. I think that's chef's kiss
Speaker 2: where we're at right now.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Matt still learning English.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh oh, just to say too that. I mean,
Speaker 5: there is this American ideal that associates wealth with intelligence,
Speaker 5: and that ain't how it is.
Speaker 2: That sound sorry, just.
Speaker 5: Isn't if anything where we're like we are raising up,
Speaker 5: lifting up the dumbest richest people look at social media
Speaker 5: influencer culture and like Jake Paul on his jet with
Speaker 5: like cash everywhere. Yeah, I mean, yes, you know, okay,
Speaker 5: having a little savvy and maybe luck is cool, but
Speaker 5: that does not make you some sort of mastermind or
Speaker 5: some sort of like big picture intelligent, you know, forward
Speaker 5: thinking person.
Speaker 4: Let's take a break, you guys for a word from
Speaker 4: our sponsors, and during this break, we hope you joined
Speaker 4: us to go to Nucleus Genomics and per Nol's earlier
Speaker 4: point figure out the character sheet for the IQ of
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Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: This study, again from over ten years ago, doesn't particularly
Speaker 4: focus on the origin story of oligarchy as a concept
Speaker 4: right as a tactic, but the authors do point out
Speaker 4: the snowball effective power, money and influence, which all of
Speaker 4: us have mentioned earlier in this episode. And we've got
Speaker 4: a quote from them, Can we can we share this quote?
Speaker 4: Who's got who's got a smart accent?
Speaker 5: Anybody feeling from that ad that British guy, Let's have
Speaker 5: him do it?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 9: Yeah, Pennyworth, Yes, that dude comes out Whenever I have
Speaker 9: to make a large transaction I don't know why, and
Speaker 9: I don't do it very often, but when I do,
Speaker 9: Lord Penniworth is there.
Speaker 3: That's Magic City.
Speaker 2: That's where I do my highest value training. Okay, here,
Speaker 2: here we go. I'll just do it like this. It
Speaker 2: is well established that organized groups regularly lobby and fraternize
Speaker 2: with public officials, move through revolving doors between public and
Speaker 2: private employment, provide self serving information to officials, raft to legislation,
Speaker 2: and spend a great deal of money on election campaigns.
Speaker 2: James Tillery.
Speaker 5: Fragnize, you say, yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, let's be clear, folks. Your vote does matter,
Speaker 4: and you should vote as often as you can, and
Speaker 4: for as long as you can.
Speaker 5: And as many times as you can for the same Canada.
Speaker 3: That's total. If you're dead, vote right now. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: Okay, but listen, folks, if you are the average Johnny
Speaker 4: blue jeans friends and neighbors, your political desires will inevitably
Speaker 4: take a backseat to the desires of wealthy individuals and
Speaker 4: institutions because they vote with their dollar right, they vote
Speaker 4: with their influence. They pour millions into campaign coffers and
Speaker 4: shadowy private public contracts that the ordinary individual just simply
Speaker 4: cannot access well.
Speaker 5: And sadly, Johnny, blue jeans. Blue jeans just weren't blue enough.
Speaker 2: I got to get those dark blue jeans. No, that's
Speaker 2: another right, ones, what are they?
Speaker 5: I'm being funny. I'm meaning jeans with a G like that.
Speaker 3: This is why we hang out blue jeans. That's a
Speaker 3: good joke, blue.
Speaker 5: Bloods, you know, like.
Speaker 3: The levels to this, folks.
Speaker 4: Uh, this is also a genuine improvable conspiracy. It is
Speaker 4: more than a bit undemocratic. It speaks directly to what
Speaker 4: another former president, Dwight Eisenhower, warned us about all those
Speaker 4: years ago.
Speaker 3: We'll play a brief clip.
Speaker 10: In the councils of government. We must guard against the
Speaker 10: acquisition of unwanted influence, whether it's so or unsowned by
Speaker 10: the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise
Speaker 10: of misplaced power exists and will persist.
