We have that, okay, three to one. Ask not what your country
can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Mister
Gerbatcheff, tear down this wall, read my lips. It's the Rookieshet podcast
with Rob Long. Peter Robinson's usually here, but Stephen Hayward's is sitting in
for him today. I'm James Lylenx. We just talked to Carol Roth about
her new book You Will Owe Nothing, So let's have ourselves a podcast.
Our economy has degraded, the suicide rate has jumped, public filth and disorder
and crime have exponentially increased, and yet your concern is at the Ukrainians don't
have enough tanks. I think it's a fair question to ask, like,
where's the concern for the United States in that? Tucker, I've heard that
routine from you before, but that's not my concern. Welcome everybody, It's
the Brookseshe Podcast. Number six hundred and fifty. Wow, a gust number.
I don't know why, but I guess just those sort of round numbers
make you feel wow. We've been at this for a long time and for
good reason, because it's lots of fun. It's so much fun that Peter
Robinson isn't here for two weeks in a row because he just can't stand the
excitement. He's got to go someplace and just collect himself. But I'm here,
James Les Minneapolis, Rob long I presume, and Gotham Stephen Ay,
We're sitting in for Peter Robinson in California. Gentleman, Welcome, Hi James.
How are you doing? Been a week? Been a week? It's
been a week. So where to start? We had a NATO conference and
Biden skipped the dinner. You know, you get a little tired at the
end of the day. Hey, we'll you why, you know, go
through all of that chatter and sitting there and making relationships and secret protocols between
the meals. Well, I bother come back to the room, watch a
little television, sleep like natos in the news. No, no, no,
no, isn't We had a call up. We have a call up
of troops, which is interesting, seems to be under the radar, but
a lot of people are raising a spot like eyebrows at that. And we
have today all over the Twitter, a series of clips of Tucker Elson interviewing
various presidential candidates. It seems to be in the most reason and perhaps what
people will be talking about the most Ricochet dot com, where, by the
way, you should go and look and say, where has this been all
my life? And wonder is there anything more to within this? There is.
There's a member feed which is just a great place to make a new
community what you've been looking for. Facebook didn't do it, Threads didn't do
it. Ricoche dot com is where you go, and we'll be talking about
the Tucker clips and probably having some good, zesty arguments about it. Tucker
is a good guy to do these interviews because he asks questions and a way
that frames them outside of the usual narrative, which case people will say,
well, that's of course it's because he's the Nazi, But no, no,
I mean hearing him ask the questions about him immigration and Ukraine, which
I disagree intensely. But it's good and it's forthright and it's simple, and
it's better than the blather and polaver we get from the usual debates, which
never seemed to have the sort of payoff that these Tucker interchanges have. So,
gentlemen, have you seen any of them? What are you think?
Do you have any favorites, how do you think they did, etc.
Or never mind that subject, it's boring, you want to talk about something
else. Well, I have not seen them, but it seems to me
that he problem. My guess is that that he's going to do a good
job, but mostly because he's usually when people ask these questions or ask these
kind of things the press, they're sort of got your questions designed to embarrass
the candidate in front of Democratic candidate Democratic voters. You know, it's like
completely irrelevant to Republican Party primary voters, which is the phase that we're in
now. Mostly I don't you know, obviously because they're biased, but mostly
also because I don't think that any member of the United States Press Corps could
even frame a question that would be would have an interesting answer and irrelevant answer
to Republican primary voters. They don't know any they haven't met any. They
certainly don't work with any either, none in the newsroom. So these are
just like it's like, how do you what kind of questions would you ask
a person who's running for the governor of Venus, Like you wouldn't even know
what to begin with, you know, Um, so Tucker Lease is going
to be relevant. I mean, he's gonna have got your questions too,
probably because he's doesn't want to make some news. Nothing wrong with that,
but least they're gonna be got youa questions that that are sort of interesting to
watch the candidates squirre him under. Um. You know, I have the
complicated feelings about Tucker because I've been a long time and I and I admire
what he's a lot of what he's done. I almost one hundred percent disagree
with him now on his priorities and analysis of what's wrong with America in the
world. Um, but he's an interesting guy, an interesting mind and um
which she was more consistent mind. Um, but uh, there's no arguing
that he is an important voice in the you know, right word movement.
He should be the guy asking these tough questions. I think if I had,
if I had to interviewed the governor of Venus, I would ask him
how he dealt with all the pressure. We've just had the We've just had
the rib podcast in a nutshell, Rob Long, I haven't seen any of
the quotes. Here's four minutes of opinion on it. Well, yeah,
I could have. I could have just hunted right and good and good taking
my defense, this is not on the rundown here, So you just you
pulled this one out of your ass and now I'm to make it. But
I think you're absolutely right in what you said, and that's and I agree
with what you said anyway. So yeah, there's a rob points to uh
an asymmetry in the way these debates go. The media, the mainstream media
always ask questions to based on premises of the left to embarrass Republicans. They
almost never ask questions based on the premises of the right and the Democratic debates.
To think of one example that breaks from the mold, you have to
go all the way back to two thousand and eight, when Charlie Gibson of
ABC News asked Barack Obama, why do you want to raise the capital gains
tax? One? Every time you raise it, revenues go down, and
every time you cut it, revenues go up. Why raise it at all?
And I thought, you know that that's the kind of question I would
ask someone who feel, you know, who's conversions and supply side economics.
And like, I say, that's fifteen years ago. Now you've got to
go back to question, right, all right, So and you know,
consider that if Tucker were to throw his hat into the ring as a candidate
for the Republican nomination, he would outpoll probably half the candidates who's going to
be interviewing today, in the next few days or whatever whatever the schedule is.
So yeah, they're better take him seriously, and if they're not prepared
for it, I think most than them. Also, I kind of feel
like it's a good example because Tucker does represent, unfortunately my view, he
does represent a certain portion of that electorate, and so there are going to
be a sizeable number of voters who are going to be like, Okay,
I agree with Tucker, tell me why I'm wrong. I mean, Republican
primary voters in general tend to be persuadable, and that's kind of what they've
shown over the past thirty years. Right, you go in with a front
runner and you can come out with somebody totally different. So they are up
for grabs. They're open to this kind of debate, in this kind of
exchange. So why not have somebody, I mean, Tuck Across is not
going to show up and say, listen, I really don't have an opinion
on this. I'm very neutral, like in him right. So this could
be very, very elucidating. And also I would feel perfectly comfortable judging a
candidate who disagrees with Tucker on the basis of how they how they treat that
disagreement, like right Aisa Hutchinson, for example, he was asked, you
know about the issue of medically gastrating to use the terms that they use because
that's the term, because it's what happens youth in the guise of gender affirming
healthcare, and Hutchinson's response was, well, I like to talk about issues.
He didn't believe that this was a serious issue, right, which shows
a distinct lack of interest in the side of things that make David French uncomfortable.
The cultural the culture war, that of course, is an entire creation
of the right, which was in reaction to absolutely nothing and was gender out
of nowhere. Right. So if he's not conversant in that and doesn't want
to have an opinion about that, that's instructive. But when you said Rob
as the rootless, cosmopolitan East Coast rnal squares that you are, that you
disagree, you disagree that. Unfortunately a lot of the voters agree with Tucker.
What are the issues that you think are Unfortunately they agree well Ukraine.
