Transcription
He's the populist left, whereas Trump was the populist right. If you continue to just demonize the populace of any color, what happens is people just feel, "Oh, well, you don't actually care about my problems, so at least this guy's talking about my problems."
Zoron talks about attaching richer, whiter neighborhoods. I think that's a product of the democratic socialist worldview. It very much views things from an oppressor oppressed lens and explicitly views things in terms of racial dynamics which I think is unhealthy. What I challenge people to do who are critical of Zoron is say let's talk about specific policies assess whether they work but the overall worldview that he represents I don't think works. I have my concerns about what he opens up uh the Overton window to allow like even more far-left policies. What we know is that he's comfortable aligning himself with people who actually defend extremists.
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Kaisen, welcome to trigonometry.
Thank you. Uh, great to have you on, man. Tell us a little bit about who you are before we get into it.
Yeah, so I guess I'm a thought leader now. And, uh, I wasn't always someone who was engaged with politics, honestly, until last year. I didn't pay attention to politics at all. Uh, I was very much in the spiritual scene, very LA hippie top living life coach, healer type person. And then last year I started paying attention to the 2024 election just because how could you not at one point and the day that Trump got shot um even though I wasn't particularly political I realized humanity is in crisis and if people are getting killed over political beliefs and people are excommunicating members of their family and their friends groups over their opinions of people that none of us actually know. It's time to just start speaking up and bring clarity and humanity to the discourse. So that's the super short version of my background.
Well, you are someone who thinks very clearly and it's interesting we there's quite a lot of overlap about the stuff in terms of the stuff that we talk about. One of the things that you you probably would have seen there's a clip of me at the Doha debates talking about the history of slavery um that went super viral and you've been making very similar points. Uh so what's your angle? What are you saying on all of that?
Yeah. So, um, I did see your clip and I made my own video in response to that. And what I was actually surprised by was the reaction that you got when you said that out loud cuz from my perspective like this is just truth. Like, right? This is it's just a historical fact that Great Britain was the first major empire to bring uh end to slavery. Great Britain is a majority white empire and white people didn't invent slavery to begin with. Everyone participated in slavery. Every color did it to every color when they had the opportunity. And we've become so hyper sensitized to taboo truths that it becomes impossible to talk about them because people immediately assume that because you're making a statement about something, it implies a bunch of other statements. So, for example, I took it that maybe the reason people were offended is because they were asserting that white people are more moral or something like that. And I don't think you need to draw any conclusion at all like that. I think is you were just making a point about what history actually says and I think what it actually revealed was there's almost this like there's this culture of race essentialism that I think is really unhealthy that's been developing in the west more generally where white people all have this sort of collective guilt for something that a specific subset of people did in America i.e. slavery um where black people are entitled to some sort of collective grievance against white people as a collective and it's really unhealthy and it the only conclusion is that you have to form opinions about people based on their color and that's not a way to actually build a society. It's not a way to build a nation. And I wanted to point that out because what I've seen is this tribalism building up between racial groups where it's not even about what people are doing. It's about what tribe they're a part of and what that tribe has done in the past. And I think it was important for you to say that because what it revealed to everyone is, hey, evil is not unique to any group. It's a collective human inheritance. And we need to be honest about that rather than cherrypicking and trying to compare the evils that people of different skin color have done in the past. It doesn't actually get us anywhere.
Well, my big concern with with this way of looking at the world is it inevitably focuses focuses everybody's mind on their skin color and their ethnic group. And then suddenly everyone starts looking around and going, "Well, what about our group? What what about white people? What about these people? What about those people?" And suddenly we no longer have like America in your case or Britain. It's like white people, black people, Jewish people, Muslim people, and the the the incentive to come together >> is not there. In fact, the incentive is to go, what are the differences between us?
Exactly. Yeah. It's it's a degenerative form of identity politics. And look, identity is important to people. So, I'm not saying that people shouldn't feel any affinity for people within their racial group or their religious group or any of that. But the thing is racial identity can't actually evolve, right? It's inherently fixed. Whereas identities like I'm an American or, you know, I'm a British person or whatever, those can actually update and evolve and encompass people across fixed identity groups. So increasingly I see us focusing on immutable things that actually can't be changed rather than focusing on universal principles that everyone can choose to adopt. So, I don't even really like talking about race to be honest with you because uh not only is it inherently misunderstood, but it's I just find it very regressive to hyperfixate on that stuff. But unfortunately, because of how racialized western society has become, it needs to be addressed. And my hope is that we can address it in a way that's corrective and gets people to be less attached to the entire uh apparatus so that we can focus on the things that we can actually unify around like western values.
