Some More News - SMN: Are Rich People Okay?
Episode Date: April 5, 2023Hi. In today's episode, we look at what being rich does to your perception of yourself and others, the eccentricities of the super wealthy, how they use their money to hold influe...nce over our political systems and the dystopian future they envision for all of us. SOURCES: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v6D3Ks23MZd5oXmn9w6td6y8vTBZw2j0T_9TBUeMa5Y/edit?usp=sharing Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews?ref_id=9949 SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews If you're looking for an easier way to take supplements, Athletic Greens is giving you a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to https://athleticgreens.com/MORENEWS. Check it out. Get your money's worth at https://EXPRESSVPN.com/MORENEWS to get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free! Upgrade your CBD. Go to https://NextEvo.com/MORENEWS to get 20% off your first order of $40 or more. Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at https://www.stamps.com/morenews. Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show!
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Greetings, jerks.
Boy, oh boy, don't you all look eager today
with your gaping mouths all tonguing the air,
desperate for a few drops of my news?
Well, get ready, schmucks, because here's some news.
I am really sorry about coming in so hot just now,
just to level with you.
I recently came into a bunch of money,
and I guess I'm just feeling a tad bit cocky, you know?
It's kind of wild how just a little bit of wealth does that.
Like I spat on my neighbor's cat this morning.
Don't worry, the cat loved it, but this got me thinking,
hey now, have you ever noticed that rich people
seem to be a little off?
And no, I'm not just talking about this guy.
I mean, I'm kind of talking about that guy,
but not just that guy.
Because the Duke of interesting looking into it
isn't the only rich person who has taken the word eccentric
to an extremely unsettling level.
And not just one or two of them, but most rich people,
regardless of their political views or occupation.
Everything from Peter Thiel wanting to build his own
floating libertarian island to Gwyneth Paltrow
justifying the sale of psychic vampire repellent.
Nearly every time a rich person shares their daily schedule
or personal diet, it reads like
an alien terrorist's manifesto.
There are entire industries like pet cloning
that exist because of weird rich people.
Or just look at any auction where something like
John Lennon's tooth or a banana taped to a wall
sells for way more money than it's worth.
Or heck, just look at everything
Nicolas Cage has purchased.
Sometimes people like to credit their behavior
to being geniuses, but I think most of us realize
that's not the case, because it doesn't matter
who the rich person is, they inevitably say
or do something super messed up.
And they've been doing it since forever.
It's said that Henry Ford ate literal grass sandwiches.
There's a terrible horror movie based on the time
a rich widow built a funhouse to hide from ghosts.
Just look up any history on old nobility,
you'll crack open a pinata of brain spiders.
And of course, this is why we have the extremely old trope
of the bizarre, often evil rich person,
Charles Foster Kane, Mr. Fish Odor,
any Bond villain, Scrooge, or Scrooge's anamorph duck form,
that fucking dragon literally sitting on gold in the Hobbit,
Christian Grey, Mr. Burns, of course.
And don't you sit there and tell me
that Bruce Wayne isn't a messed up guy.
But none of that would really matter,
except these same people also hold a huge amount
of political power,
because they're not
the fictional characters, they're real people.
They influence the politicians that make our laws.
They own the companies we work for
and control the industries we need to provide us
with essential living standards.
And so as a newly rich person myself,
I think this concerns me even more.
What can I do to avoid becoming a villain?
Spit on fewer cats?
Spit on the same number of cats, but less?
Bah!
Not gonna happen.
Sorry, anyway, today we ask an important question
to which you already know the answer.
Are rich people okay?
Seriously now, are they?
If only they were just playful eccentrics,
a well-dressed foppish monocle wearer,
perhaps an anthropomorphic legume.
But there's a lot of evidence out there
that the wealthier you get,
the less likely you are to find common ground
with your fellow human beings,
which could suggest that maybe they shouldn't have any power
over their fellow human beings.
To put it simply, rich people can be real fucked up,
gnarled dicks.
They tend to be worse tippers,
though they self-report being better tippers.
They gave less of their money to charitable causes
during the Great Recession than others.
They have a tendency to assume they can skirt around the law
or get away with not paying people for services.
The greater the income inequality where they live,
the less likely they are to be generous and giving.
I could go on.
So I will.
One study found that drivers of more expensive cars
were less likely than others
to stop for pedestrians at crosswalks
and were generally just more reckless as drivers.
And here's a story that they were more likely
than non-rich people to take candy
that they were specifically told
would otherwise go to children.
Yes, literally Mr. Burns.
They said, drop it.
Those are just studies mind you, science trash.
Who needs it?
Pachewi, take that you cat.
But there are loads of examples
of rich people proving them right.
For example, paying hefty sums and bribes
to make sure their children can get accepted
to elite universities, often with fake test scores
or as fake athletic recruits.
That's right, when you're lost out there
and you're all alone, a light is waiting
to give a $500,000 bribe from your semi-famous mom.
The ringleader of that scheme said he helped
750 wealthy families get their kids into college,
mostly for kids that wouldn't have been accepted otherwise,
and some of whom didn't want to go at all.
There's another discussion to be had about the actual value
of attending elite universities,
but those are 750 plus spots that could have gone
to students who actually worked for that opportunity,
or don't have that opportunity,
or at the very least, wanted to go.
And not only does it dissolve any notion
that our society is a meritocracy,
but it shows that wealthy people truly think
they deserve things because they are wealthy
and don't care about how their actions impact others.
You might recall that news story
where a rich teenager drove drunk and killed four people
before his lawyers said he had affluenza,
which is apparently a psychological condition
from being raised in wealth and privilege.
That term was dismissed as pseudoscientific
and having no basis in psychology.
But as it turns out, science does have a lot to say
about how being wealthy alters the way you think.
Or as this news scientist will editorialize,
fucks up your brain.
There are statistics showing that rich kids
are more likely to experience substance abuse
and just as likely as poor kids to commit crimes.
As adults, they will also drink much more often
and recklessly than most.
But what's unique is that the crimes they commit
are wildly different.
While poorer kids in the inner city tend to get busted
for things like carrying weapons,
often for self-defense reasons,
rich kids mainly get in trouble
for stealing from their peers and parents.
I'm not saying that poor people
can't also steal from their parents,
and if you're poor and watching, you have my permission.
