“The Government Is Lying!” - Why America Has Gone INSANE | Nick Freitas

people have this idea that that politics is primarily about policy politics has primarily become about marketing it is not your civic duty to vote it is your civic duty to know what the hell you're voting for who understands what a massive threat the bureaucracy actually plays to what we would like to believe is a representative government there is so much power to be had when you can slip your controversial piece of legislation into a bill that nobody can vote no on are they getting money in the back end I'm going to sneak in a tariff for the sugar industry in Florida but that little tariff is worth tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars for the industry which benefits from it who is actually running the [Music] country all right Nick thank you so much for coming on the iced coffee hour really appreciate it no it's my pleasure thank you guys for having you're a Virginia State Delegate a former very decorated Green Beret with multiple tours served and you've gained over 3 million followers from giving no BS advice to young men and women on how to improve their life and find the right partner I've noticed a lot of your most popular topics tend to be on Family Values what is the problem today with young men that you see oh gosh where do we where do we start gosh one hour later um I'll tell you what let me tell you an interesting story I actually um on our podcast I got in something of a a fight with my co-host uh Christian who's a great guy we've been we've been good friends for a long time he he'd worked with me in politics for a while and um we were we were just talking about again this this topic what what's going on with young men what's going on with young men in society and relationships why are young men checking out all of that and I took kind of I guess kind of the typical older guy attitude like buck up get your crap together you know you know go to the gym you know read more uh go talk to girls and um and we got done and he looks at me goes I'm so tired of that crap from people like you he because you got married at 19 you got a beautiful wife you know you got kids you got this whole the and you're looking at me I'm almost 30 I find it almost impossible to date in this environment my initial reaction was all right well I guess we're going to fight this out right and uh I started thinking for a second I was like man he's um he's right I'm being flipping about this I'm being very flipping about this because I I'm 45 so I'm I'm not ancient um but it's true the the world that I grew up in in the in the 90s early 2000s I think is significantly different than the world that young men are growing up in right now I've conceded all those points um I believe they're relevant I believe they're worth discussing I believe men have a right to feel um that that is completely unfair and unrealistic question is how do you get out of it so why is it happening so I I think there's a couple different uh reasons for it um I think in in many cases there's legitimate criticisms right there there are problems with the facts we look back through history with respect to women's place within Society I think there are uh problems when you see like the temperance movement that took place in the early 20th century that was led to the um you know abolishing alcohol in the um what was it the 19 18th amendment I think um that was that was rooted in a very real problem and the very real problem was alcohol alcoholism had become rampant um a lot of not not most but a lot of men were abusive uh to the women weren't fulfilling their responsibilities to protect and provide be the sort of men that their wives deserve that their children deserved and so I I think there was a a push toward that at the same time that we were trying to create greater equality before the law for women at the same time uh there is another political philosophy out there that is largely rooted in Marx which um really despises the nuclear family and and that's not hyperbole if you read Marx uh he believed in the abolition of the family he thought the family stood up against um kind of this sort of Ideal socialist society he wanted to create it was one where children would not only be educated collectively but they would be raised collectively he looked at marriage as particularly oppressive toward um women in general and when you see other people that were very prominent thinkers within especially second third Wade feminism people like Simone de bis uh she actually said very proudly in a debate I think in the 70s said that uh women should not be given the option to be stay at home mothers because if they had that as an option too many of them would choose it and it would disrupt the progress that they were attempting to make so I think there I think there has been a very very dedicated philosophical and political push um to undermine the family I think when you undermine the best version of traditional masculinity you do a good job at actually achieving that um especially when you want to pretend as if men and women are are essentially interchangeable we're not so my belief on this matter as a bachelor a 25 y- old male bachelor is that Society has gotten way too easy for everybody we have everything that we could possibly ever want and then so where do we turn to a more hedonistic approach towards life where we're just kind of grabbing at the next immediate pleasure rather than long-term goals and I think that that's kind of also infected women as well in the same thing where like short-term relationships are super common these days and women can just go on their phon scroll on Tik Tok and be hit with dopamine hit after dopamine hit happiness happiness and's consquence there's negative consequence getting dopamine because you're always kind of floating at a higher vibration you could live a pretty good life honestly off like two grand a month because think about it you rent you could rent a room uh in a place for like 800 bucks eat junk food and then scroll Tik Tok and now I mean it it definitely serves advertisers where they want you to stick around in these platforms longer and longer and longer it makes sense it's like that drives a lot of profits for people if a portion of the population just says you know what I'm just going to be on my phone all day I'm going to be totally happy just doing the minimum and it's a pretty good life compared to like 300 years ago I mean this would be farming and dying if you don't if the if the crop doesn't come in before the win no no I think there's I think there's a lot of Truth in the fact that technological development has um decreased the necessity for a lot of or or it's it's removed certain challenges that used to be so evident and gave us meaning and purpose right going out and fighting for something and and um you know again bringing in the crop or protecting the family from the Barbarian horde or whatever else it was brought meaning and purpose now I will say this I don't think you can I don't think it's a one for one exchange right I don't think you can exchange meaning and purpose for just simple dopamine hits and and I think we see the effects of that because as as much as we talk about how what are the real consequences for somebody you know just streaming through or watching Tik Tok or watching porn or whatever it is and okay hey yeah did my basic uh Necessities for life are met in the sense that I have enough food I have shelter and I have very very easy and accessible entertainment and yet people are miserable right and yet I can't watch I we don't have cable in my house so this is the first time I've been watching cable in a while every other ad is for some sort of pharmaceutical every single it's amazing to me it's shocking to me by the same token if you actually look at young women and what they're saying you have the highest diagnosis of mental illness among young women that you've had in recorded history and and it is and it is ideologically aligned as well it's not it's not one for one across the board women who identify as U more conservative or more moderate are about according to Pew research I think it's about 19 to 23% have been diagnosed with some sort of of mental illness as soon as they identify as being liberal or Progressive it jumps up to 52 now could that be because people that are conservative are less likely to test it could be yeah it could be but the thing that you've got to ask though is is is this constant drive that we've had I think it it's Abigail sh shers talked a lot about this this constant drive to dwell on that which um you feel has been challenging or traumatic I mean the word trauma has expanded to include somebody said something mean to me I got misgendered at the coffee shop that's traumatic and I do think that goes back to your point about when things become so easy minor inconveniences are now Earth shattering trauma um but I don't think that healthy right and and I do think that a mindset which says I expect life to be difficult I expect there to be challenges I expect that to actually find meaning and purpose which is going to give me not just happiness but a a sense of joy in peace in the midst of the storm like that's going to require work and I don't think people are happy I mean yeah they might be happier than they would if if they were starving to death but I don't think that provides purpose right I think the data clearly shows people are not happier today by means and there are consequences like you said but the consequences are so far removed from that initial infraction of going on your phone rather than going outside yes and I think that like like uh in atomic habits James clear's book by the way if you haven't read it highly recommend you read it he says that consequences in order to actually promote positive or negative behavior need to be directly after whatever it is that you do oh I think they need to be quick and they need to be strong enough to elicit an actual response as someone that as someone that serves an elected office I could not agree more with that statement because part of the reason why people get so frustrated with politics is because they don't see the direct consequences of the action they don't they don't draw a straight line between this policy led to this consequence and the end result is is that if you don't make the right if you don't make the right connection then you make the wrong diagnosis and then you start looking for the wrong cure and when the Cure just allows you to continue off into that spiral it gets significantly worse over time but no I think you're right if there isn't a one connection between what is actually causing the problem people will continue to to look for whatever the simplest solution is but before we get into that if you're on a small business just like us I'm sure you're well aware that doing things like payroll taxes and benefits can feel like a full-time job 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is it leads to men and women being overly competitive with one another when in reality we're far more happier when we're uh Cooperative with one another or collaborative with one another um now none of that means that a woman can't for instance do something that might be traditionally considered more masculine serving in the military right I was just talking with my good friend Mesa Tate right she's a UFC bantamweight champion right she that is that is not typically what we consider the traditional feminine role but she she at the same time loves embracing being a wife and a mother let me put it this way I I had a um I had a mom call me up a single mom and she goes you you talk a lot about raising men you talk about the importance of uh the male role model within a a boy's life she I'm a single mom which means I I don't have the father there that I I wish I did what do I do is it I mean is there anything I can do and I said you know I was raised by a single mom now my dad was still involved with my life but I got to see him three to four months out of the year right not as much as I would have liked to but my dad was a man that I admired and so three to four months went a long way when you admire your father what I told her was you you are going to need a positive male role model at some point in his life because there are certain challenges that he's going to need to go through and they need to be age appropriate challenges but he needs to deal he needs to have somebody in his life that is basically challenging him to explore and to try and to fight and to get up when he fails um and to tell him to you know hey nobody needs your crying right now we need to get the job done right not not to an inappropriate degree needs to be age appropriate but that's important what do you mean by age appropriate I don't give the same challenges to my 19-year-old son that I gave to him when he was seven understand um I and the other thing too is it's it's important to realize um the the thing that I tried to convey to her was my mom did I thought my mom did an excellent job as a single mother in in part because when I was little and when you're little and you're far more vulnerable you want security you want love you want comfort you want that that bonding with your with your both your parents but your mother in particular um I said but as as boys get older um it's important to understand that we have a hard time we have a hard time feeling love apart from respect love without respect feels like pity um I think to most men and we don't want to be pied like dear God if there's anything we don't want it's to be pitting I said so as your boy gets older one of the best things that you can do for that little boy is start to give him a little bit more responsibilities a little bit more challenges um have him carrying the groceries from the car have him you know when he again age appropriate when he's old enough when you guys walk down the street together he should be walking on the street side um when he when he acts in a way that is kind of called out that protector and provider in him reward him for it um one of the one of the greatest compliments my wife ever gave me was one time she just stopped me man this hits me every time I talk about it she just stopped me she goes I need you to I need you to know that you have done an excellent job providing and and being there for this family and you make me feel safe brother I am telling you that I that was the only compliment I needed for a year it's not the only one I got but it's all I would have needed right it's all I would have needed because I get so much sense of that meaning and and purpose from my faith and from you know providing for my wife providing for my children and so I think a lot of it has to do with giving men challenges intellectually uh physically um emotionally it doesn't mean that everyone's going to take the same path right but I think there is something to be said for that fact of overcoming something that required great mental and physical strain to do uh because once they realize that they can accomplish it especially if they've had to fail a couple times before they accomplish it that's a mindset shift and that mindset shift even if it was something minor when they were 12 years old um that plays into other areas of their of their life and so I think that's really important for for for both men and women but I think a lot of times it manifests itself is different in the examples that you use so that was something that people around these men could be doing to improve these men's lives but what if you've existed for 18 19 20 years and you didn't grow up with a father figure and you feel like yourself always going after these short-term Pleasures living a hedonistic lifestyle and you're not where you want to be yeah so what can you do for yourself to change rather than maybe you know the things around you putting the the the blame not blame per se but like you know responsibility on them one of the most empowering things you can do is actually take responsibility for your own actions and and I don't and I mean that even when you're not responsible for some of your circumstances I I have I have I I put it into two um there's there's an overcoming mentality and then there's a victim mentality I have no know incredibly wealthy privileged people with a victim mentality they their life will always get worse as a result of it because they're constantly looking for somebody else to blame with respect to what's going on I have seen other people that grew up in conditions where they were legitimately not responsible for the crap they went through but their attitude to the whole thing was is how can I improve my situation and that's not to say that they shouldn't be able to you know to to really talk