Pod Insights The Impact Theory Podcast Navigating Crisis: Race, Economics, and Unity in Turbulent Times + Tribute To Charlie Kirk About this episode SleepMe: Visit https://sleep.me/impact to get your Chilipad and save 20% with code IMPACT. Try it risk-free with their 30-night sleep trial and free shipping.
Vital Proteins: Get 20% off by going to https://www.vitalproteins.com and entering promo code IMPACT at check out
Hims: Start your free online visit today at https://hims.com/IMPACT.
ButcherBox: Ready to level up your meals? Go to https://butcherbox.com/impact to get $20 off your first box and FREE bacon for life with the Bilyeu Box!
Netsuite: Download the new e-book Navigating Global Trade: 3 Insights for Leaders at http://NetSuite.com/Theory http://netsuite.com/Theory
What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here:
If you want my help...
STARTING a business:join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show:
https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show
SCALING a business:see if you qualify here. https://tombilyeu.com/call:
https://tombilyeu.com/call
Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/:
https://tombilyeu.com/
**********************************************************************
If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you.
**********************************************************************
FOLLOW TOM:
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/
Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en
Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu
YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu
After some time away, Tom and co-host Drew dive right into the heart of America’s current cultural and economic crossroads. This episode tackles pressing issues like escalating racial tensions, the consequences of misguided policies, and how online narratives—and our emotions—are shaping the national conversation. Tom and Drew also break down the harsh realities of America’s economy, dissect income inequality, and debate the effectiveness (and limitations) of capitalism and socialism.
As news breaks about escalating political violence—including the assassination of Charlie Kirk—Tom and Drew explore the dangers of a divided nation and stress the urgent need to step back from emotional reactions, define our values, and seek solutions rooted in first principles. Whether you’re concerned about where the country is heading, curious about building wealth in chaotic times, or searching for ways to bridge the cultural divide, this episode is a must-listen. Stay tuned as Tom and Drew encourage honest conversations and challenge us all to pick narratives that move us—and the country—towards a better future.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript 10,249 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Tom Bilyeu? Let's talk about the moment your side hustle becomes a real business. Now, I see way too many founders stay stuck running their business like it's a hobby. And then they wonder why nothing ever feels real. It doesn't feel real because it's not. I've helped thousands of entrepreneurs build real businesses through Impact Theory University. And the first step in the path to building a legit business is registering it. And Taylor Brands will help you do just that in a few clicks. An LLC, a limited liability company, is an official business structure. It's inexpensive to form and very simple to maintain. It's how you open a business bank account. It's how customers know they're dealing with a real company. And Taylor Brands doesn't stop at the filing.
0:45 Tom Bilyeu? Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Taylor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement.
1:09 Tom Bilyeu? Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to the Tom Bilyeu Show Live. We're here. It's been a minute to everybody in the feed pointing that out. It really does feel like it's been a long time. So I am very excited to be back with my man Drew. What is up Drew?
1:24 Speaker 01 Hey, welcome back, man.
1:25 Tom Bilyeu? It's good to be back.
1:26 Speaker 01 Nice to see you.
1:27 Tom Bilyeu? It's good to see you.
1:28 Speaker 01 There's a lot of reactions about what we should do, how we should change the criminal justice system. And then again, Trump even had a video talking about condemning violent crime. What do you think the actual second order consequence of this will be? Cause you let Nick Fuentes tell it, move away from the blacks. You let Scott Adams tell it.
1:46 Tom Bilyeu? Race is really becoming a problem. Like this is wild. Now, again, some of this is it starts online. But what online does is it gives people the narrative. And part of what I'm trying to do, because I will routinely get criticism from people that encountered me in phase one, when all I talked about was empowerment, who are like, yo, you fell off. Like, I really miss when all you did was put out empowerment, not. My response to that is the message has to meet the moment. Otherwise, you're just making noise. And we are in a moment now where we have a cultural problem. And we are now dealing with the consequences of all the things that come downstream of culture from bad policy.
2:26 Tom Bilyeu? I have a firm belief that when you have the wrong policies, your culture will ultimately fall. And that falling has, call it roughly 100 years of horrifying consequences. So I'm trying to stop us from going down that path. And so when I look at what's happening with race, race is ratcheting up. I'm trying to give people a narrative, and it is a narrative, trying to make it as true as possible. But every time you choose a word, you're picking a narrative. But I'm trying to give people a narrative that will lead them to first principles, that will allow them to build up from that. That will hopefully stop them from sliding onto a team, stop them from being ideological. Get them to define their own value system, not necessarily mimic mine, but to have a value system that they can articulate,
3:10 Tom Bilyeu? such that they would be able to respond in a moment like that, because they know what they expect of themselves. So when I watch race ratcheting it up, up, and I hear somebody like Nick Fuentes, or I hear somebody like Scott Adams.
3:26 Tom Bilyeu? That putting that narrative out there is only going to further exacerbate the problem. So I don't like those narratives as when I look at their utility of what it's going to do. Because it's only, we are a multicultural society, period, end of story, have been since our founding. So it won't play out well for us. The Chinese can do it. They can kick everybody out. If they think that there's any sort of detriment to their cultural integrity. But that's not America, man. That wasn't the gamble that we made. And we become the most effective country on planet Earth.
4:06 Tom Bilyeu? Because of our geography, let's not get it twisted about that. That's a huge part of it. But then also because we over optimize for freedom over everything else. And so that's created this incredible thing. But we are a multicultural society. And if we don't let the people in that multicultural society say the things that they believe to be true, you have a problem. But if we then tear ourselves apart because everybody is screaming that this is all about race, again, wrong level of analysis, despite the fact that there is truth, but it's speeding up, man. That's like the race as it felt in the eighties was like, yo, this used to really be a problem. We've got to do everything we can to make it not a problem. And now it's like, hey, this is really a problem.
4:48 Tom Bilyeu? And we've got to call as much attention to it as humanly possible from every angle. And that's just going to make it worse.