I think he's absolutely one hundred percent wrong on Ukraine. And I think he's
gone way too far on his caution about Ukraine. He's already said he's rooting
for Putin. We already know that. I think that's just a an error
of judgment that is kind of hard to come back from. UM. I
think he's wrong about January sixth. I think he's wrong about the twenty twenty
election. I think he's fundamentally wrong on the issue of whether we should have
a free market economy or a command of industrialized economy. He's in favor of
industrial policy. He just like everyone who's in favor destrir policy. They're like,
it's great as long as I'm in charge. But that is not how
this country works. So one of the reasons why the founders made sure to
circumscribe the power of government, it's because they know that we have a thing
called a democracy and sometimes the morons win um and we are living in that
under that umbrella right now that it does happen, and when it does happen,
you're very very thankful for restrictions on federal power. So I think he's
wrong about all those things. Um, and I think it's wrong about that
guy Ander Tained. I think it's was gross. I think he's gross.
I know that's that's yeah, So I don't. But the thing about the
Ukraine is is when he speaks about Christian persecution and indicates he absolutely knows nothing
whatsoever about the schism that you're Kraine in church that's going on, or doesn't
or knows and doesn't care. I mean, it's irrelevant. I'm glad that
there is somebody with whom I disagree who's asking those questions of potential candidates,
because I want to hear a robust intellectual defense of the age. Yea.
So he had a great question of Tim Scott about immigration, and Tim Scott
did something that was he gave sort of a standard boil plate agreeing into and
then he stood up and started talking to the audience like I like I used
to do at the At the night Owls accepted this was really weird. It's
like he interposed himself between the audience and Tucker and took over and just moved
the conversation where he wanted it to. But it was a weird way of
marginalizing doctor. But it was still the clips that I see have been more
interesting than anything I ever saw in the debate, where eleven people are in
stages or answering questions from MSNBC. Yeah, yeah, I got a question
though, is um Is anybody else having a weird Tim Scott moment? Oh
yeah, Rob, I kind of I know what you mean. And yeah,
I think you're onto something there. I think he's maybe the most interesting,
well the most interesting candidate in the field that we're not paying sufficient attention
to. I'll put it that way, good way putting it now, Yeah,
especially since the Descantist campaign seems to be like the Ukrainian counter offensive.
Mum, I mean it's it's it's ongoing, and accomplishments are being made,
but people are expecting a breakthrough at some point every day and something dramatic like
that. It's just not happening. Then you go to look at what Trump
in Iowa. I suppose I think the last time Trump tweetered about it,
he was up one hundred and forty seven points or something. And Trump has
made people in Iowa very unhappy. Yeah. Yeah, So you know there's
two thoughts on that. He I think foolishly this week by all the accounts
I read attack their governor Kim Reynolds, who's very popular, and who,
for what it's worth, I've had on my shortlist as a very strong running
mate for whoever the Republican nominee is I think to be an excellent candidate.
Second, we still don't know if Trump's going to show up for any debates,
if He's going to campaign in Iowa. Again, I'm old enough to
remember that in nineteen eighty Ronald Reagan was the front runner and his campaign manager
John Sears said, oh, you know, Gosh, you don't want to
be in the debate in Iowa. You don't want to spend a lot of
time there. So Reagan barely visited Iowa and was up set by George H.
W. Bush, whereupon Rake and fired John Sears shortly after and recovered
quickly. But the point is, I think Trump may be making similar blunders
for even less cogent reasons than Rake and had forty some years ago. I
mean, not out of personal peak, you mean out of personal peak.
No, he would never do that. Also, I think that the Trump's
in a very different position. It's not I mean everyone is everyone in the
Republican Party who's running for president is running against him. That's how that works.
In twenty sixteen, they all thought we're running against each other, and
there's weird there's weirdo here who's eventually gonna like figure it out, he'll drop
my real My real opponent is Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or somebody like that.
Right, Jeb Bush, Right, Jeb Bush. Now they all know
who their opponent is. It's one guy. And what you don't want to
do is you don't want to have those guys all on stage having decided at
a caucus that they really don't need to right now go after each other.
They just need to kill him. That's something he's not really going to be
able to stand up too. So it may be smart for him not to
show up, because he's terrible at these things. When he's cornered. He's
just you know, remember he been depending on how how far into the tank
you are. He lost the twenty twenty election in that first debate with Joe
Biden because of his behavior. I mean, this is something I'm not conjecturing.
This is literally something the Trump campaign admitted. At the beginning of December.
The head of the campaign, the President didn't admit it, but the
other Right campaign they had all the numbers and all the proof for it.
That's why he lost Republican mails in Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania and in Georgia,
in Georgia and in Arizona. So you know, these debates are not great
for him. When he's under fire, he's much better as the guy shooting
from the hip. And so maybe I don't know, maybe it's wise for
him not to show up. Probably so, but it looks awful, and
it seeds the stage to people who can say what they want and will and
you know they don't have to make up stuff they I mean, drump tweeted
one the other day that one of the first thing he would do when reelected
is to close the border and see the little that and solve that immigration problem,
which would be interesting except that we kind of have four years of record
on which to look on that issue. The same thing with the deep state.
Alsolve the deep state. All during this well, we kind of gave
you the chance to do that before, and now you're older, you're even
weirder, even the tweets that you keep me. So we cast our eyes
elsewhere, perhaps and sping of elsewhere. There's this high minded conversation we're having
here, and then there's a proud capitalistic commercialist essence that is the spot.
I am Andrew Gutman and I'm Beth Feely, and we're a couple of accidental
activist parents who woke up and started speaking out about issues that we saw in
our children's schools. So join us every week on Take Back our Schools on
the Ricochet Audio network or wherever you get your podcast Ricochet, Join the conversation.
All right, so much for the domestic stuff. International NATO, you
guys have any ideas about how that conference went. I just yearned for the
days when NATO meeting, meeting meant absolutely nothing. Nothing met the French,
We're gonna be completely difficult. Yeah, we're always kind of peripheral the NATO
when they kicked us out back in the sixties. Exactly right. Yeah,
So the hell boy, the problem here is, I'll step back a minute.
I keep worrying that our biggest problem with the whole Ukraine scene is an
incoherence or indecisiveness in our policy that reminds me in some ways of Vietnam.
Right, So, to review the record, the Biden administration said, we're
not going to send the high Mars rocket systems. Okay, we will send
the Highmars rocket systems. We're not going to send Abrams tanks. Okay,
we will send you the tanks, but it's going to take at least nine
months because the apply chain for those is huge and training so forth. We're
not going to send F sixteens. Okay, now we'll send you F sixteens.
And now cluster bombs, which are controversial in and of themselves, because
apparently Joe Bliden Bliden, Biden blurted out. Biden blurted, I gotta practice
that that we're running short of ammunition, which is not exactly reassuring specifically or
generally, and so we're going to go to cluster bombs. And you keep
wondering, you know, do they actually have an endgame or it aminds me
the graduated escalation of Vietnam, which never had a strategy for victory. Recall,
deep down, I think they want a stalemate, and are rumors that
there are back channel negotiations underway for a political settlement which would involve seeding some
territory to Russia. Maybe that's the most sensible thing to do. I think,
by the way, James, you mentioned that we keep thinking the Ukrainian
counter offensive was going to have a breakthrough. But I think that even though
all the modern weaponry we have, this is resembling more and more World War
One trench warfare, where breakthroughs are very difficult. Both defense and offense have
roughly symmetrical strengths, and I think it's going to be very difficult to make
a breakthrough unless we're prepared to give them a lot more air power, a
lot more really devastating you know, moab bombs that we used of course in
the Middle East and so forth, and I think we don't want to do
that because we're afraid, quite rightly so, that we might provoke Russia into
using tactical nukes. Well, the strategy seems to be to a trit to
destroy their logistics, to destroy their ability to resupply. And that was our
Vietnam strategy, you know, let's just bomb the Ho Chimen trail every day,
right right, It didn't work. But in this case there are very
specific strategic objectives and they're doing it. And you can you can believe or
not believe the stuff that you get on telegram on Twitter and Reddit that are
fed along from the Ukrainian side or the Russian side, and the complaints about
the shortage of ammunition. But the Russians do not seem to be particularly well
equipped. There's just a lot of them hunkered down there. So you destroy
their ability to be resupplied, and you keep doing that, and you keep
doing that, and then you overrun a demobilized, starving, under motivated force.
