The Hidden Agenda Behind DOGE’s Demise And The Cliff We’re Headed For | Tom Bilyeu Deepdive

You've been told waste, fraud, and abuse are the enemy, but what if they're actually the glue that holds the whole system together? I'm going to make that case today. Even though Elon has pulled back and it looks like DOGE is already on life support, it is critical that we reckon with what just happened and where we go from here. If you think you understand DOGE and the threat it represents, you ain't heard nothing yet. Follow me down the rabbit hole of why the Department of Governmental Efficiency had to be killed. While I'm not a believer, I believe the Bible is the original self-help book. It's full of timeless wisdom that really will make your life better. And one quote above all others is going to guide our discussion today. It comes from your favorite carpenter and mine, Jesus of Nazareth. By their fruit, you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit, you will know them. Okay, by their fruit, you will know them. In the world of business, we call that steering by results. In science, it's the scientific method. But in politics, it's something else entirely. And that's what we're going to discuss today. Politics is a game of power, control, and re-election. It is by its very nature a Machiavellian game. Who's in office? Who's out? Who's popular? Who's got the vote? Who has the mandate and the will of the people? Who has a secret that can be used or exploited? It's a different tree, but it bears fruit just the same. And our job is to figure out whether the fruit that it bears is good or bad. Before we can decipher DOGE, though, we have to first come to an agreement on terms. My final argument is going to hinge on a few base assumptions, but the most important one is that politics is a game of power and control. That is the essence of the thing. But since politicians have to fiercely control narrative to maintain power, they are best understood as a magician who is desperate to misdirect and hide the illusion. So the essence of the game is power and control and the illusion is that they're just doing it all to make your life better. But just like the magician doesn't want you to see the smoke and mirrors, the politicians really don't want you to see that politics is all about getting reelected. So remember, job number one is to get in power. Therefore, accumulating power is the essence of the thing. Before we go any further, I want to be really clear about what I'm doing here. I'm going to prove that Doge is a threat to the entire US economy and political system. All of the screaming over Doge lacking transparency or giving Elon access to personal data or even cutting critical services for the most vulnerable Americans is merely political theater and or the nonsensical lamentations of people who do not understand how the monetary system is actually rigged against them. To be clear, deficit spending hurts the poor the most. Despite that, politicians want more, more, more. And I'm going to show you why. I'm going to walk you through how the United States Congress passed legislation in 1913 that created an economic system that requires fraud, waste, and abuse. Our current system requires, yes, requires ever-increasing debt to remain stable for reasons that are going to absolutely shock you. By the end of this video, you're going to wish I was lying, but I'm going to take you step-by-step through how it all works in three simple parts. Part one, Doge ignored Machiavelli. The first thing to understand if you want to know why Doge had to be killed for our current economy and political system to survive is that politics is a Machiavellian game of power. I don't need you to believe that politicians are ruthless, but politics certainly are by nature, and it takes what it takes to survive in the jungle. That is what Machiavelli has tried to teach the world, but many of us seem to insist on ignoring his lessons. The book, written in 1513, was called The Prince, and it's largely considered to be the first book on political science. It was written specifically to advise Lorenzo de Medici, and it outlined the ruthless, pragmatic tactics for rulers to gain and retain power. It offered revolutionary ideas about politics and morality, famously suggesting the idea that the ends justify the means. Machiavelli's blunt, but honest talk about human nature and realpolitik stirred controversy and outrage among moralists and religious leaders of his time. He became synonymous with cunning, deceit, manipulation, and amorality, which eventually turned his name into the adjective that we all know today, Machiavellian. But, I don't think the right question to ask is was Machiavelli immoral? I think the right question to ask is was he right about man as political animal? And I think he was. That's why Robert Greene's The 48 Laws of Power, a modernization of the same concepts, continues to be a perennial best-seller that you can find in any bookstore. These books may say something ugly about human nature, but I believe what they say is inescapably true, and if you fail to understand it, the whole world is going to confuse you forever. Does anyone really believe that politicians are selfless actors who just want to make the world a better place? I don't think so. I hope not. That may be what we want to be true, but to confuse is for ought is a terrible mistake that will leave you confused. The