01:09:41 · Casey Handmer, Ty Morse
[01:09:41] S1: He says, like, you'll have not universal basic income. You'll have universal high income. Yeah. Because you'll be able to essentially produce anything that you want on demand. [01:09:49] S0: Ironically, I don't think we'll ever have universal high income because I think the way that the hedonic treadmill works in human brains, whatever you have, it's, like, not good enough anymore, and suddenly you want, you know, that plus two. [01:10:00] S1: We we already see that now. Yeah. We're like... Not to pick on anyone too much, but, like, who are these people in New York in the DSA? Right? Like, when I was a kid, the leftist labor leaders, the union bosses and so on who were running, even in the nineteen nineties, like, you know, wage labor, like hourly labor labor trade disputes strikes, blah blah blah blah blah. Right? They were genuinely on the bottom end of the economic totem pole. They were often older gentlemen who had grown up in genuine poverty in public housing, often, like, their dad had died in World War two or whatever, and they'd they'd work their way up from the ground floor. They were usually pretty tough. Right? They... Not like you and I, not like soft handed, like, weirdos. You know? Like, they actually... They genuinely worked with their body. They longshoremen. They they loaded chips by hand. Like, hard work shit like that. Okay? Nowadays, the the lefties that I know and that that we see in in public and so on, they're the most privileged people you've ever seen in your life. It's astonishing.
01:10:00 · Casey Handmer, Ty Morse
[01:10:00] S1: We we already see that now. Yeah. We're like... Not to pick on anyone too much, but, like, who are these people in New York in the DSA? Right? Like, when I was a kid, the leftist labor leaders, the union bosses and so on who were running, even in the nineteen nineties, like, you know, wage labor, like hourly labor labor trade disputes strikes, blah blah blah blah blah. Right? They were genuinely on the bottom end of the economic totem pole. They were often older gentlemen who had grown up in genuine poverty in public housing, often, like, their dad had died in World War two or whatever, and they'd they'd work their way up from the ground floor. They were usually pretty tough. Right? They... Not like you and I, not like soft handed, like, weirdos. You know? Like, they actually... They genuinely worked with their body. They longshoremen. They they loaded chips by hand. Like, hard work shit like that. Okay? Nowadays, the the lefties that I know and that that we see in in public and so on, they're the most privileged people you've ever seen in your life. It's astonishing. [01:11:11] S0: It's like Elizabeth Warren in the back of a limousine being like, hate the rich.
01:11:11 · Ty Morse, Casey Handmer
[01:11:11] S0: It's like Elizabeth Warren in the back of a limousine being like, hate the rich. [01:11:16] S1: Yeah. Post it from my iPhone. Yeah. It's it's like, you know, we're not we're not sharing the benefits of technology. Post it from my iPhone. I'm like, oh, you know, the benefits of wealth. I'm like, you have the same iPhone as Elon Musk. Like, it's... Basically, like, once you reach some relatively minimal tier, it's like horseshoe theory. If you're too privileged, you become a a champagne socialist or something. [01:11:38] S0: Yeah. It's it's very interesting to me that, you know, a hundred and fifty years ago, there might have been a major difference in between, like, the wealthiest people in the world and the poorest people in the world. But if you look across, like, The US today [01:11:50] S1: Yeah. [01:11:50] S0: The vast majority of activities that people partake in, like, you roughly eat the same food. There's not, like, some billion dollar mattress. There's not some... You know, maybe you have, a pool, but you watch the same Netflix or or or YouTube. You don't have access to a faster DoorDash. [01:12:05] S1: Yeah. The only real differences are around energy availability. So, like, can you afford to air condition a large house? Can you fly private? Whatever. Right? [01:12:12] S0: Yeah. But, like, honestly, I I think people misunderstand private jets as well. Like, for Elon, really what you should compare it to is if if... Unless it's, like,
01:12:12 · Ty Morse, Casey Handmer
[01:12:12] S0: Yeah. But, like, honestly, I I think people misunderstand private jets as well. Like, for Elon, really what you should compare it to is if if... Unless it's, like, [01:12:21] S1: purely anomaly in that in that class. Right? Because most people who are actually flying private are themselves private citizens, and no one knows who they are. Right? So the thing that Elon doesn't have and that you will also one day lose if you become famous enough, and I will as well, is that you'll be unable to exist in public. The same thing to the movie stars who live in the hills here. Right? They can't exist in public because they can't go outside without being harassed or someone trying to kill them. And the same thing for know, sufficiently prominent politicians. But most people are not... Don't have enough face recognition that they could do that. Yeah. I totally agree with you. People people bang on about income inequality and so on. Like, you know, The United States is is the worst income inequality on Earth. I'm like, The United States has the richest poor people on Earth. [01:13:03] S0: Yeah. There's there's no, like, teleportation device for a billion dollars either. Like, you actually just have to get in the same roughly same jet, and there might be some guy that spends a boatload of money on the flight, but you're gonna get there in the same amount of time.
01:13:16 · Casey Handmer
[01:13:16] S1: I mean, I don't I don't really envy the rich. I mean, I am rich, but I don't envy the the super rich, I'll tell you why. The people who are significantly wealthier than I am, their lives are more complicated. Okay? They have private security. They're usually much older and in much worse health. They don't have privacy obviously. They have people actively trying to destroy their privacy. They're wealthy enough that they're surrounded by very few relationships and are not transactional one way or another. It's very hard for them to interact with other humans as humans. And the ones that are not ridiculously old or inherited wealth or whatever are by and large, like, cracked founders who have, by their own choice, but nonetheless extremely difficult professional lives. Right? So that usually, like, the family life is not quite there or whatever. Right? And you say, like, is that something you really want? I think that this this obsessing over income inequality is actually a negative thing. I think the optimum amount of income inequality is not zero, and a certain amount actually incentivizes success. It rewards success. It rewards hard work. It rewards innovation. It rewards technological development and as a result, it actually lifts the floor. So the thing you should worry about I think is not so much income inequality like some Gini coefficient nonsense. It is, like, are the bottom decile in our economic system starving, or do they have an opportunity to get on that ladder? Do they have opportunities to get educated, to try as hard as they can, to build a better life for themselves, for their children, for their grandchildren, for their communities, and so on. And on that front, I think The United States has always done a really good job. It's done a better job now than in the past perhaps, but The United States is accumulating wealth for people up and down the spectrum faster. People say, oh, the middle class has disappeared as though, like, what was the middle class seventy years ago, which is like, you know, some guy working hourly at the Lockheed plant, you know, putting his kids through some public school in in a car with no safety standards is the middle class. Middle The class has disappeared in The United States because people have left it through the ceiling.
01:15:11 · Casey Handmer
But these these things are not not well appreciated or educated or or taught or understood.