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

Gusto: Try 3 months free at https://gusto.com/iced Shopify: Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at https://shopify.com/ich NetSuite: Take advantage of NetSuite’s Flexible Financing Program: https://www.netsuite.com/ICED Subscribe to @Nickjfreitas Here! Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [email protected] For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 00:01:15 - Problems with young men today 00:10:05 - Sponsor - Gusto 00:11:26 - Becoming a strong man or woman 00:15:50 - Actions to improve as you age 00:21:30 - What to do if you lack motivation 00:26:23 - Role models for kids today 00:28:36 - Sponsor - Shopify 00:31:22 - Modern dating 00:35:37 - Graham’s marriage story 00:38:21 - Is dating harder today? 00:44:05 - Intellectual compatibility 00:46:32 - Women supporting men financially 00:48:46 - Red flags in dating 00:51:45 - When masculinity becomes toxic 00:52:51 - How people gain confidence 00:57:51 - Sponsor - Netsuite 00:59:03 - Who runs the country? 01:07:05 - Importance of the president 01:11:55 - Wasteful government spending 01:14:49 - Why do people root for failure? 01:16:10 - National debt problems 01:19:40 - Thoughts on Bitcoin 01:29:49 - Flat tax? 01:30:43 - Should voting require a test? 01:35:34 - Who really runs the government? 01:48:58 - Are kids reading books? 02:01:33 - Best potential president *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  At Edward Jones, we believe rich is about taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your financial advisor personalizes your plan to help you preserve your progress and create something that lasts. Let's find your rich. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  People have this idea that that politics is primarily about policy. Politics has primarily become about marketing.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  It is not your civic duty to vote. It is your civic duty to know what the hell you're voting for. Who understands what a massive threat that bureaucracy actually plays to what we would like to believe is a representative government? There is so much power to be had when you can slip your controversial piece of legislation into a bill that nobody can vote no on.

• 0:44Graham Stephan?

  Are they getting money in the back end?

• 0:46Speaker 01

  I'm gonna sneak in a tariff for the sugar industry in Florida. But that little tariff is worth tens of millions of, not hundreds of millions of dollars for the industry which benefits from it.

• 0:59Graham Stephan?

  Who is actually running the country?

• 1:09Graham Stephan?

  All right, Nick, thank you so much for coming on. The Iced Coffee Hour. Really appreciate it.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  No, it's my pleasure. Thank you guys for having me.

• 1:15Graham Stephan?

  You're a Virginia State Delegate, a former very decorated Green Beret with multiple tours served, and you've gained over 3 million followers from giving no BS advice to young men and women on how to improve their life and find the right partner. I've noticed a lot of your most popular topics tend to be on family values. What is the problem today with young men that you see?

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh.

• 1:35Graham Stephan?

  Where do we start?

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, gosh, one hour later. I'll tell you what, let me tell you an interesting story. I actually, on our podcast, I got in something of a fight with my co-host, Christian, who's a great guy. We've been, we've been good friends for a long time. He'd worked with me in politics for a while. And we were, we were just talking about, again, this, this topic, what's going on with young men, what's going on with young men in society and relationships? Why are young men checking out? All of that. And I took kind of, I guess, kind of the typical older guy attitude, like buck up, get your crap together, you know, you know, go to the gym, you know, read more, go talk to girls, and And we got done and he looks at me goes, I'm so tired of that crap from people like you.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  He goes, you got married at 19, you got a beautiful wife, you know, you, you got kids, you got this whole these and you're looking at me, I'm almost 30. I find it almost impossible to date in this environment. My initial reaction was, all right, well, I guess we're gonna fight this out. And I started thinking for a second, I was like, man, he's, um, he's right. I'm being flippant about this. I'm being very flippant about this because I'm 45, so I'm, I'm not ancient. But it's true. The, the world that I grew up in, in the, in the nineties, early 2000s, I think is significantly different than the world that young men are growing up in right now. I've conceded all those points. Um, I believe they're relevant. I believe they're worth discussing. I believe men have a right to feel, um, that it, that is completely unfair and unrealistic.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Question is, how do you get out of it?

• 3:04Graham Stephan?

  So why is it happening?

• 3:06Speaker 01

  So I, I think there's a couple of different, uh, reasons for it. I think in, in many cases, there's legitimate criticisms, right? There, there are problems with the fact as we look back through history with respect to women's place within society. I think there are, uh, problems when you see like the temperance movement that took place in the early 20th century that was led to the, um, you know, abolishing alcohol and the, um, what was it, the 19th, 18th amendment, I think. That was, that was rooted in a very real problem and the very real problem was alcoholism, alcoholism had become rampant. A lot of, not, not most, but a lot of men were abusive, uh, to the women, weren't fulfilling the responsibilities to protect and provide and be the sort of men that their wives deserve, that their children deserve.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  And so I, I think there was a, a push toward that at the same time that we were trying to create greater equality before the law for women. At the same time, uh, there is another political philosophy out there that is largely rooted in Marx, which, um, really despises the nuclear family and, and that's not hyperbole. If you read Marx, uh, he believed in the abolition of the family. He thought the family stood up against, um, kind of this sort of ideal socialist society he wanted to create. It was one where children would not only be educated collectively, but they would be raised collectively. He looked at marriage as particularly oppressive toward, um, women in general.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  And when you see other people that were very prominent thinkers within, especially second, third wave feminism, people like Simone de Beauvoir, she actually said very proudly in a debate, I think in the seventies, said that women should not be given the option to be stay at home mothers because if they had that as an option, too many of them would choose it and it would disrupt the progress that they were attempting to make. So I think there, I think there has been a very, very dedicated philosophical and political push to undermine the family. I think when you undermine the best version of traditional masculinity, you do a good job at actually achieving that, especially when you want to pretend as if men and women are essentially interchangeable. We're not.

• 5:11Jack Selby?

  So my belief on this matter as a bachelor, a 25 year old male bachelor, is that society has gotten way too easy for everybody. We have everything that we could possibly ever want.

• 5:53Jack Selby?

  And then, so where do we turn to a more hedonistic approach towards life, where we're just kind of grabbing at the next immediate pleasure rather than long-term goals? And I think that that's kind of also infected women as well in the same thing where like short-term relationships are super common these days and women can just go on their phones, scroll on TikTok and be hit with dopamine hit after dopamine hit and happiness after happiness. And then there's no real consequence to that. Like there's no negative consequence to just continually getting dopamine because you're always kind of floating at a higher vibration.

• 6:27Graham Stephan?

  You could live a pretty good life, honestly, off like two grand a month. Because think about it, you rent, you could rent a room in a place where like 800 bucks, eat junk food, and then scroll TikTok. And now, I mean, it definitely serves advertisers where they want you to stick around on these platforms longer and longer and longer.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 6:43Graham Stephan?

  It makes sense. It's like that drives a lot of profits for people.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:47Graham Stephan?

  A portion of the population just says, you know what, I'm just gonna be on my phone all day. I'm gonna be totally happy just doing the minimum and it's a pretty good life compared to like 300 years ago. I mean, this would be a luxury.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Oh, subsistence farming and dying, you know, if the crop doesn't come in before the winter.

• 7:00Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, my gosh.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  No, no, I think there's, I think there's a lot of truth in the fact that technological development has decreased the necessity for a lot of, or it's, it's removed certain challenges that used to be so evident and gave us meaning and purpose, right? Going out and fighting for something and, and, you know, again, bringing in the crop or protecting the family from the barbarian horde or wherever else it was, brought meaning and purpose. Now, I will say this, I don't think you can, I don't think it's a one for one exchange, right? I don't think you're gonna exchange meaning and purpose for just simple dopamine hits. And I, and I think we see the effects of that because as, as much as we talk about how, what are the real consequences for somebody, you know, just streaming through or watching TikTok

• 7:42Speaker 01

  or watching porn or whatever it is and, okay, hey, my, my basic necessities for life are met in the sense that I have enough food, I have shelter, and I have very, very easy and accessible entertainment. And yet people are miserable, right? And yet I can't watch, we don't have cable in my house, so this is the first time I've been watching cable in a while. Every other ad is for some sort of pharmaceutical. Every single, it's amazing to me. It's shocking to me. By the same token, if you actually look at young women and what they're saying, you have the highest diagnosis of mental illness among young women that you've had in recorded history. And, and it is, and it is ideologically aligned as well. It's not, it's not one for one across the board.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Women who identify as more conservative or more moderate are about, according to Pew Research, I think it's about 19 to 23% have been diagnosed with some sort of, of mental illness. As soon as they identify as being liberal or progressive, it jumps up to 52.

• 8:37Graham Stephan?

  Now, could that be because people that are conservative are less likely to test?

• 8:42Speaker 01

  It could be, yeah, it could be. But the other thing that you've got to ask though is, is this constant drive that we've had, I think it was Abigail Schreiber, Schreiber's talked a lot about this, this constant drive to dwell on that which... You feel has been challenging or traumatic. I mean, the word trauma has expanded to include, somebody said something mean to me. I got misgendered at the coffee shop. That's traumatic. And I do think that goes back to your point about when things become so easy, minor inconveniences are now earth shattering trauma. But I don't think that's healthy, right? And I do think that a mindset which says, I expect life to be difficult. I expect there to be challenges. I expect that to actually find meaning and purpose, which is going to give me not just

• 9:27Speaker 01

  happiness, but a sense of joy and peace in the midst of the storm. Like, that's going to require work. And I don't think people are happy. I mean, yeah, they might be happier than they would if they were starving to death. But I don't think that provides purpose.

• 9:41Jack Selby?

  Right. I think the data clearly shows people are not happier today by any means. And there are consequences, like you said, but the consequences are so far removed from that initial infraction of going on your phone rather than going outside.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:54Jack Selby?

  And I think that like, like in Atomic Habits, James Clear's book, by the way, if you haven't read it, highly recommend you read it. He says that consequences in order to actually promote positive or negative behavior need to be directly after whatever it is that you do.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Oh, I think.

• 10:08Jack Selby?

  They need to be quick and they need to be strong enough to elicit an actual response.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  As someone that, as someone that serves in elected office, I could not agree more with that statement. Because part of the reason why people get so frustrated with politics is because they don't see the direct consequences of the action. They don't, they don't draw a straight line between this policy led to this consequence. And the end result is, is that if you don't make the right, if you don't make the right connection, then you make the wrong diagnosis and then you start looking for the wrong cure. And when the cure just allows you to continue off into that spiral, it gets significantly worse over time. But no, I think you're right. If there isn't a one to one connection between what is actually causing the problem, people will continue to, to look for whatever the simplest solution is.

• 10:50Jack Selby?

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• 11:06Graham Stephan?

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• 11:33Jack Selby?

  And here's the best part, guys. You can try it completely for free for three months. All you gotta do is go to gusto.com/iced. Once again, guys, that is gusto.com/iced. And we have a link down below in the description. And by the way, I just want to mention, this is seriously like a full circle moment for me because when I first started working with Graham like five years ago and I created my S corp, I used Gusto. I looked online, did a bunch of research. This was the best option and they still are. So it's awesome that they sponsor us. I seriously appreciate it. If you guys are interested, there's a link down below in the description. Thank you so much to Gusto for sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast. Okay, so with all of that considered, so we've kind of understood now why people are as weak as they are today. What would you say for the viewer is the best way that they can then become a strong man or woman?

• 12:16Speaker 01

  I think in general, one, I think it's a little bit different for men and women. I think there's similarities, but I think again, this goes back to appreciating the fact that I think men and women are equally necessary for society and certainly should have equal protection before the law. But I think it's a little bit absurd for us to consider that they're just perfectly interchangeable. I don't think that's accurate. Not to mention the fact that I think what that leads to is it leads to men and women being overly competitive with one another when in reality, we're far more happier when we're cooperative with one another or collaborative with one another. Now, none of that means that a woman can't, for instance, do something that might be traditionally considered more masculine, serving in the military, right? I was just talking with my good friend, Misha Tate, right? She's a UFC bantamweight champion, right? She, that is, that is not typically what we consider the traditional feminine role.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  But she, she at the same time loves embracing being a wife and a mother. Let me put it this way, I had a, I had a mom call me up, a single mom.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  And she goes, you talk a lot about raising many, you talk about the importance of the male role model within a boy's life. She goes, I'm a single mom, which means I don't have the father there that I wish I did. What do I do? Is it, I mean, is there anything I can do?

• 13:26Speaker 01

  And I said, you know, I was raised by a single mom. Now, my dad was still involved with my life, but I got to see him three to four months out of the year, right? Not as much as I would have liked to, but my dad was a man that I admired. And so, three to four months went a long way when you admire your father. What I told her was, you are going to need a positive male role model at some point in his life, because there are certain challenges that he's going to need to go through, and they need to be age-appropriate challenges. But he needs to deal, he needs to have somebody in his life that is basically challenging him to explore and to try and to fight and to get up when he fails, and to tell him to, you know, hey, nobody needs your crying right now. We need to get the job done, right? Not to an inappropriate degree. Needs to be age appropriate, but that's important. What do you mean by age appropriate?

