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Join JD, Bondor, and Anton Seim as they delve into recent global upheavals, the media's role in perception, and the intrinsic connection to a broken monetary system. Discover how the Lindy effect and the Cantillon effect shape local and global landscapes amid riots and unrest.
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Bondor - @gildedpleb on 𝕏
Anton Seim - @antonseim on 𝕏
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Hey friend, listen. I know the world is scary right now. Corruption, war, inflation, demographics,
degeneracy, disease, unrest, hatred and despair. We didn't come here to tell you how it is,
that it's going to get way better. Better by Bitcoin. Fantastic way to start your Tuesday
afternoon. Thank you everybody for diving into this episode of Better by Bitcoin. I'm
here with Bondor and Mr. Seim who have not seen in a minute because he's been a gallivanting
across the globe. Good to see you guys. The intro hits different after a week or less three days of
riots. It's interesting. It's been a while. What's the temperature over by you guys? I just was up
in the bay and I was driving down yesterday and I stopped at a Starbucks and just ordering
Starbucks. I was like, where are you going? I was literally in the middle of nowhere in Northern
California. I was like, I'll go back down. He's like, oh, is it even safe to go down there? I was
like, wow, man. I was like, I'm pretty confident it's safe. I'm sure it's media overblown and hype
and that was correct. It's just kind of wild though how the media totally captures anyone
and everyone's belief system about anything and just kind of blows it up. It makes sense to
the terror people can feel, hashtag COVID, about anything and everything. It's just kind of weird.
I know you were back kind of before this right stuff was happening, but I'm just kind of curious,
Anson, from your travels, is there any similarities in what I was saying about the
people being terrorized about something that was kind of being hyperventilated over in the media,
but maybe wasn't true in IRL, in the meat space? Yeah. I was just in Israel and the first night
that I was in Tel Aviv, we got a rocket alert. I was staying on the 17th floor of a hotel.
It was at 3 a.m. It was the Houthis had fired a missile at Tel Aviv. So Israel has the ability
to shoot down most of them, like every once in a while one will sneak through, but for the most
part, they're going to shoot it down if it's going to go at a major populated area. So that doesn't
make you feel safe, but the actual atmosphere around Tel Aviv feels incredibly safe. There's
kids out 10, 11 p.m. riding scooters around the city. There's very low crime. So a friend of mine
who was with me on the trip said that he felt safer in Tel Aviv than he would feel in downtown
Los Angeles right now, even with rocket attacks going on. But I do have a little bit of a
differing opinion. I live just north of downtown, but in a neighborhood that I very specifically
chose because it has geographical boundaries that make a riot basically not going to happen
in my neighborhood. But oftentimes I do drive through downtown Los Angeles to go to the airport
and protesters will almost always shut down sometimes the 110 freeway, sometimes the 101
freeway. And if you were driving through there and they're all of a sudden throwing bricks and rocks
at the freeway, that could be incredibly dangerous for you. So it is overblown because the riots are
taking place in a very specific place downtown, but in some ways it's not overblown because if
you happen to be in downtown or if you live downtown, then there's going to be a lot of
trouble for you. Also, they're absolutely, from like an aesthetic standpoint, they've absolutely
destroyed downtown. Everything is covered in ACAB and F12 and all this stuff all over.
So that is terrible. And then one other thing that did piss me off this week is that people
were trying to assemble protests in my neighborhood on our neighborhood Facebook groups.
And they're like, oh, it's a peaceful protest, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, but a riot is actively
going on. So you're assembling a peaceful protest while there's this atmosphere of rioting, which I
just feel like is a recipe for disaster. And of course, there were some elements of like teenage
kids who are spray painting in my neighborhood now. So even though my neighborhood is completely
separate from it, is it separate from it? Because that same like mental virus is even getting into
nicer areas like where we live.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, the thing with the downtown LA too, just that there's no secure freeway in downtown LA.
You like the 101 in particular, it's a lowered freeway. And it's like literally a sidewalk,
a wall, the freeway. Anybody can just like launch anything into the freeway at any time anyway.
Like just out of principle, that section should be avoided always because it's just ridiculous.
But then, you know, there's also the cool development that has been rumored about for
years, which is like, oh, let's cap the freeway, put in a park, like make it beautiful, like all
this stuff. But welcome to California where they can't even build anything.
Is it the fourth street or the sixth street bridge? The one that has the like comes off of
the 101 and then another 110 and like swoops into the city and you have the over thing.
We used to shoot there all the time. And it always blows my mind, like all of those images that
you're getting of the riot because of where they're happening. It's like they're cinematic
and they're beautiful because that's where people shoot like movies all the time because of the way
it looks. And so it's just kind of like, you know, I'm not saying they're fabricated. Right.
But what I am positing as a question is like, why was that spot taken? And I'm sure it's because,
you know, people know whoever, you know, the media or whoever that that is a great place to take
photographs. Just like I mean, and it's it's also I mean, there's a lot of federal buildings
down there like that's the civic core, right? Like right below Bunker Hill is a civic core.
Yeah. So, you know, it's just like, oh, yeah, let's do it there. And it's also not it's not
you know, there are apartments there. There are people who live there. But like,
man, after COVID, COVID destroyed downtown LA. It was incredible, incredible. And then COVID just
destroyed it. Yeah, I remember driving there anymore. There's nothing Yeah, it's like all
the big establishments like there's still some like Kohl's and things like that are still there.
But a lot of the places that I would drive by, like, I'm surprised it's like, wait, was it like
the world's like largest bookstore or whatever it is? That's downtown. It's like, I'm surprised
some of these places are still even oldest, the last bookstore. Yeah, there it is. Yeah. And it's
like, I just feel bad for those establishments. Because all of this unrest, it kind of does three
things. One is that street that they're on, as I was just saying about like the shooting being
films, not being guns. But people would shoot there all the time like that, that street,
it's like you usually have to book it out to three, maybe even like four weeks in advance.
And sometimes even longer if you're doing like a bigger production to get that particular location.
