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The Zach Foust Show
Headlines good? Reality bad? | ZFS 91
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The White House posted a graph this week saying prices are falling. I need to be very clear about something. Prices are not falling. Inflation came in at 3.5% for June which means everything you buy is 3.5% more expensive than it was this time last year. That is not deflation. That is not prices coming down. That is propaganda posted at a convenient moment before the war started back up again.
I walk through every major headline hitting the economy right now and tell you what it actually means. The Strait of Hormuz is back down to 3 to 5 ships per day after briefly opening. Trump is threatening to bomb Iranian power plants and bridges next week if they do not come to the table. Oil is sitting at $78 and economists are already calling for a dramatic spike if he follows through. Our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is sitting at 319.5 million barrels, only 19.5 million above the minimum operating level, the lowest since 1983.
Food is up 26% over five years. India is hitting 9.87% wholesale inflation because of this war. Farmers are dealing with tariffs, drought, and urea costs all at once. And the AI bubble is being called out by Jeremy Grantham and Bill Gurley, two of the most credible voices in investment, who are both saying the same thing. This is the dot com bubble and it is going to pop.
Is our economy heading toward a free fall? Are we already in it? Speaking of already in it, the Iran War. We're now four and a half months in, and it seems like the Iran War is picking back up in intensity. And AI, is it in a bubble? Is it gonna pop? And if it does pop, what can you do about it? Let's read through a few headlines today and kind of decipher what's going on in today's economy. Thank you for jumping in to the Zach Fowl Show. This is episode number 91. And I want to start us with a clip so that we can understand where this war kind of got its origin. So for those who don't know, this war began on February 28th, 2026. For those watching in the future, February 28th, 2026, we beheaded that Ayatollah, we threw a tomahawk at a child's school, and the war began. The strait would close the same exact day. Now, since then, we were still at war. But the timeline for this war was actually supposed to be a lot shorter. It's supposed to be about two to four weeks. Let's hear it from the horse's mouth herself, Miss Caroline Levitt. This is from March 10th.
SPEAKER_02Operation was going faster than anticipated. What is your current timeline for how long the war will last?
SPEAKER_01So, look, as you know, Steve, the president and the U.S. military's uh initial timeline was about four to six weeks to achieve the full objectives of Operation Epic Fury. Again, to destroy their missiles and their ability to make them, destroy their Navy, permanently deny them nuclear weapons forever, and to, of course, weaken their evil terrorist proxies in the region. Uh, we know that the US military and our brave war fighters uh are quickly and expeditiously executing these objectives well ahead of schedule.
SPEAKER_04Uh ultimately the This is just a perfect example, by the way, of the amount of news that they will throw at you to ensure that you've forgotten about what happened weeks or even months ago. Okay, this war effort that we're watching happen live and in front of us with ever many excuses around nukes, all these excuses around, oh my God, the Iranians, they're just brown terrorists, they hate America, they want to kill us, we need to eliminate them. With all that being said, this has been perpetuated to us in a way that is just inexcusable in terms of what's coming out of the White House. Of course, we've seen numbers get flubbed, of course, we see headlines get distorted, but this is supposed to be a two to four week excursion. Six weeks at most. Here we are sitting at month four and a half. Month four and a half. What's happening as of today? Let's pull up our next clip from our president stating what is going to happen to Iran over the next few days.
SPEAKER_02Uh I'll save the energy targets for last, but ultimately we'll hit energy targets, yeah. But uh we're gonna hit them very hard tonight. We're gonna hit them very hard tomorrow night, we're gonna hit them very hard the night after, and then next week it gets really bad for them because next week comes the uh power plants, next week comes the bridges. We're gonna knock out all their power plants, we're gonna knock out all their bridges. Do you anticipate that the Joe?
SPEAKER_04Why are you giggling?
SPEAKER_00Just the way he talks.
SPEAKER_04Back to the way that he talks.
SPEAKER_05They're like, What's the military plan? He's like, we're gonna hit him so hard tomorrow night, the night after that. Oh the night after that.
SPEAKER_04Oh man. Hard. That was too easy for Joe to fall right back into the show.
SPEAKER_06I was gonna say, I did think as soon as he kept saying it, I'm like, yo, Joe's right about this. He does sound kind of freaky right now.
SPEAKER_04He sounds a little freaky. He sounds a little freaky. He sounds a little freak. He's trying to freak out the Iranian people here, it seems like. It seems like like we saw in March, like we saw in April, like we saw in May, where he said there's gonna be a giant orange globe coming from their country. He's trying to intimidate. And this war is now apparently back on the table. He said, in that, by the way, I want to be very clear with that. He said, we're not gonna hit energy targets right now, but ultimately we will hit energy targets. So the plan is somewhere. The plan exists. The plan exists for us to just basically go ahead and obliterate all of the civilian capabilities and infrastructure of this country over a strait that was open before Oh my god. According to the Kobisi letter over on Twitter, breaking. President Trump says the U.S. is going to bomb Iranian power plants and bridges next week if Iran does not, quote unquote, come to the table and negotiate. Quote, we're going to knock out all of their power plants, we are going to knock out all of their bridges. Hide your kids, hide your wife. They're gonna come for the bridges. It's a similar story for those just now catching up with the Iran saga. It's a very similar story to what we heard in May. In May, there was a lot of threatening, a lot of threats of bombs, a lot of threats of infrastructure going down. We even took down one of their major military bridges. And similar to May, similar to April and March, and now the strait is shut. What was open for just a bit is now completely shut down. This is as of 24 hours ago. As we're looking at it now, what we're looking at here is indeed the Strait of Hormuz uh looping over Oman, coming from the Persian Gulf. And right here is the main choke point that we're looking at. And this choke point is typically where we're going to see 130 to 150 different vessels pass through it on a day-to-day basis. As we're tracking in the last, and we can bring this back real quick. Let's bring that tracker all the way back and let's just start zooming it through a little bit. We're counting about three to five ships that have passed through over the last 24 hours. Not many. Not many at all. And in fact, there's this one. Let's check out uh can you bring up Jersey Devil 404? Let's zoom in on that guy. I don't know what Jersey Devil 404 is up to. It looks like he tried to pass and then he turned around. Let's zoom it forward a little bit. Then he turns around again. A little a little far, a little far. Oh, yep. Now he's going down. And if we keep following him, he's just gonna keep going down. And then he'll turn around again. Why is it being so slow? Gotta get it. It may be because we have 40 tabs open. It might be, it might be. Come on. Stop being logical. But this is a similar pattern where a lot of tankers, this Jersey Devil 404 being a US oil tanker, just kind of sitting pretty. Back and forth. Can't really make its way through. So for those of you that will see stories, headlines, or uncles at barbecues that say, oh, the straits open, straight's open. It's not. It's