We Need to Talk About Benn Jordan's "LEVERAGISM" Video

You noticed it too, haven't you? We've been exposed to controversies and warnings and just non-stop bad news our entire lives, but this hits different. Beneath all of these chaotic headlines that we see every single day, it just feels like something bigger is happening. Do me a favor. Try and think of [music] one, just one general thing in your life that has improved in the last 10 years. Has your >> Okay, so so no, like already I kind of something's worse. Something Something's unusual, something's something's bad in the world out there. Like this vibe, right? And and and a lot of this is about vibe, right? So there's a vibe out there that something is bad. Something is wrong. And it you know, I'm going to try to explain this to you, right? He's going to try to explain what it is that is different right now, that is that is really changed, that is you know, the causing all these all the all all the angst that we feel in the world right now. And and here he starts with Think of something Think of something that you know, in in your in your life that has gotten better. That has gotten better. So um and and he's going to throw it at you. >> of one, just one general thing in your life that has improved in the last 10 years. Has your quality >> So think of that, right? >> Has your health care improved? How about your quality of education, your cost of living, your insurance coverage, your privacy, your freedom? Do you have more time to do what you want to do today than you did in 2016? >> And he talks really fast. So I'm going to cut him off uh because he talks so fast. Uh but here it is. You know, is there anything in your life that is better? Anything over the last 10 years that has actually improved? My iPhone is better. Um in 2016 I couldn't do this. I couldn't do this from everywhere I traveled. I I didn't have the bandwidth, uh so he couldn't do what he's doing not quite as effectively, probably not with 2.6 million views. I mean, it's just ludicrous. It really is ludicrous. And yet people do this all the time. Whether they hawking back to the '60s or whether they hawking back to the '50s or whether they hawking back 10 years ago, has anything improved in your life over the last 10 years? And if it hasn't, how much of that is due to decisions you made? How much of that is due to the things that you are responsible for? In terms of the the world out there and its impact on you, has your life things gotten better? I mean, health care, yes. There are so many more treatments right now for diseases that I might get as I get older than they were 10 years ago. The science has advanced dramatically. There are more biotech companies producing drugs that benefit my life. Just think about the benefits of GLP-1 drugs right now. I mean, GLP-1 drugs, amazing. Yes, maybe cost of health care has gone up, but the benefits are enormous. Think about how much more we know about longevity and you know, health span and how to how to live a healthy, long life. It's improved dramatically. Now, it's also worth noting that the things that he is most concerned about and where they uh he's right, education gotten worse, yeah. Cost of living gotten worse, absolutely. Those are in the control of the government. So, yeah, i- i- i- if you're going to be concerned, if you're going to be worried, then maybe you should be worried about big government. Maybe you should be worried about Washington D.C. Maybe you should be worried about the fact that big government is flooding our world with money, which is causing inflation. It's what they did during COVID and what they continue to do post COVID. Maybe you should could be concerned about the fact that public education, or could call it government education, education run by the government, doesn't work. Maybe that should concern you, yeah? But indeed, when it comes to the private sector, for the most part, I'm not saying this is true everywhere, and and ultimately, we don't live under capitalism, which is going to be a big part of my critique of what he says. When it comes to private sector, my television is bigger and better. My computer is better, faster. My internet is much better. My iPhone is better. My ability, again, to do this on YouTube has improved dramatically. Everything that private sector touches has mostly, not everything, mostly improved. Mostly improved. And when it hasn't I can point and I can name the particular I mean not always name because I don't know all the regulations, but I can name the regulation. I can name the government policy. I can name the thing that is restricting the ability of markets to improve my life. So yes, there are problems. But what is their origin? What is the source of the problem? And if the source of the problem is government, then name it as government and don't blame capitalism, markets. Let's keep going. And again, be objective about these things. God, it drives me nuts. The world is so bad, things are so awful, things are just horrible. Are they? Really? Where? In what realm? How bad are they? How responsible are you for them being bad? And in what ways are your life better? In what ways are your life better? It It's easy to think of all the bad things. But again, health care? I mean, you've got to be blind not to see the benefits that have accrued over the last 10 years in health care. I mean, just think about the number of people in GLP-1s, right? And And you know, this could be the solution to the obesity crisis. People actually ODing less than I think 2016, certainly less than 2020. Um