It's it's interesting that you talk about unification Kaisen and being unified around something because I would have thought that now I mean identity politics politics is still an issue of course it is but it's far less of an issue than it was three to five or even six years ago but you've just seen the language being used about left and right being ratcheted on both sides and that's got to be a real concern.
It is. I mean all sorts of tribalism are severe concerns. Frankly, even nationalistic tribalism can go too far, right? Like if you get to a point where, you know, I think people they look at what Trump is doing with the America first and MAGA movement and they're saying it's giving Hitler and fascist vibes and what if this becomes about invading other nations or totalitarian control here? It can go too far. I don't think that's where we are with the America first movement. I actually think it's just a reaction to the globalism and the denigration of national identity and the national spirit. But yeah, I I agree this polarization that we see between the left and the right is also really unhealthy. Because what it's doing is it's causing each side to demonize each other. And rather than viewing people as individuals who have different values that they can filter the same information through and arrive at different conclusions, it's like no, these people are crazy. These people are evil. These people are idiots. And there's no merit to what they say. It's a battle of good versus evil. And the only conclusion is domination. Like you have to just dominate the other side. And that just doesn't work. Like that's never been what the American project has been about. And it's also a lot of intellectual hubris that I'm seeing exhibited. And um, yeah, it it bothers me. Uh I you know, obviously I'm someone, if anyone's seen my work, who is more aligned with the right right now. But part of my journey is that you know, I voted for Democrats every presidential election since I could vote. I voted for Obama. I voted against Trump. I voted for Biden. I voted against Trump a lot. And um
Why why did you do that?
Well, I was honestly a low-information voter. Not to imply that everyone who voted against Trump was low information, but I didn't really have a strong thesis for why I did it. I just looked at Trump. I saw what he was saying, or rather what people told me he was saying, and I thought, "Yeah, this guy is hostile, maybe even racist, misogynist." I just bought all the narratives around it. And I just didn't like how he was coming across. And when I started paying attention to the state of discourse in 2024, I started to realize that people didn't actually have very deep convictions about why they thought Trump was the bad of the wrong choice for the 2024 election. And then I started looking a little bit deeper and inspecting my own beliefs about him. And I realized, oh, a lot of what I believe I believe because someone else told me. So when I started looking at some of the things that were objectively problems like the open border at you know between US and Mexico and I realized that the current administration had been complicit in that issue only getting bigger. Um, that was kind of one of the gateways into just trying to view things a little bit more objectively. And I still had my concerns about him. I still do. But I thought he was a better choice last year.
And it's a really good way of looking at the world. Essentially putting aside what people think and making up your own mind. And you've done a you did a really good video actually where you were analyzing Zoro Mandani and comparing him to Trump because there are kind of similarities, aren't there, believe it or not.
Absolutely. I mean, I think that's why he's so triggering to a lot of people on the right because he is Trump's foil. He's a populist. That's why Trump was a Senate to begin with because he he had an instinct or an ability to actually listen to and understand the issues of the common person. And what's going on in New York? Well, you have this multithnic, multi-religious coalition building around Zoron because he's able to say, "Yeah, affordability is a big issue and corporate corporatized capitalism in New York is not actually serving people there." And he's even able to speak with specificity about stuff like people having concerns about noise or parking, illegal parking on their streets. That's something that you can only point out if you're actually in touch with the will and the issues of the people. So, he's he's the populist left, whereas Trump was the populist right. And then you can layer on these other identities like socialist versus capitalist and and so on. But I don't think most people they're that attached to any economic system. Frankly, I don't think people think, "Oh, yeah, socialism is a solution." They just hear a guy who talks about the things that they're actually experiencing and they resonate with that. And he's also a really smart strategic politician because he's counterpositioned himself against Trump. And if you're a Democrat, that's one of the smartest things you can do right now.
Absolutely. And also what's really interesting about about Zoran is that he like you said he's talking about the things that really motivate people the thing and he really and this is what people on the right I don't think understand is that New York is experiencing real difficulties around affordability. And whether you think he's going to do it or if he's going to fail or if he can't or if he can't or if he can't deliver it's kind of irrelevant. He looks like he could to a lot of people who feel that they've been ignored by the system, which is again quite Trumpian, isn't it?
