Retrospect
Retrospect
It’s Hard To Vote Against Santa Claus | Retrospect Ep.241
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In this week’s episode we discussed the growing debate over government overreach, examining proposals such as IP28 also known as the PEACE Act, and what they could mean for privacy, innovation, and individual rights. We also dive into the fight over AI ownership and regulation in Washington, D.C., discussing who controls the future of artificial intelligence and how policymakers are shaping that future. Join us for a thoughtful conversation on power, technology, and the balance between public interest and personal freedom.
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Keywords
Oregon Initiative Petition 28, Peace Act, animal cruelty exemptions, AI ownership, American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, government overreach, public ownership, AI regulation, data centers, 3D printing, government control, AI safety, job displacement, creative expression., AI overreach, government control, creative expression, public opinion, comment sections, email responses, podcast platforms, support, rights and permissions, emergency powers, public-private partnerships, small business regulations, language control, safety and compliance.
Jason
Today, on retrospect, we are looking at two stories that sound like they came from opposite ends of the political universe, but they are really asking the same question: Who gets control when government decides private life has gone too far? In Oregon Initiative Petition 28 the Peace Act says it's about eliminating animal cruelty exemptions. Supporters frame it as compassion. Opponents say it could effectively criminalize hunting, fishing, trapping, farming, livestock processing, and even routine animal husbandry. That's not a small policy tweak, that is taking activities that have existed since before Oregon was Oregon and dragging them into the criminal code, and while Oregon is fighting over animals, Washington is fighting over algorithms. Senator Bernie Sanders is pushing a new idea, the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act. The proposal would give the public a 50% ownership stake in the largest AI companies, not through a normal tax, but through stock. Open AI, Anthropic, XAI, and others would help fund a government-run wealth fund. Sanders says AI was built from the collective knowledge of humanity, so humanity should share in the profits now, depending on where you sit, that either sounds like justice or like Uncle Sam walking into Silicon Valley with a crowbar at a clipboard. But here's why this matters. The public is nervous. Polling shows Americans want AI regulated. Gallup found 80% adults say a government should prioritize AI safety and data security, even if it slows development. Maris found 67% believe AI will eliminate more jobs than it creates. So, Sanders is not pulling this out of thin air. He is riding a wave of anxiety. The bigger question is whether that anxiety becomes protection or control, because whether it's IP 28 in Oregon or AI ownership in Washington, the pattern is familiar, a moral argument, a sweeping government solution, and millions of ordinary people wondering what just got redefined while they were at work. Today we ask the question nobody in power likes to answer when government says this is for your own good. Who gets to define the good and who pays the price?
Ian
welcome to the Retrospect podcast, a show where people come together from different walks of life and discuss a topic from their generation's perspective. My name is Ian, and as always, I'm joined by Stoney,
Stoney
hello,
Ian
and Jason.
Jason
Hello, everyone.
Ian
How's it going?
Stoney
Well, you said a keyword in there, not AI company, AI companies,
Ian
yeah.
Stoney
Okay, they want to control every AI company, because if the government owns 50% you think even share is going to do you any good with the government? Yeah, I think it's more of
Jason
a.. I think it's more of. I think the socialistic tendencies of Bernie Sanders is coming out in that, in that, in that argument he's trying to make, that, and on a surface I understand the idea that AI is making, in essence, it's making its money off the it is making its money off the collective knowledge of humanity. I mean, that's they're using that that has been accumulated over over decades and centuries,
Ian
yeah,
Jason
to produce, produce a product. So I understand on some level where he's coming from. At the same time, man, you talk about you can step into a briar patch with that one. I mean, it's
Stoney
well, where do you think the money is going to come from to buy this 50% stock? Okay, that's our taxpayer dollars. We aren't going to get that stock, that's not going to be in the name of the American people, that's government-owned entities, and that's illegal in America. Okay, we're not going to get profits. Okay, we're not going to get our monthly check right off of AI, because we, the people, won't own that. The government will own that,
Jason
right?
Stoney
And we'll have control over that.
Jason
Well,
Stoney
then they'll have control over all the data centers.
Jason
Well, good, a good portion of them, yeah.
Stoney
Who's making the data centers, the AI companies,
Jason
right?
Stoney
Okay, so this is this is nothing but about control, and then when you mix this with the letter of the law,
Jason
right,
Stoney
Oregon. Hmm, for.. oh, this isn't about stopping people from hunting. Oh, yeah. Okay, that's a lie. That's a lie. The wording of it is very particular. Oops, I'm gonna pass it up in my little notes here. Yeah, on what the government, the state government, specifically the state police, like
Ian
it's a slippery slope, where,
Jason
yeah, they're trying to eliminate some, some exemptions when it comes to animal cruelty, and I, of course, it's always the devil's in the details with this stuff, and
Ian
it's vague enough where, like, you could potentially push it as far as outright criminalizing everything from trapping to, if you have a, if you have rats in your basement, or if you have whatever, you can't, you can't, you can't trap able to trap them, or you know, or inhumanely dispose
Stoney
of them in some way, whatever, yeah, yeah, so that kind of stuff. Well, the claim classifications are for IP 28 directly says hunting and fishing are illegal. Okay, that's misleading. That's not textually accurate. Right? Right. I P 28 removes animal animal cruelty exemptions for hunting, fishing, trapping, livestock rodeos, farming, and research verified, so what does that mean, right? Is shooting something animal cruelty now? Right now, you can go to jail if you hook a fish and it takes more than 10 seconds to get it in. Are you being cruel to an animal, right? And then its IP could effectively criminalize many normal hunting, fishing, livestock practices plausible legal consequence,
Ian
right? And I thought, so
Stoney
that's what they're saying, is is that that's not what it says, right? But you
Ian
can take it so far.
Stoney
Yes,
Ian
yeah, yeah, do that. So, if for some reason I don't know, yeah, I thought it was, I thought whenever I initially had heard about this, it was kind of said jokingly, but then, whenever I have, like, looked into a little bit more, I was like, especially because we live in the great state of Louisiana, which is called Sportsman Paradise, for that very reason, hunting and fishing, and, and all those things, I feel like is in our people's blood, along with a lot of other things, because
Stoney
you have to think about it, hunting has an exemption, okay, right, right. Fishing has an exemption, because it may take you 10 minutes or five minutes to get right. You're using a bullet or an arrow or something, so there's an exemption for that being supposedly cruel to an animal. So those exemptions are now gone, or will be when this passes. It has not, as of yet, right? Of course, yeah, they're
Ian
voting on it, or that's the once it removes
Stoney
that exemption,
Ian
yeah. Now, what do you do? Yeah, and I think also the crazy thing, too, is again it's one of the, I guess, like we said before, a second ago, it feels like a slippery slope, where, like, how now, what does this involve, like someone who is in the livestock industry in Oregon, simple farming, right? Yeah, or like, again, like, I like how far, like, would let's say, for instance, like you had to put down an animal for some reason for it to be, you know, less cruel, or you know, because they weren't able to live a healthy life, or whatever the reason may be. Would you not be able to do that anymore without going to prison? Right, yeah, it's like that kind of stuff, where it's like it kind of the extension of it gets a little bit. So let me throw this at y'all. This is
Stoney
an executive summary of government overreach. Government overreach is not merely a law that someone dislikes, it is the use of public power beyond constitutional limits, statutory authority, procedural fairness, and ethical accountability. It usually appears through coercion, vague criminalization, property seizure, speech compulsion, selective enforcement, surveillance, emergency bypass, public private pressure, or regulatory capture. The central analytical rule is simple: separate emotion from authority. Ask what power is being used, who authorized it, what right is burdened, what process exists, whether compensation is required, and whether enforcement is neutral or factional. Okay, some overreach is a clear constitutional violation, some law, some is lawful but abusive, some is extreme but democratic,
Ian
quote unquote, because we're
Stoney
not a Democrat state here, we're not. Some claims are exaggerated, misleading, or false. The constitutional line is crossed when government stops protecting rights and starts managing ordinary life through obedience, silence, surrender, and state-approved belief. So and both of those are tied up into the same thing.