So it's kind of like cutting off your nose to spite your face, where all these productions that
are leaving LA are giving even are given even more of a reason to leave LA because you can't even
anticipate what's going to be happening on any given Sunday, I was just, you know, shooting
in another part of California. And, you know, one of the topics of conversation on set,
it was just like all of the stuff that's leaving LA because it's so much cheaper to shoot in Georgia,
or it's so much more stable to shoot in Toronto, or wherever it is. And so it's just kind of this,
you know, you know, Gavin is spending all this time beloviating about wanting to get arrested,
because he wants to use it for his 2028 campaign, like let's call a spade a spade. Because I mean,
can't look how great it did for Trump. But it's one of those things that it's like, dude,
you are, I don't know your end game in this, because this does not turn out well for California
when our number one export is entertainment. And we can't even do that here. Like it's wild.
Yeah, there's also a whole, you know, conversation to be had about
just how close to, like the forefront of so many things California is, and then the riots and
everybody leaving and COVID and everybody and the shutdowns and like, outrageously retarded
communist politics here. Well, of course, everyone's gonna leave. But California has
been at the forefront of all of this for so long. And it's like, there's Lindy effects there that
are not going to go away anytime soon. And so there's this really, there's this real dynamic
of like, nobody kind of really knows what, like how, how strong those Lindy effects are, and how
much of a pool like, oh, we just flip the lever, and then everyone comes back. It's like, well,
maybe, maybe not. Because we've really burned so many bridges.
For those who don't know, what is the Lindy effect? Can you kind of break it down real quick?
Yeah, the Lindy effect is just momentum. If something has been going in this particular
direction for this long, the expectation is that it will continue in that direction
for at least that long.
I have some thoughts, like specific thoughts about these current riots. And as we're recording this,
it is Tuesday, June 10. So I don't know when people are gonna be listening to this. But
there were essentially four days rioting. And a lot of people were up in arms because Trump
released first 2000 National Guard, then it was 700 Marines. And I forget what the exact numbers
are right now. But a couple things were going on. Number one, the National Guard was sent to
downtown Los Angeles for one reason, and one reason only, and that was to protect federal
buildings. The National Guard was not sent to protect downtown Los Angeles to stop protesters
or do anything like that. So when you see videos of guys yelling at the cops, they are essentially
yelling at a National Guard saying, we want to destroy this building and you're standing in our
way. They're not saying you're violating my rights in any way. They're saying we want to do violence
and you're trying to stop us from doing violence against this particular building. So that's the
first thing. Second, the cops were told to stand down. So when you see the cops hiding under an
overpass and there are guys waving Mexican flags, literally trying to kill them, throwing bricks on
top of cop cars and lighting cars on fire and the cops aren't doing anything, it's because the
government of California told the cops they are not allowed to stop the protesters. Yep.
I just wanted to say that because I feel like most people don't know that.
Yeah. And then there's also the whole other dynamic of, well, why are these things happening?
Why are these crazy riots happening in the first place? Well, it's because I, you know,
arrested 40 people and it was like, oh, well, everyone just assumes that they are day laborers
or they're here to support their family or whatever it is. And it's like, no, these people
are like the this is this. These were not regular raids. These were people who are cartel members
who are dealing on doing unbelievable amounts of evil and are just here in pursuit of that.
Right. And yet California politicians and everyone else, oh, those are the people we have to support.
We have to support those people. I saw there was a bus that there's this picture of the bus. It's
got like I think it's like thirty three Chinese nationals. This one was in Dallas. The people that
they were deporting were convicted murderers and convicted rapists from China. Wow. And people think
that the people that are getting rounded up are like the guys out picking strawberries in the
field. Yeah. Like that's not what's going on right now. So at least get the facts straight.
And it kind of sucks because we're going to get flack being three white guys talking about this.
But the the TLDR is this is all just kind of a symptom of broken money, because if you know,
and again, this is kind of the topic that you're here is if the money was not broken,
there would actually be no reason to immigrate to the United States, because the main reason people
come to the United States for prosperity and the reason they are trying to find prosperity
is because we have the Cantillon effect. We are the best place to be because we are the money
printer. That's like we are exporting our inflation to Bolivia or Venezuela or pick any country
because we are number one. And so the biggest issue right now is the reason we have such an
influx of immigration is because people want to come here because they do want a better life.
And I'm not arguing that that opportunity is here, but it is a challenge because
at the end of the day, they're having to make a big decision, kind of like the original pioneers
that came over here, like, hey, I'm going to leave everything I know to go somewhere else
to try to make some money to send it back home. And, you know, the number of times I've talked
to Uber drivers, like I talked to an Uber driver one time from Kazakhstan and he was like, hey,
and Tajikistan. And he was like, hey, or one of the stands, I can't remember which one it was.
He's like, no, I come over to the United States, I work for two months and I go home and I live
like a king because the currency arbitrage is so high that he can literally work for two months
a year. So basically within the terms of his visa, just pay somebody to use their Uber account
because that's what he did. I'm like, hey, you're not Steve or whatever it was. And you just kind
of that's how that happens. It's such an unfortunate byproduct of a broken money system.
And honestly, we're seeing the cracks finally start to form on, you know, the general balance
sheet of the market. But it's really, really unfortunate that, you know, the ire right now
is put on the border patrol person or the ire is pointed at, you know, whoever it may be when the
ire really needs to be pointed at the central bankers and it really needs to be pointed at
Congress as well. Right. Like Congress is 100 percent at fault because if you're a career
politician, you have like, you know, any career politician, you have seen inflation spike 10,
30, 60, 100 percent in your in your tenure in Congress. Like you are 100 percent to blame here.
You have nobody else to blame except for yourself. Like one of the things that blows my mind about
the riots is and you guys have seen these memes. It's like. The picture of the cop car is getting
pelted with with bricks and rocks. Right. And it's like the caption is my tax dollars.
And then you like look at the riot, like the people writing like somehow also my tax dollars.
And it's like then the National Guard, also my tax dollars and the the Marines, also my
tax dollars. And then all the the writers who are like the organization and the the
nonprofits and NGOs that are like funding participation and and handing out flyers
and doing all that are also funded by your tax dollars. And so it's like all of this is just
so broken money. Like the only reason any of this exists is broken. And then also,
of course, like the Craigslist ads, they're like, oh, yeah, we're looking for tough guys
to show up in downtown and. Might have to do with confrontation and blah, blah, blah, it's like
we'll pay you eight thousand dollars a week or whatever it was for six thousand to to fourteen
thousand dollars a week. We'll pay you to show up to be a writer like, bro, under under under
only under broken money. Would anyone find that that is is a useful way to spend money
only under broken money? Could you have enough money to even spend it on all these things?
