Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 074: Riots, Racism & Power

Episode Date: May 6, 2015

If you look at the riots in Baltimore and the police related incidents around the country it seems like the U.S. is going to hell in a handbasket. Is racism at the heart of this unrest? Sal, Adam & Justin share their perspective on Baltimore and other emotionally charged social issues in the media. We have promised to Pump Your Mind, so here you go!...

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, please only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Welcome to Mind Pump. This is the almost always fitness show that's about to get a little political here. You guys ready to get political? You want to talk about this right now? Great.

Yeah, I want to talk about this because. This is sensitive, bro. It is sensitive. I love that we don't stray away from this. No, man, it's all listen. Talk with everybody thinks. We got opinions. Talk with everybody thinks.

Exactly. What? Yeah. So I want to say think like cool things. Yeah. Well, let me ask you guys something Well, first of all, who do you think the way we do? It's this is Salda stuff And I'm here with Adam Schaefer and Justin Andrews. That's me and we're about to not talk about fitness

We're gonna talk about some serious stuff here. So what have you guys seen all over the news for the last, you know, week or two Riots. Yeah, that's a crazy stuff going on apocalypse right no No. Yeah, no, it's these it's these riots in Baltimore and it looks like the apocalypse and some of these some of these news yeah, I haven't I haven't actually seen any video clips or anything going on. Do you have you have like a good description of like what that looks like? Yeah, oh yeah, I mean is it like is it like back in like Rodney King where that kind of yeah, okay? Exactly. I could be like fashion cop cars and yeah, stuff's getting destroyed. There's some looting going on Definitely overshadows the majority of the people who are peaceful protesters. There's a lot of peaceful protesters however the loud and violent people are the ones that get all the camera, you know, they're the ones that get the news attention

So I think it's it's of, it's not a very, now we're talking about media influence. Oh, huge. It's so skewed in that direction. And look, there was some crazy shit in parts of the city that were, you know, was up in flames. You know, and it's funny because you have like two camps.

It's, it's hilarious. You've got two sides that tend to come out of situations like this. You have the, I'm for the cops, the police are always right, and then you have the cops are evil, and we're being oppressed. If you side with the cops, you're licking their boots. Racist. Yeah, you're racist. It's crazy to me because when I look at this, and I always try to be objective, I always try to look at things, and as much as possible,

of course it's impossible to be totally objective. We all have bias. Let's just be honest here, okay. I don't care who you are, I don't care where you come from. You're gonna have some kind of bias because of where you grew up, how you grew up, who you are,

how your brain works. It's just the way it is. Okay, but- That's the first thing that makes an idiot right there. What? People that don't realize that we all have that. Everybody does. We all do. Of course you do.

Your brain makes decisions before you realize it when you look at someone or when you see a situation, your instantly your brain wants to form an opinion because this is what benefited mankind when we evolved. You didn't have time to sit there and think about, you gotta decide right now, and it always would decide, it would always side with the air on the side of safety.

So you're gonna be scared before you understand. You're gonna judge before you sit and try and look and see in the situation, because if you fuck up one time, you're dead, but if you're always scared, always judging, always running, always attacking, you're more likely to survive, and that's just so our brains are just hardwired that way. So there's always bias. However, I like to, I always try to sit back and actually meditate on stuff like this. I actually sit back and I, as much as I possibly can, I try to look at the entire situation and place myself in the position of each of the sides that is involved

with this. And in this situation, that's very rare. By the way, I think that that's something that's commendable. I think if people can do that, right? If you can wait and be patient and can do that, right? If you can wait and be patient and observe and wait for facts and then make assessment. Absolutely. And, you know, here's what we're looking at, right? We have, you know, a black kid gets killed. He's apprehended by police. His spine is severed and he dies. And so, you know, the community gets angry and there's obviously lots of resentment already there. And it erupts into violence and riots for some of them, not most of them, okay, by the way. There's, this is not the majority of people in Baltimore

at all, not even close. But some of them, this is what happens. And you know, you get this whole racism thing and what's going on and oh, and if you look at Freddie Gray, for example, you look at his rap sheet. The kid has a rap sheet that's like a mile long. He's been arrested. I don't know how many times for dealing drugs, drug possession. There's one, there's robbery on one of them or you know, you know, there's actually a couple of violent things he's gotten busted for. So the guy is not innocent.