Yeah, anyway. Lots of ways in which our lives are better. Homes are bigger. Yeah, they're more expensive, but they're also bigger. Um >> This day, 1 decade ago, the Dow Jones closed at around 18,000 points. Since then, it has skyrocketed, closing today at 51,000 points. So, congratulations, unless of course your quality of life is not 2.83 times better. >> But even if your quality of life is not 2.8 times better, which is not the the Dow Jones Industrial or whatever he's measuring there, S&P 500, it's not a measure of your quality of life. You don't expect your quality of life to improve by the same amount as the stock market has. But one of the things he never says during this entire show is the fact that most Americans have money in the stock market. Their 401(k)s. Even if they don't even if they have a pension plan. The pension plan's money is in the stock market. If they have insurance, the insurance company's money is in the stock market. Our wealth, all of our wealth, is to a large extent tied up with the stock market. The fact that the stock market has gone up so much benefits almost all Americans. We're all better off for the fact that the stock market is much higher. Our wealth has increased. Now, I know some of you out there going to say, "It's all inflation. It's all Well, but prices are not 3.8 times higher from 10 years ago." They're just not. So, whatever is driving it, you are wealthier, you have more purchasing power, you can buy more stuff. And the reality is that more and more Americans now are kind of retiring and some are retiring. And the reason they can retire and semi-retire right now is because they have a lot of money in the bank because of the stock market. They can all live off of their savings. Isn't that something to celebrate? Isn't that one way in which our life is better than it was 10 years ago? We're richer. We're quite a bit richer. And richer doesn't just mean a number in a bank account. Richer means more opportunities, more opportunities to start a business, more opportunities to retire early or retire early or or just retire. More opportunities to buy a vacation home, more opportunities to to hang out with your kids and grandkids and take them on vacation and expensive vacations and buy them a home. Who knows, right? So, you can poopoo the stock market and its increase. But the reality is that the increase in the stock market benefits almost all of us and is a reflection of dramatic increase in productivity, the dramatic increase in innovation, and the fact that Americans are far better off than they were 10 years ago. We produce more, more efficiently, more effectively. Maybe we don't manufacture with our hands more. Maybe we don't you know, we're not what do you call it? Uh out there farming with our hands. But in terms of the value of what we produce, we're producing more than we ever have. And our companies as a consequence, because of our productivity, because of their productivity, are more profitable than ever. And that is reflected in rising stocks. And yeah. The fact that the government inflates, the fact that there's a lot of money slashing out there, helps. But, that ultimately, as I've said many times, ultimately has to express itself in rising prices. And we're not seeing that. We're just not seeing that. You're not seeing but prices. Prices of goods rise anywhere close to the same level as the stock market is rising. >> In that case, I made a video for you to watch. But, this video isn't about evil CEOs or how capitalism and wealth inequality are out of control. You probably already knew those things. This is a theory made >> Capitalism is out of control. You you knew that. Inequality is out of control. You knew that. That's just again, an assumption everybody knows. Crazy CEOs. Everybody knows that. We don't need to comment on that, right? >> Maybe a conspiracy theory, but a theory nonetheless, that I've been sharing and discussing and refining for years. For you, it's merely some lenses that you can try on when reading your newsfeed. It's an introduction to what comes after capitalism. Something I can only call leveragism. >> [music] >> So, to his credit, he's talking about what comes after capitalism, what we live in today. Um and he's calling it leveragism. Uh it it it's a silly title. What comes after capitalism? Really, we've never had capitalism. And what uh comes after capitalism is the mixed economy. And uh what comes after a mixed economy is most more statism and less capitalism. More statism, less freedom. And that mixture keeps shifting, but overall, what we're seeing and have seen for decades and decades and decades is a one-way direction. More statism, less freedom. More statism, less freedom. And and as we see that, you know, uh yes, our freedom shrink. And all the problems all the problems that really do exist out there. And the fact that we're not growing as fast as we should be growing, all that all that manifests itself. But that is a consequence of that shift in a mixed economy, not the consequence is not capitalism. >> [music] >> If we make a really really >> Oops. >> is dependent on economic and technological growth. On >> So I I I I I need to go back here. All right. Yeah, it's hard to tell with all >> [music] [singing] [music] >> Capitalism on paper is dependent on economic and technological on paper the >> So capitalism is dependent on technological and economic growth. Now, what does that even mean? What does it mean to say that capitalism Oops, let me turn on lights here. What does it mean to say that capitalism is dependent on technological