Only under broken money are all these systems like this. It's like so insanely broken. And
nobody, not a single one of the people involved of all the people I just listed get it. They're
all just like, yeah, but I'm getting my paycheck and hey, it's like, bro, the person you're you're
literally pointing a gun at another person who's who is they're getting a paycheck to fight you.
And the source of those paychecks is the same place. It's bonkers. I'm just gonna say bonkers
a lot. If the money wasn't broken, the guys that are standing there waving a Mexican flag saying
Mexico is the greatest culture ever would not be in Los Angeles. If you could be in Mexico,
make a good income, save your money, not have to worry about it being stolen by inflation,
taxation, confiscation. And Mexico is the greatest country ever. Those guys would be in Mexico or
they'd be in Venezuela or they'd be in Ghana or they'd be in China, whatever country that they
want to live in the culture of, you know, if they want to be within their ethnicity or within their
culture, they can be in those places. We're going to get back to that time period. Right now,
the U.S. offers opportunity. People can come and make money. No matter what people say,
the U.S. has a culture and has a great culture. A lot of people want to come and take advantage of
that, but they don't want to assimilate into the culture. And so the reason that they come here is
because the money is broken. Right now, the U.S. has the global reserve currency. There are lots
of social programs that they can come and take advantage of. In California, people don't know
this. You can get unemployment and you can be a non-citizen. You can be an illegal alien of the
United States and you can still qualify for unemployment, disability, paid parental leave,
all these different programs. If you're a homeless person, you can get thousands of dollars a month
for being homeless. None of this requires you to be a citizen, to pay taxes, none of that. So why
wouldn't you come to one of the greatest places geographically, climate-wise, in the world,
and that's exactly what people have done. And live in a five-star hotel for free,
which is exactly what happens. It's crazy. Yeah. That is, I think, honestly,
the thing that's the most frustrating here in the whole thing. Individuals need to be judged
on their individual character. That's what's called spades, spades. That being said, Tom
Hauman is in between a rock and a hard place because at the end of the day, and he always
answers his questions correctly, it's like, if you're breaking the law, you're breaking the law.
If I were to just go to Japan and be a gaijin and just walk into Japan and be like, hey, you're
going to owe me all this stuff. I think I can't remember the guy. It's like Johnny Somali or
whatever it is, the guy who was going around in Japan and causing a ruckus. And they basically
arrested him and deported him. Yeah, that should happen. Because at the end of the day, you are
coming in and trying to impose your culture and trying to impose unrest on a homogenous group of
people, whether it be Japan, whether it be Thailand, whether it be Dubai, whatever it is,
you have to play by the rules of the place that you're in. Because if you can't agree on the
rule book, then the rules don't matter. And I think that's the thing that's the biggest
frustration for me in this whole thing is at the end of the day, we still have to show our passport
when we go to any country in the world. And yet our politicians are saying that it is not important
for you to show your passport to come into our country. Oh, by the way, it's not even important
for you to show it to get here. We will give you handouts. We'll give you free health care. We'll
give you free food. We'll give you free lodging. We'll give you free everything. Whereas when I
want to go somewhere else, it's like I'm paying hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to go there
and then just like scraping together some money for a mediocre meal at best. And so it's really,
really frustrating, this entire situation. And it is 100% manufactured because we don't have a good
measuring stick. That measuring stick is money. And the reason that that measuring stick is money
is because if you want apples and I don't really have any apples to give you right now, well,
then I can give you some money and buy those apples later. Or if you have apples, then you
want to give them to Anton or Cleve or anybody like myself. If they don't want them right now,
your apples are going to go bad. And so the measuring stick of money was created to
be a store of value and a medium of exchange to solve a very human problem. It's a technology.
Money is a technology. And so it's really, really... We're at a sad point in human history
when we have a group of political elite who refuse to let a dying technology die.
Fiat currency is a dying technology and it needs to die. Because as soon as Fiat technology,
or sorry, Fiat money dies, everything gets better for everyone. Bitcoin, hard money is the rising
tide and everything gets better for everyone. And it's not going to be overnight. But honestly,
if we flipped onto a hard money standard overnight, it actually would be overnight
because people think completely differently the way that they spend hard money than they do soft
money. And that actually even goes to... And sorry, I'm rambling. But that even goes to credit
card companies. Credit card companies want you to do the new thing now, which is tap.
Because they know if you tap, you spend 4% more, which if you dipped, they knew that you would
spend 4% more. And they knew that if you would swipe, you would spend 4% more. And so you're
spending 12% more than you would spend if you spend cash because of the technology that they've
given you to make that transaction less painful. It's all this stuff that is really frustrating
because it's this vicious cycle of, at the end of the day, the monetary layer, the monetary
technology, the base layer of how we value things is broken. And we're more worried about the fact
that, oh, you wronged me because of X, Y, Z reason. Oh, by the way, I'm being paid by somebody
who actually is getting money for free. And so they're telling me to throw this rock at you.
And so it's like people are treating symptoms, but they're not going to the problem. And the
problem is the money. Yep. And then they're papering over the actual problem with these
false solutions and these false narratives about it too. Like, oh, why are you rioting? Well,
I'm rioting because I stand against the imperialist nature of shutting down immigration and
the US taking over this land and blah, blah, blah, and just goes on and on and on. It's all
just BS. Like literally none of it makes any sense. If you analyze any of it, none of it makes
any sense. And yet that's the thing. It's like these weird, I think at some point, and then
you get challenged for, oh, how dare you stand against my ancestral land? How dare you do
whatever the thing is that you've done? And the term for it is called a struggle session,
which is the Maoist like, no, no, no. We would just assault somebody with ideological garbage
for hours and hours and hours and just make them go through this thing. And it's all just lies on
lies and lies on lies and lies. And there's no getting to the bottom of it. And there's no
ending it. And it just goes on and on and on. The only like solution is just like not engaged.
You'd be like, no, you're a retarded communist. Sorry, we're moving on. Sorry that happened to
you. But the thing that's crazy is that it's so effective that you can't break through to anybody.