Yeah. And what's the alternative, right? Like it's basically a one party state. You have Andrew Cuomo who resigned. You have >> Curtis Leewa who's a Republican and Andrew Cuomo even lost the primary. So, if you think from a New Yorker's shoes, if you're a New Yorker and you see that you're paying $4,500 a month for rants and you see that the field is composed of a bunch of people who are either Republican or disgraced former governors, and then you have Zoran Mandani who's talking about the stuff that you experience on a day-to-day basis. What are you going to choose? So, I have my concerns about what he opens up uh the Overton window to allow, like even more far-left policies. And people have complained or been concerned about Islamic extremism. I think there's a healthy discussion to have about some of Zoran's associations there. But the solution is not to name call and demonize him further. The solution is to understand him, speak in the way that he is speaking to his audience, but offer a different solution. But if you just demonize him and then you demonize anyone who follows him or you dismiss them as stupid, well, they're going to be polarized against you even further. So, I think there's a massive strategic error that I see the right committing in their prosecution of Zoran and everything he stands for.
And this is so interesting because these people made the exact m same mistake with Trump. Yes.
And you're just going like, dude, you're using the same tactics the left use against Trump. And it only made it worse because the thing that Zoran has, whether you, like I said, I don't agree with his economic policies, I think ultimately they're going to lead to a disaster, but he's a great communicator. He's charismatic and he's he's funny just like Trump. You saw him on the uh on Andrew Schulz's flagrant podcast. He smashed it.
Yeah, he was impressive. And I like that you said that you the people are committing the same error that was committed against Trump. Look, let's look at what Trump was called. A fascist, a white supremacist, all these labels that are pretty much just political swear words. Like I think the average person when they say fascist, they don't actually have a way of defining what fascist is. And I think a better term is he's a nationalist Trump. But you can always take something that you consider bad and make it sound even worse. Same thing with Zoron. He's an avowed democratic socialist. Maybe he's secretly a communist. I don't know what is in his mind. I can't read minds. I can read words. He said he's a democratic socialist. Engage him there. Show why democratic socialism is an untenable economic model as opposed to calling him a communist. And if you have concerns about Islamism or radical uh extremism or Sharia law being brought to New York, then yeah, you should be specific about, okay, I don't like how he's associated with this imam that he took a picture with, for example. That specifically is my issue. Not say something like, well, he's Muslim and that's bad and all Muslims are extremists who want to take over America. It just doesn't resonate with people who are certainly in the team Zoron camp or people who are more moderates and open to a variety of different viewpoints.
Well, the one area I don't kind of agree with the discussion you guys are having is I think the and this isn't evidence of my right leaning bias, just a factual matter. When you look at President Trump, the things that people said about him, the mistakes they made are exactly the same. But the difference I think is yes he was speaking to people's concerns but he had a credible plan for addressing those concerns. So for example if you are concerned about the open border he had a plan which he's now implementing. We can argue about whe you know the way that it's being done but in terms of effectiveness it's there right. Uh whether you know if you talk about offshoring of jobs he is now doing a lot to try and bring jobs back to America with Zor Mani the he is addressing people's concerns but the solutions that he is offering verifiably do not work and that to me is a big difference.
Which specific policies?
So if you if your policy effectively is to give people free stuff as a solution to affordability. That is not a sustainable model for running anything, right? Um, you have to, for example, if it's housing, you have to create more housing. You giving people a rent freeze doesn't work because there'll be some other way to hike up prices in a place where demand massively out supply. Do you see what I'm saying?
I see what you're saying. And now I have to be the guy who takes the devil's advocacy position. It's not fun because I do fundamentally disagree with Zoron's worldview. But just to steel man him for a second, you know, I think a lot of the time people are >> they see socialist and then they they see the headlines for what he's proposing and they say this is unworkable. And uh I disagree with the worldview like there's no successful socialist country on earth. People say Scandinavian nations. No, those are capitalist systems with strong social safety nets. They're not the same thing. But if I look at some of the specific policies that he's proposing, like for example, he wants to have a rent freeze while also reducing the cost on the landlord side by addressing why is insurance so high. What are all these building codes and housing laws that are making it expensive and difficult to build housing? How do we incentivize both public like you know public housing but also private industry to create more housing? There's a logic there. There's an internally consistent logic there. And part of it is just he needs to raise like 9 to 11 billion to fund this. So if he gets the governor on board and they just raise taxes on the rich and they find a point in the curve where they can raise taxes enough to make more money but not scare them all away. It can work in theory. So there are certain individual policies that he has that I I think they there's a there's a part part of the spectrum where they actually can work. My concern is more of the democratic socialist worldview in general because the whole idea of democratic socialism is they're going to try to control the means of production. That's the end goal. And you can say it's democratically like people vote on nationalized healthcare or nationalized energy systems or whatever. But I just I think that centralizing control of private industry is inefficient and it consistently has been shown not to work especially in the western system.