Seems to be the idea. So, yeah, there are parallels too.
You can any war will have parallels to any other war until it doesn't.
Yeah, I'm not I think the analogy to Vietnam is right. I
would just cast the characters differently. I would say that the smug sitting on
the sidelines, barely lifting a finger but doing some help. Russian position in
Vietnam was now played by the United States and the West, and the Russians
are us in there for no reason and hated and despised, and you know,
whether we're running out of ammunition or not, I think that's probably not
true. You know, we are sent they are. Any American equipment they're
using, either that's comes from US or comes from our European allies. Is
sort of garage sale equipment. It's not actually stuff that we're using now.
We may not be replacing what we needed to be replacing at the generation that
we should be now, but it's not this It's not this generation. This
is a generation to go. So when the f sixteens come, which one
come from us, will come from our partners, and the pilots are trained,
I suspect they've actually we've been training for you know, about nine months,
not the two months that is public. Things will probably get worse for
people living in the region, but the war might actually start looking different.
But the other reason is like Vietnam, is because people are kind that everyone
is, every one of the actors, even even the costars right here,
NATO, the West, US, even the Belarus, they're all kind of
waiting for something to happen, something political to happen, something political to change
in a capital far away. That's what the North Vietnameans were waiting for us
what the South feet means are worried whether the Russians, of the Chinese,
the Americans are waiting for in the Vietnam War. And I suspect that when
this does play out, it will play out a lot more, a lot
more closely to a complete and utter humiliation for Russia, which will which is,
by the way, it is a dangerous thing, but it isn't as
if you know, the argument that we provoked this by our our NATO talk
is sort of not historically accurate. In early in the early two thousands,
as recently as the early two thousands, Putin was suggesting that NATO be expanded
to include Russia. People keep forgetting that it was only later when Georgia and
Ukraine felt they were about to be invaded, that these talks got hot,
and of course Georgia and Ukraine were invaded. So it's sort of like saying,
it's your own damn fault. Your house got robbed because you were planning
to buy an alarm. So you know, these things do happen. Something
was provoked, but I don't think it was bad provocation. I think it
was perfectly safe provocation. But um, you know, the mystery box or
the Schrodinger's what is the Schrodinger's cat that is putin in that room, It's
gonna has all the answers, we just don't. I just don't think he
has them yet. It maybe that he turns a corner and somebody's there with
a gun, and that's the answer. Wouldn't be the worst possible outcome to
this problem. No, he'll be poisoned out a window. Well, that's
our take on the world as it is. Now let's go to the stuff
that really matters. Money. Carol Roth is our guest to self described quote
recovering investment banker. Carol's an entrepreneur, writer and commentator who appears on Fox
Business, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and she's got a
new book coming out, You That Will Own Nothing, Your war with a
new financial world order, and how to fight back. Carol, thanks for
joining us in the podcast today. Great to be with you guys your book
get started. In this book, you were learning that some of the wealthiest
people on the planet, the DeVos eat always say I started predicting the end
of private property. It can be this wonderful thing. You will own nothing
and you will be happy. Everything will be a micro transaction. You'll have
no privacy in the world. Will never be better. Tell us about that
revelation of yours and where than I you think these guys were serious and where
we are in the process of getting to this utopia or dystopian that they want.
James, you know, when I first heard you'll own nothing and You'll
be happy making its rounds on social media, I sort of internalized it the
way I internalized many things on social media, going, ah, that's a
funny meme, maybe without of context. You know, there's is the World
Economic Forum. It's littered with the business and political elite. There's no way
they're actually predicting the end of private property by twenty thirty. Somebody must have
gotten this wrong. And so it did not take very much time to go
find the video. It's on the WEF's Twitter stream still today, and it
was based on input from their Global Future Councils, and there you have it,
like in black and white. Number one is you'll own nothing and you'll
be happy. By the way, the other seven are kind of horrible too.
Everyone sort of focuses on that first one. But you know, it
did stand out to me as somebody who for over a quarter of century has
been focused on wealth creation and opportunities for everybody to kind of think about this.
You know, I know that ownership leads to wealth. You have to
own assets that have the opportunity to retain their value or to appreciate in value
in order to accumulate wealth. So the idea that the people who were wealthy
and well connected were saying, you'll own nothing and you'll be happy. One
it was pretty clear you'll own nothing. It wasn't willow nothing and I'll own
nothing. It's all about you, right, So that's kind of staggering.
The second was the happiness part, that like they're almost trying to get you
to buy in that somehow this is great for you. You know, you
can live this free you know, Instagram, yolo life and you don't have
to worry about anything. And you know, as a students of history,
I think we can all agree that people who haven't had access to private property,
you know, have not been free and have not been happy. So,
you know, I kind of put that aside, but it was always
in the back of my mind and as I started kind of thinking about all
these different issues that were coming up, with the debasement of the dollar and
the shift in the global financial order and the dollarization, central bank, digital
currencies, social credits, esg Wall Street competing with you to buy a house,
big tech trying to wrench your life back to you as a subscription or
a service. Like anytime I started to get one of those, like,
I kept going, there's got to be a through line here, There's gotta
be a through line. And just one day I'm walking and it hit me
sort of like a lightning bolt. You will own nothing, And there it
was. It was like it just like spoke to me and I said,
that's the through line. And you know, so it's not, you know,
necessarily that everything we talk about in the book is some World Economic Forum
cabal intention, but it is really a really good way to frame and think
about all these different forces that are coming at us. Yeah, and it
kind of depends on how you how you pronounce the words. Right, there's
you will own nothing and you will like it, and there's also you will
own nothing and you'll like it. But it does seem like, I mean,
can we just go can we go a piece by piece through the things
that you're not going to own, Like people say you're not gonna own Well,
you're not going to own it. You don't have you don't have to
own a hard drive, right because you can store all of your stuff in
the cloud. You don't have to own a car because you can ride share
uber lift. It's efficient, you can do that, and you'll never have
to own a car, And won't that be better. There's a whole new
move it's started, really, I mean, you know, for I mean,
I think for all of American history, you were supposed to own a
house, to the extent that we created an enormous bureaucracy to subsidize and kind
of distore the prices as of houses. And then around two thousand and eight
or two thousand and nine or two thousand and ten, people started saying,
coincidentally, with the collapse of the housing industry or the housing finance business,
hey, maybe you should just rent, try renting. Maybe the renting is
good so you don't have to own a house. And the arguments for all
that has been well, why would you want all this extra stuff that you
then have delay this you're liable for. Instead, there's probably a more productive
way to use and to save and to invest your money. Why, I
mean, I think I know why that's wrong. Just doesn't feel right to
me. But why is it wrong from its economic business prosperities. Yeah,
I feel like you've gone through my cover and I've we've sort of crossed out
all of those different things, and you can see it behind me, you
know, all those different things that you won't own. You know. I
think it's different for every category of ownership, and each one has its own
unique issues. Having a car, which unless you have a classic car,
is probably a depreciating asset, is different. It's about, you know,
freedom and not depending on infrastructure and those kinds of things. The home is
one that we really should be focused on because when you think about the American
dream, and I see Steve not ere Long here, you know the American
dream. What is the symbol of the American dream. It is a home
and you might even have a picket fence in front of it. And there's
a reason for that. That is the largest asset on people's balance sheets in
America and frankly in a lot of other places around the world. Buy dollar
value. This is the way that Americans have created wealth. I talk about
in the book that I think that that probably has to do with duration.