Ian
Can I just, for a minute, can I take a
Stoney
58 Sorry, just for a moment. Can
Ian
I, can I take a rabbit trail? But it's all gonna, it's all gonna come back to what this topic is for a second. The there was something my roommate and I are now the proud owners of a 3D printer and we've been having a lot of fun with 3D printing a whole bunch of different tools and little gadgets and fun little props and things like that just we've been having fun with it I didn't realize how much this episode was also centered around something that I just watched yesterday. There's a video I watched from somebody who he talks a lot about how our consumer electronics are like constantly online and they're constantly need to be updated and they're all part of a database and like you can never truly just like own a piece of technology that's just like a piece of technology is yours anymore, in in New York, I think they're in the process of trying to approve being able to have your 3D printer on some sort of database, which would allow it, which would have to, it would have to be on online at all times to be a part of this database to track what you're printing on your printer, and if the algorithm, or if the spyware, or whatever, want to call it, inside the machine has the feeling that you're printing gun parts, quote unquote, it will, it will stop, it will cease to print, or if it, if it tracks your, your, your, your history, it will cease to allow you to print certain things, and so a lot of people are kind of getting like government overall, right, right, but but the thing is, is that when again this is the same same situation is happening with this IP 28 situation that's happening with that as well, whenever you start looking in the details of it. It's not just like consumer 3D printers, it's CNC machines, it's laser engravers, it's, it's, it's everything from like concrete 3D printers, it's like, whatever, like the reach of how far it goes is everything, and if, and so that means that everything needs to have some sort of rate regulated, quote unquote, software on it that can, like, if it, if it detects that you're printing something that it doesn't like, it can stop you.
Stoney
Why do you think there needs to be so many data centers? Oh, well, yeah, this is all the information that they want to pull in. Yeah, because you can with your printer, you can make gun parts,
Ian
parts you can't, you can't, there's a common misconception, you can't, print a gun,
Stoney
but you can, you can, you can suppress her,
Ian
well, again, you can, print parts, you can make
Stoney
parts, yeah, but you can't really, you know, right,
Ian
all the things that has the, and that's that, that's also the confu, I don't say the confusing part, the misleading part about a lot of that bill I'm talking about is obviously anything that is that is part of like the firing housing that deals with the combustion of the actual and the propulsion of the bullet is all metal machined perfect parts you have to purchase beforehand that you could already purchase now here's right, you can purchase them online.
Stoney
You can't do a weapon with gunpowder.
Ian
Okay,
Stoney
you can make an air-compressed shotgun just as well as a regular shotgun. Right, right. And yeah, there's a, there's a, there's a version out there, double barrel, Jason Shay, yeah, that you print the casing,
Ian
yeah, yeah,
Stoney
you print, and then everything's printed, and it has a special tube on it with the compressed round gas in it, and you put, and when it's just like a regular, so maybe even a little more forceful, yes, there's
Ian
a, there's a couple of, like, like what you call it, not articles, like forums that I was reading up on this a little bit, and people are saying there's like a lot of, a lot of like both, and like pictures of things where it's like this is technically like the grip of a pistol, but also this is the grip of, like, a hand drill. This is a suppressor, but this is also like a one-way flow valve, like a Tesla valve, like I talked about. It's like things like that, like there's like a camera mount on, like a hot shoe mount on a camera. It's like, oh, that's actually a potentially could be a mount for a site of, like, it's things like that, where people are like, this is this could potentially affect manufacturing as a whole, not just for us, but like for companies and for other, because again, you know,
Jason
is it does this printer, is it like use a plastic material to get kind of melts it and kind of forms whatever, there's a couple.
Ian
All different types of plastic you can use, but there are some one in particular. It's we don't have it here at the house, because you have to have like an enclosure for it because of the fumes, but it's called ABS plastic, and a lot of times you can, if we were to just change out a nozzle and get a housing for that one, we could, um, print ABS plastic, and you can make like, like, hard, tough tools with it, so it's like it's meant to be more rigid, whereas the stuff we're printing with right now, even if you print it really thick, if you were like really bang at it, you could probably break it, you know, but right, but
Stoney
there's ways to do it, yeah, yeah,
Ian
there's ways you can get around it, you know what,
Stoney
I find it Black Friday every time I go,
Ian
what's that,
Stoney
rolls of filament,
Jason
there you go, rolls and
Stoney
rolls and rolls and rolls of filament,
Ian
really.
Stoney
Yeah, $10 a pop, $10 a pop.
Ian
I may just, I may give you a crisp $20 bill and tell you to give you something, yeah. But so, anyway, it's like this whole thing again, like I said, once you start looking in the details of it, it's like it's not just, and not only that, again, it also goes to it's what is it called, that is it, the disparity of the commons, or something like that, or it's like it's not just, it's not just New York who's going to have this problem. The company we bought ours from is called Bamboo Labs.
Stoney
Okay,
Ian
and so, like, Bamboo Labs, obviously, is going to want to be able to sell printers in all of the United States, and to do that, they have to comply with New York, and so to do that, they'll just put the compliance for everyone. The same thing with, like, California stuff, a lot of times packaging will have a bunch of, like, cancer warnings on it, because they have to comply with California's legislation, or whatever, and so they just put it on everything for everybody. It's
Stoney
not feasible to make some for New York for everybody, right. And so the thing is, like, we're gonna,
Ian
we're gonna potentially have, if we, if you were to, I'm not sure if this is gonna, if it's in full effect yet, or if it, if it will be, but potentially, if you're gonna buy a 3D printer in the next few years, or we may get a far more update on ours that, like, has surveillance software in it that watches what we're doing, and like, if it's here's another problem with that,
Stoney
and we kind of touched on this, so we touched on that in one of the last episodes with the car stuff. Yeah, okay, right. Number one, the National Road, whatever, that made this law that now in 2027 all vehicles must do this. We didn't vote on that. That's not a constitutional law. Okay, the ATF, right now, is under a bunch of scrutiny for a bunch of their stuff, because it's being deemed unconstitutional. So, how can a group that we did not elect not vote for come in and say you have to do this. How can a state come in and say you can do this?
Jason
Right, it goes back to the.. it's called
Stoney
government. Well, it's government
Jason
overreach, but this is where I think a lot of people kind of.. the way government is structured. I mean, they mean you legislators pass laws, then those laws are in essence have to be interpreted and enforced by the executive branch. So that's
Stoney
actually wrong. That's actually wrong.
Ian
The
Stoney
Congress legislates, the executive enforces, and the courts interpret correct. That's the way it's supposed to be.