not. And oil prices have tipped back up after recovering. One of the bigger problems with this war has been oil. For those of you that don't know, Straight of War Moose controls about a fifth, 20% of the world's oil supply. So when you take away a fifth of the world's oil supply, there are bound to be ripple effects from it. And we're going to talk about those here in a moment. Here we'll see price now at $78.75, 73 cents, 72 cents. It's dropping as of right now, peaking above 110 though. But here's the thing: there are economists already calling for this to spike up dramatically if over the next couple weeks Trump does what he says he's going to do. Why? Because we are running out of oil. And this oil squeeze is causing inflation. Bringing us to our next topic: the Bureau of Labor and Statistics released a 12-month percentage change of prices. This is called the Consumer Price Index. The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases this every single month. And every single month there will be headlines and articles and political pundits and podcast guests that'll come on and say this is what it means. Things are getting better, things are getting worse. Things are going to have a light at the end of the tunnel. Oh, everything's everyone's gonna die. What are the actual numbers? Well, if we look at this latest report, we'll see that of the four major categories that they track, energy is really leading the way in terms of inflation. Why is energy leading the way? Well, when you cut off a fifth of the world's oil supply, oil gets more expensive. Energy gets more expensive, importing, exporting, more expensive. Anything that has to do with manufacturing, industrial companies, industrial factories, oil. We're now beginning into diesel, deaf, all these other items that go up in cost. Urea, it's used for fertilizer. More than 45% of the world's fertilizer comes out of the Strait of Hormuz. Also suffered a major price spike during the time when America was going to be putting their seeds in the ground. But that doesn't matter, right? That doesn't matter when normal farmers who are offing themselves at the highest rate since the Great Depression also have increasing costs due to tariffs, urea, and oil. Let's show this table real quick. So I want to showcase one specific item, and it's food. Now, inflation came in in total for June at 3.5%. 3.5%. Economists thought it was going to be about 3.9%. So it actually came in below expectations, 3.5%. What a win, right? Well, not really. Because at the end of the day, the Federal Reserve wants inflation down below 2%. I want to explain this for you so everybody can understand what 3.5% means. This means prices for you are 3.5% higher than they were last year. Let me explain to you what this means. Inflation means the items that you were paying on just this time last year are now more expensive. Your dollar is weaker. It goes less distance in terms of how it can go out of your wallet and into the economy. It can't travel as far because of inflation. And when you hear people talk about, oh, inflation's down this month. Oh, this is incredible. Look at the actual number. We're down from over 4% to now 3.5%, which is still nearly double what the Federal Reserve wants at 2%. And even if it were 2%, quick quiz if inflation were 2%, does that mean prices are more or less expensive than they were last year? More. We have not seen negative inflation or what's known as deflation ever in this report. Especially long term, ever in this report. And deflation is exactly what caused the silent decades of Japan. That's not what we want. You don't want deflation, especially in a debt-based, fractional reserve run, usury model system that America runs on this neoliberal macro corporate favoring capitalist economy. It needs inflation. It needs it. It needs more credit. It needs more debt. It needs expansion. The JDP has to grow. Our military industrial complex has to make more money. And that probably has a lot to do with the fact that we're in this war. But that's a whole other topic. Let's go to this uh tweet right here. Oh, actually, no, you deleted a few. Beautiful. Sean's cleaning up as we go. Let's uh actually go back to that. So what we'll see here is food. Food is up 3.0%. Food away from home up 3.4%. First, full what's a full service meal and snack? Is this like what you get on an airplane? What's a f is that like going to a restaurant? It's the and snacks that's throwing me off. Because I imagine like I go to a restaurant, I get a steak, I get some potatoes. Like, hey, you got any snacks? I just want an appetizer today, guys. Listen, one time we me and my wife went to Olive Garden. We have not gone back to Olive Garden in six years. We went to Olive Garden and we had a waitress. Listen, listen, it's been six over six years now. It was just before COVID. We went to Olive Garden. Gosh, that's seven years, and we only got water and the breadsticks and salad. And the waitress hated us so much. Are you getting free breadsticks? Well Yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty much. Well, but they're not free. If you don't get a meal, I don't we still had to pay it. It was like seven bucks or something like that. And we still paid her like a third we gave her like a $13 tip, rounded out like $20. But this the I mean, she came over to the table, dude, like every two minutes. Are you gonna get something? Almost was basically her her her vibe. Like, no, we're just we're just chilling. And then she would literally just not say anything and just walk off. Like she was so irritated that we weren't eating. She was so beside herself that we just wanted to enjoy some breadsticks, which are good, by the way. They're really good.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_04They're fire breadsticks. But she hated us, and we just never went back.
SPEAKER_06I just don't like Olive Garden.
SPEAKER_04Neither does Rachel too heavy. So that's probably another bigger. It was just kind of like, eh, we won't go back.
SPEAKER_06It's got a weird smell in there.
SPEAKER_04It's got a weird smell.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, when I walk in, it's like smells like armpits.
SPEAKER_04Somebody called Olive Garden Italian Applebee's one time, and I was like, that's that's pretty much it. Outback is Australian Applebee's. Chili's is like upscale Applebee's.
SPEAKER_06It's all the Cisco, different Cisco stops.
SPEAKER_04Food is up in price. We've been talking about this happening since the beginning of this war. The cost of urea is going up, had gone up when farmers were ordering fertilizer. Urea is the main form of fertilizer. And so when the cost of the main form of fertilizer goes up, the cost of production goes up. When the cost of oil, the cost of uh everything that's industrial on a farm is gonna go up and operating it. And that's not to mention the fact that tariffs are affecting farming as well. The El Nino. We have droughts affecting these farmers. And I came on here three, four months ago and said food prices are probably gonna keep going up. I didn't say it's because I wanted you to get mad at me or I wanted to, you know, just be a shock jockey. I wanted you to be prepared. We talked about gardening, we talked about cucumbers, carrots. We just pulled some potatoes out of the ground. I'm not a big garden guy. Haven't been until recently. Main reason food prices are going up, and I just don't want to eat the food that's coming out of the grocery stores. I don't want to eat poison. Everyone's getting diarrhea now. You hear that? You heard about the diarrhea epidemic going around?
SPEAKER_05Oh, I've heard it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Loud and clear.
SPEAKER_04And apparently, Sean, to your point you've made on other podcasts about my uh my Taco Bell affliction. Reports are that the diarrhea disease is indeed sourcing out of Taco Bell.
SPEAKER_06Taco Bell specifically?
SPEAKER_04I don't know if they're just running with it for the meme or if it's legit science, but they're saying it might be coming out of Taco Bell. So now I can say I've survived COVID and I've survived Taco Bell's diarrhea epidemic without getting sick. I'm very proud of that.