• 14:08Speaker 01

  I don't give the same challenges to my 19-year-old son that I gave to him when he was seven. That's fair. Okay, understand. And the other thing too, is it's important to realize, the thing that I tried to convey to her was, my mom, I thought my mom did an excellent job as a single mother, in part because when I was little, and when you're little and you're far more vulnerable, you want security, you want love, you want comfort, you want that bonding with your, with your, both your parents, but your mother in particular. I said, but as, as boys get older, it's important to understand that we have a hard time, we have a hard time feeling love apart from respect. Love without respect feels like pity, I think to most men. And we don't want to be pitied. Like, dear God,

• 14:50Speaker 01

  if there's anything we don't want, it's to be pitied. I said, so as your boy gets older, one of the best things that you can do for that little boy is start to give him a little bit more responsibilities, a little bit more challenges. Have him carrying the groceries from the car, have him, you know, when he, again, age-appropriate, when he's old enough, when you guys walk down the street together, he should be walking on the street side. When he, when he acts in a way that is, kind of calls out that protector and provider in him, reward him for it. One of the, one of the greatest compliments my wife ever gave me was, one time she just stopped me, man, this hits me every time I talk about it. She just stopped me, she goes, I need you to, I need you to know that you have done an excellent job providing and being there for this family, and you make me feel safe.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Brother, I am telling you that I, that was the only compliment I needed for a year. It's not the only one I got, but it's all I would have needed, right? It's all I would have needed because I get so much sense of that meaning and purpose from my faith and from, you know, providing for my wife, providing for my children. And so I think a lot of it has to do with giving men challenges intellectually, physically, emotionally. It doesn't mean that everyone's going to take the same path, right? But I think there is something to be said for that fact of overcoming something that required great mental and physical strain to do. Because once they realize that they can accomplish it, especially if they've had to fail a couple of times before they accomplish it, that's a mindset shift.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  And that mindset shift, even if it was something minor when they were 12 years old, that plays into other areas of their, of their life. And so I think that's really important for, for, for both men and women, but I think a lot of times it manifests itself different in the examples that you use.

• 16:31Jack Selby?

  So that was something that people around these men could be doing to improve these men's lives. But what if you've existed for 18, 19, 20 years and you didn't grow up with a father figure and you feel like yourself always going after these short-term pleasures, living a hedonistic lifestyle, and you're not where you want to be?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:47Jack Selby?

  So what can you do for yourself to change rather than maybe, you know, the things around you, putting the, the blame, not blame per se, but like, you know, responsibility on them?

• 16:58Speaker 01

  One of the most empowering things you can do is actually take responsibility for your own actions. And, and I don't, and I mean that even when you're not responsible for some of your circumstances. I, I have, I have, I put into two, um, there's, there's an overcoming mentality and then there's a victim mentality. I have known incredibly wealthy, privileged people with a victim mentality. They, their life will always get worse as a result of it because they're constantly looking for somebody else to blame with respect to what's going on. I have seen other people that grew up in conditions where they were legitimately not responsible for the crap they went through, but their attitude through the whole thing was, is how can I improve my situation? And that's not to say that they shouldn't be able to, you know, to really talk and discuss

• 17:40Speaker 01

  the things that happened to them. But the response to the things happening to them was, what can I do different? When you adopt that sort of mindset, it changes the way you look at things. And the mindset changes what is so important. Now, what do you do with that? Once, once you take responsibility, what do you do? I think there's five categories for, for all of us, men or women. I think there's a spiritual component, there's an intellectual component, an emotional component, a physical component, and a professional component. So the, the spiritual side, I mean, look, this is, this is a long debate, and we can have it all day long. But I think we're starting to see the resurge of this idea that what you think about God really, really matters in your life, whether you completely dismiss

• 18:21Speaker 01

  it, you know, entirely, or you actually have a faith that you appeal to. Because what that does is it provides you an objective framework for truth and morality. And when you have an objective framework that exists outside of you, it's not just about what I feel like doing that day. It's not just about what gives me hedonistic pleasure. It's about the fact that there is a right and wrong, and I want to be honorable. That's incredibly important. The, the intellectual side, nothing prevents anybody from reading books, watching podcasts, listening to people that you admire and respect, discuss ideas. Because men should be intelligent. You shouldn't just be strong, you should be intelligent. The emotional component has to do with being able to regulate your emotions while at the same time not shoving them down so far that you're, you're unable to actually demonstrate

• 19:03Speaker 01

  them in a way that makes sense. I remember, there was this interesting interview where a man was explaining to a female psychologist, because you talk a lot about opening up with your feelings. He goes, well, I'm gonna tell you right now, the women in my life are the hardest on me, not the men. My wife, my daughters, they'd rather see me die on top of my horse than fall off of it. He goes, what do you do with that? And that's a tremendous amount of pressure, because I never want to be, I never want to be seen as weak. And yet we got a people, oh, you need to be vulnerable. I don't want to be vulnerable. So, so how do I deal with that? My wife said some of the ones that really struck me. She goes, I don't need you to be weak, honey. I do, I need you to be tender. And that was a, that was an eye-opening experience for me. And it wasn't that I was not tender with my wife and children, but it was this idea of trying

• 19:47Speaker 01

  to articulate, what does it mean to be emotionally mature as a man? Because there are some burdens that I'm supposed to carry. There's some burdens where I'm not supposed to stop everything I'm doing and have a good cry about it. I'm supposed to get the job done. I'm supposed to protect. I'm supposed to provide the stability, the calm in the storm for my family. How do I do that if I'm weepy all the time? I can't. So there is, there is a degree of, of us compartmentalizing when appropriate in order to get the job done. The question is, is what happens when we go back into that box and pull it out and start talking about it? And I, I think some of that emotional maturity comes from understanding the difference between weakness and...

• 20:24Speaker 00

  At Edward Jones, we believe rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Appropriate tenderness toward people that you care about and then finding people that you can trust to discuss things with and to work out issues because you want to be better for the people in your life that matter the most.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  The physical component, again, I, regardless of where you are as a man or what your life goals are, you know, some people are going to end up, you know, working in finance. Some people are going to be, you know, Navy SEALs. Those have different physical requirements. But the, the data is in and, and getting out and doing physical exercise, lifting weights, doing stuff like that, doesn't just have physical benefits, it also has intellectual benefits as well. It has enormous health benefits. So I, I think, again, to be the sort of man that can protect, that can provide, you want to be in the shape to be able to do that. And then finally, the professional.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  It has never been easier or cheaper to develop marketable skillsets. I, I think that is one of, we, we, there's so much trashing of the internet right now and social media and everything else, and for good reason, right? There's, there's definitely harmful things that take place. But social media is neutral, right? It can be used for good, it can be used for ill. It has never been easy to educate yourself on a wide variety of marketable skillsets. And to be constantly looking at, at learning and, um, and finding ways that the things that you're learning, the things that you, the capabilities that you're developing are not only beneficial for you, they're beneficial to other people. Because that's the beautiful thing about the marketplace. You really want to get wealthy? You do it by actually providing things of value to other people and then they provide you value in return.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  And so looking for ways to actually do that and learning how to do it, never been easier, but it's a continuous process. Um, so those are the five areas that I tell people, like, look, if you focus on these five areas, regardless of your circumstances, you are not going to be disappointed with where you end, uh, you're not going to be disappointed with the progress that you've made, even if it doesn't always yield the immediate returns that you want.

• 22:45Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. And what do you say to the people who lack motivation to do that?

• 22:48Speaker 01

  So this is where discipline and motivation come in, right? And there's a difference, right? It's great to be motivated. There are plenty of days I am not motivated to go to work. There are plenty of days I'm not motivated to go to the gym. There's plenty, um, so what happens then? Well, discipline takes over. So I think a large part of that is that if you're not initially motivated towards something, you always have something that you like or that you're interested in, but let's say is more productive than something else. Scrolling through TikTok, right? Playing, um, you know, Space Marine two, whatever, those can all be fun and entertaining. They're not necessarily productive. So find the stuff that you, you do have some interest in that are productive and start focusing on building habits and consistency with that. Um, I, I got, when I left the military, I didn't go to the gym for like nine years.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Um, and I, when I hit 40, I was like, holy crap, dude. If I don't start making some changes, this is going to be bad.

• 23:36Graham Stephan?

  What were the symptoms?

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Uh, I was getting heavier. Yeah. When we, when you go into legislative session in Virginia, we have a 60 day legislative session. You know what you do for 60 days? You sit, you talk, you read and you eat and you drink. That's what you do. That's what you do during legislative session. So we used to, I affectionately refer to it as our session baby, right? You get that little pooch that you get when you want to cruise, but it's a 60 day cruise, right? That nobody wants to go on. But anyway, and I noticed I used to always be able to get that and then come home and I'd be working outside or tearing up brush or doing something and it would just fall off. And then I hit 40 and it didn't. I was like, okay, I need to start making some changes. And so I remember saying, okay, I have to now go through a lifestyle change. If I don't, there's going to be negative consequences.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  I don't want to do this, but I'm going to for 90 days. For 90 days, I'm going to do it. And here's what I found. Doing anything for a consistent period of time, three to four days a week. For that period of time, you end up seeing results, whether it's reading more, whether it's developing capabilities, whether it's focusing on conversations, whatever it is, the physical lifting, whatever it is, you see results and then all of a sudden it becomes a part of your routine. And the next thing you know, you're far more motivated to do the thing that you actually have far more discipline to do now.

• 24:52Jack Selby?

  You mentioned of the five areas to focus on, if you want to improve your life, one of them was physical fitness. And one thing Andrew Tate always says is if you're upset, you got to get a six pack and then reevaluate your own happiness. Do you think that that's like a reasonable thing to say? Do you agree with that?

• 25:08Speaker 01

  I think Andrew's saying something that is incredibly catchy and easy to remember, but it also generates a lot of hostility, right? Like, how dare he reduce everything to a six pack? But if you, if you think about what he's saying in that moment, he's like, go, go out and achieve something that is universally respected. Right? Universally respected on a number of levels. Why? Because to get a six pack, you got to eat right. To get a six pack, you got to work out. To get a six pack, you got to be motivated and disciplined in order to do something that most people don't want to do. And at the end, you have something that it's aesthetically pleasing that every woman on the planet likes. Now, once you've done all of that, chances are you're going to be in a better, are you going to be happier than when you were when you started that endeavor? Yeah, probably.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  So there's actually a lot of, I think there's actually a lot of common sense that goes into that statement. Once you break it down into everything that's entailed. Do I think in and of itself, like that's some sort of-

• 26:01Jack Selby?

  In a vacuum, that that's like, you know- I think that would probably cure a lot, though. I kind of actually agree with that, but I agree it is a bit of like a catchy phrase that that I would say is not going to yield the best results.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Well, let me put it this way. People gave Jordan Peterson crap when he said, "Clean your room." Right? But then you've also got the former commander of SOCOM, Special Operations Command, essentially saying the same thing in his book, "Clean your room." And what we're talking about is what is something that is an objectively good thing to do that requires some degree of discipline and, you know, habit-forming behavior that you can look on and say, "I set out to do something. I did it. It's done." Or, "Now I have to maintain it." All of those things, I think, yield positive results. So even though it may seem simple, let's face it, if we're getting into a large philosophical discussion on all

• 26:56Speaker 01

  the various reasons and impacts on why you needed, or we can just say, "Here's a very, very, here's a simple task," or maybe a difficult task, right? Especially, dude, I'm 45. I'm working on the six-pack. That's a friggin' difficult task. But I've been working on it, and I'm certainly happier for the endeavor. So I think sometimes it's about simplifying something down into terms that are accessible to people, and it seems attainable, right? It may, it may suck to have to do it, but it's attainable. And giving people attainable goals is, I think, incredibly important.

• 27:25Jack Selby?

  So, you know, we mentioned Andrew Tate, and some may argue he's a false idol. I think it kind of depends on what you're taking away from what he's saying. If it affects you positively, then I guess he probably wouldn't be a false idol. But if it affects you negatively, then he is a false idol. Who would you say are people that the young kids should idolize that exist today?

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Christ. Jesus is hard to beat, right? Perfection's hard to beat. But I mean that sincerely. I mean that sincerely. I think that too many people have a very, very blasé Sunday School version of, of Jesus that doesn't even begin to explain the absolute complexity there. That is very, pretty incredible, actually, when you look at the actual courage involved.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  As far as like contemporary people that I know that I think are good role models, John Lovell, John Lovell runs Warrior Poet Society. He was, he was in Ranger Regiment, I can't remember what Ranger Battalion, but he did some tours over in Afghanistan and has done some really interesting work since then. But he talks a lot about what genuine masculinity looks like. He's a big believer that, you know, we, sometimes when we overcorrect on trying to make men, men, we focus on the warrior without focusing on the poet. And so I think he's done a very good job of achieving that proper balance on what does it mean to be, yeah, as a man, you should be strong and you should be capable and you should be terrifying to threats and you should be tender toward your family and the people that you love and you should be romantic and

• 28:53Speaker 01

  you should be, you know, a poet. And, and what does it mean to do that? And how can you accomplish that? So I think John Lovell is a very good example of something like that. There's other people that I really admire, Victor Marks, Victor Marks runs an organization called All Things Possible and he fights against human trafficking. Why does he do that? Because he was horribly abused through most of his, his young life. Went off to the Marine Corps, dealt with a lot of anger, a lot of frustration. But now he gets out and he helps remove children from really, really bad situations. But on top of that, he talks a lot about his faith. He talks a lot about his journey, talks a lot about overcoming challenging situations. And so these are guys that I think that people can respect for the fact that they are masculine in the sense that we typically think

• 29:36Speaker 01

  that's a guy that can handle himself in a fight, right? But I think their view with respect to relationships, with respect to how a man should treat a woman, I think is vastly superior to what we get in some of the red pill environment.

• 29:52Graham Stephan?

  Although really quick, I just want to mention that for those unaware, I got a coffee company and it's called Bankroll Coffee and our goal is to bring you the highest quality coffee at the most affordable price. And in terms of researching how to go about doing all of this, we had to find the best e-commerce platform to use. And that is where our sponsor Shopify is there to help.

• 30:09Jack Selby?

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• 30:25Graham Stephan?

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• 30:53Jack Selby?

  Again, guys, that's Shopify.com/ICH to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com/ICH. Once again, it's only $1 to try it out. Highly recommend it. Thank you so much to Shopify for sponsoring this episode, and back to the podcast.

• 31:06Graham Stephan?

  Going back to your podcast co-host, who was complaining about dating. What was the resolution of that? Or what is your advice to him?

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, we've had discussions. Actually, he just asked a girl out here. We're all pretty excited about it. We've been pushing him to do it for a while now, and so we were really happy. He'd wanted to, but he was just kind of that, kind of gun shy, right? Kind of gun shy after a while.

• 31:28Jack Selby?

  Where did he meet this girl?