Speaker 4: So we all remember Dwight, right, we all remember his
Speaker 4: his earlier statement.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's a warning about what happens when the
Speaker 2: government has all these contracts to build all these munitions,
Speaker 2: and the government is making a lot of money by
Speaker 2: selling munitions to other places, right, and then what happens
Speaker 2: when those folks are the ones who kind of need
Speaker 2: to make some more profits, and they're directly tied to
Speaker 2: the US administration. Whoever it is. Eisenhower isn't even talking
Speaker 2: about himself and his administration in that moment, and he's
Speaker 2: referencing it, right, but he's not. He's not saying be
Speaker 2: warned now. He's saying, worry about it. Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty six.
Speaker 4: He's also he's also, by the way, folks, do check
Speaker 4: out the full speech if you can find it. He
Speaker 4: also is on the way out, So this is like
Speaker 4: Dave Thomas on his last day at Wendy's walking out
Speaker 4: of Wendy's and right as he opens the door, he says, hey, guys,
Speaker 4: I think Frosty's are bad, and then he leaves.
Speaker 3: That's what happened.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, He's like, you guys should really change the friars.
Speaker 2: The oil in those friars has been in there for
Speaker 2: like six years. Anyway, you should probably do that.
Speaker 3: And they say what, and he says, I'm off to Monaco.
Speaker 4: This could sound like old beans maybe to a lot
Speaker 4: of us in the crowd tonight. If we are to
Speaker 4: assume an optimistic perspective and consider a solution. Then we
Speaker 4: have to note that multiple academics and indeed a lot
Speaker 4: of politicians have one step, one immediate step to solve
Speaker 4: the oligarchy campaign finance reform.
Speaker 2: Remember, people were really trying to push for campaign finance reform.
Speaker 2: I remember hearing about that quite a lot. We wanted
Speaker 2: to fix things.
Speaker 3: That all got blasted out of the water.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry I keep harping on Citizens United, but I
Speaker 5: mean I think that's I mean, the worst, the worst
Speaker 5: of it, and just open the floodgates, right, you're correct.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's also it didn't pull well with the American public. Uh,
Speaker 4: the increasingly monopolized mass media didn't go out of its
Speaker 4: way to talk about this idea or to mess with
Speaker 4: the money.
Speaker 3: As we said.
Speaker 2: We were saying the media conglomerates had like a stake in
Speaker 2: not wanting the American people to want campaign finance reform.
Speaker 4: We're saying they could have done a better job getting
Speaker 4: the message out.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, it's it's weird because campaign.
Speaker 4: Reform, the idea, like to your earlier point about superpacks, Matt,
Speaker 4: campaign reform gets trotted out every few election cycles and
Speaker 4: then it gets tucked away with these other pie in
Speaker 4: the sky ideas like ranked choice voting or open primaries.
Speaker 4: I think the public, we gotta admit we're partially to
Speaker 4: blame for this. We are notoriously individualistic in the United States,
Speaker 4: which I don't see is a bad thing because I'm
Speaker 4: quite brainwashed. We don't really think about the big systemic
Speaker 4: issues until they affect us on an immediate and personal level.
Speaker 4: So like Johnny Blue Jeans is watching the TV or
Speaker 4: his podcast and choice, and he says, don't lecture me
Speaker 4: about abstract sanctions and tariffs and how that's gonna matter
Speaker 4: in ten years. Tell me while my guests went up
Speaker 4: fifty cents a gallon, And who I'm going to blame?
Speaker 4: Key guys, I'm going on Facebook composted. Oh how dare
Speaker 4: you Johnny blue Jeans with a g bak? You know,
Speaker 4: I mean, it is a snoozefest. But the entire time
Speaker 4: this dog and pony show is occurring, those same powerful
Speaker 4: people and politics and business they're making money hand over
Speaker 4: fist or tentacle.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I feel like other oligarchs in other countries are more
Speaker 4: honest about their standing.
Speaker 2: I suppose, I mean, I just I just have never
Speaker 2: I wasn't in you know, Russia in ninety six when
Speaker 2: that stuff went down, Like, hey, guys, it's all of us,
Speaker 2: look at us.
Speaker 8: Where the guys the oligarks.