4:55 Speaker 01 America is going to have to deal with its problems one way or another. And I think it's just bubbling over. So we will monitor, we'll see what happens.
5:03 Tom Bilyeu? And I'm going to make one last point as a direct appeal to everybody here. Get out of your emotions. Get out of your emotions. And anytime you see somebody locked in their emotions and they are reasoning from a place of emotion, eject. First of all, you're not going to be able to convince them of anything. Remember that emotions make dots feel like they connect that don't actually connect. Meaning when they're looking at the race of it all, it feels right. I see a black man. He is killing a white woman. He said the words, I got that white woman. So it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like this is our problem, race.
5:41 Tom Bilyeu? Once you try to build up from first principles, you then have to contend with, well, hold on a second. He had schizophrenia. What is more likely to have played a bigger role in his decision making process? Racism or schizophrenia? And I think you'll see that schizophrenia comes first and everything else cascades down from that. So then it's like, oh, okay, cool. I have a solution set now that's being informed by the facts on the ground. That's where you want to get, not what my emotions feel, not what other people's emotions are telling them, not how eloquent they are in making a case. But when you think from first principles and you build your case up from physics, where do you end up? So be careful because what's happening online is all emotion all the time.
6:27 Speaker 01 There was one comment that said, Theo Savage, I said, so if he claimed he did it because of aliens, we think it's an alien problem? Going back to like, you said, I got that white woman, it's a like racist problem. That was just a funny dichotomy, but uh, yeah, I don't think this is getting better. I think this is getting worse. And again, I, I love the sentiment behind it and I think that it's noble and I-
6:49 Tom Bilyeu? What's the sentiment? What do you mean?
6:51 Speaker 01 I remember you said the Morgan Freeman line, if we just stop talking about race, it will go away. And I'm going to continue to say like, this is a problem, we can't sweep under the rug. Cause we tried to sweep it under the rug, we tried to legislate it, we tried to out racism, racism. All the ways that we're trying to deal with it, I feel like it hasn't gone away yet. So until we have a honest conversation, until we try to actually think of ways to, I don't even say rectify, cause I don't even know which ways, what the North Star is anymore, especially in a moment like this. But I do feel like having the conversation will need to happen. And unless we're going to keep going through these cycles of white kills black, look at this, black kills white, look at this. And we just kind of keep swinging that pendulum back and forth.
7:32 Tom Bilyeu? Yeah. All of history tells you that's exactly what's going to happen.
7:35 Speaker 01 America is going through something right now. The manufacturing sector in 2025 alone has lost 42,000 jobs since liberation day. The BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics have just downgraded 900,000 jobs in the last three months. That can then get expanded into, some people are saying a million plus, if you're going through all of four of Biden's years. So we're now realizing that the economy isn't as strong as we thought from both a jobs market standpoint place and the, you take out the mag seven and S and P is like flat, not even growing. So now you're starting to see some chinks in the armor. From an economic standpoint, how are you feeling? And I definitely want to jump into the fiscal dominant stuff after your initial point.
8:15 Tom Bilyeu? Okay. So from an economic standpoint, you have to separate the average person, the person that doesn't own assets from the person that does own assets. If you own assets, the economy is awesome. It's probably in a bubble and you're probably about to go through a multi-year recession. But nonetheless, whatever, those happen every now and then. And as long as there's not some massive like trend coming that I can't- Like stagflation or something like that. Your way bigger concern is that America ends in revolution or civil war by by orders of magnitude than that you end up in, you know, thirty years of stagflation like Japan. So I don't think that we have that problem because we are still the world's reserve currency. So you'd have a managed decline there.
8:58 Tom Bilyeu? For people that don't own assets, this is a catastrophic time, catastrophic. And so this is why, like, I am really like, so I'm driven by meaning and purpose. So that's the thing that pushes me. So for anybody that's confused, why a guy with as much money as I have, why I do what I do, why I didn't just ride off into the sunset, it's because I want to matter. I want to make sure that my cycles on this earth, I feel like I'm contributing to the group in a positive way. And so the thing that I can see with my talent, my intelligence, my passions, the thing that I'm good at is helping people think through these kinds of problems. And right now, going back to this idea, today's theme of the show, I guess, is level of analysis.
9:43 Tom Bilyeu? You get somebody like Gary's economics, he's identified the problem. Someone like Mamdammy, he's identified the problem, but their solution is retarded. So it's like they, that's where I fit right now. And over time, maybe that'll change and maybe people will figure this out. But right now, that's the thing that I'm really trying to drive home for people is there are traceable physics to why the economy is booming for people that own assets and why it's an horrific train wreck for people that don't own assets. And so now it's like, well, do you want to keep being in that side of things? Or are you going to finally make the transition and learn about this? And as somebody who's now spent, God, five years learning about investing,
10:27 Tom Bilyeu? it's like even I now I'm like, I was talking to Lisa about this over my vacation is like, oh, I now see a future where I don't have to worry about making money off of entrepreneurship, which is where I've always focused. I'm good at making money. I'm not good at investing money. But now as I get better at investing money and I understand this game, I haven't made more yet off of investing than I made off of entrepreneurship, but I made a lot. And so it's like, whoa, this really works. So that's the thing I've become evangelical about is getting people to understand. You don't have to remain in the camp of like, well, I'm not part of the elite. I'm not in the top 10%. I'm not in the 1%. It's like, stop. That's emotion. That's narrative.
11:11 Tom Bilyeu? Get to the physics of money. Okay, it works in a knowable way, which means that you can do knowable things to have a knowable outcome. There are no guarantees, but you can like dramatically increase the odds that 20 years from now, you are in a wildly better financial position than you're in now. It's a very simple learning exercise. And so again, emotions make dots feel like they connect that don't connect. So when I heard that PBD debate, would you believe? The thing that PBD did not understand is you, you have to go immediately to their value system. You have to get them to articulate what the value system is that drives their hatred of capitalism.