and economic growth? What is capitalism? He hasn't defined it and never will. Capitalism is a system a political, social, economic system of property rights. It's a system of private property. It's a system where the government in ideal situation protects individual rights, primarily property rights, in which and in which all property is privately owned. So, it's a system of property rights. It's a system of individual rights. It's a system of freedom. It's a system cuz that's what individual rights are. Individual rights are the freedom to act, to pursue your values based on your rational mind in pursuit of your goals, pursuit of your happiness, free of coercion, free of force, free of an authoritarian regime telling you what you can and cannot do. That's what capitalism is. Capitalism doesn't depend on technology and economic growth. Technology and economic growth are outgrowths of capitalism. This is putting uh you know, it's it's reversing cause and effect. It's not that capitalism depends on on on these things. It's that these things don't exist without at least some element, some big chunk of our society being based on freedom in the economic realm. Without economic freedom, there is no technological and economic progress. So, again, no. He he's not explaining. He's not proving. He's just stating capitalism depends on economic growth, and people are going, "Oh, yeah, that makes sense." Makes sense? No, it doesn't actually. Capitalism makes economic growth possible. Where do you have a system that is not reliant on a we on on on on a free enterprise system, on on on free companies, on private property. that grows. North Korea, Cuba, Iran, the old Soviet Union, Mao's China. No, you don't get economic progress and you don't get technological progress in any of those. The only places where you get economic growth and technological progress are places that respect property rights. And you get that progress to the extent that they respect property rights. Now, he goes on that fallacy. >> is that everybody gets a slice of the pie, and if we make a really, really, really big pie that keeps growing, then everybody can get fat. And not only is that example >> Now, notice the pie analogy, which is, you know, one of my favorite analogies in all of politics and economics. Pie analogies? The economy is a pie? Right? You know, we just want we have a pie and and what we do is is we redistribute the pie and we give people pieces of the pie. We give people slices. And if the pie is big, then we all get big slices and we can get fat, which means we can get rich. But again, that's that's just such a bizarre analogy. There's no pie. It's It's This is collectivism 101. This starts from the assumption that there is societal wealth and we can grow that wealth and we can shrink that wealth, but there is no such thing as societal wealth. There's your wealth and my wealth and Elon Musk's wealth and Jeff Bezos's wealth, wealth that they created, that they did something to earn. And we don't get to divvy that up. We each create the pie that we're going to use to consume. We each create the pie that becomes our wealth. Now, we we can invest some of our pie in somebody else's enterprise, somebody else's pie, and grow with them. That's what happened with the stock market when it grew as much as it did over the last 10 years. We invested our money with the you know, the the the Jeff Bezos and Elon Musks and and and Peter Thiels and the rest of the venture capital and and technological community, and it grew because of their productive efforts. And not just them, you know, other kinds of businesses, not just technology, but primarily technology. But there is no pie. And the whole thing in economics is not dividing up the pie. Too much discussion in economics is about redistribution, but the fundamental issue in economics is production. How do you produce stuff? Where do you get the stuff to begin with? What is required to get anything? To get stuff. Now, I know I'm stopping every 2 seconds. There's no way we can get through this whole video, but that's fine. Whatever we get through, we get through. >> ample, kind of a literal one when we look at the American obesity epidemic. But capitalism also ate agricultural innovation and global supply chains and wealth creation in developing countries that played a huge part in decreasing global hunger. It's worth recognizing that >> in 1970, 1/3 of the people on this planet were starving, and now that number is down to about 8.2%. How much of that achievement can be awarded to capitalism can be debated, but ignoring that this drop in famine happened in a time when all but four countries rely on a capitalist structure would be disingenuous. >> What? >> Yeah, so at least he recognizes that, right? So, something good is happening out there because of private property. And and by the way, it's not just poor, but much of Africa uh does not rely on any kind of semblance of a capitalist economy and doesn't rely on private property, and therefore has remained poor. So, it's one of the four. But at least he recognizes, yes, global supply chains and innovation and progress and things have happened and maybe that's also capitalism, but notice that complete conceptual confusion. You don't define the term. And then you you reverse cause and effect. And there's some good, but what about all this other stuff? And you can't separate We'll get to You can't separate economic power, big business, wealthy individuals from political power. And a big part of the confusion in our world, a big part of our confusion about