He's not an upstanding citizen. Okay. Which I think is a huge point to make right there. Because you talk about putting yourself in their shoes, right? And I think I'm very, very similar the same way to it. In any situation, I always try and put myself in the other person's shoes. How would they feel the situation?

And of course, you know, what would he be going through? His mind when he gets hauled off and thrown back there and whatever happens to cause what happened, right? How would they feel the situation? And of course, you know, what would he be going through his mind when he gets hauled off and thrown back there and whatever happens to cause what happened, right? And personally, myself, I always reflect on what could I have done differently in this situation to have not allowed this to happen. And I wouldn't be able to help, but think that, you know, I kind of brought this on myself.

And I know some people are listening, I now go on like, oh my God, no, oh my, what do you mean brought this on myself and I know some people are listening right now going like oh my god No, oh my what do you mean brought this on his note? Nobody deserves this for that But I mean if you put yourself in situations like that where you're constantly breaking the law and you're doing things like that I mean, well you're gonna encounter the police a lot. Yeah, that's the bottom line Like if you're not doing a lot of stuff Cops aren't going to come fuck with you like it's just like being a stunt devil You know, I'm saying?

Like you're trying to do some crazy shit all the time. Like there's chances are you could possibly land on your fucking head sometime. Nobody wants that and nobody's hoping for that. But I mean, you're kind of gambling a little bit by making decisions like that. And I don't care if your white, black, red, brown doesn't matter.

You know, like whatever you are, if you're continually to put yourself being hauled off by cops, whatever it may be for, I mean, yeah, brown, it doesn't matter. You know, like whatever you are, if you're continually to put yourself being hauled off by cops, whatever it may be for, I mean, yeah, then absolutely. Well, here's where I get, here's where I start to get, when I look at things differently than most people. What ends up happening with situations like this,

like Freddie Gray or when there was Trayvon Martin, and there's been a few cases the past few years. When you have these situations, what ends up happening is everybody focuses on this one specific situation. So now all of a sudden, you have Freddie Gray, broken a law a million times, gets apprehended by police, he's got a violent history, and so you've got one side saying, well fuck, he's more likely to get killed by cops

because he's this kind of person. You've got the other side saying, oh no, cops are treating him improperly. Here's the deal. The riots did not happen because of Freddie Gray. That was the spark. Right. If you have a gallon, a tank full of flammable liquid that's just simmering and ready to go off,

all it takes is one little spark to set that shit off. It's not, you know, it's not just that issue. Believe me, if that community didn't have that kind of resentment and that type of relationship with law enforcement, they would not have destroyed half their city when one person gets killed because he's become the poster boy now for the city, but he shouldn't be the guy's, he's not like a great guy. But that's not the poster boy now for the city, but he shouldn't be the guys. He's not like a great guy But that's not the problem the problem What caused this stuff to get out of hand? It wasn't him. He was the spark, you know So I think we focus the product of the environment like a lot of these people like I know I can't really speak for it

And that's one that's the other problem I have with talking about these types of issues is that you know You want to empathize and you want to project yourself into the situation, but me coming from, and I'm not talking about white privilege and I'm not talking about us not being able to identify, but at the same time, there are differences. There are differences in environment. There's things that people will have to deal with on a day-to-day basis, I probably will never even understand. At the same point of that, having somebody that was actually there to give an account of the situation and what led up to that boiling point would be a great thing to dive into.

I look at the situation like that. I'm trying to look at it objectively. Like, what could the police do differently? What could the community do differently? How could we mend certain communities in a way that is productive to where people can thrive more? And these are all just things like from an outside perspective,

like we see these many explosions happening around the country. And this is all coming out of, you know, like certain public hearings and tragedies that happen. But, you know, I feel like the last couple times has happened, like these aren't the poster boys for those. No. No. I'll tell you something right now, and people need to account for this factor right here.