Right, You're consuming your home, your kids are going to school, those
kinds of things. So when you know the stock market has ups and downs,
you might panic and sell out of the stocks, but you're not doing
that when the housing market goes up and down, unless you know, you
got yourself into a situation like around the Great Recession financial crisis. So most
people ride out those ups and downs. They hold it for a long period
of time, and so they're able to create and retain that wealth. So
the idea that you would take the largest assets on people's balance sheets and say,
no, we're not going to let you have that wealth creation opportunity.
We're gonna let Wall Street have it, and it's gonna be great for you.
You're gonna be You're gonna be so happy to not be wealthy wealthy and
to be at their whim is insane. And the fact that this has come
out of fiscal and monetary policy and other government policy. The fact that one
of the craziest things when I researched you will own nothing and did it,
did the deep dive there. I did not realize that before twenty ten there
was no meaningful institutional capital in the single family home market. It was only
through the distortion of the market. And this, you know, nearly fifteen
years of easy money policy. Hey, can I just stop you? Those
are really big words. Can you explain those again? Just for so okay,
so twenty ten. Before then, there was no meaningful not saying that
there was none because maybe like one or two people did it on a small
scale, but institutional capital corporations Wall Street. So I'm not talking about a
mom and pop who might you know, come on and buy one or two
houses, but we're talking about the capital that's coming in and buying you know,
hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of homes, and so that didn't
exist. You know, they invested maybe in apartment buildings or corporate real estate,
but they weren't competing with you to buy your house and take that wealth
creation opportunity away from you. So that market didn't exist at all before twenty
ten. And because we had the Federal Reserve suppressing interest rates, printing money,
allowing these corporations to have access to cheap capital, they were able to
go out and buy all kinds of assets and inflate those asset values because there
was more money chasing these assets, and we saw the stock market go up
and whatnot, and they were looking for places to put this abundant cheap capital.
You know that interest rates were near zeros. It's a gift for the
real interest. They were going out and they're like, oh, hey,
we can by people's homes so we can tell them that this benefits them.
And we are at a point now where corporate investors as of the end of
twenty two bought approximately one in every five hopes. And that was not done
with the intention to make them better for you and give you the opportunity than
to participate in that wealth. That is, to transfer that wealth creation opportunity
from that biggest asset class on your balance sheet from Main Street to Wall Street.
So can I I know she wants getting here before before he does.
I just want to like, either have you confirm which would make me nervous,
or tell me why I'm wrong. In my little paranoid a little paranoid
voice in my head, it says that the house and even a car represent
two things. Aside from shelter and a savings account for the house and freedom,
it represents sovereignty. Like your house is your home, your my home
is my castle. That's your sovereignty. And as long as you got a
car and gas in it, I can't tell you where to go or where
it not to go. You get to go whatever you want. As long
as you obey the speed laws, and even then you know, okay.
So if they represent that, and I can convince you to liquidate that,
and I can tell myself, well, when you're liquidating, you're turning it
into liquid I'm giving you money for it. It's not nothing to still be
stealing it from you. But right now, no one can really regulate you
out of your house, right we can't really control what you do in that
house, you know, aside from the really big bad stuff. We can't
tell you what to read and what not to read, and what to listen
to or not to listen to. But once we sort of turn all of
your your hard assets into either financial instruments, numbers on a Ledger, or
digits in your ebook, which, of course we all know. When you
buy a book from Apple Books and you put it in your iPad, you
do not own that book. If the if the publisher wants to remove dirty
words that book, they can do it while you're asleep in your book.
So if I can get you to liquidate everything you own, and then it's
fine. We have all of these fantastic financial institutions and they will invest that
money and they will make sure that your money is safe, which is all
true. But once it's just money, then I can control where that money
goes, Right, Because if I run an ESG kind of fund, or
I run a financial regulator, or I'm a whack crackpot left wing president,
and I decide to have a crackpot left wing secretary of Treasury and decide to
impose a lot of crackpot left wing rules and regulations on financial services. Hypothetically
hypothetic hypothetically speaking, can I I've just taken all of your sovereignty away.
I haven't cheated you out of any money, but I've brought you and everything
you own under a government regulatory structure. Am I just breaking paranoid or No?
I don't. I don't think that you've actually become paranoid enough, because
there's another layer to that which people rarely see, which is which is a
social credit piece of this, which is very informal right now, but you
know, certainly gaining momentum. But think about if you don't own a home
and somebody else owns it, and you do something that somebody doesn't like,
then they could have cause to remove you from the home. Right you are
not a worthy person. You have become you know, you're a mom that
shows up somewhere and to protest for your kids. And the FA has now
said you're a domestic terrorist. I'm sorry, I can't have a domestic terrorist
renting from me, So you can no longer have access to housing. So
the sovereignty argument extends in all different directions. And I tried to make that
in sort of a chapter by chapter connection within you will own nothing. But
you're right, you know, one of the issues with the money and if
you if you are somebody who owned a house and they and you liquidated that.
I mean, most people they're just renting to begin with, right,
they never get into that opportunity to buy the house. Now, the younger
folks, and so they are taking their money and they're not It's not like
they're saving money and then investing it somewhere else. They're just giving it to
somebody else who is creating the wealth for themselves. But you know, if
we get to the point of the central bank digital currency, which is also
not conspiratorial. You know, the Fed New York Fed ran a pilot program
with twelve financial institutions starting last November that they just reported on at the wholesale
level, but they said it's a wild success um. The G seven came
out with their principles. They think it was thirteen principles for retail facing CBDC.
So these aren't the activities that you do. If this is something that
nobody has you know, considered before, and so to the extent then that
you are liquid, you have your money and a a form factor that that's
cash, and when it's not going to work for you and you're not building
that wealth, it's just sitting there in a currency that's being debased by the
government and the FED. But then you have them trying to centralize control of
the currency and monitor that potentially and make decisions that take away your sovereignty and
agency over your capital. This is a real threat, I mean potentially the
ultimate set threat to our freedom and our agency and our ability to create wealth
and all of those related things that I don't think enough people understand and just
given the level of financial literacy we have in this country, I mean,
think about things like the stimulus checks. I went on many media outlets and
begged and pleaded, do not do the stimulus, do not take that thousand
or twelve hundred dollars. Whether it was a Donnie dollar or a Biden buck,
it didn't care, it didn't matter who the president was. But don't
do this. You are going to pay seven to ten times that easily,
you know, a year for the rest of your life for taking that.