• 31:30Speaker 01

  He actually met it on our online community, because they got to talking about a bunch of weighty topics. And because there was that distance, they've met before in person and the whole thing, but because there was that distance, a lot of the conversation was not on things that you... I think modern dating is a perfect way to one day end up divorced, because I don't think it sets us up for good marriages. I think it sets us up for something far more superficial and hedonistic. But he had a chance to really get to know, really get to know this person through, like, deep, weighty, online conversations about things that truly matter about life and relationships. And so anyways, I don't want to, he's going to get furious with me that I just mentioned this, but that was good. The other resolution there is I had to tell him I was sorry.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  I had to apologize to him, because as much as I am still certain that acknowledging the problem doesn't mean you wallow in it, it means you've still got to find a way out. And I don't think there's any way, I don't think there's any way out of the social situation that we find ourselves, or that men find themselves in, without men stepping up and taking ownership of it.

• 32:32Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  But he was right that I was being very, very flippant toward the very real issues that young men were facing.

• 32:38Graham Stephan?

  What do you consider modern dating? Is that like today? Is it 10 years ago? Is it five years ago? Dating apps?

• 32:44Speaker 01

  I think it's older than just, I think it's older than just dating apps. I think that we, I think that we started to take this view of, first of all, I think people start dating way too young. And then they treat it as some kind of like, you know, social experiment. I kind of like you. I'm kind of attracted to you. Um, you know, let's, whatever, hang out, go to movies, go to dinner, whatever it is. And, and there's never really this question of what is the, what is the actual purpose of what we're doing? And when you don't have a, when you don't have an end state in mind, like, are we getting married? This, this sounds totally foreign now and people look at me like I'm some sort of archaic, you know? But we raise our kids with the idea that you're not allowed to date before you're 18.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  And people think that's just insane. None of them gave us any pushback.

• 33:34Graham Stephan?

  Why not?

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Part of it was because, well, one, we homeschooled.

• 33:38Graham Stephan?

  Oh, that's very good. That's the real.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  That, that was huge.

• 33:42Graham Stephan?

  I have no contact.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  But that, that wasn't it, right? Homeschool is not, like, there was a time where homeschool was a much more isolating experience than it is now. It's not now. They still went to co-ops. They still went to sporting events. Both my, my daughters did theater at an all-boys school because they needed girls to come to play the part. So imagine sending your daughter, who's not allowed to date, to an all-boys school to do theater because it's one of the best gigs in town, right? So they, they still had a lot of exposure. They were out there constantly with, with friends and, and people that were not, but there wasn't constant pressure from a very early age on who's your boyfriend? Who's your girlfriend? You know, who are you dating now? Because you don't know the deal. And this starts in like seventh or eighth grade. This is just a series of one to two week things where people are constantly getting mad and frustrated and there's drama everywhere.

• 34:28Graham Stephan?

  And my first relationship was like two and a half months in seventh grade.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. So wow, you were two and a half months.

• 34:34Graham Stephan?

  I feel like some of those experiences, I think, are important. I mean, because you, you learn about different social interactions and, and things that if you're 18, going into it for the first time, you could be severely behind the curve. Because I feel like as, as like, women are way more attuned to, uh, like body language and social situations and guys are not. And you have to almost learn that as a dude to like pick up on a lot of stuff.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  I mean, my, my oldest daughter's happily married at age 21.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  And went into that marriage with zero baggage.

• 35:05Jack Selby?

  Should a man ask his girlfriend's dad permission to marry her?

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:09Jack Selby?

  A hundred percent.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  No hesitation whatsoever. But I will say this, because that's become the, oh, you see your daughter as property. No, I don't see my daughter as property. I see another man coming in to fulfill

• 35:23Speaker 01

  a responsibility that I've had since that little girl was born, right? Since that little girl was in the womb, I've had the responsibility to protect and provide and to create a world where she could flourish and be safe and feel loved and cherished. And now I'm handing that responsibility over to another young man. So yeah, he damn well better ask my permission. Because if I don't think he's ready, there's going to be some problems. But I will tell you this. I can say that with my favorite tough guy tone. And I did a lot in my life to try to be intimidating to a potential boy, right? You know, Green Berets, Ranger School, Sniper School, like there's all sorts of things that I could, I could put on the wall to show him that I'll bury you.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Telling someone, telling someone they have to ask permission for your daughter's hand really only has value if she makes him do it. So I can do it from an intimidating standpoint, but the fact that my daughter insisted that he get my permission, that's where you know that the trust has been made in the appropriate way. Is that this isn't property. She trusts that her father, who loves her and knows her very well and wants the best for her. If he says that he's a good guy, then she not only knows what she feels and what she understands about him, but it's a vetting process.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  So I would say that that statement of should he ask? Yes. But the one that truly gives that value is your daughter when she, she demands it.

• 36:52Jack Selby?

  Graham had a very funny experience to ask.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Macy's.

• 36:58Graham Stephan?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, her dad. It was really tough getting him alone. That was, that was, that was the difficult part. And she had purposely gone with her mom and sister. I think it was to get like a coffee or something.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:11Graham Stephan?

  And then I think her dad was like, oh, maybe I'll come along too. And I think we, we got him off that. But then her brother was also staying badly. He didn't want to go. At all. And they're like, oh, you should come. And he's like, no, no, I think he's, they're like watching a sports game or something like that. And I could not get him away from her dad. Because they were kind of like watching a game.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:32Graham Stephan?

  I, I brought up something. He was doing some landscape work. And I brought up like the landscape. Because I knew her brother was not going to be interested in the landscape. I was like, show me the landscape. He went outside and he wouldn't stop talking about the landscape. And I didn't know when I could tell him like, I'm not interested. But I want to be polite and let him talk about the landscape. And then after a while, I, I think I said, hey, listen, I didn't bring you out to talk about the landscape. Like, I don't really. But, and then, then I went into it. And he's like, oh, but after he'd been talking about the landscape for like 15 minutes. It was a little awkward for me to bring that up.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  But you were, but you were being respectful. That's a huge thing for a guy, right? It's a huge thing for a dad.

• 38:08Graham Stephan?

  But I was half paying attention because the entire time I was waiting for a good break. And the entire time I'm watching my brother, like watching this game on TV. And I didn't want to like, I didn't want him to come out. So I knew I was a bit on a, you know, a time crunch. But I didn't want to like interrupt.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:24Graham Stephan?

  So.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  But you got the answer you wanted.

• 38:25Graham Stephan?

  I got the answer.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. My, uh, my son-in-law, they had been dating for a year and a half. And, um, he's standing, and I was so used to him being over at our house, right? Because they hung out at our house all the time. Um, and, uh, so he's over and I'm like, oh yeah, Lily's gonna get here soon. He's like, hey, uh,

• 38:45Speaker 01

  Mr. Freitas, I need to talk to you about something. And I'm like, are we doing this right now? He goes, I, I gotta do it right now, Mr. Freitas. I'm like, are you, are you kidding me? No, dude, you gotta set up an appointment. This is like, no. He's like, gotta talk to you right now, Mr. Freitas.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Okay. All right, let's do it. And he did a great job. I asked him some questions.

• 39:08Graham Stephan?

  What were the questions?

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Just about discussions that they had, what, what, you know, I asked him about, you know, things that were important to him. And I already knew these things, but there's something to be said and like, no, I'm going to ask you and I want a definitive answer. So it wasn't anything, it wasn't anything nuts, right? Typical stuff. But Tina was there too, though. He wanted Tina there as well. And so we went through and yeah, I'll never forget that moment.

• 39:36Graham Stephan?

  I was about to say in terms of modern dating, because we never really got back to that. Is it really that much harder? I tend to believe it's, it's not.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  What do you mean that much harder?

• 39:47Speaker 00

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• 40:17Graham Stephan?

  Like your co-host was talking about how like it's impossible to date these days and modern dating is just like, I tend to believe it's like, it doesn't take that much to be just above the average. And that most people put in very little effort. I go through, like, one of my favorite things is to go through dating profiles and just critique them. And the ones I see are so bad. I mean, the pictures are awful. The descriptions are awful. The messages are bad. And I tend to think that it takes so little effort just to be like a step above average. Like, and that's just a little bit of effort. And if you actually put time into yourself and get better at these things, it should be easy. I feel like it's easier than ever.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  I think it, I think it depends in part on what you're looking for and what your expectations are, obviously. Um, I, I think somebody that is looking for, let's just say more of what you might call a traditional, um, a traditional marriage. They feel like it's, it's more difficult right now. And I think they attribute a lot of that to kind of like what third wave feminism tells women, they should think about marriage and society and men and whatnot. So I think if you are looking for something that might be more traditional like that, I think it's probably more difficult. Um, I mean, I, I don't, do you, do you guys ever watch the show Homath?

• 41:29Jack Selby?

  No.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Oh, oh.

• 41:30Graham Stephan?

  Wait, those are the shorts.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:32Jack Selby?

  You've seen Homath?

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 41:34Jack Selby?

  He's the guy that's like.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  He does the graphs. He does the graphs. It's awesome.

• 41:38Jack Selby?

  Shout out Homath. Like honestly.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  You know, you know, who thinks that, you know, who thinks that channel is just really interesting? My wife.

• 41:47Graham Stephan?

  Really?

• 41:47Speaker 01

  We will sit down there and watch that together because we'll sit there and he'll explain, this is how women see things, this is how men see things and whatnot. And so we'll do a lot of like, is that true? Is that true? You know, and, and she's like, he's, gosh, he's like pretty spot on, right? And, uh, and, and what's so nice about is, is the visual depiction, right?

• 42:03Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, he's a great artist too. Like a really intricate drawing.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  He has such a great way of, I think, putting things into terms. And then that visualization that goes with it really allows it to stick. And I admire, I admire that.

• 42:14Graham Stephan?

  Flow charts are incredible. Like if this, then that, and if that, then this, and.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And, and the thing is, he could say the entire thing, but without the flow chart, it just doesn't hit the same. And so, um, he does a good job of explaining how, because of the way that men and women kind of biologically think about these things, combined with things like social media, combined with things like the dopamines you, hits you were talking about, combined with things like third wave feminism, combined with things like a more hedonistic culture. What it means is that, you know, 80% of the women are sleeping with 20, 30 to 20% of the guys, uh, high, high performers, the whole deal. And then you have a large part, we talk about above average, right? We have a large part of the, the male population that isn't, you know, blue eyes, six foot, finance, like that whole thing. They feel like they're

• 43:01Speaker 01

  being basically spurned. Well, at the same time, now you, you could say, well, kid, the, do things to improve yourself. In fact, that's what Homath says. He goes, you can make, you can, you can go from a three to a seven, to an eight with not a huge amount of effort. I think the other thing, I think the other thing that that keeps guys from doing those things is one, I think we have a culture on the other side. I think we have a male culture that says, I'm so pissed about what's going on, you know, I'm screw them. They don't deserve it. At the same time that I think, I think porn is horrible. Um, I, I think porn is just corrosive intellectually and emotionally. And when we know it has negative effects intellectually, we know it has negative effects with respect to the brain and dopamine hits and things like

• 43:44Speaker 01

  that. Um, it's even worse on another level. I had a friend of mine on his name's Josh, and he used to be, I mean, award winning porn star for like six years and was on the verge of suicide. And he talks about all the friends he's had within that industry that have killed themselves. But all that to say that you, you mentioned before, what happens when it's easier than ever in order to get, if you can't get the thing you really want, you can get something, you can get proximity. And porn, I think ends up being proximity. And so the problem is, is that what happens when you have a lot of guys that feel like they're competing at a disadvantage in a society that, or in a culture that is increasingly

• 44:23Speaker 01

  against them. And there are plenty of distractions that will at least provide a diversion, right? Video games, porn, stuff like that. I don't have anything but video games in general, right? But porn I do. But, um, I think when you combine all those things, that creates a problem. Now, to your point, you can make a choice not to do that. You can make a choice to, to work hard and improve yourself in these other areas. Um, and, and ultimately, the thing that I, I look, good news, bad news, right? Bad news is guys is yeah, this is a problem, right? And I understand this is not ideal. Good news is, is you can do something about it. Bad news again is the only way it's ever going to change is if you do something about it. Um, I don't think the reason why so much of culture now has

• 45:07Speaker 01

  intensified on this idea that, again, men are the problem and you don't deserve a special place in society and everything. They're telling you that not because it's true, but because they know it isn't. I don't care what any faddish political or sociological ideology comes up with. Men in general, and in many ways, young men specifically, are absolutely essential to a healthy society. When young men want to play their proper role within a society, societies flourish. And when they don't, things get bad really, really quickly. So again, bad news, yep, it's happening. Good news, you can do something about it. And bad news is, is you're gonna have to if you actually want to improve the situation.

• 45:50Jack Selby?

  What do you think about intellectual compatibility? Do partners need to be somewhere around the same range of, I guess, IQ?

• 45:57Speaker 01

  This is, this is interesting because there's, there's been a lot of research on this, on how, on how relationships used to develop versus how they do now, right? And then you, you had, I think, I can't remember the name now, it might've been Losing Ground. I can't remember the author of the book. But he was talking about how, once upon a time, I'm gonna use Ho Math. Ho Math is an example. Ho Math says, he goes, what does a guy look for? We look for looks, personality, and then there's a couple of other things that like could really push you over the edge for us on something we really like. And then men have all, or women have all these other criteria. It used to be that the, I think the IQ differential between men and women didn't matter as much within relationships.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Now that we have a much larger population that have gone to college and, and the female population of the college is actually higher than the male population, you've seen an increase in the IQ component factoring into marriage.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't think it's something where, I don't think it's something where it has to, it has to be a thing where they're even. I think you have to be compatible with respect to what your expectations are with marriage. That's why I say the values are the most important component. And then the, the expectations, and then interests is like third or fourth down, down the road. Cause a lot of times the intellectual capacity will show up in the interests.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  I do think it's important that you have something you can actually have a conversation with. So I don't think there can, there can be such a deficit that you just got nothing to talk about. But I don't know, I don't have a good answer for you on, on how important a factor I think that is. I can tell you that one of the things that first attracted me to, well, the first thing that attracted me to my wife is she walked in the classroom. We were high school sweethearts, right? And I was like, holy crap, that's never gonna happen, right? But there was other pretty girls, right? So what attracted me to her? Well, two things attracted me to her is she wanted to discuss like important topics. Like she wanted to debate and get into the meat of things and, and go back and forth and contend. And I found that really attractive.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  So I think part of it is based off of what you enjoy. If you enjoy intellectual pursuits, you're probably going to need to find someone that, that also has at least some degree of interest in, in a similar field.