This is a fact. There are people who profit off of the narrative of racism. Oh, I was just, what I wanted to say right now is just what drives me fucking nuts is how many people just fall right into the trap of whatever media says when there is someone behind the scenes that is benefiting from the riots, that's benefiting from, and there's,

that they make the decision how to portray that story. It's just like when someone sees a car accident, five different people see a car accident, all five people tell that story different. They choose to tell the story the way they want to tell the story and normally they have a purpose for it There's a reason why that is and that's the shit that people are just so naive to sometimes It's like god, it's why I'm not a big fan of news

I know we talk about this all time now. I don't watch hardly any of that shit It's just like and people always give you our time like why don't you watch it? You know like it's a bunch of propaganda dude. I'm not and and I'm not like, it's such a crocker shit. And so much of it is politically influenced. Well, you know, you have, right, you've had for now for the last, you know, I'll give you an example. If we move away from racism, I'm gonna use a different example, okay? You have these narratives that, you know, politicians

like to use to divide people, because when you divide people, it's easier for you to gain votes. And by the way, a unit united people is the worst enemy of corrupt politicians. If everybody's united, you're fucked. So your best bet is to divide them, okay, always. So I'll give you another example. We heard this a lot in the last election

that there was a pay gap between men and women, inequality, women earn, you know, 70 something cents to every dollar that every man that there was a pay gap between men and women. Inequality. Women earn 70 something cents to every dollar that every man. So it was something like that, right? Now, this is unequivocal bullshit. I'll debate this with anybody all day long. You economists have broken this down and have shown.

This is absolutely false. And what they did is they took a statistic where they took all women's jobs, all jobs that women do, all jobs that men do, jobs that men do add them up divide them and then they compared them Well, you can't compare two jobs that are different, you know if I'm an engineer and you are a school teacher Someone's gonna make more than the other person you can't compare that what you have to do is compare Apples apples so you have to compare all you know men who are teachers and women who are teachers are all men who are engineers and who women who are engineers. And when you do that, when you break it down,

the pay gap disappears. It's like four cents. It's almost nonexistent. However, that narrative, that narrative that we need, you know, women need to, you know, we need to come out with laws to make women earn more because there's all this, you know, sexism towards them, politicians benefit from that because then they're going to come out with their solutions. And you're going to vote for them. Oh, and by the way, the other guy who says this doesn't exist as sexist, don't vote for those people because they're sexist. And so you're going to win votes. And so this is what I mean by people profiting off of certain narratives.

Now, let me get you in public opinion. That's it. And let me take something. There's a reason why when something racist happens, it's big news because it's not, it's actually quite rare compared to how it's been throughout all of US history. Right now is the best time to ever be alive in American history. If you're a minority, if you're a woman, if you're under privilege, it's the best time. And it makes big news precisely because most people find it appalling.

I'm not saying racism doesn't exist, absolutely not. However, it's not like it was even 20 or 30 years ago. However, we're seeing all of a sudden this narrative being pushed and it's trying to force us to be divided. In reality, it's not white versus black at all. It's people with power versus people without power. Ah, amen.

And that's where you're starting to see, you know, that's where you see the issue. Now, it just so happens that, you know, a lot of these underprivileged, you know, communities happen to have a lot of minorities. However, there's also people who aren't minorities in there who also live in that same, you know, area, that same zone, they still experience the same, you know, similar kind of stuff. And, um, same area, that same zone, they still experience the same similar kind of stuff. And of course, like I said, it's not the same. There's definitely racism definitely exists. However, people with powers, what we need to be careful for,

it's not about the white, do the black, do the, now I'm gonna use the Freddie Gray example again. Six of the police officers, there were six officers that arrested him, right? Three of the six were black. There goes the race card. There goes that. Yeah, three of them, right? Three of the six were black. There goes the race card. There goes that. Yeah, three of them were black. A majority of the city council is black.

The mayor is black. I think 54% of the police force is black. So you have to ask yourself, what's really happening? Is it a racist thing or is it people with power oppressing people without power? Is that what's really happening right now? Is that the real big problem that's occurring? And I'll give you another example.

If you were just watching the news for the last three years, you'd think, oh my gosh, the cops are just killing minorities left and right. I think last year, 200 something, black Americans were killed by police officers in the whole country. 500 something white people were killed and 300 something Hispanic. So, there isn't this epidemic of killings.