Jason
But that's what I'm saying, so okay, they pass a law, so now it comes down to the executive level. Look, so okay, got this law. How do we enforce this law? Because law doesn't address every potential circumstance that you're going to run into as the call the rubber meets the road. Yeah, so what happens? What do they.. what's the famous thing that starts happening? It's called rule making. That's where, especially at the federal level, where the courts have granted these executive, the executive branch, broad latitude.
Ian
Yeah, and
Jason
how rules are written, and how to enforce, in essence, Congress's laws. Yeah. Okay. So that's that's where the trouble, like ATF, where you know the law says this. Well, again, we now we got to kind of distill it down, and we got to kind of get into the more weeds with it, right? What's this? What's that? We're going to classify this, classify that. So that's where I think the trouble comes in is, is the rulemaking, and I think, unfortunately, over time, Congress is kind of just
Ian
right hand, you know,
Jason
just they kind of let the executive branch, I mean, I could tell you that one of the biggest issues is when it comes down to the EPA, okay, the Environmental Protection Agency and the laws, and how that mandates down just down here in Louisiana.
Ian
Yeah,
Jason
we just had a law passed this legislative session that did away with inspection stickers,
Stoney
except,
Jason
except for the people that are in the non-attainment area.
Stoney
Now you. Have to get a $6 barcode on your car that says I don't have to have an inspection sticker for emissions,
Ian
okay?
Stoney
You still have to pay for the $6 but you still, the barcode, you still
Jason
have to be tested for emissions, so
Stoney
you're in an emission area, correct? But what I'm talking about is the people who aren't in an emission area have to have the $6 barcode stating that I'm not in an emissions area, so I don't need it. I mean, this
Jason
is a perfect example at the state level right now that there was a program called the Motor Vehicle Inspection Program that was originally designed to ensure that the vehicles operating on the road had all the proper equipment on them, and were safe, and had insurance, and on and on and on. Unfortunately, it's kind of morphed into something that it well, I shouldn't say the program necessarily hasn't morphed. I think the technology and cars have now made the inspection sticker program a bit of a kind of a waste, really, and now, of course, it's a money generator at the state level, but unfortunately became very unpopular, was a lot of black market involved with inspection stickers, and on and on and on with that, so I'm
Ian
not gonna say any names, but the amount of times I've had people say, like, don't worry, I know a guy, I'll get you a get you a sticker, which
Jason
then goes back to defeating the purpose of, yeah, you know, before they had inspection stickers, the police would stop you, yeah, for violation stops, yeah, your windshield wipers not working, your headlights, your headlamps are not working, turn signals are not operating, all the things that you're required to have on your vehicle and to be operating to make it change
Stoney
the exhaust on your vehicle, right? Anything that was not, if your car came off the factory, if you put wider tires on it, yeah. You know, if you did this, if you, this squatted stuff coming out now, right? All of these things, they could stop you far incite you for it,
Jason
right? So, at that, that's when, but now the
Stoney
inspection companies, they don't do that. You got tires too wide, they don't care. You got tent too far down, they don't care, right? They just, they're making their little money, the government's getting their money, and it's not really helping. Yeah, the only thing that they did insure was insurance, and they had to go into the computer, right? And there's a paper trail, verify. So, other
Ian
than that, at a
Jason
minimum, at a minimum, it, they, you know, it had, I would think, some good,
Ian
yeah,
Jason
because it didn't make people, you know,
Ian
right,
Jason
check some very basic things once a year,
Ian
right,
Jason
but you know the inspection program now it goes away. I think it effectively ends at the end of this year, and
Stoney
well, they still gonna be writing tickets for Inspired, and I suppose you just scratch it off, according to the law, I think, according
Jason
to the law, I think, I think I saw a news article regarding that they would stop writing tickets at the end of end of the end of June.
Ian
Okay, so you see,
Stoney
I say that you laugh, but they, everybody tells you, got an inspired inspection sticker, scratch it off, yeah. So they can't see
Ian
it right,
Stoney
because if they're driving down the road and they see, how do they know you're not from missileing, right? Because they're not going to turn around and look and make sure you're licensed for every car that goes by. So just scratch it off now.
Jason
So you know, once again, said, but this is the problem. The reason I brought this up is because here's a state level program that has been deemed we don't need any more, but because of this federal non-attainment issue with air pollution, which comes from what the EPA and how rules are written, our this area, that, that you know, there's a certain area, there's so many parishes that if you live within there, you have to still get emissions check, whereas someone else in another part of the state,
Ian
yeah, doesn't, won't
Jason
have to worry about that, they'll have
Stoney
to get the $6 sticker saying that they don't have to get the think
Jason
the I think the sticker has, well, even I think even the people that are living in the non-attainment area will still have a QR. That's what I just said, right? It's exactly what I just said. You're
Stoney
still going to have to buy the ticket, right? You don't have to get the emissions test, but you still got to buy the ticket,
Jason
but not, but not anybody else in other parts of the state.
Stoney
No. Yes, you still have to have the, you have to still have the barcode, you still have to spend the $6 double check
Jason
on that to get the sticker
Stoney
saying that you don't have to have the emissions test, and they're going to scan it,
Jason
but I'm talking about the people that are outside of the. Non attainment area, so like someone, what
Stoney
I'm talking about,
Jason
no, that I understand it goes away, no period, other than the people that live within the non attainment, so what
Ian
is what is a non attainment zone, like what
Stoney
outside of the six parishes that have the air pollution issues? Okay,
Jason
so the federal government has designated certain parishes have an air pollution issue, and as such, people living in there and operating vehicles, their vehicles have to be emissions checked every year. And
Ian
what you're saying, what you're saying, Jason, is that the people that live in that area have to have a barcode that proves that they have been tested, correct? Everyone else that does not live in those areas does not have to have a barcode at all. My understanding
Jason
sticker goes away, so if I live in, say, North Louisiana, right? Well,
Ian
that doesn't matter.
Jason
It's done,
Ian
okay? I
Jason
mean, so that's what I'm saying. Once again, this is what I'm talking about. This is that these federal rules, and here's
Stoney
my point. If everybody, this is why my friend's understanding, when I was talking to him about it, was everybody's got to have it, because they're going to be able to drive by you and scan the damn thing,
Ian
right?
Stoney
Okay, if they, if you don't, then just scratch the thing off,
Ian
yeah,
Stoney
okay, because what are they going to do, they're not going to turn around, oh, look, there's a license plate there, oh, let's type it in, let's see, does he have to have that, you know, $6 code? No, everybody, so when they're driving by, they're gonna have little readers on the car on the police cars that can scan it as they go by, right?
Ian
That's crazy. Well, you see what I'm saying. So,
Jason
so you might, you maybe I'll have to do a double check, maybe Ian, you could pull it up. It just literally just passed this legislative session, so I believe the governor signed it. He did, so you may, we may get some clarification on whether people outside of the non-attainment zone will have to get anything. They may still have to get a QR code. I don't know if they do, then I don't understand the point of that, but
Stoney
what the point of it is, is the same thing, scratch it off, what then the only time you got to worry about
Ian
it is if you get passed through, yeah, I
Jason
guess if
Stoney
you don't like it, I got, I got a friend who lives up in Plasville, Louisiana. I'll just make my address that,
Jason
right? And then I just won't
Stoney
worry about it. My insurance will be cheaper. A
Jason
lot of people do, but it's gonna be tied to your vehicle registration, is my understanding. So, the
Stoney
minute you make your address up in Plasville, or wherever, or whoever city you want it to, unless
Jason
they start tightening up on the addresses, and basically provide some, you got to provide additional proof of your, your address, so like utility bills, or something else that you would have to,
Stoney
or a lease. Well, maybe I can sign one any day, saying that anybody lives in the house now, it's 12 month lease, blah blah blah, you turn that in, great, still same solution.