• 48:11Jack Selby?

  I think it's probably the fair answer is if, if that matters to you, it's a, if it's a value of yours, then you probably should be someone like that. What do you think, what do you think about women who financially support their men? Do you think that that is a recipe for success or disaster?

• 48:25Speaker 01

  I, I think it, I think it can work. I think it can work. For instance, I, I met a couple not that long ago. She was a doctor, he was an FBI agent. They were not happy with what was going on in their, in their kids' school.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  And so they had the conversations like, okay, we want to pull kids out. We want to do, you know, this homeschooling, we want to do these other things. And he was like, you're a doctor. He was, and, and you've worked very hard on this. You got your practice going, everything else. He goes, it would probably be easier for me to fulfill that role. And, and I think there, and I, and I think they've made this decision in a way that is mutually respectful and, and it works for the arrangement they have. So I don't think it has to be one way or the other. I think typically it's important for the man to provide. But again, that's something that, this is one of the reasons why before you get married, discussing expectations is, is hugely important. My wife and I, again, at 18 and 19 at the time when we were dating, I'm like, what do you expect out of me like financially?

• 49:24Speaker 01

  What do you, I said, cause I expect to be the primary breadwinner. That's, I expect that role for myself. I don't have a problem with you working, but I, I take on that responsibility as the primary responsibility for me. And her, her statement was, I would like to work. I'd like to have professional pursuits. She goes, but when we start having kids, I don't want, I don't want our lifestyle to be dependent on two incomes. I want to have that option at that point. I said, I completely agree. I said, expectation back. What that means is, is we can't get used to a two income lifestyle. Cause when your income goes away, the expectation cannot mean, okay, I'm going to stay at home with the kids now, but we still have to maintain X, Y, and Z.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  And she's like, no, no, absolutely totally fair. So that, that whole back and forth right there would be really, really easy for people to assume that you're all on the same page. No, no, no. Talk all that out on that expectation. So I would say that typically, I, I think that most of, most of the relationships I see are, if, if there's one person that is providing, they're usually happier. With the man in that position, but it doesn't, it doesn't have to be. I don't, I don't think it's a moral imperative.

• 50:31Graham Stephan?

  And what are the red flags that you would warn your friends about when dating?

• 50:36Speaker 01

  I, I think one of the biggest ones, so let, let's say you've established values. Let's say you've established that you, you have similar values. If you have wildly different expectations for your life, it may be that you guys are really good friends, but you're just not made to, to build a life together because you've got to have some sort of agreement on this is what we're going to do. So for instance, if people have very, very, um, very, very hard professional aspirations, which are not compatible, but there's more than just a desire to say, make money or whatnot, like they are very, very passionate about like maybe their craft or their business or whatever it is, and those two things are not compatible and neither are willing to give way, just part as friends, right? Just part as friends. Um, here's another big one. I tell, um, this, this is applicable for both men and women.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Jordan Peterson talks about this where a lot of times a woman will initiate a dispute in part to see how you handle it. Do you do a good job of regulating your emotions? Do you, do you fly off the handle? Do you get really upset? Do you get, you know, quiet and impossible to talk to? Like those are all important things for her to find out. One of the most important things for you to find out as a guy is can you have a rational conversation with this woman? Because if you can't, sorry, part as friends, don't marry her. Again, one of the things I most appreciated about my wife, and this was something that we established when we were dating, but through the first year of marriage was also an important component. There was one time we were debating, I was upset. We're both passionate people. And she goes, I need you to talk to me like I'm the woman that you love.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  I said, okay, that's fair.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  But on the other side, it's like, I need you to realize that reality is reality. And while you may have an emotional response to this, it doesn't trump facts on the ground. She's like, that's fair. And so what it meant was, is that when I approached that conversation, I need to remember, I'm not just arguing with one of my buddies. I'm not in a heated discussion on the floor of the House of Delegates, right? I am talking to the woman I love, and she is entitled to know that the way I will discuss things with her will never cause her to wonder about my commitment toward her. By the same token, it's, women make emotional connections for very, very serious and relevant biological reasons. And it has to do with vulnerability in the physical world. And so they have to pick up on micro signals and things like that and be more in tune to it, like you were mentioning earlier.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  So that emotional component to the way that they think or process information or make connections to things that happened in the past is relevant and important and actually a strength. But it can't be used to distract from the topic at hand. And so my wife was always incredibly reasonable. When I would make a good point, she would concede the point. Like, I tell guys, one of the worst pieces of advice you can get from older men is, don't argue with your wife, just say, yes, dear. I don't treat my wife like a petulant child. If I think she's wrong, we're going to have a discussion. Because ultimately, I do see it as my responsibility to make sure that my family is okay.

• 53:30Graham Stephan?

  When does masculinity become toxic?

• 53:33Speaker 01

  I think it's best to kind of illustrate that through examples. So again, when we talk about what we consider to be typical masculine traits, again, aggression, competitiveness, you know, physical prowess, you know, things like that. If I use my aggression and my competitiveness, my physical prowess to steal an old lady's purse, that's toxic. If I use it to hurt the guy that's stealing the purse or to give the purse back to the lady, that's positive. So I think the best way to think about both male and feminine traits is that you have a whole category here, which are, in many respects, morally neutral. It's all a question of how they manifest and to what purpose. And so I would say that masculine traits become toxic the moment they are used to harm or exploit the innocent in order to gain favor for yourself.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  And I think that's true of feminine traits as well. Nurturing is a very feminine trait, unless it becomes something where now you're babying someone or you're you're keeping them in a position of constant dependency because you need to feel that level of Importance in a relationship. So.

• 54:36Graham Stephan?

  Speaking of importance, how do people gain confidence? What is your recommendation?

• 54:41Speaker 01

  So just confidence in general, like so in a skill set, I think it, I think it has to do with identifying something that you want to improve in, coming up with a, you know, a logical plan for how would you actually develop competency within that skill set, doing those things and then challenging yourself with the understanding that you're going to fail. You're going to fail. You're not going to, I mean, nobody's an expert right off the bat. Nobody's at the, at the top of the field right off the bat. So you have to actually go out there and, and put in the work associated with whatever the capability is.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  And then do it enough times where you get better, more efficient, more effective at it. And that feedback is going to come both from your, your performance that you experience. But you know, again, outside feedback is also not bad. This is another reason why I think mentorship is really important to people.

• 55:27Graham Stephan?

  What is your biggest insecurity?

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Imposter syndrome. The imposter syndrome. Definitely. So it's always this idea of I don't want to, I don't want to pretend like I'm something I'm not. So that, that I struggle with that. But I will say that there's a, there's a negative manifestation of that and a positive manifestation. The negative manifestation is if you dwell on it so much that you, you allow it to, to isolate and never try anything or never do anything or ever share anything. The positive manifestation was, I remember a while back, somebody was like, oh, man, well, Nick was, Nick was a Green Beret, man, you don't mess with Nick. He was a Green Beret. And I got, and this was like four or five years ago. And I remember thinking, is that really true anymore? Like, I used to be a Green Beret. Like, I, I

• 56:12Speaker 01

  used to be sniper qualified. I used to be, you know, Ranger qualified. I used to run, you know, counterterrorism missions in Iraq. I used to work out regularly. I used to shoot on a regular basis and be very, very proficient at it. Is that true now? And that sort of imposter syndrome was appropriate because it was like, do you have capabilities or do you have stories? And look, I think there's a point in all of our lives where capabilities gradually become stories. And now maybe your job is to be a little bit more on the mentor side or whatnot. But it really kicked me into gear where it's like, dude, you are in your late 30s, early 40s. You ain't ready to just have stories yet. You need to go back out there and fight for those capabilities. When somebody says something about you,

• 56:56Speaker 01

  you need to be asking yourself, you know you, is that true? Because if it's not, and you're letting people say it about yourself, you're getting an inflated sense of accomplishment over something that you aren't anymore. And I don't want to be that. And so I think that was a that was a positive manifestation of impostor syndrome. But yeah, that's, that's the part I want to make sure that I'm actually, I want to make sure that the things that I'm saying or conveying are true. That makes sense.

• 57:25Jack Selby?

  It does. What are some important questions that people should be asking themselves? You just said something that I thought was really interesting. Other people tell me I am this. Is that true? Or is that just giving myself an inflated sense of self or ego? What other questions do you think other people could be asking themselves to improve themselves? Or maybe pull themselves out of, let's say, like, a mental fallacy that they could be in?

• 57:51Speaker 01

  I think one of the one of the most important things people can ask themselves whenever they find themselves in a difficult situation is, what did I do to get myself here? Because it's, it's, people can be in situations that are genuinely, you know, they're the victim. They are actually the victim. That doesn't mean they can improve their situation or make sure that they're not a victim next time. And so I think one of the most important things that people can do, and again, that's very controversial, because we're not, we're never supposed to engage in victim blaming. I'm not engaging in victim blaming. I'm saying that even when you undergo something that is maybe, say, truly traumatic, or, you know, whatever it is, and it's genuinely not your fault, if you immediately take the mindset of, what can I do differently? How can I improve

• 58:35Speaker 01

  on this? How can I make sure this doesn't happen again? What are the things that I can do? Those are important questions to ask, because they will constantly move toward, what are ways that I can improve to either increase my awareness, increase my intellectual awareness, increase my physical strength, increase my capabilities? So I think when you are constantly looking at situations on

• 58:56Speaker 01

  I can't control what I can't control, but what can I improve? It would not only prevent you from wasting a lot of time on things that you just can't change. It will actually ensure that you're, it will increase your sense of gratitude, if that makes sense. Because as I start to look at what can I, what can I change, what can I improve? And then I do those things. Um, it's like, okay, I'm, you know, I'm grateful for the ability to be able to do these things in order to improve, in order to make sure this doesn't happen again, instead of looking for villains. So I think that's one of the most important things people can be constantly asking themselves, whatever situation that they're in.

• 59:31Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. Well, now, because you're a lot more active in politics, who is actually running the country? But you know what? While we're on the topic, this makes me question, what does the future hold for business? Because if you ask nine different experts, you're going to get 10 different answers. From a bull market to bear market, the economy's great, it's awful. Someone should really just invent a crystal ball.

• 59:52Jack Selby?

  But until that happens, over 40,000 businesses have already future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one fluid platform. And the idea is with just one unified business management suite, you have just one source of truth, giving you all of the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. Plus, with real-time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data.

• 1:00:16Graham Stephan?

  When you're able to close the book in days and not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards and more time to focus on what's next. So whether your company is running millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. And speaking of opportunity, right now you can download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com/iced.

• 1:00:38Jack Selby?

  The guide is completely free to you at netsuite.com/iced. Once again, guys, netsuite.com/iced. Thank you so much to NetSuite for sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast.

• 1:00:48Graham Stephan?

  Who is actually running the country?

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  The bureaucracy. The bureaucracy and a, um, to some degree, so it's a combination of certain politicians, certain elected officials. A very, very powerful bureaucracy. I'm assuming we're largely talking about the federal level, the federal bureaucracy. And then there's, there's certain, there's certain powerful interests that obviously have a lot of money and influence within the game. But I always tell people the single greatest threat to the United States as we know it is not the CCP, it's not Russia, it's not terrorism. Those are all threats. Those are all credible legitimate threats. But it's nowhere near the threat of a massive unelected bureaucracy that has essentially attained

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  for itself a massive amount of power and control that should, I mean, shouldn't even belong to it. Right now, your politicians will go and they will pass a bill, the clean air bill. And there will be certain provisions within that bill. There'll be certain directions and whatnot. But you would be shocked at how much of that bill is the Department of Energy will promulgate regulations, the EPA will promulgate regulations. What regulations? Well, the regulations to achieve this. You mean regulations that it comes with fees, fines, penalties, where you could potentially shut down my business? Nobody voted on that? Well, we voted on the larger bill.

• 1:02:09Graham Stephan?

  So how much of that gets snuck in there? Because I remember all of these packages that would go into effect in like 2020, 2021. And yeah, and it was like two, 3,000 pages. And in those 3,000 pages that it's impossible to read the whole thing, someone just like sneaks in a paragraph that says, oh yeah, this company gets some extra funding or special privileges, or we'll throw in this little tax over here. Who does that? And how is this able to pass? Because it seems like an all or nothing, where it's like, well, if you don't pass this whole thing, then it's, it makes no sense to me.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  So you got over 500 members of Congress, and I can tell you right now that the vast majority of decisions are probably being made by about 15 to 20 of them. So especially on the federal You're not passing bills until you're a committee chair. And then which committee? Because I would guarantee you, if you're the chairman of the appropriations committee, if you're chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, oh, the fundraising, the fundraising potential for that is astronomical compared to if you're the chairman of the Education Committee. Right? So that's the part where the, where the interest play in as well. And, and, and the state is kind of a microcosm of that, but there's two massive, massive differences between, let's say, the Virginia State Legislature and the federal government.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  In the Virginia State Legislature, we constitutionally have to have a balanced, balanced budget. Have to. We don't get to do continuing resolutions. We have to have a balanced budget. That's an important limiting principle on our power. The other thing is, is, um, actually, there's three things. The, the second one is we have essentially one issue per bill. So what we have is what they call germane this rules. Now Rand Paul has been trying to do this on the federal level. I think Thomas Massey has as well and some others. They can't get it through. But what it says is that in Virginia, if, if I have the save the puppies bill, there isn't a bunch of crap in there for agriculture or for educate. This is a save the puppies bill. And the only thing you can have in there is stuff about saving puppies. They don't have that rule in the federal.