11:53 Tom Bilyeu? And so then we can go, okay, I get what you're trying to steer towards. And it's either nonsensical or oh, that actually makes sense. And now let's look at the physics of the economy. Cause he never got, I've only watched the first half, so maybe he does get to it eventually. But he was not addressing the physics of why socialism breaks down. Socialism breaks down because you, dear viewer, won't work for free.
12:17 Tom Bilyeu? Period. That's it. None of us will work for free. Because none of us will work for free, giving people things for free never works. Because you were saying, oh, you need to do that thing for free. People also don't understand how tax revenue is generated. So because they don't understand how tax revenue is generated through entrepreneurship, period, end of story, full stop, nothing else. Uh, then it's like, oh, well, if you break entrepreneurship, then none of the, there's nothing to give for free. So the very thing that's putting them in this impoverished position that's breaking the economy is money printing. So it's the part of the government that deviates from capitalism. Now capitalism needs to be checked. It needs regulations. Um, but the, as we deviate more and more from capitalism, we break the system more.
13:02 Tom Bilyeu? And more. That's what's messing people up. It isn't capitalism. It's the way that we've manipulated it, corrupted it, that that becomes the problem. And socialism is that on steroids. Socialism is let's take all the things that we've done to break the economy and magnify it a hundredfold. So my job, as I see it, is to go to bat for the average person to show them, here are the policies you would need to change. And then barring that, because I think changing policies is next to impossible. Here are the things you would need to do in your own life. And then here are the things that we could do culturally that would be better. But culture takes, call it two generations to change. And I'm not seeing that ripple happen right now. Quick break, but don't go anywhere. There's more to come after this short break from our sponsors.
13:49 Tom Bilyeu? Luxury brands are not charging you more for better cashmere. You're paying for the storefront, the ad budget, the name on the tag. But Quince cuts all of that out. They work directly with ethical factories. They skip the middlemen and sell 100% Mongolian cashmere, starting at just 60 bucks. 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Now, I gave one of these as a gift last year. It was a big hit and gifting is really the test of a brand. You might tolerate a lot of stuff in your own closet that you would never give to somebody else. I've got their joggers and a couple of their tees as well. And I can tell you their whole line is high quality. Give the gift of quality this holiday season.
14:31 Tom Bilyeu? Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. It's now also available in Canada and the UK. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, make sure you tell them that it was on Impact Theory. That's the best way to support the show. Let's talk about something that genuinely keeps me awake at night. My team at Impact Theory gets hit with phishing scams from bad actors pretending to be me all the time. And they keep getting more sophisticated attacks with details specific enough to look legit. AI has made a lot of things possible, including scams like this, but AI still needs.
15:12 Tom Bilyeu? Raw material. It gets it from data brokers who sell your name, address, phone number to anyone willing to pay. Incogni goes after that supply. They handle removal requests across 420 plus harmful broker sites and they keep checking back as brokers constantly try to relist you. On the unlimited plan, the exposure scanner hunts down your information, send a link and their privacy experts handle the takedown. Track your progress in the app and get a monthly risk assessment showing exactly where you stand. Go to incogni.com/impact
15:48 Tom Bilyeu? and use code IMPACT for 60% off an annual plan. Incogni is I-N-C-O-G-N-I.com/impact. Promo code IMPACT. It's completely risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
16:06 Tom Bilyeu? All right. Thanks for sticking with us. Let's jump right back in.
16:10 Speaker 01 There's a lot of chatter in the chat right now about
16:13 Tom Bilyeu? Let's go.
16:14 Speaker 01 where can we start? You can't eat assets. You're saying a bunch of things, but what should we actually do? But I think that's the punchline, right?
16:21 Tom Bilyeu? Let's walk them through it. I'm happy to get super specific. So the thing that you should be doing is Ray Dalio is the best. So you can just follow him. He's got what he calls the all-weather strategy. So the all-weather portfolio. So go learn the principles of that. He's laid it out endlessly. Just follow him on Instagram. Can certainly read his books, but he details it out over and over and over. We just had Lynn Alden on the program. She has her three-pillar strategy.
16:47 Speaker 01 Tastic, by the way. Definitely taken.
16:49 Tom Bilyeu? Go look at that. I just did a deep dive where I walked through Lynn Alden's, like a distilled version of Lynn Alden's three-pillar strategy. You don't even have to go beyond my content to find these answers, but certainly you can. There are plenty of people talking about this, but you have to own assets. The one that everybody understands intuitively is housing, but this is not a good moment for housing. People have been priced out of it due to inflation. So far better to go somewhere where you can own a small piece of something like the stock market. The stock market, for all of its corruption, is a modern miracle. Invest in the stock market. Find things that have a long-term track record of delivering dividends in a sustainable way to their shareholders.
17:28 Tom Bilyeu? So you're gonna look for those, it's gonna be, call it 40% of your portfolio. Another, call it 30% of your portfolio is gonna be risk on assets. So things like crypto, you're gonna do things that are protective like Bitcoin or gold. So that you're probably not gonna get the insane like upside, certainly not with gold. Bitcoin probably isn't gonna, look, that one maybe still has legs. Maybe it's gonna keep growing like everybody says, but anyway, you're looking for things that can't be inflated. That's the key there. And then have some really protective stuff like bonds, tips, things that you're just trying to make sure that your principal can't.
18:11 Tom Bilyeu? Can't, there's no such thing, but that has what they call a risk-free rate of return. Nothing is truly risk-free, but you get the idea. And so that's gonna be roughly 10 to 20% of your portfolio. That's a really bad sort of fumbly way through it. I've done far clearer, simple step-by-step breakdowns. And again, Ray Dalio and Alden both do incredible breakdowns. You can find both of them inside my content, or you can go directly to their own stuff. This is all very knowable. It's very simple. Get into the stock market in a super Broadway, okay? Be very careful about just like over indexing on technology, for instance, because you're probably in a bubble right now. Go a little bit broader than that, though, yes, I'm hyper aware that seven companies make up, or I'm not sure if it's all seven anymore.