But the differences are interesting
in that rich people seem to commit crimes
that they either think they'll get away with
or just don't care if they do.
Often it shows a disrespect
for their immediate surroundings,
stealing from the people directly around them,
or of course, massive tax evasion,
or the fact that rich people are more likely
to say they drive over the speed limit.
After all, what do they care if the penalty is a fine?
That's probably why there's at least one study showing
that rich people actually tend to shoplift
more than non-rich folk.
There's often an inherent disregard for others
on a massive scale.
For example, the endless stories of wealthy homeowners
who've tried to illegally block access to public beaches near their homes.
You know, because those public beaches are theirs now,
I guess.
No looky-loos.
The owner of this home on Pacific Coast Highway
has been fined $4.2 million
for intentionally blocking access to the beach.
And that was a compounded penalty
over many years of not complying.
The public on a public beach? Yuckies, patooey, I wish everything was a cated penalty over many years of not complying. The public on a public beach?
Yuckies, patooey, I wish everything was a cat
that I could spit on.
And while the homeowners may have legitimate gripes
about litter or noise,
it's the goddamn motherfucking beach.
You decided to buy a house there, my fellow rich person.
You can't build yourself a house next to Central Park
and then get upset when you go outside
and see old men playing chess, even if it's Magneto.
California's earliest state laws said the area
between the water line and the mean high tide line
is public.
So you can't block access to it or keep it all to yourself,
even if you own the area surrounding it.
Voters enshrined that into the state constitution in 1972.
But that hasn't stopped people from putting up phony,
no trespassing signs, or even hiring private security guards
to try and kick people out.
Here's a story about one rich dip who bought 89 acres
of land near San Francisco for $30 million
and then locked the public access gate to the local beach.
He even posted security guards and signs that read,
"'Beach closed, keep out.'"
And the fight over that beach has continued
for more than a decade,
leading the State Coastal Commission to sue in 2020.
They're demanding that the rich dip either apply
for a permit to change access to that beach
or open that road and charge no more than $2 for parking.
But the wild part, he doesn't even give a shit.
He said he regrets buying the property
and hasn't spent a single night there
and that he's only waging a decades long legal battle
on principle since he doesn't want to be forced
to run an unprofitable parking business.
He doesn't even want to win.
In 2018, he told the New York Times, quote,
if I were to ever win in the Supreme Court,
I'd be depressed about it.
I support the Coastal Act.
I don't want to weaken it by winning,
but property rights are even more important.
So just to recap, this rich dip purchased a bunch of land
around a public beach, closed the road access to that beach,
doesn't use the property he bought,
and is acting really put upon by all the people telling him
he can't just close a public beach,
but also thinks it would be bad
if he won his battle to close down the public beach.
And I don't know, but I think maybe it's a therapist
you need instead of a lawyer.
But I can't stress enough how not a fluke
this one story is.
If you combined all the public land in America
that's currently inaccessible because it's surrounded by private property,
it would be the size of Vermont, New Hampshire,
and Connecticut put together.
At 15 million acres,
that would make it the largest national park in the country.
We'd call it Grand Prick National Park
or Dildo Stone, Dildosimony,
whatever you wanna call it like that.
The wealthy are buying up huge chunks of America
to keep the public out and further isolate themselves.
And the more resources they have,
the more they tend to take.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison,
who's worth more than $100 billion,
bought the sixth largest Hawaiian island
and then immediately started making life
for the island's 3000 inhabitants absolutely miserable.
He now gives most small businesses
only 30 day commercial leases
and forced many generations long locals
to leave after cutting off their revenue streams.
Essentially, if you still live there,
Ellison is likely both your boss and your landlord.
Something to look forward to
for all you Texas residents and Tesla employees.
And that's kind of on par for the ultra rich,
to use a golf metaphor they'll understand.
To quote Brooke Harrington, a sociologist
who studied for years as a wealth manager,
"'The lives of the richest people in the world
"'are so different from those of the rest of us,
"'it's almost literally unimaginable.
"'National borders are nothing to them.
"'They might as well not exist.
"'The laws are nothing to them.
"'They might as well not exist.'"
One wealth manager told her that the ultra rich
believe that they are descended from the pharaohs
and that they were destined to inherit the earth.
I mean, pharaohs were also pieces of shit,
so that actually might check out.
And of course, none of what you're hearing is surprising.
Again, behavior like this is why we have all those rich people stereotypes.
I may be a rich guy now,
but I still remember what it meant to be poor
and to know that the wealthy are a leech on our society.
And yet, quite ironically, we've also designed this system
to give them the most power and therefore allowed them
to get away with the most crimes, huge systemic crimes,
crimes we haven't even talked about,
like how companies can just steal from their employees
and get away with it.
In 2017 and in just California,
wage theft totaled to over $320 million.
Nationally, that number is $8 billion.
Compare that to shoplifting or robbery losses,
and you have to wonder why the nightly news
is not constantly covering the massive epidemic
of rich bosses stealing from their employees.
But again, we know this.
So the question really isn't, are rich people okay?
But actually, why are rich people not okay?
And when we come back, we're going to look into that answer.
I need to know like really bad.
After all, I'm rich now.
See?
Trust your eyes, folks.
That is an actual Beanie Baby.
Last time I saw one of these,
everyone was scrambling for them
because they'd be worth millions in the future.
And they said that in the past, making now the future.
And would the past lie?
I think not.
Found this one in some idiot stroller,
just sitting there between two fleshy arm like things.
Like I know I say that money is fake all the time,
which is why I don't really pay attention
to how much things cost or my own finances,
but this has to be like worth a lot.
Someone needs to make a movie about this find.
My life is going to change starting now.
Well, at least until after this ad break.
Ah, ad breaks.
Why do I even need them?
I'm rich.
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Gonna just put this beanie baby away.
Don't want anyone to steal it
before I get it to an appraiser.
Anyway, money, it's a gas,
in that it makes people explode.
After all, if you recall from before the ads,
it's very clear that having money
doesn't make you a model citizen.
And it's not hard to speculate why.
People with lots of money exert more political control,
own more stuff, and generally have an easier time
going about their day, giving them more material
and institutional power than those who don't.
And that power dynamic is what seems to melt the rich person brain like a Kraft single
in a microwave, a simile that a rich person would not understand.