• 1:04:08Graham Stephan?

  Why not?

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  Because they don't want it. They don't want.

• 1:04:11Graham Stephan?

  Are they making money on the back end of this?

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  There is so much power to be had when you can slip your controversial piece of legislation into a bill that nobody can vote no on.

• 1:04:22Graham Stephan?

  But how, how does that benefit that person slipping it in? Are they getting money in the back end? What sort of privileges?

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  It could be campaign contributions. It could be just they believe it's really necessary. Milton Friedman articulated, it's a concept that's been around. Milton Friedman did the best job of articulating where he talked about concentrated benefit and dispersed cost. So for instance, I'm going to sneak in a tariff for the sugar industry in Florida. I'm going to sneak in a tariff for that. So what does that mean? Well, it means that. Every product that you have in the United States that utilizes sugar just went up, but probably only by a couple of pennies. So maybe your grocery budget is impacted by, let's just, I'm just throwing numbers out here. Let's say a hundred dollars a year. You don't even know that's going on. But that little tariff is worth tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars for the industry which benefits from it.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  So they're gonna put all kinds of time, money and effort into lobbying for this, into doing commercials about how this is helping American businesses and saving American jobs. When in reality, what they did was they just made all of your grocery budgets go up so that they could actually take larger profits because they're not able to compete with a foreign sourced product. Now, if you want to get out there and say, hey, you're all gonna have to pay more for this because we want to protect an American company, you can do that. But that's not what's going on, right? That's not what's going on. And so the concentrated benefit to the company is so intense that they're willing to spend time, money and effort to make sure that every congressman is on board with this.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  Now, who got hurt by this? Generally, anyone that buys anything with sugar, but you don't notice it. Are you, are you, let's say you did. You watch this, you're like, holy crap, I can't believe I'm paying a hundred dollars more on groceries every year as a result of this tariff. You gonna stop what you're doing, hire lobbyists and then go and talk to, you know, congressmen and their staffs for the next six months in order to get this removed? No. And so the incentive structure is completely backward. Now, a lot of people will say, well, this is why you get the money out of politics. You can't. You, you can't. Like, I just wish people would understand this. You can't get the money out of politics. And every time they try to come up with some sort of campaign finance reform, you know who it benefits? Incumbents. Every single time.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  Because as incumbents, we have special advantages. First of all, lobbyists don't like to piss us off. Right? If you vote a certain amount with the right industry or whatnot, they're gonna continue to, they, they will never endorse one of your candidates and they're not gonna give money to one of your, or, excuse me, they will, they will not endorse your opponents and will give money to your opponents. It's not worth the risk. This is all a financial decision. It's an economic calculation.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  Right, so you have all these factors that are going into this process. Now, let's say tomorrow, you said, okay, we're limiting all campaign contributions to a thousand dollars. Because they did this at the federal level with like 2,700.

• 1:07:14Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  Okay, well, great. I, as an incumbent, I get to go around and give a bunch of speeches. I get invited to go talk to a bunch of groups. Why? Because I'm an elected official. You don't get those invitations. Yeah, you could show up to a couple of forums that they host. But you don't have the same reason to be there that I have to be there as an incumbent. So by limiting our fundraising capacity, you haven't been advantaged as the challenger. I've been advantaged as the incumbent. So the solution is not get money out of politics, because you can't. The solution is the government should not have this much control over the economy. It was never meant to. Go read Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. Half of what the federal government does right now, they're not doing that because of anything in Article 1, Section 8. They're doing it because of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution,

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  which gave the federal government the ability to pass the income tax. And so now the federal government is involved in a whole host of things that they were never intended to be. Not because they're forcing you to do it, but simply because they're saying, if you want to get any of that money back for your state or for you as an individual, you got to sign on to this program. You don't have to. You're just not going to get that money back. Do you have many times in the state legislature I hear, well, Nick, we can't pass that because we might lose federal funds? Oh, you mean the federal funds they exploited from us in the first place? So, no, I hate to tell people this, but the way I look at who I'm going to vote for is no longer simply, you know, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian. The way I look for is who understands what a massive threat that bureaucracy actually plays to what we would like to believe is a representative government?

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Who actually understands that the government's role is not to be this involved in micromanaging our everyday lives? And who is actually serious about doing something to prevent it?

• 1:08:51Graham Stephan?

  So how important is the president? Because to me, it seems like they have very little power compared to the House and the Senate. Like, I think the House and Senate is 10 times more important than who you elect as president. I could be wrong, but it just seems as though they have way more power.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  It was meant to be that way.

• 1:09:07Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  It was meant to be that way in large part because, especially for the House, because the House controls the budget, right? All budget amendments have to start in the House. And so that really was meant to give the legislature a great deal of power. If you look at executives, if you look at presidents early on in the Republic, there was a great deal of deference gave to the legislature as kind of the true voice of the people. Again, a couple of things have changed that, though. In the early progressive era, especially under the Woodrow Wilson administration, there was this dramatic shift away from constitutional limitations on federal power to more of a managed bureaucratic state, right? We were going to

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  Going to increase the bureaucracy. We're going to put experts in place with all the best data and they were going to make far more sound decisions than the marketplace would. Guess what? Didn't really work out that way. You actually saw a massive increase on that during the Roosevelt administration with FDR. FDR ushered in the single greatest interventions into the economy and into the role of the federal government. And the dirty little secret here, and I'm not making this up, this is not hyperbolic. If you look a lot of what he modeled after was Mussolini's Italy. Hugh Johnson, who actually ran the National Recovery Act programs in the 1930s where the federal government was coming in and telling you how much you could charge for dry cleaning, right? You want to go buy a chicken? You don't get to pick the chicken, right?

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  That because federal mandates say it has to be X, Y, and Z. Hugh Johnson used to carry around a book called The Corporate State, which was written by Italian fascists. And so they actually saw fascism before it devolved into, you know, everything it became. They actually saw it as a good balance between socialism, which wanted to abolish the private ownership of the means of production and state control of the economy to where it was, you can still own the corporation, but you will run it the way we say and you will meet the objectives we want. And if you don't, we could potentially nationalize it. And so when you, when you start setting up a massive federal bureaucracy to deal with all those decisions, the important thing to understand is, is the bureaucracy ends up with interests of its own.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  And the bureaucracy wants to expand its power and it wants to expand its budget. And again, the people in the bureaucracy might think they're doing the Lord's work. But that doesn't mean it's right, and it doesn't mean that our system of government was ever meant to do that. I think it's fascinating that Thomas Sowell, who is one of my favorite contemporary economists at a Stanford University, he was a Marxist. This was a guy that dropped out of high school and then got into Harvard. Went through Harvard as a Marxist, studying under Milton Friedman at the Chicago School, or at the University of Chicago, was a Marxist. Whenever they asked Thomas Sowell, what changed her mind? How did you go from a Marxist to one of the biggest advocates for free market economics in the country, in the world? And he goes, one summer, working for the federal government. He goes, I was working down in Puerto Rico, a big storm came through,

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  and there was all kinds of emphasis in order to flood more federal money in, in order to assist with things. And I wanted to see the data in order to determine whether or not the funding that we were utilizing, how we're utilizing it, was actually achieving its intended objectives. He goes, it wasn't just that the data came back. He goes, I couldn't get it. They wouldn't give it to me. And then I realized that if we'd had the data, we could essentially empirically prove what we already suspected to be true, which was that the program wasn't working the way it was supposed to. But it represented a third of that agency's budget. And they weren't going to allow for anything that was going to potentially chop out or put in jeopardy a third of their budget.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  And so, the thing I would tell people is the problem, Jeffersonian quote, right? The government that's big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have. That's true. It just is. And it's not because, it's not because I believe that the people pushing for this are all evil, nefarious, horrible human beings. I think they are completely wrong about human nature. I think they're completely wrong about economics. I think they're completely wrong about the, what should be a positive relationship between the government and the people that it's supposed to serve and represent.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  And it goes back, there's a, there's a C.S. Lewis quote where he said, "It might be better to live under greedy robber barons than moral busybodies." He goes, "Because a greedy robber baron might have their greed satiated at some point." He goes, "But a moral busybody will torment you without end because they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

• 1:14:11Graham Stephan?

  So how much wasteful spending do you see in the government?

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  Massive.

• 1:14:14Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, right?

• 1:14:15Speaker 01

  Massive amounts. But, okay, let me rephrase that. What do you mean wasteful? If you mean wasteful in the sense that it isn't serving the intended purpose, or it's actually counterproductive with respect to what we would consider to be positive economic growth, horribly wasteful. If you look at it from the perspective of how good is it at supporting particular constituencies in order to make sure people get reelected? It's some of the most efficient stuff you've ever seen on the planet.

• 1:14:39Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  So it's all about, whenever you see something that you think, "This is so stupid. Who would have come up with this way?" I promise you, it's somebody very smart for a purpose they're not telling you.

• 1:14:50Graham Stephan?

  See, the problem that I see is that it seems like a lot of the expenditures are grossly inflated, and there's no incentive to bring it back down or be reasonable with what they spend.

• 1:14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:59Graham Stephan?

  And what I really liked was that Elon Musk came up with DOGE to basically audit the government's spending, get it under control. Because the way I see it is like a finance person, if someone has a spending problem and they're spending more money than they make, the solution is not, "Well, you gotta make more money."

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:14Graham Stephan?

  The solution is always, "Well, let's look at the budget, cut down, see what you could afford, and then go from there." And it seems like, why wouldn't that also apply to the government?

• 1:15:22Speaker 01

  Because it's not their money. It's not their money, and about half the population doesn't pay any real federal income tax, but they do receive federal benefits.

• 1:15:30Graham Stephan?

  Right.

• 1:15:31Speaker 01

  So, I mean, this is a story as old as Plato, right? Democracy fails the moment people realize that they can vote for themselves benefits from the public treasury. So if we've now created a, we've now created a society where a significant portion of the population are not net taxpayers, but they are net tax beneficiaries. So you have politicians that have created constituencies where they actually benefit from raising taxes on people that are engaging in productive economic behavior in order to buy the votes of people who are not. And I don't say that to be a mean wicked person. I know what it is to be poor. What I don't know what it is, here's what I don't know. I don't know what it's like to think that it's somebody else's fault because I wasn't making as much money.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  And but that is a very, very easy button to push because there are, there are examples of people within society that have gotten their wealth through either unethical means, ill-gotten gains, or whatever else it is. But when you take anybody that's achieved incredible economic success and you automatically put into that category as if that's the only way it could have been done. Well, then now you create, you, you create a, a, a degree of, I hate to call it class warfare, because ultimately that's not what it is. It's more ideological warfare. It's saying, my enemy is anybody that has more than me. What a horrible place to live. When, when my neighbor does well, I want to celebrate with him because not only is it good for my neighbor, but it's also an indication that, gosh, if I make better decisions, maybe I can have that too. Or I can turn it around. I say,

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  my neighbor has more than me. He must have done something wrong. Who's the politician that will steal from him and give to me? Don't ever doubt that that has power as an economic and a political message.

• 1:17:04Graham Stephan?

  But going deeper, why do people root for others' downfalls? Why is that so natural?

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  I don't think it requires as much effort on their part. Again, there's a, people don't adopt the victim mentality because it's, it's, it's ultimately good for them. People adopt the victim mentality because in the moment, it's incredibly satisfying. I, I think one of the biggest things that we have to understand and come to grips with is not everybody wants freedom. There's a lot of people that would, if, if you're saying, you gotta trade your freedom, but you don't have any responsibilities anymore, deal. The problem is, you can't accept that sort of environment without punishing somebody else. Because the only way that you can get stuff now, if you're not willing to work forward to the degree that is necessary in order to attain it, is to take it from somebody else. And you're going to need the one institution within society that is legally authorized to use aggressive violence to get what they want. That's the government.

• 1:17:51Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. The big eye opener for me was the, uh, several of the tax plans that have gone out there. And it's incredible how much, I mean, the, these taxes that they want to implement are on the extreme side of things. And they always start high to be able to negotiate down. But even when you see over 10 years, let's just say that, I, I think they were going to raise like three to five trillion dollars over 10 years. But when you really put that into context, that's one year of overspending by the government, more than they bring in one year. And that's over 10 years on the aggressive side. So it seems almost like a drop in the bucket to tax more compared to just cutting back on what they're spending already. How, how much of a problem is the national debt?

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  It's getting to a point where it's far more significant for two reasons. We've been able to get away with a large national debt in part because we're a massive economy. Like we're like 15, 16 trillion dollar economy. I mean, huge. The problem that we have now is that certain entitlement programs like social security, Medicaid, Medicaid, these are not sustainable. And quite frankly, they never were. I think that's the part that we all need to understand. When FDR put this out there, they never were sustainable. Anytime that you're, you, you set up a retirement scheme which operates eerily like a Ponzi scheme. That is, at some point, you're gonna, you're gonna falter. And we're at a point where our birth rates are not sustainable in order to, to maintain it.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  And so they're trying to solve that problem through immigration, largely illegal immigration. But that causes other social upheaval in part because you have a massive welfare state. And so if you're creating situations where you get free healthcare and free education, but you also have a working population that is maybe paying things like sales taxes or maybe property taxes by virtue of renting or things like that. They're certainly not paying all the taxes that are being utilized in order to sustain what amounts to free medical care and free education. And so you have a deficit there as well, not to mention some of the cultural considerations that go into effect. So that compounds the problem with respect to the debt. The only other reason why we've got away with, I believe, with having the debt we do is because we're the world's reserve currency.

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  The moment, I don't think BRICS is gonna, I don't think BRICS is gonna achieve what they want to because there's so many internal problems in places like China and Brazil that I just don't see them pulling it off. South Africa, oh my gosh. I don't see them pulling it off.

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  But that being the world's reserve currency, we can say that, okay, it's saved the dollar, but has it?