capitalism, is the inability to separate political and economic power. We'll get to that. Let's revisit that on paper part. So, [music] like even if we limit our examples to Coca-Cola, who I seem to frequently use for economic examples for some reason, capitalism leads to a lot of evil [ __ ] In 19 So, Coca-Cola So, capitalism leads to a lot of evil [ __ ] So, Coca-Cola might have done some stuff that today, looking backwards, looks but capitalism leads to a lot of evil [ __ ] Uh You know, so so you're picking one example, you're picking a company, you're picking different periods of time. Uh By the way, I haven't gone and done the research to challenge all of these. I don't think they're that important. Uh uh You know, you can you can nitpick the stuff, particularly going back into the 19th century. >> In 1954, Coca-Cola [music] financially and politically supported a CIA-backed military coup of Guatemala. Then, in the early 2000s, Coca-Cola was suspected to have hired right-wing paramilitary [music] death squads to assassinate union leaders. Coca-Cola is the number one top plastic polluter [music] in the world despite their constant marketing of their sustainability goals. They've caused water shortages in Latin America and India by >> I mean, this is amazing to me. They they've caused water shortages in Latin America and India. And the life expectancy in those countries goes keeps going up. Uh as he showed fewer people in these countries, Latin America and and and and Asia, uh poverty is declining dramatically in these places. You'd think with that water shortages, poverty wouldn't be declining that much. I mean, it's just it's you know, they just pick and choose because they want to believe all the evil stuff about any particular company. And And why do they want to believe it? And this is an important moral point. Why do these people buy into it? Why is it so easy to believe that business creates does evil in the world. Well, because business is greedy. Uh in other words, business is focused on making money. In other words, business is focused on its own self-interest. Oh my god, they're selfish. And what is selfishness? Selfishness is the pursuit of short-term gain in any way possible. Lie, steal, cheat, murder, steal their water, whatever it takes. Short-term gain is all that matters to selfish person. And And this isn't just some Marxist thing. This is every every moral philosopher almost in human history has believed this. If if you pursue your own self-interest, you will do harm to others. That is almost definitional in our moral code. So, business that pursue their own self-interest. Self-interest leads strong to others. Okay, well, then it's not surprising that Coca-Cola did all these horrible things. Of course, they did. Why would you ever challenge that? Why would you ever second-guess that? So, yeah. That why we have to have regulations and controls about these businessmen cuz otherwise they'll lie, cheat, steal their way and take all our stuff. Because that's the best way to do business. >> They're depleting local aquifers. They have bottling partners that have been repeatedly accused of human rights violations and [music] suppressing union organization. They have Israeli franchises that have sourced their resources from occupied Palestinian territories, which is considered illegal under international law. >> No, it's not. >> Is the existence of capitalism the problem here? Most progressive >> Good question. Is the existence of capitalism the problem here? Is it the protection of property rights that has caused this? But, you know, but it is the existence of capitalism. Because what is it about capitalism that causes these problems? Self-interest. Self-interest, the pursuit of profit, greed. And that's why it's so easy to buy the [ __ ] >> Whereas some people would answer that question with a resounding yes. I think it's debatable. I would argue that most of these things that Coke did violate the rules written by capitalist governments, and the problem is greed, which is a byproduct of jealousy. Since capitalism is frequently associated with hoarding more resources than your neighbors, we tend to associate capitalism with being a douchebag. >> So, capitalism is about greed. Greed it it is is about hoarding, which means being a douchebag. Right? I mean, but that's that's not that's a necessary connection if you have an altruistic view of which almost everybody in the world has. This is why people This is why it's so difficult to get these ideas across to people. >> And that's totally fair. So much so that we even get popular memes and fake Karl Marx quotes like there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, which is a completely sane and reasonable thing to shout at lemonade stands and farmers markets. The reason I'm discussing [music] this to begin with is to highlight what American capitalism means on paper and how apparently nobody has seen that paper in decades. >> So notice how he's trying to be balanced here, right? So he you know, his his idea about yelling yelling this at lemonade stands and farmers markets. He's being He's being cynical here, right? He's He's making fun of the crazy left that yells these things that there's no ethical consumption under capitalism. He doesn't believe that. It It It's also how you know, he threw out the hoarding. Um the capitalist hoard. What does that even mean? What does that mean to hoard? I mean, it's such an overused term again. It's one of these things that people just say. This is what happens. Rich people hoard their wealth. But do rich people