Confronting Hasan Piker | Why Capitalism Is Horrible (The Dark Truth)

so there are a lot of problems with our economy that are only getting worse from housing to Crime to homelessness to so much more and today we're having a discussion with one of the most outspoken left-wing political commentators who's made it very clear he's anti-landlord oh yeah we have a very unique debate on that one where do you draw the line between public housing and becoming a landlord do you think like a property like this should be owned by the government housing is a mechanism for for capital accumulation has really perverted our understanding of housing housing should be uh decommodified anti-capitalist and also a Democratic Socialist this one is going to be very unique and if you haven't seen it already check out last week's episode with Brett Cooper from the daily wire who is basically the exact opposite so we get to see both sides of the spectrum here but with that said thank you so much enjoy the first a message from our sponsor where's Jack we got to start filming this podcast first of all Jack that's not true and second turn down the music we're gonna get copyright claimed oh Graham don't worry about it being demonetized that's sponsor evident sound the best tool for creators to soundtrack their content without worrying about it being demonetized we've been using epidemic sound for years but before then finding good copyright free music was difficult every single track that we found was either not copyright free or it was just really bad epidemic sound is music that actually sounds good they're suspenseful fun Whimsical foreign or any other genre you might want to use plus finding the right soundtrack could really enhance your video and thankfully epidemic has 40 000 professionally produced tracks in over 90 000 sound effects that are exclusive to epidemic sound but my favorite part has to be the new ear feature here works like their fine similar feature which allows you to highlight a specific part of a track and search for music that sounds just like it so if you're a content creator looking to soundtrack your content without worrying about copyright strikes epidemic sound is my favorite recommendation and with a 30-day free trial and 50 discount on first commercial plans with the link in the description to get a free 30-day trial and start creating your best quality content today and now with that said let's get the podcast I don't think I could ever go live like you do man I feel like uh it takes bro are you stripping that because you say no free promise oh come on oh okay what if I want to give him promo Fairlife is actually pretty fire I mean their practices are absolutely the worst by like even Dairy Farmer standards why um I think like the conditions that they keep the cows in is like worse than other Farms when you learn something like that I have a lot of vegans in my a lot of radical vegans in my in my community one of my main editors is a vegan uh propagandist actually so um he constantly tries to sneak in stuff like that see I've constantly heard bad things about Nestle oh yeah yeah for sure what is their deal do you know anything about them yeah I mean first of all when you're in the water business that's uh that's already pretty unethical you know what I mean what do they do well I mean it's like something you need for survival and these guys are basically going to local resource like a natural resource shutting off access to it and then reselling it back to the people that live there well yeah I would say that's like kind of problematic at least but then also on top of that um like on the chocolate front they uh utilize child slave labor however they Outsource it to uh you know third-party companies that are completely beyond their control and uh the the safety mechanisms that they've put in place I think it's like the chocolate Alliance if I'm not mistaken is like it's like a regular NGO you know Shady uh not exactly consistent um and uh as far as I understand the United States Supreme Court ruled that Mars Nestle and other american-based or multinational corporations that utilize child slave labor are not uh legally culpable for any of the damages if they were to ever be sued by the child slave laborers interesting is that because that was a recent Supreme Court deniability that they could say well we hired this company and we're not responsible for what that company does and if they do that we don't know about it yeah one of those it's one of those like oh no I can't believe the people that we Outsource this like hiring process in in the global South is utilizing child slave labor like but then again you know you got multiple states in the United States of America unwinding uh child labor laws so things are looking great here wait could you explain that yeah um I can I don't want to I don't want to mess this up here but I think this might be the first time we've had sources pulled up like this that's good we know it's yeah but I I know our Kansas yeah what some people call Arkansas but I call Arkansas uh it was uh recently making a move and I think Idaho as well is it to lower the age that uh a minor would be able to work or what is Missouri independent titles is kids at work states try to ease child labor laws at the behest of Industry now this of course is following like uh a sea of nlrb Investigations that were conducted at uh you know poultry plants where children were found Hyundai had a facility in Alabama where children were actually working in the facility oftentimes these are undocumented kids um the the uh the Hyundai facilities I believe in two different facilities they found children all the way from like 12 to you know 12 year old 14 year olds working at the facilities on the assembly line uh there was another article there was another investigation conducted where they found that cleaning companies that they were utilizing late at night uh were also you know hiring children I would love to get more detail about exactly what they want to do because I know titles could be one thing a title could be misconstrued but I wouldn't be opposed necessarily if they if they make it easier for a teenager or someone who wants to work after school a certain amount of hours more access to be able to work if they want to yeah but again it depends on exactly what this says I can tell you what it is 11 states have done this and they've either passed or introduced laws to roll back child labor laws a push this coming from industry trade organizations and conservative legislatures for the legislators for the most part um in the past few years those states have moved to extend working hours for children eliminate work permit requirements and lower age for teens to handle alcohol or work in hazardous industries that would be an interesting one because Jack you worked at a restaurant but you couldn't serve the alcohol right yes correct until until I turn 21 but a lot of restaurants like they don't actually listen to that not trying to throw my old restaurant onto the bus here but restaurants don't really adhere to that yeah it does seem silly to me that if you have a server who let's say is 19 years old and it's waiting on a table they cannot bring a glass of alcohol to the people that they're waiting on even if that person doesn't have a drink like some of these things I think can be but then again I come from the perspective of like I loved working part-time when I was like late middle school high school like that was the joy of my existence was being able to work so I think it just comes down to like what those changes are I think no children should work as a necessity you know what I mean like part-time labor understandable um if you want to do it um to learn the value of a dollar or whatever certainly and a lot of kids work and they're like you know family businesses or whatnot But ultimately I think like that genuinely harms your your development your your you know capacity to learn when you're tired fatigued and you're you have this additional burden I think this is a there's a gigantic gigantic policy failure I don't mean like I'm just simply stating that the fact that that needs to happen in this country is is pretty up let's get more on to that before yeah I just wanted to say sure there is apparently according to the U.S Department of Labor a 69 increase in children employed illegally by companies since 2018. you know child labor is on the rise I had no idea can you tell us a bit about your background how you got involved in twitch and general streaming um sure take us back from like you know as a kid so I grew up in Turkey um to a relatively affluent family and if you're like even even a little bit affluent in Turkey because of how massive the wealth Gap is in a country like that you're you know you're Caked Up uh in comparison to like American Standards where if a similar salary would not or similar amount of wealth would not make you uh you know upper middle class even sure such as the nature of you know developing nations um but uh by the time I got to college my dad lost everything right um which is fine I mean I still had a lot of the benefits of uh early upbringing could you tell us do you mind telling us how we lost everything or what future Trading what what happened in this gambled basically yeah have you been doing that for a while and seen some success and then just kind of went all in on it or something yeah pretty much I think I'm not I'm a little murky on the details like I don't think he he's never fully like brought it up you know what I mean um but he was he was successful I mean he was like lobbying the Turkish government you know he was he was uh like the right-hand man in a holding group you know what I mean he was like he had some pretty serious uh jobs um but uh once he once he got a little bit older and retired he basically got into that and lost everything how old were you at the time um that was around 17. um and then 18 when I went to college when he like full-blown lost it all not that it really matters because like like I said I already got the the many benefits of growing up and and getting the best education you know what I mean so at that point it's like it's fine what other benefits were there besides a good education because you you were in the United States at that point no no no no no no I'm in turkey at that point okay I came to America when I was 18. I would visit the United States sometimes for Summers and whatnot which I would consider to be one of the benefits at least you know what I mean um but uh I mean it's just freedom to not have the the economic insecurity even as a child even if you don't recognize it that still weighs on you you know what I mean in ways that like your parents will be depressed in in certain aspects right like that that's a that's a lift that people that come from affluent backgrounds don't have to even think about it's like a burden that doesn't exist didn't have to work you know what I mean could um I mean they were very particular about not getting me uh things that I wanted but you know ultimately it doesn't matter because there were so many amenities that come along with that that I um that I benefited from which is something I talk about regularly I mean it was a fairly privileged background yeah and uh you know I I think that was probably my first uh that's when I first started developing an understanding or even recognizing income inequality was when I switched over from a private school to a public one and that's when I realized like oh like you know The Gardener's kid and I'm going to the same school and like and this was when I was in third grade I started realizing like damn The Gardener's kid is not living like I am at all you know what I mean I think that was probably my first uh recognition of of wealth disparity wealth inequality not like I wasn't like a socialist or anything right but as a kid just yeah I was just like why the does the kid not have anything you know what I mean Fair yeah like what what made you say that there think that way like what was it that that kid was lacking that you had I mean even like basic food items you know what I mean like you bring lunch to school or there's a there's a commissary at school I can buy whatever I want he can't you know what I mean things like that little things like that made me realize that that um there was something that was a little off what was your sentiment towards it at the time were you like oh I'm just happy that I'm one of the people like a Haver or was it something I mean I was a kid I didn't really yeah think about it anything beyond like observing sure yeah anything beyond the observation I wasn't like you know I didn't have a a revolutionary spark sure that makes sense yeah yeah so then you're 18. you come to United States what's what happens there and why did he come to the United States why here I always wanted to come to America when I was growing up so you probably noticed that I don't have an accent yeah and also I have a pretty solid understanding of American culture as well because I was immersed in it when I was growing up many people around the world are immersed in American culture obviously it's like you know pretty profoundly successful that's why you see the Taliban wearing like Oakleys and you know what I mean like these dudes were in a cave you know three months ago and now they got like tactical like American rifles vest they're wearing the the baseball caps and whatnot and that's that's one aspect of like how powerful American culture is um and I was certainly captivated by it other kids they would ask other kids like what do you want to be and kids say I want to be an astronaut I want to be a lawyer maybe not really or I want to be an engineer I want to be a firefighter I was like I want to go to college in America that was it's so weird when I think about it but that's all I wanted to do America represented this Freedom right the American dream like it was it was um it was something I I definitely uh believed yeah paired up with also the social conservatism in turkey that was like developing and and became the erdogan regime like the changes that I started seeing um what were those changes by the way so Elizabeth type this is a long story but the zip type erdogan is is kind of like Donald Trump but more successful even than Donald Trump um he basically uh ran on this like uh anti-western degeneracy we need to go back to you know uh uh conservative values while also of course privatizing a lot of you know key sectors in turkey that were otherwise nationalized historically um he came