For starters, one 2009 study found that people with a lot of wealth and power tend to think
they have more personal control over life outcomes than they really do.
Even when the outcome is completely random.
The researchers asked a variety of people
to predict a dice roll,
but found that people in high power positions
uniformly wanted to roll the dice themselves
instead of letting someone else do it for them.
People in neutral or low power positions
were more likely to be okay
letting someone else roll the dice
because it's a dice roll.
And unless you're Danny Ocean,
you can't influence what happens.
Essentially, being rich and powerful
leads you to overestimate your own abilities,
even in things that are 100% based on luck or random chance.
Since these people credit themselves with high performance,
it's only natural that they think
that their own special touch is going to be more valuable
than that of others.
It's why they deny other people's lived experiences
that conflict with their own viewpoints.
After all, they have all the money, so they must be right.
Another study from 2019 confirmed this result.
People from higher social classes were more likely
to express overconfidence in their performance
in a series of basic cognitive tests,
even though they performed at about the same level
as everyone else.
But what's really wild and kind of explains a lot
about certain, let's call them suck ups to,
let's call them Elon Musk, is that independent observers in that study
also rated those people as more competent than others,
despite knowing that they didn't perform
any better in the tests.
Their overconfidence was seen as evidence of competence
to the observers.
And so as the researchers speculated,
this attitude might be partially why the rich
tend to stay that way.
In other words, this money disease also affects people
without money who see rich people as somehow more deserving
of their status.
Way to victim blame peer reviewed study
by the American Psychological Association.
At any rate, it's this overconfidence and disregard for the help of others
that leads to narcissistic and antisocial behavior.
In one of the games, we actually rigged a computer
so that die rolls over a certain score were impossible.
You couldn't get above 12 in this game.
And yet, the richer you were,
the more likely you were to cheat in this game
to earn credits
toward a $50 cash prize.
Sometimes by three to four times as much.
Wow, a TED Talk?
How quaint.
That's Paul Piff, cool name-haver
and a psychological science researcher
who's behind a few of the studies we're talking about
in this episode.
Mr. PP has highlighted some of the more negative tendencies
of the wealthy in his research.
Specifically, that people with lots of money
and high social status are more likely to cheat,
exhibit unethical behavior in business,
and lie in negotiations.
They have a great ability to morally justify
those unethical decisions in their own minds.
Piff argues that wealthy people
simply have fewer constraints
that would hinder their ability to act this way
and that their isolation from others makes it
so they don't have to think about the consequences
of their actions.
They've literally been able to buy their way
out of having to worry about what other people think.
In one experiment where Piff gave individuals $10
and asked them how much they'd like to share
with a total stranger, poor people gave an average
of 44% more than the affluent.
When those poor people picture a stranger,
they're probably thinking about someone like them,
also known as someone who could also use the money.
But when rich people picture a stranger,
they aren't thinking about a gross poor person at all.
They're much more likely picturing one of their peers,
some fucking rich person,
possibly wearing a top hat and orgy mask.
And that perverted freak certainly doesn't need that 10 bucks
and this ungenerous behavior
is a big symptom of social isolation.
Further research bears this out.
A 2016 study found that wealthier people
literally look at other people less often
while walking down the street and perhaps as a result,
have a harder time identifying changes
in facial expressions in photos.
The researchers say that the faces of others
hold less motivational relevance among the wealthy,
which is a nice academic way of saying
that you don't fucking matter to them
because they don't value you.
It's almost as if in their eyes,
the rest of us are, what could the term be?
What are they see us as?
What would it be?
It'd be non-playable characters in a video game.
Hmm, that seems like the kind of view
a person
who perhaps shouldn't be in charge
of a social media company would have.
Oh, also, speaking of divorced guys obsessed with Twitter,
rich people are fucking miserable.
I know it's hard to care much,
but it's important to note that despite being
overconfident narcissists who, again,
literally steal candy from babies,
they aren't actually happy at all.
The old adage that money can't buy you happiness
is let's say a little true,
because if you're poor and don't have your basic needs met,
money will absolutely buy happiness.
But after a certain point, that money does stop helping.
One study from Purdue University estimated this level
to be around $95,000 a year.
But above that, more money tends to equal
less life satisfaction.
I'm honestly not sure how accurate that is
or if there's a quantifiable number here.
But you get the general idea.
It's not really that money buys happiness.
It's that money removes stressors of survival
that cause unhappiness.
There is a point for everyone
where the money to happy ratio levels out.
It's of course hard to imagine
because the people often pointing this out are,
you know, rich.
I thought that success was all I needed.
That's what was gonna bring the happiness.
Buying my mom a house, when those things came,
the happiness wasn't there.
Thank you, fellow rich person, Jay Cole.
Achieving a high level of wealth or status
does a couple of things to the human brain
that cause less happiness.
That social isolation we mentioned earlier
doesn't just lead to a lack of compassion
and empathy for others,
but it also isolates them from their own community.
Rich people overall spend less time socializing
than lower income people.
But when they do, they have to hang out
with other rich people, which sounds honestly terrible.
Like imagine having to play code names with this guy.
And just like you and your friends competing
over who's better at video games
or who can fit the most bottle caps in their mouth,
this creates a feedback loop of rich people
only comparing themselves to other rich people.
It's why some of these depressing assholes
have spent the last few decades
competing to own the biggest yacht,
or one imagines trying to see who can fit
the most golden bottle caps in their mouths.
It's Warren Buffet, obviously.
No better example is the recent article in The Cut
about the Fleischman effect,
named after the classic DC Comics character Fleischman.
Fleshman.
Flesh, the Fleshman.
It details the struggle of America's moderately affluent
who don't feel quite rich enough.
Quote, since leaving New York,
Beth has found herself in tears at least once a week.
She makes $300,000 a year,
more than she's ever earned in her life,
but she's running out of minutes in the day
to squeeze out more dollars.
How do I make the $700,000 that I'm going to need
to send my daughter to private school
or do the renovation in the attic
so I can turn it into the master suite,
so I can have a tub,
and so I can have one thing I enjoy in my life, she says.
Not surprisingly, Beth isn't her real name.
The people interviewed for that article
seem to understand that complaining about their lives
is like complaining about being given
too much free weed at Coachella,
or just being given too much free weed, period.