• 1:20:18Speaker 01

  When you're operating off of a purely fiat currency like we have been since the seventies, this is the natural result because the government only has three ways to raise money. They can tax it, they can borrow it, or they can print it. And, and massive printing like we saw during COVID, you know, when, when 40% of the money's supply and existence was printed within six months,

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  that's gonna have impacts on prices across the board. But to your point earlier about this whole idea of policy and pain, right? Decision and pain. The number of people that think that, oh, well, we have inflation because of corporate greed. So let me get this straight. Corporations weren't greedy until, what, 2021? And then they all of a sudden became greedy and now that's why we're dealing with this? No, you printed $3 trillion. The value of everything has not gone up. The value of your dollar has gone down as a result of just printing fiat currency. There is, my favorite politician in the world right now is Javier Malé. Nobody has done more in such a short period of time. But going back to your point earlier about the power of the executive.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  The president in Argentina has a lot more power over the executive branch than the president of the United States. One of the biggest problems that we have with the president of the United States being able to actually do things within the executive branch that we might consider to be meaningful is the fact that we have civil service laws. And so even though the government, the president presides over a massive federal government, that doesn't mean he can fire who he wants and hire who he wants. He has a select number of positions between cabinet positions, appointees and things like that. But you have mid-level bureaucrats that have been there forever and they can wait you out.

• 1:21:56Graham Stephan?

  What do you think of Bitcoin?

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  So here's the deal. I don't have a, I don't have a particular affinity for any one cryptocurrency. I have a huge concern about government-controlled digital currencies. I don't want the Fed or the Treasury anywhere near digital currencies personally.

• 1:22:18Graham Stephan?

  Why is that?

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  Because one of the biggest, one of the biggest reasons why we're in the mess that we're in right now economically is because of exclusive federal control over currency.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  I don't believe that you can, I don't, there's no such thing as a stable fiat currency ultimately. If there isn't some sort of limiting principle which prevents the government from just arbitrarily printing dollars, you're in a lot of trouble and that's what we have right now. That's what we've had, again, since the 70s. And pretty soon the chickens are going to come home to roost on that one, I think, pretty significantly. But the thing I like about, you know, Bitcoin is obviously not inflationary. So that's an interesting concept because for so long, even people like Milton Friedman have operated out the concept that, well, inflation has to be, or all currencies have to be somewhat inflationary in order to meet with increased population or production or whatever else. I actually, I don't think that's necessarily true when we look at the nature of currency and what it is. So.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  My answer is any currency and any, any mechanism which can potentially be used as currency that isn't controlled by a government, I'm here for it. I'm here for it. Yeah.

• 1:23:25Jack Selby?

  One thing that seems so incredibly foreign now is whenever I think that the government exists to serve us, because it consistently is reaffirmed in my brain that I kind of exist to serve the government.

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:37Jack Selby?

  One thing you mentioned is that in bills that are passed, not on the federal level, it needs to actually represent whatever the title of the bill is. Like, Save the Puppies bill will actually only be about saving the puppies. And that, that doesn't need to happen on the federal level. It made me think about the, uh, the border bill that was attempted to be passed, the bipartisan border.

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:57Jack Selby?

  But if you look at like the main spending of it,

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:59Jack Selby?

  it, it had nothing to do with the border. And then, and then people during these debates, like Kamala Harris is saying, like, yeah, I was trying to pass a bipartisan border bill to save up the border, which was shut down by Republicans, which were all guided by, by Trump. But I'm looking at the border bill and we'll list the top three things in the border bill right now and the total, I mean, amount of money that was allocated for this bill. It's insane.

• 1:24:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:22Jack Selby?

  What was it like 20% was actually for the border and like 80% was to other countries?

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and this is done intent, please understand, this is done intentionally for just the soundbite that took place during that debate. Republicans don't really want to fix the border because we had a bipartisan, what is bipartisan? If one person crosses the island votes at the other side, you now have officially a bipartisan bill. Because a bipartisan piece of legislation was put out there to secure the border and you guys voted no because you want the problem more than you do the solution. And then you read the bill, which most people don't, right? And then you find out, wait a second. Here was my question. What new funding or authorities did the federal government require to do what the previous administration was already doing with existing funding and authorities? What more did you need? The answer is nothing. They didn't need anything. That bill was specifically

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  put out there with a poison pill in it, so it had to die so that the Democrats could come out and say Republicans voted against a border security bill. And look, I'm not saying Republicans don't do similar things to Democrats. I'm just saying that's the reality. Most of, people have this idea that, that politics is primarily about policy. Politics has primarily become about marketing.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  And if you market well, you're successful.

• 1:25:33Jack Selby?

  There was another thing that I thought was hilarious, which was the Inflation Reduction Act, which how, tell me how, when inflation is just the increasing of the money supply.

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:43Jack Selby?

  Print more money. That, that the, the solution is to print. Well, because so much money. Prices go up. Not even for inflation, but it wasn't for inflation, but it was for green energy.

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:53Jack Selby?

  It had, like, tell me how that has anything to do with inflation. And they called it the Inflation Reduction.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  Nothing. It, it, they called it the Inflation Reduction Act because everybody in the country, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum, realizes that inflation is a problem. So if I want to get a bill passed for something that is far more controversial, I don't do the green energy bill, which by the way, has some inflation stuff. No, no, no. I do the Inflation Reduction Act and how dare you vote against it? You must not want to deal with inflation. That's what I'm saying. This is marketing.

• 1:26:23Jack Selby?

  It had nothing to do with inflation.

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  It was worse. It made it worse. It actually made it worse.

• 1:26:28Jack Selby?

  Well, okay, we're going to link to these two bills down below in the description. I highly recommend you guys actually look where the funding is going. Cause I heard about these things, immediately looked it up and it was like, I got slapped in the face. I was so confused that it just was a complete misnomer.

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. But the, the other, the other one that keeps getting discussed, uh, which is just fascinating me because this has already been done in Europe and repealed because it had such horrible effects. Un, attacks on unrealized gains.

• 1:26:54Jack Selby?

  Oh gosh.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  You, are you kidding me right now? Like, how do we not understand how monumentally stupid this is? And part of the reason why we don't understand how monumentally stupid it is, is because we have a public school system that has no incentive to train kids to actually understand how monumentally stupid it is. Cause when the government's running your education system, trusted to teach kids that the government is your buddy and it's here to help.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  I mean, you, you guys know this, but you guys can explain this better than I can, but let me give it a shot. You have investments and you haven't actually realized any of the profits or the money from those investments. Because well, the money that you have placed into that investment is now being used to start up a new company or it's being used to hire people or it's being used to build capital, uh, equipment in order to make the business more profitable so that you can get a return. So you used your labor in order to make money. And instead of just going and spending that money on a yacht, you decided to reinvest that labor. So somebody else could use the money that you had at that particular time, right? Cause there's a time preference in order to build something that is beneficial for the employees, for the customers and for you as an investor. What we're now going to say is, you know what? You're too successful as an investor because you have this much money in net assets. So what we're going to do is we're going to force you to pay a tax.

• 1:28:02Speaker 01

  So what do you have to do now? You have to liquidate assets into a money-making venture, which businesses and employees depend upon in order to give the money to who? The federal government. And what would this wonderful unrealized gains tax actually do after, of course, it's destroyed businesses, destroyed opportunities and run away the investor cloud? What would it do then? It would pay for three days of federal government spending. Well, thank God, Kamala. Can't thank you, can't thank you enough for that. France lost somewhere in the neighborhood of like 20% of its millionaires. Don't quote me on that actual percentage. It was a significant portion of their millionaires. Left the country. Because then the question became, well, if you're taxing unrealized gains, what is that? Is it stock? Is it real estate?

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  Is it art? Like what all is included in this? And then how do we constantly go and assess that? Like, this is an actual nightmare, even for the tax assessors, on trying to determine what the relative wealth is of a bunch of assets that, you know, especially for some.

• 1:29:00Jack Selby?

  What about unrealized losses too? Does that only go against unrealized gains? And on top of that, I think the frustrating part for me is I saw this one TikTok this one time, which usually get off TikTok, it's not good for you. But I saw a TikTok that was really funny and it was this girl that was complaining. She's like, okay, so I make money. The money is taxed. I spend money. The money is taxed. I want to invest money. The money is taxed. There is taxing along every single step and yet it's still not enough?

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  Here's the, you want to, oh, let me really piss you off. We had a bill in Virginia, we've had it in a couple of different years, where we were going to lower the, lower the tax rate. So, and we lowered it across the, across the, all three, we have like three levels of taxation in Virginia.

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  So our Democrat friends get up and say, you want to lower taxes for the wealthy. Okay. If you're lowering taxes across all income brackets and the vast majority of taxes are paid by the top 20% of the population, vast majority, right? A net, like all the taxes are paid by the top 50%, but the top 20%, they're paying all of it. So if you're going to do a tax cut, well, then by definition, the people paying taxes are going to realize the largest gain as a result of that. But that wasn't good enough. They wanted a tax cut for the people that needed it the most. So you mean the net beneficiaries of tax spending?

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  Okay, that's not a tax cut. That's more government spending, but you've now shaped it as a tax cut. Now, here was the, here was the worst part because they're like people make people living off of $20,000 a year. Can I just say something right now? If you're living off of $20,000 a year in the United States, chances are you have no idea about all of the massive government welfare programs that we already have out there that are providing you additional assistance. In fact, when you add it all up, it ends up being that there are, a lot of people are actually making more in government benefits than they are with respect to their jobs. But if I'm trying to make a really, really like edgy point on the floor and I'm trying to talk about how mean you are for not wanting to give tax cuts to this people, I want you to keep something in mind.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  When they look at their income, they don't count the redistributed funds. So you pay taxes, those taxes get taken from you and they give to this person over here and it increases their net income by like double. But then they don't count that when they're talking about their income because technically they didn't earn it, right? It was a government redistribution. So let's say you pay more in taxes in order to help this person that is hurting and so they get even more. They can come back the very next year and say they're still just making $20,000 a year. It doesn't matter that actually, no, they're clearing over 45,000 now as a result of, you know, you getting taxed more. They don't even count that into the equation because we're just looking at income.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  And so what it does is it gives them the ability to vilify taxpayers. And the moment you say this is too much, you're greedy. Why don't you want to help people? They don't even give you credit for the help you're already doing.

• 1:32:05Graham Stephan?

  Why is there a flat tax? It seems like that would be a very simple solution that I've never spoken with a person who's been not in favor of a flat tax. It just seems very easy to implement.

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  Well, because the moment you'd say it would be, it would be very, I don't even think it's the fairest form, but I do think it's, it would be a vast improvement over what we currently have because the rich would still pay more. The biggest problem that you're going to get is that if any sort of flat tax scheme that you come up with is either going to drastically increase taxes on poor people, which is really bad political marketing, or it won't be sufficient to fund the existing federal bureaucracy. And there's a, there's a very cynical saying in politics, which is nobody ever lost an election by spending too little. And so the more federal dollars you're spending at something, the more constituencies you're creating that are dependent upon those federal dollars.

• 1:32:54Graham Stephan?

  This might be really controversial, but I've always been curious about this. Why don't they require people take a test in order to vote? Like you just have to answer basic questions that demonstrate some, like the lowest form of knowledge, just to be able to get by.

• 1:33:13Speaker 01

  So they used to. It was called poll testing and it was largely executed in the post-civil war and Jim Crow era. And so what it was is local registrars, especially very racist local registrars would come up with tests with ridiculous answers. And so when black voters would come to vote, oh, take your test, you failed.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  And that was it. And so the argument is, is well, why couldn't we come up with a more objective test that we do now? I will say this, whenever it comes to exercising what are either, I believe, natural rights or essential civil liberties. So a natural right is something like your freedom of religion or freedom of speech. A civil liberty is voting. I'm skeptical of the government politicians coming up with tests you have to take because then they will manipulate the test in the way that they want. And so I think, I think a better question on some of this is that if we're being honest is.

• 1:34:10Speaker 01

  Is there any problem with a, is there any problem with a, a system which says that you can be a net beneficiary of the system without contributing to it? And I mean, that's just it?

• 1:34:24Graham Stephan?

  Maybe to some degree there is if people are really down on their luck. I think maybe there should be a, something down there that, that'll at least help rehabilitate you back into society.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  I, I think that, I, I think that that's, that's always, and I will say this, that has always been the argument.

• 1:34:40Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  But the reality is, is we're here. And that argument hasn't changed, right? Well, it's, it's always gonna be, okay, but these aren't the lowest. And by the way, can we also, can we also say this? I don't like corporate welfare either. I don't like cronyism.

• 1:34:55Speaker 01

  We, we had the Amazon deal in, in Virginia and I voted against it. I was one of like seven Republicans. It was to move the Amazon headquarters there and they got a bunch of tax breaks and they got a bunch of, of other things to move the headquarters.

• 1:35:06Graham Stephan?

  And what was, what was the argument against that?

• 1:35:08Speaker 01

  The argument against it for me was, is that this is cronyist. They're, they're not coming here because we've created the best tax and regulatory environment for the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia. We're doing it because you've manipulated, you've specifically manipulated the tax environment and the regulatory environment just for them. Which means the burdens are gonna be passed along to existing businesses within Virginia. And so I, I've always been very, very skeptical of this idea that we're going to very, very, we're, we're gonna sit there and manipulate the tax code in order to give businesses which have the most lobbying power and an economic advantage. And that's essentially what you do with cronyist economics.

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  And, and I just, I have a real problem with it.

• 1:35:47Graham Stephan?

  Do you, do you think that there could be a net benefit? I'm just trying to play the other side here.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 1:35:52Graham Stephan?

  You could say like Elon Musk could go practically anywhere and say, I'm gonna put my headquarters here.

• 1:35:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:56Graham Stephan?