Yeah. So I I agree with that. But even here, what I what I challenge people to do who are critical of Zoron is say, "Let's talk about specific policies. Assess whether they work." Give credit where credit's due. Like I think he has some reasonable ideas like, "Okay, maybe we need some mental health workers in the mix to deal with a guy who's muttering on the subway as opposed to sending a cop there." It's like, okay, I'm open to that, but please also be willing to increase the police force if that's needed. But I'm open to some of this. But the overall worldview that he represents, I don't think works. And I think someone should just ask him the simple question. Can you give me an example of a democratic socialist country that exists today that's been successful and he can't produce that? And there you would probably get into some sort of very theoretical description of why it should work. And I think that's actually where he'd be most vulnerable because I don't think his association with the DSA, the Democratic Socialist of America, has been uh scrutinized enough actually. Like why is this guy giving part of his salary to these people? What does that reflect about his worldview? You go to the DSA website, it it's extreme, man. They have a very racialized worldview. It's a very hostile grievance-based agenda. And I think if people focus strategically on that, that would actually be a much more vulnerable point where I think he would be much more likely to show uh that yeah, he might have some policies that could work in the short term, but he's introducing a worldview that doesn't work in the long term.
Isn't that somewhat contradictory to the conversation we had so far? Because ultimately it's about addressing the concerns that people have. Whereas saying he's a democratic socialist is not that far off saying he's a communist cuz those two things are not far off from each other just in terms of the policies of those two groups advocate. Right? You see what I'm saying?
I see what you're saying.
Do you think do you think a significant portion of Zoran's audience would be horrified to find out that he believes in the redistribution of wealth at a higher level than they currently do or or whatever. Um, well, if you looked at the DSA's platform, I think people would be horrified to see some of the the excerpts from that platform.
Really? Like what?
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So, one thing they they talk about is ending white supremacy. Like that's like a big part of their platform. And I remember when I read that, I was like, "Oh, wow. These people like they're they're fermenting more racial division."
But isn't that a mainstream left-wing position in this country that that's what needs to happen? Am I wrong? I I I'm not American, so I don't know. I'm just
I don't think it's as mainstream as you think. At least not in such explicit terms. I mean, this is literally in their website. They constantly talk about this. And maybe you guys, I don't know if you heard the headline where Zoron talks about taxing richer, whiter neighborhoods. Like that's literally a part of his platform I believe still. You can go to the PDF and check it out.
I think that's a product of the democratic socialist worldview. It very much views things from an oppressor oppressed lens and explicitly views things in terms of racial dynamics, which I think is unhealthy.
No, I agree. But I guess what I'm saying is, as far as I could tell, as an outside observer, the Democratic Party has been saying those things for the last 10 years.
I don't think.
Is that wrong?
Uh I I think the woke left, which is still relatively, it's a relative minority, does talk about that stuff a lot. I don't think the moderate Democrats and like the Andrew Cuomo of the world talk about that. You're not going to hear Gavin Newsome talking about racial dynamics. I think they tend to avoid it. And I think now when we talk about the slippery slope concern, it's that Zoron and you know again it's in his platform talking about richer whiter neighborhoods is now shifting the Overton window toward toward racializing the problems that we have. And that along with I think the socialist worldview more generally is stuff that I think should people should apply pressure on.
And what's interesting about Zoran is that it's opened up the discussion to talk about anti-semitism now related to Israel. Like I don't really want to focus on Israel particularly, but what I do want to focus on is how Jewish people in New York say they're now worried about Zoran and the election of Zoran that they're going to become targets, etc. Do do you think that there's any credible how can I say there's any big credible basis to these worries or do you think it's akin to people worrying about that Trump's going to come in and all of a sudden you know black people I saw one of your videos your hairdresser said that they worried that she she was going to be in chains for example.