But even all that free weed, or I guess an attic tub,
won't make her any happier.
Once people achieve a certain status,
they become terrified of losing it
and will expend way more effort
trying to maintain their status.
For example, I have already hired an armed guard
to watch my beanie baby,
and I will not sleep until that guard arrives.
Don't think I can't feel all your coveting eyes.
I feel them.
They're pointed at the beanie baby.
And so this might explain why rich people
don't actually feel rich.
Like how 35% of millionaires say that retirement
is going to take a miracle.
Or why people who make six figures
sometimes say that they're living paycheck to paycheck.
Here's a fun eyesore from something called
financialsamurai.com attempting to explain
why someone making $400,000 a year isn't actually wealthy.
The rationale is that a higher earner in a big city
doesn't have that much money left over
after they buy all the things
that rich people spend their money on.
Fancy private schools, a $1.6 million house,
one of them Squid Games tickets, and three vacations a year.
It's hard to feel rich when you constantly have to spend
all your money trying to be rich.
It's funny how it's always the poor
that are blamed for their spending choices,
because it sure appears like the wealthy
are terrible with their money.
So weird and funny that is, ha ha ha ha ha.
In fact, overall, it seems that rich people can't help
but develop these, let's call them symptoms.
You overestimate your own abilities,
think less about the feelings of others,
get increasingly isolated, and yet you still want more.
We can even circle back to that Paul Piff Ted talk
to see how all these elements come together quite perfectly
in a game of Monopoly rigged to favor
one player over the other.
The rich player started to move around the board louder,
literally smacking the board with their piece
as he went around.
We were more likely to see signs of dominance
and nonverbal signs of display, displays of power
and celebration among the rich players.
P-Dawg brought in more than 100 strangers
and then paired them off to play one-on-one.
But in each group, one of the players was randomly selected
to start with double the money,
roll two dice instead of one per turn,
and get twice as much every time they passed Go.
Monopoly, a socialist game intended to demonstrate
the ills of capitalism,
already makes for an insufferable afternoon
under the normal rules.
So as you would expect,
this very quickly became a bloodbath,
and the rich players acted accordingly.
They became boastful,
disregarding the feelings
of the strangers sitting across from them,
and even started taking more pretzels
from a communal bowl placed on the table.
After the game was over, the winners were asked
why they thought they won, and incredibly,
very few of them mentioned the coin flip.
Instead, they talked about their own strategies,
the shrewd moves they had made to buy properties
and take control of the game.
It's almost as if they had a sort of amnesia
about the obvious headstart they'd been given,
maybe because acknowledging that would make them feel bad.
We see this in more areas than just money,
people getting downright offended at the accusation
that they were given special treatment. And of course, one very specific industry comes to mind.
There is no prerequisite to be in this business. Hustle, talent, timing, hard work. Boom.
Hard work, boom. And if you have the acumen of a film degree
and a history of film, does that help you?
Of course, but it's not the requirement.
Hustle, talent, timing, hard work, boom.
That's all it takes.
And then secondarily, of course,
the acumen of a film degree and a history of film
and maybe history of film is her reference to the fact
that her mom was Janet Leigh
and her father was Tony Curtis.
Look, I take no pleasure in going after Jamie Lee Curtis.
I like Jamie Lee Curtis.
She was in Drowning Mona for Pete's sake.
And I'm told a lot of other films too.
We have our researchers on it
and we'll hopefully confirm soon, but come on.
When she got her big break in Halloween, oh, see, they confirmed she was in other on. When she got her big break in Halloween,
oh, see, they confirmed, she was in other movies.
When she got her big break in Halloween,
the producer and co-writer specifically said
that they cast her, at least in part,
because her mom was in Psycho.
They wanted the publicity, of course they did,
and of course Jamie Lee would embrace
that connection as well.
Nobody is saying she's not talented and didn't work hard, but this is a great example of how the monopoly study
manifests in the real world.
People have success and then convince themselves
that it was almost exclusively their own talent
and hard work and they downplay the massive leg up they got
by being the offspring of Hollywood royalty.
She got to roll extra dice and got double the money
and you can tell it causes her anguish to acknowledge that
because she said that it does.
And that's what the monopoly experiment shows
that this can happen to anyone,
even the star of the hit film, Drowning Mona.
That experiment has been recreated
in several different contexts around the world, by the way,
all with similar results.
And so again, this isn't a problem with rich people
so much as like with a species,
it's not in their blood or anything.
It's a problem that can affect anyone
under the right conditions.
If you get a lot of money and success,
your world changes in a certain way
that makes you lack empathy, become lonely,
grow jealous of others,
develop delusions about your own accomplishments,
and lose so much impulse control and consequences
that you will steal candy from a baby.
You literally become Mr. Burns from The Simpsons,
or I guess if you're a younger rich person,
you become Hank Scorpio,
a guy who pretends to care about his employees
but really makes things all about himself, exploiting others
to further his own diabolical plans,
possibly flamethrower themed.
Glad you made that connection too, Elon.
Maybe it's bad that you are the villain in a TV cartoon.
Very self-aware.
As an aside, boy, the Simpsons really got rich
people's numbers, huh?
They really, they really just nailed it.
Anyway, we're going to get into the consequences
of all of this after the ad break,
because as we mentioned at the top of this video,
not only are these people very troubled,
but they also have a lot of influence over the world.
And that seems dangerous.
It's dangerous for people who clearly don't like
other people to have influence over everybody's lives.
And it seems like there's a really unhealthy cycle,
perhaps a spiral, that makes it extremely hard
to break this pattern.
Rich people influence politics and run companies,
which makes them richer.
Poor people aspire to be rich,
perhaps to change the system themselves.
And if they actually got rich,
they would just succumb to the system as well.
I mean, except for me,
who will not let my Beanie Baby wealth,
which I earned, change me.
I earned that, okay?
My expert eyes spotted the Beanie Baby
and dexterously liberated from a stroller.
You can't teach that in school.
Well, you have to learn it in the real world,
on the streets where you take the thing from the stroller.
Anyway, ads first, then we'll talk more about my success.
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Ooh, yeah, that's good.
Yes, yes.
So good.
Oh, hi!
Sorry, I'm just jotting down some notes
for my future biography.