Jason
So I don't know, it'd be very interesting when the, in essence, because what's going to happen is just like at the federal level, where laws are passed in these federal
Stoney
office of Motor Vehicles that will come out and pass their little right, they
Jason
will, they will come because they have to, they're gonna have to publish rules on how they're going to administer, enforce this. So, I mean, that's just part of the natural process with that. So, but I just found it funny that, just, you know, just talking about how you know we talk about this overreach, that's where the overreach, where I think people start getting in trouble. It's these rules and the amount of leeway, especially at the federal level. At the state level, I think things are a little bit more tightly, you know, there's there's methods of pushing back on some of this stuff at the federal level. It's almost next to impossible to fight rulemaking. I mean, it just had to go. Only
Stoney
got it in a bind because of the Supreme Court.
Jason
Oh, that's because the courts finally intervened on some of what they were saying about, you know, guns and all this other stuff, and you know, certain things, and yeah, I think it was like bump stocks and some suppressors.
Jason
Yeah, I don't know, but was it suppressors? Yes,
Stoney
suppressors was the big thing.
Jason
Well, I know they tried to pass a suppressor act, I remember to deregulate suppressors, and it, for whatever reason, it, they, it was never pursued. I'm not
Ian
finding, I'm not finding any concrete. Go to, go to.. well, I'm finding, I'm finding a whole bunch of information about it, but I'm not finding anything that specifically says about people that aren't in the non-attainment areas, and if they have to.. if it's in France, I don't.. yeah, I don't
Jason
know how this is going to work, yeah. A big thing
Ian
they were saying, the big someone had specifically commented, saying, How are they going? How are they going to know that the code is good, and how are they going to check it? So, are they just going to, you know, they're just pulling people over to scan the QR code, just to see, just to see if it's something like that. And, of course, a state police said that more guidance is coming, yeah, but will not say when the deadline is actually January of 2027 That's what I thought. For now, drivers outside of the emissions parishes will soon be able to stop worrying about inspection stickers. Drivers in the Baton Rouge area emissions parish should still plan for yearly emissions inspections and check their local inspection stations before showing that's
Jason
kind of what I thought that parishes
Ian
that you were talking about are East Baton Rouge Parish, West Baton Rouge Parish, Ascension, Livingston, Iberville. Yep, those are the five, that's it, that are still in that emissions situation. I don't know what that means for the other parishes besides those five, but well, I would. The best thing
Jason
to do is Louisiana legislature. You can Google that. You can probably go to search and just type in inspection sticker. It'll probably pull up the act, because the law becomes an act upon signature of the governor.
Ian
Okay,
Jason
and it would probably tell you what the law is, because it gives you a synopsis, okay, of what the actual law says, so you know, just curious, yeah, this is this is for developing, for a lot of people, this would be considered government overreach,
Ian
yeah,
Jason
but the federal government is basically saying, well, we know better than you, because you have bad air down there, and you got to do this extra thing, even though
Stoney
it's not helping, it's not
Jason
helping at all. I don't know what some money generator is. I mean, I mean, the only way you could basically, the only way I can see, just from just common sense, is to do this is to basically find any car that that basically fails, you know. You meant you can't drive the car till it's fixed. I mean, I don't know how she's gonna..
Stoney
well, that's the only way you can get the sticker. Okay, if you go and it's rejected, you get the orange sticker, right? The only way you can get the correct one is to bring it from a mechanic saying that a mechanic, not you, right, a mechanic fixed it, and it's retested and done. Then you get your clear, then you get your
Jason
right, you'll get the current sticker.
Ian
Yeah, that's..
Stoney
I don't know, this this whole thing, and it's. it's. it's really. we're at the point, and a lot of the show lately has kind of come up to what we've been talking to, just really government overreach, right? And now we're just kind of defining it, you know, with the, like Jason said, the executive branch and the rules of organizations that have no business interfering in our lives, the citizens' lives of America.
Jason
I just, I think, I don't, you know, we've, we've kind of brought this up. I just think the more, you know, the more advanced we get. I just think it's inevitable that things just become more and more regulated, I mean, the idea of, I mean, when was the last time you seen regulations get really rolled back? Yeah, you really don't. It's kind of like we talk about it, and we, we take like five steps forward, and we then people start bitching and moaning, and then eventually they say, "Okay, well, and then moving it, we may take two steps back, but we're still three steps forward from where we were before, and I think that's just the way, that's the way of getting people to just accept it.
Ian
Yeah,
Jason
that's the norm, that's the norm, right? Just FYI, for people who don't know, the Peace Act in Oregon, it's called the People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions Act, that's the name of it. So, just if you're interested in what's going on in Oregon over there, yeah, that's what it is. And right now, they say supporters reportedly submitted more than 120,000 signatures, yeah, exceeding the roughly 117,000 valid signatures needed to qualify for the November 2026 ballot, right.
Ian
And that's why, and that's why I had originally brought it up, because I, again, you hear some of these things, you're like, oh, that'll never make it, but then, but then, but well, in certain states or certain circumstances, you know, something crazy like that happens, you're like, "Oh, that's just it's whatever. But with something like that, I was like, "How did the fact that there's 124,000 people that signed that, that probably have are probably not in animal husbandry at all, or hunting to
Jason
say it, these. A lot, I hate to say this is this is coming from a lot of not non-native Oregon residents that have moved into that state within the last 25 years, but I guarantee if you, if you would go back and remove the everybody that's kind of moved there and just go back to the original people who settled that state.
Ian
Yeah,
Jason
that's a very, very libertarian, you know, type of of politics there. Now it's gone completely. I feel bad for some of those people. We have
Stoney
a friend in California that we game with that says, you know, California is mostly a conservative state. You got a few idiots in two or three little areas that kind of run it for
Ian
us. Yep,
Stoney
and he's like, this is ridiculous.
Jason
I don't feel bad because it's a beautiful state.
Stoney
It's gorgeous.
Jason
Matter of fact, I was at a get-together last night, and a friend of mine, his new girlfriend is from California. Okay, she's been living in California for the last 12 years. She just moved to Louisiana,
Ian
okay,
Jason
for him.
Ian
Yeah,
Jason
and I was asking her, I said, what do you, what do you think? She goes, it's, it's a crazy government, but it's a beautiful state, and I say, yep, exactly,
Ian
yep,
Jason
it is a beautiful state. I understand why people want to live there.