hoard their wealth? What do people do What do rich people do with their wealth? Well, what did Elon Musk do with his wealth? He started SpaceX and Tesla. What did Jeff Bezos do with his wealth? He started, you know, Blue whatever and and a an AI company. And yes, he consumes a lot. He bought a big yacht which somebody built and a lot of people got paid to work on and and you know, a lot of people got compensated for providing him that yacht. And and he probably has a couple of private jets and he has a bunch of homes and so on, but he also the primary way in which he uses his wealth is he invests it. It doesn't sit in his mattress. He doesn't big dig a bigger hole in the backyard and put it all there. He doesn't even buy it gold with it. All right. Um so, he's going to go into a long section here about you know, uh uh what he calls political leverage. Which is uh you know, all the you know, if we just run through this, it's about Bretton Woods and import exports and inflation and uh and going off the gold standard and what has happened to our purchasing power since then. And all of this is true. But why doesn't he name the problem? None of that is capitalist. Under capitalism, under capitalism, money is private. The state has no business in money. In the 19th century in America, government didn't issue money. Now, they intervened and they interjected way too much. But in Canada, for example, Canada had private banks that issued their own money. Canada only got a central bank I think it was the 1940s, maybe the 1930s, but late, much later than the US. So, the real answer here is not capitalism produces uh you know, all this increased cost of living. No, that that is the anti-capitalists that produce that. That is working against freedom. That is the state taking over the resource, the the the the product, the the creation, the thing that is money. Money is not just Money is a is a is something is a human creation. It's a technology. And when people are left free to innovate around this technology, you don't get a high cost of You don't get a rising cost of living. Actually, you get a declining cost of living. You get small deflation. But he doesn't know this. And this is hard, and people want easy answers. And so, let's blame the rising cost of living on capitalism, when you should be blaming the rising cost of living on the Federal Reserve and the federal government that is running massive debts that are hard for me to even contemplate. And and and hard for me to see any way that this ends in any positive kind of sense. And when all of this collapses, which it is bound to do in one way or the other, is government going to get blamed for it, or you're going to get blamed for it? Is the market going to get blamed for it? Is capitalism going to get blamed for it? Are we going to need a new system to replace capitalism, because capitalism imploded with the federal government defaulting on all of its debt? Anyway, he goes through the 1970s, and he has a whole theory about about what happened um uh you know, during the 1970s and what happened to oil and and all of that. And um some It's a mixture. It's a mixture. That whole section is a mixture of true stuff. I mean, some of the history is true. And and some of his analysis is true. But a lot of just bogus stuff that he just presents without proof, without analysis, without debate, without any suggestions that there might be an alternative explanation what's happening. No, this is what's happening. A lot of his economic analysis is I don't know. Conventional, I was going to say, but it's worse than conventional. But let's look at his discussion of leverage here. Here is a section of classical leverage. All right, let's go there. >> need to philosophically understand leverage. >> Chapter two. Chapter one was about government and money. >> Leverage is a term frequently used by economists, although maybe not frequently enough. Studying leverage on an investment is about as fun [music] as writing down thousands of metrics and using logistic regression to predict a fight instead of just betting against Jake Paul and then watching him get knocked unconscious and you winning $100 in the process. See what he does >> See why popular he comes up with all these popular uh references. But, no, leverage is actually quite fun and and calculating leverage on an investment is actually quite interesting and and uh and a lot of people do it and uh it's not that complicated and yeah, it's it's it's worth really thinking about. >> decided to rent a home in a small town where every house costs exactly $100,000 and you're saving up to buy one. I decided to move to the same town as well, but not just to live there. I'm going to try and make as much money as possible. I happen to have $100,000 in cash, so I buy a house. A year goes by, property value increases by 10% and I sell the same house for $110,000, making 10% profit on my equity. But, then I get a better idea. I take $100,000 from the sale of my house and use it as five $20,000 down [music] payments on five houses. Another year of 10% value increase will earn me 50% return on investment. So, why don't I do this in real life? Why don't I own dozens of properties? >> That's right. This is exactly how leverage works. >> Well, because this isn't some sort of infinite money glitch, it's a high-risk maneuver. In fact, it's asymmetrical against me because if those properties would lose 20% of their value before I sell them, then I would lose 100% of my investment and be broke. But, there's a whole lot more to this. Long before George Soros