in did all of that uh and and of course in order to maintain his popularity with a so uh with a socially conservative base of support that was all around the country and not necessarily reflected in the big cities um he had to keep you know ramping up the intensity talking about how like Muslims like the real Muslims were oppressed in Turkey a country with like 98 Muslim you know what I mean but um that the the elitist western-facing Muslims were were you know morally degenerate and ruining the country they didn't care about the hard-working real Muslims uh in in The Villages and in other places or even in big cities that were not being reflected in policy so that was his main method that was his like culture War basically that he used to gain prominence and it was very successful I mean it was pretty profoundly popular and also profoundly unpopular as well but he still maintained like a a coalition of like 51 of the vote fair enough uh throughout his Reign pretty much so you know some of the social changes I observed one of the dumbest ones I guess but like that I immediately recognized was I I love uh political cartoons political satire when I was growing up I used to read these Comics that would come out weekly it was like a newspaper called penguin there was a couple other ones and they would regularly criticize that on as political satirists do they would draw him as like different animals and he is a very thin-skinned man as many of these Petty tyrants are and he sued them he sued a bunch of them as a matter of fact and then that was kind of like a turning point um we don't have uh an American understanding of free speech in Turkey erdogan himself actually went to jail for a poem and inciting violence uh originally uh many many years back many years prior before he actually um you know ran for any position of power but uh he was now weaponizing that against his uh you know dissenters basically that was one of those things uh there was a there was an element in the air of feeling as though you know alcohol consumption was frowned upon things of that nature it was never fully regulated obviously because it's like a you know pretty solid sector tourism is something that turkey relies on heavily um and you can't really shut that off right you can't just be like oh we're not gonna you know you're not allowed but it basically started giving voice to more social conservatives who then felt more empowered to be able to uh you know reinforce their ideas no matter how backwards they were so things of that nature I started noticing that I didn't like that the Free Speech conversation is also a major one considering that uh you know Turkey does jail a lot of journalists and a lot of academics like famously but one of the worst in the country one of the worst on the planet um America is still the number one Jailer across the board but turkey jails a lot of academics and a lot of like dissenters basically so um you know that was not something I was fond of but you know paired up with that seeing America as it's you know this this Beacon of moral degeneracy that I thought was awesome uh and and you know rampant consumption that I also thought was awesome because I'm a bit of a hedonist uh I I wanted to come to America it represented the this like you know this Beacon of Freedom sure something that a lot of people that you know actually immigrate to the United States if they have are fortunate enough to do so uh this is a this is a thing that they see from wherever they live because there's so much wealthier yeah there's so much money and uh opportunity too that's something that I've seen with a lot of people who've immigrated here they're like there's so much opportunity everywhere you go for sure the possibilities are Limitless yeah absolutely in comparison to other countries yeah oh yeah totally and so what was your experience then going to college um I went to college first I came to University of Miami it was a degenerate I partied a lot I had two nines both semesters my parents were like that is the most unacceptable thing on the planet like how dare you they were already upset that I chose University Miami over Boston or even George Washington University where I got like really fat scholarships from as a matter of fact um so when I chose that when I chose the University of Miami they were already frustrated what was their reasoning behind picking Miami I want to have fun that was it yeah no I 100 my videos of like spring break there man it looks no it's crazy was it fun how was it it was a lot of fun yeah but so was Rutgers honestly which is where I inevitably uh transferred to yeah um and then but Rutgers was in New Jersey and I hated the weather and I just did not like living in New Jersey at all um throughout that time also I started slowly but surely that's when I started to like uh genuinely recognizing uh what was profoundly wrong with America uh one of the one of the most significant radicalizing components for someone like myself was Healthcare like seeing the fact that coming from a country where there is Private health care but also Public Health Care to a certain degree like you can still get uh you know Public Health Care um completely free that the government pays for right um seeing that like uh you had to pay an insane amount of money to just get like basic procedures I was like oh this is like unacceptable and um it didn't make sense to me at all I always are also had a negative opinion of America's foreign policy as someone who didn't live in America so that was already there and that's when I started uh you know moving more into my current beliefs what about foreign policy do you think was was the most broken from your perspective I mean where do I begin everything America does is pretty awful in terms of foreign policy it's always done at the best of uh not some like uh you know democratizing Principle as the way they presented here but instead to make money for the military industrial complex which is like one of our most viable Industries right and uh you know there's obviously different layers to it resource extraction is a huge component um whether it be illicit and like uh you know uh uh not on the books resource extraction or control like you know opium fields that uh that are being controlled or protected by the Marines that have no clue what they're doing there in Afghanistan uh even though that those opiates inevitably make their way not into America mind you we have fentanyl that's coming from China that's different or uh any kind of other uh natural minerals natural resources or even uh even maintaining a country's economic status so that you can take advantage of the labor force at a much much uh you know at a much lower you think America does that oh absolutely I think I think the entirety of the West does that and I do believe that they they do it fairly deliberately I feel like it's I've always kind of in the back of my mind thought about it if you're giving jobs to these third world countries right like the little like not like the sewing jobs and stuff like that like creating materials and stuff the sweatshops I wonder if that I always wondered if that was a ploy to keep them because it's such low paying jobs it's just enough to get by and survive to like make sure that they still stay at the end of the crack of the Whip or something that's that's most jobs I feel like most jobs to pay like 50 to 70k a year I think it's good enough to keep someone under submission like yeah oh yes I would say most jobs keep you just at the neutral point where you don't want to leave but it's good enough where you want to stay that's where I feel like most okay so you don't want to you don't want to recognize that you're you're being bagged into a corner so much so that you're both hungry and angry because inevitably you'll bite back right if you are relatively comfortable through uh you know a ton a metric ton of Commodities that you can consume a cheap cheap consumer goods for the most part um you'll you'll forget that the cost of Health Care is skyrocketed the cost of college education which is like one of the most significant at as it stands one of the most significant ways of upward social Mobility which is not even that good anymore right but the prices have still increased the cost of housing is is has dramatically increased um but hey we get really cheap TVs what I wondered like like how do you solve that problem because if you just abandon ship and you take all those businesses that we're using this resources over there then they don't have jobs at all and do you think that they would have to fend for themselves and then create something better like internally or do you think that it's upon their government to to do something for them I think China is a pretty good example of like what has been done um with respect to taking in foreign capital and then spreading it out as best as possible and like immediately developing uh a lot of the underdeveloped parts I mean if you look to like the past 30 years of Chinese development and you look at the current Chinese economy in comparison to where it was before foreign Capital started flooding in uh and and you know before they started taking advantage of their manufacturing power and also you know ripping the IP as as uh aggressively as they could perfectly openly by the way and and our Capital owners also like the business owners here know that right it's not a secret but they still want the cheap manufacturing so they just were like yeah whatever who cares um but I think their development has been pretty solid as a consequence of that it's about how evenly you distribute the resources once you start getting in a load of foreign Capital do you trust their numbers though because I've I've heard quite a bit that they could manufacture their own profits and and a lot of the buildings they've built or built on you know invisible money that was just basically taken from the people who invest and Builders use it and employ you know plow it into the next development and I mean I see it I look at their railroads I look at high speed rail like if you pull up a map of like High-Speed Rail in China from 2000 to now yeah in comparison to you know High-Speed Rail In America which is not existing I think that that's like pretty even development in a country there is the we were looking at like ghost cities yesterday yeah because people immediately are like what about the ghost cities I think that was a combination of like make work which I do think is uh something that every good government should do make work like busy work construction being one of those uh ways of doing that and and uh thinking that the the population was going to grow more than it actually did and uh you know this happens and not only centrally planned economies but it happens in America as well um not to the same degree but a lot of those ghost cities are now actually becoming more and more populated because uh because those there is need for a developed City like people want to move to a place where you know if if they move certain things around and that is an advantage that centrally planned economies have if you move certain things around you can move people there as well people want to go to a place where they can get better educational opportunities for example so that's what they do they'll be like all right we're gonna put some really good schools here so then people start moving into what was before a ghost City so I think that there's a lot of confusion and a lot of chaos uh about what gets talked about with respect to China um I mean there are obviously awful things that the Chinese government has done just like any other government has you know make no mistake I'm not avoiding those realities um but I think overall they have developed incredibly well especially if you look to where they were 20 30 years ago or where they were 100 years ago I mean it's it's insane and you know this is not just my analysis of the situation if you look to like uh I don't know the World Trade Organization whenever someone says capitalism has been profoundly good in like eviscerating Global poverty extreme poverty at the global level they're pretty much just talking about China like the Chinese numbers really really Skyrocket that that performance if you leave China out of the equation um and obviously I'm not like um the World Trade Organization and I have you know or these institutions have a profoundly different world view than I do right but even they recognize that they just say it's because the capitalism I say it's because of resource allocation like a more equitable distribution of resources my biggest issue is that we have no way of verifying what China says is true and that's my biggest concern have you ever been to China never I haven't either I really want to go I just look at to tier one cities sure and think that like Shenzhen as far as I've seen from people that have traveled as far as I read on on the matter from again Western Outlets ultimately right which uh usually will have a bias that is I would say anti-china because they see it as like in contention to American uh you know American power Western power right um even they recognize the development so you know I I feel like I feel like it's definitely there yeah let's get back on to that after we finish the story because we left off of you being like 18 or so in college you end up transferring to Rutgers what happened there and then how did you get to where you are today from that I graduated from college can't get a job obviously I graduated with honors actually uh poli-sci degree what was that what changed between Miami and Rutgers I just realized like I have to you know have to work hard together yeah okay was there a pivotal moment that happened for you that was like your wake-up call or was it just gradual over time no it was just gradual okay because like I think um American school is like fairly easy in comparison to you know what I had to learn in school in Turkey so I was just like really phoning it in so I decided not to phone it as much you know what I mean sure so that's that's pretty much it and when you're a freshman you don't really know what you're gonna do so you have to take a lot of like you know Common Core style classes and those foundational classes are often like very difficult especially if it's not something that you're truly interested in whereas Poli SCI was something I was interested in so it was a lot easier for me yeah like it came naturally it was the job you wanted to get so you must have graduated what 2014 or 15. 