Ian
Yeah, I've been.. weather is always weather is always nice. One
Stoney
of my favorite songs in the whole world by a guy was a bodyguard for his name is Frankie Beverly. They did look at California. It's one of the most beautiful songs of one of the most beautiful states ever, but when you look at it, Colorado, I lived in California, I lived in Escondido for a while, I lived in Colorado, but one of the things that that gets me, and I may have said this on the show, and if I have, just put it up to my TBI, I'm sorry, but when I lived in California, there's two interstates that come through there, and there's if you're coming west to east from California to Colorado from that direction. The billboards were on both sides of the interstate. If you were from California and planned on spending more than three days, turn around and go home. Now Colorado was completely. that was a, there's no, it's not coming back,
Jason
no, it's that was a, that was a solid conservative Republican state, for, for when I was
Stoney
there, it was solidly, because it was
Jason
made up of just hearty people that just want to be left alone, and generally had just good sensibilities about them, and unfortunately got when they went to that legalizing drugs,
Ian
it
Jason
just spurred the decline of that state, and it's just it
Stoney
was more of a destination place. This is where you went to visit and stuff. When people started staying longer, that's when it kind of turned, and it just, it got ugly. I
Jason
worry about, like, Idaho and Montana, those states.
Ian
I want to go to Montana so bad. I
Jason
mean, well, I love Montana. Okay, and I hope there's a lot of.. I hate to say, there's a lot of people that you know that, that come from, yeah,
Jason
that are. that are.
Stoney
oh, Bill Gates is the largest landowner in Montana. Look, that looked that one at the time, the
Jason
last time I think he had like 40,000 acres,
Stoney
y'all at minimum. Yeah,
Jason
but
Ian
I was looking at the legislative stuff, and it was like a lot of legal mumbo jumbo that I can't really parse through right now, right, while also holding a conversation here, so I'll look at it later. But again, I didn't really get any. You want to
Jason
find out what the actual bill says. Now it's just I'm saying, you, you're going to look at that, right? So that legal money goes to the lawyers at the executive level. Okay, we got to develop rules, how enforced this, yeah, what we think they mean.
Ian
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean,
Jason
that's that's the challenge, right? Sometimes they go overboard,
Ian
yes.
Jason
Sometimes they don't do it enough, and then it leaves everybody in confusion, because you want to be clear, of course. You want to have clear boundaries. You want to say that, where everybody understands. Okay, what do I need to do to be in compliance,
Ian
right? How do I obey the law? How do I do it? Well,
Stoney
luckily the Supreme Court has been pulling back these agencies, they're making them kind of.. they're saying you got to stay within the lines,
Ian
right?
Stoney
This getting out of the line stuff is stopping. Hopefully that continues.
Ian
Yeah, I
Jason
believe a good example of that was. I think, was it last year or maybe two years ago when the Supreme Court basically, it was a Chevron case.
Ian
It
Jason
was here in Louisiana.
Ian
Okay,
Jason
if I'm not mistaken, and Supreme Court basically said that, you know, hey, EPA. You're exceeding your, your, your statutory authority by some of these rules. Okay, you've implemented, if I'm not mistaken, believe it's a Chevron case, which was a, which was a win, I guess, for industry.
Ian
Yeah.
Jason
Now, well, West
Stoney
Virginia just won one over the EPA in 22
Jason
yeah,
Stoney
so they, you know, they, the some of the provisions that they were doing for their energy policy was out, and maybe it's time Louisiana kind of stepped up. Said, hey, hey, well,
Jason
let me tell you, right now the bigger thing in Louisiana is going to be carbon capture, that that is a huge issue right now, and there's a lot of people, you got a lot of industry,
Ian
yeah,
Jason
a lot of money right now to be involved with that, and on the other hand, you got a lot of people that are opposing this, basically shoving carbon underground,
Ian
yeah,
Jason
because what they want to do is dump a lot of this stuff under Lake Morrow. Yeah, you know, which, you know, this - I hate to say it. This reminds me of back in the, in the 70s and the 80s, when Louisiana was known as the dumping ground of the United States, because everybody's bringing their hazardous materials, and we were corrupt politicians were taking payoffs to dump this stuff in our environment, which I mean, you know, I, that's what I'm saying. It's, I'm very mixed when it comes to these things. There's these are the areas where my more liberal,
Ian
yeah,
Jason
tendencies on these issues come out, because you know, I want a clean environment,
Ian
right?
Jason
I want, sure, I want clean water. I don't want animals to be mutated and poisoned oil, drowning oil. I mean, I don't want any of that. So, you know, it's like, where do you, where is the line where you need to capitalize on business, and because that produces jobs, and then that produces wealth, and then that brings everybody's standard of living up, and they can afford more things and better take care of their families, and stuff like that, so it's such a mixed bag when it comes to this kind of over regulation, some over, I mean, some, some would say that is over regulate, some would say no, it's too much regulation. Yeah, I guess it depends on where you're at on the regulation
Stoney
be too much regulation.
Jason
I mean it's just, I mean,
Stoney
I'd say this all the time, I'm a fiscal conservative with liberal tendencies, I want a good environment, but I also think that as a money grab, and the Libtard Democrat Party has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they aren't in it for the environment,
Ian
right?
Stoney
They're in it to have their little slush funds and all these things that aren't helping the environment at all,
Ian
right,
Stoney
and they want to shove things down our throat, so they can make their money and have their control.
Ian
And then to go back around to the AI discussion about all this, we have all these data centers as well. We have all the.. we'll see, that's that's proof right there that
Stoney
they don't care about our environment, the damage that these data centers are going to do
Ian
right
Stoney
is far beyond any benefit that we'll ever get from them, but bar every lip target is for the data center. Oh, we gotta have, and it's going to destroy, just
Jason
they.. we can't
Stoney
fathom how bad that's going to be. Oh yeah,
Jason
we really. I think it's, I feel like we're building the skeleton right now of a
Stoney
Skynet,
Jason
of a world, whether it's Skynet or Skynet,
Stoney
they should just change the name to it right now to make it Skynet.
Jason
We're basically little by little, we're laying the bones of a of a body that's going to be created that right now we can't envision, and I, I tell people that all the time. I mean, they're probably things are gonna.. we're not even fathom right now. It's not even part of the collective consciousness. We.. we're not there yet, but I guarantee intend we're gonna look back and
Ian
go, "Oh, we're gonna look back. Was the start of it?
Jason
That was the start of it. I mean, it just. I mean, it just was, so I, but look, I'm telling, there's a lot of people that are, that are in, you know, there's some people that are really pushing this kind of shared ownership in AI, who's
Stoney
sharing it? No, nobody's sharing, well,
Jason
they're saying some sort of public collective, but now I'm gonna tell you, I think this now ties into something really on the financial level, nationally, think about, they think about this right now, like, for example, for decades, Alaska paid residents from oil revenues to live in Alaska,
Ian
really, yes,
Stoney
yeah,
Jason
everybody got a stipend,
Stoney
everybody got stipends, get out, but that's. Not what's going to happen. No, no, of course not. Okay, with AI, that's the government owning AI is not going to give us a stipend, and that's never going to happen,
Ian
right? But they'll pretend like that's that's what's gonna happen to pass it. And then, of course, oh wait a second, I
Jason
think this is a way, because I think right now, and we've touched on this on other discussions, you know. Right now, there's a lot of movement in the world to a lot of countries that are trying to get off the petrol dollar. Okay, now we all know by us having the world's reserve currency that enables us to print money and live beyond our means, right? Just us, I think. If the inevitable ever happens, that somehow the dollar is dropped as the reserve currency, and, and this is what worries me about sometimes America's excursions into around the world, and I think unfortunately a part of where a lot of people were America first. I think there's a lot of people that were wanting this administration to solely focus on trying to fix the ills of this country, of course, because you're just spending tons of money in foreign wars, that absolutely, how does that help the average person trying to pay their bills? Right, it really doesn't, but I think I think the thinkers right now, what collective, what group of people that can essence hold the debt of America? It's these AI companies.