I know most rich people get there
due to a great deal of luck,
but as one of the rare cases it actually earned my wealth,
I figured it would be good to pass along my knowledge of it.
If you hear crying from the stroller,
don't worry, that is normal and good.
So good.
Okay, back to rich people
and how their warped sensibilities
have incredibly troubling consequences
for the rest of us normals.
This is most obvious in their political power
and how they manipulate our laws
to ensure they will stay rich at the expense of others.
I know you already know this
and you don't exactly need documentation to back it up,
but here's a 2013 report about how the wealthiest 1%
are much more politically involved
and also much more conservative than most Americans.
Specifically, when it comes to politics around taxes,
regulations, and naturally social welfare programs.
Because they're rich you see,
and so they know what's best for the poor.
The paper goes on to say that the top 1 10th of 1%
of Americans are even more conservative
than other rich people.
And that this appears to be why their opinions
tend to be vastly different from what most Americans
want their government to do.
We could spend the rest of this episode
just on that dynamic.
That policy makers are heavily influenced
by the super wealthy,
probably because the policy makers themselves
are largely members of that same group.
But again, you already know this
because you're very smart and great with a sword.
And we have more specific consequences
of rich person behavior to dive into,
like the fact that they consume way more
than the rest of us, because of course they do.
As of 2015, the wealthiest 10% were responsible
for nearly half of the world's carbon emissions.
And the top 1% emit more than twice as much carbon
as the poorest half of humanity combined.
The next time you feel shame for forgetting
to bring your reusable bags to the grocery store,
just look at an image of flight trackers
after the Super Bowl.
That's from 2018 and all those red lines are private jets.
It was no different this year as according to the FAA,
more than 4,000 additional takeoffs and landings
were expected in the Phoenix area.
And of course, there's a pretty good chance
that two of those jets belong to these guys.
Not to give away anyone's assassination coordinates,
of course, but this is why it's very frustrating
to talk about mitigating climate change,
because it is technically about personal responsibility,
except some people's responsibility
matters way more than others.
I think that we need to move away the focus
from only individual action to a larger systemic action.
Of course, we can't have system change without individual change.
But still, as long as we focus on only people, for example, stop flying or becoming vegan, which is, of course, good things.
But if we think that this is the way to do it, then we forget about those who are actually
responsible for the climate crisis, like the multinational companies who are purposely
destroying lives and livelihoods and the planet in order to maximize short-term profits.
Those are the people that we need to go after.
The sad child is right!
Climate activist Greta Thunberg no longer flies
and has gone vegan in her personal life.
But she recognizes that not all individual decisions
are created equal.
A manager at GameStop deciding not to fly
isn't the same as say, Elon Musk or Taylor Swift.
And if corporations or the very wealthy don't do their part,
then it matters way less what the rest of us do.
Imagine you're on a life raft and have to consume food
and your companions were three children
and also Galactus, the planet eater.
Yes, you should all try to conserve,
but clearly one of you is the actual problem.
And so it's only a matter of hours
until you run out of those delicious kids.
Elon supposedly thinks global warming is a major risk,
but not enough to give up his private jet
or to even let us see how often he's flying around in it.
But in case you're wondering,
his jet made 134 flights in 2022.
And honestly, he's not even among
the biggest offenders here.
Private jets pollute five to 14 times more per passenger
than commercial flying and the industry is booming.
Just between January and July of 2022,
Taylor Swift's private jet flew 170 times.
Please don't kill me.
Okay, I think we're okay.
A spokesperson for Swift didn't dispute the numbers,
but said the pop star's plane gets loaned out regularly.
So, okay, cool.
Glad she's a fun friend, I guess.
But no matter who is in the jet,
it is still responsible for nearly 1,200 times
the annual emissions of the average person.
Oh God, please don't hurt me.
They here, they're after me.
Okay, okay, well, maybe I'll hire a bodyguard
in addition to the Beanie Baby guard, I don't know.
And a jet actually, jets are so cool.
I should order a jet.
And I will.
But consumption isn't the only issue.
Remember that tweet of Elon saying he thought global warming
was a major risk?
Well, that was below his tweet where he said,
"'Population collapse due to low birth rates
"'is a much bigger risk to
civilization than global warming. And, um, huh? Like in what way, Musco? He doesn't give any
support for this argument or propose a solution, but I certainly wouldn't want to believe that his
decision to have so many children is because he thinks the world is underpopulated, except that's
literally what he said. And he is absolutely not alone in this thinking.
That's right.
This is a quiet but growing movement
that's kind of taking off in these tech and VC circles
based on the idea that the human population
is on the decline and especially birth rates
among certain groups.
And it's their job to fix that
by having lots and lots of children.
Gross.
Also incorrect.
Just to get this out of the way first,
we here at the Showdy are not antinatalist.
We may even be anti-antinatalist
in that we don't think climate change
or like the state of the world
are solid reasons to not have a kid.
We're not pro forced birth and we're not pro no birth.
It in fact would be great if we made it easier
and less expensive to raise a child.
And if you can afford to raise a child
and think you'd make good parents
and it would be fulfilling, et cetera, and so forth,
all that good stuff, go for it.
People had kids during the Black Plague.
It'll be tough, but it's okay.
But even more to the point,
population collapse isn't happening.
It just isn't.
While global birth rates have declined,
that's because they were pretty fucking high previously.
The human population is in no danger of disappearing.
We're likely to cross 10 billion people
in the next 60 years,
and the population might decline after that or might not.
And if it does,
it'll be because of increased access to contraception
and greater educational attainment among women,
things like that.
And yet, despite this reality,
the pro-natalist movement is a growing trend
among the wealthy specifically,
who appear to be leading by horrifying example.
Tech elites, Malcolm and Simone Collins,
seen here trying to invite you
into a Harry Potter themed threesome,
not only want to have as many children as possible,
but want their offspring to commit
to having at least eight children each for 11 generations.
If that happens, their bloodlines will eventually outnumber
the current human population.
And that's really fucking creepy, isn't it?
Poor little Octavian, Torsten, and Titan Invictus,
which are their fucking names,
are too young to understand this,
but they're apparently part of a breeding farm.
They have no idea their parents have already loaned out
their sperm and uteruses, uter, uter, uteri, baby sacks,
and Lord help them if they grow up
not wanting to fulfill their weird destiny.