and discuss the things that happened to them but their response to the things happening to was what can I do different when you adopt that sort of mindset it changes the way you look at things and the mindset changes what is so important now what do you do with that once once you take responsibility what do you do I think there's five categories for for all of us men or women I think there's a spiritual component there's an intellectual component an emotional component a uh physical component and a professional component so the the spiritual side I mean look this is a this is a long debate and we can have it all day long um but I think we're starting to see the resurge of this idea that what you think about God really really matters in your life whether you completely dismiss it you know entirely or or you actually have a faith that you appeal to because what that does is it provides you an objective framework for truth and morality and when you have an objective framework that exists outside of you it's not just about what I feel like doing that day it's not just about what gives me hedonistic pleasure it's back the fact that there is a right and wrong and I want to be honorable that's incredibly important the the intellectual side um nothing prevents anybody from reading books watching podcasts listening to people that you admire and respect discuss ideas because men should be intelligent you shouldn't just be strong you should be intelligent the emotional component has to do with being able to regulate your emotions while at the same time not shoving them down so far that you're you're unable to actually demonstrate them in a way that makes sense I remember um there was this interesting interview where a man was explaining to a a female psychologist because you talk a lot about opening up with your feelings he goes well I'm going to tell you right now the women of my life are the hardest on me not the men um my wife my daughters they'd rather see me die on top of my horse than fall off of it he go what do you do with that and that's a tremendous amount of pressure because I I never want to be I never want to be seen as weak and yet we got other people oh you need to be vulnerable I don't want to be vulnerable so so how do I deal with that my wife said some the once that really struck me she goes I don't need you to be weak honey I do I need you to be tender and that was a that was an eye- openening experience for me um and it wasn't that I was not tender with my wife and children but it was this idea of trying to articulate what does it mean to be emotionally mature as a man because there are some burdens that I'm supposed to carry there's some burdens where I'm not supposed to stop everything I'm doing and have a good cry about it I'm supposed to get the job done I'm supposed to protect I'm supposed to provide the stability the calm and the storm for my family how do I do that if I'm weepy all the time I can't so there is a there is a degree of of us compartmentalizing when appropriate in order to get the job done the question is what happens when we go back into that box and pull it out and start talking about it and I I think some of that emotional maturity comes from understanding the difference between weakness and appropriate tenderness toward people that you care about and then finding people that you can trust to discuss things with and to work out issues because you want to be better for the people in your life that matter the most um the physical component again I I regardless of where you are as a man or what your life goals are you know some people are going to end up you know working in finance some people are going to be you know Navy Seals those have different physical requirements but the the data is in and and getting out and doing physical exercise lifting weights doing stuff like that doesn't just have physical benefits it also has intellectual benefits as well it has enormous health benefits so I I think again to be the sort of man that can protect that can provide you want to be in the shape to be able to do that um and then finally uh the professional it has never been easier or cheaper to develop marketable skill sets I I think that is one of we we there's so much trashing of the internet right now and social media and everything else and for good reason right there's there's definitely harmful things that take place but social media is neutral right it can be used for good it can be used for ill it has never been easy to educate yourself on a wide variety of marketable skill sets and to be constantly looking at at learning and um and finding ways that the things that you're learning the things that you the capabilities that you're developing are not only Ben beneficial for you they're beneficial to other people because that's the beautiful thing about the marketplace you really want to get wealthy you do it by actually providing things of value to other people and then they provide you value in return and so looking for ways to actually do that and learning how to do it never been easier but it's a continuous process um so th those are the five areas that I tell people like look if you focus on these five areas regardless of your circumstances you are not going to be disappointed with where you in uh you're not going to be disappointed with the progress that you've made even it if it doesn't always yield the immediate returns that you want yeah and what do you say to the people who lack motivation to do that so this is where discipline and motivation come in right and there's a difference right it's great to be motivated there are plenty of days I am not motivated to go to work there are plenty of days I'm not motivated to go to the gym there's plenty so what happens then well discipline takes over so I think a large part of that is that if you're not initially motivated towards something you always have something that you like or that you're interested in that let's say is more productive than something else scrolling through Tik Tok right playing um you know Space Marine 2 whatever those can all be fun and entertainment they're not necessarily productive so find the stuff that you you do have some interest in that are productive and start focusing on building habits and consistency with that um I I got when I left the military I didn't go to the gym for like nine years um and I re when I hit 40 I was like holy crap dude if I don't start making some changes this is going to be bad what were the symptoms I was getting heavier yeah when we when you go into a legislative session in Virginia we have a 60-day legislative session you know do for 60 days you sit you talk you read and you eat and you drink right that's what you do that's what you do during legislative session so we used to I refer to as our session baby right you get that little Pooch that you get when you go on a cruise uh but it's a 60-day cruise right that nobody wants to go on but anyway and I I noticed I used to always be able to get that and then come home and I'd be working outside or or tearing up brush or doing something and it would just fall off and then I hit 40 and a d it I was like okay I need to start making some changes and so I remember saying okay I have to now go through a lifestyle change if I don't there's going to be negative consequences I don't want to do this um but I'm going to for 90 days for 90 days I'm going to do it and here's what I found doing anything for a consistent period of time three to four days a week for that period of time you end up seeing results whether it's reading more whether it's developing capabilities whether it's focusing on conversations whatever it is the physical you know lifting whatever it is you see results and then all of a sudden it becomes a part of your routine and the next thing you know you're far more motivated to do the thing that you actually have far more discipline to do now you mentioned of the five areas to focus on if you want to improve your life one of them was physical fitness and one thing Andrew Tate always says is if you're upset you got to get a six-pack and then reevaluate your own happiness do you think that that's like a reasonable thing to say do you agree with that I think Andrew's saying something that is is incredibly catchy and easy to remember but it also generates a lot of hostility right like how dare he reduce everything to a six-pack um but but if you if you think about what he's saying in that moment he's like go go out and Achieve something that is universally respected right universally respected on a number of levels why because to get a six-pack you got to eat right to get a six-pack you got to work out to get a six-pack you got to be motivated and disciplined in order to do something that most people don't want to do and at the end you have something that is aesthetically pleasing that every woman on the planet likes now once you've done all of that chances are are you going to be in a better POS are you going to be happier than when you were when you started that endeavor yeah probably so there there's actually a lot of I think there's actually a lot of common sense that goes into that statement once you break it down into everything that's entailed do I think in and of itself like like that's some sort of in a vacuum that that's like you know I think that would probably cure a lot though I kind of actually agree with that but I agree it is a bit of like a a catchy phrase that that I I would say is not going to yield the results well let let me put it this way people gave Jordan Peterson crap when he said clean your room right but then you've also got the former commander of um Socom Special Operations Command essentially saying the same thing in his book clean your room and and what we're talking about is what is something that is an objectively good thing to do that requires some degree of discipline um and you know habit forming behavior that you can look on and say I I set out to do something I did it it's done um or now I have to maintain it all of those things I think yield positive results so so even though it may seem simple let's face it if if we're getting into a large philosophical discussion on all the various reasons and impacts on why you need to or we can just say here's a very very here's a simple task or maybe a difficult task right six especially dude I'm 45 I'm working on the six-pack that's a freaking difficult task um but I've been working on it and I'm certainly happier for the Endeavor so I think sometimes it's about simplifying something down into terms that are accessible to people and it seems attainable right it may it may suck to have to do it but it's attainable and giving people attainable goals is I think incredibly important so you know we we mentioned Andrew Tate and some may argue he's a false idol I think it kind of depends on what you're taking away from what he's saying if it affects you positively then I guess he probably wouldn't be a false idol but if it affects you negatively then he is a false idol who would you say are people that the young kids should idolize that exists today uh Christ Christ Jesus is hard to beat right Perfection is hard to beat but I mean that sincerely I I mean that sincerely I I think that too many people have a very very um Blas Sunday school version of of uh Jesus that doesn't even begin to explain the absolute complexity there um that is is very pretty incredible actually when you look at the actual courage uh involved um as far as like temporary people that I know that I I think are are good Role Models John level uh John level runs a warrior Poet Society he was uh he was in Ranger regimen I can't remember what ranger battalion but he did some tours over in Afghanistan and has done some really interesting work uh since then but he talks a lot about what genuine masculinity looks like he's a big believer that you know we we sometimes when we overcorrect on trying to make men men we focus on the Warrior without focusing on the poet and so I I think he's done a very good job of achieving that proper balance on what is mean to be yeah as a man you should be strong and you should be capable and you should be terrifying to threats and you should be tender toward your family and the people that you love and you should be romantic and you should be you know a poet and and what does it mean to do that and how can you accomplish that so I think John leville is a very good example of something like that there's other people that I really admire Victor Marx uh Victor Marx runs an organization called all things possible and he fights against human trafficking why does he do that because he was horribly abused um through most of his his Young Life went off to the Marine Corps uh dealt with a lot of anger a lot of frustration um but now he gets out and he helps remove children from really really bad situations but on top of that he he talks a lot about his faith he talks a lot about his journey talks a lot about overcoming challenging situations and so these are guys that I think that people can respect for the fact that they are um masculine in the sense that we typically think that's a guy that can handle themselves in a fight right but I I think their view with respect to relationships with respect to um how a man should treat a woman I think is vastly superior to what we get in some of the red pill uh environment although really quick I just want to mention that for those unaware I got a coffee company and it's called bankroll coffee and our goal is to bring you the highest quality coffee at the most affordable price and in terms of researching how to go about doing all of this we had to find the best e-commerce platform to use and that is where our sponsor Shopify is there to help Shopify is the home of the number one checkout on the planet with way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going for example Shopify is a service called shop pay that lets customers save their email address credit card 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we're all pretty excited about we've been pushing him to do it for a while now and and so we we were really happy he had wanted to but it was just kind of that kind of gun shy right kind of gun shy after a while where where did he meet this girl uh he actually he actually met it on our online community because they got to they got to talking about a bunch of weighty topics and because there was that distance they've met before in person in the whole but because there was that distance a lot of the conversation was not on things that you I think modern dating is a is a perfect way to One Day end up divorced um because I don't think it sets us up for good marriages I think it sets us up for something far more superficial and hedonistic um but he had a chance to really get to know really get to know this person through like deep weighty online conversations about things that that truly matter about life and relationships and um so anyways I don't want to he's going to get furious with me that I just mentioned this um but that was good the other the other resolution there is I had to tell him I was sorry um I had to apologize to him because as as much as I am still certain that acknowledging the problem doesn't mean you wallow in it it means you still got to find a way out and I don't think there's any way I don't think there's any way out of the social situation that we find ourselves with the men find themselves in without men stepping up and taking ownership of it but but he was right that I was being very very flippant toward the very real issues that that young men were facing what do you consider modern dating is that like today is it 10 years ago is it 5 years like dating apps I think it's I think it's older than just I think it's older than just dating apps I I think that we I think that we started to take this view of first of all I think people start dating way too young um and then they treat it as some kind of like you know social experiment I kind of like you I'm kind of attracted to you um you know let's whatever hang out go to movies go to dinner whatever it is um and and there's never really this question of what is the what is the actual purpose of what we're doing and when you don't have a when you don't have an instate in mind like are are we getting married this this sounds totally foreign now and people look at me like I'm some sort of archaic you know um but we raised our kids with the idea that you're not allowed to date before you're 18 and people think that's just insane none of them gave us any push back why not part of it was because well one we homeschooled there that's the real that that was huge but but the contacted the but that that wasn't it right homeschool is not like there there was a time where homeschool was a