However, if we dig deeper, we find that America has the highest incarceration rate. We have the highest, definitely the highest kill rate police officers killing people, if you just add them all up. Most countries lose one-tenth, and I'm talking about it on a per capita basis. So there's definitely an issue there. And how much is it drug related?

This is what I'm just gonna say. Freddie Gray's rap sheet, for example, if you look at the first two-thirds of it, we're all non-violent drug possession or dealing. And the drug war has created these war zones. It's this reason to have police officers come mess with you. And here's a deal. Police officers have a lot of discretion.

And this is, you know, it just, it comes with the job, and we need to remember, you know, something. Police officers are not all of a sudden and fallible when they put a badge on. It's not like they put a badge on. They grow wings and then they're these amazing, human beings that don't make mistakes and don't have bias and don't have days

where they want to act like assholes. They're people, just like everybody else, except they're people. They're an extreme amount of stress. And with a lot of power. Yeah, and they have power. They have a lot of power. They have a lot of power with discretion.

Like they can pull you over. Have you guys ever been pulled over over by a cop and he says he's just gonna give you a warning Oh, yeah, that's discretion That's a lot of fucking power like what if he does what if he just looks at you and he's like I don't like this guy He's gonna give you a ticket. He's gonna fuck with you if he wants to he can yeah Oh, yeah, and and so this is where we need to be careful and so now you're hearing a lot of people talk about Putting body cameras on police officers. Right, you know, I thought that was how that I did. I thought they were actually doing that.

Well, they're in their glasses or what it was. There are cities now that have already done this. As a result, violence has gone down tremendously and complaints against the police officers have gone down tremendously. And I want to say something here, it goes both ways. It's definitely going gonna protect the public, but I bet you, it would protect the police

a lot more than we wanna admit. I bet you, there's a lot of people that makes shit up about cops, fucking with them. When in reality, they were the ones being the bad guy. So cops are actually in favor of wearing body cameras too, because they're like, good, I'll put it on and I'll show everybody that you came after me and I had to use force against you. Yeah.

You know, type of deal. So, you know, so that's a big one. You know, body cameras. I think that will solve a lot of issues because once you look at video, you can see clearly what's going on. Although that doesn't always cure everything, of course, we have the classic Rodding King case where if you watch the video, you can see this man being beat, you know, horrifically. Horrifically.

And the gestures system is not perfect. However, if this happens enough, shit will change. It's starting to change already. You're starting to see politicians talk about it now. And they're, like I said, they're visiting things like the war on drugs. I mean, yeah, now as in drugs is a big part

of the economy, right, for some of these communities, too, that are underprivileged. And I feel like if something like, say, marijuana, for some of these communities too that are underprivileged. I feel like if something like say marijuana, we've talked a little bit about this and the legalization of that. How many incarceration's happened because of the selling and tons?

Like what is that gonna do to all of our prisons and- Tons, and I don't know if I recommend legal to all of our prisons and tons. And I don't know if I'm in a, if I recommend legalizing all drugs, but definitely decriminalizing to a certain extent. Right. Really? Yeah, like when do you, since when you don't make that?

Yes. Well, no, no, no, let me explain. Let me just try to float both lines right now. No, not at all, not at all, bro. I can, we've talked about this before. I can debate, I can, I'm called, I'm called bullshit right now. No, no, no, no, no.

I can, I'm open for debate on, so you gotta get it in your state. All right, well call I'm calling bullshit right now. No, no, no, no, I can. I'm open for debate on so full. You got to understand. All right. Well, I'll debate you right now. I say everything goes legal. Well, let me explain the difference. Legalization means there's a market for it. It's regulated. It's sold. And there's varying degrees of regulation. Decriminalized means. Okay. You can't go to the store and buy heroin. However, if you get caught with some heroin, you don't get thrown in jail. Okay. So we agree on decriminalization. and buy heroin. However, if you get caught with some heroin, you don't get thrown in jail. Okay, so we agree on decriminalization. Yes, okay.

I agree that there's no- I agree that there's no- I'm open for debate. But when it comes to decriminalization, you get caught with like two hits of acid in some states, it's like 30 years in jail. So great. You know, nonviolent, you've just got two hits acid on you.