2013 2013. the job I wanted to get originally was this is funny a consultant in one of the big four firms really so originally I was like this is I you know I have a poli-sci background I could probably go to like you know PWC McKenzie one of those companies you know what I mean that's what I was like trying to get hired by but of course that's all like wheeling and dealing who you know and I did not know anybody so they've just I don't even think anyone even looked at my resume right could it be GPA too do you have a good grade yeah like I said I graduated with honors three seven five got it so you know that's like been pretty solid yeah I would say um and my dad was like you have to go to like law school or gonna MBA or something right okay and I was not really necessarily interested in that so I was just like yeah sure I'll study for a law I still I'll study for my lsats in California Los Angeles at the time uh you guys probably know this but if you don't my uncle has a YouTube channel called The Young Turks it was like a 26 person shop it was like a you know tiny operation not that big not that media Behemoth or anything um so I was like yeah I'll just go work with him do an internship with him and I'll live in LA and I'll study for the lsats with I had no interest in studying for the lsats yeah or going to law school um so yeah I started working there and then I was like yeah maybe I should just like work with him instead and at first it was really awful because I had no money and The Young Turks didn't have any money either so they were like yeah we wanna we wanna do uh Biz Dev we want to do like we want you to fill the role of someone who would be doing like our direct advertisement sales in-house rather than uh rather than someone who rather than having Google do it right like bringing in sponsorships every now and then rather than you know relying on YouTube we want someone to do it internally so I basically set up our in-house advertisement sales and operations a lot of cold calling a lot of learning I didn't know anything about it I just knew the industry a little bit but that's how I got my start of The Young Turks was it like commission based or was it salary it was supposed to be like uh commission based but you know when you put a 22 year old in a job like that in a position like that and it's commission based and the product that you're like trying to sell is kind of hard to sell because it's like political commentary political news and you're going for a lot of like Dr campaigns right or where uh you know with that's what you're trying to sell to well I I had to yeah I had to get like I brought in like Squarespace Crunchyroll things like that and and through through like uh you know they weren't necessarily tier one uh uh you know ad companies I would say they weren't like tier one marketing companies like I would meet up with them like OMD all these like big Brands you know I think it was Ogilvy was another one I can't even remember now but you know I was cold calling a lot I was developing relationships with these people while also simultaneously on the back end like trying to create a system like trying to create the structure so we can like actually deliver these ads all this stuff um and I brought in a bunch of I brought in a bunch of campaign chains but they were all like you know CTR uh CTR based like that was the that was the performance that they wanted and it's just like the shittiest type of ads I'm sure you guys have them too still to this day um I wanted to do like native advertising I thought that would be cool but at the time you know people weren't really uh willing to take a bet I think we were too ahead of the game in that respect and uh brought that stuff in but it was so awful I mean I hated sales what did you not like about it I just it sucks man come on you I'm sure you guys have done sales in some yeah I loved it yeah I hated it it's just like I I don't wanna I don't want to be friends with these people you know what I mean I just like I feel like you have to be a sociopath a little bit to be like really good at it no no no no no it was an agent I was a real estate agent for 10 years so that's how I got started sales before that though it wasn't really sales but kind of I worked at a marine aquarium wholesaler so we would sell fish and coral and it wasn't really like a sales I didn't have to pitch anybody but someone would call in and ask about something and I would describe it to him over the phone like I didn't get commissions no inbound requests I was all I was all out that's gonna make it obviously less so I mean I was doing the same thing I was calling up people from open houses who would sign in and talk to them but I felt like sales provides a service where if they're looking for something if you could help them Finance something you're doing them a service so it's very much a customer service based industry one other thing I did while all of that was going on was I always wanted to be on camera but I was dog like I was so bad at it right I was not good I don't think anyone is really that good I love talking but I was very nervous on camera at first like when the when the camera light was on it was a different person almost I couldn't let my personality out but at that point I'd realized that like repetition and hard work for someone like myself um I was able to achieve a lot of the things as long as I just like Boulder through it you know push push through it doesn't matter if I suck at first who gives a it's embarrassing but it doesn't matter um so I would present myself as a fill and host because I looked at all these other hoes and it's a YouTube show you know these guys don't know anything more than I do they're just you know they're a little bit more charismatic sure they have more experience on camera I don't think they're bringing anything particularly new to the table it's a YouTube show you know and I was like I could do that I want to do that so I would say if someone needs a fill I'll do it last second doesn't matter don't care what the subject matter is I'll read on it I'll speak on it I'll do it so that's how I started doing um and so I started doing more um you know on-camera appearances at first was that uh like a teleprompter or would they give you topping you'd have to research that and speak on it yeah yeah no teleprompter at this point okay and then I uh was was living with one of The Producers at the time um for one of the one of the media properties there uh on the entertainment side and I pitched him the idea The Young Turks at this point had no teleprompter shows I pitched him the idea of doing a teleprompter show they had a studio that was basically just like a Supply Closet I was like I'm gonna put a green screen in here and I'm gonna do a show out of this uh I'm I'm gonna give you like a free show you know I'm just doing extra work right and you know it took a lot of convincing But ultimately he was like sure whatever I mean we lived together yeah it's uh you know I'm greasing his wheels that way I guess I'm gonna call it the breakdown and everyone's like oh versus gonna be a drain on our resources 30 million views every week it was monetized at that point was it no oh so this is but it's it's so much reach for you guys yes wow so you know it became this thing that was insanely popular Facebook was skyrocketing like our Facebook growth was insane tremendous who is the audience at that point who the audience was I don't really know what the demographics were but I I would say they're still 18 to 35 okay you know like the key Target demo I probably was a little bit younger like Facebook at that point was like more popular I would say than it is now with younger demographics this is when people were like moving away they had Snapchat as an alternative but like there wasn't that many viable Alternatives right um and it was it was just doing tremendously well I was doing these things where I would just do like a back and forth with Tommy Lauren do you guys remember who that is so we never collaborated but she would make a video and I would piece by piece go through her video and just like dunk on everything she was saying it was I think like this wasn't as popular as it is now as everyone does it now right everyone does it on Tick Tock everyone does it on YouTube but at the time it was like kind of unique especially to the political sphere and it was still scripted it was still teleprompted and I had like all these assets that I would bring in um and it and it was really it was for a brief moment I think I captured the attention of like a massive group of people but it was still under the tyt umbrella I did not have any ownership of this IP I did not have anything what's like I have no control over it you know what I mean and I would constantly say give me more funds so I could hire a writer give me more fun so I can like beef up this process um and instead of doing that what a tyt do they said no we're just gonna take the breakdown your baby your child this thing that you've made and we're gonna make all the other hosts do it as well which will dilute the the brand and what my vision for it was uh so now you have to train everyone just like you've trained your editors to be able to do this kind of content and you have to also help them you know make the show because my job isn't making a show my job at that point is building our Facebook operations right like growing our Facebook operations I hated that that was when I realized like fully that I just have no control over my life whatsoever this is a reality that many people face and unfortunately can't really Escape because you know they can't become entrepreneurs because that is a you know massive massive risk it was one that I was able to do um eventually I by January 2020 uh before that I I went part-time with The Young Turks because uh I I wanted my own thing actually I'm getting ahead of myself here a little bit I'm jumping um what ended up happening is I realized I needed my own thing after that when they did that I I needed to no longer be in the shadow of The Young Turks no longer being the shadow of my uncle because no matter what I did everyone was like nepotism that's the reason why you're successful nepotism that's the reason why you're Facebook you know shit's popping off nebotism it's like well he's not doing Facebook videos like what do you mean he literally can't like you know um so I was always like trying to move the audience from tyt properties to something that I own like you know my Instagram yeah they were not too fond of that at first they didn't give a but then they realized like oh this guy's like kind of using our Network to like build his own brand I don't like it um then I started twitch because I was very bad off the cuff I wanted a place where I could go to every day build a community around it I wanted something that was mine and I wanted to be able to start speaking off the cuff what better way to learn how to speak off the cuff than speak off the cuff for eight hours a day to an audience even you know have a back and forth and I also was a gamer already and I saw the gaming space as one that was like actually very diverse and had a lot of like Progressive opinions but unfortunately if you looked at like the gaming adjacent content creators none of them were really openly leftists or anything like that they were all actually very right-wing you had the you had a lot of like actually far right content creators even that were doing like commentary and essays so we're you know gamergate had happened and everyone was talking about like you know how video games are political and and that meant like there was like a black woman in the video game you know what I mean Not Call of Duty though Call of Duty was not considered political um so it was a lot of commentary like that which is why I was like no there's there's uh there's definitely demand for this um my kind of politics with my understanding of memes internet culture all that sort of stuff and twitch was the best place to go to do that because it was a video game platform so that's when I made the move to start doing my twitch which was very tiny at the time wasn't anything and I started building it up slowly but surely and by the time 2019 came around it was at least like respectable you know what I mean I was I was reaching like sometimes 5 000 concurrent videos oh wow that's high more than respectable yeah that's really good I mean well in comparison to where I'm at now it was at the time it was like not that big right um how are people finding you at that point was it just twitch was pushing you to the top because people no a big part of it was networking there were content creators that I collaborated with um that I I basically would do content with it was a mutually beneficial situation train wrecks TV was one of them that does like debates or what did with hosts like this podcast that was live I would go on that all the time there was another show uh by a friend of mine who I now do a podcast with called uh well at the time I've had a different name his name is Austin show um he had like these massive uh debates for that that you know basically everyone on the platform would be watching at the time it was like 35k live concurrent viewership which was like you're maxing out at that point right for any kind of like non-fort night you know non-gaming uh content and um that's pretty much how I how I uh grew up uh my my uh platform there was another content creator who no longer friends with but Destiny who's who I collaborated with a lot as well yeah early on so how often were you working at the YouTube channel and doing twitch how did you balance the two I it was probably 2019 was probably the worst there was no balance no time for friends no time for relationships no time for family I would wake up at around 5 30 in the morning start reading and writing my script I'll go into the studio shoot the video I have all the assets prepared would drive back home after 2 2 p.m it was like usually you know it was 6 37 to 2 p.m is what my working time frame was for The Young Turks um but then I was still on call you know what I mean it wasn't like I was done right I I would have to upload the video myself to Facebook that was my job as well I would have to do the SEO for it thumbnails all that sort of stuff make the thumbnails make the SEO um and I would drive back home take my dog to the dog park make my first meal of the day basically cook it as quickly as I could go work out at the gym and while I'm doing all of that uh by the time you know it was like 5 p.m at this point