much more isolating experience than it is now it's not now they still went to co-ops they still went to sporting events both my my daughters did theater at an all boy school because they needed girls to come and play the parts so imagine sitting your daughter who's not allowed to date to an all boy School uh to do theater because it's one of the best gigs in town right um so they they still had a lot of exposure they were out there constantly with with friends and and people that were not but there wasn't constant pressure um from a very early age on who's your boyfriend who's your girlfriend you know who are you dating now because you don't know the deal and this starts in like seventh or eighth grade this is just a series of one to two week things where people are constantly getting mad and frustrated and there's drama everywhere and my first relationship was like two and a half months in seventh grade so I think so wow you were two and a half months give yourself some time some of those experien I think are important I mean because you you learn about different social interactions and and and things that if you're 18 going into it for the first time you could be severely behind the curve cuz I feel like as as like women are way more attuned to uh like body language and social situations and guys are not and you have to almost learn that as a as a dude to like pick up on a lot of stuff I mean my my oldest daughter is happily married at ag21 um and went into that marriage with zero baggage should a man ask his girlfriend's dad permission to marry her yes 100% no no hesitation whatsoever but I will say this because that's become oh you see your daughter as property no I don't see my daughter as property I see another man coming in to fulfill um a responsibility that I've had since that little girl was born right since that little girl was in the womb I've had the responsibility to protect and provide and to create a world where she could flourish and be safe and feel loved and cherished and now I'm handing that responsibility over to another young man so yeah he damn well better ask my permission because if I don't think he's ready there's going to be some problems but I will tell you this um I can say that with my favorite tough guy tone and uh I did a lot in my life to try to be intimidating to a potential boy right you know Green Berets Ranger school sniper school like there's all sorts of things that I I could I could put on the wall um to show him that I'll bury you telling someone telling someone that they have to ask a permission for your daughter's hand um really only has value if she makes him do it so I can do it from an intimidating standpoint but the fact that my daughter um insisted that he get my permission that's where you know that the trust has been made in the appropriate way is that this isn't property she trusts that her father who loves her and knows her very well and wants the best for her if he says that he's a good guy then she not only knows what she feels and what she understands about him but it's a vetting process um so I I would say that that statement of shitty ask yes um but the one that truly gives that value is your daughter when she she demands it Graham had a very funny experience to ask Macy's oh yeah yeah her dad it was really tough getting him alone that that was the that was the difficult part and uh she had purposely gone with her mom and sister I think it was to get like a coffee or something yeah and then I think her dad was like oh maybe maybe I'll come along too and I think we we got him off that but then her brother was also uh staying back he didn't want to go at all and they're like oh you should come and he's like no no I think he's they're like watching a sports game or something like that and I could not get him away from her dad because they were kind of like watching a game together I I brought up something he was doing some landscape work and I brought up like the landscape cuz I knew her brother was not going to be interested in the landscape I was like you should show me the landscape he went outside and he wouldn't stop talking about the landscape and I didn't know when I could tell him like I'm not interest but I want to be polite and let him talk about the landcape and then after a while I I think I said Hey listen I didn't bring you out to talk about the landscape like I don't really but and then then I went into it and he was like oh but after he'd been talking about the landscape for like 15 minutes it was a little awkward for me to bring that up at that you were but you were being respectful that's a huge thing for a guy right for a dad but I was half paying attention because the entire time I was waiting for a good break and the entire time I'm watching a brother like watching this game on TV and I didn't want to like I didn't want him to come out so I knew I was a bit on a you know a time crime yeah but I didn't want to like interrupt yeah so but you got the answer you want I got the answer my uh my son-in-law they had been dating for a year and a half and um he's standing and I was so used to him being over at our house right because they hung out at our house all the time um and uh so he's over and I'm like oh yeah Lily's going to get here soon he's he's like hey uh Mr frus I need to talk to you about something and I'm like are we doing this right now he goes I I I got to do it right now Mr F I'm like are you are you kidding me no dude you got to set up an appointment this is like no he's like gotta talk to you right now Mr fr like okay all right let's do it um and he and he he did a great job I asked him some questions U but what were the questions just um about discussions that they had what what you know I I asked him about you know things that were important to him and I already knew these things but there there's something to be said and and like I'm gonna ask you and I want a definitive answer so it wasn't anything it wasn't anything nuts right typical stuff but Tina was there too though um he wanted Tina there as well and um so we went through and um yeah I I'll I'll never forget that moment I was about to say in terms of modern dating because we never really got back to that is it really that much harder I I I tend to believe it's it's not what what do you mean that much harder like your co-host was talking about how like it's it's impossible to date these days and modern dating is just like I tend to believe it's like it it doesn't take that much to be just above the average and that most people put in very little effort uh I go through like one of my favorite things is to go through dating profiles and just critique them and the ones I see are so bad I mean the pictures are awful the descriptions are awful the messages are bad and I tend to think that it takes so little effort just to be like a step above average like and that's just a little bit of effort and if you actually put time into yourself and get better at these things it should be easy I I feel like it's easier than ever I think it I think it depends in part on what you're looking for and what your expectations are obviously um I I think somebody that is looking for let's just say more of what you might call a traditional um a traditional marriage they feel like it's it's more difficult right now and I think attributed a lot of that to kind of like what third W feminism tells women they should think about marriage and society and men and and whatnot so I I think if you are looking for something that might be more traditional like that I think it's probably more difficult um I mean I don't you guys ever watch the show HTH no oh oh wait those are the shs you seen oh yeah yeah he's the guy that's like he does the graphs he does the graphs it's awesome shout out H like honestly wow you know thinks that you know who thinks that channel is just really interesting my wife really we will sit down there and watch that together because we'll sit there and he'll explain this is how women see things this is how men see things and whatnot and so we'll do a lot of like is that true is that true you know and and she's like he's gosh he's like pretty spot on right and uh and and what's so nice about is is the visual depiction right it's something that's easy great artist go really intricate drawing he has such a great way of I think putting things into terms and then that visualization that goes with it really allows it to stick and I admire admire charts are incredible like if this then that and if that then this and yeah yeah and the thing is he could say the entire thing but without the flowchart it just doesn't hit the same and so um he does a good job of explaining how because of the way that men and women kind of biologically think about these things combined with things like social media combined with things like the dopamines hits you were talking about combined with things like third wave feminism combined with things like a more hedonistic culture what it means is that you know 0% of the women are sleeping with 20 30 to 20% of the guys uh high high performers the whole deal and then you have a large part when you talk about above average right when you have a large part of the the male population that isn't you know blue eyes six foot Finance right like that whole thing they feel like they're being basically spurned well at the same time now you you could say well okay then do things to improve yourself in fact that's what homass says he goes you can make you you can go from a three to a seven to eight with not a huge amount of effort I think the other thing I think the other thing that that keeps guys from doing those things is one I think we have a culture on the other side I think we have a male culture that says I'm so pissed about what's going on you know I'm screw them they don't deserve it at the same time that I think I think porn is horrible um I I think porn is just corrosive intellectually and emotionally and and we know it has negative uh effects intellectually we know it has negative effects with respect to to the brain and dopamine hits and things like that um it it's even worse on another level I I had a friend of mine on his name's uh Josh and he used to be I me award-winning porn star for like six years and um was on the verge of suicide and and he talks about all the friends he's had within that industry that killed themselves but all that to say that you you mentioned before what happens when it's easier than ever in order to get if you can't get the thing you really want you can get something you can get proximity and porn I think ends up me proximity and so the problem is is that what happens when you have a lot of guys that feel like they're competing at a disadvantage in a society that or in a culture that is increasingly against them and there are plenty of distractions that will at least provide a diversion right uh video games porn stuff like that I don't have anything but video games in general right but porn I do but um I I think when you combine all those things that creates a problem now to your point you can make a choice not to do that you can make a choice to to work hard and improve yourself in these other areas um and and ultimately the thing that I I look good news bad news right bad news is guys is yeah this is a problem right and I understand this is not ideal good news is is you can do something about it bad news again is the only way it's ever going to change is if you do something about it um I don't think the reason why so much of culture now has intensified on this idea that again men are the problem and you don't deserve a specialist place in societ society and everything they're they're telling you that not because it's true but because they know it isn't um I don't care what any fattish uh political or or sociological ideology comes up with men in general um and and in many ways young men specifically are absolutely essential to a healthy Society uh when young men want to play their proper role within a society societies flourish and when they don't things get bad really really quickly so again bad news yep it's happening good news you can do something about it and bad news is you're going to have to if you actually want to improve the situation what do you think about intellectual compatibility do Partners need to be somewhere around the same range of I guess IQ this is this is interesting because there's there's been a lot of research on this on on how on how relationships used to develop versus how they do now right and then you you had I think it I can't remember the name now it might have been um losing ground I can't remember the author of the book but he was talking about how Once Upon a Time um I'm going to use H maath H maath as an example H maath says he goes what does a guy look for we look for looks personality and then there's a couple other things that like can really push you over the edge for us on something we really like and then men have all or women have all these other criteria it used to be that the the I think the IQ differential between men and women didn't matter as much within relationships now that we have a much larger population that have gone to college and and the female population of the college is actually High higher than the male population you've seen an increase in the the IQ component factoring into marriage um I don't I don't think it's something where I I don't think it's something where it has to it has to be a thing where where they're even I think you have to be compatible with respect to what your expectations are with marriage that's why I say the values are the most important component and then the the expectations and then interest is like third or fourth down down the the road because a lot of times the intellectual capacity will show up in the interests um I do think it's important that you have something you can actually have a conversation with so I don't think there can there can be such a deficit that you just got nothing to talk about um but I don't know I don't have a good answer for you on on how important a factor I think that is I can tell you that um one of the things that first attracted me to well the first thing that attracted me of my wife as she walked in the classroom we were high school sweethearts right I was like holy crap that's never going to happen right um but there was other pretty girls right so what attracted me to her well two things attracted me to her is she wanted to discuss like important topics like she wanted to debate and get into the meat of things and and go back and forth and contend and I found that really attractive so um I think part of it is based off of what you enjoy if you enjoy intellectual um Pursuits you're probably going to need to find someone that that also has at least some degree of interest in in a similar field I think it's probably the fair fa answer is if if that matters to you it's a if it's a value of yours then you probably should something like that what do you think what do you think about women who financially support their men do you think that that is a recipe for success or disaster I I think it I think it can work um I think it can work um for instance I I met a couple not that long ago uh she was a doctor he was an FBI agent they were not happy with what was going on in the in their kids school um and so they had the conversations like okay we want to pull kids out we want to do you know this homeschooling want do these other things and he was like you're a doctor he was and and you worked very hard on this you got your practice going everything else he goes it would probably be easier for me to fulfill that role and and I think there and and I think they've made this decision um in a way that is mutually respectful and um and and works for the arrangement they have so I don't think it has to be one way or the other I think typically it's important for the man to provide U but again that's something that this is one of the reasons why before you get married discussing expectations is is hugely important my wife and I again at 18 and 19 at the time when we were dating I'm like what do you expect out of me like financially what do you I said because I expect to be the primary bread winner that's I expect that role for myself I don't have a problem with you working but I I take on that responsibility as the primary responsibility for me and her her statement was I would like to work I'd like to have professional um Pursuits she goes but when we start having kids I don't want I don't want our lifestyle to be dependent on two incomes I want to have that option at that point I said I completely agree I said expectation back what that means is is we can't get used to a two-income lifestyle because when your income goes away the expectation cannot mean okay I'm