Or if you're a drug addict, you know, they're gonna throw you ass and jail, you get a felony. And then what are you gonna do? Now you get a felony, it's hard to get a job. You go to prison for a long-ass time, so you prison, by the way, it doesn't reform shit. It actually teaches you how to become a better criminal.

You go into prison for 15 years, you come out, you get a network, and you're a better criminal now. And you can't get a job, so what are you probably gonna do? Oh yeah. That's just it, when you're reformed from prison, how many people are gonna hire you? Exactly. What kind of problems are you having?

Well, what's, you know the stat on once you're in the system, how many people actually stay in the system? It's a huge percentage of people go right back. What do I want to leave? There's really nothing out here once you go into prison to fall back on. Yeah, so you have that. You have an education system that's failing. Largely because the education system does not follow

any market forces whatsoever. Let me explain what I mean. If you've got a shitty school, by the way, a lot of these people, a lot of these parents in these neighborhoods, in these quote unquote quote unquote poor disenfranchised neighborhoods, they know that the schools that they have to send their kids to suck, they know that they're shit, but they really have no other option. The average school in America receives something like $10,000 or $12,000 a year per student

in tax dollars. So let me, true, that's true. In California, it's like $10,000 or $12,000 a month per student in tax dollars. So let me, true, that's true. In California, it's like $10 or $12,000 alone per year. So every student that a school will get, they receive thousands of dollars per year from taxes. What do you think would happen if we took that money? Let's say we took 10 grand and we gave it to Mrs. Johnson or Mrs. Smith

and we said, here's $10,000. You have to spend it on school but you get to choose where your kid goes to school. You get to take that 10 grand and go wherever you want. What do you think would happen to the shitty schools? Yeah, empty. They go out of business. Yeah, business.

What do you think would happen to the good schools? This is that whole market. They would expand. They would expand. That would solve. Yeah, give the parents that ability, give them the voucher and people don't like this, of course. There, and people don't like this, of course, that there's unions that don't like it, of course,

because they reduce their power, schools make up excuses, what, but look, if you're a shitty school, I'm sorry, you should go out of business, and parents should have the option of taking that money and going somewhere else, and that will also solve a lot of problems. I think that would solve a huge amount of problems.

And the last thing is, and this is super controversial, I guarantee I'm gonna piss people off right now, but I wanna explain myself, is I think minimum wage laws are horrible for people who have a criminal record, for people who are disenfranchised, for people with no skills.

Because when you have, for example, the time of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, do you know what that means? Well, you know, I say I would not go without it completely. Well, well, so I'll tell you, I think the idea that we do things like that in guaranteeing you that you're gonna make this much money, it would solve, in my opinion, would solve so many problems

by it didn't exist. If I wanna work for $2 an hour, in my opinion, it would solve so many problems by what it didn't exist. If I want to work for $2 an hour, that's me, right? Better than being on the road begging, right? If I want to work for $4 an hour and bust my ass for 12 hours a day and stuff like that, that's on me. You know what I'm saying? You don't have to hire me and I don't,

you know what I'm saying? To me, you don't, to guarantee you $12, $15 an hour and stuff like that, especially when other stuff is declining in our economy. It's just backwards. So the worry there, I mean, the worry there is exploitation, right? Right. So you have to understand one thing. There's a moral argument here.

If somebody agrees to do said work for said amount of dollars and the other person agrees to pay the person said amount of dollars for said work. You have an agreement between two people and makes no fucking sense that a law should exist saying you can't do that. Agreed. That's number one. But number two, let's just look at this, for example.

Let's just look at this objective again. If I say the minimum wage is $15 an hour, what I'm really saying is nobody worth less than $15 an hour is What I'm really saying is nobody worth less than $15 an hour is high rubble. Who is worth less in the in the in a market economy? Who is worth less than fit and everybody's like everybody should make 50. No, it doesn't work that way. If you own a business, you're not going to pay an ex felon with zero skills, $15 an hour. You might pay in five bucks an hour to answer the phone or something. You might pay in five bucks an hour and guess what he's going to. You might pay him five bucks an hour,

and guess what he's gonna do? Here she's gonna learn skills and build a resume, and it's gonna help them advance. Minimum wage laws actually increase unemployment amongst the very people that they pretend to say they wanna help with minimum wage laws. And you gotta understand, wages, you know, you get paid, it's a price,

and everything in the market has a price. Labor has a price, so do products. So if I take pencils, and I say, we're gonna make a law that all pencils have to be sold for 10% more than they're sold now, and that's the law, you can't sell them for anything less than that now, you're gonna sell less pencils.