SPEAKER_06That's equivalent to a deployment.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's basically my third deployment. It's essentially I've now gone on three deployments at this point. Unvaxxed through COVID, ate Taco Bell through the diarrhea epidemic. We're we're all here. Third torque. So let's go into our next tab to see how higher food prices are affecting consumer purchasing. This according to newsdecota.com. So the report says food prices are up 2.7% from a year ago and about 26% higher than five years ago, prompting more consumers to switch to lower cost store brands, shop at discount realtors, retailers, sorry. Freudian slip. Freudian slip. Shop at discount retailers, or simply buy fewer groceries. Cobank economist Billy Roberts says, quote, food price increases are proving to be the definitive everyday stressor for consumers, and they're responding decisively by choosing lower cost options like private label brands, shopping at discount retailers, or simply buying less. So, food prices are going up. And it's not just for America! I know America is the entire earth, and we don't listen or hear or care about anything else that's going on in any other country, but the dollar is the world reserve currency. Can I tell you right now, do you think what America's doing is affecting other countries? I can tell you that it is. This war, the money printing, all of this affects other countries. Why? Because they depend on the dollar. Their currency, ever since 1944, has been pegged in one way, shape, or form, first world or third, to the dollar. So inflation, when we're feeling it, other countries are also feeling it. So let's pull up India. Says the US-Iran war hits home in India, with WPI inflation rising to 9.87%. You thought 3% was bad. 9.87%. Says the impact of the US-Iran war is feeding into prices, with India's wholesale price inflation accelerating to 9.87% in June from 9.68% in May. The rise has been driven by a steep increase in the price of both food and non-food items. Maybe things like urea, maybe things like oil. I don't know. I'm just in the basement. I'm reading an article for you. This is affecting the entire world. It's not just us. We made a whiteboard video about four months ago talking about the possibility of famine striking these third world countries because of this war. The supply and demand ripple effects were in the water. I watched a stone get thrown into the lake, and I'm like, oh, the ripples are gonna hit over there. And people are like, that's not gonna happen. I watched a stone get thrown into the lake. Ripple effects are going to happen. And they're not done. That's the other thing. They're not done. Inflation's not going away, mainly because the war is not going away either. Iran stepped fully away from the MOU, so is America. Apparently, we're gonna bomb them for the next two weeks. Do you really think that's gonna cause oil prices to go down? Do you really? Do you really think that's going to benefit our economy if we continue to bomb Iran?
SPEAKER_07Really?
SPEAKER_04Just because they don't have a nuke? I get they shouldn't have a nuke, but for this very reason, you're not gonna get a house. They don't get a nuke, you don't get a house. Fair deal. Fair deal. Fair deal. And now we have a Twitter tweet. A Twitter, a tweetle. What do you call them? An ex? Is it just a post now? What's the actual like literate way to describe this post? Is it an ex?
SPEAKER_05Everyone gets it. Whatever you want to say.
SPEAKER_04I I get it, but like what is the actual I get it. I get people know what I'm saying. I think they're still tweets too. That's why I say. Sean? What's your generation call this?
SPEAKER_06I think we call them tweets. Yeah? I don't know. I still just call it Twitter. I don't know. I don't even call it X or anything. Like, why why would anybody say, oh, it's X, formerly known as Twitter? It's like, it's just Twitter.
SPEAKER_04I think it's because Elon had an old company named X or one of them. This is his first one. It was his first one.
SPEAKER_05That he sold to PayPal. That's how they merged. Ah it became a part of the mafia.
SPEAKER_04Then PayPal sells to eBay. Got it. This tweet coming out of Jack Prandelli over on X says 19 million barrels. That's the entire cushion left in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is the reserve that America has of oil. The SPR sits at about 319.5 billion, or I'm sorry, million barrels of oil, the lowest since 1983. The estimated minimum operating level, around 300 million barrels. So we are now sitting 19.5 million from the minimum, and we've just bludgeoned the Strait of Hormuz once again, which is lowering the amount of oil, about a fifth of it that can come out of that straight. Refilling back to its historical norms could take years or tens of billions of dollars. This SPR was built after the 1973 oil embargo so that the US would never get caught flat-footed again. Lots of good lore about the 1973 oil embargo in the Yom Kippur War. But we won't get into that. Let's look at this graph so we can get a good visual on this. Pull up the phone, look at the screen real quick, check out this visual. We are here, that tiny little arrow over there on the far right. And then the red line being the minimum operating level of our SPR. Now I want to look into the definition of that. Why 300 million? Is that is that just what we stated? Is there some math? I'm assuming there's some math around that as to what we would need to be able to continue to operate our country, operate our facilities, our infrastructure, or importing, exporting. I'm not sure why 300 is the number, but that's the number. And we're very, very close to it. We're very dangerously close to it. Biden had come close to it, built it back up by the end of his term, and then this war, as you can see, has kind of hockey sticked us down, and the war's ongoing. Just to show that we didn't pull this only from Twitter, let's go to our next graph showing the same exact thing. Little hockey stick there at the end. Little L.
SPEAKER_07Little L. Let's move on. Let's get move on.
SPEAKER_04Perfect. With all that being said, the White House is currently putting out propaganda on X. This is just straight propaganda. This isn't real. This is straight propaganda. But pull this out real quick. Pull this out. This whole graph is is propaganda. CPI down 0.4%. We're still at 3.5%. 3.5% means prices are 3.5% more expensive than they were last year. So for the official White House, Twitter, X, whatever they want to call themselves account, to say prices are falling. They're falling out of the sky. Everything's gonna be more expensive. Expensive for you. You're finally gonna be able to find a house. You're finally gonna be able to get a burrito in Chipotle without thinking about your banking account. You're finally gonna be able to afford groceries. Maybe you'll raise a family one day. You're gonna be able to afford childcare, healthcare. It's gonna be beautiful. Just stop talking about the war and look at this. Prices are coming down. This is the largest amount of monthly deflation we've seen since April 2020. I guess it pays no uh mind to the fact that April 2020 was, in fact, the time when the economy was completely shut down.
SPEAKER_07Maybe.
SPEAKER_04Could have something to do with the global outbreak breaking its way into America just a month and a half prior, shutting us all down, telling us to go home for two weeks, it would turn into two and a half years. Could have something to do with that. We won't dive any further. But this is a misleading, very propaganda, very just it's it's just giving weak. Because there's no data, there's no numbers that show prices are going down. And if there were, they would talk about them. We know that. If they were, they were talking about them. When we were coming down off the avian flu and egg prices were coming down, it was all they were talking about was eggs. When gas prices were coming down, it was all they were talking about was gas prices. And now that those things are higher again, they're not talking about them. Or they don't care about them, or they're just gonna put out tweets whenever it's convenient to say, ah, prices are coming down. They're not. They're not. Economists just thought they were going to be more and more expensive, and it's just only more expensive. If that makes sense. Sean, does that make sense? How this is just BS?
SPEAKER_06Yes.
SPEAKER_04I hate when you do that.
SPEAKER_06Why?
SPEAKER_04I don't know.
SPEAKER_06I know, I I'm I'm I'm listening, I'm tracking, man.
SPEAKER_04It's frustrating though, because people want lower prices, and then we see headlines that give people faith that prices will get lower. And then we're we're not gonna actually see like people are getting like just tricked.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. I think for me personally, I've gotten to the point where when I see stuff like this, it's just like, okay, more propaganda, whatever. Good. Like I don't know. Like it's good, but also like, damn, this shit sucks. Like, when are things gonna actually change?
SPEAKER_04Right. No, I hear you. I feel we could we could sp just completely divert this podcast into the very anarchist way that it could be based off of just that statement. But yeah.
SPEAKER_05Moving on. Like when pitchers were allowed to bat in the National League, and like every once in a while a pitcher would hit a home run, but then they would still bat 26%.
SPEAKER_04That's a super good tip.
SPEAKER_050.026 on the season.
SPEAKER_04They'd hit their four home runs throughout the season, but also bat 184.
SPEAKER_05Accidentally got a run and is flexing so hard on the timeline.
SPEAKER_04And it's yeah, it's like you've hit a home run as a pitcher and you're also down 12-2. You just hit a solo shot. Congratulations. Yeah, congrats. It's 12-2.