going to stay at home with the kids now but we still have to maintain X Y and Z and she's like no no absolutely totally fair so that that whole back and forth right there would be really really easy for people to assume that you're all on the same page no no no talk all that out on that expectation so I would say that typically I I think that most of most of the relationships I see are are if if there's one person that is providing they usually are happier um with the man in that position but it doesn't it doesn't have to be I I don't think it's a moral imperative and what are the red flags that you would warn your friends about when dating I I think one of the biggest ones so let's say you've established values let's say you've established that you you have similar values if you have wildly different expectations for your life it may be that you guys are really good friends but you're just not made to to build a life together because you got to have some sort of agreement on this is what we're going to do so for instance if people have very very um very very hard professional aspirations which are not compatible but there's more than just a desire to say make money or what not like they are very very passionate about like maybe their craft or their business or whatever it is and those two things are not compatible and neither are willing to give way just part as friend friends right just part his friends um here's another big one I tell um this this is applicable for both men and women um Jordan Peterson talks about this where a lot of times a woman will initiate um a dispute in part to see how you handle it do you do a good job of regulating your emotions do you do you fly off the handle do you get really upset do you get you know quiet and impossible to talk to like those are all important things for her to find out one of the most important things for you to find out as a guy is can you have a rational conversation with this woman because if you can't sorry part his friends don't marry her um again one of the things I most appreciated about my wife and this was something that we established when we were dating but through the first year of marriage was also an important component there was one time we were debating I was upset we're both passionate people and she goes I need you to talk to me like I'm the woman that you love I said okay that's fair um but on the other side it's like I need you to realize that reality is reality and while you may have an emotional response to this it doesn't trap Trump facts on the ground she's like that's fair and so what it meant was is that when I approach that conversation I need to remember I'm not just arguing with one of my buddies I'm not in a heating discussion on the floor of the House of delegates right I am talking to the woman I love and she is entitled to know that the way I will discuss things with her will never cause her to wonder about my commitment toward her by the same token it's women make emotional connections for a very very serious and relevant biological reasons um and it has to do with with vulnerability in the physical world so they have to pick up on micro signals and things like that and be more in tune to it like you were mentioning earlier um so that that that emotional component to the way that they think or process information or make connections to things that happened in the past is relevant important and actually is strength uh but it can't be used to distract from the topic at hand and so my wife was always incredibly reasonable um when I would make a good point she would concede the point like I I tell guys one of the worst pieces of advice you can get from older men is don't argue with your wife just say Yes dear I don't treat my wife like a petulant child if I think she's wrong we're going to have a discussion because ultimately I do see it is my responsibility to make sure that my family is okay when does masculinity become toxic I I think it's best to kind of illustrate that through examples so uh again when we talk about ma what we consider to be typical masculine traits again aggression aggression competitiveness um you know physical prowess you know things like that um if I use my aggression and my competitiveness and my physical prowess to steal an old lady's purse that's toxic if I use it to hurt the guy that's stealing the purse and order to give the purse back to the lady that's positive so I think the the best way to think about both male and feminine traits is that you have a whole category here which are in many respects morally neutral it's all a question of how they manifest into what purpose and so I would say that masculine traits become toxic the moment they are used to harm or exploit the innocent in order to gain favor for yourself um and I think that's true of feminine traits as well nurturing is a very feminine trait unless it becomes something where now you're you're babying someone or or you're um you're you're keeping them in a in a position of constant dependency because you need to feel that that level of U um importance in a relationship so speaking of importance how do people gain confidence what is your recommendation um so just confidence in G like so in a skill set I think it I think it has to do with um identifying something that you want to improve in coming up with a you know a logical plan for how would you actually develop competency within that skill set doing those things and then challenging yourself with the understanding that you're going to fail uh you're going to fail you're not going to I mean nobody's an expert right off the bat nobody's at the at the top of the field right off the bat so you have to actually go out there and and put in uh the work associated with whatever the capability is um and then do it enough times to where you get better more efficient more effective at it and that feedback is going to come both from your your performance that you experience um but you know again outside feedback is also not bad um this is another reason why I think mentorship is really important to people so what is your biggest insecurity impostor syndrome imposter syndrome definitely so it's always this idea of I don't want to I don't want to pretend like I'm something I'm not um so that that I I struggle with that but I will say that there's a there's a negative manifestation of that and a positive manifestation the negative manifestation is if you dwell on it so much that you you um allow it to to isolate and never try anything or never do anything or never share anything the positive manifestation was I remember a while back um somebody was like oh man well Nick was Nick was a Green Beret man you don't mess with Nick he was a Green Beret and I got and this was like four or five years ago and I remember thinking that really true anymore like I used to a GRE Beret like I I used to be sniper qualified I used to be you know Ranger qualified I used to run you know counterterrorism missions in Iraq I used to work out regularly I used to shoot on a regular basis and be very very proficient at it is that true now and that sort of impostor synd them was appropriate because it was like do you have capabilities or do you have stories um and look I think there's a point in all of our lives where capabilities gradually become stories and now maybe your job is to be a little bit more on the mentor side or whatnot but it it really kicked me in gear where it's like dude you were in your late 30s early 40s um you ain't ready to just have stories yet you need to go back out there and fight for those capabilities when when somebody says something about you you need to be asking yourself you know you is that true because if it's not and you're letting people say it about yourself you're getting an inflated sense of accomplishment over something that you aren't anymore and I didn't want to be that and so I think that was a that was a positive manifestation of of impostor syndrome um but yeah that that's that's the part I I want to make sure that I'm actually um I want to make sure that the things that I'm saying are conveying are true um that makes sense it does what are some important questions that people should be asking themselves you just said something that I thought was really interesting other people tell me I am this is that true or is that just giving myself uh an inflated sense of self or ego what other questions do you think other people could be asking themselves to improve themselves or maybe pull themsel out of let's say like a mental fallacy that they could be in um I I think one of one of the most important things people can ask themselves whenever they find themselves in a difficult situation is what did I do to get myself here uh because it's it's people can be in situations that are genuinely um you know they're the victim they they are actually the victim that doesn't mean they can't improve their situation or make that they're not a victim next time and so I think one of the most important things that people can do and again that's very controversial because we're we're never supposed to engage in victim blaming I'm not engaging in victim blaming I'm saying that even when you undergo something that is maybe say truly traumatic or you know whatever it is and and it's genuinely not your fault if you immediately take the mindset of what can I do differently how can I improve on this how can I make sure this doesn't happen again what are the things that I can do um those are important questions to ask because they will constantly move toward what are ways that I can improve to either increase my awareness increase my intellectual awareness increase my physical strength increase my capabilities so I I think when you are constantly looking at situations on I can't control what I can't control but what can I improve it will not only prevent you from wasting a a lot of time on things that you just can't change it will actually ensure that you're it will increase your sense of gratitude if that makes sense because as I start to look at what can I what can I change what can I improve and then I do those things um it's like okay I'm you know I'm grateful for the ability to be able to do these things in order to improve in order to make sure this doesn't happen again instead of looking for for villains so I I think that's one of the most important things people can be constantly asking themselves whatever situation that they're in yeah well now because you're a lot more active in politics who is actually running the country but you know what while we're on the topic this makes me question what does the future hold for business because if you ask nine different experts you're going to get 10 different answers from a bull market to Bare Market the econom is great it's awful someone should really just invent a crystal ball but until that happens over 40,000 businesses have already future proofed their business with netw Suite by Oracle the number one Cloud Erp bringing accounting financial management inventory and HR into one fluid platform and the idea is with just one unified business management Suite you have just one source of Truth giving you all of the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions plus with real-time insights and forecasting you're peering into the future with actionable data when you're able to close the book in days and not weeks you're spending less time looking backwards and more time to focus on what's next so whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions netsuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and sees your biggest opportunities and speaking of opportunity right now you can download the cfo's guide to Ai and machine learning at netsuite.com isted the guide is completely free to you at nets.com IED once again guys nets.com thank you so much to nets for sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast who is actually running the country the bureaucracy the bureaucracy and a um to some degree so it's it's a combination of certain politicians certain elected officials a very very powerful bureaucracy I'm assuming we're largely talking about the federal level uh the federal bureaucracy and then there's there's certain uh there's certain powerful interests that obviously have a lot of money and influence um W within the game but I always tell people the single greatest threat to the United States as we know it is not the CCP it's not Russia it's not terrorism those are all threats those are all credible legitimate threats but it's nowhere near the the threat of a massive unelected bureaucracy that has essentially attained for itself a massive amount of power and control um that that should I mean shouldn't even belong to it right now your politicians will go and they will pass a bill the the clean air Bill and there will be certain Provisions within that bill there'll be certain directions and whatnot but you would be shocked at how much of that bill is the Department of energy will promulgate regulations the EPA will promulgate regulations what regulations well the regulations to achieve this you mean regulations that it comes with fees fines penalties where you can potentially shut down my business nobody voted on that well we voted on the the larger bill it so how much of that gets snuck in there because I remember all of these packages that would go into effect in like 2020 2021 and yeah and it was like 2 3,000 Pages Y and in those 3,000 pages that it's impossible to read the whole thing someone just like sneaks in a paragraph that says oh yeah this company gets some extra funding or special privileges or we'll throw in this little tax over here H who does that and how is this able to pass because it seems like an All or Nothing where it's like well if you don't pass this whole thing then it's it makes no sense to me so you got over 500 members of Congress and I can tell you right now that the the vast majority of decisions are probably being made by about 15 to 20 of them um so especially on the federal level you're not passing bills until you're a committee chair and then which committee because I guarantee you if you're the chairman of the Appropriations Committee if you're chairman of the Ways and Means Committee oh the fundraising the fundraising potential for that is astronomical compared to if you're the chairman of the education committee right so that's the part where where the interests play in as well um and and and the state is kind of a mic microcosm of that but there's two M massive differences between let's say the Virginia state legislature and the federal government in the Virginia state legislature we constitutionally have to have a balance balanced budget have to we don't get to do continuing resolutions have to have a balanced budget that's an important limiting principle on our power the other thing is is um actually there's three things the the second one is we have essentially one issue per bill so what we have is what they call germanness rules now Rand Paul has been trying to do this on the federal level I think Thomas Massie has as well and some others they can't get it through but what it says is that in Virginia if if I have the save the puppies Bill there isn't a bunch of crap in there for agriculture or for educa this is a save the puppies bill and the only thing you can have in there is stuff about saving puppies they don't have that rule in the federal why not because they don't want it they are they making money on the back end of this so much power to be had when you can slip your controversial piece of legislation into a bill that nobody can vote no on but how how does that benefit that person slipping it in are they getting money in the back end what sort of it could be it could be campaign contributions it could be just they believe it's really necessary that Milton fredman um articulated it's a concept that's been around mil Freedman did the best job of articulating where he talked about concentrated benefit and dispersed cost so for instance I'm going to sneak in a tariff for the sugar industry in Florida I'm sneak in a a tariff for that so what does that mean well it means that every product that you have in the United States that utilizes sugar just went up but probably only by a couple of pennies so maybe your grocery budget is impacted by let's just I'm just throwing numbers out here let's say $100 a year you don't even know that's going on but that little tariff is worth tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars for the industry which benefits from it so they're going to put all kinds of time money and effort into lobbying for this into doing commercials about how this is helping American businesses and saving American jobs when in reality what they did was they just made all of your grocery budgets go