Speaker 3: Hey, we're the ogs? Get it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, if you know, let's say there
Speaker 2: was some kind of big inauguration or something that happened
Speaker 2: for Putin. Let's say many around that time, and let's
Speaker 2: say to your two thousand or something, and then all
Speaker 2: the oligarchs were just you know, sitting there in the
Speaker 2: audience with Putin's spouse or something. You know, maybe are.
Speaker 11: You you're you're talking about the Zuck and doctor Evil
Speaker 11: the techno or are.
Speaker 4: We talking about are we talking about the dprk uh
Speaker 4: their habit of giving each other medals, which is honestly
Speaker 4: kind of wholesome, or are we talking about literally every
Speaker 4: government in most of history the boy at least, you know,
Speaker 4: European countries are still going to be a mix of
Speaker 4: democracies and monarchies. And the quiet part set out loud
Speaker 4: is that despite moving toward democratic society or democratic practices,
Speaker 4: there is still phenomenal intergenerational wealth inequality because of their
Speaker 4: previous governments, the imperialism, the shadow of colonialism. The easiest
Speaker 4: way to get rich is to be born rich, right,
Speaker 4: and Middle Eastern monarchies, to their credit, are pretty upfront
Speaker 4: about this. They say, Hey, we're the royal family. We
Speaker 4: influence policy, we influence industry. Get on board or get
Speaker 4: off the train.
Speaker 5: Got to at least respect the chance, the comparative transparency.
Speaker 2: I want to be the wrong word, please m M.
Speaker 2: I want to make one point of just what we
Speaker 2: were talking about there with Johnny Blue Jeans and being
Speaker 2: more upset about gas prices because it makes sense, right,
Speaker 2: because the gas prices are going to immediately affect Johnny
Speaker 2: Blue Jeans.
Speaker 3: By the way, guys, just putting that out there. Thank you,
Speaker 3: good one.
Speaker 2: Your your ancestors are proud of you, sir. I promise you, the.
Speaker 3: Future is proud of you.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, the just this point we talked about, I
Speaker 2: can't remember which episode we talked about, but the amount
Speaker 2: of fires that are being set and within all of
Speaker 2: our minds, if we're paying attention to the news right now,
Speaker 2: no matter where you live in the world, the amount
Speaker 2: of things that become the most important, the most dire
Speaker 2: thing that just continually pop up. And oh there's another one.
Speaker 2: Holy crap, there's another one. Oh my god, there's another one.
Speaker 2: And each instance it feels as though that new one
Speaker 2: is the most important thing, and all of our attention
Speaker 2: will go to it momentarily until the point where we
Speaker 2: are absolutely exhausted with trying to figure out what the
Speaker 2: heck is going on and how we could even begin
Speaker 2: to fix some of these problems. You just kind of
Speaker 2: it's not collapse, but you you need to find a
Speaker 2: place that feels safe.
Speaker 5: And is it is fatigue mental fatigue? Yes, yeah, guys.
Speaker 4: That's really interesting because it makes me think, I know
Speaker 4: we're going long here, but this is worthwhile. It makes
Speaker 4: me think again of the concept of Dunbar's numbers. What
Speaker 4: if there is a hardwired Dunbar's number not just for
Speaker 4: the number of people a brain can acknowledge as people,
Speaker 4: but what if there's a Dunbar's number for the number
Speaker 4: of distinct thoughts one can hold in one's mind.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, absolutely, and especially the number of massive problems
Speaker 2: that need to be fixed and in which order you
Speaker 2: need to fix them.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: We know this just through like puzzle games, any kind
Speaker 2: of games that we've ever played.
Speaker 3: Everybody to check out, everybody check out only Garks.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean here that's great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we heard great stuff about it.
Speaker 2: Well, the point is there's an order of operations where
Speaker 2: wherein you have to fix things, right, You're if you're
Speaker 2: imagining fixing a tractor or something that breaks down, you
Speaker 2: have to fix things. You can't just fix one piece
Speaker 2: and now the tractor is going to work again. If
Speaker 2: the engine is broken, if the track is broken, if
Speaker 2: there's all these other things, you got to fix things
Speaker 2: in an order. And I'm imagining it's kind of the
Speaker 2: same way here. The further we can push, we the
Speaker 2: further whoever these people are that have an interest in
Speaker 2: keeping campaign finance reform out, the further thing can push
Speaker 2: the problems away from campaign finance reform, the safer they
Speaker 2: are in their positions of power.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, fully agreed.