Nobody believed that, and then we lived through double digit inflation. So we
don't have people who are real savvy with the you know, they're gonna they're
gonna buy into all of these narratives and they're they're going to think that they're
going to be financially better off. And it's a really scary proposition. Yeah,
Carol, it's Steve Hayward out in California. James and to a lesser
extent, Rob use the rule that I think it's worth crystallizing and keeping in
mind and extending. I call it Hulman's razor, after the late Mike Hulman,
who is a very important guy who's not as well known as he deserved
to be. But he used to say, and he said that two generations
of students, including me, whenever you hear some nifty sounding progressive idea to
make the world better, slow down, repeat it slowly in a German accent,
and see if it still sounds as good. It works great, not
just for this, for all kinds of great ideas. Right by the way,
as this resonates really highly with me exactly, I'll just mention in passing,
Mike Hulman is the person who saved the Electoral College back in nineteen seventy
and the world will be different if he had not succeeded. That's a long,
very interesting story. But back to you, I could go on for
a while about the point Rob raises that's also fundamental, which is, if
you don't own property, at the end of the day, you don't own
yourself. That's what James Madison would say if we had a time machine and
dropped him here. I want to ask you for something. You know,
how do people fight back or what do you recommend people do. We'll give
you one very specific idea. I keep going into places where they I pull
up my wallet and I'll pull out a dollar bill, not a dollar bill,
a twenty dollar bill and an age of inflation, and they'll say,
oh, we don't take cash, and I'm perfect. I like the convenience
of using cards in my phone too, but I noticed my dollar bill still
says on it. I checked this note is legal tender for all debts public
and private. I wonder if maybe you think we shouldn't have a mass moment
of people insisting on paying cash for things at all these places that say they
because and this is the gateway to for a lot of the controls of our
lives that you talk about in your book, maybe we should do insist on
cash. Don't you think that it's an interesting coincidence that we have had this
sort of reversal of policy on crime at a time where they're trying to get
people to go towards a digital currency. It may be entirely coincidental, but
it's not lost on me that the reason why many of these small businesses and
other businesses don't want to take cash is because they don't want to get robbed.
And you have a bunch of cities who you know, won't enforce any
of their crime laws and are basically encouraging the criminals to go ahead and do
whatever they want. So I think there is you know, an interesting push
and pull there that I think it would be very smart for people to go
ahead and you know, continue to use cash and try to make that viable.
But I also understand as a small business advocate, you know why you
wouldn't want to put you know, the person who's working behind the counter in
jeopardy. I do think for something like a CBDC though, you have you
have to do that math, You have to to to come up with that
plan and say, Okay, if this does happen, and you know,
maybe I can't use cash anywhere, but I also can't use my CBDC because
you know, Steve and I went out for too many burgers and Rob and
I posted bad things on social media and James well, you know, they
just decided they didn't like James, you know from somebody had to tip with
him back in the day, and they're now going to come back and say,
well, let's just put him on whatever it is. Or maybe they're
trying to help us by controlling inflation. They want to slow spending destruct demand,
so they're just going to cut off all of our access to money.
Like what are you going to do? Like have you done things like get
small pieces of silver and gold? Have you talked to you know, like
minded people in your community about like, hey, you know things you know
where to go sideways like who's the doctor, who's the person who's raising chickens.
You know, what are the things that we need to get through a
period of chaos, Because it may not be that it's a final and total
switch. It could just be a period of chaos before it resets and goes
back to it to sort of some level of normalcy. But you know,
it's very much kind of like if your house is burning down, that's not
the time to get an insurance policy or to create an escape plan. You
want to think about it. And even if you think if it's a low
probability of happening, you know it's still a high cost outcome if it does,
and so you want to, you know, make those decisions now.
So I think people really do need to do those things. And I'm sure
there's at least one or two people listening. They're gonna go, Caroll,
you sound like a prepper, and I will, I will, I will
give you the dist here. There's a difference between being a prepper and being
prepared. Being a prepper is somebody who lives this lifestyle every day, like
every aspect of their life every day is about this is all going down.
And I'm getting in my bunker, and this is how I'm living. Being
prepared is again just coming up with the plan and just making sure you're not
caught by surprised if and when this happens, because we can see the trajectory.
We just don't know duration, right, We don't know if this takes
twelve months. We don't know if it takes twelve years. We don't know
if it takes fifty years. But you know, in the off chance that
it sooner verses later, you don't want to be the person going, oh
boy, I didn't really think about this. Wow, I'm screwed. Now
I have to follow what the state says, or you know, nobody will
let me do anything, and I don't know you know, what I'm going
to do. So I just think it's important to go through that level of
preparation, which is, you know, most of the things I talk about
in the chapter about fighting back are common sense things that you should probably do
anyway, and you know, diversification and you know, certain behavioral things.
They're just good basic practices, but they take on a new meaning as you
kind of see, you know, the different shifts that are happening here,
and some of these you know, very specific proposals that are being said allowed,
there's no secret to them. Okay, I like cash. I love
cash. I'm holding up with the camera right now. My father's paper,
father's money clip, which I carry around. But I you can't run a
lot. Let me just see that. It was a pretty wild what's end?
It's only a watch. I'm sorry. My father always told me that,
you know, if you've got a full tank of gas and fifty bucks
in your pocket, you're a freeman. And he was right. What it's
so convenient to just walk up to a terminal and tap my watch and it's
done. It's convenient at the end of the day not to have to empty
out change what am I gonna with? Change? The things? Barely take
it they want to roll it for you anymore. And it leads me to
believe that's so much of what we're talking about here. I never really think
that there's some big conspiracy, because that invests in them more intelligence and foresight
than they've ever demonstrated that they have. Rather, it's a confluence of things
that make a certain sort of world come about, and everybody gets used to
it with a boiling frog effect. Part of it is the ease of payment
means that if they say we're gonna you don't want that digital dollars, Well
what am I using now? I'm using a digital dog. Well they'll be
able to track where you got. Well they can track what I'm doing now.
I mean, it's a big I'm not doing it. So people get
used to that. It used to be that I would buy Adobe Photoshop and
it would work until computers changed enough and it fell out of whatever. I
can't do that anymore. I rent it. But on the other hand,
I can use it from any computer I want. I get a new computer
and it's already there. It's seamless, it's easier. It's so much easier
to rent these things. So much of what they's selling us is an
easiness. But I hit my wall the one point at which I say,
and I grate against a lot of these things I do. I just I
want to own things. I want things to be tangible. I agree with
you, a house is important, even though at the back of my head
I know that when the mortgage is completely paid off, I missed my taxes
and they take it from me. So I'm not sure how much that ownership
thing. In the end really matters there. But I reached the end when
I saw an ad on Twitter for what looked to be a really interesting water
shower faucet, very stylish, and it wasn't Bluetooth enabled either, which is
great, didn't have an app connected to it, which is even better.
So I click on the ad and I'm looking at it and pricing it out.
The shower faucet head ran on a subscription model. No oh no,
it's not possible. It did. And I looked at that and I said,
you cannot be serious. I mean, I'm used to the subscription thing
with software all the time now, and I known by it because of it
very and it had to do with the filters. You signed up for it,
and every so often they would send you the filter. But the idea
that something so quotitian as my bloody shower head, which I stare at every
day would require a subscription, then again, if you own nothing and you
don't have to worry about it breaking down and all you have to do is
just to have an automatic debit, you know, there's a lot less friction
in your life. And so many things that people are getting used to these
days, the frictionlessness of it sort of trains them psychologically to say I can
see what they're talking about and it may not be so bad. But I'll
ask this is long winded thing which not even as a question, but a
speech of some starts. I'll end with this. It seems to me that
what these guys are doing, they're just they're techno futuristic, you know,
dreamers who believe that somehow we're here, the perfect Star Trek future is here,
and in between, there's some stuff that happens that we get to there
once. The most important thing you think that we should look for, that
says oh rubicon crossed alert alert. This is the thing that really means we're
in trouble when it comes to the WF future being right und the corner.