But of course, while their stated motivation
is this myth of a declining population,
it's important to note that these pronatalists
are only pro reproduction for people like them.
They might not explicitly say that, but for example,
here's Elon Musk praising the opening of idiocracy
that if you recall, imagines a world where evolution
is quote, dumbed down because only poor,
non-intelligent people have kids.
Musk had said in interviews that the three biggest indicators
for having lots of children are poverty,
lack of education and religion.
So if you're like a powerful capitalist
who treats his workers poorly
and views anyone who disagrees with you as a non-person
and who bought an information sharing website
and who has out loud said he supports
the party of religious zealotry and corporate greed,
one can kind of see a pretty clear picture
that he seems to want to have a bunch of secret,
wealthy, super smart babies to lead the army
of poor religious misinformed masses
to shape the future as he sees fit.
Just a little theory based on his words and actions.
Anyway, here's another much more bizarre example
of tech billionaire, Marc Andreessen,
who's blocked me on Twitter for some reason,
I don't know why,
warning that chat bots and VR waifus
will mean that only the most aggressive men and women
will breed and send us back to the Bronze Age.
He's, you know how the best and smartest people
are the ones susceptible to fucking virtual waifus?
Powerful insight, Mr. Andreese.
Only a truly great mind could be the co-founder of Netscape,
the absolutely not the first web browser ever made.
Funny how these people seem to think every invention
before the internet was natural selection
and somehow only now are we screwing that up.
And of course, there's another word for what these weird freaks are describing.
Isn't there? Yeah. I mean, you know, based on the very simple definition of eugenics,
which is manipulating the gene pool to promote superior characteristics. And I put that in
quotation marks. That is their belief, that's what this is.
And in fact, some of the people involved in these movements
don't even deny that, they'll freely use the word eugenics.
Right, they may not say it publicly in so many words,
but eugenics is absolutely what we're circling here.
Musk and others like him are very dedicated to the idea
that wealth is directly linked to IQ,
and that it's more important than ever for rich people
like him to have a lot of children.
So weird how an IQ test developed by a bunch of racist
and wealthy eugenicists would constantly result
in a bunch of pro-eugenics conclusions.
So darn weird, why?
Oh, but even if IQ tests were accurate, which they aren't,
it's still not true that wealthy people have higher IQs.
And so none of this aligns with Elon Musk's claim
that he cares about the future of humanity
so much as it shows that he cares
about the future of him-manity
and the future of certain other people.
I'm not gonna call him a white nationalist,
you know, for legal reasons,
but there's a simple through line
from Musk encouraging rich people to procreate
to Victor Orban's policies aimed at promoting growth
of traditional families to the Christchurch,
New Zealand mass shooter starting his manifesto with,
"'It's the birth rates, it's the birth rates,
"'it's the birth rates.'"
Again, not saying that all rich people are Nazis,
seriously not saying that,
but you see how easy it could be for a person
with little consideration for others
and overconfidence in their own value
to conclude that their DNA must be superior
and then get wrapped up in this kind of thinking,
like Nazi thinking.
Also, it helps if you grew up in an apartheid,
but I'm not naming any names, all right?
I'm absolutely not naming any stupid, insecure,
overwhelmingly divorced names.
And this creepy eugenics hogwash seems to stem
from a larger ethical position known as long-termism.
As the name implies, long-termism emphasizes
that society should make decisions
based on the long-term consequences for humanity,
focusing on the lives of people generations from now,
or even thousands or millions of years in the future.
Okay, sure.
So I assume that they think we need to prioritize
the mitigation of climate change,
avert nuclear war,
and ensure an adequate social safety net
for the long haul, right?
Except it turns out that's not what they care about at all.
We've talked about this before on a smaller scale
because it comes up a lot when talking about tech people
like Elon Musk.
Invention is, as you might know, the mother of kneading stuff.
When Wordy McWordsmaker invented the first printing press,
they weren't thinking about how to create the internet
several thousands of years from then.
Why would they?
They were solving an immediate problem in their society,
but something has broken in these tech people's brains
where they keep trying to invent things
based on what their own vision of the future should be
instead of what people actually need.
Neuralink, Musk's monkey torturing company,
claims it can eventually use brain chips
to help people with disabilities.
And yet when grilled on this by a respected medical expert
Elon seems to have no idea how that would actually work. What is happening?
It's allowing it to do that like the wires these small wires
They're stimulating these areas of the brain and then is it that the areas of the brain are there?
They're losing some sort of electrical force like what it what is happening? Yeah. Yeah
It's like it's like the thing. It's like a bunch of circuits
and there's some circuits that are broken
and we can fix those circuits,
substitute for those circuits.
You see it'll shock your brain or something.
Now fix it.
It's like that.
It's like whatever you just said to me.
You guessed and then the answer is like, yeah, it. It's like that, it's like whatever you just said to me. You guessed and then the answer is like,
yeah, it's kind of like that.
Because that of course,
isn't what Musk actually created the company for.
He created Neuralink because he wants to achieve
a transhuman evolution where our brains are wired
into the world like a computer.
Oh, we can play Tetris in our minds.
Neuralink's first product isn't designed
to help someone with a disability,
but to let us control our smartphones
with brain chips.
And do we really need that?
We can already control smartphones
with our voices or fingers.
And there are of course, accessibility barriers
for some people regarding that.
But that's not why he's doing it.
He's doing it because he thinks it's like
a neat little sci-fi gizmo.
He's thinking about his sci-fi dream and working backwards.
And because he's so hungry for that result,
he's likely going to cut corners.
And in fact, might end up achieving nothing
beyond some fried monkey brains.
That isn't to say brain shifts won't happen,
but it will more likely be made by somebody else
who is actually focused on treating the immediate need.
You know, people with brain diseases or mobility issues
that would be helped by a chip.
And that really sums up long-termism,
the idea that we need to focus on some far off
utopian fantasy to the point that we ignore
or even abuse the world right in front of us.
After all, what's a few dead monkeys
or 1500 other dead animals or massive worker layoffs
or even a climate catastrophe
when the goal is to have space colonies
and immortalize the human race.
And they really do fantasize about living in space.
They even have a spot picked out
in the form of the collection of galaxies
called the Virgo Supercluster.