basically you know the video would be ready to publish publish the video go live on Twitch and then from like 5 PM 6 p.m till like 11 p.m I was live streaming on Twitch as many hours as I could what was the motivation for doing that was it to build Twitch up enough that you could leave the motivation was so that well one I uh the motivation was that I I wanted a place that I could like go back to like a a community you know what I mean um another motivation for me was just like you know have some Independence outside of The Young Turks like a brand uh of my own you know something that people can point to and say that's Hassan that's a song not at the Young Turks like individually that's fair so that was my most uh you know those were the the primary motivators and also be able to learn how to speak how much were you making at the time between working like what seems to be 16 hour days like every single day before I left uit I think my salary was around like 65 Grand sure which you know for La standers is not great um and on top of that it was like whatever I was making on Twitch I think I said I would go independent like I started thinking or teasing out like possibly going independent um was it five thousand subs or ten thousand Subs I can't remember which you know after the twitch pay cut is a lot of money is like another additional on top of that like around what is it like 20 grand 25 Grand um something like that um so you know that was that was I thought enough uh for me to withstand the the possibility of like losing health care and everything else which was something that I had to you know struggle with it was something that I was genuinely fearful of yeah something that a lot of people have to think about if they have to make that jump on their own so that's uh that's how that worked out for me so when did you make the jump full-time to Twitch August 21st 2019 comes around yeah and I say something that in a heated gaming moment that uh I still stand by in principle and also like uh you know as long as I elaborate what it what the intention behind what I said was said America deserve 9 11. oh I've yeah I've seen that clip everyone's seen that clip at this point I mean that went on Fox News I remember being terrified like uh it immediately keemstar elevated it then like I mean people clipped it out keemstar escalated it it just elevated it put it out there you know broad daylight and in that in a span of 24 hours it was on Fox News it made it to Tucker Carlson it made it to Laura Ingram Laura Ingram was calling Dan Crenshaw in to like respond to it because I also said some stuff about Dan Crenshaw as well and I remember thinking like I'm so I'm I'm killed I'm gonna be murdered well I you know I I'd been getting death threats at that point pretty regularly but like it was on Fox News Now how many people were watching you when you said that live I don't remember but it wasn't that big it just like doesn't matter once it's out there it's like yeah it doesn't matter once once you that's how this works you know it doesn't matter you you got 2 000 people let's say watching or five thousand people let's say watching and then it gets in front of a much larger audience of people that are like oh this guy he's Muslim socialist guy he's saying America deserve 911 he like loves Al Qaeda you know what I mean which wasn't my point at all it was actually the opposite but that made its way to Fox News and I remember thinking oh if Fox and it's if Fox and Friends covers this in the morning I know Donald Trump watches Fox and Friends if Fox and Friends covers this in the morning I'm screwed because Donald Trump might tweet about it and if he does that I'm dead like they're gonna murder me like there's no way I survived that right um and it was probably one of the worst uh weeks months of my life it's something that you know people still bring all the time but I didn't really give a uh but uh at the time I was still look at tyt guy and so people were setting death threats to like everyone at The Young Turks like literally everyone down to like the key grip you know what I mean like they found anyone and everyone that works at the Young Turks and would like docs them and say that they're gonna come murder them um that's when I realized like you know maybe I should uh do this on my own like I don't want other people to be suffering the consequences of my stupid mouth and not being able to like fully uh elaborate on on things or not get clip chimped really what were you trying to get across when you said that comment you know the 20th year uh the 20th anniversary of 9 11 really uh was an interesting moment for me because everything that I've said at that on that broadcast basically uh things that I already knew was reinforced through every documentary that came out in that in that time frame talking about our uh arming and radicalizing of the mujahideen uh in the lead-up to the civil war in Afghanistan and the US is our invasion of Afghanistan and how much the CIA very openly uh elevated these these otherwise like random groups of militants into a viable and robust anti-soviet uh violent Force they did it through uh you know Islamic fundamentalism that they instilled upon uh people then legitimized um and then some of those groups became the Taliban right they started infighting some of those groups again the Taliban and America was directly involved in this and very openly um even before uh Ronald Reagan famously brought them to the White House and said they reminded the mujahideen reminded him of the founding fathers um so that's what I was talking about because it was in response to what Dan Crenshaw was saying about how you know 9 11 happened because they hate us like they hate us because they hate us that's it and it was uh it was very frustrating for me to see like a dude who went served overseas got his eye blown out right to to come back and just like keep reinforcing that same cycle of violence uh and even using his like veteran status as a way to just like send more men and women overseas to get their blown off for no reason you know what I mean so you're saying they have a reason to dislike us but not deserving to happen to innocent people yes I never I never meant that obviously like the 3 000 people that died on 9 11 deserve to die that's ridiculous I was simply talking about America's uh chickens coming home to roost you know what I mean this is a this in at least in academic circles or even in most circumstances this is something that like every American kind of understands and and recognizes you know what I mean like we constantly their up over there eventually some of those guys are going to come back and like you know do do a little bit of whiplash like come back and and strike back right um that was the point many such examples it's a concept called blowback um and uh and I think the the uh the way that the media actually started covering in the 20th anniversary of of 9 11 and the Afghan Invasion reflected all of the talking points that I was making at the time which is why I had a lot of people actually come back and be like listen I misunderstood what you were saying at the time but I totally get it now did that not make you really concerned about what you say when you go live and how things could be taken out of con did you change the way that you would speak after that to be more careful or considerate of like you have to be very literal in what you say because things will be taken out of context absolutely I uh I call it Twitter speak there's a way that people speak if they're on Twitter all the time where they want to make sure that nothing that they say can be uh you know intentionally misconstrued um and if you ever use like any kind of spicy language or if you embellish it all if you exaggerate like people will weaponize that against you they'll use it against you um it's it's certainly something that I uh I I have have cared about a lot more yeah like I take into consideration a lot more now I'm also curious did any of that online hate translate in person I mean I don't usually talk about that because you know I don't want to I don't want to give any power to it but it's just uh you know it is what it is okay it happens got it but uh no for the most part uh out in public when I meet people uh no it's a overwhelmingly positive experience it's always just like you know people that work at the restaurants I go to or you know people that are uh Union activists and leaders that are you know saying look I love your I love your show uh you gave me the confidence to go out and and you know fight for my rights in the workplace things of that nature it's it's usually it's overwhelmingly positive yeah and what was the outcome of like your next live stream after that comment well they got banned you got banned for a week yes because you know obviously when when you know when when something that you say uh on a live stream becomes a matter of national news especially in a negative way you're probably gonna get banned which immediately took action got banned for a week um and then I uh you know I came back and when you get banned and you come back a lot of there's always like a big boost a lot of people pay attention to that so this is something I actually wanted to get your opinion on universal basic income what are your thoughts on that um because that would give a lot of people that autonomy to be able to be their own boss to a certain extent and to pursue other creative Ventures Ubi is actually a very good idea but it can be a very bad idea as well what do I mean by that Ubi is uh the problem with Ubi is that if it's used as a way to further the social safety nets the existing social safety nets that are already in a state of disarray then it's not good just a cash injection with no that that basically eats away at like EBT SNAP credits and and you know Social Security and whatnot would be devastating because I feel like that would open up the avenue to further privatize these uh institutions that the government is supposed to be controlling so that is something that I'm very fearful of but as a concept of Ubi on top of that was supplementary great um let me ask you this do you feel like a person would be able to better manage money like that than the government would like let's just say hypothetically you do get rid of all the other social services but in its place you go right to the person you say you get twenty two hundred dollars a month or two thousand dollars a month no you don't feel like a person would benefit absolutely some people might but no I'm of the mindset that people are not very smart and as a whole and when we're when we think about every single person I'm a dumbass okay I don't want to manage all of that stuff someone should manage all of that stuff and I think that leaving it up to a a governing body is always going to be especially I mean even though it's like devastatingly crippled awful uh for the most part it's not significant enough I still think that uh having it be regulated uh through a a body that is still somewhat accountable through the Democratic processes is the is the right thing to do in theory in practice obviously our institutions are are purposely crippled undermined underfunded um and uh left to starve and die out so that you can privatize it basically but I am I am uh I'm a firm believer that you know having that uh having that safety net is is really really important there are plenty of examples of this being super successful I mean every Nordic country that you look to social democracies that you look to in Europe there are you know very different ways of doing things but ultimately the the principle behind it is still the same socialization is is a a necessity I would say and yeah what things do you think should be socialized I think healthcare is one of one of the items that you mentioned I don't know what I'm about to say and I know what you're about to say yeah but you know if we could talk more time to talk about it yeah so uh yeah I think I mean I things that have inelastic demand Necessities for survival should certainly have at least like uh comfortable bottom that the government should provide what do I mean by this I I'm not saying that we should like completely eradicate the private sector in all aspects of our development or all all aspects of commodity develop you know commodity production um well maybe in the future that could be something that we could do not in the short term of course um but Healthcare certainly should be nationalized but you can't nationalize Healthcare without also having free college because you don't want doctors to get you know into five hundred thousand dollars in debt and then go work at a you know go work at a public facility for pennies on the dollar and and not be able to even pay that debt back um plenty of countries have recognized this and that's the reason why they also offer free education uh even America has kind of been forced to recognize this reality uh and you know you see schools like NYU and and New York schools like New York colleges trying to create a scholarship process so that you know doctors can get educated for free or at least like have heavily subsidized education um I also think you know what I want to say housing should be uh decommodified what do I mean by that I think we all agree that housing should I mean housing is a necessity for survival for that reason I believe that um housing is a mechanism for for capital accumulation has really uh perverted our understanding of Housing and has created glaringly obvious uh problems in America but especially in a place like California where uh what is it 43.7 or 43.7 uh people for every like hundred thousand people is is homeless here it's like an insane number I don't want to mess the numbers up yeah but we are number one my understanding with homeless though is that a lot of people come to California specifically because of the weather and because of some of the social services that are offered here part of me believes homelessness is not necessarily a California problem but it's a Country-Wide problem someone could be homeless in let's say Nevada and they get a one-way ticket to California and that's Nevada's Solution by the way to homelessness oh 100 yeah that was California's delusion to homelessness was the ship them to Hawaii back in the day yeah another state a lot of homelessness I feel like it's it's California's bearing a lot of the burden of a nationwide crisis of homelessness that it's not just because California real estate's expensive but it's also because the weather and I think the