James, you said so many great things there that I want to talk about
all that, I'll just give you them my highlights. I can answer the
question. First one is that they don't really know what they're doing. Okay,
So when you go into a casino and they have shifted from cash to
chips and now to digital cards, do you think they didn't know what they
were doing or do they think they knew that? Oh? No, no,
no, no, I know, I agree exactly. No, psychologically
do. I'm talking about, you know, the individual constituent elements may indeed
know what they are doing about the thing that they do. I'm talking about
the general concatenation of all working in some sort of devious spectrum blowfield like concert
to to achieve. So here's what I think. I think that the world
is shifting. We know that the US has too much debts, they're getting
desperate, We're on a unsustainable financial trajectory. We're seeing things like dedollarization happen
and power you know, shifts happen around the globe. I think your guys
first part of the podcast was talking a little bit about some of those things,
and the people who are the wealthy and the well connected, who are
not stupid, see that happening, and they don't want to hope that things
work out for them. They want to control it in a way that's happening
or that they can and make sure that they are on top of what is
happening. And I do think that it's different. It's big tech is different
than the FED in the government, which is different than the World Economic Forum,
which is different than big business. The challenges that we have all of
these different forces coming at us at once, and sometimes what they're trying to
do overlaps, and sometimes it doesn't. So sometimes they'll work together and sometimes
they may not. But in each of those cases, we have to be
aware and understand that the decisions that we're making, and you know, us
not pushing back creates more of that reality of this barbelling of the population when
you talk about this um, you know, kind of these people who think
that they know better and that they're doing for the benefit. There's a story
that I share in the book that's based on a vintage Twilight Zone episode and
you might know the episode, but basically, these aliens come down to Earth
and obviously the people of Earth they're like, hey, why are you on
our planet? And the aliens say, you know, we've been watching you.
You have war, you have famines, we have technology that solves for
all of these things. We just feel bad that you guys are going through
this and we want to help you. And you know, the people of
Earth are like kind of skeptical about this, right, They're like, I
don't know that they really want to help us. That sounds like why would
they want to help us. That seems weird. Maybe we should give the
guy a lie detect your test. So they give the alien a lie Detect
your tests and he passes it with flying colors. Well, meanwhile, he
leaves behind his like his playbook is manual, and somebody from the CIA Grit
organization goes and they decode the cover and it says to serve Man. And
they're like, well, you know they said they want to serve Man,
and you know that he passed that. They like, they just want to
help. So they start using the technology and it's starting to work great and
everyone's really happy with it. So then they're like, well, we should
go visit their planet, and they invite to the Aliens invite the people of
Rope to their planet, and they start boarding spaceships and all these people are
leaving Earth, and well the CIA guys is like, oh, I'm gonna
go too, that sounds fun. He starts boarding the plane and one of
the code crackers gets further into the book to Serve Man and realizes as she's
running to the spaceship, Steve, do you want to give the line fuck
thir in the book? And that's the thing, James, I want people
to take away is what. Okay, but who's the actor who played the
main alien? Tell me that, Oh no, it doesn't matter, It
doesn't matter who it is. You know, Ted Cassidy. Okay, well,
okay, so urch Ted Cassidy in mind. And when they say we're
just doing this to help you, we're trying to create a better future.
It's great for you, which again, not us, not me, but
for you. I'm I'm just here for the children, and I'm just here
to deserve. Man. Man, if we can't, if we can't take
one look at Klaus Schwab and realize that he's lurched from a certain man,
then we're really lame. Robbie had one sent the one thing just because you
know, we try to innovate all sorts of different things. Right, But
it seems like what you're saying is ony house is good, saving money is
good, diversifying your retirements, saying you're saving and investing because if you just
leave it in that form factor right question. Yeah, okay, So saving
and investing for the future is good and making sure that um that those funds
are diversified so that you hedge against this, and you hedge against that,
and you pretty much come out even, um, that seems like basic advice.
I mean yeah, and also like, how do we how do we
veer away from that? I mean, you know, my dad gave that
advice, and I think his father probably game like, how do how do
we make sure that we just don't stray from that? Again, Well,
we have to first of all, get people to read things like the book
and understand this information. I think most people haven't gone down the path of
financial literacy. I think there has been an intentional shift away from financial literacy.
I mean, we pay for the schools. If we wanted that to
be part of the program, that would have been part of the program.
But if that was part of the program, then the government couldn't nationalize student
lending and enable a wholesale wealth transfer from young people to colleges and their administrators
and get them more dependent on the government. So I think it's the schools
are busy, as you know, teaching pronouns. So it's not you know,
you don't e want to get me started on what my old library is
teaching. M Yeah, it's crazy. I mean we need to equip first
of all, you know, there are a lot of adults that don't have
strong financial literacy, so we have to kind of start with them, and
we do have to make a commitment to find ways to get young people more
involved and make it more interesting to them, because you know, for whatever
reason, people like to look at the shiny new things and the stupid stuff
on TikTok and whatever, and nobody seems to care about their their financial wellness,
you know, as as something maybe because we've been so prosperous for so
long and they just haven't felt the need that they had to. So I
do think it's a concerted effort. And you know, I see this in
the medium. I mean people, the business and finance people kind of get
relegated into this side space. Oh no, we have to talk about this
other newsy stuff here. But like when with the last time we had a
march on Washington over student debt and predatory government lending and the Federal Reserve and
flat I mean never but like you know, oh, somebody you know put
a face on about like can or something, and everybody goes wild over that.
I'd like to see that same level of outrage over the financial foundation because
the other stuff is going to shift and change and it's going to constantly be
moving and if it goes in one direction, you can get it back.
Once the financial foundation is broken, like that's it. We don't know how
that gets put back together. And the thing that worries me the most is
if you look at the shifts in the global financial order. You know,
before us, it was Britain, Before them, it was the Dutch.
When we move from Britain to the US, you know, the USO standing
as this like bastion of free market ideals and private property and wealth creation opportunities
to step into that role. The folks who are trying to step into that
role right now are like bastions of tyranny and dictatorships and really bad actors.
So if the US isn't going to survive and thrive, like who is,
you know what's going to happen. You're not here just here in the US
and for the future, but in the world with the global financial situation,
So we have to get this tight or you know, it's going to shift
what happens on a global basis. The book is you their own, not
sing and we advise you to buy it in the hardcover, of course,
because they can't digitally alter it. Right now if they want, if they
want to alter the copy of Carol Roth's new book, they have to come
to your house in the middle of the night with a sharpie and an exactive
knife and change things. So you buy the book in physical form as a
metaphor for the physical form that we should all inhabit. To keep in mind
going forward. Carol, it's been fascinating and lots of fun. Write another
book soon quick, so we can have you on or we'll just GM up
you guys, so much fun to chat with you again and appreciate the time
of the conversation. Okay, bye, good bye bye. Should also note
that this is a digital medium, the podcast but whatnot, and that means
that we can actually just do what they used to do in the old days,
which was to pull up, you know, bring up the horse in
the carriage in the middle of the town and then the guy gets out and
sells you old time mcgilla Cutty's elixirs to all the folks and holds it up
and pass it around. You can smell it and you can drink it.
We can't do that here because digital, but we got something else to tell
you about it. It's just as good. A matter of fact, it's
even better. Hello. I'm Dennis Neil and here's what's bugging me. The
media are burying some of the biggest scandals of our lifetime, and I'm here
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toxic chemical burnoffs. Join me to hear things no other journalist will dare tell
you. All that and more on What's bugging Me? Available for download and
streaming every Thursday right here on the Ricochet Audio Network and wherever you get your
podcasts Ricochet. Join the conversation well before we go, and we're not going
anywhere soon. But you know, the end is insight. It has to
be. This is not like one of those nine hour podcasts that Dan Carlin
does. I love Dan Carlin, but honest to God, sometimes it's like
I turn it on its nine hours of one week in the Pacific War and
it's uh, it's great, great for road trips anyway. Uh, speaking
of road trips, Rob, you want people to get into the car that
they own, yes, that you own the lease whatever, like I don't
know why you have to own a car. That is an example of the
longest lift, an exemplar of you know freedom. As you know James that
the fun of Ricochet are the people and the people. Sometimes people we fellow
your fellow Ricochet club members will you know, inter getting conversations and debates and
sometimes just weird celebrations of things online. But we also like to get together.