Speaker 4: Also, the concept of pragmatism and practicality arrives immediately. We're
Speaker 4: not saying Johnny Blue Jeans with a G is by
Speaker 4: any means a knucklehead for worrying about gas prices. We're
Speaker 4: saying that, like most people alive, the guy is to
Speaker 4: your point, Matt, thinking through immediate problems and immediate solutions. Recently,
Speaker 4: rewatched pulp fiction by Quentin Tarantino. There's a cameo by
Speaker 4: a guy named mister Wolfe who is a cleaner, played
Speaker 4: by Harvey Kaitel, and that guy is helping them clean
Speaker 4: up a murder, right, And.
Speaker 3: In his.
Speaker 4: Phenomenal cameo, he doesn't lecture the dudes about climate change
Speaker 4: and the problems of fossile fuels. He figures out how
Speaker 4: to clean the car and how to get brain matter
Speaker 4: and blood out of.
Speaker 3: The back seat.
Speaker 4: So maybe that's what most people are doing right. I'm
Speaker 4: not gonna worry about solving my problems fifty years from now.
Speaker 4: Those are too big for me. I'm gonna worry about
Speaker 4: solving my problems today. And the oligarchs love that. The
Speaker 4: oligarchs will, to your point, steer that conversation, especially because
Speaker 4: our American oligarchs are a little bit different off Mike.
Speaker 4: I think it was you know who said it's kind
Speaker 4: of oligarchy three point oh. You know, these guys are
Speaker 4: technic arcs. Technically like Ella Musk or Peter Teel. They've
Speaker 4: hacked the push and pool of legislation versus innovation, and
Speaker 4: they are making sweetheart policies. They're removing regulations. They're eroding
Speaker 4: democracy and each time they do it, they go a
Speaker 4: little more powerful.
Speaker 5: They're acting as extra governmental entities. They just are pallunteer doge.
Speaker 5: They are occupying the same space that typically a an
Speaker 5: agency would occupy that if not staffed by elected officials,
Speaker 5: at the very least staff by appointed officials who are
Speaker 5: appointed by elected officials. There's some sense of representation. That's
Speaker 5: just not what's happening here, and it's they're not even
Speaker 5: trying to hide it.
Speaker 2: Very little can happen if you don't have the ability
Speaker 2: to process transactions, or you don't have a place where
Speaker 2: you can store all of your data rights. Very little
Speaker 2: can happen without their company's specific help.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, if you want to own the house,
Speaker 4: the first thing you do is by the door to
Speaker 4: the house, right yeah, yeah, yeah, you keep the gate.
Speaker 3: And that's that's what's occurring.
Speaker 4: That's why people are losing their minds about the k
Speaker 4: shaped economy of wealth inequality. OXFAM recently noted I want
Speaker 4: to see January, maybe February this year, twenty twenty six,
Speaker 4: that now we have gone beyond the Gilded Age. Wealth
Speaker 4: inequality in the United States is now worse than it
Speaker 4: was in the years leading up to the Great Depression.
Speaker 3: Again a terrible name.
Speaker 4: Just one hundred billionaire families put two point six billion
Speaker 4: US dollars into federal elections in twenty twenty four. That
Speaker 4: means one out of every six dollars spent by every candidate,
Speaker 4: every party, every community, every super pack. Aside from all
Speaker 4: the tribalism stuff, the billionaires are running the game.
Speaker 3: This is an oligarchy.
Speaker 2: It's really depressing, man.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 4: To that first time meme, right, we see again that
Speaker 4: a lot of members of the upper class are arguing
Speaker 4: that oligarchy is inherently better for everyone than something that
Speaker 4: acknowledges the public, like democracy or communism.
Speaker 3: And then one of the.
Speaker 4: Ideas that we're dancing around here as we wrap up
Speaker 4: is something we all recognize, social Darwinism. Do you guys
Speaker 4: remember this concept?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think I was sort of hitting at it
Speaker 5: in a slightly different wording. At the top is the
Speaker 5: site of It's an economic version of the survival of
Speaker 5: the fittest, and this notion that that in some way
Speaker 5: creates a system that is the best version of things.