SPEAKER_05You hit because the other pitcher just threw a horrible pitch. It was a bad pitch. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04It was a big and that's the scenario we're in. We're we're in this little gap where the war actually did kind of stop for a moment. And if you want to know why inflation actually came down, it's because the war subsided for a sec. It's because oil prices came down. That's all it is. It's only because energy prices came down. If you see the latest inflation data, you have to know this. The only reason inflation came in a little cooler was because oil prices came down. But now, since this report has come out, the war is back on. So understand this the next inflation numbers we're going to see are going to be more dramatic. And prices did not come down from this inflation report. They only were not as expensive as we thought. 3.5% more expensive to live in America than it was this time last year, and that's being perpetuated by this post as prices are coming down. That's a lie. And I just want to be very clear about that. And as Sean made it very clear, there's a lot of lies, and it can feel like, wow, I don't care about this lie because I've been lied to 38 other times. But it is a lie. Speaking of lies, here's Donald Trump talking in the office. Why uh is this the Oval Office all gold plated? This can't be the Oval Office. Did he gold plate the entire Oval Office? Yeah. For sure. Why'd I forget about that? Oh, I do remember that video. This is from the 14th of July on prices and inflation.
SPEAKER_02Prices are coming way down, and we're going to bring them much lower yet. We had the worst inflation in history, and the history of our country. I mean, we had months where it was 9 and 10%. And now we have a report just came out. It was just released. Thank you for bringing it up. But the report was incredible. Inflation is way down. That means prices are coming way down, and we're doing a great job. This is coming from real news, no bullshit. Prices are way down.
SPEAKER_04Sorry. Sorry, had one more thing to say. My apologies. It says Trump claimed the prices were coming down across the board and pointed to a release by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics that showed overall consumer prices dropping 0.4% from May to June. It should be noted that prices rose 0.5% the previous month, with many analysts pointing to the conflict with Iran as the main driver of both the increase and the decrease. In June, the ceasefire was holding. When you really look at the numbers over a 12-month period, June 2025 to June 2026, here's some of the data shown, and I would highly suggest following Real News, no bullshit. They are a fantastic source for getting all this data quick and accurately. We love them. So with that being said, inflation is going to continue, and this war is not going to be done, meaning inflation is going to keep doing what it's been doing when the war was going on. And when oil prices go up, it affects energy. When energy goes up, it affects everything from imports to exports to products and services, goods all across the board. We saw that in the past three months of inflation reports. And the July CPI report that we'll inevitably get at the beginning of August will surely show what we're talking about right now that prices are not coming back down. At least not right now, because of the war. But there's another war going on that we must talk about, and it is the war of AI.
SPEAKER_07Let's bring this up real quick.
SPEAKER_04Like, is this his buffering mode? I just don't like that we're trying to pose robots in like human-like positions. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Like as if they but the human programmed it. It's not the robot's fault. There. The human made it do that, so you'd feel more natural looking at it. Who is my father?
SPEAKER_06It's just who I stem from.
SPEAKER_04It's good marketing.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Well, that's how I feel about like the like Chat GBT when you like talk to it with your voice and they have like actual breathing and like they're like, yeah. And like they have like the breathing noises. I'm sorry about that. That's manipulative. Like that's crazy. Yeah. Like what are you doing on the box?
SPEAKER_04Let me think about that. Like you just spent two minutes thinking about it. Why are you texting that you're thinking about it?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, like you already know what the fuck you're gonna say. You don't need to think about it, dude.
SPEAKER_05Dude, can I tell I'm I'm gonna interrupt for a second. I saw this video the other day from this like it's like a therapy show, like couples therapy. And it's a like older guy and woman, and he goes, you know, I've been doing this new thing. Why are you whispering to me? Because it's sad. Oh preparing you for sorrow. All right. Turn up your volume, everybody. And then at the end of the day, I'll be like, Hey, did I do good today? And then his wife like laughs at it, and he's like, I just like no one else is telling me. I don't know who to ask. Oh damn. And I was like, also, ChatGPT is programmed to go, Yes, you did amazing. Like, no matter what, ChatGPT is gonna be like, You did amazing. You did incredible. So, like, he's falling victim to the favorable programming, but in the same sense, like needs it. That was a good video. There's a lot of ethical exploration there.
SPEAKER_04You did a great job today, son. Yeah, it's really tough. That wasn't just a hit and run, that was a fantastic way to get those angry motives out of your body. Everybody let's dissect where you can put the body most safely and efficiently.
SPEAKER_06Oh no.
SPEAKER_04That's I had my conversation with Rachel the other day because my daughter was asking uh Alexa about songs. She was playing songs with it, and then at one point she was like, Alexa, what would you like to hear? And I said, Stop it. Stop it right now. Do not act like that is something that has any thought processes or any emotion. It does not care. It's time to have the talk. It's time to have the talk, and apparently it's right now at seven. That's that's for me, it's gonna be the new talk, like the big tech stuff. Like, yeah, you have the the birds and the bees talk, but like we gotta we gotta talk about tech.
SPEAKER_05We could dude, we could talk about this for what it what is what's the birds and the bees thing?
SPEAKER_04Well flowers are born. Yes, it's how flowers are born. It's it's essentially the same process, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Can you explain it in detail?
SPEAKER_04You know what I've never heard of it before, I just didn't know what you were talking about. Right. I think for the dollar club members, we'll exclusively have a conversation around the birds and the bees. Uh, we can make that happen for sure. But I think right now, as you usually tell me to stay on topic.
SPEAKER_05Oh, yeah, let's go. Let's go.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I probably will stay there. Good try, though. I love that. The contemplating robot here must only be thinking well, the AI bubble burst.
SPEAKER_05I'm gonna cut this whole bit out.
SPEAKER_04Nah, don't cut this bit out. Don't cut this. Tell tell Joe right now in the comment section. Don't cut this bit out if you're watching live. Let's read through the third paragraph here. It says, Jerry Jeremy Grant Grantham. Jeremy Grantham, the founder and investment advisor at a large asset manager, said he planned to sell his tech shares as he expected the AI bubble to burst soon. Pause. I'm not a financial advisor. I do not advise or cannot advise you on what you should buy, sell, or invest in. I am simply a random dude on YouTube and Spotify. Do not listen to what I say or what I'm even repeating, others are saying. The founder and investment advisor at a large asset manager said he planned to sell his tech shares as he expected the AI bubble to burst soon. Grantham said that AI was similar to the invention of railways or the internet, in that everyone overinvests, and when they realize it as a utility, such as electricity, they understand that there's not much money to be made from the invention itself except for the companies that build services around it. Okay, now this is a really important point here. He says, I don't believe that these big AI conglomeration companies, these token-based profit model companies, are gonna survive much longer. I've said it before. I think it's it right now, it's it's like all these investments that are being thrown in at the tunes of hundreds of billions of dollars. The total investment in AI, by the way, totaled 2.35 trillion as of right now. 2.35 trillion. Sit on that number for a moment. The reason money is flowing into this is because money's also flowing out. We just saw in the SpaceX IPO, you can just throw a number on something and become a trillionaire. The AI boom is a gold rush, similar to the gold rush of the dot-com bubble. Can my unks shout out in the chat real quick that remember the dot-com bubble? It began in 1996 with Netscape. They were an IPO that basically overvaluated themselves. This bubbled into the entire tech stock market. And all of these companies that were thriving at the moment, or at least pitching to investors, thriving, they were just getting money hand over fist. Private money, public money, hedge funds were throwing money into internet-based companies for about four years. And then March 2020, or I'm sorry, March 20, March 2020 was COVID, March 2000, it popped. It just popped. Because all of that speculation created a hyper-inflated bubble around tech, and inevitably all of these companies are making these big audacious promises around what they could do with internet, but they couldn't come through on it. They couldn't create a profitable model based off of it, and they crashed. Now, does that mean quick quiz? Quick quiz.