18:55 Tom Bilyeu? But anyway, a very small number of companies make up the vast majority of the gains in the stock market. So, and I'm happy to answer very specific questions that people have it, but that gets you the rough answer.
19:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, that kind of gets us rolling right there. There's this new level, I've been looking up Professor Wolf. I'm debating if I'm gonna bring him up at the time, so if people in the chat know, let me think what you think about him. He's talking about this new model of socialism. And a lot of times when people say, well, Russia, Cuba, these places already did it. He's like, no, not that socialism. When I think of socialism, I'm thinking of the working class and the collective making decisions and not just being done by the CEO. So an example he uses, like, let's say a company at the end of the year, they have a quarterly meeting with all their employees. How should we use, how should we divvy up profits? How should we divvy up, what should be the expenditures for next year? That those types of decisions are done collectively. And then everybody goes into their individual buckets and kind of executes like they do normally.
19:49 Tom Bilyeu? Can't do that.
19:50 Speaker 01 What that that was that's where my pitch going is that like, where do you think? Some people are saying that is still democratic, but it has a socialism aspect added to it. That can kind of become better.
20:00 Tom Bilyeu? As people that do not understand how to run a company. So, look, you can sell a company to the employees, but you're making them shareholders. And so, sure, love it for people that want to do it. Doesn't happen very often because it can create a lot of weird distortions. But hey, by all means, it is a thing. The far better idea, in my opinion, is, hey, we've got this thing that's been around since the 1600s. It's called the stock market. And you can go buy, rather than just the company that you work for, you can get a piece of every company. Even entrepreneurs who are saying, I'm risking everything because I believe that I can build the mass amount of wealth. Even they will diversify into other companies and not just hold their own company. So, uh, take advantage of that.
20:44 Tom Bilyeu? Like, people try to get real fucking fancy when the answer has already been made very simple. The stock market allows you to have a piece of any public company. You can even get a piece of private companies. That's becoming so available due to technology that you could, if you don't mind, a dramatically decreased amount of liquidity. You can go buy into private companies. So the options are better than they've ever been at any time in human history. The problem is people want to be fancy. They want to be day traders. They want to get rich fast. If people could just say, I'm gonna get rich, but it's gonna take me 30 years. If they could just have that mentality, oh, my God, they would be in the game. The thing that other people are just absolutely destroying their ability to purchase something.
21:28 Tom Bilyeu? They're doing it by understanding how inflation works, that it forces you to own assets. And so if people just accepted, that is what we have voted for. We collectively as the Western world, because it is not just a phenomenon in America. But we, the Western world, have decided that we are so compassionate that we're gonna give so many things away for free, that we are now at a point where we can't even tax the populace enough. We've got to tax them invisibly because they'd never vote for it through inflation. And so we're gonna deficit spend, inflate your ability to purchase into essentially nothing, force everybody into the stock market. And hey, if you're in the stock market, you're loving life because it's stealing from everybody, but only giving to the people that own assets. And just as a reminder, the assets are owned by the top 10%.
22:13 Tom Bilyeu? The top 10% of people own 93% of all assets. So. You can either be in that group or not.
22:20 Speaker 01 Okay, so I get the, instead of having an internal conversation with the company, they're better off just owning a stock market and kind of.
22:28 Tom Bilyeu? Yes, because they need to accept the hard reality. They don't know how to run a company. So they, stop trying to fucking force your company to buy your shares or whatever. You don't know if the company's in that position.
22:38 Speaker 01 Okay, let's, let's separate those two things. I think I'm a little bit confused, so I can only imagine where the chat is right now. So the socialism policy isn't necessarily that you buy in and become a stockholder.
22:47 Tom Bilyeu? Well, let's be very clear. Socialism is about confiscating the means of production. It is, we the workers are going to run this company.
22:56 Speaker 01 But that, and that's, I think, where I'm trying to hone in on. There is a hybrid model that is specifically proposed by this professor that says certain large companies from the, decisions from the company should be done democratically. So for example, the 2026 planning for impact theory, everybody will sit around the table and say, I have this idea, I have this idea.
23:14 Tom Bilyeu? Mm hmm.
23:14 Speaker 01 Hypothetically speaking, like, why wouldn't that be closer to, I don't want to use any of these trigger words, equitable or fair.
23:22 Tom Bilyeu? I love it. Use trigger.
23:23 Speaker 01 That's what I mean, but.
23:24 Tom Bilyeu? Trigger the shit out of me.
23:24 Speaker 01 But some people are saying if we just did that, that would stop income inequality.
23:28 Tom Bilyeu? False.
23:28 Speaker 01 That would minimize CEOs having a hundred X versus that pay. That they say if everybody votes on where those profits go, it will then be done in a more democratic way.
23:39 Tom Bilyeu? Yes, but they, they don't know what they're doing. They don't know what they're talking about. So they are going to distribute funds more equitably to people in the company. Theoretically, though I already don't trust them to do that. But let's say theoretically that they did that. What if the company is not in a position to do that? So the way that you attract talent is you offer them a compensation package. Now, the, this is one of those where, again, people have a finger on a problem. So income inequality is really problematic.
24:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:13 Tom Bilyeu? So the question becomes, what do we need to do to actually resolve income inequality? And what I'm saying is socialism is not the answer. This hybrid idea where people vote on it is not the answer. The, what you need to do to start getting rid of income inequality has a lot to do with globalism. And it has everything to do with inflation. So you've got to put people in a position where they can save their money and become like self-sufficient from that perspective. When people talk about not being able to get ahead, what they're really talking about is I'm always behind, always behind, always in debt, always in debt. So the question becomes, why is everything getting more expensive? The reason everything is getting more expensive is because the government is printing money. Why is the government printing money?