location really support people who have no other place to live but on the street because of the weather there is some truth to the way that like Texas or red States deal with homelessness is a problem what you're what you're mentioning there's truth to that but ultimately um there are countries that have been able to eviscerate homelessness without shipping them to other places you know what I mean uh countries that do a much better job uh of tackling the issue through policy uh then then we do here in California and it's not like they're killing their homeless people like they're housing them yeah uh and the reality is that uh you know public housing as or or even like uh like decoupling housing from uh the profit motive is is 100 a necessity to solve uh homelessness because other than the people that are being shipped to California let's say the reason why we have so many homeless people here is because and I work with a lot of uh you know people that do activism in this field that work with homeless people uh in general um it's it's the number one factor is that they get priced out of the housing market so I call this the different tiers of homelessness because the most public-facing side of homelessness is oftentimes the the uh the person that you see on the street that has like leathery skin at this point from being under the Sun from sun damage sun exposure for many many years who clearly is not mentally well right um that is the last tier of homelessness that is the the uh type of homelessness that like this person is going to be profoundly hard to recover and profoundly hard to reintegrate into society and and needs a lot of work um that number is growing in California as well but there is an invisible side of homelessness that a lot of people don't even recognize that actually makes up the largest percentage of homeless people the invisible homelessness comes from people who are housing insecure people who are couch surfing people who are living in their cars but still keep up appearances have a job people that don't have access to like uh you know don't have immediate access to like running water right but can still figure it out by like going to the gym and like having a gym membership living in their car but then you know cleaning themselves up before a job interview or you know before going into work that is the first stage of homelessness that's the most common version of homelessness that is the most recoverable form of homelessness and that is almost entirely due to you know obviously market conditions as well like you know the job sector layoffs things of that nature but the most common reason for that homelessness to exist the largest pocket is that they get priced out of the housing market they uh have a job but they their commute expands dramatically let's say um and that actually makes it more costly for them when they live like you know uh 40 50 minutes away ruins the quality of life but let's say we don't even care about that at this point um they they're forced to move somewhere far away and they can't keep the jobs that they originally had the job still exists but it's much much much more difficult to uh you know go to it now a lot of people have a hard time keeping jobs like that they get fired um all of a sudden you know you you no longer have access to you know clean water you have your car uh you're having a hard time you're being harassed by cops regularly because you can't park everywhere you know what I mean you're you're being called a vagrant whatever then you move into tier two homelessness which is also another massive pocket where it becomes permanent like your condition basically becomes permanent now one thing that I always like to stress is that you know even bears and animals in the wild need shelter for survival you need a cave right you need something to burrow inside of you don't just like Brave the elements and as humans I I feel like we're all you know I don't know if you guys are vegans or not but like we're all a little bit specious right we think humans are the apex predator we think we're a little bit better off than like you know monkeys and and the like we are um when you are shut off from having access to shelter with no recourse with no way of like recovering that over an extended period of time that is an insanely traumatic experience you start developing PTSD there's a lot of crime that goes on in homeless communities as well uh there's back and forth assault rape uh and the like and then um you also don't have access to health care obviously so you start both self-medicating in some ways and also simultaneously trying to make money start selling drugs start taking the drugs you start selling the drugs and that completely built like paired up with the trauma of not having shelter and not having any job opportunities pushes you into the last the final stage of homelessness where you see like a lot of mental illness a lot of drug abuse and even more assaults and even more uh you know rape and horrific things that people have to go through yeah I've definitely seen a very extreme side of things growing up and living in West L.A um up until really 2020 where most of the people that I would see visually I think had a mental illness were severely addicted to drugs and I think there's no resources out there that address those and there was a property that I was considering purchasing that was right by Venice Beach and it was down the street from the new homeless shelter that was there that was the one that everyone was upset about because it was in the middle of Venice and I think the average cost was like 500 000 a room people said why do they need to be right in the middle of event at such a high cost and the benefit would be if you sold that to a developer the money that that person would bring into the community could more than pay for so much more shelter why is it here but I remember following up on that because I knew it was such a big deal for that community and throughout a lot of the process it was never more than I believe 60 occupied because they enforced a dry policy that you could not uh bring in drugs alcohol be drunk um you're nailing it this is this is you're absolutely correct but I've also seen a side of it where people just did not want to assimilate back into a community that they felt more free I'm not saying this is everyone but they felt more free not you know participating in society and having that uh Freedom really to to do it what you're describing is is actually 100 correct homeless shelters are actually more violent spaces for a lot of homeless people than than the opposite you would think like what the that's a shelter that's like so much better it's not it's actually where the where a lot of the assaults and a lot of the robberies are committed um and on top of that uh if you have items that you care about or even like a dog for example you can't bring your dog and you can't you have to go cold turkey if you're on drugs um if you have any sort of like abuse and substance issues you have to go Cold Turkey um so a lot of people choose not to do that and while we all probably looked at that and go oh off you don't have any rights you know why go to the shelter and fix yourself up the reality is that that is actually as far as like a compassionate and more ethical approach to homelessness the the reality is that this is why a lot of people advocate for housing first homelessness policies where um where where people have some semblance of autonomy still to to begin the healing process the mental health and and the you know substance abuse therapy process um uh that that is a more permanent and also a more secure way to deal with this uh with this issue but that's on the tackling the the existing homelessness part what I was talking about with respect to housing is usually tackling it on the other side because there's two sides of this rope you gotta you gotta shut off this part and you got to shut off this part this part is being caused by uh you know this part is being caused by uh a a lack of access to like affordable housing and being priced out of the housing market this part is just way more complicated you have to actually convince uh people to to go into housing even if you offer permanent shelter sometimes almost people don't want it they don't trust it and they're scared and and you know there is a there is a mechanism of enforcement that you need to engage with there but I mean that requires hiring a load of social workers and and uh you know genuinely trying to tackle this issue instead of just kind of you know playing uh chicken with uh with the homeless encampments and just like pushing them one street over and then being like Oh we solved the problem you know what I mean like look I mean that's certainly something but where should that be for homeless should that be in the Pacific Palisade should that be Beverly Hills what's to say it shouldn't be in Santa Monica but it's okay in Riverside I think that it should be wherever homeless people are I think that um as far as like it's not even shelters uh housing first policies should exist in in most communities I uh I think that it would genuinely in the long term benefit those communities because then you just don't have homeless people in the countries let's say suffocating yeah let's say Santa Monica would be a prime example of that yeah it brings in a lot of business a lot of Technology a lot of really wealthy people if you were to put a community of homeless people in the middle of that and say this is where they are and therefore that's where we should build for homeless it would drive out a lot of the people because they would feel less safe um they wouldn't want to do business there and I feel like property taxes housing I'd probably make the housing market a little bit better in Santa Monica well the issue well then you get property values going down you get less Commerce in Santa Monica the area slowly generates and I feel like then that would continue to spread so like overall the benefit would be lower than if you say we're going to put money into mental health into drug addiction it doesn't need to be in the middle of the city but it could exist over here where land is more affordable and our uh our opportunity cost is lower if that makes sense well the way I see it as someone you know who owns a house in West Hollywood as someone who uh lived in these neighborhoods that you speak of as well I lived in Brentwood before uh in in you know more affordable apartments which was awful so expensive yeah but still incredibly expensive with many many roommates um I think that the option is do you want homeless people to keep moving around and on the streets or do you want them to in the toilet with a roof over their head and I think like if that is the alternative and what you bring up with Venice is actually a good idea because I mean a not a perfect solution because ultimately that didn't eradicate homelessness in Venice right um but uh with with some genuine changes into the way that like the shelter's process works with like hopes for permanent shelter Solutions yeah which currently are non-existent I think that uh it doesn't matter where you put these these places like it doesn't matter where you have um you know rehab facilities for example because like think about it this way property in Malibu is so expensive right well you know what Malibu has a on a rehab facilities does that change the property value no why because the people that are going to those rehab facilities are rich people they're the rich people rehab facilities so they also aren't necessarily the ones defecating on the street and I feel like the defecating on the street usually is an indicator of severe mental illness to the point where they cannot function on their own without assistance and those would not be the people who could voluntarily go and like I'm gonna also that's not entirely correct either not 100 but I would say because in a lot we don't have public bathrooms you know what I mean where the is he supposed to right yeah you're talking about the extremes where you know I used to work in West Hollywood and I would see people out front on Sunset Plaza pulling their pants down in front of traffic and just yeah um yeah people are are severely and and like genuinely cripplingly mentally ill due to the circumstances that I described um and those people need help and part of that help comes from again like not directly institutionalizing those people but some level of institutionalization in a a significantly more empathetic and significantly more compassionate and more ethical ways I would agree with that and and I think that this is something that like everyone kind of agrees on yeah but there's a very uh you know it's a very shitty part of this conversation that uh we will never agree on which is the unfortunate reality that like housing prices might need to be devalued a little bit in the process of like building or or um not completely abolishing zoning restrictions in its entirety but at least like allowing for uh or or allowing for certain types of housing to be developed in communities California has a 55 home ownership rate homeowners are very powerful as an as an entity here in this in the state they don't want any housing they don't want any housing no I agree with you on that that's something that I've said is that the building process in Los Angeles specifically is so terrible it is so bad I made a video on this years ago about the process it takes to build a multi-family building here in LA the amount of open space that you need to account for the amount of parking parking is a huge one even if you're close to nearby Transit you need a certain amount of parking spaces for the amount of bedrooms that you have per square foot in addition to Common space open area all of these things that make the cost so unbelievably High to build any sort of multi-family here in Los Angeles and so for a developer for it to even make Financial sense to break even they have to build luxury units that's the only thing that they could build otherwise there's no Financial pay would lose money on that yeah but also building adus is so difficult in Los Angeles and they came out with this program a few years ago saying I remember we're gonna accept most adus and I was really looking forward to this because I have a duplex and I'd love to turn the garage at that point into another unit two units and there was a proposal that would allow you to build five stories if you were within I think it was like a mile from a major intersection or half a mile