SPEAKER_07Did the dot-com bubble stop the internet? Up there in the top? Nobody?
SPEAKER_04Did the dot-com bubble stop the internet? No, of course not. It halted the companies for a bit. A little bit. But it was mainly just the stock market. It didn't actually impact much else in our world. Uh Sean, could we skip forward real quick to that median home sale price graph? Right there. Uh the gray bar right there uh at the beginning of 2001, that's when the dot-com bubble crashed. That's when it actually popped. And you could see home prices drop from where they were at of 179 to 171. Prices were 179,000, they dropped to 171,000. That would be the equivalent to around a $400,000 home being worth $380. Is it a drop? Sure. Is it the 20%, 30% crash everybody wants? Definitely not. And we could see right after it spiked right back up to way above where it was and kept going until the inevitable conglomeration of 2008. We know that. So just to be clear, tech bubble popping doesn't always equal asset price deflation. Doesn't always mean that retirement accounts are gonna go into flux. I mean, think of what would happen to happen for a 2008-like crash to happen. You'd have to have a bunch of people selling their homes, nobody willing to buy them. You'd have to have a lot of people selling off their assets because they're going down in price and they're afraid. Could that happen with an AI bubble pop? Maybe. But here's another man who thinks it's gonna happen. This is tech invest investor Bill Gurley, who, as Joe mentioned, is pretty much the DNA equivalent of what we all kind of think that Silicon Valley investors look like. You know, guys that have at least a four handicap look like. He just has that standard build. But he says, quote, I think AI is gonna trip and run out of money. He says they're headed for a reset. Let's go down a little bit a little bit to a couple of his quotes. He says, one day we're going to have an AI reset. Notice he says one day. Because we're creating bubbles because interlopers came in. What the heck is an interloper? Do we know what an interloper is? Can we Google what the word interloper means here in a moment?
SPEAKER_06Isn't that a movie?
SPEAKER_04We will somebody saying like Zach, I can't believe you don't know what interloper means. I get it. I don't know what all the words mean. Interloper. A person or entity that intrudes in a place, situation, or social group where they are not wanted, do not belong, or lack permission to be there. Got it. So the weird guy who is supposed to leave the party and then comes back to the next one. The guy that gets kind of told to leave the last one, shows back up. You don't want him there. He's the interloper. It says we're going to have an AI reset because waves have been created by interlopers. However, Gurley said the sell-off will allow bargain hunters to snag a deal. He said investors should emulate Warren Buffett by determining at what price they would buy software service stocks and start gobbling them up when they fall to those levels. Hear me. Crashes don't benefit the working class. They never have. They never have. And 2008 gets overromanticized because you've heard of that one person that got a really good deal on a short sale over foreclosure in like 2010 and a half. And you're like, I want that opportunity too. Do you want the high unemployment rate? Do you want to be unemployed? Do you want all the the these investors are waiting for this opportunity because there's no downside to an investor? As long as they're not one of the companies that fell through and they didn't have all their eggs in one basket. These Warren Buffett-like types, who, by the way, Warren Buffett gives a lot of money back. Love Warren Buffett. Emulate him as a billionaire. They're just gonna buy all the cheap stocks the moment the crash happens. They get richer because of crashes. It's the same thing, by the way, that happened in 2008. When did all this infrastructural and uh institutional investing start up in real estate, by the way? It was right after the 2008 housing market crash. So when crashes happen, billionaires benefit. And it separates the wealth gap of the two even further between the have nots and the have yachts. Speaking of the have nots, have yachts, a senator who's consistently and constantly spoken out against them is Congressman. I'm sorry, Senator Bernie Sanders. Senator Bernie Sanders introduced legislation to create a $7 trillion AI Sovereign Wealth Fund.
unknownHmm.
SPEAKER_04This was introduced just last month. Says the bill would give the American people, not oligarchs, control over the future of AI. What's it got to say? It says today introduced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act to give public access a 50% ownership in the largest artificial intelligence companies in our country. Quote, left unchecked, artificial intelligence and robotics threatens the jobs, privacy rights, and mental health of every man, woman, and child in America. As a society, we can no longer sit back and allow a handful of big tech oligarchs to determine the future of this revolutionary technology with no democratic input. AI was not created out of thin air. It was not a brilliant idea that just popped into Mark Zuckerberg's head or Elon Musk's imagination. The foundation of AI is based on the collective knowledge of humanity and the creative work of tens of millions of people. And the American people must have the ability to slow it down and make sure that AI benefits humanity, not just the richest people on the planet. And that's precisely what this legislation does. Scroll down a little bit. There's three main points that we're going to take away from this. And we do have the actual bill article that we'll show you in a moment. So if you want to read the actual bill, there's three main items. First, it would create an independent commission for democratic AI to manage the sovereign wealth fund in the public's interest. I would obviously want to know who's in charge of that, who's putting those people in charge, what their jobs are actually going to be, how open, authentic are they going to be with the public. The independent commission would use voting shares in these companies to block decisions that hurt the American people and push for policies that help them. The Independent Commission would consist of seven members nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, with nominees selected from a list of bipartisan names provided by Congress. No longer would the future of AI and the transformation of human life that it will bring be dictated by fewer than a dozen big tech oligarchs. Sounds good! Sounds good. Sounds good. I like it so far. Second, it would require large companies that operate both AI and non-AI businesses to break up those businesses, ensuring the public receives an ownership stake in the AI business. Again, I like it, but now how do you do that? We haven't been breaking up monopolies as a country for decades. How are we gonna do it now with the hottest, coolest oligarchs at the table right now, the biggest, fastest companies, the genre of AI that's receiving trillions of dollars? How are we gonna do that? Would be my question. Third point it would guarantee that the economic benefits generated by ARU AI are used to improve the lives of all of us, not simply to make the richest people in the world even richer. Sounds great. Sounds great. Now on the count of three, I want you to say in your head, yes or no, do you think this would actually receive enough votes to pass through Congress? Three, two, one. No, I I don't think so. I think there's been several things proposed by Bernie Sanders that never make their way even to the voting floor that make a lot of sense. I think the second part would require a lot more detail, even in reading through the bill, not a lot of detail. In fact, can we bring up the bill real quick? If you want to look this up, I will have it in the comments section. Uh, this is the bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to impose an excise tax on systematically important AI activity and for other purposes. The act may be cited as the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act. And I skipped a line and Sean didn't catch it. My bad, brother. I'll have that in the comment section if you want to read through it. I think it makes a lot of sense. Do I think anything comes of it? No, I I don't, unfortunately. But go figure. A couple weeks later, after Bernie presents that, Sam Altman comes up with a similar idea.
SPEAKER_07But a little different.