I r L in real life. Right now, as we speak,
there's a meetup Rickchee meet up happening Winston Salem, so our shout out to
those guys and hope they're having a good time. On July eighteenth, there's
going to be one in Portland, Oregon, which I really think anyone,
any Ricochet member who's even it's even possible to get there, I want you
to go because I want to see some I want to see them on the
ground. Reporting from Ricochet members on Portland. My guess is that there are
parts of Portland where you could be and it's it's like a tornado. Like
you're there and it's like this great, look, how beautiful this is,
and then you like you turn a corner and suddenly there's just devastation. But
you know that's a that's a Ricochet member task. There. There's a German
Fest meet up in Milwaukee on July twenty eighth through July thirtieth. That's that
weekend, So if you're in that area, you should go and Cookville,
Tennessee Labor Day weekend, Cookville, Tennessee September one through four. So those
are the ones coming up for the summer. There'll be more obviously the autumn.
If you want to go to one, please do. If you will
not go to one and you're not a member of Ricochet, that's a simple
solution to that. Join Ricochet. Actually join Ricochet. And if you can't
go to any of those and you really want to have one, put up
a post on the member feed saying how about our meet up in X place
at why time? And I guarantee you Ricochet members will show up, because
that's what we do. We show up. Cannot shame Charles C. W.
Cook to going to Cookville. Then Oh, that's a good idea.
I've got to feel that out. Yeah, let's tell him that the town
named themselves for him like that? Right would believe that zeal for No,
he wouldn't not for a moment. Well, all right, other things here,
cultural wars. I think we were talking at the beginning of the show
about how you conservatives are always starting culture wars. Oh it's just chin and
up this nonsense over nothing. I guarantee you tomorrow it's going to be right
wing loses its mind or is melting down. Two things I never never enjoy
seeing about anything over Disney snow White casting. I think that will be the
latest thing. So Disney does this whole recasting of snow White, the white
part being particularly problematic, and then there's a reaction to it, which is
basically scorn and laughter and pointing and going haha, because that's precisely what we
thought that they would do. And I was looking at that and thinking,
you know, when I was a kid and I saw that movie, and
I saw all the Disney movies, I never thought that the dwarves were I
never thought that they were physically handicapped, that they were there's something wrong with
them. There was just short, you know, a little shortly as the
big heads, and they were they were industrious, for heaven's sakes, They
went to work every single day. And they I could never figure out whether
or not their attributes were derived from their nomenclature or the other way around.
Is that the way it isn't their culture. They give you that name at
birth and you are fulfilled that you are destined then to your mold your personality
around it. Or do they actually have some long, unpronounceable names and the
ones they used for human facing or their attributes emotionally. So there's a lot
too, but that's all going to be lost in a new version because they're
no longer dwarves. They're going to be forest people in non binary and the
rest of it. It's ridiculous, etc. But bub bub bub bud,
Stephen, let me ask you this. Iger. Bob Iger sat down with
c NBC a little while ago and said, quote, the last thing I
want to do for the company is to be drawn into any culture wars.
Okay, uh yeah, okay, and also said he's open to selling ABC
and the ESPN and the rest of it. The company attempts to make money
or keep money Disney and trouble American icon and that's the face. So what
do you think is that a white flag? Was that them saying you know
what we got so many things coming, you know, in the pipeline.
Hey, yeah, what am I gonna do? But in the future,
going forward, we don't want to be involved in any culture wars. Yeah.
I mean two thoughts at least to open up. One is, of
course this new Rob knows this better than I do, but just a long
lead time for making these movies. And so this decision to cast a person
of color and change around the Dwarves was made what two, three, four
years ago probably, And my point is, if they were starting today to
make the decision to make a new version of Snow White, I'm not sure
would turn out the way it has turned out now. And behind that point
number two is I think the corporate world is shocked at what you've seen happen
to bud Light, which is now the latest figure I saw slipped a number
fourteenth in the Bear sales list, having been number one for several decades.
And there's other things. I mean, Disney Park attendance is way down.
Some people say, well, it's because the prices have gotten too high.
Maybe that's true. I wouldn't surprise me. I've always thought that Disney was
an amazing the parks we're an amazing machine to separate you from your currency,
your physical currency, and their genius is at that. And maybe they've overdone
that. I don't know, but I think corporate America now was waking up
to the fact that a wokerie is I mean, we overdo the woke,
go broke business. But we're now actually seeing that conservatives are flexing their market
power in ways that you've never really seen before on this scale. And I
think they've got one attention of corporate question for Rob question for Rob here.
David French disagrees, and I believe so. In the newspaper today, he
was saying that actually, these companies are not doing their companies are doing this
because they are embracing the directions in which American people are increasingly going. Well,
I don't know. I mean, look, if if, if the
if show business companies could actually predict what people want, they wouldn't be in
the trouble they're in right now. They're they're in terrible trouble financially, they're
they're you know, they're when when you you know, when when you're laying
off thousands and thousands of people in your company, it's not because you've managed
it right. It's because you made big, big, big fat mistakes,
which they've done right. They've alienated two of the giant trade unions that are
now on strike, the Writers Guild, who's like on their last legs.
Son on a lot of last legs, but we've been on for a long
time. They're weary, strike weary. Now they've been given a shot in
the armor of the adrenaline with the sad going out, so you're gonna have
bigger you know, there's no place for them to hide now, these companies,
they're just everything shut down, which is probably what they wanted. But
you know the problem with the off switches, you have to know how where
the on switches, and so it's one thing to turn the spick it off
and you can kind of reset your financials for the next two quarters and show,
you know, kind of refigure out what you're refigure who you're gonna pay
and how you're going to pay them. But at some point you got to
start back up again. And that's I think that's what that's what guided Iger
into saying he's a very smart guy. But Iger is talking about the things
he'd like to sell, and he'd probably like to sell them now, so
that when the sun comes up again and the strike is over, he doesn't
have to worry about ABC and ESPN and a bunch of other broadcast properties.
I think that's wrong. I think the broadcast properties in the future for these
people, but they don't know it. But you look, you know that.
To me, the argument for Disney is like they have these classic titles,
snow White, those kinds of things which are great, and then they
have this enormous ability to manage the creative process, which they have shown like
a thousand times in brilliance. I mean, one of the best Disney cartoons
of the reason in the past five years was Coco, and it was great.
I mean, my god, if you haven't seen Coco, you had
to see it. And I the end of the y, the end of
Pixar greatness was oh my god, it's so beautiful. Who is just an
absolutely stunkingly talented man. He's an amazing guy. And I've had several conversations
with him. Oh really, Oh yeah, I started. I started emailing
and tweeting with him a long time ago, and we developed this back and
forth conversation. He would have the guys from like the team on Monsters,
Inc. Sent my daughter, who was about two or three at the time.
It was just boo a shirt signed with some from the end of Animators.
Yeah. So what I'm saying that that was a that was a movie,
that that was about a non white culture or set in Mexico. And
I guess if you're kind of super churalist, you could complain that it was
woke in some way, but it really wasn't. It was a movie about
those people and it was incredibly brilliant. And like my argument to Disney is,
do more of that. Do more of that stuff. Take me when
I go see a movie or TV show, Take me someplace I haven't been.