from public transit and I was so looking forward to that because I could take that duplex and build five to six units and that would provide a lot more housing and everyone in my neighborhood would be able to do that but that failed because people didn't want and I kind of understand if if you're a house you don't want to be necessarily living next to five stories and have people look down in your backyard and lose that privacy and like I get that too but they make buildings so difficult here in L.A yeah um I I agree I think that they do that deliberately they do that for one because like uh you know a lot of people say their quality of life or the the character of the neighborhood will be eviscerated destroyed right um or uh they also don't want their housing prices to devalue either technically uh because now there's more housing availability you know what I mean or because they're next to a building all of a sudden and to that I say you know yeah there's going to be some there's going to be a little bit of struggle there but in the long term in the long run it will yield tremendous benefits in the form of not having people that have been homeless for five years six years that's taking a outside of your house or just like trying to break into your house breaking into your car like I've had I've had all of these things happen um it's a it's the cost of living in a big city it shouldn't have to be there are plenty of examples of cities that have been able to eradicate this problem not entirely but have done a much better uh you know have dealt with it much better like what cities um I am of course going to bring up if you are not familiar with this I'm surprised uh red Vienna uh Austria is the country we're talking about in Vienna 65 of uh all homes are actually public housing they are not-for-profit housing basically it's a it's it's a concept where the government offers many benefits to develop housing and then and then basically have the rent exist specifically to either further develop more public housing or to maintain the housing itself housing that is not created with the sole purpose of accumulating uh more value to the single soul owner or whatever corporation owns it but instead housing created uh by by basically taking away some of the barriers of developing this project that can only be done by the government like offering a lot for a dollar with the express purpose of like building cooperatively owned housing and then working with like Credit Unions to to basically get investment in like to get a loan from A bank uh only to have the existing property once it's you know completed and built uh and the rent in said existing property pay for the uh pay for the mortgage and the maintenance fees I've seen quite a few countries offer that of like a dollar but in a lot of those instances it's usually to promote people to move into a city that no one else wants to live in or that is declining in population they need more people in there and so they use that as a resort to say hey come here be no different than people like you know doing that in Riverside and saying like hey we want more people over here we want to be more of a hub uh but I think Los Angeles and a lot of California specifically um in in a higher priced neighborhoods they want to attract top talent and they want people like that to move here and innovate and they don't have a problem with declining population to that extent where they have to incentivize people and land is so expensive I don't think it should be a bypro Vancouver doesn't have a declining population uh but it's not it's not to incentivize more people to move in it's the basically uh uh it's used to basically do the the lightest form of government intervention you can do and utilize the same capitalistic system and the same structures without like completely undermining it to offer affordable housing is a low-cost alternative but because that system is not funded at all and has actually been uh you know disfavored by homeowners and and uh you know all of these people that are incentivized to consistently keep their housing prices up in places like Amsterdam uh the number of cooperatively owned uh non-profit housing units have declined and that's why even in a place like Amsterdam for example you see since the 2000s the cost of living Skyrocket and become a genuine problem so where do you draw the line between public housing and becoming a landlord I mean do you think like a property like this should be owned by the government and someone should have to pay way less because it's owned by the guy like should someone have the right to live in West Hollywood for instance yeah if I think that I think if if like I am not in the business of like completely eradicating private home ownership I am a private homeowner myself what I simply want to do is make it unaffordable for people to generate and accumulate capital from a home that they're not living inside of a home that they're basically renting out that's what it means to decommodify housing now that's a very long-term goal and obviously that's not going to be happening anytime soon in the United States of America so the solutions I present in the interim period in the short term is to literally just like eviscerate the problem that currently exists with homelessness so let's discuss this on an ethical level because I think that would be really fun because I know you two have very different opinions on the ethics of land ownership slash obviously being a landlord Graham has his own unique experiences because he's obviously a property owner like that and you probably have your own respective opinion let's hear what you have to say about that I mean I think that um I think that shutting off a necessary resource by you know by making it a profitable business a profitable Venture is like something that I'm entirely against if you want to still you know do that uh you know you could do commercial real estate which is up different because yeah but let's say it's a mom-and-pop business how is that any different from a household I feel like a like a a family is also a business they have to run a business just the same way as a mom and pop liquor store on the corner would have to run a business you're taking in money you have expenses you have to save a little bit for a rainy day yeah wouldn't that be the same thing no because you don't have to live inside of your your you don't have to live inside of your uh business in the same way a business can Thrive and survive even if the the barrier in that regard exists right a business can still uh get a bank loan to be able to pay for these sorts of things whereas like I think the similar process should not exist for home ownership wouldn't that be wouldn't getting a loan be the same thing as renting a house from a landlord because then you're owing money to someone else probably the government who you're going to be paying five to seven percent interest to yeah I mean in some respects absolutely well obviously we don't have like Soviet block style public housing in this country so I'm just simply saying that like in the short term these are the uh this is what I advocate for in the short term to like at least tackle some of the issues with availability of housing that creates homelessness from my perspective I see landlords as providing a service and and I'm trying not to like include the slumlords because there's certainly people that do the bare minimum like just basic above like the bare minimum living conditions to try to maximize profit but yeah talking about like a lot of landlords that I see the vast majority of your mom and pop they own three or fewer properties they a lot of times have owned properties from their parents they just turn into rentals they've they own up the house instead of selling it they'll choose to rent it out to someone else will they buy something else and then eventually rent that but from what I've seen and what what I've seen a lot of people do is that they'll buy a property that that no one else would consider and these would be properties that need a lot of work that maybe an owner users doesn't have the funds to fix up they don't have the time they don't have the interest someone else goes and fixes that up and rents it out to someone who doesn't want to own a home and there's a lot of people out there that renting is more beneficial than owning if they're only going to live there for a few years if they just want to test out an area home ownership is is is really burdensome as I'm sure you've seen with property taxes Insurance repairs so miscellaneous things right now it's cheaper to rent than it is to own throughout the majority of losses I think ultimately the sense of security that you get from having permanent shelter when you're a homeowner is is you know much much better overall than than having the fear of you know your landlord literally changing your rent just because they can because the market conditions are favorable to to do such a thing um and uh regardless of that though I mean like I said uh public housing does not necessarily have to mean permanent shelter in the sense that like you own the house that you're in um Singapore I think has a system similar to that as well where you're basically leasing it for the government right um and and you know these are places where they've been able to tackle this crisis head on before it even existed and it still works on a rental basis if you want the opportunity to rent a home you can absolutely do so um I guess the way I see the world is that um I wish for a future where people don't even need to be mom and pop landlords uh as a as a nest egg for survival that like they they like they don't need to even do that because a lot of those things are taken care of through social safety nets when you are no longer a productive laborer when you have retired but of course that is a load of other issues as well how would that play in though if you want a higher quality of living beyond that let's say let's say that you don't want that and you want to be able to make more money or work harder and get something nicer then go ahead I mean it's not I'm yeah what I'm talking about with respect to like full-blown decommodetized uh decommodifying housing is again so far out in the future that it's like unimaginable to talk about from today's standards of living and the way that we experience Society right now because there are other complications that uh that that exist there like for example housing is not the only issue uh part of the the problem that I mentioned is commutes and travel right one way to make traffic congestion uh infinitely more uh infinitely better and more livable in a place like California is public transit we're very spread out but unfortunately we also have made zero attempts to better our public transit system in this in the state in general and certainly not in Los Angeles um that is also a necessity walkability like making walkable cities and and making this City more walkable and simultaneously have better public transit options is an absolute necessity for low-income people to survive I would love to see micro Apartments I'm talking like 300 250 square foot that's what I would have loved when I was 20 21 years old you're working all day you're out and about you could live in the central part of wherever you want to live and that's all you need you need a bed a kitchen a TV bathroom 300 square feet I no I I don't think I don't think that's a solution I mean it's just like sure if you if you want to create an opportunity for like cheaper living that's fine that's great but like I don't even think when I say affordable housing when we talk about like again going back to Vienna 65 public homeowner like publicly owned housing availability those massive complexes that we're talking about are like Luxury Condominiums in comparison to what we have here as as available in the private Market um they have they have gyms they have pools they have uh some some sunlight coming in um and and you know a balcony that you can you know build like a some kind of Shrubbery on you know like just some some green um all of that stuff is is still very much a possibility even if it is decoupled from the profit motive and we can't even think about it like that we were immediately we're like well why not still have it be private and just be cheaper overall and you know take out some of the amenities I I don't want to do that I want to make sure that we build you know livable uh livable housing that people want to live in that is still kept at a low cost and and more affordable that's what I think can be done and it is done in other places uh and I think that it should be done in California it would literally make this state like the number one country to live in uh because you know we have a massive GDP where very powerful economy I think it's like what fourth fifth largest economy on the planet pretty much the fourth largest economy yeah where did the money go that's that's what I want to tell you where the money goes the money goes to you know Gavin Newsom and other people's like cousins and uncles that are like contractors and developers that uh take on and bid for these like uh viable contracts of like massive infrastructure projects that they have really no intention of uh fully seeing through it goes to our police force a gigantic chunk of it goes to our police force every time you drive over a pothole think like you know cops got a armored personnel carrier so you can't have this pothole fixed it's it's unimaginable even then part of me thinks that crime is escalating to a point where we need more police officers because it's so prevalent like I've seen you bring up a good point like first of all crime is not escalating technically that is even if you look at police numbers police data crime is actually decreasing but everywhere in the media they're like oh my God crime is so bad you would think that crime is worse in California than it is in like South Carolina no it's not South Carolina has a much higher rate for example of murders in New York can they decriminalize a lot of the things in California too no that's again a lot of this stuff is a lot of this stuff is portrayed in the media in a way to draw out hysteria towards it and then you see uh homeless people like defecating on the street and then you think oh my God the media is correct crime is skyrocketing homicides are up that's true um certainly the main component though is not our police budgets because police budgets have gone up year over year over year the Los Angeles Police Department