SPEAKER_04Just a little. So in Bernie's, he wanted 50% of these companies to be publicly owned. In Sam Altman's version, it's 5%. And it's not public. Breaking. So as OpenAI has proposed that's Sam Altman's company. Chat GPT. OpenAI has proposed giving the Trump administration a 5% stake in the company to quote clear political. Obstacles, unquote. The details would include one, Sam Altman has argued that giving the public a financial stake in the company is the best way to share the upside of AI. Bernie would agree with you. Open AI is reportedly in early talks for a public ownership deal as political pressure rises. The proposed arrangement would involve other US AI companies handling over a similar stick handing over a similar stake. I would assume that's anthropic. We're looking at companies all across the board, maybe even over to Palantir. Four Sam Altman is reportedly in active talks with the Trump administration about the situation. Maybe because there's a law that's potentially being discussed that would force 50% to the public. And instead, they're like, what if we did 5%, gave it to the White House, and that would kind of guarantee us a government bailout if anything were to fall because now you have a vested interest in our success. Could be, could be, I think I like Bernie's option better. I think I like his variation of creating this wealth fund better. And he brings up great points. He brings up great points in the fact that honestly, there's so much money that's being made on AI or potentially could be made by AI in the future. They're not extremely profitable at the moment. 50% of data centers have either been stopped altogether or held back, postponed. The lily pads in front are a little foggy for AI, I gotta admit. But again, just like the dot-com bubble, if this bubble were to pop, there's $2.35 trillion in that poppage. That's a lot of money. That is a lot of money. But like the dot com bubble, would a tech bubble stop AI from eventually growing? I don't think so. I don't think so. And I think we can use the dot-com bubble to kind of see that that was a hiccup in the stock market that did bring a lot of these companies that were making audacious promises they couldn't come to fruition on financially to these investors to fall. Can that happen again with AI? I think it will. But will the companies that are utilizing AI to better their services, the goods, the things that they're doing with it to improve the consumer experience, the human experience, even though it's not human, is probably gonna stay. Now you may be asking. How much money is $2.35 trillion? You may be asking that you probably didn't, but now you may be. What would uh a trillion dollars look like next to a human if we stacked it up in hundred dollar bills? Are you curious? I was. I found a graphic. So, oh yeah, this is just the first of two. So here is a billion dollars. Pick up your screens. A billion dollars stacked next to a human. I don't know how tall the human is. Does it say? Okay, let's just assume they're five foot five. A billion dollars. We could see the ten thousand dollar bundle stacked at the very beginning. A million, ten million, a hundred million. This makes me question, by the way, in that scene in The Dark Knight Rise is how much money the Joker was lighting on fire. You remember that scene where he like slides down the mountain of money? That's a that's a similar height to that, and that's straight up. He had it in a whole pile. Was the Joker sitting on a Billy? And maybe those were also tens, fifties, ones. I don't know what you get. Banks for robbing them and stuff. It's my all-time favorite movie, by the way. Great movie. That uh that right there, that uh piece of art, that's yeah, it's the color taken from each each frame. Or like every two minutes or something. But to be clear, that is a billion dollars. And if you're just listening, that is a stack of money that is about, I'd say, ten times as wide as the human and about three and a half times the height. It says 17 feet tall approximately, is if you stacked a billion dollars up two meters wide, so six and a half feet wide. But there have been two thousand three hundred and fifty of those stacks invested into AI. Can we bring up the next graphic? This really puts it in perspective. So on the far left, we'll see the same graphic we just looked at, the human standing next to the billion dollars. And the billion dollars now looks like the stack of 10,000 bucks. Because now we're comparing it to 100 billion, 250 billion, all the way up to 1.6 trillion dollars, the total investment in AI from 2013 to 2024, which means that number has gone up. That stack of money would have gone up another 7.5 billion, or no, not seven and a half billion, seven and a half trillion dollars. No, I'm saying it wrong once again. 750 billion dollars. 750 billion dollars. So 750 of those original stacks next to the people are going into AI investment, and this is why individuals are thinking in a world where data centers are being pushed back on, and we don't have enough energy right now to support all of these graphic processing AI-based data centers from NVIDIA and Meta and all Google. We don't have the infrastructure. Also, you don't have the profitable model. AI is selling like all these different weird packages now, like on Chat GPT. You can like register to make it talk sexy to you and stuff, and it can take in more uh photos and videos, and now they're throwing ads into it. Does throwing ads into something to create a profit model sound like a good profitable business, or does it sound like they're trying to scrape what they can? It does it sound like they're trying to scrape what they can when you can type in, I want to see, you know, something crazy R-rated, X, like you're allowing your technology to do that now, to see titties, and I'm supposed to think that that's the profitable model you guys had drawn up three and a half years ago in your executive board meetings. Like, yeah, 2026, we need to create a subscription fee so that they can see uh big titties. All right, that's 2026 Q1 launch plan. I don't think that happened. I don't think it did. And it's not slowing down either, according to CrunchBase.com, the global venture dollar volume into AI is not just growing, I mean it it's spiking. It's spiking pretty dramatically in late stage products. Late stage products meaning they're coming to market soon. This isn't new, but it's growing. So when people talk about a tech bubble, AI-based bubble, some history would say that that bubble in 2000 started in 1996. It didn't start in 2000, it didn't start in 1999, it started four years prior. Bubbles don't form overnight. You could look at the student loan bubble people say that we're in, you could look at the wage crisis that we're in. Like these things don't happen overnight. They happen through decades, they happen through years, they happen through laws. And what we're witnessing right now is, in my opinion, I would say we are walking toward a bubble. I don't know when it's going to pop. I don't know how severe the pop could be. All I would say is if you're holding investments and you're thinking, Zach, should I sell, I wouldn't advise it if you're looking to hold for 10, 20, 30 years. Because just like the dot-com bubble, just like 2008, just like the temporary crashes we saw in 2020, even one in 2023, our stock market's been recovering faster than ever. So I would not sell. Uh, but if you have extra money on hand and you want to take advantage of what the earlier man said, you could have the opportunity to buy tech stocks at a bargain price when and if this bubble were to crack. So the problem for me isn't whether or not it's going to crack. I think it will. And then the debate for me as to whether or not that would halt AI from growing, to me, is a silly argument. I think it'll continue to grow on to encompass everything about our lives. And to make you feel a little bit better about that, I figured I would bring on some of the tech lords that are in charge of that AI infrastructure to kind of ease our tensions a bit, kind of just put us at ease as to what they're building, because obviously AI is going to create lots of jobs. Obviously, we're going to create lots of uh utopian experience. Obviously, it's going to be great for humanity. Humanity should live on all of these things. Let's begin uh right here from the beginning of uh this is Mr. Elon Musk. Can we start this from the start?
SPEAKER_00We have for the first time, we will have for the first time something that is smarter than the smartest human. Um, and that I mean it's hard to say exactly what that moment is, but but there will come a point where no job is needed. You can have a job if you want to have a job for sort of personal satisfaction, but the AI will be able to do everything.
SPEAKER_04Can you pause it real quick? Sean, why are we still pretending that anybody's doing a job for personal satisfaction? Why are we still pretending that that's the case? People are working jobs. No, no matter if you're doing it for survival or thriving, no matter if you're doing it just to put groceries in your grocery cart barely, or go on a vacation and have a Bentley. You're doing what you do because you make money. You're doing what you do so you can pay bills. You're doing what you're doing. Like, I would say there's what what do you think the percentage? There's definitely some that love their job, love their work. I would put myself in a position of, I do not hate what I'm doing right now. I don't dislike what I'm doing right now at all. I don't like the topic matter sometimes. But, you know, I'm free of the quote unquote fixed labor force, which I'm very grateful for. But if the money thing, if AI took over the world and AI was just everything and money didn't mean anything anymore, you'd probably find me in my garden more than 85% of the time. And maybe I'd record it and just be on live and be like, hey, you know, you just see what Elon did.