was known for paying everybody in the world to be mean to Alex Jones [music] and Donald Trump, he wrote a classic and important book called The Alchemy of Finance, which was published in 1987. [music] This book introduced and popularized the theory of reflexivity, which is now arguably cited more in anthropology than it is in finance. [music] Continuing with my pedantic little example here. As we all know, one of the few predictable [music] things about housing markets is that they constantly fluctuate. And if I [clears throat] arrive to that town with millions or billions of dollars in capital to absorb the housing market [music] losing value, I'd be able to tip the scales in a way where I'm not as exposed to the asymmetrical [music] risk. If I buy enough of these houses in this little town, I'm actually not only contributing to the increase in the appraised property value, but I'm able to maneuver the local economy to my benefit. I could >> Is that true? So, if you go into a local neighborhood and you buy lots of these houses, um you can somehow manipulate the local economy in your favor over time? I mean, again, where is this coming from? On the basis of what? What is the economic or financial theory that suggests that this is true? Roll some numbers by me. How does How would that work? What's the economic logic of it? We don't need that. We're just going to make a statement that if I buy enough houses, I can I can, you know, change the economy and I can make sure that the the the the value of houses never goes down. So, I'm not taking any risk anymore. But that's complete made-up fairy tales. >> I could perform a little magic trick called the dividend recap. [music] I could create a shadow company and then sell the houses to myself or below their actual value. Then, when this causes comparable houses to be appraised at a lower value, I can buy [music] them and rent them at higher prices until I create a housing shortage, which will then inflate the value for when I decide to sell them. By the way, >> All of that is BS. All of that assumes that you're the only you know, you dominate the entire market. That you can manipulate home prices just like that. That no other buyers are going to come in that you you're the only buyer. And if nobody's going to compete with you to raise the price of the home up because you're the only buyer. It's just you know, it's made up numbers. It's made up numbers without understanding market dynamics and how markets actually work. How do you create a housing shortage? Why can't people build new houses? Maybe that's the problem. Maybe that's what you should be looking at. Hey, Ben, look at how white white people can't build new houses. And how do you how can you create a housing shortage? And what are you doing with these houses? You're sitting on them? What causes the prices to go up? People want to move in, but if the entire neighborhood is empty because you haven't rented them out, then why anybody going to move in there? And if people are renting them, then you know, the rent has value and why prices going down? How did you cause the price to go down? The whole thing is just it's just mind-bogglingly mind-bogglingly, is that a that that is a legitimate you know, economic term, I think. It's just he he just is making stuff up. And this is the problem with most people who attack capitalism. They make stuff up. Now, I'm I think that he's convinced he's right. He's convinced himself because he doesn't understand economics. He doesn't know how markets work. He you know, it's it's I I remember these students I had in the 1990s during the dot-com bubble who used to tell me uh profits don't matter. All that matters is growth. Stocks just grow grow grow grow and as long as they grow, you know, that that's what matters. If they never make a profit ever, they and but they continue to grow, how do they continue to grow? Oh, they keep issuing shares. Why would anybody give them shares? Because they keep growing and therefore the share price goes up. Why does the share I mean it's just it makes no economic sense. You can't ground it in anything. But people are really good at self-delusion. And really good at buying into delusional stories. Cuz they're simple and they make sense. If you don't think. And if you don't think too abstractly. And if you don't think in a too complicated way and and about the complexity of of the world in which we live. All right, let's see. >> None of this is hypothetical. This is exactly what Blackstone did via Invitation Homes after [music] the 2008 financial crisis. And and Blackstone, for example, is now the largest owner of individual houses in the United States. >> Yeah, so when there was a housing crisis when there was a housing crisis which was really bad cuz prices were going down not because of Blackstone, not because of anybody because my hairdresser, the woman who cut my hair in those days, owned three homes. Because we're not going to get into the whole story of the financial crisis because a lot of really bad government policies encouraged people to take on a lot of debt and buy lots of homes and then they couldn't pay the mortgages and house prices collapsed. And Blackstone saw an incredible opportunity to buy a home cheap and they bought them up and started renting them out. They didn't cause the collapse. But they they actually created a floor in the collapse. By Blackstone buying the homes up they actually prevented the homes from going down even more. They actually provided liquidity. Liquidity means money entering the market when nobody else was