Yeah. Uh 100% I think it's a concern not because of what Zoron is saying but because of who he's affiliated with. Because again there was that picture of him with that imam. Right. This was an imam who literally has defended multiple terrorists, one in court and one by raising a legal defense fund for him. So whether Zoron is sympathetic to the views of that individual is one thing, but what we know is that he's comfortable aligning himself with people who actually defend extremists. So if I see that again, if we talk about like what are you not open to? you well, you're open to taking a picture with an imam and calling him a pillar of the community without explicitly acknowledging the really messed up things that he's done in the past. So, I don't think that's an irrational concern that Jewish New Yorkers have. Um, and I think it's something that Zoron should have to explicitly answer for cuz he gets kind of evasive when he's pressured on these things. For example, in the Andrew Scholes interview that I forget who brought it up, Andrew Scholes brings up that topic and he says, "Well, Eric Adams and uh Bill Delasio campaigned with that same imam. Like, what's the big deal?" And that's actually misleading. It's highly misleading because what happened was um I think it was Bloomberg actually met that imam and he didn't realize what his background was and then after he said he regretted the meeting. Eric Adams met that imam alongside a Jewish community leader and a Christian community leader. Neither of those interactions were like taking a picture arm in arm with a guy who defended terrorists. So look, I I get that Zoron as a Muslim probably he wants to show solidarity with the Muslim community in New York and it's a tricky thread uh needle to thread. But at the same time, when you bring extremists into the tent, there's concerns from other people in the tent that now you're going to allow in more extremist views. So if people were to say just because he's Muslim, this is a problem. I would say, hey, that's actually not being fair. But when you look at the people he's actually associating himself with, yeah, there's a reasonable concern. I mean, same thing with Hassan right? Hassan you he said that America deserved 9/11. And yeah, afterward he said kind of apologized for it, but it's like, okay, if if you're going to align yourself with someone like that, then people are going to have concerns. Hey, do you actually agree with this guy or is this someone who you're friends with and you agree with some of what they said and not others? At least in the case of Hassan, he's denounced those comments by Hassan. But in the case of the EOM, he he he kind of just deflected and that's not what we need a leader doing when yeah, positioning yourself with people who are explicitly sympathizing with terrorists and and that's the real concern because you look at America and I'm a foreigner here and all the rest of it, but I do worry that this current polarization is just going to continue happening. And now that you see it in New York with Jewish people being saying that they're openly scared, they're openly talking about leaving and you you're kind of thinking to yourself, where will this end? Where will this end? And how will this end? Because we can't keep going on this trajectory without something significant happening.
Yeah. Um, you know, I I actually hoped that it would end when Trump nearly got assassinated. It didn't end there. Uh, I hoped it would end when Charlie Kirk got assassinated. Didn't end there either.
And, um, I think there's two paths we can take. Um, one is the more pessimistic path where there's sufficient violence that causes the leaders on both sides to find the courage to say, "Hey, enough." And critique their side directly, which is what I I think people need to be doing. Like followers take cues from leaders. And if leaders are never critiquing their followers, their followers are not going to change. Um, the optimistic path is that some people realize that the temperature has been turned up way too high and they start turning it down. And I'm trying to do that to the extent that I can. That's kind of why I try to do stuff like steel man Zoran Mani's position just to humanize the sides to one another. And I think that can work. And I don't think you need everyone to do it at once. I think you just need the most visible leaders with the biggest followings to start doing that and be willing to take the heat for it because look, if I make a video steel Manning Zone on Mandani, I do not go viral. It just doesn't end up as well. And it's like, yeah, it sucks and I also get criticism and people misunderstand me, but I also think it's really important.
And I also think there's a core of my audience and any influencer or leader audience who does see that and respects you when you do it. So yeah, the applause is not going to be loud, but there are going to be people who's like, "Yeah, you know, politics aside, this is kind of crazy." And I'm glad that someone is calling this out and just trying to not have some continuous moral crusade against everyone they disagree with.
It's one of the things we tried to do on the show as well. And I wanted to ask you about immigration and uh ICE and all the rest of it because this is one of the things as an outsider, again, it's very difficult to judge. Um, I don't know when in relation to the other episodes this one goes out, but we've talked to people on the show and off the show about it and you get the full range from this is brilliant and the only reason the rights are happening is the the local officials are interfering with ICE enforcing the law through to this is tyranny, you know, authoritarianism, etc. Where do you come down on it?