SPEAKER_06All these cucumbers.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, look at all these cucumbers. You see, Elon just took over the entire NFL with AI robots. Great. Like that might be what we're doing. I don't know. But what percentage do you think it is of people that actually love their job and if money weren't a thing, we'd continue to do it.
SPEAKER_06Oh, I feel like uh percentage-wise out of the entire like Earth or America?
SPEAKER_04America. America. Let's stick in capitalist America.
SPEAKER_06I think America is probably like a solid five percent.
SPEAKER_04I think that's that's exactly what I was gonna say.
SPEAKER_06I would say five percent really love their job.
SPEAKER_04That's fair. One out of twenty. That's not a bad number at all.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I could I could see that.
SPEAKER_04I could see one out of twenty.
SPEAKER_06I feel like it's usually like an older dude. He's like, Yeah, I'm retired, I'm a retired cop. Now I'm just doing this for fun.
SPEAKER_04Fair.
SPEAKER_06Like I could see that.
SPEAKER_04And there's plenty of people that that also I would put myself into this position, and someone may hear this and be like, is that me? Or you may know somebody who have conflated making money with fun. And if money were to not exist, they would no longer have interest in the job. They would say, Oh, I love doing what I'm doing. But you love doing what you're doing because it's making you good money. That's that's that's a large part of it.
SPEAKER_06We all gotta live like SpongeBob.
SPEAKER_04What is well, he loves his job.
SPEAKER_06He does love his job. Somehow he owns a pineapple.
SPEAKER_04There are a couple episodes where it talks about how much he gets paid, and that's insane. He can afford a pineapple.
SPEAKER_06And uh to feed his pet snail.
SPEAKER_04Mr. Yeah, how is he feeding his pet snail? No wonder the guy doesn't have a car. He doesn't maybe he's sabotaging himself so he doesn't have to have a vehicle. So he doesn't have to have those higher costs. I mean, how much does it cost to get oil to the bottom of the ocean?
SPEAKER_06This is getting too deep.
SPEAKER_04Maybe it's probably expensive, or maybe it's natural, maybe they have a natural source, like oil comes from the ocean. Maybe they got a little rig. The bikini bottom oil rig. I don't know. Elon says there aren't gonna be jobs, everything will be done by AI. Let's continue playing this. This is making me happy. Also, pause. Worst beard I've seen in at least eight months. I was about to say or or on video. What are we doing here with the 10% grown mustache and just full Jebediah under the chin? I don't know what's going on there. Could you imagine if you started growing an Amish beard?
SPEAKER_06Uh I I don't know how I would feel about it.
SPEAKER_04I'd like it.
SPEAKER_05I think I would like it. Looks like in this clip. Did you ever watch the original Men in Black? No. Oh, sorry. If you did, the plot of it is there's an alien that comes and like kills a guy and wears his skin to pretend to be a human. That's kind of like what Elon looks like. Oh, like men in black in this clip.
SPEAKER_04That's how men in black started. Isn't that what I said? No, you said X-Men. Oh, I meant men in black. Oh, maybe you did say men in black. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was supposed to say you're describing the men in black.
SPEAKER_05He looks like an alien. Yeah, he said men in black, dude. He kind of talks like that too. He looks into like an alien wearing human skin, pretending to be a normal human.
SPEAKER_04The men in black theory applies to And then you're like, well he's billionated, and he's like X E A of the It's so true. That that actually has one of my favorite scenes because uh it's one of the only movies Michael Jackson's in.
SPEAKER_05Really?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you never saw that? I mean, I have, but yeah, it's one of the 20 years ago. It's the only one of the only movies he was in because he loved Men in Black so much. That's cool. I think it was the second one that they put him in. Oh, yeah. On like the screen. Yeah, they put here. Can you look up the Michael Jackson scene from Men in Black 2? It's really funny.
SPEAKER_05Elam, he kind of looks like if you've ever played a Madden game, they're really bad at the human generation. He looks how humans look in Madden games. That's I hope we don't get flagged on music.
SPEAKER_04Mine.
SPEAKER_06I just uh skip right to there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04There it is! I didn't know he was in there. Can you can you uh full screen it and just back it up like three seconds? His lines are funny.
SPEAKER_10The door locks are gone and the treaty is signed. Good work. Zed, what about that position you promised me in Men in Black?
SPEAKER_02Still working on the alien affirmative action program. I'll keep you posted.
SPEAKER_10Wait a minute. That's not what you promised me.
SPEAKER_02You're you're breaking up.
SPEAKER_10Zed. Hello? I'll call you back. I can be Agent M.
unknownZed.
SPEAKER_04I can be Agent M. Apparently, he wanted to be in the actual movie, and the director was like, We can't. You will distract every you can't be an actor in a movie. You're Michael Jackson. We have to make us up a role that jokes about you being Michael Jackson.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And I think it's hilarious that they lean to the fact that he looks like one of the aliens took over a person's body. And little thumbnail or a little uh Easter egg. He was in Antarctica. Hmm, what's going on in Antarctica? A lot of questions. That's where Elvis and Hitler apparently are. I don't know. But that's Elon Musk. Let's continue playing this. Uh just cuz look at that awful beard. Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00I don't know if that makes people comfortable or uncomfortable. It doesn't. It's hard, you know, when it is when when there's new technology, it tends to have usually follow an S-curve. In this case, we're going to be on the exponential portion of the S-curve for a long time. Um and you're able to ask for anything. It won't be correct. We won't have universal basic income. We'll have universal high income. So in some in some sense, it'll be cut somewhat of a leveler. Um equalizer. Because uh really I think everyone will have access to this magic genie. Uh where we we have for the first time.
SPEAKER_04Quick question for the chat. What drug causes overly watery eyes? Um I'm curious. I think that dries your eyes out, actually.
SPEAKER_06Alcohol? Uh I don't know.
SPEAKER_04I don't know. A little watery. I almost think he was tearing up at the fact that he was promising people higher income, universal higher income. I just don't see it happening. I think we have all the potential to create a utopian state like that. I just don't think that they'll do it. Elitist billionaires don't want that. Zionists don't want that. Beta blockers and antidepressants. Beta blockers and antidepressants. Depressants. Hmm. Hmm. Sam Altman, ladies and gentlemen, on our next clip, owner of OpenAI. Here's his take on what AI might do in the near future. I want you to take this in with a nice deep breath, and as he states it with a big smile, feel the peace overwhelm your body.
SPEAKER_03Um, I think AI will probably, like most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, uh, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning. Probably all, but until then we're gonna count.
SPEAKER_04Good. Good. Did you hear that? Did you hear he's it's probably gonna kill all humans, it's probably gonna eliminate human need, but we're gonna make some pretty cool companies in the meantime. You heard that, right? Like, this is one of the leaders of this group. We're not even showing the drug-infested Alex Carp. We're not we're not going into some of these uh talks about lavender and its use in war. They already know no one's gonna have a job. It might destroy humanity as we know it. Who knows how people are gonna be fulfilled in their day-to-day. Some people will convince them that's themselves that's their job, but take money away, and then what is it? And I obviously I don't think we're gonna get to that point where just no one's working a job. I I I just don't see that.