It's so impossibly hard to be like, hey, look, here's the solution. I don't want a solution.
I want to be bad. Right. You're just like, come on, guys. It's all of it's available to us right
now, today, today. The only thing stopping you from ending all this is literally you.
You can literally just put yourself on a Bitcoin standard and be done with it all
like today, right now. Anton, I'm curious your take on this slant to this as a documentarian,
right, as a filmmaker, as a director, you know, as a TV. How important is it to.
Genuinely tell stories and tell parts of stories that you don't like in pursuit of truth,
because I'm curious, because I'm sure you guys, you know, as you're working through the process
of like getting to a story, you probably get some stuff that's like, oh, I don't like that.
But like, how important is it to be like, well, even though we don't like it, it's actually
important. As a filmmaker, you make a movie is expensive, and in order to get the money to make
a movie, you have to sell that movie to somebody who is going to give you the money to make that
movie in order to sell a movie, you have to say this is the direction that we're taking this
story. So if it's a documentary, you say this is our point of view. This is this movie is
essentially propaganda for something. We're going to make it for that thing. But then there's this
other thing that happens in production. This happens in narrative movies, and it happens
in documentary movies. Things just happen, and that becomes the story. So an actor might act
in a certain way that you didn't expect, might start crying in a scene. Now that's what that
character does. In documentary, oftentimes you end up discovering things that you didn't even
know existed. So no matter what is written on the page, whatever gets filmed, whatever happens in
the heat of production, that becomes the movie. And so there is truth that just supersedes whatever
thing, whatever slant that you want to take. For me as a filmmaker, I'm a bit of a purist.
So I, and this is just me, is my personal values. I want to pursue the truth, the truth that I find.
So I come at it looking through the lens that I have, but I also come at it with an open mind
to find out what is actually going on. And so there's something, I mean, I often say that God
loves movies, because first of all, it's a miracle that any movie ever gets finished. But there are
these things that happen when you're making a movie that just seem orchestrated by God. And sometimes
those happen on movies that you wouldn't think have godly biblical type values. And yet
these things happen. I'll just give one recent example that I watched. The Florida Project,
there's this moment where these two little girls walk into frame and there's a rainbow overarching
the entire hotel. That was just a real rainbow that happened. They were at lunch, they saw it,
and they grabbed the cameras. They said, hey, are the girls ready? Just have them walking
into the frame. And it just kind of goes with the whole story of the movie. And that movie has a
really dark story. It's about a mom who is essentially broke living in a motel who becomes
a sex worker and has a daughter who's getting taken away from her by CPS. Kind of a dark movie.
It's also a comedy. But that movie somehow got made. It's a miracle that it got made. And it
has these moments in it that are like just moments of truth that were orchestrated by the hand of
god. So I don't know if that answers your question, but that's the way that I see it.
It kind of does. And it's circling back to the current state with the riots. I'm curious
y'all's take on... I don't necessarily know if the word is a solution,
but it's like, does it need to get worse before it gets better? And can it get better
with the way things are now? Does something have to change or can we just keep going down this path
and it eventually will get better? I mean, Anton, I love what you just said. In answering your
question, Jay, I love what you just said, Anton, about there's this hand of god aspect to it.
Right? For instance, I mean, this is just a stupid thing, but it happened. It's out there.
Like when the riots first started, there's a video of a police officer shoving a chair into
the rioters like, hey, we're forming a line, get the debris out of the way. And the chair just
happens to be... If you were to buy that chair new right now, it's a $2,000 chair. It's the
Aeron chair. Right? But then you're thinking about this, you're like, wait a second,
like in the Bitcoin space, there's a meme, which is sell your chairs and buy Bitcoin.
And it's like something like that. And this is neither here nor there, whatever. It's just a
thing that happened, but it rings like maybe all of the riots and all the things we're going through
are just... We're just going to see this on repeat until people start to understand what's
actually happening. And I think we're already making strides in that. Consider these riots,
how you feel about them inside versus the summer love riots. Right? How do you feel differently?
I personally, I was like, whoa, this is crazy. We got to look out, be careful, be safe.
I'm like, is this... These riots feel like these people are the dumbest people
out there. And nobody's on board with that. It's like, no, you guys are being dumb.
If you were at all intelligent about this, you would never have stood on all those cars and
the burning cars, burning Waymo's and waved a Mexican flag. You would have been waving an
American flag because you love America and you want to be here. Right? It's like, no,
you're not winning. You have not won any points from anybody. If these riots are nominally about
immigration, which they're supposed to be about, right? Well, you've proven that you're not worthy
of being here because of that. I mean, maybe you are worthy being here, right? Maybe you have
a whole awesome character, et cetera, et cetera. And you're contributing all the rest of it.
That's cool. But like, bro, the imaging, you've lost the plot. And it just speaks to this idea
of like, wait a second, whether or not it's true. It speaks to the idea of like, this is
orchestrated. This is a hundred percent, like not organic, not for other purposes. It's literally
some guy, whatever the, and they found the guy who's funding this stuff. It's like, okay,
if you're buying into this man, you've got to wake up. You've got a lot of rabbit holes to go down.
Yeah. It's really tough on the immigration side because at the end of the day,
you know, it's like, I want everybody to have the best life. Like I'm, you know,
and I'm gonna use the word privilege. I don't actually believe in the privilege argument
because I think there's, you know, they're just decks. There's just hands that you're dealt,
right? And you need to make the decision whether to get up and go out and do something. You know,
everybody can make that decision. You can decide to do this or not do that.
There are opportunities, right? People have different opportunities and you can argue that
a particular opportunity puts you in a privileged position over somebody else. But at the end of
the day, everyone has the opportunity to go out and do stuff for the most part. And the challenge
right now and the frustrating thing for me is all these people are arguing about it's like,
oh, this was once Mexico. Well, it's not Mexico now. And so we're in this position where you can
argue that, but if I were to go to Tijuana or, you know, Mexico city and argue that this was
once California because technically it was part of Mexico. And so let's just argue the inverse
of like, well, we should just be a United California again. And I don't really care that
you're Mexico. Like I want you to be part of the United States because you were once California
and California is not part of the United States. Like people laugh at me. I probably, you know,
I'd probably be dead. And so just this frustrating piece of, you know, people really, really not
understanding that at the end of the day, most people, I think want the best for everyone.