Yeah. Um, I think it's important to deport people who are here in the country illegally. And I think in principle what people have lost touch with is the fact that America is not just a piece of land. It's not just an idea. It's a community. And the value of the community is exclusivity. Actually, any community that people desire to be in, people desire to be in because the community is cultivated with rules and principles and boundaries that make everyone in the community get along. Unfortunately, the idea of America being something special and something worth holding on to has been eroded over time where people don't love America. They don't love what it stands for. They think it's just some evil racist white supremacist place that's just defined by slavery when it's like no, people live here. People love living here because we have rules and norms that people follow and they work pretty well relative to other places in the world. And if you just allow people to violate the fundamental principle of what makes a nation state upon entry, then every other rule it becomes kind of optional. And if you see people entering the southern border, because they just want to makes you wonder, well, why am I even paying taxes then? That said, I think there's better and worse ways to execute the deportation effort. And my critiques of the Trump uh Trump Trump administration are a I think that they're doing things in a very brute force way that doesn't actually scale. Because if you truly think that there's 10 to 30 million people in the country illegally, you're not going to deport them all through ICE. You need to fix the incentives here. And the incentive is if you come here, you're going to get at least a limited degree of healthcare. Your kids are going to get to go to school. You'll be able to get a job. The employer that you get a job from is not going to go to prison for breaking employment law. And yeah, you get to experience a lot of the benefits that come with being in America. Whereas, if we said, "Hey, employers, if we find out that you're employing someone illegally, you're going to go to prison." All of a sudden employers would stop employing people illegally and you remove one of the chief incentives for people coming here. But instead of there being a crackdown on illegal employments, we're seeing yeah ice rates. And there's going to be a need for that no matter what. But I think it's a higher proportion of the overall uh pie than it actually needs to be. And I'd like to see them focus on the incentives. So, no, it's not fair to say that the only reason people are protesting is because local law enforcement is interfering or not complying with ICE. I live here. I mean, I interact with illegal immigrants regularly. I have friends who go to these protests in support of um, you know, in solidarity with illegal immigrants. It's it's not all manufactured. I I think that's a massive straw man of the position. And actually when I've spoken to some of my friends who are trying to defend illegal immigrants or standing up to what Trump is doing and I explain my position of hey look these people are not many of them are not bad people. They just came here to follow the American dream. But the thing that makes the American dream the American dream is supported by rules. And when people are breaking the rules the American dream kind of collapses for everyone. And there's a way to deport people more compassionately. We can pay them to leave, which the Trump administration has done to a degree. I think we should be paying them more because it's so expensive to forcibly deport them. So why not just give them money, you preserve some goodwill, it's not so noisy, you don't see crying mothers on TV. And yeah, if you remove the jobs, you don't allow them to avail themselves of healthcare, unless it's like a truly life-saving situation, then yeah, a lot of these people are just going to leave voluntarily. And it's still not gonna feel good, but it'll probably feel better than for the next three years watching ICE forcibly uh arrest people and deport them. And eventually political capital runs out. So uh look, I think it's just really important in principle to enforce the law and the law is if you're here, you have to be here legally.
Uh I'm open to doing things like, you know, if the agricultural industry, for example, relies on illegal immigrant labor, cool. Let's make the legal immigration process uh faster and more efficient so that they can get um seasonal worker visas and things that they need to augment their workforce. But no, I'm I'm not open to amnesty and these things outside of like maybe some cases if someone's like really a senior citizen or something like that because look, we're in a state right now where we actually did that in the 80s. In the 80s, Ronald Reagan signed a bill giving people amnesty and we're back in the same situation. So at some point a boundary needs to be set and a boundary needs to be set that's so strong that people won't allow this open border situation ever again. But because we haven't been willing to do that, it's continued to perpetuate. And before it was actually the Republicans being in favor of this kind of stuff. It was like the whole idea of you know them. It was more to support the corporate uh the corporate reliance on
Well, very much on that. Do you think one of the reasons that the fairly obvious solution that you've outlined which is you deal with this at the point of employment and you introduced fairly draconian punishments for employers who employ illegal immigrants. One of the reasons that hasn't happened is you talk about political capital that's actually how you spend a lot of political capital because it's not going to be you know Juanita who's complaining about what's happening. It's going to be somebody with power with donations to your campaign etc.
Yeah, you're right. And I think that's probably why they haven't addressed it. Um, but look, I I think Trump is serious about solving the illegal immigration problem. Uh, I wasn't convinced that he was serious until I saw that I was like, "Oh, wow. He's he means everyone. He's actually trying to deport everyone, not just violent criminals." And then I saw he's, you know, doubling down with $150 billion to ICE. So, it's like, okay, I think he's actually serious. I think he's willing to take heat. Why not take heat by dealing with the corporations who are employing these people, which I actually think could be a lot more unifying? Like I think there's a part of most Americans who hate it when they see the rules being broken by corporations. I think the corporations who provide money to uh the MAGA movement and political causes, yeah, they're going to be a lot more resistant, but I think Trump can rally the base against those people.
And Trump, he's in his last term anyway. So, what does he have to lose?
Well, absolutely. And let's be fair, he's never been someone who's been afraid to tackle the difficult issues.
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I think one of the most difficult issues that needs to be addressed and it's a really tough one is wealth inequality. Like it's I came here 20 odd years ago and there was still a huge difference between rich and poor but in the 20 or so years I've been visiting your country. It seems to have grown wider and wider and wider. And we talk about radicalization Kaisen that will radicalize people especially when you got access to Instagram. Let's say you're dirt poor 20 odd years ago, you didn't really know how the other half lived. Now you all you do is go on Instagram and it gets rubbed in your face.
You could watch Cribs on MTV. I remember that day.
I kind of liked Cribs even when I was broke.