up so that they could actually take larger profits because they're not able to compete with a foreign sourc product now if you want to get out there and say hey you're all going to have to pay more for this because we want to protect an American company you can do that but that's not what's going going on right that's not what's going on and so the concentrated benefit to the company is so intense that they're willing to spend time money and effort to make sure that every congressman is on board with this now who got hurt by this generally anyone that buys anything with sugar but you don't notice it are you are you let's say you did you watch this you're like holy crap I can't believe I'm paying $100 more on groceries every year as a result of this tariff you're gonna stop what you're doing hire lobbyists and then go and talk to you know congressmen and their staffs for the next six months in order to get this removed no and so the incentive structure is completely backward um now a lot of people will say well this is why you get the money out of politics you can't you you can't like I just wish people would understand this you can't get the money out of politics and every time they try to come up with some sort of campaign Finance reform you know who it benefits incumbents every single time because as incumbents we have special advantages first of all lobbyists don't like to piss us off right if you vote a certain amount with the right industry or whatnot they're going to continue to they they will never endorse one of your candidates and they're not going to give money to one of your or excuse me they will they will not endorse your opponents they won't give money to your OPP opponents it's not worth the risk this is all a financial decision it's an economic calculation right so so you have all these factors that are going into this process now let's say tomorrow um you said okay we we're limiting all campaign contributions to $1,000 cuz they did this at the federal level with like 2700 yeah okay well great I as an incumbent I get to go around and give a bunch of speeches I get invited to go talk to a bunch of groups why because I'm an elected official you don't get those invitations yeah you could show up to a couple of forums that they host but you don't have the same reason to be there that I have to be there as an incumbent so by limiting our fundraising capacity you haven't been advantag as the Challenger I've been advantag as the incumbent so the solution is not get get money out of politics cuz you can't the solution is the government should not have this much control over the economy it was never meant to go read Article 1 Section 8 of The Constitution half of what the federal government does right now they're not doing that because of anything in Article 1 Section 8 they're doing it because of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution which gave the federal government the ability to pass the income tax and so now the federal government is involved in a whole host of things that they were never intended to be not because they're forcing you to do it but simply because they're saying if you want to get any of that money back for your state or for you as an individual you got to sign on to this program you don't have to you're just not going to get that money back do you have many times in a state legislature I hear well Nick we can't pass that because we might lose federal funds Oh you mean the federal funds they exploited from us in the first place so no I I I hate to tell people this but the way I look at who I'm going to vote for is no longer simply you know Republican Democrat libertarian the way I look for it is who understands what a massive threat the bureaucracy actually plays to we would like to believe is a representative government um who actually understands that the government's role is not to be this involved in micromanaging our everyday lives and who is actually serious about doing something to prevent it so how important is the president because to me it seems like they have very little power compared to the house in the Senate like like I think the House and Senate is 10 times more important than who you elect as a president I could be wrong but it just seems as though they have we way more power it was meant to be that way yeah it was meant to be that way in large part because especially for the house cuz the house controls the budget right all budget Amendments have to start in the house and so that really was meant to give the legislature a great deal of power if you look at Executives if you look at presidents early on in the in the Republic there was a great deal of deference gave to the legislature as as kind of the true voice of the people um again uh a couple of things have changed that though in the early Progressive Era especially under the woodro Wilson Administration there was this dramatic shift away from constitutional limitations on federal power to more of a a managed bureaucratic state right we were G going to increase the bureaucracy we're going to put experts in place with all the best data and they were going to make far more sound decisions than the marketplace would guess what didn't really work out that way you actually saw a massive increase on that during the U Roosevelt administration with FDR uh FDR ushered in the single greatest interventions into the economy um into the role of the federal government and the Dirty Little Secret here and I'm not making this up this is not hyperbolic if you look at a lot of what he modeled it after was melini's Italy um Hugh Johnson who actually ran ran um the National Recovery Act programs in the 1930s where the federal government was coming in and telling you how much you could charge for dry cleaning right you you want to go buy a chicken you don't get to pick the chicken right that because Federal mandate say it has to be X Y and Z Hugh Johnson used to carry around a book called the corpor state which was written by Italian fascists and so they actually saw fascism before it devolved into you know everything it became they actually saw it as a as a good balance between socialism which wanted to abolish the private ownership of the means of production and State control of the economy to where it was you can still own the corporation but you will run it the way we say and you will meet the objectives we want and if you don't we could potentially nationalize it and so when you when you start setting up a mass of federal bureaucracy to deal with all those decisions the important thing to understand is the bureaucracy ends up with interests of its own and the bureaucracy wants to expand its power and it wants to expand its budget and again the people in the bureaucracy might think they're doing the Lord's work but that doesn't mean it's right and it doesn't mean that our system of government was ever meant to do that I think it's fascinating that Thomas Soul who is one of my favorite contemporary economists at a Stanford University he was a Marxist this was a guy that dropped out of high school and then got into Harvard went through Harvard as a Marxist studying under Milton Freedman at the Chicago uh school or at the University of Chicago was a Marxist whenever they asked Thomas Soul what changed your mind how did you go from a Marxist to one of the biggest advocates for free market economics in the country in the world and he goes One Summer working for the federal government he goes I was working down in Puerto Rico a big storm came through and there was all kinds of emphasis in order to flood more Federal money in in order to assist with things and and I wanted to see the data in order to to determine whether or not the funding that we were utilizing and how we're utilizing it was actually achieving its intended objectives he goes he goes it wasn't just that the data came back he was I couldn't get it they wouldn't give it to me and then I realized that if we had had the data we we could we could essentially empirically prove what we already suspected to be true which was that the the program wasn't working the way it it was supposed to but it represented a third of that agency's budget and they weren't going to allow for anything that was going to potentially chop out or put in Jeopardy a third of their budget and so the thing I would tell people is the problem a Jeffersonian quote right the government that's big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have that's true it just is and and and it's not because it's not because I believe that the the people pushing for this are all evil nefarious horrible human beings I think they are completely wrong about human nature I think they're completely wrong about economics I think they're completely wrong about the what what should be a positive relationship between the government and and the people that it's supposed to serve and represent um and and it goes back there's a there's a CS Lewis quote uh where he said it it might be better to live under greedy robber barons than moral Busy Bodies he goes because a greedy Robber Baron might have their greed satiated at some point he goes but a moral busy body will torment you without in because they do so with the approval of their own conscience so how much wasteful spending do you see in the government massive yeah right massive amounts but okay let me rephrase that what do you mean wasteful if you mean wasteful in the sense that it isn't serving the intended purpose or it's actually counterproductive with respect to what we would consider to be positive economic growth horribly wasteful if you look at it from the perspective of how good is it at supporting particular constituencies in order to make sure people get reelected it's some of the most efficient stuff you've ever seen on the planet yeah guess so it's all about whenever you see something that you think this is so stupid who would have come up with this way I promise you it's somebody very smart for a purpose they're not telling you see the problem that I see is that it seems like a lot of the expenditures are grossly inflated and there's no incentive to bring it back down or be reasonable with what they spend and what I really liked was that Elon Musk came up with Doge to basically audit the government spending get it under control because the way I see it as like a finance person if someone has a spending problem and spending more money than they make the solution is not well you got to make more money yeah the solution is always well let's look at the budget cut down see what you could afford and then go from there and it seems like why wouldn't that also apply to the government that not their money it's not their money and um about half the population doesn't pay any real federal income tax but they do receive federal benefits right so I mean this is a story as old as Plato right democracy fails the moment people realize that they can vote for themselves benefits from the public treasury so if we we've now created a we've now created a society where a significant portion of the population are not net taxpayers but they are net tax beneficiaries so you have politicians that have created constituencies where they actually benefit from raising taxes on people that are engaging in productive economic behavior in order to buy the votes of people who are not and I don't say that to be a mean Wicked person I I know what it is to be poor um what I don't know what it is here's what I don't know I don't know what it's like to think that it's somebody else's fault because wasn't making as much money and but that is a very very easy button to push because there are there are examples of people within society that have gotten their wealth through either unethical means ill-gotten gains or whatever else it is but when you take anybody that's achieved incredible economic success and you automatically put him into that category as if that's the only way it could have been done well then now you create you you create a a a degree of I hate to call it class Warfare because ultimately that's not what it is it's more ideological Warfare it's saying enemy is anybody that has more than me what a horrible place to live when my neighbor does well I want to celebrate with him because not only is it good for my neighbor but it's also an indication that gosh if I make better decisions maybe I can have that too or I can turn it around and say my neighbor has more than me he must have done something wrong who's the politician that will steal from him and give to me don't ever doubt that that has power as an economic and a political message but going deeper why do people root for others downfalls why is that so natural I don't think think it requires as much effort on their part again there's a people don't adopt the victim mentality because it's it's it's ultimately good for them people adopt a victim mentality because in the moment it's incredibly satisfying I think one of the biggest things that we have to understand and come to grips with is not everybody wants Freedom there's a lot of people that would if if you're saying you got to trade your freedom but you don't have any responsibilities anymore deal the problem is you can't accept that sort of environment without punishing somebody else because the only way that you can get stuff now if you're not willing to work for it to the degree that is necessary in order to attain it is to take it from somebody else and you're going to need the one institution within society that is legally authorized to use aggressive violence to get what they want and that's the government yeah the big irer for me was the uh several of the tax plans that have gone out there and it's incredible how much I mean the these taxes that they want to implement are on the extreme side of things they always start high to be able to negotiate down but even when you see over 10 years let's just say that I I think they were going to raise like3 to5 trillion do over 10 years but when you really put that into context that's one year of overspending by the government more than they bring in one year and that's over 10 years on the aggressive side so it seems almost like a drop in the bucket to tax more compared to just cutting back on what they're spending already how how much of a problem is the national debt uh it's it's getting to a point yeah it's getting to a point where it's far more significant for two reasons um we were we've been able to get away with a large national debt in part because we we we're a massive economy what like 156 trillion dollar economy I mean huge um the problem that we have now is that certain entitlement programs like Social Security Medicaid Medicare these are not sustainable um and and quite frankly they never were I think that's the part that we all need to understand when FDR put this out there they never were sustainable anytime that you're you you set up a retirement scheme which operates eerily like a Ponzi scheme um that is at some point you're going to you're going to falter and we're at a point where our birth rates are not so sustainable in order to to maintain it and so they're trying to solve that problem through immigration and largely illegal immigration but that causes other social upheaval in part because you have a massive welfare state and so if you're creating situations where you get free healthare and free education um but you also have a working population that is is maybe paying things like sales taxes or maybe property taxes by virtue of renting or things like that they're certainly not paying all the taxes that are being utilized in order to sustain what amounts to free medical care and free education and so you have a deficit there as well not to mention some of the cultural considerations that go into effect so that compounds the problem with respect to the debt the only other reason why we've gotten away with I I believe with having the debt we do is because we're the world's Reserve currency um the moment I I don't think brics is going to I don't think bricks is going to achieve what they want to because there's so many internal problems in places like China and Brazil that I just don't see them pulling it off South Africa oh my gosh I don't see them pulling it off um but that being the world's Reserve currency we we can say that okay it's saved the dollar but has it uh when when you're operating off of a a purely fiat currency like we have been since the 70s um this is the natural result because the government only has three ways to raise money they can tax it they can borrow it or they can print it and and massive printing like we saw during covid you know when when 40% of the money supply in existence was printed within six months you that's going to have impacts on prices across the board but to to your point earlier