They want the best for other people. There are some people who don't, but I'd say most people
are generally good people and they generally want the best for everyone.
But where that starts is somewhere. And it's like, for us in America, it's the constitution
of the bill of rights. And so if you want to be respected and you want to actually have the,
you know, privileges, because that is a set of privilege, like privileges or something
are bestowed upon you by someone, the privileges of the constitution of the bill of rights.
Well, that comes with being a citizen that comes with being here legally,
that comes with following the rules. Like you don't get access to the rules if you're
breaking the rules. And like, that's the issue here is like, I'm not going to get afforded the
same opportunity or the same rules if I go to Italy or Germany or Spain or South Africa or
Australia. And I wouldn't expect that because, again, I'm not paying for that system.
They have different rules and regulations, but it's just, you know, misguided to be arguing about
you want something that candidly you don't have any claim to. And, you know, and I'm just saying
as a matter of fact, I'm not saying that as an act of judgment on any of these people,
but it's like, you know, you can't. You couldn't expect somebody to go to your house and wherever
and take your stuff and then not be upset about it. And that's kind of where I was like,
as a taxpayer, if you're in the United States and somebody's here illegally, they're stealing from
you. Like it's just like brass tacks. That is the case. You are stealing from taxpayers.
And that's frustrating. The the ninety two riots in that time period, those people that were
burning down Los Angeles thought that they were doing the right thing in the George Floyd riots
in twenty twenty, the people that were burning down Los Angeles thought they were doing the
right thing in twenty twenty five. And these riots, the people that are out there lighting
Waymo cars on fire, they think they're fighting for a righteous cause. But also at the same time,
a lot of them are are pretty young and they're just looking for something to do. They don't
have anything better to get paid to. Right. They might be getting paid also, but it's fun. It's
fun to throw a brick through a window. It's fun to go and loot the Apple store. Instruction is
so fun. It's a get together in a group. Mob mentality takes over. You're you're thinking
you're fighting some great cause when you reflect back on the ninety two riots. You're like, what
positive change did that inspire? Or when you look back on the George Floyd riots, you're like,
wow, did that make America better? No, not really. And that's exactly what's going to happen
with these riots. I remember just to bring it back to Bitcoin. I remember during the George Floyd
riots, it was kind of in that covid time period. And I remember I was totally, totally over covid
at this time. But I remember the same people who were absolute Nazis about social distancing,
mask wearing, being on lockdown, washing your groceries, not going into restaurants,
were in huge groups chanting. They weren't wearing masks, which maybe they should have been
when they're causing destruction because their identities are out there. And I remember thinking,
like, wow, the same people that were saying stay at home are now out in the streets. Meanwhile,
I'm staying at home. I'm not staying at home like on lockdown, but I just am not participating in a
riot. I'm buying Bitcoin. I remember the price of Bitcoin went up. It was like 20 percent or
twenty five percent during that time period. It went from like ten thousand to twelve thousand,
something like that. I don't know. I might have more. I can't remember. All I know is that the
price of Bitcoin is going up. And I was like, I bet during these riots, during this unrest,
the price of Bitcoin is going to react in a positive way. And sure enough, we went straight
back to all time high. Those people who are just looking for something to do there, they're even
though they're it's not it takes a lot of effort to throw a brick at the same time. It's lazy to
protest in the way that they are. They're not going to do the work that it takes to learn about
Bitcoin. And so it's a huge wasted opportunity. They could be using that time productively to
learn about Bitcoin, to earn money, to buy Bitcoin and participate in the growth of this
thing, to see their own value, their own wealth increase. And instead, they're facing potential
felonies. And you have drones circling around monitoring identities, triangulating where their
phone is and Palantir. And they're going to have a rude wake up call when they go on vacation and
they try to come back in the United States and they're banned from coming into the United States.
And that will happen to a lot of people. Right. Like flying is a privilege,
like you want to take our privileges, privileges are rights bestowed upon you by somebody else.
Like flying is a privilege. You are you are at the privilege of the company that is allowing you to
fly, you know, or the privilege of the country that you're trying to go into. So I got so like
bring us back to how does Bitcoin make us better? Bitcoin and these people don't realize this yet,
but Bitcoin is the actual protest. Bitcoin is the actual solution to the thing that they want.
They stand against immigration. Well, if they all adopted Bitcoin, there'd be no reason to
immigrate anywhere because you would have all the opportunities that you want close to your family,
close to your people, close to your culture. There's no reason because because your entire
government is not def or inflating the currency or having a foreign government inflate a currency
on top of you. Solves the problem. Right. And it's not to say that all or all immigration is
is because of economic reasons, but most immigration is because of economic reasons.
It's obviously the overwhelming majority of cases. Right. OK. So but then you go through
all these things like, bro, if you just if you just stopped doing this, you wouldn't have any
felony charges. You wouldn't be in the Palantir database for these offenses, et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. And you'd have more money. You look at and it's like, oh, well, how does this like
everybody who owns Bitcoin is basically like, you know, unfortunately, in some way, but long riot
because, well, what happens when people riot? They break windows, they loot businesses,
they destroy public infrastructure, they cause all of this work that now needs to be done.
What's the next thing that happens? Well, all of these companies, all these municipalities,
they start claiming taking out claims against their insurance companies. What happens there?
Well, the insurance companies are then underfunded. So the next thing they have to do is they have to
go appeal to the Fed and appeal to their bankers and all the rest of that so that they can pay out
their liabilities. Well, what is the Fed and the bankers do? Well, they print money. And what
happens when you print money? Bitcoin goes up and it's like, what are we doing here, guys?
There's an existing solution, which is Bitcoin to all of the protesting reasons. And instead of
actually participating in the real protest, participating in the real solution, they just
want to think they're literally by rioting and by committing acts of violence and destruction.
They are just giving more and more and more power to the Bitcoiners who have already figured it out.
Sorry. It's going to be game over once all the agencies with the Bitcoiners.
I was looking at a chart earlier today about the retail FOMO cycles for Bitcoin. And again,
I'm still a baby Bitcoiner, still new coming up here. And the current cycle is basically at a 45
degree angle. And everybody's like, oh, this is the institutional stairstep. This is what
institutions, how they buy stuff is they buy in big tranches and then it's like stairstep.