Ian
Yeah,
Jason
because of what they are, the value of them are, and I think that is the long-term thinking. I think the powers that be are trying to find what could be the hedge,
Ian
yeah.
Jason
If the dollar gets dropped from an oil perspective, where are you going to get your money to be able to do things?
Ian
Yeah,
Jason
and I think right now these AI companies, they are the new oil companies. It's
Ian
information.
Jason
It is exactly information is power. Yeah, information is power, and I really think what's driving this is that,
Ian
yeah,
Jason
I think the long-term projections are, you know, how long can the United States hold out as, as, as, as the reserve currency, and I truly, this is my gut is telling me AI is going to become the new petrol dollar. AI companies are going to now hold the, they will control the wealth around the world, because if you make the AI companies now the hedge, well, it's all over the world.
Ian
Yeah,
Jason
you know, you can't get away from
Ian
it, especially like with the size of the data centers. I think wasn't the one, like in Utah, or is it Nevada, that's like, like absolutely massive, or whatever. Yeah, why would you even need that that big of a data center for something? It's, I don't know. I think the scariest part about that is that I, I don't think that's far off. That's the crazy part, is the fact that it's like you're saying that, and it's not like some crazy outlandish idea, whereas maybe a handful of years ago you may have been, and we've
Jason
talked about universal basic income.
Ian
Yeah,
Jason
I'm just telling you, I think you're, you're kind of laying the groundwork to be able to do this, and there's two wealth fund models that Bernie Sanders has, has kind of brought up the Norway government pension fund global, it's valued at over 2 trillion, and then they, of course, the one I just mentioned, the Alaska Permanent
Ian
Fund,
Jason
which distributes annual dividend payments to Alaska residents,
Ian
and he's, is he proposing that,
Jason
yes,
Ian
every US citizen gets,
Jason
well, he's basically saying, you know he would like the United States taxpayer, which would, in essence, be your tax dollar, to basically own 50% now, like Sam Altman and them, they all agree that there should be some ownership. I think a lot of them have said that kind of on board with that idea. I don't think they 50% I think that may be a little, a little too much on their, on their end, but right there is with these guys, I mean, you know, Elon, and all these guys are they operate a little differently than what the oil barons of the right of the early 20th century operated under, they're a little bit more kind. Of you know, free of giving away their money than what some of these oil barons, you know, were versus like, you know, I think it's Rockefeller, and I think it's also Carnegie, and all them,
Ian
they have so much more as the, is the thing.
Stoney
Well, I don't know if they do, and dollar, you know, Rockefeller was probably the wealthiest man ever to live. Yeah, I believe he is right. Well, but
Ian
like, but the thing is, like, whenever you look at, like, the wealth of Elon Musk, he could throw around a lot of
Stoney
JD Rockefeller had way in dollars back then, the dollars today had more than Elon Musk. He was probably the wealthiest man to ever live,
Ian
maybe.
Jason
Yeah, may have to Google that. I'd be very, who was right. Well, what would he be worth today?
Ian
Right, yeah,
Jason
yeah. Well, I'd be very curious if he was living in today's money, what he was worth at his height.
Stoney
Well, you have to understand, he owned and controlled over 80% of all petroleum, and then when the government came, stepped in and broke it
Ian
all up. All
Stoney
he did was sell it to his friends and family, so he still controlled it. So it wasn't that it went away, he just put it in trust funds, and you know, generational wealth, as they want to call it, right?
Jason
They, they, they, you know, always, you know, they're trying to find ways to, you know, protect themselves or protect, you know, help their, their families, and
Ian
set yourself up. Let's see,
Jason
yeah. What is it? Well, I'm just curious, um, Carnegie, I mean, you know, at the time of his death
Ian
in 1937 John D. Rockefeller had an estimated net worth of 1.4 billion, which equated to roughly 1.5 of the US gross domestic product, or GDP, because assessing historic wealth across different economies or economic areas is highly complex. There's a few different ways share of GDP valued at over 400 billion to 600 billion in today's modern economic terms.
Jason
So he,
Ian
but raw inflation would adjust it to something like his wealth would be like 30 billion in today's money, like if it was just like inflation numbers. So, so again, he's they're taking two different statistics here. If it's actually like share of GDP, like, like it would be back then, like 1.5% of like the US GDP, right? It would be like at his peak, Rockefeller
Stoney
was estimated around $1 billion in 1913 Right now, Guinness is list that roughly at $631 billion in 2024
Ian
Right,
Jason
I don't know what, what, what usk is
Stoney
about $450 billion
Jason
I thought he was like, what he was. He's on his
Stoney
rant to a trillion dollars. I
Jason
think his.. I think something to do with his company to make him the first trip, right now, first trillionaire. His
Ian
estimated Elon Musk's total net worth is estimated approximately around 840 billion, or potentially 735 according to like Bloomberg, and right, depends on Forbes and Bloomberg, say anywhere between 730 to 840 so it's like still, regardless, you know, crazy, crazy amounts of wealth, I can't even
Jason
imagine one person owning,
Ian
yeah, that's that's
Jason
what I'm saying, so he is basically him, Altman, they are the new, they are the new Rockefellers and Vanderbilts and Carnegies, that's the new thing now, so yeah,
Ian
it's crazy, yeah, and like the point I was kind of saying with some of that was the fact that, like, you know, with that amount of wealth, he could, you know, even if you don't have it in liquid cash, you can still throw around some, you can still make some financial cigars with $100 yeah, you can make some dumb financial decisions, and still, you know, he
Jason
basically, he was able to get Trump elected, I mean, remember, toward the end of right before that election, he was saying the Democrats were, I mean, you saw, well, the news about how much the Democrats spent on that campaign. I think it was like 1.1 $1.2 billion on a presidential election.
Ian
Yeah,
Jason
and and Elon Musk dumped 200 million to Trump's campaign, like in the last few weeks, which he
Ian
bought Twitter around that time, I think. Wow, which is crazy.
Jason
Yeah, so I mean,
Ian
yeah,
Jason
but they said they had an hour long meeting in San. 100 senate office this week held at Altman's request and highlighted the inherent tension between AI powerhouses and policymakers as Americans are increasingly asked, just,
Stoney
just in retrospect, the Vanderbilts would be 350 to $400 billion in economic power in today's money,
Ian
that's still a lot of money, even for back then, almost 100 years ago. That's crazy amounts of money.
Jason
Yeah, he goes, speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday, Trump described a potential partnership where the American people can benefit from the success of AI, and said executives from leading AI companies will visit the White House, probably next week, to discuss the idea. So,
Stoney
the Rothschilds are about 400 billion.
Ian
Okay, that's wild. I wonder, what that's going to look like. What that conversation is going to look like. How that's going to pay. Well, I mean,
Jason
look, the term, I mean, you've already kind of set the precedent now, because you know, if we all heard, I mean, Trump administration secured a 10% stake in the with it with Intel. Remember, really. Oh yeah,
Ian
okay,
Jason
so they own part of Intel now, the
Ian
US government. The US government get out, yeah. Okay, which
Stoney
is actually illegal.