about this whole idea of um policy and pain right decision and pain the number of people that think that oh well we have inflation because of corporate greed so let me get this straight corporations weren't greedy until what 2021 and then they all of a sudden became greedy and now that's why we're dealing with this no you printed $3 trillion the value of everything has not gone up the the value of your dollar has gone down as a result of just printing fiat currency um there is my favorite politician in the world right now is javay nobody has done more um in such a short period of time uh but going back to your point earlier about the power of the executive the president in Argentina has a lot more power over the Executive Branch than the president of the United States one of the biggest problems that we have with the president of the United States being able to actually do things within the executive branch that we might consider to be meaningful is the fact that we have Civil Service laws and so even though the government the president presides over a massive federal government that doesn't mean he can fire who he wants and hire who he wants he has a select number of positions between cabinet positions appointees and things like that but you have mid-level bureaucrats that have been there forever and they can wait you out what do you think of Bitcoin so here's the deal I I don't have a um I don't have a particular affinity for any one uh cryptocurrency um I I have a huge concern about government controlled digital currencies um I don't want the fed or the treasury anywhere near digital currencies personally why is that because one of the biggest one of the biggest reasons why we're in the mess that we're in right now economically is because of uh exclusive Federal control over currency um I don't believe that you can I don't there's no such thing as a stable fiat currency ultimately if if there isn't some sort of limiting principle uh which prevents the government from just arbitrarily printing dollars you're you're in a lot of trouble and that's what we have right now that's what we've had again since the 70s and pretty soon the chickens are going to come home to roost on that one I think pretty significantly um but the thing I like about you know Bitcoin is obviously not inflationary so that's an interesting concept because for so long even people like mil Freeman have operated out the concept that well inflation has to be or all currencies have to be somewhat inflationary in order to meet with increased population or production or or whatever else I actually I don't think that's necessar true when we look at the nature of currency and what it is so um my answer is any currency and any any mechanism which can potentially be used as currency that isn't controlled by a government I'm here for it I'm here for it yeah one thing that seems so incredibly foreign now is whenever I think that the government exists to serve us because it consistently is reaffirmed in my brain that I kind of exist to serve the government one thing you mentioned is that in bills that are not on the federal level it needs to actually represent whatever the title of the bill is like save the puppies bill will actually only be about saving the puppies and that that doesn't need to happen on the federal level it made me think about the uh the Border bill that was attempted to be passed the bipar is in Border but if you look at like the main spending of it it it had nothing to do with the border and then and then people during these debates like KLA Harris is saying like yeah I was trying to pass a bipartisan border Bill to save up the border which was shut down by Republicans which were all Guided by by Trump but I'm looking at the border Bill and we'll list the top three things in the Border bill right now and the total I mean amount of money that was allocated for this bill it's insane what was it like 20% was actually for the border and like 80% was to other countries and and this is done int please understand this is done intentionally for just the sound B that took place during that debate Republicans don't really want to fix the Border because we had a bipart what is bipartisan if one person crosses the island votes to the other side you now have official a bipartisan bill because a bipartisan piece of legislation was put out there to secure the border and you guys voted no because you want the problem more than you do the solution and then you read the bill which most people don't right and then you find out wait a second here is my question what new funding or authorities did the federal government require to do what the previous administration was already doing with existing funding and authorities what more did you need the answer is nothing they didn't need anything that bill was specifically put out there with a poison pill in it so it had to die so that the Democrats could come out and say Republicans voted against a border security Bill and look I'm not saying Republicans don't do similar things to Democrats I'm just saying that's the reality most of people have this idea that that politics is primarily about policy politics has primarily become about marketing and if you Market well you're successful there was another thing that I thought was hilarious which was the inflation reduction act which how tell me how when is just the increasing of the money supply more money that that the the solution is to print well because so much money not even for inflation but it wasn't for inflation but it was for green energy yeah it had tell me how that has anything to do with inflation and they called it the inflation reduction nothing it they called it the inflation reduction act because everybody in the country regardless of where they are in the political Spectrum realizes that inflation is a problem so if I want to get a bill passed for something that those far far more controversial I don't do the green Energy bill which by the way has some inflation stuff no no no I do the inflation reduction act and how dare you vote against it you must not want to deal with inflation that's what I'm saying this is marketing it had nothing to do with inflation it worse it made it worse it actually made it worse we're GNA link to these two bills Down Below in the description I highly recommend you guys actually look where the funding is going because I heard about these things immediately looked it up and it was like I got slapped in the face I was so confused used that it just was a complete misnomer yeah the the other the other one that keeps getting discussed uh which is just fascinating me because this has already been done in Europe and repealed because it had such horrible effects un attacks on unrealized gains oh gosh you are you kidding me right now like how do we not understand how monumentally stupid this is and part of the reason why we don't understand how monumentally stupid it is is because we have a public school system that has no incentive to train kids to actually understand how monumentally stupid it is because when the government is running your education system trusted to teach kids that the government is your buddy and it's here to help um I mean you guys know this but you guys could explain this better than I can but let me give it a shot um you have Investments and you haven't actually realized any of the profits or the money from those Investments because well the money that you have placed into that investment is now being used to start up a new company or it's being used to hire people it's being used to build Capital uh equipment in order to make the business more profitable so that you can get a return so you used your labor in order to make money and instead of just going and spending that money on a yacht you decided to reinvest that labor so somebody else could use the money that you had at that particular time right because there's a Time preference in order to build something that is beneficial for the employees for the customers and for you as an investor what we're now going to say is you know what you're too successful as an investor because you have this much money and net assets so what we're going to do is we're going to force you to pay a tax so what do you have to do now you have to liquidate assets into a money-making Venture which businesses and and employees depend PA in order to give the money to who the federal government and what would this wonderful unrealized gains tax actually do after of course it's destroyed businesses destroyed opportunities and run away the investor Cloud what would it do then it would pay for three days of federal government spending well thank god Camala can't thank you can't thank you enough for that France lost somewhere in the neighborhood of like 20% of its millionaires don't quote me on that actual percentage it was a significant portion of their millionaires um left the country because then the question became well if you're taxing unrealized gains what is that is it stock is it real estate is it art like what all is included in this and then how do we constantly go and assess that like this is an actual nightmare even for the tax assessors on trying to determine what the relative wealth is of a bunch of assets that you know especially for some what about unrealized losses too does that only go against unrealized gains and on top of that I I think the frustrating part for me is I saw this one tick Tok this one time which usually T get off the money is taxed I want to invest money the money is taxed there is taxing along every single step and yet it's still not enough here here's the you want to oh let me really piss you off um we had a bill in Virginia uh we've had it a couple different years where we were going to lower the lower the tax rate so and we lowered it across the across the all three level we have like three uh levels of Taxation in Virginia so our Democrat friends get up and say you want to lower taxes for the wealthy okay if you're lowering taxes across all income brackets and the vast majority of taxes are paid by the top 20% of the population vast majority right a net to like all the taxes are paid by the top 50% but the top 20% they're they're paying all of it so if you're going to do a tax cut well then by definition the people paying taxes are going to realize the largest gain as a result of that but that wasn't good enough they wanted a tax cut for the people that needed it the most so you mean the net beneficiaries of tax spending okay that's not a tax cut that's more government spending but you've now shaped it as a tax cut now here was the here was the worst part because they're like people make people living off of $20,000 a year can I just say something right now if you're living off of $20,000 in the United States chances are you have no idea about all of the massive government welfare programs that we already have out there that are providing you additional assistance in fact when you add it all up it ends up being that there are a lot of people are actually making more in government benefits than they are with respect to their jobs but if I'm trying to make a really really like edgy point on the floor and I'm trying to talk about how mean you are for not wanting to give tax cuts to this people I want you to keep something in mind when they look at their income they don't count the redistributed funds so you pay taxes those taxes get taken from you and they give to this person over here and it increases their net income by like double but then they don't count that when they're talking about their income because technically they didn't earn it right it was a government redistribution so let's say you pay more in taxes in order to help this person that is hurting and so they get even more they can come back the very next year and say they're still just making $20,000 a year it doesn't matter that actually no they're clearing over 45,000 now as a result of you know you getting taxed more they don't even count that into the equation because we're just looking at income and so what it does is it gives them the ability to vilify taxpayers and the moment you say this is too much you're greedy why don't you want to help people they don't even give you credit for the help you're already doing why why is it there a flat tax it seems like that would be a very simple solution that I've never spoken with a person who's been not in favor of a flat tax it just seems very easy to implement well because the the moment you took it would be it would be very I I don't even think it's the fairest form but I do think it's a it would be a vast improvement over what we currently have because the rich would still pay more um the biggest problem that you're going to get is that if any sort of flat tax scheme that you come up with is either going to drastically increase taxes on poor people which is really bad political marketing um or it won't be sufficient to fund the existing Federal bureaucracy and there's a there's a very cynical saying in um politics which is nobody ever lost an election by spending too little and so the more federal dollars you're spending at something the more constituencies you're creating that are dependent upon those federal dollars now this might be really controversial but I've always been curious about this why don't they require people take a test in order to vote like you just have to answer basic questions that demonstrate some like the low EST form of knowledge just to be able to get by so they used to it was called pole testing and it was largely executed in the post Civil War and Jim Crow era and so what it was is local registrars especially very racist local registrars would come up with tests with ridiculous answers and so when black voters would come to vote oh take your test you failed and that was it and so the argument is was well why couldn't we come up with a more objective test that we do now I will say this whenever it comes to exercising um what are either I believe natural rights or essential civil liberty so a natural right is something like your freedom of religion or freedom of speech a civil liberty is voting um I'm I'm skeptical of the government politicians coming up with tests you have to take because then they will manipulate the tests in the way that they want and so I I think I think a better question on some of this is that if if we're being honest is is is there any problem with a is there any problem with a a system which says that you can be a net beneficiary of the system without contributing to it and I mean that's just it you get to maybe to some degree there is if people are really down on their luck I think maybe there should be a something down there that that'll at least help rehabilitate you back into society I I think that I I think that that's that's always and I will say this that has always been the argument yeah but the reality is is we're here and that argument hasn't changed right well it's it's always going to be for okay but these aren't the lowest and by the way can we also can we also say this I don't like corporate welfare either I don't like cronyism um we we had the Amazon deal in in Virginia and I voted against it I was one of like seven Republicans that voted it was to move the Amazon headquarters there and they got a bunch of tax breaks and they got a bunch of other things to move the headquarter to what was what was the argument against that the argument against it for me was is that this is cronous they're not coming here because we've created the best tax and Regulatory environment for the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia we're doing it because you've manipul you've specifically manipulated the tax environment and the regulatory environment just for them which means the burdens are going to be passed along to existing businesses within Virginia and so I I've always been very very skeptical of this idea that we're going to very very we're going to sit there and manipulate the tax code in order to give businesses which have the most lobbying power an an economic advantage and that's essentially what you do with Cronus economics um and and I just I have a real problem with it do do you think that there could be a net benefit I'm just trying to play The Other Side here you could say like Elon Musk could go practically anywhere say I'm going to put my headquarters here yeah if you give me XYZ and if you don't I'm going to go somewhere else that will there's still a net benefit there even though it might not be as large sure um if you want to watch a really funny takedown of this uh reason TV did one on uh and and it was it was about arguing over I think um Amazon an Amazon headquarters something like that but it was these two mayors that were competing with one another on what they were going to