idea with the highest predictive validity is that left unchecked, people will lie, cheat, steal, spin, manipulate, and coerce in order to get in power and stay there. And nothing gets you in power faster or keeps you there longer than promising to give voters things that seem free. It makes the voters reliant on you and it creates a never-ending need for more money, which provides the needed justification for modern monetary theory. Part two, modern monetary theory, aka the inflation monster. Modern monetary theory, known as MMT for short, is just a fancy way of saying magic money. Magic money that isn't tied to anything real like gold. Used to be, but it's not anymore. And that's a huge problem that dictates basically everything in your life. I'm going to make the case. I'm telling you right now, this impacts more of your life than people understand. MMT is a bit like a cortisol injection for pain. Got a joint, hurts a bit. You get the injection, it makes the pain go away, at least for a while, but it also destroys your bones, muscles, and immune system in the process. Plus, it's only masking the symptoms, it's not actually addressing the thing that's causing the pain. Whether you're an America, China, or 16th century Italy, when people are flush with cash, they're chill. China is literally an authoritarian government, but when people have food in their bellies and housing prices are going up, no one says a peep. But break the housing market and you've got riots in the streets. The Revolutionary War in America kicked off over taxes and now that housing is out of reach for most, the middle class is getting eaten alive and the wealth divide is growing faster than Ozempic sales, suddenly America also feels unstable. Actually, the entire West feels unstable. The wellspring from which every other problem arises is tied to modern monetary theory. If you want to know why families are falling apart, follow the money. If you want to know why the average job doesn't buy what it used to, MMT. If you want to know why we're so polarized, MMT. If you want to know why DEI, talk to a central banker. And modern monetary theory sounds like a great way to solve a natural problem. When you view the economy as a force of nature that needs to be tamed and resisted like floods or hurricanes, I get why you'd want to create a system that is under direct individual human control. The economy is better understood as an earthquake. You don't want to fight against this force. You will lose. You want to build in a way that's flexible enough to move with the shaking without breaking. So, why did Doge have to die if it wasn't for the reasons coming from the left? Simple. Doge had to die because the current monetary system is built on debt. Like the whole system is made of debt. If you've ever seen one of those AI videos where everything is made of cheese, but you can still see that it's supposed to be the buildings or whatever, but they're all made of cheese, that's what the economy's like. But instead of cheese, it's debt. Everything is debt. And because everything is debt, if you don't have waste, fraud, abuse in the system, you don't have a deficit, and therefore you don't need more money. I'm going to prove this out in a minute. Deficit spending is the point. And waste gets you to the point the fastest. Hear me when I say you must have a deficit to make the current modern monetary system work. You must have a deficit. Must. Remember, the whole system is made of cheese. So, anyone who says get rid of the cheese, aka the debt, they're saying get rid of everything. Without waste, you could balance your budget, and that would be a catastrophe for the current system. I can't believe this is true, but it is because the system requires debt to function. Whatever you're doing, pause. Hear this. That is why both sides of the aisle want to deficit spend. They just want to do it at different rates. If you don't believe me, or you're not sure yet, here's a quick breakdown of how it works in five easy steps. One, money is created through debt. This is a fact no one disputes. They might not understand it, but no one disputes it that does understand it. Well, um the uh So, the I mean again, some of this stuff gets the government definitely prints money and it definitely lends that money. The government definitely prints money and then it lends that money by uh by selling bonds. Uh is that what they do? They they um That guy was the chair of Biden's economic advisory committee. He doesn't understand how the system works. He's not evil, fine, but he's still one of the many useful idiots driving at full speed towards a cliff. The fundamental truth is that modern money isn't backed by commodities like gold or silver or even glass beads for the love of God. Instead, money is lent into existence by central banks. It didn't exist, somebody wants to borrow it, poof, they create it typically through the purchase of government bonds or securities. Every new dollar, every dollar, forget new, every dollar that exists, full stop, entered circulation as interest-bearing debt. Two, interest requires constant debt expansion. Because every dollar created is attached to debt and therefore an interest obligation, society must always repay more money than was originally created. This is a key point. The amount of currency needed to repay debt, principal plus interest, by its nature will always exceed the amount of currency