So when you make those laws, you're definitely gonna have less jobs. And I've heard people come at me and say, oh no, look at this study. You know, this city raised their minimum wage and their unemployment didn't go up. This is bullshit because you don't see the jobs that were not created. You might not have lost jobs, but you might have stopped ones from being created as a result. Well, absolutely. Let's put it this way. We're, and we're all entrepreneurs. We've all been in this situation.

I've been in a business building a business before and, and going like, God, I wish I had some help. I could just use someone who did this and this and this for me helped me out, but I can't afford $10 an hour yet. I can't afford to pay someone $10 an hour. I can probably afford to someone $5 an hour, but I can't do that. Right. The law shows me I can't do that.

So I can't, I can't pay anybody. So I just got to suck it up and keep carrying the load myself. And people talk about Exploitation, but let me ask you guys a question. If somebody agrees to make five dollars an hour, it's because that is better than their current situation. Yes. They're not being exploited. That is that is better than their current situation. And especially in a country like ours, you know, well, actually back up. It's technically not when welfare is paying their more money. Well, that's a great, that's a very, very, very good point, my friend. That's a very good point because- Another great job for me.

Well, and we're going to piss everybody off. You're creating incentives for, you know, not working, but, you know, besides that, let's talk about where for a second. Now, I think we should touch welfare after we touch corporate welfare. I think we should look at, when you look at all the money that we waste, way more money gets wasted on things like corporate subsidies and favors for big companies.

So when politicians come out and like, we need to cut welfare. Like, hold on a second, you wanna save money? Let's look over here first. Before we look at the welfare, because that's where a lot of most of the money's going. But that being said, if we talk about,

and I do believe there should be, you know, a social safety net, I do believe there should be some formal welfare. However, I believe again, we should apply market forces to that. I think rather than giving someone $1,000 worth of benefits where it comes out to, you know, you get food stamps, you get these kind of benefits, you get that. And you add it all up and it comes out to $1,000 a month.

I think it's better if you give them a thousand bucks. I think it'd be better to give someone the money and say spend it how you want because what's going to happen is you get a large percentage of people who are going to invest it, who are going to start businesses, who are going to spend it on education, you're going to large people that are going to use that money and be flexible with it and take it where they want to go. And there's definitely people that are going to take advantage of it, but they do already, anyway, it already exists.

Right. So I think if we incorporate that market force and say, fine, here's your $1,000 a month, this is your minimum that you could possibly, this is your welfare, take it and spend it however you want. I guarantee you a large percentage of them, or at least a good percentage, will take that money and will invest it

and turn it into something that will sustain them. Versus, I'm so added in it not other way just because I feel like I've... I'd not feel. I know people who've literally said this out of their mouth when I've suggested like, Hey, you should go apply over. I'm sure Starbucks either jobs and then they're like... Why, I make more money on employment or whatever. I can stay home and make more money on unemployment to do that.

Wouldn't it make a hundred dollars more and have to work every single day? That's silly. Like, I literally just want to frickin' well, it's people taking advantage of loopholes and systems. There's always going to be that mentality if it's there, right? And people are going to look for that.

However, there, I mean, the initial, I just to play devil's advocate with that. People, when they are, have a disability, for instance, or they have like, you know, a child with special needs or you know, all these types of things. Absolutely, I mean, so that's why it's so tough though, that's why it's not like is black and white and clear.

Yeah, but I think these are things that should be part of the qualification. No, right. I mean, there definitely has to be, you just don't have to be, you know what I mean, right now the qualification is jobless. Yeah. I'm saying jobless qualifies you for welfare.