  If you give me X, Y, Z and if you don't, I'm gonna go somewhere else that will. And there's still a net benefit there, even though it might not be as large.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  Sure. Um, if, if you wanna watch a really funny takedown of this, uh, Reason TV did one on, uh, and, and it was, it was about arguing over, I think, um, Amazon, an Amazon headquarters, something like that, but it was these two mayors that were competing with one another on what they were gonna do next. And it, it started off with, we're gonna give you tax breaks and we're gonna give you regulatory breaks and then it ended up with, we will let you hunt human beings in our town, just please, we need the jobs. And, and the problem is, is that it is, I think it's an infinite regression. Because ultimately, what you're doing is you're creating an environment where now that's the expectation for how business is done. And so there's never this idea where here's 11 playing field. We have a low tax, we have a low tax rate. We're very, very

• 1:36:45Speaker 01

  business friendly in the sense that no matter who wants to do business here, we want you here. And we want you to, we want you to have an incredibly predictable, you know, tax environment, regulatory environment. That's the way I want to attract business, because I think that attracts business more for the long haul. If it's, if it's this infinite fighting back and forth, then ultimately, the only businesses that truly benefit from that are the ones that have the most lobbying power, and they will always benefit at the expense of maybe, maybe new competition, maybe innovative competition. And so I, I definitely think you can make a short term argument for why it would be beneficial. The problem is, I think in the long term, you're setting really, really perverse incentive structures. And you're, you're making politicians far more powerful with respect to the decision

• 1:37:29Speaker 01

  making process that a business uses. I don't want to be in the position, I don't want to be the one where, whether or not you decide to do business in Virginia is determined based off of how much you donate to my campaign. Because I'm the one that controls the committee that's going to get to decide whether or not your little tax break goes through. I think that's ultimately a very, very perverse incentive.

• 1:37:50Jack Selby?

  You mentioned that the government is mostly ran by 12 to 15 individuals in Congress. Who would you say these people are? And why do they get to make the decisions?

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  Speaker of the House, Majority Leader, Minority Leader, Committee Chairs, Senate Majority Leader.

• 1:38:04Jack Selby?

  Because they're like the conductors of all of the, the people beneath them, essentially.

• 1:38:08Speaker 01

  Every single committee seat is decided by the Speaker. People don't recognize how much power a Speaker has.

• 1:38:15Jack Selby?

  When you say committee seat.

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  So Appropriations Committee decides where all the money goes. So let me use Virginia as an example, because I'm very familiar with those committees. So we have a Finance Committee that decides the taxes. We have an Appropriations Committee that decides where the money goes. We have an Agriculture Committee that decides all ag policy. We have an Education Committee. We have a Transportation Committee. We have a Public Safety Committee. We have a Courts of Justice Committee. So each one of these committee chairs gets to select who their Subcommittee Chairs are. And then the Speaker gets to select who sits on what committees, and he can remove you from them anytime he wants. Now, there, there is some limiting principles on there, because you can always, you know, vote no confidence of the, the Chair when it comes to the Speaker. We saw that with McCarthy. But that doesn't happen very often. Very, very little.

• 1:38:57Speaker 01

  So if you're the Chair of Appropriations, you're going to out-fundraise me 20 to 1 just by virtue of being the Chair. You get to decide the budget of Virginia. And if you serve on the Appropriations Committee, oh, you will be voting for the budget. Or else you won't be on the Appropriations Committee. That's just reality. That is, that's true on the federal level.

• 1:39:16Jack Selby?

  So that's the Speaker of the House that gets to appoint these like, committee leaders of these small little subcategories that get to decide things like regulations and environmental.

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  The way, the way to think about this is that there is a practical reason why some of this is done. So for instance, not every bill can go to the House floor, right? So what do we do? We have a committee structure. Alright, so you got a bill on agriculture. Great. It's going to get assigned to the Agricultural Committee. The Chairman of the Agricultural Committee is going to assign it to a Subcommittee with a Subcommittee Chair that they picked. And they selected the composition of that Subcommittee, usually to make sure that whatever outcome they want gets achieved. That bill goes before the Subcommittee. It's heard. You bring witnesses. And the vast majority of that is kind of figured out based off of the ideological composition of that Subcommittee. I would argue 60 to 70% of bills

• 1:40:03Speaker 01

  and, and most of your, 67% die in a Subcommittee, right? So seven people saw it, like in Virginia. And there's a similar structure on the federal level as well. And again, that, that is not in and of itself nefarious. It's just a way of, how are we supposed to manage 2,500 pieces of legislation in 60 days? Right? We gotta have a process for it. But if you're a Committee Chair, especially on the federal level, because the federal level is much different. One of the big benefits about state legislatures is that we tend to be citizen legislatures, which means we're not full-time legislators. Like, we, I get paid $17,600 a year to be a delegate. That's not, that's not my job that pays the bills, right? That's enough money to cover like, gas and expenses. Because that's what we're supposed to do. Go serve

• 1:40:48Speaker 01

  and then go back and live in our districts. If you're in DC, that's a totally different world. And if you're not in one of those very, very powerful positions within the Legislature, you're not deciding anything with respect to legislation. And if you want to one day be in a position to be able to do that, you better get really good at playing ball with the people that are currently in power. There's very, very few people, one of the reasons why Trump scares the living piss out of DC, is that he is the first guy that kind of came in and said, screw all of this, and got elected. Now, when he got elected, what happened? Well, he had very powerful people within Congress that slow rolled a lot of it. And then the other thing is that really exposed the power of the bureaucracy.

• 1:41:31Speaker 01

  Because if you've been sitting, if you're in a, if you're in a position of senior management within the civil service side of the bureaucracy, the president can't fire you. It's almost impossible to fire you. I mean, you gotta do something that was criminal. Now, what happens if you don't like what the president's doing? You slow roll it. You don't implement it the way it should be. You, you, you engage in some of that horrible customer service that the federal government and that all government agencies have become notorious for. And then in four years, you're gone. Okay, back to business as usual.

• 1:42:00Graham Stephan?

  So what could people do about this? Because it seems like it's outside of a lot of people's control.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  A lot of it. So the first thing I would tell people is it, it is not your civic duty to vote. It is your civic duty to know what the hell you're voting for. Like, I can't stand this whole idea of, well, I voted because Taylor Swift told me, dude, I voted because they have kind eyes. Like, holy crap, dude, you're not doing your civic duty to your country if you have no idea what policies you're actually advocating for when you cast that vote. So I want everybody to vote, but I, I want them to know what they're voting for and why they're voting for it. I, I think that's number one. Two, if you're someone that believes in, in more of a limited constitutionally restricted government, which is to say, I don't need a government to micromanage my life. I want to be in charge of my life. I want the government to do government stuff, like build a road, keep me free from foreign invasion. I don't know.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  Lock people up for committing violent crimes. Right? That's what I want you to do, government. Thank you, we can handle the rest. Then you need to actually elect people that are dedicated to that. And the number of people that are actually dedicated to that is, is very, very small. And it doesn't fall neatly into, oh, well, they're a Republican. Because Republicans advertise themselves as doing that, but there's actually a much smaller demographic of Republicans that are serious about it. You know, your Rand Pauls, your Thomas Massies, you know, some guys like that. So know what you're voting for. The other thing I would say, and, and I, this is, how bad do you want to piss people off today?

• 1:43:25Graham Stephan?

  Do a lot. Really badly.

• 1:43:27Speaker 01

  Get your kids out of public school.

• 1:43:31Speaker 01

  I do not say this because all public school teachers are bad. They're not. There is there is tens of thousands of absolutely wonderful public school teachers and some administrators and principals and everything else doing their doing their best to try to make a broken system work. But it is effectively a broken system. This was set up based off of an 18th century Prussian model in order to make really, really good conscripts and factory workers. And it is a mass production approach to education, which means it's not interested in the individual goals of your child. It is at this point interested in sustaining itself as it is. And you know this because anytime there's any sort of adjustment to

• 1:44:10Speaker 01

  try to make substantive change to the system, the advertising you get is not, you know, oh, that's a really good point. It's something we should consider, or well, we think we have a different way of achieving that. No, it's it's you hate teachers and you want to defund public school. You don't want poor people to learn. Right? It's immediately ad hominem attack. Immediately ad hominem attack. The other thing that we need to keep in mind is that if you look at if you look at our university system. So you want to teach in a public school? Got to have a degree, right? Got to have an education degree. Our university system overall is on a good day, about 70, 30 leftist to conservative or libertarian. On a bad day, it's more like 90, 10. And

• 1:44:55Speaker 01

  in the education departments of every school, it's more like 95, 5. And what I mean by that, and James Lindsay has actually done a really, really good job of talking about this in his book called The Marxification of Education. If you look at what's being emphasized within education right now, it's hideous. We're at a point right now where there is such power within that system in order to maintain the status quo, in order to just argue for more funding, but to never do any sort of substantive change that would that would correct some of the things that we all saw during COVID, that I think at this point, it has gotten almost openly hostile. And you see this with some of just the like this, the speeches that are given from like the, you know, American Federation of Teachers and the advocacy that they do. They are actively

• 1:45:40Speaker 01

  involved in political ideological pursuits. And so to say, if you're someone that believes in free markets, if you're someone that believes in property rights, if you're someone that believes that, you know, US history with all its flaws has overall been a pretty good, pretty good step in the right direction by compared to world history. You are going to increasingly get a core of teachers that were not taught that. They were taught the exact opposite of that. And so the worldview that you're trying to teach your kids is going to be in many cases, directly opposed within the school system that you are paying taxes for and will be arrested if you don't send your kids to unless you can afford an alternative. So I would just tell you right now, you need to look really hard at what is being taught to your kids. I always hear about socialization, socialization.

• 1:46:26Speaker 01

  I don't want to hear about socialization when we got kids getting raped in public school bathrooms, and this is something in Virginia that we have really dealt with. I don't want to hear about it when we've got overt political indoctrination. We've got overt indoctrination on things like critical theory, queer theory, things that do not need to be discussed in the ninth grade, especially when you have kids that can't even get basic math and reading scores down.

• 1:46:51Speaker 01

  We don't need pornographic materials within our public school libraries. I'm sorry, this whole idea that we just want to ban books. In the Commonwealth of Virginia, we had a bill. Here's what the bill did. It didn't ban a single book, not one. Didn't ban, didn't remove any, didn't do anything. It said, you're going to have a list on your public school. In order to address some of the concerns that parents have brought up, you're going to have a list of books that feature things like this. And then we offered six examples. One was a graphic novel of a 10 year old girl being raped by an elderly man. One was depictions of, of, these are visual depictions, right? We're not talking about a Pulitzer Prize thing where it's kind of like, no, no, no. Visual depictions in books. You're going to have a list that tells parents these books are in there and then you're going to give them the option to not let their kid check it out.

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  Not one vote, not one crossover vote. So no, this stuff is going on within your public school system. So what I would say is this, I think one of the biggest keys going forward, if you, if again, you want to see the sort of country where we believe in property rights, we believe in free markets, we believe in individual liberty, we believe that the government is supposed to play an important yet limited role within our lives, you're going to need to take more responsibility over your kid's education. Now, if you keep him in public school because you can't afford an alternative, understand you're still going to have to be very, very actively involved because while you can delegate.

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  Well, you can delegate the authority to educate your kids. You cannot delegate the responsibility for it. They're your kids. And I think it's one of the, it's one of the single most important things people can do is play a far more active role. So if you can't get out of them, I would. That's just the reality. I'm gonna tell people what I believe is the truth. If you can't get out of them, you're gonna have to play a far more active role because I don't think they're, I think they are increasingly designed to indoctrinate, whether and actually set your children up for economic or social success.

• 1:48:41Jack Selby?

  Okay, so just to get this straight, you're saying that this was a bill or something, an idea that was, you, you were presumably trying to pass, which said that parents needed, that parents should be provided with a list of books and they can then decide if their child can check it out.

• 1:48:57Speaker 01

  Delegate Tim Anderson had the bill. He, he listed six of some of the most graphic books that had been in Virginia public school system, not theoretically, not could be, were. And he said, these are the sort of books, and we came up with a certain guideline. These are the sort of books, they just have to inform parents that they're there. Not one, here was the crazy part. As he's describing this and he's showing pictures, we had to dismiss the student pages. We have student pages that serve in the Virginia House of Delegates and Senate. They're, they're like 13, 14 years old. And they sit up there and they'll run and they'll, they'll bring you bills or they'll bring you stuff like that. We requested the speaker dismiss the, the student pages so that we could actually show what we were gonna show. And he went through and he read off what it said. He showed the pictures of it.

• 1:49:41Speaker 01

  He did all of it. I had a Democrat colleague, one who I actually respect quite a bit, even though we disagree a lot. He goes, Nick, I think it was horribly, just, just went beyond all decorum for Tim to show those pictures on the floor of the House of Delegates. Like, those are pictures from books in public school libraries. If it's inappropriate here, in a room full of adults and legislators who actually have the decision-making power over these things, why is it appropriate in a public school library? And by the way, we weren't even gonna remove them. We were just gonna let parents know they were there. Why was that inappropriate? He goes, well, Nick, nobody wants those books in the public school system. I said, well, somebody certainly does because they're there.

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  I said, but I'll tell you what. We'll see when we have the vote.

• 1:50:29Graham Stephan?

  Who put the books there?

• 1:50:31Speaker 01

  A lot of it is based off of individual school librarians and the American Library Association. By the way, you want to read some really scary quotes? Read what a certain head of the American Library Association said that she thinks the role of the libraries and responsibilities are because it is not increased literacy. I mean, you want to talk about like dedicated, every time I say this, people are always like, oh, red skirt. The woman has come right out and said that she she's a Marxist and that she has a certain, she believes she has a certain ideological responsibility. And that using that position to be able to foster that and to foster those ideas is very important to her. Okay, maybe you like that, maybe you don't, but don't get, you don't get to tell me it's not happening.

• 1:51:14Graham Stephan?

  Are kids actually going to the library and reading books? Is that, I feel like it's, I never, I never, never went to, like, I would pick up the National Geographic books, like with the, all the butterflies and the reptiles. But I was like third grade and look at the dinosaurs. I mean, that was about it.

• 1:51:30Speaker 01

  You probably didn't have porn in your public school library, but I'll tell you what, if you were a teenage boy and you came across some, yeah, you might be going to the library more.

• 1:51:36Graham Stephan?