As former long-termism adherent Emil P. Torres writes,
"'The suffering of those living today
"'would be minuscule compared to the potential benefit,
"'as they see it, of having 10 to the 23rd
"'biological humans living pleasure-filled lives
"'throughout the Virgo supercluster.'"
So we're clear, 10 to the 23rd is a one
followed by 23 zeros.
And so of course, this all ties into the breeding fantasy,
because to them, one of the best ways to reach
that utter sci-fi nonsense is to pump out
a bunch of rich kids.
Swedish philosopher, Nick Bostrom,
a major influence on the long-termists
writes of dysgenic pressures in the current world
as in undesirable characteristics that should be bred out.
Quote, it is possible that advanced civilized society
is dependent on there being a sufficiently large fraction
of intellectually talented individuals.
Currently, it seems that there is a negative correlation
in some places between intellectual achievement
and fertility.
He goes on to say that genetic engineering
is rapidly approaching the point
"'where it will become possible to give parents the choice
"'of endowing their offspring with genes
"'that correlate with intellectual capacity,
"'physical health, longevity, and other desirable traits.'"
Always great when someone talks about
desirables and undesirables.
In short, these are people who watched Gattaca
and completely misunderstood the message of it.
I'm not editorializing, I'm not saying this
just so we can show you that sick poster.
Quote from that pronatalist couple, the Collinses,
"'We are the underground railroad of Gattaca babies
"'and people who want to do genetic stuff with their kids.'"
Literally name dropping the cautionary film, Gattaca as their goal.
It really can't be stressed enough
how unselfaware they are about any of this.
As when asked about the pro-natalist movement,
Malcolm Collins told the National Post,
"'Imagine if there really were some secret cabals
"'of rich dudes trying to just make more of themselves.
"'Wouldn't that be outrageous and wild?'
"'Ah yes, wouldn't that be wild?
These weird rich freaks want to give their offspring
a major genetic edge to populate the Earth
and then go infest some far off super cluster.
It's literal galaxy brain stuff that some of the wealthiest
and most powerful people in the world subscribe to.
Elon directly parroted the idea
that rich people tend to have fewer kids,
and he's given $1.5 million
to Bostrom's Future of Humanity Institute,
which also counts among its supporters,
hedge fund manager, Luke Ding,
and secretive venture capitalist, Alexander Thomas.
Bostrom's papers, Existential Risks and Astronomical Waste,
focus on the potential future value of humanity
and how that value is tied
to technologically manipulating
the human body to enhance ourselves physically
and eliminate aging, if you can afford it.
You come away from these papers
with the unmistakable realization
that those who accept this stuff don't see a ton of value
in the lives currently being lived.
They don't care about humanity.
They care about their idea of the potential future
of their chosen humanity.
They think that we are once again, NPCs in their world.
In fact, the Collinses have a different term for it.
They call them husks as in quote,
"'We call them a husk because when someone halts
"'the process of creative destruction,
"'refusing to explore,
weigh and sometimes to accept new ideas,
they stop being meaningfully human,
in our house's view at least.
Cool quote from demons.
But to be fair and balanced, you know,
after all, if you were dealt such a statistically
and probably good hand, it would be really hard
not to think you were the main character,
even to the point
that you might start believing that you are living
in a simulation just for you.
We like to pretend we're talking about eccentric traits here
but how is this not a serious delusion?
One that is really dangerous when you think about
how much power these people have.
If you got on a plane and the pilot announced
that nothing mattered because everyone is living
in the matrix,
you'd probably have some safety concerns.
These people have for the most part given up
on our current civilization
and are preparing for the next one,
which incidentally also belongs to them.
For example, there's Project Eureka,
a startup town the Collinses tried to raise money for
during the pandemic,
where all community rules would be ultimately set,
all disputes resolved by them.
In fact, they flat out say they don't care about poor people
or improving people's baseline
in order to lift everyone up.
If you want to make the future better for everyone,
and you could choose to dramatically increase
the educational outcomes of the bottom 10% of people,
or the top 0.1% of people, spoiler alert,
they say choose the 0.1%.
They also claim to be secular Calvinists,
hopefully completely unrelated to scientific Calvinism,
which is, you know, Nazi shit,
but no holding my breath on that.
It seems like maybe it's like pretty much
the exact same thing, and at that point,
it's a semantic game, so maybe that. It seems like maybe it's like pretty much the exact same thing. And at that point it's a semantic game.
So maybe that's what they're saying it is.
And they do say it's not cultural or racial,
but they're also concerned about demographic collapse.
So a family of contradictions, I guess, is my point.
It's this self-fulfilling prophecy
where they think society is doomed.
And in turn, they do nothing to help society,
often even hurting it and showing contempt
for those who make up society.
And after doing their best to ruin civilization,
many among the super rich are hoping to escape its collapse,
preparing for doomsday scenarios
by purchasing private islands
or securing an underground bunker
with a fully gassed up helicopter
ready to go.
Many rich survivalists refer to FEMA,
the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
as foolishly expecting meaningful aid
and believe they, the venture capitalists
and hedge fund managers, should be the ones who survive
and rule after, well, take your pick.
Steve Hoffman, the co-founder and CEO of Reddit,
credits the 1998 film, Deep Impact,
with turning him into a doomsday prepper.
His plan for a disaster is to gravitate to other people.
But he phrases that by saying, quote,
"'Being around other people is a good thing.
"'I also have this somewhat egotistical view
"'that I'm a pretty good leader.
I will probably be in charge or at least not a slave
when push comes to shove.
Okay, so if you're not in charge, you won't be a slave.
But if you are in charge, will there still be slaves?
Just very interesting that he sounds kind of excited
for an apocalypse and automatically assumes
there will be leaders and slaves in that scenario,
winners and losers, with him, of course,
being on the right side of that equation.
That's what the idea of community means to him.
And this knucklehead's not even a billionaire.
He's worth a fucking pathetic $10 million,
according to a website that makes up
how much money they think people have.
The doomsday prepping is a good example
of the uncomfortable amount of sci-fi fantasizing
among the wealthy that conveniently isolates them
from disgusting commoners.
Funny how that's always the end result.
Elon Musk was inspired to start
a whole tunnel digging company
just so he personally wouldn't have to deal
with traffic anymore.