do next and it it started off with we're going to give you tax breaks and we're going to give you regulatory breaks and then it ended up with what we will let you hunt human beings in our town just please we need the jobs and and the problem is is that it is I think it's an infinite regression um because ultimately what you're doing is you're creating an environment where now that's the expectation for how business is done and so there's never this idea where here's 11 playing field we have a low tax B we have a low tax rate we're very very business friendly in the sense that no matter who wants to do business here we want you here and we want you to we want you to have an incredibly predictable um you know tax environment and Regulatory environment that's the way I want to attract business because I think that attracts business more for the Long Haul if it's if it's this infinite fighting back and forth then ultimately the only businesses that truly benefit from that are the ones that have the most lobbying power and they will always benefit at the expense of maybe maybe new competition maybe Innovative competition and so I I definitely think you can make a short-term argument for why it would be beneficial uh the problem is I think in the long term you're setting really really perverse incentive structures and you're you're making politicians far more powerful with respect to the decision- making process that a business uses I don't want to be in the position I don't want to be the one where um whether or not you decide to do business in Virginia is detered based off of how much you donate to my campaign because I'm the one that controls the committee that's going to get to decide whether or not your little tax break goes through um I think that's ultimately a very very perverse incentive you mentioned that the government is mostly ran by 12 to 15 individuals in Congress who would you say these people are and why do they get to make the decisions speaker of the house uh Majority Leader minority leader committee chairs Senate majority leaders because they're like the conductors of all of the the people beneath them essentially every every single committee seat is decided by the speaker people don't recognize how much power a speaker has say committee seat so um Appropriations Committee decides where all the money goes so let me use Virginia as an example because I'm very familiar with those committees so we have a finance committee that decides the taxes we have an Appropriations Committee that decides where the money goes we have an agriculture committee that decides all a policy we have an education committee we have a transportation committee we have a Public Safety Committee we have a a courts of Justice committee so each one of these committee chairs gets to who their subcommittee chairs are and then the Speaker gets to select who sits on what committees and he can remove you from them anytime he wants now there there is some limiting principles on there because you can always you know vote no confidence of the the chair when it comes to the speaker we saw that with McCarthy but that doesn't happen very often very very little um so if you're the chair of Appropriations you're going to out fund raise me 20 to1 just by virtue of being the chair you get to decide the budget of Virginia and if you serve on the Appropriations Committee oh you will be voting for the budget or else you won't be on the Appropriations Committee that's just reality um that that is that's true on the federal level so that's the speaker of the house that gets to appoint these like committee leaders of these small little subcategories that get to decide things like regulations and environmental the way the way to think about this is that there's a practical reason why some of this is done so for instance not every bill can go to the house floor right so what do we do we have a committee structure all right so you got a bill on agriculture great it's going to get assigned to the agricultural committee the chairman of the agriculture committee is going to assign it to a subcommittee with a subcommittee chair that they picked and they selected the composition of that subcommittee usually to make sure that whatever outcome they want gets achieved that bill goes before the subcommittee it's heard you bring Witnesses and the vast majority of that is kind of figured out based off of the ideological composition of that subcommittee I would argue 60 to 70% of bills and and most of your 67 repr die in a subcommittee right so seven people saw it like in Virginia um and there's a similar structure on the federal level as well and again that that is not in in of itself nefarious it's just a way of how are we supposed to manage 2500 pieces of legislation in 60 days right we got to have a process for it but if you're a committee chair especially on the federal level uh because the federal level is much different the one of the big benefits about state legislatures is that we tend to be citizen legislators which means we're not full-time legislators like we I get paid $17,600 a year to be a delegate that's not that's not my job that pays the bills right that's enough money to cover like gas and expenses um because that's what we're supposed to do go serve and then go back and live in our districts if you're in DC that's a totally different world um and if you're not in one of those very very powerful positions within the legislature you're not deciding anything with respect to um legislation and if you want to one day be in a position to be able to do that you better get really good at playing ball with the people that are currently in power there's very few people one of the reasons why Trump scares the living piss out of DC is that he is the first guy that kind of came in and said screw all of this and got elected now when he got elected what happened well he had very powerful people within Congress that slow rolled a lot of it and then the other thing is that really exposed the power of the bureaucracy because if if you've been s if you're in a if you're in a position of Senior Management within the Civil Service side of the bureaucracy president can't fire you it's almost impossible to fire you I you got to do something almost criminal now what happens if you don't like what the president's doing you slow roll it you don't implement it the way it should be you you you engage in some of that horrible customer service that the federal government and that all government agencies have become notorious for and then in four years you're gone okay back to business as usual so what could people do about this because it seems like it's outside of a lot of people's control a lot of it so the first thing I would tell people is it it is not your civic duty to vote it is your civic duty to know what the hell you're voting for like I I can't stand this whole idea of well I voted because Taylor Swift told me dude I voted because they have kind eyes like holy crap dude you're not doing your civic duty to your country if you have no idea what policies you're actually advocating for when you cast that vote so I want everybody to vote but I I want them to know what they're voting for and why they're voting for it I I think that's number one two if you're someone that believes in in more of a limited con constitutionally restricted government which is to say I don't need a government to micromanage my life I want to be in charge of my life I want the government to do government stuff like build the road keep me free from foreign Invasion I don't know um lock people up for committing violent crimes right that's what I want you to do government thank you we can handle the rest then you need to actually elect people that are dedicated to that and the number of people that are actually dedicated to that is is very very small and it doesn't fall neatly into oh well they're a republican because Republicans advertise themselves as doing that but there's actually a much smaller demographic of Republicans that are serious about it you know your Rand Paul's your Thomas massie's you know some guys like that um so know what you're voting for the other thing I would say and and I this is how bad do you want to piss people off today do a lot um really badly get your kids out of public school um I do not say this because all public school teachers are bad they're not there is there is tens of thousands of absolutely wonderful uh Public School teachers and and some administrators and principles and everything else doing their doing their best to try to make a broken system work but it is effectively a broken system this was set up based off of an 18th century Prussian model in order to make really really good conscripts and Factory workers and it is a mass production approach to education which means it's not interested in the individual goals of your child it is at this point interested in sustaining itself as it is and you you know this because anytime there's any sort of adjustment to try to make substantive change to the system the advertising you get is not you know oh well that's a really good point and something we should consider or well we think we have a different way of achieving that no it's it's you hate teachers and you want to defund public school you don't want poor people to learn right it's immediately ad hominum attack immediately ad hominum attack the other thing that we need to keep in mind is that if you look at if you look at our University system so you want to teach in a public school got to have a degree right got to have an education degree our University system overall is on a good day about 7030 um leftists to conservative or libertarian on a bad day it's more like 910 and in the education Departments of every school it's more like 955 and what I mean by that and James Lindsay has actually done a really really good job of of talking about this in his book called the Marx ification of Education if you look at what's being emphasized Within educ right now it's hideous um we're at a point right now where there there is such power within that system in order to maintain the status quo in order to just argue for more funding but to never do any sort of substantive change that would that would correct some of the things that we all saw during Co um that I I think at this point it has gotten almost openly hostile um and you see this with some of just the like this the speeches that are given from like the you know American Federation of teachers and and the advocacy that they do they are actively involved in political ideological Pursuits and so to say if you're someone that believes in free markets if you're someone that believes in property rights if you're someone that believes that you know us history with all its flaws has has overall been a a a pretty good pretty good step in the right direction uh by compared to world history you you are going to increasingly get a core of teachers that were not taught that they were taught the exact opposite of that and so the worldview that you're trying to teach your kids is going to be in many cases directly opposed within the school system that you are paying taxes for and will be arrested if you don't send your kids to unless you can afford an alternative so I would just tell you right now you need to look really hard at what is being taught to your kids I always hear about socialization socialization I don't want to hear about socialization when we got kids getting raped in public school bathrooms and this is something in Virginia that we have really dealt with I I don't want to hear about it when we've got overt political indoctrination we've got overt indoctrination on things like critical theory queer Theory things that do not need to be discussed in the 9th grade especially when you have kids that can't even get basic math and and reading scores down um we don't need pornographic materials within our Public School libraries I I'm sorry this whole idea that we just want to ban books in in the Commonwealth of Virginia we had a Bill here's what the bill did it didn't ban a single book not one didn't ban didn't remove any didn't do anything it said you're going to have a list on your public in order to address some of thec concerns that parents have brought up you're going to have a list of books that feature things like this and then we offered six examples one was a graphic no of a 10-year-old girl beinged by an elderly man one was depictions of of um these are visual depictions right we're not talking about a puler priz thing where it's kind of like no no no visual depictions in in books you're going to have a list that tells parents these books are in there and then you're going to give them the option to not let their kids check it out not one vote not one crossover vote so no this stuff is going on within your public school system so what I would say is this I I think one of the biggest Keys going forward if you if you again you want to see the sort of country where we believe in property rights we believe in free markets We Believe an individual liberty we believe that the government is supposed to play an important yet limited role within our lives you're going to need to take more responsibility over your kids' education now if you keep him in public school because you can't afford an alternative understand you're still going to have to be very very actively involved because while you can delegate um well while you can delegate the authority to educate your kids you cannot delegate the responsibility for it they're your kids and I think it's one of the it's one of the single most important things people can do is play a far more active role so if you can get out of him I would that's just the real I'm to tell people what I believe is the truth if you can't get out of him you're GNA have to play a far more active role because I don't think they're I think they are increasingly designed um to indoctrinate whe then actually set your children up for economic or social success okay so just to get this straight you're saying that this was a bill or something an idea that was you you were I'm presumably trying to pass which said that parents needed that parents should be provided with a list of books and they can then decide if their child can check it out delegate Tim Anderson had the bill he he listed six of some of the most graphic uh books that had been in Virginia Public School System not theoretically not could be were and he said these are the sort of books and we came up with a certain guideline these are the sort of books they just have to inform parents that they're there not one per here was the crazy part as he's describing this and he's showing pictures we had to dismiss the student Pages we have student pages that serve in the Virginia House of delegates and Senate they're they're like 13 14 years old and they sit up there and they'll run and they'll they'll bring you bills or they'll bring you stuff like that we uh requested the speaker dismissed the the student pages so that we could actually show what we were going to show and he went through and he read off what it said he showed the pictures of it he did all of it I had a Democrat colleague one who I actually respect quite a bit even though we disagree a lot he goes Nick I think it was horribly um Ju Just just went beyond all decorum for Tim to show those pictures on the floor of the House of delegates like those are pictures from books in public school libraries if it's inappropriate here in a room full of adults and legislators who actually have the decision-making power over these things why is it appropriate in a public school library and by the way we weren't even going to remove them we were just going to let parents know they were there why was that inappropriate he goes well Nick nobody wants those books in the public school system I said well somebody certainly does because they're there I said but I'll tell you what we'll see when we have the vote who put the books there a lot of it is based off of individual school librarians and the American Library Association by the way you want to read some really squ scary quotes read what a certain head of the American Library Association said that she thinks the role of the libraries and responsibilities are because it is not increase literacy I mean you want to talk about like dedicated every time I say this people always like oh red Scar the woman has has come right out and said that she she's a Marxist and that she has a certain she believes she has a certain ideological responsibility and that using that position to be able to Foster that and to Foster those ideas is very important to her okay maybe you like that maybe you don't but don't get you don't get to tell me it's not happening are kids actually going to the