And so it's like we're kind of getting that stairstep model here. And as somebody who
firmly believes in the ability of sound money to change the entire world,
I'm nervous that it's not going to change fast enough and we're going to continue to be
frogs in a pot because we need the system to break. I guess that's the thing. One point for
the rioters is we need the system to break. The challenge with the rioters, though, is they don't
know what they're doing. They're just like, hey, pick up that rock and throw it. And they're like,
cool, you're going to pay me to pick up that rock and throw it? Yeah, I'll pick up the rock and
throw it. But it's so short-sighted that it's actually not solving any problems. All it's doing
is enriching the insurance companies. And because the insurance companies are close to the money
printer, it's just going to enrich the people at the insurance companies and the bankers,
because the bankers will print more money because they can make more money from it.
And the insurance companies will gladly take that money because they need that money to
make their stock price go up. And if their stock price goes up and they can continue to make more
money, it's like it's just this vicious cycle that they can then go out and pay more writers
to do more riots because it's valuable. And so it sucks because just like you're saying,
Bondor, they're missing the point. And that is one of the reasons why we have this show,
is to try and paint the picture. And so I think that's one thing, maybe this is a good
transition point to start going in there. Like, hey, how can we paint the picture?
If you could talk to the writers right now, and let's assume they're not capable of understanding
Bitcoin. So let's not even go around the ride or bike. You need to understand this.
What would you say is a picture you could paint for somebody who is here illegally?
And then also for somebody who is here just as a citizen, but what are the two pictures you could
paint about the world at large, LA at large, Mexico at large? Because I'm using Mexico
currently because that's the biggest point of contention is it's like people being
deported back to Mexico. But how would you guys paint that picture of like, okay,
we're on a Bitcoin standard. You don't understand what that means, but here's what it means if you
can't really understand the Bitcoin standard part. Like, here's why this matters to you.
Like, what would you explain to them of like, it gets better and this is what it looks like?
When Laszlo paid $10,000 for two pizzas, it was Laszlo, right? A lot of people are like,
what an idiot. That'd be worth like billions of dollars now. Well, who received the 10,000 Bitcoin?
Somebody received it. And in a similar way, I saw a thing where the cost of sending Marines
to Los Angeles was $135 million. All right, who received the $135 million? It went somewhere. It
didn't just get burned. Then there's the other reality that the government is going to print
money to pay that $135 million. When the government prints money, the value of assets,
because we can tell in effect, go up first. Therefore, it's going to cause the price of
Bitcoin to go up. So simply by holding Bitcoin, you see your wealth go up. So that's all just to
say that the way that Bitcoin makes your life better is everything that happens, the positive
and the negative are going to cause the price of Bitcoin to go up. It's going to cause the value
of Bitcoin to go up. You're literally just going to get richer by holding Bitcoin and doing nothing
else. So it makes your... Having more money gives you more freedom. Having Bitcoin gives you more
freedom. Simply by owning and understanding Bitcoin, you become more free. I wanted to talk
about what you're asking about Mexico, but that was a lot. So maybe Bontor, if you want to take
over. I just wanted to get that out. I mean, I have a lot of difficulty with trying to explain
it and trying to get it across to people because, I mean, as you guys have as well, we've been doing
this for years. We've been literally... We've lost friends over this stuff because it's like
we tell them in the simplest way possible, buy Bitcoin, it fixes this problem. And then we tell
them in the most complicated technical way possible, Nakamoto consensus cannot be broken.
And therefore, it means that we can have a non-inflationary currency and the non-inflationary
currency affects our time preferences. Well, okay. Well, your time preferences are when you value
the long-term over the short-term. If you have low-time preferences, you value the long-term
over the short-term. High inflation means you'll always value the short-term over the long-term.
When you value the short-term over the long-term, psychological reinforcement starts to kick in
and you begin to do all sorts of ridiculous behavior because you can't think past
the edge of your nose. And you give them these ultra short solutions, ultra long solutions.
You bring in experts. You bring in nobodies. You bring in people who are no longer in poverty
because of Bitcoin. You bring in... It doesn't matter who you bring in. Everyone's like,
Ponzi scheme. I figured it out. It's a Ponzi scheme. Just complete, absolute dismissal.
And JD goes to what you're saying. It's like this.
They can't see it because their time preferences are too short.
I mean, maybe the only solution is that eventually, and we know this is already going to happen.
People are already building this product. Eventually, the entire banking system is just
going to be running on top of Bitcoin anyway because of its ability to send. You can send
any amount of money between any bank internationally and have final settlement.
And you can do this on the Lightning Network too, which is, well, if we have a final settlement
in a second, that completely changes all of global finance. Okay, well, then all of global finance
is then running on a Bitcoin standard, whether or not you understand it. And at that point,
that's when the time preferences start to kick in. And all of the entrepreneurs and business
leaders who are closer to that system, those time preferences start to kick in.
And we start to see products that are more long-term oriented. We start to see
innovations that actually push towards that. And we start to see culture at that point
start to push towards that direction. So, I mean, how do you communicate that to somebody? And how
do you get them to believe it? Well, maybe you don't have to, but I certainly want to try.
I'm reading the book right now, The Five Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom. And
kind of what you're talking about, where just kind of the world gets better
and the time preferences are what do it, is it is a very, very powerful,
you know, the way it's described online is a transformative guide to design your dream life.
And it's like, I would say it's more than that. I would say it's an expose on understanding
your priorities. And one of the things I talk about is your life razor that you
talked about this topic. And your life razor, just like Occam's razor. Occam's razor is this
theory that the simplest explanation is probably the true one. And the life razor concept that
Sahil breaks down in this is you should have a life razor where it's like, if your life razor,
for instance, was, if it takes me away from my kids, I don't do it. It's a very simple
decision making framework that kind of pushes you in a direction that,
you know, makes things easy. It cuts through things. It's a razor.
One of the things that they say in there, and I'll land the plane on the way this is,
but one of the things that he talks about is most people will probably only see their parents
a handful of times before they die. Your parents, the average age is between 70 and 80 years old.