Speaker 3: Nailed it, my friend.
Speaker 4: Yeah, The idea that we are due to lineage or
Speaker 4: due to the financial success of our forebears, we are
Speaker 4: somehow better than people, and our opinions should count for more.
Speaker 3: Our priorities should count for more.
Speaker 4: Everybody is equal, but some are more equal than others.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course we have to be fair, guys.
Speaker 4: There are some advantages to that sort of despotism.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: One of the big issues that we have in the
Speaker 4: United States is that our elected officials serve for a
Speaker 4: limited number of years. Centralized dictatorship, authoritarian economies and structures
Speaker 4: do have the I hate to say this, but they
Speaker 4: do have the ability to enact large scale plans that
Speaker 4: can take decades to reach fruition because their guys aren't
Speaker 4: always panicking about whether or not they'll get re elected.
Speaker 5: We talked about this too in terms of some of
Speaker 5: our experiences in Qatar talking to business folks. How there's
Speaker 5: a sense that doing business with those type of regimes
Speaker 5: is beneficial because you can set your watch by it.
Speaker 5: You don't have to worry about the next change that's coming,
Speaker 5: so you can you can be a little more predictive
Speaker 5: with what these deals are going to look like long term.
Speaker 3: You're absolutely right.
Speaker 4: Now, remember those conversations, and to be clear, everyone, thank
Speaker 4: you for tuning in, but this is not what the
Speaker 4: United States signed up for. You know, this was not
Speaker 4: the original pitch of the founding fathers. The idea is
Speaker 4: that you should be able to succeed based on your
Speaker 4: individual merit. You should have a say in the government
Speaker 4: because you employ the government, you pay them through taxes.
Speaker 4: But this is demonstrably not the case. It's I don't know,
Speaker 4: it's worrisome because if things continue on the current conspiratorial
Speaker 4: path and you're watching this now, your children are going
Speaker 4: to have even less of a say than you do
Speaker 4: in the future.
Speaker 2: It feels like it's we're right on the edge of
Speaker 2: it happening here. Collapse, I mean, just like with the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union, and in that collapse, a handful of people
Speaker 2: that have enough, you know, capital, step in and buy
Speaker 2: the shares of the things, if a stock market still
Speaker 2: exists after the collapse and all of that good stuff.
Speaker 2: I was reading what is It's a It was a
Speaker 2: weird website and I don't know much about it, so
Speaker 2: you have to fact check this website. But I was
Speaker 2: getting some worry some information off of It's called Ellisberg
Speaker 2: ideas somebody named David Roche Again. No, I can't back
Speaker 2: up what this person says or whether it's correct or not,
Speaker 2: but it resonated with me because I was reading about
Speaker 2: AI investment and the fragility, the current fragility of the
Speaker 2: US economy just based on the way AI investment is happening.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna read a quick thing on this because
Speaker 2: it feels like something big is about to happen, and
Speaker 2: it's there are folks out there, countries China know that
Speaker 2: this is coming and it's going to happen, and it's
Speaker 2: being purposefully done. I think that's a little conspiratorial, but
Speaker 2: that's the way I'm feeling right now. I'm going to
Speaker 2: read from this. AI investment accounted for forty percent of
Speaker 2: all fixed asset investment in the US last year. That's
Speaker 2: things like construction, you actually have something at the end
Speaker 2: of the investment. Yet it contributed only zero point five
Speaker 2: percent of GDP growth. So investment forty percent, actual GDP
Speaker 2: growth zero point five percent, and that's going to fall
Speaker 2: even more so. So that was twenty twenty five coming up.
Speaker 2: It's twenty twenty six falling to zero point two percent. Basically,
Speaker 2: that has to do with AI can't do anything right
Speaker 2: now to make enough money, and even a percent, a
Speaker 2: tiny percentage of the money that's being put into it,
Speaker 2: it can't do it. It can't do it right now.