24:57 Tom Bilyeu? The government is printing money because they want a deficit spend. They want to give too many things away for free. So now they have to lower the value of the dollar, which makes asset prices seem to go up in value. And in reality, they're not actually going up in value. It's just a place for you to hide from the effects, the effects of inflation. So getting people to understand, oh, you have a flight to safety. It's called asset ownership. You would be far better off never again voting for anybody who deficit spends. Right now, both sides deficit spend. And unfortunately, because you can't convince the other people in the world to vote for austerity, they're just going to keep doing that, which means just in reality,
25:39 Tom Bilyeu? you have to put yourself in a position where you can own assets. Okay, going back to specifically, like, I don't like capitalism. Let's just round it to that. The question becomes, why doesn't socialism work? Why isn't what's going on in the Nordic countries? Why isn't that socialism? Because it isn't. Why isn't that socialism? Why isn't China like actual communism? Because it isn't. And so you have to start teasing these things out. Once you realize, oh, all the Nordic countries, they use a privatized model. They just tax the life out of everybody. Right now, we tax the life out of only the top earners. Nordic countries tax everybody.
26:24 Tom Bilyeu? So if you wanted a flat tax, then you could start doing these crazy things. But we don't want a flat tax. We want to tax the people that are the highest earners. We want that progressive tax. Okay, but then you run into the situation that we're in now. So this comes down to, all right, pick a country and say, okay, I want things to be more like that. And then just look at the trade offs. Everything's going to be a trade off. So if you want your country to be like China, you've got a high risk in America. Anyway, you've got a high risk of a population that can't agree with each other. So now you've got authoritarian top down rule, but with a populace that really disagrees. So now the authoritarian rule has like going and browbeat everybody to get them back in line. Think about China and the Tiananmen Square massacre. You start seeing stuff like that. So do we want to see Trump's National
27:09 Tom Bilyeu? Guard actually shooting and killing Americans? I certainly do not. But that is how you get people in line. You need to look no further than China's history. If you want to do something more like the model in Norway, for instance, okay, you're going to need some of their geographic advantages, which we don't have. But that would be one good place to start. Then you're going to have to be willing to tax everybody across the board, which we have not shown a willingness to do. Also, you've got to stop deficit spending. So there's all kinds of things. It's just all a trade off. So innovation is killed in the Nordic countries. They you just look at the number of per capita companies that end up being successful. If you take out oil from Norway, for instance, one of the most successful Nordic countries, all of a sudden, they're not in
27:54 Tom Bilyeu? competition from a GDP perspective. So it's like, yes, they have insane natural resources, a very homogenous culture. So basically, people share a value set. So it becomes far easier to convince everybody to take care of everybody. But on a global stage, they're they just don't matter. So it comes down to, are you playing to win or not? America very much has that ethos. So but if people at least picked a country and said, I want to be like that, then we go, okay, what would the trade offs have to be? Because it isn't that America couldn't over time become more like that, but it's going to be a trade off.
28:28 Speaker 01 Okay, okay. And then now from like, a country perspective, because I think.
28:35 Speaker 01 The biggest issue, I think a lot of people are clinging to socialism is because, yes, money printing is something that is driving the actual problem underlying it. But we're seeing so many impacts on a day to day level that it's now creating other misaligned incentives. So when I see certain profit margins, or when I see certain businesses or companies who increased, like the whole greedflation increase that happened over the pandemic, where some people were pointing to supply chains, but they also had prices increase while the amount of goods they were sending to the consumers decreased. You know, so I'm seeing certain level of things that's like, okay, while yes, the government printing money is bad, we're still seeing all these other things in the economy that
29:19 Speaker 01 are controllable, that people are taking advantage of the situation. So I think a lot of times, just like with these other populist moments with the racism or the attacks, we're seeing crony capitalism happening. We're saying, see, that's why capitalism is bad. But the greater free market, pure capitalism doesn't necessarily happen as often, or we're too many layers removed from that. Does that make sense? You get what I'm saying with that?
29:44 Tom Bilyeu? I do, sort of. So it really comes down to what are people trying to accomplish? What is the system that's going to allow them to accomplish that? What are the physics that have put us in the situation that we're in? And then people being able to think up from that. So again, people have their finger on a real problem. We have both a wealth disparity that's untenable and an income inequality that's untenable. Those things have to be resolved. So now the question becomes, how do you resolve them? We can model ourselves after other countries as long as we look at the real things that are working for them and what might make us just modeling that one to one difficult
30:29 Tom Bilyeu? or impossible. So Bruce Lugo was saying, in all caps, as is his way, that Norway, he may have said Nordic countries, but they don't have a flat tax. He's right about that. But they tax way, way, way, way, way, way, way more broadly than we do in the US. So as a reminder, the top 50% of taxpayers in America pay 97% of the taxes. So that means 50% pay three. You're never going to get that in a Nordic country. There's just... Unless you do that, unless you broadly tax people, including the poor, you're never going to be able to generate enough funds. Quick break, but don't go anywhere. There's more to come after this short break from our sponsors.
31:13 Tom Bilyeu? You're probably paying two salespeople to do one salesperson's job. That's where today's sponsor, Pipe Drive, comes in. An intelligent AI-powered sales CRM loved by growing sales teams. Pipe Drive just launched meeting intelligence built right into the CRM. Before every call, it pulls deal history and past conversations into one brief. During the call, it records and takes notes. After it, it drafts your CRM updates to review and approve. So there's less admin and more selling. Switch to a CRM built by salespeople for salespeople and join the over 100,000 companies already using Pipe Drive.
31:56 Tom Bilyeu? My link gets you an exclusive 30 days free instead of the usual 14-day trial. There's no credit card payment needed. Just head to pipedrive.com/impact to get started. Again, that's pipedrive.com/impact and you can be up and running in minutes.