  Maybe I did, but like, I just wouldn't, I wouldn't know.

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  Here's what it comes down to. It's not even a question of, because I've heard some people say, well, you know, if you want to ban it for your children, you can ban it, but you don't get to ban it from mine. Like, okay, but it's in a public school library. Our tax dollars paid for it. Is there really no realm where we can say, look, whether you like it, whether you don't like it, this probably isn't appropriate for a 13 year old? Especially a 13 year old that we need to stay focused on, I don't know, learning how to read, right? Or, or being able to do basic mathematics or finish their AP courses, like, why is this in here? Why is this taking up time? And then to see the pushback to where, well, if you want to do this, you're a book banner, or you're a book burner, or you're a fascist. Let me get this straight. I'm a fascist because I don't want tax dollars spent on openly pornographic materials in a public school library? Really?

• 1:52:25Speaker 01

  I'm a fascist because I want parents to actually be aware that these, this sorts of material is in your public school library. That that makes me a fascist?

• 1:52:32Graham Stephan?

  Why do you think no one voted on that?

• 1:52:34Speaker 01

  Well, our side did. We voted for unanimously. We got it out of the House. So not a single Democrat voted for it. We got out of the House, went to the Senate and died in a subcommittee. And most of the people that voted in the subcommittee voted by proxy.

• 1:52:45Graham Stephan?

  So it's because you didn't have funding in there, though. That's probably why.

• 1:52:49Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:52:49Jack Selby?

  So why don't the the citizens make the decision for something like that?

• 1:52:54Speaker 01

  Well, so.

• 1:52:55Jack Selby?

  Because I'm sure if you if you like did by poll.

• 1:52:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:58Jack Selby?

  It would be overwhelmingly like, yes, please let us know, you know, if there are certain books that could be explicit that we could then restrict our child. So we have control over what our child can read in school.

• 1:53:06Speaker 01

  Depending on your state, your local school board actually can't have the authority to do things like that. And your local school board can be very powerful. So the the local school boards in Virginia are actually quite powerful. There's a lot of things that the Virginia Department of Education does that is just what they call like guidance or recommendations, but they're not impositions. Because our state constitution gives a great deal of authority to the localities, which I don't think is a bad thing. And so that's the place where the the parents can have the biggest voice. Here's going to always be the problem, though. This is my other problem with with government run education. You're forcing all of us to pay for it. Right? And so even if you even if you do have some sort of impact at the local level, we're still being all compelled to pay for it, even if we don't like it.

• 1:53:49Speaker 01

  And part of the problem is, is that when you give, when you increasingly give the government more control over areas of our life, especially areas as essential as education, you are ultimately going to end up with greater inefficiencies because of the way government spends money, which we discussed at Ozum. But you're also going to end up with agendas. You're going to end up with political agendas in your classroom that you probably don't want. And even the people right now that might be happy with the particular agenda, okay, cool. Are you going to be happy if Trump's the one setting it? So is the solution for us to fight endlessly about which side of the political spectrum is going to control education? Or should the fight be, how do we empower parents to be able to get their kids' education? Because we could do things like individual vouchers. We could do things like education savings accounts. We could.

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  Let me put it this way, for everyone that has watched this and said Nick's just an anti-education zealot.

• 1:54:41Speaker 00

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• 1:55:11Speaker 04

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• 1:55:41Speaker 01

  We all agree education is important. Can we also agree that eating is important? Okay, so let's say 100 years ago, the government got together and said, you know what? Eating is so incredibly important that it cannot be left to the private sector. There's no way it can be left to the private sector because otherwise, poor people would starve to death. And so here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna open up 10,000 government grocery stores. And you're not gonna actually pick your grocery store, you're gonna be assigned a grocery store based off of your address. Now, when you go into the grocery store, you're not actually gonna select your groceries. Your groceries are going to be selected by nutritional experts that the government approves of, and they're gonna decide what your grocery bag looks like for your family based off

• 1:56:22Speaker 01

  of whatever the newest data is on caloric intake and things like that. Now, if you don't like something in your grocery bag, no problem, you're just gonna have to show up to a lot of meetings either at the local level, or the state level, or potentially the federal level, in order to try to convince them to put something else in your bag, while all the people that currently have stuff in your bag are gonna deploy lobbyists in order to make sure that your bag never changes. Right? Oh, by the way, none of the employees working at this government grocery store will ever be rewarded financially off of their ingenuity, creativity, or work ethic. They will be rewarded based off of seniority. Does anybody think that would be an effective, efficient, or pleasant place to get your groceries?

• 1:57:04Speaker 01

  Every time I ask that question, everybody says, "Resolutely absolutely not. That would be horrible." It's exactly what we did with the public school system. You are assigned to government school based off of your address. You have little or no say over the curriculum that your children are issued. If you do have a problem with what's going on, you're gonna have to go through a lengthy political battle in order to try to change any of it, and it will probably be a miniscule change if the bureaucracy doesn't like the change. And none of your teachers are rewarded based off of genuine creativity, work ethic, or ingenuity. They're rewarded based off of their seniority within a government system.

• 1:57:32Graham Stephan?

  The school system is rewarded based on test scores. Like, overall, they might get more funding if the test scores are good, right?

• 1:57:38Speaker 01

  Or it goes the opposite, right? You got less, you got lower test scores, so you need more funding. The problem, the reason why you have lower test scores is because you didn't have enough funding. So, all, all schools, all public schools in America have three primary funding streams. Usually, about anywhere from forty to fifty percent comes from local property taxes, right? So, wealthier areas tend to have more funding for education. Then you have about another, maybe forty to fifty percent, coming from the state level, and they have various indexes in order to determine what that looks like. And then you have the remaining, like, anywhere from nine to ten percent coming from federal funds that are usually dedicated toward specific programs. And then you will have local authority, state authority, and then federal authority

• 1:58:20Speaker 01

  insofar as you want the federal dollars for certain programs. So, that's the mechanism that you're, you're working with. So, yeah, in, in some cases, you, you, you could theoretically have a state that would give a school more funding if it's doing really, really well. But, more often than not, and I sit on the education committee in Virginia, the argument that you're gonna hear is, "Well, this school is failing because you have underfunded it." And then you look at it, like, "Wait a second, this school's getting more funding than, than other schools that are outperforming it, so it's gotta be more than the funding." Now, if you really wanna get pissed off, go look at the... Go look at the share of funding within public education from 1970 to today, and go look at how much of it has actually gone to administrative bloat within your school system.

• 1:59:05Speaker 01

  The administrative bloat has far outpaced teacher pay, anything else. And it certainly hasn't led, all this additional funding hasn't led to drastically improved test scores. And then you can even ask the question, are test scores really the best way to solve it? Like, I have a real heart for, I saw somebody the other day, and I wish I could have memorized, he did a beautiful job, but he basically said he had ADHD and he had dyslexia. But the way he described it was very, he goes, I have ADHD, which means I can focus on multiple independent things at once. He goes, I have dyslexia, which means I see things in incredibly unique way that other people's can't. Most people don't see ADHD or dyslexia that way. They see it as disadvantages. I think a lot of the reason why we see certain things as disadvantages

• 1:59:49Speaker 01

  is because we have a school system that tells you to go in, sit down, shut up for six hours a day, and engage in standardized testing in order to determine whether or not you've encapsulated and mastered the subject matter. Yeah, you put, you put an eight-year-old boy in that situation, you're probably going to have some problems. In fact, you're probably going to have disciplinary issues. You're probably going to have a lot of things that are disruptive for the class. And you can certainly categorize those as problems for that model. But you take that same boy, you put him into a different learning environment, all of a sudden he thrives. And wasn't it Einstein that said, you know, a fish will think it's stupid if you judge its intelligence by its ability to climb a tree?

• 2:00:28Speaker 01

  Again, now let me, let me say something complimentary about the people within public school system.

• 2:00:40Speaker 01

  Trying to mass produce public education for tens of millions of people is incredibly difficult, incredibly difficult.

• 2:00:48Speaker 01

  But I think we need to start asking the question instead of, well, how do we improve this model, which I believe is fundamentally flawed. I think it's about time to start asking questions is, are these flaws so fundamental and is there a better way to do this that will actually create a far more individualized educational experience? Because I can tell you from personal experience, um, operating with co-ops, tutors, and then sitting on an education committee where I'm looking at the data for this stuff. One of the greatest things, um, that arrived from homeschools, we had, we didn't have a fraction of the resources and assets that the public school system did with respect to what we could provide for our kids.

• 2:01:25Speaker 01

  But when a, my kid didn't understand a particular topic, I didn't make all my other kids stop until they caught up. They were all able to go forward and, and develop as fast as they can within a particular strength. I didn't have to stick with the curriculum that wasn't working for them and just hope that it would get better. I could change the curriculum. I could customize it to them. When they got to a certain age within high school and they'd gone through that basic learning, right? You gotta know basic math. You gotta learn how to read. You gotta learn basic English comprehension. You have to do these things no matter what your profession is, no matter what you want to do. But we got to a point where one day I remember my oldest daughter just being so frustrated and upset with a subject matter. I think she was taking algebra two at the time. She was a sophomore in high school and she was miserable. She was hating every minute of it. I said, what do you want to do?

• 2:02:07Speaker 01

  And she goes, well, she goes, these, these, these are the categories that I have interest in. I said, you know what? None of those require algebra two. So why don't we focus your education on, on something that will actually be beneficial to something that you would like to do that is both intellectually stimulating for you and financially viable. Why don't we focus on that? All of a sudden, learning went from this horrible thing that she couldn't stand to something that was exciting because it was customized toward her objectives. We didn't have to be millionaires to do that. It isn't as difficult as it's made out to be. And in fact, I think we're increasingly seeing an expert class that is constantly trying to convince us that we're too stupid to do things that have been done for centuries.

• 2:02:50Speaker 01

  So I would just encourage people, as angry as I might have made you saying all this,

• 2:02:56Speaker 01

  Just take a look into it because to your point, when you were talking about access to information and things like that, it has never been easier. It has never been easier.

• 2:03:06Speaker 01

  And I do think ultimately, it's going to be the thing that that saves us because I don't. I don't want a generation of Americans thinking that they that the most important thing that they will do in their lives is vote. Like the thing that will ultimately decide whether their business succeeds or failures is who's in politics. That's not a free country.

• 2:03:26Speaker 01

  I think honestly, the most unique and beautiful thing about this country, the reason why people risked life and limb to get here and still do. It's not because you get to vote for politicians every two, four and six years. It's because up until this point in history, we were one of the very, very few places on earth. Where if you genuinely applied yourself. You could create a life. And be relatively certain. That. A dictator, a bureaucrat, an aristocrat wasn't going to come in and take it all away from you because you were the wrong class or the wrong race or the wrong religion. And that's what's so beautiful about it, right? It's that that ability to seize opportunity in a way that typically has not existed throughout time and space.

• 2:04:09Speaker 01

  And that is ultimately what is what is at stake. And so.

• 2:04:15Speaker 01

  I told somebody once, like, what do you want to be known for in politics? I said, look, I'm very, I'm very aware of the fact that two minutes after I leave politics, most people forget I was ever there. I want to, I want to have a good relationship with my family. I want my wife and kids to be proud of who I was and what I did and know that I was there for them. Insofar as I work within government, my goal ultimately. Is to make government so small and yet so efficient at what it's supposed to do. That nobody has to worry on a day to day basis on whether it's going to come in and crush their lives. And that's still what I hold out hope for.

• 2:04:49Jack Selby?

  Who do you think if if you had the power, let's just say, and you were motivated to do so, who do you think could make the best president? Out of anybody like Joe Rogan? Elon?

• 2:05:04Graham Stephan?

  Just like a random guy. Adam Sandler. Adam Sandler would be good. He'd be so practical.

• 2:05:10Speaker 01

  Uh, Theo Von, definitely.

• 2:05:12Graham Stephan?

  I actually think Theo Von would be decent.

• 2:05:15Speaker 01

  I think, no, I think, uh, I think, I think it would be hysterical. I will say this, I'm, I'm not sure the job he would do, but I, I think it would be, I think it would be hysterical. Uh, the, the, the person that I see right now that I think is doing the best job in executive branch position is Javier Malley. Because I think he, he genuinely does believe in individual liberty, property rights, and I think he is willing to, uh, he's willing to argue for free market principles in a way that is unapologetic and bold. And it's one of the things that's been missing from American politics is a lot of times when we talk about the things we believe, we, we give a thousand caveats. And like, well, you know, I'm not a bad guy, but I believe that, like, no, I believe this because I think it's true. And because ultimately what I want is, is, is human flourishing. But I think Javier Malley, Javier Malley ran in a country that has been dominated by peronists for decades.

• 2:06:00Speaker 01

  He, he said things that were not supposed to get you to win. He said things that I'm surprised haven't got him shot yet. And he won by convincing young voters in Buenos Aires.

• 2:06:12Speaker 01

  When was the last time anybody in American political and politics with a view of emphasizing individual liberty and small government and, and free markets, won in the city? And he did it. And I, I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that he was bold, but some of it had to do with the fact that he was fighting under conditions where it, it's really hard to argue that one philosophy hasn't caused you all your misery when it's the only philosophy you've lived under for 70 years. And I do think the timing made a lot there. So I, I really like Javier. But yeah, if I can't have, if I can't have Malley, man, let's give Theo, let's give Theo a shot.

• 2:06:48Graham Stephan?

  I like that. Or Larry, the cable guy would be cool.

• 2:06:50Speaker 01

  There's another guy called the fat electrician that would be, would be funny, but yeah.

• 2:06:53Graham Stephan?

  Well, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate you coming on.

• 2:06:56Speaker 01

  No, thank you.

• 2:06:56Graham Stephan?

  Thank you. And we'll link to all your info down below in the description.

• 2:06:59Speaker 01

  Really appreciate it.

• 2:07:00Graham Stephan?

  Thanks, guys. Till next time.

• 2:07:07Speaker 00

  At Edward Jones, we believe rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are, with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters, so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.