Speaker 4: And now where yeah shout out to everybody's water bill
Speaker 4: by the way.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but that's where a massive chunk of US
Speaker 2: investment is going and it's not making any money. And
Speaker 2: you add into that this whole our discussion about munitions
Speaker 2: and the long game that Iran has to get the
Speaker 2: US and Israel to spend as much of their existing
Speaker 2: ammunition and then Iran having a lot more ammunition and
Speaker 2: a war of attrition. It's just it's becoming a very
Speaker 2: Nobody can see the future. But if I get I
Speaker 2: have this feeling in my chest. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you guys share that, that just something is about to happen,
Speaker 2: especially with DHS being not funded currently, with all those
Speaker 2: FBI people who watch foreign agents within the United States
Speaker 2: warnings about cyber.
Speaker 3: Attacks c I twelve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, the potential for a major attack not the
Speaker 2: same as but maybe similar to the September eleventh attacks,
Speaker 2: and who knows where it would come from or how
Speaker 2: it would happen, or even who would sponsor the people
Speaker 2: that carry it out.
Speaker 4: And still you tell me over and over again, my friend,
Speaker 4: you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction. I've
Speaker 4: got to stop listening to that song because I completely
Speaker 4: agree with what you're saying.
Speaker 3: This is an meganith.
Speaker 4: It's in a way, in a way, are we headed
Speaker 4: toward a mega death. That's where we leave it for now, because, yes, folks,
Speaker 4: the United States is a work in progress. It is
Speaker 4: an experiment, and it's an experiment worth conducting. It is
Speaker 4: a democracy, yet it is also functionally an oligarchy. We
Speaker 4: are profoundly sad to say. History has proven time and
Speaker 4: time and time again that this type of social structure,
Speaker 4: this type of conspiracy, often has bloody consequences in the
Speaker 4: long term. Right, the exit plan sometimes ends up being guillotines, revolutions,
Speaker 4: third story windows. But the system can be changed, the
Speaker 4: conspiracy can be halted. We can build a better place,
Speaker 4: one closer to what those crazy founding fathers brainstormed from
Speaker 4: the jump, you know, and that, more than anything, is
Speaker 4: the stuff the oligarchs don't want you to know. Thank
Speaker 4: you so much for tuning in. Be safe, out there.
Speaker 4: We can't wait to hear your thoughts, especially if you
Speaker 4: are a billionaire.
Speaker 3: Is that the one that gets us in trouble? What
Speaker 3: do you think?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 5: We accept all commerce. Sure, billionaires hit us up. You
Speaker 5: can do that by reaching out to us on your
Speaker 5: social media platform of choice, where we are either conspiracy
Speaker 5: stuff or conspiracy stuff show.
Speaker 2: Before I tell you our number. Guys. I keep thinking
Speaker 2: about this thing, and I used to think was completely
Speaker 2: laughably naive, almost wo wo that you would hear on
Speaker 2: the internet. I think we all saw it at some
Speaker 2: point around twenty twelve. I think this concept of an
Speaker 2: evolution of consciousness, like we need a we need a
Speaker 2: consciousness shift, or the terminology that's used.
Speaker 5: For great enlightenment, perhaps this baby.
Speaker 2: I used to kind of laugh. I'd be like, yeah, okay, whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, we we exist in this world. This is
Speaker 2: how it works, is how it functions. It feels more
Speaker 2: and more that we got the only way out of
Speaker 2: this thing is to fully reject sounds, insane money and
Speaker 2: thing does inconveniences and profits and stocks and all those
Speaker 2: things and just get rid of them.
Speaker 4: It's interesting, Yeah, we still have. Years ago, I had
Speaker 4: put out a challenge that we couldn't afford, but we
Speaker 4: got away with it so far. Please votes, do your
Speaker 4: best to tell us how the concept of money and
Speaker 4: economy differs in any way from the concept of religion.
Speaker 4: We'd love to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2: This is your God. Just watch they live again the
Speaker 2: ones use call us one eight three three std wy.
Speaker 2: Just give yourself a cool nickname and let us know
Speaker 2: if we can use your name and message on the air.
Speaker 2: If you want to send us an email, we've got those.
Speaker 4: We are the Entities, available twenty four hours and evening,
Speaker 4: seven nights a week. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes
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