32:22 Tom Bilyeu? So again, build up from All right. Thanks for sticking with us. Let's show What are the physics of money? So we, as a reserve currency, what are the things that we're going to be able to do that other people won't be able to do? This is the whole Russia thing about US crypto. It's just a guise for them to be able to export more inflation, get more people to buy their debt in the form of stable coins. A thousand percent, I guarantee you, Scott Beston has had that conversation. And he's like, oh, yes, like pass all that legislation so that I can sell all of our debt via backing stable coins one-to-one with US treasuries. It's brilliant. And so being mad about that's wild. That's brilliant. So there are certain things that America can do that other countries can't do. There are certain things that America has shown a willingness to do that other countries won't and things that
33:07 Tom Bilyeu? Other countries have been willing to do that. We have shown that we won't do. We won't do austerity. That seems at least right now. We're not willing to tax the poor, at least right now. So it's like, no, okay, that closes doors. But if people want to have that conversation, like, I have been very clear. Innovation is one of my just like absolute top priorities. I, I don't think America's gonna win on a globe. And winning, by the way, is one of my priorities. I want America to be number one, not number two, not number three, number one. So that makes, goals make demands. Set a goal, set of demands made by that goal. Innovation, countries should optimize for innovation. Okay, well, that makes demands. So if you want people to innovate, then you have to incentivize them. I get that people don't want that to be true.
33:51 Tom Bilyeu? I get people are gonna talk about intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is very real. But people are not intrinsically motivated when they are not able to reap the fruits of their labor. And that's where PBD never said that in the debate. And I was like, bro, you've got to say that out loud. Like, nobody feels intrinsically motivated when other people get all the fruits of their labor. No matter how much they feel like they're contributing to the group. The reality is if they're not recognized for it, if they're not compensated for it, if they're working that hard, taking all that risk, putting themselves out there, and then they've still got to work two, three jobs to scrape together. Get the fuck out of here. Like that, that's nonsensical. So you've got to say those things. You've got to ground people on the human psychology that makes socialism just not work, just never, ever, ever work.
34:35 Tom Bilyeu? And when people say that, oh, that's not real socialism, what they mean is the hyper arrogant statement of, well, if I was in charge, I would make all the right decisions. No, you wouldn't, because these things are so complicated that you have to get to the foundation of just the soil. Adjust the soil through regulations, incentive structures, property rights, things like that. And then let emergent phenomenon come out of that.
35:00 Speaker 01 One of the things that you say all the time is that out of the four pillars that Ray, the beautiful deleveraging that Ray Dalio talks about is we have to redistribute wealth. A lot of people.
35:08 Tom Bilyeu? As one of the.
35:09 Speaker 01 As one of the levers, absolutely. Some of the people in the chart are saying that redistribution can happen at the company level through these like innovative voting structures, things like that. How would you see the redistribution happening? At like, not necessarily policy level, because I'm sure each state will be different and there'd be certain nuances. I understand that. But generally, directionally speaking, how do you see that redistribution happening?
35:31 Tom Bilyeu? Okay, so one, talking at the company level, I guarantee you the people putting that forward have not built companies. Building a company is so hard and the thought that I would have to get my company to vote on where I want to allocate capital to is insane. So first of all, they don't have the full picture of the company. They are going to over index on what's good for them individually, what's good for their department. They're, they don't even have the understanding of the total company and what the company is trying to do. Uh, oftentimes in that year, let alone like broadly enough. And I hate to say it, but from an intellectual horsepower perspective, there are going to be plenty of people in the company that simply aren't intellectually capable
36:16 Tom Bilyeu? of like making decisions that will help that company thrive. Companies go in and out of business so fast. In the sixties, if you made it to the S and P 500, you were likely to stay for roughly 62 years on the S and P 500. The number has dropped to 16, it's on its way to 12. And I have no idea if there's going to be any kind of floor. So companies can and do go out of existence very rapidly. And the thought that you're going to be able to do that by consensus is ludicrous. So if people have ever heard the phrase, a camel is a horse by committee, that's what you get. So, um, companies have their downsides, just like any country would by having a dictator at the top. But it's the only way that you can move fast enough that you can have one vision. So the company is not pulling against itself.
36:59 Tom Bilyeu? And even then you still have some of that within individual departments. Okay. Uh, how would we redistribute wealth? The way that we would redistribute wealth is through government programs. They are not going to be the best, but I don't see another way that would be trusted by the populace. Uh, to get the money back into the system. So there is going to be a certain amount of inefficient wealth redistribution via um, public services and goods. And it will be grossly inefficient, but you're really doing that as a way to um, psychologically soothe the populace. You're not actually doing it to solve the underlying economic problem. That's what you're trying to do to stop them from rioting in the streets.
37:40 Tom Bilyeu? Uh, I'm sure most of you have heard at this point, but Charlie Kirk has been shot and killed. And just wanted to come on and basically connect with you guys and yeah, talk about where we go from here, what this means. This obviously is, I think exceedingly serious in terms of the potential for a response. Drew and I recorded something, a pre-recorded bit, if you will, when we heard, and it is just absolutely devastating. Saw the incident as it happened.
38:20 Tom Bilyeu? For anybody that saw the footage, the up-close footage of what happened, it just seemed impossible that he was going to survive that. So unfortunately, not surprised that it happened, but what an absolute tragedy.
38:37 Tom Bilyeu? So yeah, this is, I'm very curious to see where we go from here. This is exactly what Ray Dalio has been warning people about. Ultimately, what it comes down to is how people are with each other. And clearly, we're seeing an escalation in violence.
38:57 Tom Bilyeu? So, all right, here we go. I can finally see chat.
39:04 Tom Bilyeu? Yeah, Scott, this is incredibly sad. And the thing that worries me, I don't know if you guys have been watching any of the other people that have gone live on the subject, but the community responses are very different depending on who you're watching. And I'm partly just curious to see how you guys are going to respond to this.
39:23 Tom Bilyeu? But you go to certain feeds, I recorded a bunch of it. I don't know how easy this will be to see, but was watching one feed go by and it was just people calling for, I don't want to out anybody, but I don't know if you can see that, Eric, but it's just, this is me recording their feed. It's just people saying war, war, war, war, war. That's clearly not the right play. That is exactly the thing that I am worried about.
39:54 Tom Bilyeu? Is people are going to war with who? War with each other. So this is how countries tear themselves apart. It is basically always from the inside. People get to the point where.