It was fun. I don't know if that show's still around.
Yeah, I agree. I agree. And um
Man, this is one of those issues where I actually think there have been some Democrats who have correctly identified the problem, which is Yeah. corporate influence. Like Bernie Sanders, he talks constantly about the oligarchy, the oligarchy, and you know, he does it to the point where almost it feels like a bit of a meme. But I think he's right. Like I'm pro-capitalism. I think capitalism is the best system that has ever been invented or at least the least bad of all the other economic systems empirically speaking. But there's a point at which capitalism can be co-opted by corporate interests who are influencing the laws and basically engaging in regulatory caption capture where they basically rig the rules in their favor. And I think that's al also what's probably been going on in New York too, hence the rise of Zoron. So yeah, wealth inequality is an actual issue. And I don't think the issue is inherent to capitalism. I think the issue is corporate influence and centralization of power among the few as opposed to distributed among the many. And that's what I think hopefully the right and the left can both get on board with. But that seems to not be happening yet.
Well, yeah, exactly. Because the left are far better placed to actually exploit that because that's one of, you know, that's one of the things of being on the left. You you're concerned about that. What worries me is that the right just seem more interested in demonizing the politicians that talk about it than actually addressing the problems. It's not everyone on the right, but it seems to be a lot of them. And I'm and I'm thinking to myself, if you don't actually deal with the problems, we are going to get a lot more left-wing populists because, you know, problems aren't being addressed. People's concerns aren't being addressed.
Absolutely. And that's why it's not important to people whether it's a socialist or a capitalist. They want populist first.
So if I was running the RNC or whatever, I would say, hey, we need to find a populist capitalist as a foil to the populist, socialist, and communist. And we need to meet them there and extol the virtues of capitalism when it's well structured. Because if you continue to just demonize the populace of any color, what happens is people just feel, "Oh, well, you don't actually care about my problems, so at least this guy's talking about my problems." Most people are not thinking deeply about the economic ramifications. They they don't really know how to assess these things, nor should they really have to. But if there's only one person who's actually speaking about the problems, they're going to go along with what they say, no matter what their solution is.
Yeah. Well, the thing with that though is it really fundamentally depends, no matter how important you think wealth inequality is, fundamentally depends on where you think it comes from. And I think the corporate capture argument is obviously partially true. I also think to a large extent is probably something that's been driven by technology. I mean, most of the wealth that's being created in this state, I would venture, is in one city called San Francisco where people are doing AI, right? And and you don't need a lot of people to do that. What you need is a lot of money and a lot of energy and a lot of chips. Um, so I wonder whether we're just going to live in this long age of populism because the wealth is accumulating in fewer and fewer hands just by the nature of the technological structures of the society we now live in.
Yeah. Yeah. You raise an interesting point um because now that I think about it more I think there's kind of two issues. There's what's this condition of the people who are the worst off in society.
And then there's what's the gap between the people who are the worst off and the people who are the best off which is the wealth inequality question.
I don't think it would get us all the way there to just address the situation of the people who are worse off. If you still had wealth inequality but I think it would get us a lot of the way there.
And I mean if you look at California I mean you literally see homelessness everywhere. Uh many people who are not homeless are like one paycheck away from being homeless. And that's just an awful existence. Like it's like bare subsistence. And I think if you're that kind of person and you look at the situation of like a billionaire or some San Francisco AI guy, you look at your situation, it's like, man, I can't even be happy with what I have cuz what I have sucks. Where at least
If their situation didn't suck, it would probably be easier to accept the fact that we're going to have trillionaires in relative short order. So, um, yeah, I mean, it's hard.
Like, I think there's there's going to be more extreme polls, I think, in the future just because that's what technology does. It allows uh exponential transformations of the physical world. And yeah, you're just going to have some people who are way, way, way, way richer. But I think if we can at least take care of the position of the bottom of society, it'll feel better for people.
And I think there's actually a deeper conversation to have about the relationship between the rich and the poor. Uh in this country for sure, but maybe in the west in general, where now I've been thinking about the term aristocrat and the etymology of aristocrat is the most excellent or the best among us. And there used to be this relationship between the rich and the poor where if you were one of the wealthy ones, it would almost be like instead of being at the top of the pyramid, you're at the bottom of the pyramid supporting everyone in service.
>> And at some point, the social contract kind of broke down. And I think people who became wealthy became more selfish, honestly. And I think people who were poor became resentful of the rich. And if you're rich and you see people who are poor resentful, you're not going to want to take care of them.