spends eight million dollars a day just to operate eight million dollars a day and hey if you get your car broken into good luck you know you call them up they're like sorry nobody on the line you know but doesn't that promote in a way more crime because what I've seen again this is me personally have seen this firsthand but the level of crime out in the open I've never seen that before in my life as someone who worked like Beverly Hills West Hollywood I've never seen before someone in the broad daylight smashing a window but over the last two years I've seen and heard more stories firsthand about people in broad daylight being robbed for their watches walking down the street in a crowded space someone pulls up smashes a car window grabs it and everyone's just kind of standing there looking the police won't respond to it because it's not worth their time it's not yeah and also they're super lazy let's be real uh but um yeah there's there's no other sector where like that you there's no other sector in which people go oh yeah they they're just bad but we got to give them more money but part of me thinks it's just because there's it's so prevalent because it's not enforced because the the penalties are not as strict as they should be for that level of crime America houses the largest number of uh you know caged people not Free People prisoners on the planet we are four percent of the entire planet's uh population and yet we have 25 percent of the entire planet's prisoner population we have a very Draconian attitude towards Crime and Punishment and unfortunately in other countries where they have a much more understanding approach that focuses on rehabilitation they have better results of reintegration they have lower recidivism rates it is demonstrably failed our carceral state is an abject failure we've even profit we've even baked in the profit incentive into it in the form of private prisons which are just abhorrent by uh you know other other culture standards Norway literally has a non-extradition treaty for uh many crimes to the United States because they consider U.S prisons to be a a regularly violating human rights solitary confinement and even like regular uh prisons like regular jails like Rikers and whatnot uh should be shut down but are currently operating with like millions of people I mean not Millions but thousands of people that are uh that are going through that jail system without even a court date the we have we have basically proven time and time again that like these kinds of you know we're gonna tackle crime head-on by you know beating people's heads in uh not working is is just a failure in other places where they don't do that it's not a failure what is the main difference though it's because crime doesn't happen because people are bad people certainly there are still of course going to be perverts freaks whatever you know anti-social personality disorder uh related crimes but crime for the most part is a consequence of your material conditions that's why when there's more poverty like in a state like South Carolina there's more crime there's more violent crime and the unfortunate reality is that we rarely ever try to tackle the underpinnings of why crime happens and then we try to do this Patchwork solution of like more police enforcement which ironically then takes funds away from the ways to maybe even deal with why crime happens and you know when there's less funding for after school programs When there's less funding for Education When there's less funding for for uh you know any kind of affordable solutions to the housing crisis all of a sudden you have more people that are desperate you have more people that are just like willing to say it I'm crazy I'm just gonna go you know pass someone's head in and steal their watch or Rob them at at gunpoint that is a reality that has been consistent and has been endlessly pontificated on since ancient Greece the the relationship that crime has with poverty and yet for some reason we just like to turn a blind eye to it here in the United States and and refuse to implement actual solutions that would tackle it head on meanwhile there are examples even if they are not you know perfect even if they haven't completely eviscerated crime right um you know violent crime gun violence uh and and even you know um thefts grand larceny have are are comparably much much better like those rates are much much better in other countries where they have social safety nets why do you feel like and perhaps this is just me making assumptions that crime has gotten worse since kovid even during the times that stimulus checks and employment benefits were going out that's a great question um crime has historically uh gotten lower year over year up until 2019 and then in 2020 it actually diminished dramatically because of the things that you're mentioning and also on top of uh on top of that people were not able to travel as freely um so it literally just completely suppressed crime right a lot of economic factors were were uh helpful in tackling that aspect but then after uh the the stimulus checks ran out and after uh people were able to you know go back to their regular order of business go and and travel freely and and walk around it seemed like in comparison to 2020 in 2021 crime started skyrocketing well yes in comparison to 2020 yes the year after and the year and since then crime has gone up and now it's basically catching up to 2019 levels and maybe depending on homicide for example it's it's even higher than 2019 levels but other than that crime is still consistently lower year over year it just depends on what snapshot you're looking at but when you see a big boost like that in the numbers in comparison to the year prior and you have a media that is like very excited to you know ramp up the the hysteria and the and the you know uh if it bleeds it leads uh style attitudes they have when they when they keep pushing for this narrative and you have a police Union that uh sees a lot of scrutiny when you have police see a lot of scrutiny at the national level through you know police brutality becoming a more prominent uh conversation Point um what do you what are you supposed to do against that how do you counter against that narrative you say Well they're trying to defund us there has not been any significant defunding movement that has existed in any state any municipality across the United States of America they say the police have been defunded here in Los Angeles for example I'm a taxpayer here I'll probably pay for more Kev larves and more guns than many of your viewers and and maybe even some of them combined let's be real uh and and I can tell you with a certainty that police will have not been defunded in Los Angeles as a matter of fact they've gotten more funds in comparison to the year prior and the year prior to that as well um their overtime benefits of skyrocketed as well that's one way that like police actually make a lot of their money is overtime um and uh I think what ended up happening in order to like I guess uh satiate the masses that were asking for some level of accountability from the police are neoliberal administrators decided what do we do instead of giving them 200 million extra dollars this year we'll give them 150 million extra dollars this year we'll just shave a little bit off the top of what extra money that we were going to give to the police as a rate increase and then how do they make up for that of course they made up for that with covet funds which Joe Biden has uh openly stated can be used to pay overtime and the police force to continue funding the police don't they need more money because of rising costs in general whether that be for their families the cost of cars gasoline Kevlar the cost of everything has gone up so if they cut extra funds that is also in addition to their own cost probably going up by 20 well but they haven't really cut funds like that you know what I mean they they keep funding the police uh very thoroughly and and very handsomely at the opportunity cost of not funding other places that desperately needed significantly more than the police as a matter of fact like education like the roads and the like every single thing that you see that's why I always say every single thing that you see in California we're like how the is this still like how is the pothole still here you know what I mean that's crazy yeah like fix the potholes it's like yep can't because a lot of our funds are currently being used elsewhere um it's it's like a business everything is a business right what do you do when you're when you have a unlimited money supply okay year over year you're gonna find a way to spend it so you can keep asking for it and even ask for more everyone massages the numbers in that regard if you've ever worked for a corporation you know they do it all the time they want to make sure that you know their budgets look good they're going to always find a way to spend it yep there's never a moment where police go maybe we should do a little bit of belt tightening there's never austerity towards police yeah there's only austerity towards education year over year I feel like that's not a problem with the police that's just a problem the whole California system where if any company government funded says I don't spend this amount of money that I'm given I'm not going to get more the next year and I'm going to seem like a failure if I get 20 million dollar budget I need to spend the whole thing to be able to get that again and if I spend 15 well now I'm going to be limited to 15 the next year audit it have some have some number crunches in there go no not anymore we're not doing this I think we should do that I think that would be great yeah I am I'm in favor of implementing uh efficiency protocols and eliminating redundancy me too as as uh as vicious as like a Bain Capital guy or you know a a McKinsey consultant when it comes to uh something that is as expansive and not yielding the results that it's supposed to like the police force yeah what would you decriminalize if you were to say one thing uh that should not be enforced the way it is I think if anything decriminalization is a tricky subject to discuss because I think that decriminalization without anything else is just like you're not doing anything you know what I mean if if you're decriminalizing a certain thing you also have to have preventative mechanisms put in place decriminalization of drugs for example is profoundly successful in the nation of Portugal right but what do they do they didn't just decriminalize drug usage right they also on top of that uh created systems uh that they implemented immediately like uh that that eliminated needle sharing that basically offered up a rehabilitation opportunities for people who were you know regular substance abusers and that was profoundly successful in cutting back uh both the usage and Drug assumption in general but it was also uh profoundly successful in in cutting back uh on you know secondary complications that come from needle sharing like AIDS uh and and uh you know hepatitis C and and the like like a lot of uh transmittable diseases that that people get uh and people were able to go to rehab if you consider drug usage for example to be just a criminal act and if you if you're you're only solution to drugs is you know the police force and and jailing then you know you you arrive at the problem that we have with the War on Drugs what the drugs still want and the remnants of that still exist um you know think about it like the way we treat rich people like when a rich person is a substance abuse problem they don't see the the worst impacts they don't they don't get thrown in jail for the most part or brutalized by police they go to rehab and in a lot of instances it might not even be successful but in plenty of instances it is it's just a more ethical way of dealing with it and also a more successful way of dealing with it if you look to other countries that have implemented similar processes so that's one area that I would decriminalize another one that I would decriminalize is sex work for sure again yeah I'd agree with both of those yeah why don't you think they've decriminalized sex work wouldn't that legitimize the industry prevent a lot of sex trafficking make sure that people are safer yeah absolutely not why do you think we've not done that do you think it's more of like a like a moral religious America is very puritanical and oftentimes we engage in like nonsensical acts like even if the majority of the public doesn't agree with it not saying that like the public loves sex work or anything but the greatest example that comes to mind is abortion you know what I mean it was such an insane like such an insane thing to do and you still have places like Kentucky where you know it's a ballot measure where they're like we are going to codify abortion protections and then uh and then the people overwhelmingly vote for that right it's the most democracy you can get a ballot measure is the most direct democracy right you go in you say no I want to protect abortions and you press the button or you fill it in and and Kentucky overwhelmingly voted in favor of of codifying and protecting abortions the Kentucky attorney general Mitch McConnell's very own guy uh you know who's is turned around and said no we're still gonna we're still gonna work to criminalize abortion insane why are we doing that well because we need to have wedgie shoes we need to have a culture War we need to have a back and forth even if there is no such back and forth when the overwhelming majority of people think it's like completely unjustifiable to criminalize abortion and and allow women to have bodily autonomy and and and you know not have the government interfere with a medical procedure um but it doesn't matter because it gets the base riled up it gets a very viable constituency that the Republican party needs to hold on to riled up and go out and vote for it so that's why they have to keep doing it over and over again and sex work is not all that different um it's a it's something that a lot of people both engage in or consume uh and and there's a sense of Shame surrounding it because of our puritanical attitudes and people don't usually care about it they just have apathy for the most part so it's a very easy group of people to tackle especially when you know this is an industry like you also correctly pointed out where sex trafficking happens right exploitation grooming and the like or rape happens in this industry just like it happens in every other industry but um you know