40:09 Tom Bilyeu? They really believe that the other side is an existential threat and that it justifies political violence. And one of the deep dives that I did recently, I included stats along those lines, like how many people consider the other side of the aisle to be an existential threat? How many people believe that political violence may be justified? And I had talked about the assassinations, the political assassinations in Minnesota. And but that one didn't hit me the way that this hit me. And I suppose partly because I didn't know who those people were. Charlie Kirk is obviously such an important voice. And so this one felt
40:51 Tom Bilyeu? more visceral that and just seeing the footage was extremely startling. I certainly don't expect people to watch the footage. It was, yeah, Somnium said, you saw the video and it was disturbing. It was extremely disturbing. Shooter's in custody, according to James Rosario. I have not heard that. I don't know if anybody can confirm that.
41:18 Tom Bilyeu? Okay, so it is that guy. So there was a guy that was taken into custody almost immediately. I saw footage of that before I actually saw the footage of what had happened. But there's a mix of reporting on that. Yes, other people saying he's not in custody, still at large. So we'll see, obviously, yes, Kingdom Charlie Kirk was assassinated, confirmed by President Trump. He truthed out that Charlie Kirk was in fact dead. If you saw the footage, and I really do not encourage people to look at the footage. But if you saw it, it just, it just seemed impossible. When I saw it, I was like, I don't know how anybody survives that.
41:57 Tom Bilyeu? So obviously, he did not. And
42:03 Tom Bilyeu? It's gonna be a question of how people respond to this moment. So we will see. I can't tell you how many times I heard Ray Dalio say, Tom, what it comes down to is how people are with each other, how they are with each other. And I did not understand what he meant. But this is what he means. That we reach a point where
42:24 Tom Bilyeu? people believe that violence is
42:29 Tom Bilyeu? not just an answer, but violence is the answer. And then you get into a cycle of violence where obviously many people are going to interpret this moment as being about the other team. The Democrats did this, the Democrats are the problem. And now, instead of it being about one shooter who did something, it becomes an entire political party and it only further exacerbates the tension between the sides. And
43:00 Tom Bilyeu? obviously, I really hope that this is a muted response, that people understand that this was one guy, that it was a person who made a decision, that this is not, that the most dangerous way to interpret this, barring extreme evidence, would be, the most dangerous way to look at it would be to default to it was the Democrats and this is now Democrats versus Republican and we've got to escalate.
43:30 Tom Bilyeu? That would be the most dangerous way to move forward. But the least popular thing, I think, right now is going to be anybody who calls for
43:42 Tom Bilyeu? coming together, finding a path to the middle. But that is for sure what we need to do. I just don't see any other way. All of this stuff, when you look at history, this stuff becomes incredibly repetitive, that an assassination will often spark that next move. It does not need to be that way, but that certainly is how humans respond. If the kindling is sufficient, it only takes a spark for something to catch fire. So we'll see how people respond. I'm certainly very eager to see people read this as a sign that we need to calm down, that we need to de-escalate.
44:19 Tom Bilyeu? So we'll see. We will see. But that certainly is the thing that I would really like to see people
44:29 Tom Bilyeu? take away from this. To expressly state that we need to articulate what the goal is that we have in mind.
44:41 Tom Bilyeu? And unless we want to see this country tear itself apart from the inside, we've got to have a shared vision of what the future looks like. But this certainly isn't de-escalatory. This is escalatory. But it comes down to how people respond. As I run the thought exercises of how to get people to de-escalate, the only thing I can think of is to get people to walk through cause and effect. So this certainly could be a step in an escalatory spiral. It's not like, you know, when people talk about the shot that rings around the world, or heard around the world, or, oh, we can look back with historical perspective and say that moment was the thing
45:23 Tom Bilyeu? that led to this. It's never like the next day. So the question becomes, will we be able to interrupt the sense of escalation? Or was this even enough to be that thing? And obviously, A, I hope that despite the gravity of the tragedy, that it's not. I hope that people are sufficiently aware of how this will become a narrative, how it will be used to try to rile people up to get to an end that other people desire. And given the awareness of the fact that it will be used like that, my hope is that people will de-escalate, that they will pull back out of that. They will realize, oh, okay, like, it's all fun and games, the left versus the right until somebody gets
46:08 Tom Bilyeu? hurt. And given the, what happened in Minnesota was the, I forget the exact way to phrase it to make this stat accurate, but it's like, the most concentrated amount of political violence ever, ever, or like in the last 100 years or something, I forget the exact stat, but it is, that was four people, two actually killed, two critically injured. But you start daisy chaining that with Charlie, with the attempt on Trump, and then the actual assassination of Charlie Kirk. I still can't believe that's true.
46:43 Tom Bilyeu? Uh, it's pretty wild. So you start putting all of that together and that is not painting a good picture. So I don't know, I don't know how people are going to respond to this. But it's a choice, right? Between stimulus and response, there is a choice. And to know which option to take. Most people are going to steer by emotion. The only way to eject out of that and not steer by emotion is to have a clear sense of where you want to end up. And then say, okay, what are the things that, um, how would I need to behave in order to end up there? And the odds that giving into one's emotions, giving into a sense of, um, retribution are going to lead people where they want to go. Is very, very low, but nonetheless, that is what happened.
47:28 Tom Bilyeu? And by the way, chat, shout out to you guys. I was really curious to see what you guys were going to be saying. And look, maybe I'm just missing it and I'm not looking closely enough, but I certainly don't see wall to wall calls for violence. So I am very encouraged by that. And Leif, I really, really hope that you are incorrect. And I will say it is not, uh, I don't think anything is inevitable, but certainly there is a, um, we are a Tomata and there is a way that we respond to things that is, um, all bad hemp lord. It would be against each other. So.
48:09 Speaker 01 Do super chats on the TV. One of them just sentiment and stuff like that. So.
48:16 Tom Bilyeu? I can, yeah. So, uh, Kim Bass said, I disagree with what you say, but I will defend when you, it's all right. Uh, I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death, you're right to say it. That was Voltaire or Evelyn Beatrice Hall, apparently. Uh, yeah. I mean, that to me is exactly the whole point of freedom of speech is understanding that.