Ian
That's crazy. I was about to say that can doesn't
Stoney
work, that's a constitution. And then
Jason
it also considered a government takeover of Spirit Airlines earlier this year.
Ian
Well, look how they say, although the airline couldn't
Jason
reach a deal and it ultimately close, but I mean, so I'm saying the idea now, what you're starting to see is we've advanced five steps.
Ian
Yeah,
Jason
people, bitch, we take two steps back, but we're still two steps forward, or toward, towards social lives. Look, it's hard to vote against Santa Claus,
Ian
okay,
Jason
it just is. The government provided me the
Stoney
title for the episode, hard to vote against
Jason
Santa Claus, because look, I mean, and I understand it. People that are struggling, I mean, just look what happened with these, with these subsidies, with the Obamacare, and the credits that we're going to be expired, and people were pitching and complaining about they were fixing to lose health care, because you know, because of these subsidies that were purposely ended by Democrats, and because the fact of the matter is you're basically creating socialized medicine, I mean, that's what you're doing. I mean, so that's what I'm saying. As long as the government is given, most people are not going to slap the hand away, they're going to take the money,
Ian
right?
Jason
Because people are hurting. Well, they're going
Stoney
to take the money right now. There's a big push in Canada to end the equivalent of social security,
Ian
really.
Stoney
Yes, they want to take the money away from the people that actually put it into it and give it to all the immigrants, of course. Well,
Jason
they got to pay for it somehow. Think about
Stoney
this right now, the raid program, or made program, is how many people is it killing? And as people, older people just get tired and they participate, where does that money go? But they want to completely end it right now. That's a big push for it, and just give it to the immigrants.
Ian
To kind of go back to an earlier part of the show, we were talking about it's hard to vote against Santa Claus. That's that's the whole situation that's going on with that printer thing I was talking about. It's so it's hard to vote against. Let's stop. Let's stop the manufacturing and printing of, like, 3D printing of guns, and it's like, oh, when you put it like that, it's like hard to say. I mean, not maybe not everybody, but, like, you know, most people would be like, 'Well, yeah, I don't want people. What was it last week? Who's
Stoney
not against drunk driving? As I'm saying, yeah, you say
Ian
like that, you're like, 'Well, it's hard to, because if you say no to that, then you sound like a bad guy, and it's gonna get people on your side for that. The same sort of situation for that, and of course, but like, like we said before, devil's in the details. How far are they gonna push that? How far they gonna enforce that law? How far is it gonna go until
Jason
I think I just think you're tape, you're taking the steps forward that I think you don't ever come back from, and I think it's more and more as the government becomes more involved, you've got politicians that are openly calling for a socialistic form of government, basically where the government seizes all means of production. I just, I mean, I never thought in America you would, you would have, you know, American cities being run by avowed socialists, you know, and what we're seeing today. I mean, I think our ancestors would be shocked of what of what's going on here, but yeah,
Ian
it's one day at a time.
Jason
Yeah, it does. It does happen one day at a time.
Ian
Yeah, that's crazy,
Stoney
man. It's, I mean, it's not going to get any easier. It's going to continue to get worse. It's not going to get absolutely any easier. And it's, you know, it's up to us people like us to keep talking about it. Oh yeah, and let people know what's really going on, because sometimes that's the only time they're going to hear the truth,
Ian
right?
Jason
They say right now on college campuses, commencement speakers have been interrupted by boos when discussing artificial intelligence.
Ian
Of course, about
Jason
70% of college students see AI as a threat to their job prospects,
Ian
of course,
Jason
according to a 2025 poll by the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, which I can understand, like, what jobs am I going to have?
Ian
Yeah,
Jason
I mean, you're, you're, I mean, a lot of jobs can be done by a computer. There's, I mean, there's some jobs that, at least right now,
Ian
yeah,
Jason
we don't have the, the material science stuff to create robots to be able to do some very fine things, but I mean a lot of things that I mean, I mean, I tell
Stoney
you what, go to Taco Bell right now, guess what?
Ian
Oh yeah,
Stoney
you ain't talking to a person, right, that's AI, Taco Bell, they
Jason
got somebody in there cooking until eventually the robots, they got robots. McDonald's has three
Stoney
McDonald's that are completely run by robots,
Jason
you know. So that's not that far from the crate.
Ian
The crazy thing that I heard.. well, I don't say that's actually not crazy. The very truthful thing I heard someone say that I thought was it shocked me was how come AI and all the computers are creating art for us, and all of the humans are in like factories and are working and slaving away for little to no money? Like, what shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't we, like, get these robots to do manual labor to do, like you know, to do simple jobs and factory work, so that way we can have the ability to be afford the freedom of creating and making music and art, and like
Jason
what I have seen of things that have been produced, I always, I'm a firm believer that art is a reflection of a culture soul, and what I've seen produced doesn't give me much hope. I agree with that. Right, I think that what I see some of the, but it's,
Ian
but I hear you, but it's putting people like myself out of work, so people are using it because it's cheaper than paying me to do it, and they can also type a few words in, and it does it for them. Absolutely, I think it does a worse job. The graphics that come out of it, the content that is made out of it, I think a lot of times is too busy, there's too many words, it's too messy, or it's like things that I have curated that maybe not the average person may not see the value in, but I do think it communicates to individuals and people a lot of times events or like dates, things they need to know, and I can do it in a very creative and fun way, but they, it's the simplicity of it, you type in a few words, you get what you want, and that's all they care about, and that's the hard part, is like that's the where I see the where I could
Jason
see, and you know, trying to find a ray of hope for where I see where the AI is doing the job you did. I see, you know, when it comes to AI, though, it all depends on the input source and what you've put in there to me, that's where I see the creativity come out. In, I can see how that part of
Ian
it, right,
Jason
can get smoothed out to get, I think there's room there
Ian
right
Jason
for creativity to flourish. When
Stoney
we started, and we did our episode on AI, y'all remember how I messed with y'all in the beginning of that one, that was pretty funny. My, my prompts were a sentence long, two sentences long, and now when I'm working with AI, I have prompts that go 2500 words,
Jason
that's what I'm saying, that's that creativity, that,
Stoney
that, that's that's how it changes, but one thing you said earlier about the soul of it, where is society in the soul of society? Now, I don't know why this popped into my head, but Paul Newman kind of had it right. He said we live in a world, in a society, in a world where lemonade has artificial flavors and furniture polish has real lemons in it. I mean, I mean, think about that. That's the creativity, the real lemonade. Who didn't like, as a kid, going and getting a real fresh squeeze lemonade for a nickel on the corner, and now. If you want real lemons, you got to go get furniture polish,
Ian
right? A real, real musicians are being put out of work because of the over saturation of AI-generated music, and it's like, it's that kind of stuff too. That's like, it's frustrating to see that, like, people are okay with being swindled by AI music, they listen to it, they're like, "Oh, it satisfies a very fleeting feeling, and then it's just on to the next thing, and it's like, "That's okay, like if that's what you want. But at the same time, whenever I've tried to encourage people, like, "Hey, this is AI-generated music, and I want you to know, like, there are action musicians that make certain music, and I don't like, I don't like supporting that. I don't like listening to that. I don't want to hear your AI gentle music. I'm sorry. I don't want to do that. And they get upset because it's like, you know, that's.. I don't know, it's just that kind of stuff too, where it's like there's.. there's certain aspects of that where, like, the world is changing, and I do think there is a place for art. I do think there's a place for music. It's just. I'm realizing that the overwhelming majority of the populace is okay, you know, within reason. I'm not saying this is everyone. There's a lot of people who don't like AI, but I think there's a lot of people that are okay with it and are complicit with it, and like it's whatever. And because of that, that's the part that worries me, is like there's a lot of AI content being circulated. See, I think