If your parents are in their 60s, you probably only have 20 more times to see them before they
die, before, you know, before they're gone. Or if they're in their 70s, maybe 10, you know,
if you're only seeing them one time a year. When your time preference changes, your priorities
change. It doesn't mean like a, like a load of bricks. Cause I'm like, wow, I'm going to see my
mom X number of times. I'm like, all right. The first thing I did after doing this is I'm like,
I need to change that. I don't only want to see my mom, you know, less than 10 more times before
she dies. And this time preference shift and this understanding, this breakthrough for me
comes to what these protesters are mad about is like the reason these people are mad as like, Hey,
we want to stay in the United States. The reason they want to stay in the United States is because
they want a better life. They want a better life for their family. They want a better life for
their children. They want a better life for their kids. Well, guess what? That better life that you
will make its way back to Mexico and all of Mexico would be better. All of Bolivia,
all of Venezuela, all of Brazil, all of wherever will be better on a hard money standard because
no one can steal from you period. There is more responsibility with that.
And one of the things about responsibility is you can screw stuff up, right? You can make bigger,
more costly mistakes. And there will be companies that come about that can kind of protect you from
that to a degree and you will pay for that like Casa and stuff like that. But the net net here is
they're arguing about deportation. Like that's this whole thing is the debate is deportation.
You shouldn't be or you should be deported. That's the debate. I'm not
casting any judgment on whether or not it's correct or incorrect,
but the argument really should be, why are you here in the first place?
And then the second question should be, what caused that? For most people, I would argue,
why are you here in the first place is because you want a better life. Okay.
Well, what's causing you to think that you can't get that better life in your country?
Well, you can't make ends meet because there's not enough jobs or not enough whatever. And it's
like, okay, well, what's causing that? And the answer is, and will be the fiat system.
And until that changes, nothing will get better. And so the best way that you can help change that
is take the power from the central bankers and buy Bitcoin.
Correct. Well stated full points, 10 out of 10.
So there's this thing called the bell curve. And basically there's a few geniuses. There are a few
really low IQ people. Most people are kind of, of a general level of intelligence. So people are not
dumb. Yeah. People are just kind of average. So when you see these protests and riots,
there are a lot of people on the left side of the bell curve for sure.
Some of the dumbest people are the guys like riding motorcycles straight into a wall of
cops and just getting knocked up in a motorcycle and getting thrown in jail.
That's the people on the left side of the bell curve. But a lot of these people
are just average intelligence. And yet they're ignorant. They don't even know why they're
rioting. A lot of my friends are posting on social media in support of these riots.
And they're just ignorant. And essentially it's like, well, why have Bitcoiners figured out what
is true and are Bitcoiners just smarter? And I don't think so. I think Bitcoiners tend to be
of pretty average intelligence as well. It's just that Bitcoin has freed our minds from fiat.
And so I kind of want to draw this back around to Mexico real quick.
You see people waving Mexican flags. These ice raids, they're not just to grab all the
Mexicans in the United States. They're just to grab illegal immigrants, a lot of whom
are convicted criminals in other countries. 13 million people in the last 10 years snuck over
the border through Mexico. Mexico is a pretty great country. It's a huge country. There's a lot
of resources and value in Mexico. People love Mexican culture. It has a great culture. It just
has a lot of dangers as well. And it has a fiat currency that has been inflated like crazy over
the last 50 years. And it's very, very hard to make an income. When there's a Bitcoin standard,
essentially, there will be a lot of incentive for people to live in Mexico. And yeah. So anyway,
I just want to say all of that just to say, we don't hate Mexicans. That's not why these raids
are going on. And yet I think people are just generally confused what is even going on because
their brains are on a fiat standard. Yeah, a hundred percent. One of the things that I think
is so exciting about Bitcoin is that it allows people to actually turn in and produce and create
and contribute to their own culture and their own way of life, their own traditions. It doesn't force
them into some other form of traditions and culture. The fiat system literally is forcing
unbelievable amounts of people in South America and has been for decades, even more than the last
10 years, to immigrate to America legally or illegally because it's destroying their local
countries. Fiat currency is destroying the local country. That means it's destroying the local
culture. That means it's destroying the local cuisine. That means it's destroying the local
arts, music, anything, everything. When your demographics are basically just plummeting
because all of your productive workforce are leaving and going somewhere else,
you're going to have a terrible time preserving your culture and enriching your culture.
However, if there's no reason for anybody to leave because they're on a hard money standard,
nobody's robbing from you, your culture is going to start to accelerate and really improve.
That compounds and compounds and compounds. At some point, travel is going to be too crazy because
the cultures are going to be so immense. You'll be just overwhelmed by how immensely
beautiful and wonderful some Bolivian cultural village is because they went to a Bitcoin standard.
We have to get that vision in people's heads because this is the thing. The problem is fiat.
That's what's causing all of the problems come from fiat. The solution is Bitcoin. The faster
you make that jump, the faster your family, the faster your communities, your culture,
everything you care about gets better.
Let me make a crazy analogy real quick that that just made me think of.
When you mix all the colors, you get brown. Brown can be beautiful. Brown is useful for some things,
but you know what else? Purple's beautiful and red is beautiful and blue is beautiful.
It's not always good to just mix everything all the time and have a world that and I'm
using brown very deliberately. I'm not talking about skin color. I'm talking about cultures.
I'm not talking about skin color. It is. There have been times in history and in our lifetimes
when cultures have been more vibrant in certain places where they have been completely diffused
and diluted and basically don't exist anymore. And fiat caused that. And as the rise of Bitcoin
essentially takes over, I don't know what other term to use than when the world goes on a Bitcoin
standard, those cultures are going to be able to be separated and become more vibrant again.
We're in Pride Month and I say that to say there's such a
distinct call for celebration of differences
to a point. And that's frustrating because I totally agree with everything you're saying.
And actually, brown is an interesting corollary because brown is also the color of dirt.
And, you know, when things just kind of all emulsify as a one giant heap, it's just dirty.
Right. Whereas on the counter of that is like Japanese culture is beautiful. You know,
Mexican culture is beautiful, you know, and also delicious. Like there's like so many unique things
like Bolivian cuisine and Portuguese cuisine and like Argentine, like just like beef. Like there's
so many unique and amazing aspects to the uniqueness of culture. That's actually why I
think one of the things that's the saddest part about America is like most of our food is just a
bastardization of other cultures food. I mean, we have like pizza and hot dogs. But other than that,
it's like there's not really a lot of like uniquely American food outside of like barbecue ribs.