And as an afterthought said,
he'd sell his leftover dirt for poor people's houses.
And of course he has to frame it as a practical solution
and not a selfish one.
We often see this with all these billionaires
trying to go to space, apparently just to feel something.
But when asked to justify private space travel, they often give answers like this.
What would you say to those people who say that this is a misuse of resources?
Well, I can understand it, but I think maybe they're not fully educated as to what space
does for Earth. What does it do for Earth? Well, first of all, people wouldn't be listening to
this program, most likely, if it wasn't for space.
Space is connecting the billions of people
who are not connected, you know, on telephones,
on other things.
Oh, okay.
So we're not educated enough to understand it.
It says the guy whose big success was opening up
the record store you'd go to when your mom
was taking too long at Nordstrom.
But what Richard Branson is pointing out
is that the push for space travel,
usually a government funded situation,
often creates or improves modern technology.
And he's not wrong,
except that's not why he's going to space, is it?
His company is promoting space tourism for rich people,
starting at $450,000 a ticket.
That magnanimous, profound explanation has nothing to do
with what his space company is doing.
Maybe, you know, maybe they will make some amazing
and helpful technological discoveries
while trying to pump their billionaire passengers
full of teenager blood,
but that's not why they're doing it.
Guys like Jeff Bezos try to justify this saying that
while critics of billionaire space travel are mostly right,
he still thinks it's important to look to the future
as a species and as a civilization.
Again, they don't really know
how their specific space projects will help
our immediate needs in a practical way.
It's just like vibes for them.
In Star Trek, they're in space.
Therefore, to get to a Star Trek future,
we need to be in space.
It doesn't matter if there are a million steps to do first
or problems we have that we shouldn't be bringing to space.
And of course, what that really means
is that they want to be in space.
They can't just say that,
so they have to pretend like there's a selfless reason
they're doing this.
And look, I know that we're talking about the extremes here.
Not all rich people are this far gone.
Larry David isn't out here dreaming about injecting
his essence into a cyborg body on Rigel IV,
even though he's the first who should be doing that.
But I think we've shown that in general,
greater wealth leads to greater self-focus
and isolation from community.
And as a person gets deeper in that hole,
their beliefs get more and more skewed,
not towards like smartness or whatever,
but towards gnarled, antisocial,
anti-human dystopian beliefs.
As wealth inequality widens,
this is only going to get worse.
And as we've already mentioned,
this could happen to anyone.
It's almost as if, and just stick with me on this.
It's almost as if this is a health problem.
It's almost as if being ridiculously wealthy
does something to your brain that is bad
the same way any addiction could be bad.
And while I'm not exactly saying
we need to feel sorry for rich people,
we do kind of need to feel some compassion for this,
you know, because that's the only way to fix it.
And we do need to fix it
because this health problem affects everybody.
These people are controlling our lives.
These people.
Are controlling our lives.
Of course, I'm not exactly sure
how to actually address this as a health crisis, which it is.
The GOP loves to say they're concerned
about people with mental health problems
having access to guns,
even though they don't actually care about that.
But perhaps we should do the same
with rich people's access to lawmakers.
For example, we should overturn the enabler
that is Citizens United.
Democrats are already trying to do that,
so I'm sure it'll happen any day now.
Then maybe if they don't have as much influence,
we can talk about a public health approach to the issue.
Encourage the ultra wealthy to give up most of their money
and or make it harder for the super rich
to passively generate more wealth.
Maybe a cap on the amount of wealth
they are allowed to accumulate
so as to not irrevocably
break their brains and our society.
You know, cut them off, maybe they've had enough.
The Institute for Policy Studies says that many billionaires
who pledged to give away the majority of their money
were unable to do so because their assets
simply grew too fast.
Even Mackenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos' ex-wife,
isn't able to give her money away fast enough,
and she's donated $14 billion
to more than 1,600 nonprofits in just a span of four years.
They literally can't cure themselves of this if they try,
and so they clearly need help, right?
I know I'm being a little cheeky here,
but considering that the other proposed alternative
is that we eat the rich,
this is actually quite compassionate.
Like in a zombie film, you try to find a cure first,
and we could still try to find a cure
for the money disease that all rich people have,
except for me, you know, the only good rich person,
Cody Johnston.
And who knows, maybe I can really turn things around
for rich people everywhere by setting a good example.
So what's important then is that I stay rich, obviously,
as one of the good rich people, that's very important.
And I owe it all to hard work, a superior brain,
the beard, obviously, and of course, this beanie baby that I earned through,
what is going on?
Beanie booze?
This isn't a beanie baby at all.
It's a worthless plush garbage doll.
Oh, oh my, oh my God, I'm ruined.
Oh my God, I already bought six boats on my credit card.
Oh fuck, what am I gonna do?
That stroller toddler tricked me, that fucker.
I'm gonna sue.
I'm gonna sue the toddler.
I'm gonna sue the parents.
I'm gonna sue the president of the United States.
I'm gonna sue all of you.
Then I'm gonna get a federal bailout and be fine
because I'm rich and I've earned it.
And I'm a job creator.
Okay.
Crisis averted.
Phew.
That was close.
I almost lost control there.
Okay.
Time to celebrate with a new boat.
Yes, one boat please.
Don't worry folks, I figured it out. I'm gonna take all the stuff that I bought
when I thought I was rich
and I'm gonna do street magic.
Oh, whoa, it's a live fox I pulled out of this fucking hat.
Okay, make sure to like and subscribe
so I can pay off all of my debts and I'll see you next time. Whoa, it's a live fox I pulled out of this fucking hat.
Okay, make sure to like and subscribe
so I can pay off all of my debts
and check out our patreon.com slash some more news.
We've also got a podcast called Even More News
and this show is a podcast.
It's called Some More News.
You can check it out if you wanna listen
instead of what you just did,
we got a merch store with merchandise
and sometimes Warmbo is on that merchandise,
other times he's not.
And although he has touched every product,
so there's a little bit of Warmbo in everything.
You know what?
That's the end.
That's all I have to say.
Thanks for watching.
Goodbye.
We wanted to get Mark Cuban for this
and he responded to me, but he said he was too busy.
So he's interested.
Next time.
See you later, Mark.
Who is definitely watching this.
Friend of the show.