Stoney
that's one of the things against the attack on the American family that I've been pushing. JD Rockefeller said it when he started the school system. I want stupid, uncreative people to work, and we're taking the creation away from the very soul of the people. I'm in agreement with you on this, that we're taking that away from our soul as a society. When you're creating people that aren't creative, oh, let me just chat GPT it or Google it or Siri, you're taking away, you know, I had to go look in the Encyclopedia Britannica for that school lesson. I had to actually learn something, I didn't have to just type it, copy, paste it, move it over, put it through Grammarly to take away the AI essence of it, and then turn it in,
Jason
right? You know, if there
Stoney
wasn't a time to start eating healthy, let me remind you people of something right now. The doctors that are coming out today use GPT, Chat GPT, to pass their exams,
Jason
I think they all do it. Oh, yes, dude, I just said
Stoney
that. That's what I'm saying. This is the time now to start eating healthy, because our doctors of the future, the short future ahead, aren't going to check. You
Jason
know, you, Ian, just listening to you reminds me of the movie iRobot. Okay, Will Smith is talking about everybody's getting, was getting a new robot,
Ian
yeah,
Jason
and he was talking about, you know, robot doesn't, and he was just having this conversation with, yeah, the AI, the robot, yeah, and he was saying, you know, y'all can't do this, and y'all, y'all are just lights and this and that, and the robot came back at him because looked at him. He goes, well, can you produce a great piece of art? He was just a police officer. I mean, so I get it. Where we are now, I think 100 years from now, as the tech continues to get, I think you're going to have things that produce great pieces of art. Now, I think what defines a great piece of art goes back to what I said is the soul of our culture, and I just look at what the works of art, like Leonardo Vinci and those Michelangelo. I don't see that today,
Ian
right? I just.. I think my.. I think my frustration and my concern comes from a place of I don't like the fact that we live in a society that we live in a place right now where it is harder for people to be creative and to learn how to acquire those skills, if you want to, if you want to survive, you got to have a job to put money on the on the table, right, and sometimes doing that is a very hard job, or is not something that you love to do, or is not creative in any capacity. I've been blessed, and I've been very grateful that I have in the past had a job where I can make a living doing very creative stuff, and I have loved that, and it just makes me upset that, like, we're getting to a place now where people aren't picking up instruments. People aren't learning how to make physical art or digital art, partially because it's mostly a hobby, or they don't have time for it. After raising a family and after having a job, it's hard to do that. Yeah, it's like, and so I would love to be in a place where, like, the joke that I had made earlier is like, I would love for the robots to do that work. Like, go go work in a factory, go do that kind of stuff, so that way I can have the freedom to like create, so I can learn a new instrument if I wanted to, so I can learn how to paint, I can learn how to write and do whatever, and maybe not to make money for it, but like to express myself, and that's the thing, is that I feel like we're at a point now where the expression of self is through AI, which is, which may be okay for some people, but, like, also I want people to feel like, you, you know, you can teach an old dog new tricks, you can, you can be young, and you can learn, you know, something, and just try something, and that's the hard part, is I feel like we're in a, we're in a world right now where it's like, well, well, if it's not going to make you money, or if it's not going to, you know, or you can hook
Jason
yourself up to the machine, like it did in the Matrix, and
Ian
yeah, Keanu
Jason
Reeves is going
Ian
right. I know Kung
Jason
Fu, yeah, that's
Stoney
right. Transhuman, maybe, maybe
Ian
that's what the future holds. And I'm, I'm just a, I'm just an old geezer, you know, still stuck in my old ways. That's where all of those
Stoney
movies are about the same thing, yep, AI, right, AI,
Ian
yeah,
Stoney
AI, all of that.
Jason
That's, I think, probably they were in that moment toward the future. I came out with those movies, knowing where everything was going. It
Ian
has.. I haven't.. I think I remember watching iRobot a long time ago, and to go back to that, even if that police officer was just a police officer and had never really done a great work of art. I still feel like in that moment I, as a human being, could look at the robot in the face and say, I can't make a great, I cannot physically make a great work of art right now, but I could, whereas, whereas you may, may, you may have to have input, you may have to have a database to work off of, you have to pull from something else, whereas for me, I have feelings I could pull that for myself, and I can make something new that maybe has never been seen before or heard before, or I can put work, I can string words together in my own way, and make something sound cool, and make it provoking, and emotional, like I know that's just that's where I am, I'm also a very creative person, so that's what I get,
Jason
I get
Ian
it, I got a lot to say about it, because I feel what I get it. So, but, anyways,
Jason
interesting topic. Well, it starts off a government overreach, and now it's looking at
Stoney
complete overreach with the government just being a tool of AI.
Jason
Yeah, and it's about where we're going.
Ian
Well,
Jason
yeah, I just people want want, they want to do things, and the mechanisms by which we go about trying to make change in the world, yeah,
Jason
have unfortunate consequences.
Ian
Yeah,
Jason
they just do,
Ian
right? It
Jason
never really ever works out the way originally was intended,
Ian
no. Of course not. It's
Jason
always gets morphed and changed into something else.
Ian
Well, for anybody out there who wants to share your opinions on all of the various things we talked about today, or your concerns, your thoughts, your feelings, we have comment sections on Spotify and on YouTube where you can leave some more short form responses, and then we have our email address, get offended together@gmail.com where you can send some more long form responses, in case the comment sections won't fit all of your feelings. Be sure to like and subscribe wherever you can. We're on all the major podcasting platforms. We really appreciate all the support, it means a lot. And until next week, bye bye,
Jason
goodbye everyone, and God bless,
Stoney
rights are not permissions. Your right to speak is not a platform policy. Your property is not a temporary rental from the zoning board. Your business is not a privilege granted by a regulator's mood. Your faith is not a hobby government gets to tolerate when convenient. Your medical choices, your children, your land, your livelihood, your conscience - these are not little boxes waiting for agency approval. Now, does this mean nobody can regulate anything? Of course not. That's bumper sticker thinking. We live in a real world with real harms, real fraud, real pollution, real crime, and real emergencies, but every time government acts, the burden should be on the government to prove its authority, not the citizen to beg for permission to live normally. That's the great flip we have to reset, because once normal life becomes a regulated privilege, freedom becomes paperwork, and paperwork has no soul. So, watch the agencies, watch the guidance letters, watch the emergency powers that never expire, watch the public private partnerships where government whispers and corporations swing the hammer, watch the rules that punish the small guy while the connected players get a carve out, and above all, watch the language, because control rarely calls itself control, it calls itself safety, it calls itself fairness, it calls itself modernization, it calls itself compliance, but the question remains the same. Does this protect rights or does it train the citizens to submit? That is where power stops serving the. People, and starts managing them, and that is where free people must draw the line. Thank you for hanging out with us today. You're the best. Peace.