that currently exists. This creates an ongoing need for new debt to create additional currency to cover the shortfall. Let me give you an example. If one trillion dollars is loaned into existence at 5% interest, then 1.05 trillion dollars is due back, but only 1 trillion dollars was actually created. To pay the additional 50 billion dollars in interest, society must borrow more so that more money comes into the system, perpetuating the debt cycle because if you create that money, it also has an interest obligation and you're going to have to pay interest on that. I and all of history scream from the void to be heard. There is only debt, interest, and the cliff in MMT. It is the only outcome. Point number three. Without continuous deficit spending, the money supply contracts. If governments stopped borrowing, i.e. they stopped deficit spending, if Doge actually balanced the budget, the source of new debt and therefore new currency would dry up. When loans get repaid without new ones taking their place, the currency in circulation shrinks. This happens because repaid money disappears from existence because it was only debt in the first place, reducing the available currency. There's consequences to that. Namely, there's less currency available to service the existing debt obligations. There's also increasing difficulty for businesses and individuals to repay their loans. There's potential defaults and economic contraction that will follow quickly. Point four. A deflationary spiral would begin. Halting debt creation leads rapidly to a deflationary spiral because shrinking money supply leads to default on debts, which leads to asset values collapsing, which leads to economic activity contracting further, which leads to an increasing number of defaults, which leads to an increase in the likelihood of is the cliff that we are being driven off of. Without ongoing deficit spending in the current system, which is not the only possible system, but it is the one that we have. Without ongoing deficit spending in the current system, existing debts become impossible to service at scale, causing widespread defaults and systemic failures. Point five, political and social chaos obviously would ensue. Central banks and governments clearly understand this mechanism, thus they deliberately promote constant deficit spending to avoid systemic collapse. Ever wonder why we're always going to war? They have high financial needs, lots of debt. That's why wars are an inevitable outcome of the current system that we have because without this continual injection of new debt-backed currency, fraud, waste, abuse, war, et cetera, et cetera, the economic, financial, and political structures themselves risk severe instability. Once you see the cause and effect, once you can follow those jumps, all of a sudden the political theater becomes far easier to see through. Before we dive into what's really happening with Doge, I want to tell you about today's sponsor, Shortform. Analyzing complex topics like this requires deep diving into multiple perspectives and connecting ideas across as many different sources as I can get my hands on. I just walked you through five major arguments against Doge from the left, drawing from political science, economics, and historical analysis. This kind of research is exactly what Shortform is built for. Shortform creates the most comprehensive book guides available. They're like superpowered book summaries that don't just explain key ideas, they show you how concepts connect across different books and different thinkers. Take some of the books I've referenced here. The Prince, 48 Laws of Power, Shortform's guides wouldn't just break down Machiavelli's political theories or Green's power strategies separately, they'd show you the connections. Try Shortform free and get 20% off your annual subscription by clicking the link below. Now, here's what is really going on with Doge. Let's bring it all back to 1913 when Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act. That gave birth to central banking in what has become modern monetary theory. It's a system perfectly designed for politicians that want to gain control in the easiest way possible, promise people free things. And the problem, of course, is that there's no such thing as a free lunch. MMT creates a need for ever-increasing amounts of debt, which means new money has to be created constantly, which creates inflation. According to Truflation, we've experienced more than 25% inflation in the last 5 years alone. That means every single thing got 25% more expensive. The Doge mentality could slow it down, and that would be very, very good, but it's clearly not going to stop. And to make matters worse, inflation steals from everyone, but only gives to the people who own assets, which is another way of saying that it takes from the poor and gives to the rich. I'm one of the rich people winning in this system, and I'm telling you now, it is a terrible idea. Remember when Trump said, "I know all about the rigging in the system cuz I had the system rigged on me." Well, I'm telling you, you need to change the system. If we drive off the cliff, we all go together. The only thing I could do with my money at that point is flee, and I love this place. So, let's talk about part three. Part three. And now what? Where do we go from here? This whole debate started when Doge went into high gear threatening us all the good