willing to provide liquidity because the market was only going down. So, Blackstone buying homes during this period is not market manipulation. It's actually what allows markets to recover. Which we all benefit from, at least all of us who own homes benefit from. >> And then we're renting them to to people as a >> And they're renting them. People who maybe even lost their home because they couldn't make the mortgage. But now they could rent at least. They could still have a home. So, well this should be viewed as a positive thing. Here's a beautiful market mechanism that protects us from the egregious disaster caused by government policy and keeps people in in homes. They don't own them, they rent them. But who said owning is better than renting? >> posed to selling them. It's it's a good business for us. It's a new thing, but it's also good for America. And it's good to be able to provide housing for those people who need it. >> In fact, they built a highly sophisticated [music] algorithm to scan real estate markets and intentionally overpaid for houses to price out families who wanted to live in them. >> Oh, really? They purposefully overpaid for houses. How do you make money by overpaying for an asset? How do you do that? Right? They have an AI strategy, true. But how do you how do you overpay and make money? I mean, I understand underpaying. You buy low, sell high. That's generally the rule in finance. Buy low, sell high. But here the whole point is buy high. Don't sell. I I don't know what buy sell higher. And it's just ignorant. And yet 2.3 million people >> sophisticated algorithm to scan real estate markets and intentionally overpaid for houses to price out families who wanted to live in that >> Over the years because Blackstone hates families. They hate families. They want to price you out of your home. >> Here's plenty of white papers commissioned by private equity firms openly detailed these theories. They describe housing as a supply constrained asset [music] with inelastic demand that can systematically block the working class. >> None of the white papers say systematically bulk the working class, right? But he just said this is what it the white paper say. But none of them say systematically bulk the white the working class. What it says is it's supply constrained. If it's supply constrained in certain parts of the country and demand is still there, then prices will go up. So we should buy now because it's supply constrained and this is an asset that will go up in value and we can buy it with a lot of leverage because banks will give us money because these houses are worth something. But if you're really looking at the problem, if you're really concerned about housing why aren't you spending an enormous amount of in order in order that amount of time really thinking about how to increase supply instead of attacking private equity. By the way, the Trump administration uh Donald Trump has just allowed a bill to restrict the ability of private equity funds to own homes in America. Significantly. So again, left and right all agree on this stuff. >> us from building generational wealth through home ownership. Instead, this guarantees that workers >> Home ownership shouldn't be a way you build generational wealth. I'll say this again. Home ownership shouldn't be the way you build generational wealth. Home ownership is just it it's a home. It's a it's a it's a product. It's a consumable product. Home should go down in value over time. Or stay flat. They get old. They need to be maintained. And if new homes can be built freely, then what makes your home rise in value over time when it's clearly falling apart? Or at least, you know, old. Just like your car. When you you know, your car is worth less 2 years in than it was when you originally bought it. Why is your home any different? Why should your home be any different? Only because the government restricts the supply of homes. Only because there's no new Toyotas being made because the government has limited the number of Toyotas that can be made. That's why the price of Toyotas might go up. You'd have to restrict all cars because they're substitute products of Toyota. See, you know, economics you have to think through. You can't just jump to conclusions. Like this guy, like most critics of capitalism, constantly do. Constantly. This income can be siphoned [music] back into Wall Street equity. In 2026, this is now commonplace in nearly every industry. Nearly every price tag you see is partially hypothetical, obfuscating the objective value that [music] the commodity holds. The What is the objective value the commodity holds? Where does that come from if not from supply and demand for that commodity? For that thing. Anyway, uh let me skip ahead here. He goes into a text private equity Toys "R" Us. He goes into the Toys "R" Us story. I mean, I just did a whole course on um on for Peterson Academy on private equity and venture capital and I talked about Toys "R" Us. So, yes, um it's interesting. He talks about Toys "R" Us, how private equity destroyed it. He never mentions, never mentions, and this is how this is now borderline you know uh dishonesty. He never mentions Amazon. He never mentions Amazon. Do you think Amazon had anything to do with the demise of Toys R Us? Do you think that online competition had anything to do with the bankruptcy of Toys R Us and other uh large retailers? I- I- Is online world even real to this guy? I- It's just bewildering. It's just bewildering. But no, it's all about private equity. It's their fault. It's It's all about leverage.