library and reading books is that I I feel like it's I never never never went to like I would pick up the National Geographic books like with the all the butterflies and the reptiles but I was like third grade and look at the dinosaurs I mean that was about it you probably didn't have porn in your public school library but I'll tell you what if you were a teenage boy and you came across some yeah you might be Library maybe I did but like I just wouldn't I wouldn't know here's what it comes down to it's it's not even a question of um because I I've heard some people say well you know if you want to ban it for your children you can ban it but you don't get to ban it from mine like okay but it's in a public school library our tax dollars paid for it is there really no realm where we can say look whether you like it whether you don't like it this probably isn't appropriate for a 13-year-old especially a 13-year-old that we need to stay focused on I don't know learning how to read right or or or being able to do basic mathematics or or finish their AP courses like what why is this in here why is this taking up time and then to see the push back to where well if you want to do this you're a book Banner or you're a book burner or you're a fascist let me get this straight I'm a fascist because I don't want tax dollars spent on openly pornographic materials in a public school library really I'm a fascist because I want parents to actually be aware that these this sorts of material is in your public school library that that makes me a fascist why do you think no one voted on that what do you think well our side did we voted for it unanimously uh we got it the house so not a single Democrat voted for it we got out of the house went to the Senate and died in a subcommittee and most of the people that voted in the subcommittee voted by proxy so it's because you didn't have funding in there though that's probably why right why don't the the citizens make the decision for something like that well so I'm sure if you if you like did by poll yeah it would be overwhelmingly like yes please let us know you know if there are certain books that could be explicit that we could then restrict our child so we have control over what our child can read in school depending on your state your local school board actually can't have the authority to do things like that and your local school board can be very so the the local school boards in Virginia are actually quite powerful um there's a lot of things that the Virginia Department of Education does that is just what they call like guidance or recommendations but they're not impositions because our state constitution gives a great deal of authority to the localities which I I don't think is a bad thing um and so that's the place where the the parents can have the biggest voice here's going to always be the problem though this is my other problem with with government run education you're forcing all of us to pay for it right and so even if you even if you do have some sort of um you impact at the local level we're still being all compelled to pay for it even if we don't like it and part of the problem is is that when you give when you increasingly give the government more control over areas of our life especially areas is essential as education you are ultimately going to end up with greater inefficiencies because of the way government spends money which we discussed at AUM but you're also going to end up with agendas you're going to end up with political agendas in your classroom that you probably don't want and even the people right now that might be happy with the particular agenda okay cool you going to be happy if Trump's the one setting it so is is the solution for us to fight endlessly about which side of the political spectrum is going to control education or should the fight be how do we Empower parents to be able to get their kids education because we could do things like individual vouchers we could do things like education savings accounts we could let me put it this way for everyone that has watched this said Nick's just an anti-education you know Zealot we all agree education is important can we also agree that eating is important okay so let's say a 100 years ago uh the government got together and said you know what eating is so incredibly important that it cannot be left to the private sector there's no way it could be left to the private sector because otherwise poor people would starve to death and so here's what we're going to do we're going to open up 10,000 government grocery stores and you're not going to actually pick your grocery store you're going to be assigned a grocery store based off of your address now when you go into the grocery store you're not actually going to select your groceries your groceries are going to be selected by nutritional experts that the government approves of and they're going to decide what your grocery bag looks like for your family based off of whatever the newest data is on caloric intake and things like that um now if you don't like something in your grocery bag no problem you're just going to have to show up to a lot of uh meetings either at the local level or the state level or potentially the federal level in order to try to convince them to put something else in your bag well all the people that currently stuff have stuff in your bag are going to deploy lobbyists in order to make sure that your bag never changes right oh by the way none of the employees working at this government grocery store will ever be rewarded financially off of their Ingenuity creativity or work ethic they will be rewarded based off of seniority does anybody think that would be an effective efficient or Pleasant place to get your groceries every time I ask that question everybody says resen absolutely not that would be horrible it's exactly what we did with the public school system you are assigned a government School based off of your address you have little to know say over the curriculum that your children are issued if you do have a problem with what's going on you're going to have to go through a linkly political battle in order to try to change any of it and it will probably be a minuscule change if the bureaucracy doesn't like the change and none of your teachers are rewarded based off of genuine creativity work ethic or Ingenuity they're rewarded based off of their seniority within a government I thought the school system is rewarded based on test scores like overall they might get more funding if the test scores or it goes the opposite right you got less you got lower test scores so you need more funding the pro the reason why you have lower test scores is because you didn't have enough funding so all all schools all public schools in America have three primary funding streams um usually about anywhere from 40 to 50% comes from local property taxes right so wealthier areas tend to have more funding for Education um then you have about another maybe 40 to 50% coming from the state level and they have various indexes in order to determine what that looks like and then you have the remaining like anywhere from 9 to 10% coming from federal funds that are usually dedicated toward specific programs um and then you will have local Authority State Authority and then Federal Authority in so far as you want the federal dollar dollars for certain programs so that's the mechanism that you're you're working with so yeah in some cases you you you could theoretically have a state that would um give a school more funding if it's doing really really well but more often than I and I sit on the education Committee in Virginia the argument that you're going to hear is well this school is failing because you have underfunded it and then you look at it you're like wait a second the school is getting more funding than than other schools that are outperforming it so it's got to be more than the funding now if you really want to get pissed off go look at the go look at the share of um funding within public education from 1970 to today and go look at how much of it has actually gone to administrative bloat within your school system uh the the administrative bloat has far outpaced um teacher pay um anything else and and it certainly hasn't LED all this additional funding hasn't led to drastically improve test scores um and and then you can even ask the question are test scores really the best way to to solve it like I I have a real heart for I I saw somebody the other day and I wish I could have uh memorized it he did a beautiful job but he basically said he had ADHD and he and he had dyslexia but the way he described it was very he go he goes I have ADHD which means I can focus on multiple independent things at once he goes I have dyslexia which means I see things in an incredibly unique way that other people's can't most people don't see ADHD or dyslexia that way they see it as disadvantages I think a lot of the reason why we see certain things as disadvantages is because we have a school system that tells you to go in sit down shut up for six hours a day and engage in standardized testing in order to determine whether or not you've you know encapsulated and mastered the subject matter yeah you you put you put an 8-year-old boy in that situation you're probably going to have some problems in fact you're probably going to have disciplinary issues you're probably going to have a lot of things that are disruptive for the class and and you can certainly categorize those as problems for that model but you take that same boy you put him into a different learning environment all of a sudden he thrives it wasn't an Einstein that said you know a fish will think it's stupid if you judge its intelligence by its ability to climb a tree again now let me let me say something um complimentary about the the people within Public Schools system trying to mass-produce public education for tens of millions of people is incredibly difficult incredibly difficult um but I think we need to start asking the question instead of well how do we improve this model which I believe is fundamentally flaw I think it's about time to start asking questions is are these flaws so fundamental and is there a better way to do this that will actually create a far more individualized educational experience because I can tell you from personal experience um operating with co-ops two or two and then sitting on an education committee where I'm looking at the data for this stuff one of the greatest things um that arrived from homeschools we had we didn't have a fraction of the resources and assets that the public school system did with respect to what we could provide for our kids but when a my kid didn't understand a particular topic I didn't make all my other kids stop until they caught up they were all able to go forward and and develop as fast as they can within a particular strength I didn't have to stick with the curriculum that wasn't working for them and just hope that it would get better I could change the curriculum I could customize it to them when they got to a certain age within high school and they'd gone through that basic learning right you got to know basic math you got to learn how to read you got to learn basic english comprehension you have to do these things no matter what your profession is no matter what you want to do but we got to a point where one day I remember my oldest daughter just being so frustrated and upset with a a subject matter I think she was taking Algebra 2 at the time she was a sophomore in high school and she was miserable she was hating every minute of it I said what do you want to do and she goes well she goes these These are these are the categories that I have interest in I saidy you know what none of those require Algebra 2 so why don't we focus your education on on something that will actually be beneficial to something that you would like to do that is both intellectually stimulating for you and financially viable why don't we focus on that all of a sudden learning went from this horrible thing that she couldn't stand as something that was exciting because it was customized toward her objectives we didn't have to millionaires to do that it isn't as difficult as it's made out to be and in fact I think we're increasingly seeing an expert class that is constantly trying to convince us that we're too stupid to do things that have been done for centuries so I would just encourage people as angry as I might have made you saying all this just take a look into it because to your point it when you were talking about access to information and things like that it has never been easier it has never been easier um and I do think ultimately it's going to be the thing that that saves us CU I don't I don't want a generation of Americans thinking that they that the most important thing that they will do in their lives is vote like the thing that will ultimately decide whether their business succeeds or failures is who's in politics that's not a free country I I think honestly the most unique and beautiful thing about this country the reason why people risk life and limb to get here and still do it's not because you get to vote for politicians every two four and six years it's because up until this point in history we were one of the very very few places on Earth where if you genuinely applied yourself you could create a life and be relatively certain that a dictator a bureaucrat an aristocrat wasn't going to come in and take it all away from you because you were the wrong class or the wrong race or the wrong religion and that's what's so beautiful about it right it's it's that that ability to seize opportunity in a way that typically has not existed existed throughout time and space and that is ultimately what is what is at stake and so I I told somebody once they're like what do you want to be known for in politics I said like I'm I'm very I'm very aware of the fact that two minutes after I leave politics most people forget I was over there I want to I want to have a good relationship with my family I want my wife and kids to be proud of who I was and what I did and know that I was there for them in so far as I work within government my goal ultimately is make government so small and yet so efficient at what it's supposed to do that nobody has to worry on a day-to-day basis on whether it's going to come in and Crush their lives um and that's still what I hold out to hope for who do you think if if you had the power let's just say and you were motivated to do so who do you think would make the best president out of anybody like Joe Rogan Elon Elon um just like a random guy working Adam Sandler would be good so practical uh theovon definitely okay I actually think theovon would' be decent I think no I think uh I think I think it would be hysterical I will say this I'm not sure the job he would do but I think it would be I think it would be hysterical the the the person that I see right now that I think is doing the best job in executive branch position is Javier Malay because I think he he genuinely does believe in individual liberty property rights and I think he is willing to he's willing to argue for free market principles in a way that is Unapologetic IC and bold and it's one of the things that's been missing from American politics is a lot of times when we talk about the things we believe we we give a thousand caveats and well you know I'm not a bad guy but I believe that like no I believe this because I think it's true and because ultimately what I want is is is human flourishing but I think Javier Malay Javier Malay ran in a country that has been dominated by peronists for decades he he said things that were not supposed to get you to win he said things that I'm surprised haven't got him shot yet and he won by convincing young voters in Buenos when was the last time anybody in American political and politics with the view of emphasizing individual liberty and small government and and free markets one in the city and he did it and I I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that he was bold but some of it had to do with the fact that he was fighting under conditions where it it's really hard to argue that one philosophy hasn't caused you all your misery when it's the only philosophy you've lived under for 70 years and I do think the timing made a lot there so I I really like Javier um but yeah if I can't have if I can't have Malay man let's give Theo let's give Theo a shot I like that or Larry the Cable Guy would beol there's another guy called the fat electrician that would be would be funny but yeah well thank you so much man I really appreciate you coming on oh thank you thank you and we'll link to all your info Down Below in the description really appreciate it cool thanks guys thank you till next time