time, namely a balanced budget. At best, they were just trying to slow the car headed towards the cliff. At worst, it's simply political theater or a ploy to move money out of the public coffers and into private oligarchs. It's not real unless someone is talking about changing the whole system. And you'll know when they're talking about that because they're going to need to say words like abolish the Fed. Hi, Ron Paul. Ultimately, we will have to fix the system. As the economist Ludwig von Mises wrote, "There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." Put another way, there's two ways to fix the economy, but from where we are now, both suck. One just sucks a lot worse than the other. Ludwig is right. Inevitably, option two leads to a total catastrophe of the currency system. That is what we're currently doing. Now, remember, if you want to know why this is a Machiavellian game. Politicians must get reelected. That is literally job number one. That is the essence of government. That is the essence of politics. The slight of hand, the smoke screen, is to pretend to make the world better. And people are going to vote for the policies that put the most money in their pockets right now today. Not the system with the best long-term health prognosis. So, politicians do literally the rational thing, and they make big promises which serve to both get them elected and to create the deficit that is needed to justify easing the pains of the current system we have with another cortisol shot, another injection of debt. Even though everyone in the system that we have chosen pays a massive price via inflation, it does smooth out the spikes of temporary short-term recessions. But, people don't want a short-term recession. They want to know that somebody's in control. They want to know that we can overcome nature itself. And instead of treating this like an earthquake, where you've got to be flexible enough to move with that energy, we get rigid and we try to resist, and we get into these insane boom and bust cycles where we have to inflate everyone into oblivion as a way to try to smooth everything out. And ultimately everyone just hopes they're not the ones left holding the bag when the economic body shuts down from all the cortisol injections or the economic body breaks under the movement of the earthquake. Humans are just terrible at long-term planning. This is why pre-Ozempic so many people were obese. PS, odds are Ozempic is also going to create long-term health problems, but that's a problem for another day and my entire point. People want the easy path. No one wants to be chased by a lion, even though that's what's necessary to stay sharp. We need hard things. We need danger. We need to prove merit. Abolish the Fed, stop printing money, balance the budget, think about the kids and the kids' kids. Don't saddle them with debt. Don't build a system that is predicated entirely on creating money through debt. Make money scarce again. Make people earn it by doing valuable things. God, that sounds awful. I know, and even though it would work, the fact that it sounds awful is why only the rarest among you are going to fight for that option. Everyone else is going to fight about the tea. They're going to argue about whether the Doge cuts are as big as Trump and Elon claim. They're going to worry about who gets the money instead of worrying about the fact that in the current system it will always, always, only go to the very small group of elites that actually understand and control the system. It's exactly why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. So yes, Doge must die, but it's important that we understand the real reason why. Doge must die because of the system we have chosen, not because it has bad aims at least at the level of what they message, but because in the current system the only thing you can do is hope to slow down. And if they don't have a real plan for getting us to a new system, it will ultimately all be for naught. But I will admit, slowing the car down is better than speeding up and racing off the cliff as fast as we can. Now, it's not because Elon is using his position to get extra contracts for his companies, even though he probably is. It's just that the real problem is so much bigger. The real problem is that we have a monetary system that requires that expansion because the system isn't based on anything real or scarce. It's based on the creation of debt itself, and that requires endless money printing. It is a system that steals from everyone, but only gives to a few. And that's why you can feel the gap widening between the rich and the poor. All right, if you made it this far, I love you to death. You're either hate watching, which I'll take, or hoping to make things better. Either way, I appreciate the chance to make my case. I really do. I really want people to understand the cause and effect of all this. And if you want to join me as I explore topics like this live, join me for my live streams every week on YouTube. Till then, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. If you like this conversation, check out this episode to learn more. Life is awesome, but every aspect of your life is a lie. That's the great paradox of the human condition. We strive for truth, but are ultimately incapable of seeing it clearly, and that blindness leaves us vulnerable to manipulation by narrative, by stories, beautiful, wonderful stories.