But like the uniqueness of cultures is beautiful. And I was talking about this, I think,
last week on the on the pod. And I was also talking with somebody else about this.
You know, this idea hasn't escaped me of the Tower of Babel, the Tower of Babel.
When I looked at it at face value, I was like, oh, this was God. And if you're not familiar with
the story, the story of Tower of Babel is all of the people of the world started building this
tower. And they were building it because they wanted to touch the sky. They wanted to make this
giant city, the sky city that everybody will look at. And God, when they were doing this,
saw all of the people of the world collaborating and doing this. And so he struck down their
capacity and capability to communicate with each other. And originally, when I saw that, I was like,
oh, God is just trying to stop these people from like making themselves God, essentially.
And what I actually think was happening there is God was actually saving us from ourselves because
he was removing our desire to be one homogenous people, because that would not get us to the
best place for all of humanity. And like, that's a really interesting thought to think about is
actually God was saving us from ourselves because he knew we actually needed diversity of thought,
diversity of ideas, diversity of everything to get humanity to its inevitable conclusion of when
Jesus comes back. But the bigger piece of like to a better place. And so it's really interesting to
kind of think about that, because I originally thought Babel was like, oh, God was trying to
stop us from becoming gods. But also, if you think about it, we are God because we are like or rather
we are like God. We are not gods, but like he made us in his image. So we have God within us.
But the bigger piece of this is really unique and interesting is the thought of
did he stop the people from doing this because he understood that the the conclusion of that was
they would remove their uniqueness, their unique traits and values and water down all of the
wonderful things that they would be able to do when they went and became more tribal and did
the actual like propagating of Europe. So it's just interesting here of like
riots tear things down. But when you really dig into it, you should really lean into your
differences and lean into what you're unique and good at, because that's how you actually get
beautiful and wonderful things that are unique and varied, you know, hashtag. This is why a lot
of people don't like communism. Yeah, the well said, I think there's man, there's so many
interesting ways to take that the. The image of a riot is really kind of just the image of what
Fiat is like a riot is kind of like the end game of Fiat, it says we're not going to create anything,
we're just going to steal, destroy. And what are you gonna do about it? Come on, fight me,
right? Like, that's literally what Fiat is. And it like, those are the mechanisms Fiat uses.
What are you gonna do about it? Come on, fight me. I have the aircraft carrier. So
too bad you can't fight me. Right? So Fiat is the thing that is diluting all of our cultures.
It's watering everything down. It's preventing you from participating in culture to the best of
your ability into the to the most to be able to create the most beautiful things that you can
create. That's what Fiat does. It destroys people's agency destroys their ability to
do anything. It is a destroyer Fiat destroys when you hear Fiat, Fiat currency, you should think,
oh, the reason this is just destruction, right? And Bitcoin is the exact opposite of that. It says,
this is not we don't need to destroy it. Like we can preserve this value, we can preserve this
agency, we can use that value and use that agency to create beautiful things to actually build up
the world to actually create a better world to solve the real problems that are facing us and
to move beyond them and actually improve humanity, make a better world for our children and the rest
of it. Fiat base, you see this in the riots, like, oh, we're writing so that our kids can have a
better solution, a better future. It's like, no, you're literally destroying the world your kids
are going to inherit. And that's total Fiat thinking. There's there's no thinking beyond
the next 10 seconds. Can I escape this smoke grenade that's been thrown at me, right? It's just
it's bonkers to me. And Bitcoin completely unends and undoes all of it. Takes a long time,
doesn't happen overnight, but it's for real and it happens and you can see it in the lives of
the people who are Bitcoiners. Go meet some, go try and get to know them, right? It's it's
going to be an awesome future. Beautiful future. Yeah, I can I just just one thing, then you can
close it out. Fiat dilutes culture and it pollutes culture. And just like our intro says,
it is it can be scary out there. There's riots, there's unrest, there's chaos. But one thing you
can be rest assured is that Bitcoin thrives when there is chaos. I'm not saying it's a good thing
that there's chaos. But if you feel scared and uncertain about the future, one thing you can be
certain of is that when things are scary outside, the value of Bitcoin is just increasing. The
Bitcoin is getting stronger. And so it gives you something that's going to give you a little bit
of peace over uncertain. Surroundings when your your value and your freedom is in something that
can't be stolen, can't be taken away, can't be confiscated, can't be diluted like the culture
is being diluted and preserves that value for the future. So as bad as writing and unrest is,
it's good for Bitcoin. Last thoughts, anybody, any any last words, pearls of wisdom for
anybody watching who may be at the riot or not at the right or thinking about the right or afraid
of the riot, even though they live in like Guam. So if you're afraid, if you're scared right now,
buy Bitcoin. Agreed. 100% agree. And I'll tack on to that. If you're afraid right now,
buy Bitcoin, even if it's hard. And what I mean by that is not if it's like hard to part with
your money. But I mean, if your government is trying to actively dissuade you with a high tax
or a high burden or a difficult way to get access to it, that should tell you something.
Yep. That should tell you something. You should look at what's going on in the world and realize
what do you have good access to? Fast food. That's not good for you. What do you have bad access to?
You know, water that's full of fluoride. Like, what are you going to have access to? You have
good access to things that are enriching other people and things that enrich yourself are
normally difficult to get access to. So if you do want a better life, buy Bitcoin because it tells
the system, F you. Tells the system, I'm done playing your games. Tells the system that I am
not going to put up with it. We're not going to take it anymore. And it's important that you do
that because it's you voting with your dollar. People talk about that all the time. Vote with
your dollars. It doesn't matter if they're denarii. It doesn't matter if they're pesos.
It doesn't matter if they're rubles. Vote with your money to show the system that you're done.
Buy Bitcoin. All right. We should wrap it up, I think.
Any last thoughts, Antonio?
Good to be back on the show. I've been out for a while, traveling around the world,
and I've been watching the show. And you guys have been doing a great job. And I'm just
thankful and proud to be a part of this show. So thanks, guys.
Ditto, man. Glad to have you here. We'll see you guys. We're going to probably do another
episode on Thursday. Hopefully we have a couple of guest stars lined up. So it should be fun.
And yeah, see you guys then.
Bye.