48:40 Tom Bilyeu? And this is the thing that bothers me about Charlie Kirk being the one that got shot was this was a guy that was willing to get out there and debate people. He was willing to meet people head to head. And I get that a lot of people are going to criticize anybody who debates because they're trying to win. They're going to criticize them of manipulating, lying. But the reality is the guy would stand in front of people and he would debate and full respect to anybody that is willing to do that. And so for him to be assassinated while doing that, I guess he wasn't technically debating, but answering people's questions is heartbreaking, heartbreaking, heartbreaking. There's two things that I'm worried about.
49:22 Tom Bilyeu? Thing number one is just, he was a guy and he had kids and a wife. And of course, like the first thing I thought is, what would it be like for Lisa? If something like that happened to me, we don't even have kids. And so that would be just unbelievably tragic. And then the second thing I worry about is America. So it is wild, man. We are really in a fight for the soul of America. I did not see this as being a chapter in my life. But here we are. Here we are.
49:59 Tom Bilyeu? Yeah. All right. Anthony Rice says, "The debate must go on. Make it bigger. Stand for Charlie." I get the sentiment of Stand for Charlie, but that's the thing that scares me is that people will make this about that instead of saying, "As a country, we are going to have to be very clear headed about where we want to end up." And so, yeah, I mean, look, I get it. People are going to rally around him and that is a beautiful thing. But boy, do we have to be careful about not leveraging that as like a, "And now I'm on this team." And that's exactly what happens.
50:44 Tom Bilyeu? The reason that martyrs are so powerful is it gives you a symbol. It gives you a person to rally around. And as humans, we want that. We crave that. We love that. It gives us that moral clarity. It gives us a sense of certainty. And that sense of certainty is the one thing I would really encourage people to try to back off of. And look, I, I admit, I feel like I'm screaming into a void when I say that. It is so anathema to the human spirit. What we want to do is, um, we want to get people back. We want to get people back. So yeah, we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to watch out for that.
51:29 Tom Bilyeu? We are gonna have to watch out for that. Uh, one must pick a side. Something went by, uh, PJW, no teams. Tom, you have been clearly on the anti-Trump team. And I am really just trying to not be on a team. I don't think being on a team makes you think clearly. I don't consider myself anti-Trump. I don't consider myself pro-Trump. I consider myself pro-America. I will admit, I'm on Team America. There's no doubt about that. I'd be lying if I said anything else. Uh, I am pro-America. I want to see America do well. I want to see us take care of each other. I want to see us, um, address the underlying causes that have led us to a populist moment. And you want to talk about, um, I don't think we have our finger on the pulse of what is really wrong.
52:13 Tom Bilyeu? And what's really wrong is so boring and so mundane, but it's economic. And when people fear for their economic future, they are operating in a place of emotion. And that leads to the kind of dark place we're seeing. This is why this becomes so predictable. This is why this becomes so predictable. We, as humans, we only work in so many ways. There are only so many different personality types. There's only so many different narratives and ways to, um, parse the world. And given that, and given the way that those belief systems bounce into each other, uh, we end up in these crazy loops. We end up in crazy loops.
52:59 Tom Bilyeu? I mean, I think Charlie was Charlie was so much more visible that I think this is going to have a much bigger impact. I think also being in context of that also happened. So now you've got attempt on Trump's life twice. You've got the assassinations in Minnesota, and now you've got Charlie Kirk being assassinated. But Charlie Kirk was orders of magnitude more visible than the politicians in Minnesota. So I would expect this to have a much bigger impact. I mean, just look at all the conversations on X. So yeah, I think this one is far bigger. I think that Constantine Kissin's idea that we've crossed some sort of invisible line. I
53:41 Tom Bilyeu? think all of that is accurate. So yeah, we'll see how this plays out. All right, guys. As a parting shot, I will remind you, the only way to get where you want to go is to clearly define where you want to be. And as a country, I think we've got to be finding a way back to the middle. We've got to find a path to being hopeful, to being optimistic, to being to solving the economic problems so that we can come back together as a country. I think these are knowable things. I think they are doable things, but they are certainly not going to happen by accident. Remember, in the coming days, whatever narrative you decide to adopt,
54:20 Tom Bilyeu? it is a choice. And there will be facts, and there will be interpretations. Try to parse the facts. Try to make sure that you're actually touching where the rubber meets the road. And try to make sure that your interpretation is something that is likely to lead us all somewhere good. You don't want to BS yourself. You don't want to lie. But everything that you're going to be encountering in the coming days and weeks is going to be spin. It is going to be from a perspective. It's not necessarily people that have bad intentions. But every word that we choose is spin, whether you're talking to your kids, your wife, your friends, or the nation. You're making word choices. Those word choices frame things in
55:03 Tom Bilyeu? a certain way. And we are all relentlessly framing things for ourselves. So pick a frame that is useful in moving yourself, your loved ones, and if you interface with a larger audience, hopefully, everybody. Towards a positive outcome because I don't think there's going to be a lot of people calling for that in the coming days and weeks. So, all right, everybody, much love to all of you. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I had a really intense desire to connect and spend some time with you guys. So yeah, crazy days. Much love. Spread some love, everybody. Not going to be easy. All right. Love you guys. Later.
55:45 Tom Bilyeu? Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break and that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop, eight ounces of water, and you're done. You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics, nutrient-dense superfoods, everything that used to require six, seven different supplements, and perfect planning
56:27 Tom Bilyeu? now happens in one drink that takes about 30 seconds to make. Right now, AG1 is giving you $87 worth of free gifts with your first subscription. You get a welcome kit, travel packs, vitamin D3 plus K2, and flavor samples. Click the link in the show notes or visit drinkag1.com/impact to claim this offer.
Previous America on Edge: Political Violence, Race Narratives, and the Future of Economic Stability Next Rich Roll on Mastering Pain, Overcoming Addiction & Living With Purpose (Fan Fav) Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