decoupling that from sex work which is done consensually amongst adults is is uh very very important but instead there's a deliberate effort by you know super conservative Ultra Christian fundamentalist to never separate the two to make sure that there's a conflation so that they can consistently say what you want sex crimes to continue you want sex trafficking to continue we need to destroy sex work in his entirety it's every every single time there is a coercion happening every single time that there is uh you know a crime happening anytime there's a you know any kind of pornographic material being shot what are some personal values that you hold that is not also held by the political party that you associate with I mean I've there's a lot pretty much everything I hold on to I don't think the Democratic party genuinely cares about they claim to care about it but I don't think they care about any of it so I would say almost all of what I believe in the Democratic party is not unsupportive what do you think the Democratic party is doing right and what do you think that they're doing wrong and then can you also do that for the Republican party yeah they're doing everything wrong they're not doing anything right Democratic party yes okay yes they're doing everything wrong um they are they basically play the role of a bottleneck for like any kind of genuine Progressive momentum uh they don't offer nearly enough labor protections like at all they have not refunded the nlrb after Donald Trump You Know defunded It uh they are I mean there are notable exceptions to this but overall the party View and the party attitude towards like even increasing the minimum wage or things like that that could technically be done through budget reconciliation never came down to it because they looked at the first tiny marginal hurdle and said oh we can't do it because the Senate parliamentarian said we can't do it and it's like like uh if you get down to the the the thick of it or the weeds of it when you look at all of these structural hurdles the Republican Party eviscerates them regularly okay they routinely will say ah president I don't give a we're gonna do it I mean look no further than the Federalist Society from its development to its Inception to all the way to now where they have been able to dismantle abortion Protections in the Supreme Court that took like those 40 years uh long effort but it was successful you know they don't give a about what the impacts of this might be on the ground so I think in many respects the Republican Party does a very good job of one creating uh culture wars to fight and setting the terms of that battle and then two implementing measures that uh make it feel like they're actually successful and that they're giving something to their audiences that they're giving something to their constituencies whereas the Democratic party constantly is in a state of panic and defense but that defense whenever they're in positions of power never actually comes to fruition and they just kind of let a lot of it slide let a lot of it go so as far as that goes I think whether it be Environmental Protections Joe Joe I was gonna call him Joe Brandon because that's what I do on stream all that all the time Joe Biden um Joe Biden talks a big game about Environmental Protection but then offers you know Litany of pipelines to open up um and uh you know no no such genuine effort to like take away subsidies in the fossil fuel industry and like refocusing our efforts to become competitive against China in the field of like renewable energy is ever truly made because the oil industry has America in a Stranglehold you know they can do whatever the they want but under the Obama Administration the the Democratic party had a super majority in the Senate when they were trying to implement ACA and then a senator died it was replaced by a what's his name oh this is the worst okay well I can't figure it out there was one Senator whose name is literally I'm blanking out on right now it's very frustrating who played the role of of the one guy who was not going to vote for it and and you know that's why the the Democrats had to set up a Litany of compromises and couldn't go far enough but the reality is that as a unit as a whole they do not want to make genuine system breaking changes that they advocate for that I consider to be a necessity because they're still funded by the same corporate benefactors for the most part so you're of the mindset that there are like this small group of Elites that basically run the everything to a certain extent I mean if you consider that to be Capital owners in general then yes I I do I think that this country was built by Capital owners for Capital owners this entire system of governance is built for uh corporate owners to get whatever they want whatever their desires are and it's not even like individual like it's more so the structure itself benefits those who are wealthy um whether it be tax incentives when you're richer uh and I I see it in my personal experience as someone who made twenty one thousand dollars the first year my first year of employment to now like I see the the many different opportunities where like it is significantly cheaper to be wealthy than it is to be broke it is much more expensive to be broke um you know you're you're but don't you feel like that also gives you opportunity of upward Mobility no matter where you start from because you would be a great example of that of coming to America starting off earning very little but finding a category that you excelled in and innovating in that and providing value in that and reaping the rewards of that well luckily for us we don't have to speculate on this because upward social Mobility is something that people track regularly and the United States actually falls far significantly far behind other countries that have social safety nets every European social democracy absolutely destroys the United States on upward social Mobility because when you don't have access to amenities you are shutting off a massive talent pool of people that uh might be unimaginably creative but they never get a chance to even express that because they don't have the economic freedom but then if that's the case why wouldn't like Rich Kids predominantly produce more than people growing up in poverty because from what I've seen just anecdotally people who grew up poor without a lot of money or resources often have a drive that people with resources don't utilize or appreciate I think that that probably comes from having so much security that uh your your drive is diminished like I think you see a similar thing with immigrants that are coming into this country especially by the third generation full assimilation has happened and you know test results go down you've become a full-blown American uh you you are you don't have that same motivation of like you know working super hard I think that that's a byproduct but it doesn't bear itself out in the D in the data in a similar way um like yeah sure super wealthy people and their children oftentimes are fail Sons you know it's a very common thing that you see now of course they're fail Sons but they still end up making their way uh through Society in a way that like a poor person's child would never be able to you know what I mean like they're still I mean George W Bush was the president he is the ultimate fail son you know what I mean he got to the tippy top Donald Trump was a major fail son every business that he got into he up every single one uh his father Fred Trump famously had to consistently keep loaning him money uh for his Casino operations in Atlantic City over and over again and then he still ended up defaulting it because there were measures set in place for the wealthy to never truly fail right and if you take advantage of that you can become president one day so you know as far as uh as far as the data goes it it certainly shows that you know sure there might be fail sons who are abject failures ultimately that come from like really wealthy backgrounds but ultimately when you when you give more opportunity to people more economic freedoms of people especially people that are coming from much poorer backgrounds or middle class backgrounds they make more with less who do you think are political commentators on the left that you don't have a bunch of respect for you think that they like they're basically too aggressive or they lie or something like that and who are some on the right that you do and don't have respect for I I don't have an issue with like any political commentators on the left overall I uh you know there might be people that I don't really talk about in general but other than that like I I no matter what people say or no matter what they even say about me whatever their particular opinion might be I'm often of the mindset that uh there's too much uh sectarian infighting over like marginal issues that people get very passionate about and as long as someone is united in um you know trying to tackle the problems that we talked about I don't care what their political ideology is as long as they're open-minded and charitable so I don't really have an issue with like any I guess leftist commentators there aren't that many to begin with a lot of them are my friends uh you know the Chapo boys come to mind uh you know they're great they have a podcast the travel trap house if you guys are unfamiliar um and um that's it as far as right-wing commentators goes I I think that there are a lot of there is a predisposition to exaggerate or even you know advocate for things that you might not necessarily believe in in your real life on the right people say that about me all the time which is funny but um I think that it is a much more viable industry to be in if you want to just like say whatever to an audience that's like really really excited to hear it and that's why you see a lot of what is known as grifters on the right or people who would like claim to be centrists for example Temple will be a good example of this he always says he's a liberal or he's a Centrist but then he's like you look at his commentary and you're like are you really that's interesting um so you know I think that the the entirety of right-wing commentaries fear I I have uh no respect for if that's the right way to go about it I mean they're they're great businessmen and women but I think that they're the way that they view the world or at least the the propaganda that they cut is genuinely bad I I don't agree and I think that it stands against everything I believe in stands against everything I advocate for we might find common ground on certain issues but even then I think that that partnership is one that is like short-lived for the most part I I asked that because we're releasing this episode back to back with an episode we were just in Nashville we shot with Brett Cooper if you know who she is uh yeah that's uh that's fem Shapiro yeah yeah sure yeah young uh young Ben Shapiro it's funny I um many many moons ago someone was like yo this person is like look at this young young Ben Shapiro uh cut out a daily wire uh and she was doing like a fake live stream and it looked kind of weird to me because it was like not a real live stream like but she was like responding to chat and whatever and I've seen um I've seen some no space in memory card oh well let's just that's totally fine yeah okay well I've seen some materials from like Turning Point USA where they like openly are talking about how they want to make sure that their influencers resemble certain commentary and certain styles of commentary and like they use me as an example so I was like that's kind of funny that they're like doing like a fake live stream instead of a real one yeah uh and and you know making it seem like this person is like in her room and talking when they're in a studio um but yeah I don't know uh what her perspectives are at all I assume I would not agree with them given what I know about the daily wire um there might be some common ground maybe but uh yeah I don't really I don't really know too much about her yeah she said it was hot and so you know thank you yeah on a lie detector no yeah they were doing like a lie detector test I saw the clip uh and uh you know so thanks our our goal is really not to take a side but to hear both perspectives and let the audience come to their own decision and be like a hundred percent respectful to every person that comes on the show and hear out other opinions that are you know even if they're not our own but we give them a chance and we listen listen to them and hear them out so yeah all right so I got two more questions they're gonna be rapid fire questions started off with something light okay something easy what's the meaning of life what's the meaning of life um the avoidance of pain and the maximization of pleasure for all people not just individually but for everyone life is short uh I think we should enjoy things we should allow ourselves to enjoy things and we should help others uh in that similar Pursuit okay and then of course I'm not saying like eat donuts every goddamn day and become a schlumber pleasure from that though man well true but having said that being healthy is also very pleasurable and it will allow you more opportunities to seek Pleasures on top of that so you're not cutting your life off you know finally if you were to become president what would you do I would yeah it's a rapid fire question there's a lot there's a lot I would do I don't think the the president has all that much power against the like pre-existing and and like very well-defined almost fossilized institutional rules and regulations but I guess one of the things that I would try to do is uh make it much much easier for workplaces to unionize and you know develop workers councils at least so that the working class can get at least some percentage of the profits that they generate back uh because I always say it's not about being left it's not about being right it's about what's fair and I think that uh you know Collective action in that regard offers opens up the opportunity to at least advocate for fairness in the workplace thank you so much for coming on the podcast us on this has been absolutely incredible it means a lot that you came over here I know I really appreciate it not streaming too to come on here it's an honor dude man well no problem I really enjoyed this I like going in front of different audiences you know I appreciate it so thank you guys so much for watching and until next time next time nice thank you for this man I really enjoyed that okay