Don't try to give me moral or character homework, which is what it
always seems like to us when they change the snow whites and the stuff.
It's like, yeah, you're basically telling me that I need to that I
need to use and work on myself. No, that's not how it works.
Well we're correcting. You tell me a great story, and if it's
said in Alaska, or it's said in medieval Europe, or it's set in
Mexico, or it's said, I don't care where it's set. If it's
a great story. It's gonna be forever. I mean, I don't know.
Is the Lion King? I mean that's set in Africa? Is that
I mean to do more of that. That's all diversity, Like with your
stock portfolio we just talked about. It is a good thing, right,
But it doesn't mean you have to go everything has to be a lesson where
like you are? You know you like those little dwarves, didn't you,
James, Like, that's like you were. You were laughing at stock and
grumpy and snuffy and all those like We're gonna change that around. No,
stop retreading new, new, new stories, new areas, new worlds.
That's how you make show business work. Agreed, But what they want to
do, you're absolutely right. But the intention, or maybe not the intention,
but certainly the second effect is to replace those other stories, is to
apologize for them, is to say we were wrong in these representations. We're
gonna make up for it by doing this, and this will be the diversion.
And so it edges the old one off the stage because now we have
this new one, which is better and more correct. And it's a way
of rehet conning their own history instead of just saying, yeah, we made,
but we made when we made it, So what get out of here?
One of my tries possessions, which I'm now regretting that I did not
rip into my computer, was I used to have like the six CD,
six DVD set of like pretty much every Looney Tunes ever. Oh yeah,
and you know, fully a third of them are what we might call problematic
at this point. So everyone set in Cowboy times where they're an Indian and
there's like, I mean it, but and I know you're not going to
see him on TV. But they are great, And I do feel like
you're keeping the tablets, especially those tablets is probably really important. I gotta
have to dig that out and see what I can see if I can just
put it on, But then, of course then i'll put it on.
I'll put it, but I won't save it on my computer, right,
I'll save it in the cloud and then it'll be there they can find it.
Oh you have that one where bugs money shoots at the Indians. You
know, what do you mean? You scanned all my photographs and did character
recognition on every single one of them, right, It's like, well,
you're not paying for this, you know, we gave two gigabyte and there
was this thing you scrolled down at the end and signed, right, remember
that whole thing, right, right? I know, so I have cloud
services stuff too, But yeah, you're right, So Steven, you would
go to see a new movie that Disney made, as would I at Pixar.
For the rest of it, it was a new idea. I mean,
supposedly Elemental is not doing that bad. That's the latest Pixar movie.
The decline of Pixar in the public imagination is an extraordinary thing. All gonna
be hits. You're gonna have to like, there could be someone that don't
work, all right, but every one of them used to be an event
because there was something. There was some way in which they had raised the
bar technically. There was there's something new they were going to show us,
and you knew that you were going to be flabbergasted by what you saw.
And you also knew that whatever technological advance made this thing more immersive, it
wouldn't matter because what counted was the storytelling bones behind it, which were un
unparalleled run of stories behind Pixar. So now that's done, but you know,
they may come back, and that's great. They may merge with Disney
Animation, which itself is a pretty good shop. But Rob's right, new
stories from and the world bounds with opportunities for them, as opposed to just
going and giving us one more blanquely recorrected version of something they did before.
I mean, we're to the point now where I think they're going to do
a remake of Song of the South. Oh, you know, an acceptable
version of Song of the South. Man, know what I they do,
because I would love to see what they come up with. See what they
come up with, ye a rep version of Zippity Duda, you know,
I yeah, you know. I for a long time thought that, uh
well, I put this way, the Pixar movies were always not just technically
unique, but they were very original. Yea. And for a while I
was saying, I think we got to have a law that only Pixar can
make children's movies. I thought, I thought they were always better than the
dream Works movies. I mean, the Shrek movies were fun, but you
know, the Shrek movies always had you know, a baby boomer rock and
roll from the seventies and some of their soundtracks for it, and that Okay,
they're winking at the adults a lot of time sneaking those things, and
then picks Are didn't try to be cute that way, and I thought they
were, you know, an ordered magnitude better and maybe you know, you
just can't keep it up forever. But so anyway, that was my due
for a long time, and I was always astonished that they that that.
There were some years where like I think for Cocoa, and I think for
Lion King, and I think for the movie Up and definitely Toy Story.
Um, there was those years that was absolutely, without a doubt, those
were the best movies made that year. They should have gotten Best Picture Oscars.
There was no reason not to give them the Best Picture Oscar. They
were they they represented the greatest kind of film storytelling you could do. And
uh, there was just that well you know, they're animated, like so
what I mean they are? I mean the first ten minutes of Up Area
devastates and astonishing, beautiful and and what Wally went what twenty thirty minutes before
there was any dialogue from the bleakest children's movie ever made, Rights made my
daughter is I was looking at this within you know, a drained expression and
absolutely absorbed. And then of course at the end of the movie, just
as just as a way of telling a story. Here they do the entire
end credit sequence with a series of escalating sophistication of the visual arts from you
know, from cave paintings to to to to um as they can to vang
because they can. But when I was talking, when I was communication back
and forth, leabot Coco because I was so knocked out about it. There's
a scene they go to the afterlife. There's this big bureaucratic place which I
think is modeled after a hotel, nouveaux hotel in Mexico City, which is
a gorgeous, gorgeous tiffany not tiffany, but stained glass roof in the rest.
And I said, what the reason that this all works so well?
It's not because it's so beautifully conceived an animator. But I have the feeling
that everybody who was involved in this, well, let's say there was one
guy whose job it would be to research what kind of coins would be in
the pockets of these characters. Yeah, we would never see the coins,
but they would model the coins correctly and they would be there, and maybe
there'd be a nanosecond where they're doing the rigging and there's an impression of the
bar relief of the coin in somebody's gossamer thin pants, And that level of
complete absorption in culture and idea is what they just absolutely fantastically did. So
right, the dream Work stuff is great because it's pop culture and it has
all the references, and it has all the people making those you know,
you know, it's fine for what it is, but you're right, I
would have let Pixar give all of the stories over in the future. Last
thing, we'll end with this up. Do you know how exactly how they
shived Walt Disney's worst enemy in that movie. It's a beautiful Oh well,
the villain if you remember that great villain, the guy who was you know
in the in the Zeppelin and he's up there. Yeah, it was named
Months. So he's named after the guy who stole away Oswald the Rabbit,
the Lucky Rabbit from Walt Disney in a copyright, rested it away from him
and forced Walt to create Weal Mickey Mouse. So he was like the bad
guy to all the Disney lovers because he, you know, he shafted our
hero Walt at one point and then sixty seventy eighty years later they stuck the
name the character. So had he not done it, we the people at
disney Land be wearing bunny ears. Yeah, entirely possible. Oswald, well,
Oswald never got back to Mickey. It took a long time before they
finally got back in cartoon for him. But I think they got back in
a video game, um where there was just a lot of you know,
who owns the rights, and they put it together like a Roger Rabbit thing,
and Mickey and Oswald the rabbit were actually together again after all, whether
they're never apart or they're never together originally, but they got together finally.
Story of how Walt created that is all, of course part of the iconography
and mystery of Disney, and it hates me and pains me. The way
to see this company has fallen in the public imagination. But it's an entirely
self afflicted wound, just like tweeting off something stupid about Iowa. There full
circle. We're done. Happy Day. Visit our sponsors. Go to Apple
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see everybody in the comments and Ricochet four point next week, Ricochet joined the conversation