I mean, there's no age, there's no kids, no kids, there's no disabilities. You actually get more benefits if it's single parent household, by the way. So if the other person, you know, stays with you's married, whatever, you'll get less in benefits than if you were single parent household.

So it's another incentive to kind of break up the family. This is something else that, you know, stays with you's married, whatever, you'll get less in benefits than if you were single parent households. So it's another incentive to kind of break up the family. This is something else that, you know, I think needs to be looked at. But again, I wouldn't even touch that. I wouldn't even touch welfare until we remove barriers to enter the market and we make it easy for people to provide for themselves. I'll give you an example.

There was a story of this young lady in, I believe it was New York City, and she started a hair braiding business. So all she did was she braided people's hair, okay? And she built it herself and was making money. Well, lo and behold, the barbers in the city went after her and said, no, there's laws that say, if you start, if you do anything with hair, you have to have five sinks. You have to have five sinks. You have to have this many barbers. You have to, because sinks. You have to have this many barbers. You have to, because they create these regulations to knock out their competition.

It's not to, it's not to protect the consumer. It's to eliminate competition. And so this lady had to go out of business. She couldn't braid them. Even though she had lines of customers, because she dealt with hair. That's so unfortunate. Yes. And that's what I mean.

Like lower, get rid of all these barriers to enter, enter the market so that people have an easier opportunity to start businesses and do stuff like that. I totally agree with that. You mean like the way we were built as a country? Yeah, yeah. A lot of, provide opportunity. I mean, it's like how we were there in education or,

yeah, a platform for you to build a business, absolutely. No, I think a lot of, I think a lot of people don't realize that most regulations are put in place to eliminate competition. They're promoted and pushed by big companies in that industry to eliminate, for example, taxi companies. You know how many regulations there are before you can ever become a taxi driver. Now all of a sudden Uber comes out and, of course, Uber exists in this kind of quasi-gray

area before anybody could ever regulate it and they explode Yeah, you know, I move so fast that they couldn't regulate them, which was amazing to watch. That's what was so awesome Have you guys ever taken a Uber? Far superior. Yeah, everybody that I've talked to they're just like they'll never go back there They're so amazed by you know how how convenient, how fluid everything is. I feel like we're gonna be the Uber podcast. We're gonna give people so much good shit, so much cool stuff for virtually nothing,

great information. And we have to, that's the deal, we have to explode before we get regulated. Well, podcasts in general are kind of in that kind of. Well, that's what I hope, I mean, we're talking politics, I really hope that that's the direction we're going. You know, that we really do empower people again.

Individual people. Well, it's, you know what, you know what, it's already happening. Look, every cell phone is a camera. Every cell phone can all of a sudden upload a video. You're gonna see more videos of cops doing shit that they shouldn't because there's cameras everywhere. It doesn't mean it didn't happen before.

It probably happened more before. It's just now we can catch that shit on camera. And this is good. Yeah. This is a good thing. This is called decentralizing the power. Decentralizing the power. I was just going to say, I mean, that's in the power of the internet, like across the board,

like with people in the White House, like with people making big decisions. Like, I think that that should be very transparent. You know, all these secrets and all this, you know, I really feel like secrets and holding onto these things are things of the past. We need to move beyond that. Well, the fact that I'll make a collective decision. And the power to report these things was in the media. Now it's like YouTube going YouTube.

Oh, look at this video and it circulates before they can even do anything about it. I could write a blog tomorrow and theoretically could reach millions of people in a week if it becomes popular and it goes viral. And it costs me almost nothing. Whereas before you had to have connections with corporations and this and that. So like I said, I think we're gonna see, we're gonna have some periods of upheaval because of this decentralizing of power, but it's all gonna end up good. It's gonna end up good.

I think police officers are gonna have to wear body cameras so that people can watch the video and say, okay, what happened? We want to protect cops, we want to protect people. We want everything to work together. And it makes sense. If you have we want everything to work together And it makes sense if you have that much power if you're a police officer you have that much power Then you need to have a camera on you just to be protect everybody just like you said stop the rioting No, yeah, definitely. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump for more information about this show and to get valuable free resources from Sal, Adam, and Justin. Visit us at www.minepumpradio.com. Until next time, this is MindPump.