SPEAKER_07But maybe because here's Peter Thiel, who over the next week we're gonna be going a little bit more in depth on, on where he thinks the human race falls in all of this.
SPEAKER_08You're hesitant about that real quick. You would prefer the human race to endure, right? Right. The human race. You're hesitant. Well, I Yes?
SPEAKER_04I don't know. I I would start that over real quick. That's a tough question. Do you think the human race should move on? Assuming, by the way, he is one of them, he is a human race. Based off the men in black theory, maybe not. But based off of what we know about him, what he portrays, he's part of the human race. He is asked, Do you think the human race should go on? Let's play this one more time.
SPEAKER_08You would prefer co-founder Palantir, by the way.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_08Uh you're hesitating. Well, I yes, I don't know. I I would I would um hesitation. This is a long hesitation. There's so many questions and plus.
SPEAKER_04You would prefer the human race. He is like the Jordan Peterson of multi-billionaires. He loves to make everything more difficult and theological than it is, and just go so deep when the question is so obvious.
SPEAKER_05He's a philosopher. That's what he went to school for.
SPEAKER_04Uh when the when the answers are just just basic elementary.
SPEAKER_06It's like lettuce. I say that's a ball, that's a softball. That is that is anymore. It's a T ball. I think uh yeah, the humans should survive and you know, we can use AI to better our life. He's just like, uh no, there's a lot of I don't know.
SPEAKER_04There's a lot of questions implicit to uh to giving that answer. No, we could start with, yeah, I think human race should survive. Could AI eventually impact its ability to feel fulfilled or be valuable to the labor force? I'm sure, but these are questions that we're ultimately talking about at the higher echelons of the AI tech world. We're we're very aware of these problems, you know, like and you can get into it, but you could start with the human race should survive, because again, assuming you're one of them. Assuming he's one of them. Last one, and then we'll head out for the day, guys. Love you so much. If you have not subscribed, we are fighting the algorithm here. If you've made it to this point in the podcast, I love you so much. Because YouTube and Spotify both are just kind of being a little algorithmically glitchy. We'll just call it that. We'll just call it that. Um, so if you use the buttons to like the subscribe, that is awesome. If you want to leave a review, make it honest. You don't just have to leave a five-star review, make it honest on Spotify. And if you do want access to some of the documents that we're going over, like I want to show one real quick. This is our real inflation document. Uh, we are slowly, oh man, you got rid of yours, dude. Wow. You gotta click out of it. Click into a new cell.
SPEAKER_07What the hell?
SPEAKER_04Click into a new cell? What the hell? I don't know, you're just about to delete everything. Control Z. Boom. The items that have suffered the most inflation versus the most deflation since 2010. We are working through the Wayback Machine, Federal Reserve data, past blogs, pictures of menus, pictures from Black Friday deals to find what was the real price of these items in 2010, what was the income that someone was making in 2010, and could they afford life? We've gone through things like the McDonald's meals, home insurance, dish soap, Taco Bell Crunchy Taco, ground beef, coffee, a subway, foot long, so many more. There's about 200 plus items. We're slowly building this out. Our dollar club members will get first access to this document as they already have alpha access to our corruption map. So if you're interested in what's actually going on in this economy and want some proof that you can show at the barbecue, at the pool, or to your buddy, this document might be it, especially once we can create some beautiful graphics out of it. Back to AI. Let's finish off with again something beautiful. One of the head executives of safety. You might have missed this one. This is back in February. AI Safety Boss were warns that the world is quote in peril. So he's quitting to write poetry. Scroll down a little bit. A major Silicon Valley tech giant, anthropic, Claude, to write poetry, warning the world is in peril. Mirnach Sharma, an Oxford graduate who leads Anthropic Safeguards research team, said he was leaving the $350 billion company to devote myself to the practice of courageous speech by taking up a degree in poetry. The resignation follows the release of Opus 4.6, a more powerful version of Anthropic's clawed chat tool last week. The founders of Anthropic have repeatedly warned that powerful AI bots could spell disaster for humanity or even extinction. In his resignation letter, Mr. Sharma said that he had faced, quote, pressures to set aside what matters most. Also adding, I continuously find myself reckoning with our situation. The world is in peril, and not just from AI or bioweapons, but from a whole series of interconnected crises unfolding in this very moment. Mr. Sharmer already published a published poet with a book on poetry by the safety chiefs, saying he is lean learning to let the beauty he loves be what he does. Oh, that's beautiful. He's gonna be a great poet. He's gonna be a great poet. In it, he describes himself as a poet, mystic, and ecstatic DJ. Ah, okay. I like this guy. His works include prayers and duty, which stands for do not look away. What? Duty, do not look away. That's not what duty stands for. Those are not the same. Well, why did they put it in per why did they put it in parentheses right next to it?
SPEAKER_05It's like songs when they put it in parentheses. Oh, oh, those are his titles.
SPEAKER_04My apology. Yeah, my I assumed immediately that was breaking down what the duty meant.
SPEAKER_05That doesn't mean that.
SPEAKER_04So one of the yeah, that doesn't mean that all right. No one claimed it did. No one claimed it did. No one claimed it did. So one of the safety officers in charge of one of the largest AI infrastructures in our country quit because he wanted to write poetry because he feels that he was basically being involved in one of the larger issues that was causing so much chaos and peril across our country. And this was when 4.6 dropped. When they dropped Fable 5, people lost their minds just a few months later. What's gonna be in a year, two years, three years? Are we gonna have AI bots doing everything for us in five, 10 years to the point where we're in this utopian state where everybody has high-paying jobs and money doesn't matter anymore? I don't know. Will an AI fund get set up by either the companies themselves with the government or by our government and given out to the public? 50%. We're gonna follow Bernie Sanders' legislation, see where that goes over the summer. Food prices are still heading up. It is time to learn how to garden for next year. One thing I can promise you outside of a large crash, food prices are not coming down. Could the inflation slow down? Maybe. But the cost of goods right now for your grocery cart are more than likely only going to be more expensive as time goes on. The time to learn how to plant a seed could be now. Start that community garden. Companies, they're also going to start seeing cracks from this inflation that we're seeing. They're paying the higher cost too, and the people that they're trying to hire, if they are, are demanding more money. Why? Because everything's more expensive. So the companies are going to struggle slightly from this, but would that also cause a crash? We don't know. The war is back on. We'll continue to track it as we go along. Gen Z in this economy are being completely shafted. All while we're going to war with a foreign country on behest of another foreign country that starts with I. We're watching our money fly out of our country. We're not allowing money to flow into the systems that are needed for affordable housing, affordable healthcare, just an affordable lifestyle, all while we're watching food, oil, and all these other products increase in price. We'll continue to track what's real. We'll continue to dissect what the reality is versus what's fake and what's not. And we'll continue to track the economy in real time for the working class if you feel you don't have the time to do so. I love you so much. Thank you for tuning in. Sean, play the song. We'll talk to you next time here on the Zach Fowl Show. And so is Howard Lutnik.