>> And if people who are poor don't see rich people, you know, doing things for the everyone else, they're going to become resentful. And it's just this vicious cycle. So I remember a few years ago, um, Mark Zuckerberg, he tried to like donate this hospital and, you know, just I don't know why he did it. I assume it's the goodness of his heart and maybe it's for social status, but it's a good thing to do. And people rejected that. Like they didn't even want his donation. And that shows me there's something really broken about the relationship between uh the best off and the worst off.
And I I think look, I'm not one of these people. I I think we kind of have this fallacy of like everyone's equally capable. Not everyone's equally capable, right? Not everyone's going to be a billionaire. Not everyone's going to make a world changing technology. So there's kind of a natural aristocracy. And if we can get honest about that, then we can have a conversation about, okay, well, what should the aristocrats be doing? And what do we give them in reward for doing what is good for the collective? And we should be celebrating people who are doing things that benefit all of humanity. Like Mark Zuckerberg should have been celebrated when he generated a enough funds to create a hospital wing.
But yeah, there's like just like there's like this right left divide. There's this poor rich divide. And there have always been rich and poor, but I don't think it's always been this level of animosity.
>> This is a really interesting point. I think it was during certain periods of ancient Greece, the rich and uh powerful were expected to almost dedicate their entire lives to actually doing things for their community and for society. Um, and yeah, you're right. Like you could be a billionaire now who pledges to give away 99% of his wealth and people will still hate you.
>> Yeah.
>> Because you're a billionaire,
>> right?
>> Yeah. Um, which is interesting your point about inequality by the way I look I haven't seen the latest research but I remember reading the spirit level and the argument they basically made is actually >> once you get past a certain basic point which this country is way past it doesn't actually matter how well off the people at the bottom are what matters is the gap between the rich and the poor and that ruins everything for everybody including the super rich weirdly enough because all of the metrics like of social disease population in prison, teenage pregnancy, interpersonal violence, those things go up as inequality goes up.
Um, so I I it's actually going to be you're going to get this wave of populism from both sides. And I I suspect both of them are going to struggle to actually fix the problem.
>> Well, if that isn't depressing.
>> Yeah. Well, that's what we do here at
>> Yeah. Depressometry.
>> Um, yeah. Yeah, I mean I I think it's a it's just a difficult problem to solve and um you know this there's kind of this like hydonic treadmill effect I think that maybe is going on too to be fair because I mean if you were to talk to the average person who's working a 9 to5 where they're making like $15 an hour and say well you're actually at the point past which there's diminishing returns and you actually have enough. I don't think they would feel that way. I I think they would feel no if you doubled my salary it would make my life tangibly better.
>> So,
>> and they'd be right.
>> I think they'd be right. Right. Like, I I think it would be nice if you didn't have to
>> worry about if you get fired, you're going to be homeless the next month. Like, I think many people are below that threshold. So, yeah, I don't know the research. I've heard these stories like past $80,000 like, you know, more money doesn't make you more happy. And that's all man.
>> Okay, cool. I'm like, it sounds like BS to me.
>> That's total The idea that money doesn't make you happy is a story that rich people tell poor people so they don't feel jealous. That's it.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Absolutely.
>> Yeah. I actually heard a good quote from Tony Robbins. Actually, I went to one of his events recently and he said,
>> "If you think that money doesn't make you happy, you haven't given enough away."
>> And I was like, "Oh, that's actually really interesting framing." Which kind of goes back to the whole natural aristocracy idea. You get to a point where you have so much wealth that the fun part is giving it to good causes. So, um I think again we need to address this at the bottom and also the gap, but I think we can at least start with what's going on at the bottom. And a lot of people are just in conditions where it's like, yeah, resentment is natural.
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The more we talk about these issues, the more time I spend in America, I kind of think that the Americans and maybe the West in general needs to go through a d-radicalization program. Do you know
>> except they don't work?
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. I mean, kind of true. But if we were, let's play a little thought experiment. If we were to kind of design a d-radicalization program for the average American, the average person in the West, what do you think it would mean? What do you think
>> we should do in order to just ratchet everything down?
>> Well, I I think a lot of this is a lot of the division is because instead of socializing, we have social media.
And you even see this um along racial lines. Pre-2014, perceptions of black people of white black race relations was at a high 60s. Perceptions of white people of black white relations was at a high too. It was also in the 70s. What happened after that? Well, people would say it was events like Trayvon Martin and then eventually George Floyd, but the rates of police brutality against minority groups didn't radically spike. What happened was people's awareness of it radically spiked because we all have instant access to view any extremely negative event in our pockets at all times. So the rise of social media in combination with the fact that you know the pandemic led to everyone being in their houses and we have this whole generation of kids who didn't go to college or they missed out on school in their key developmental years has meant that people don't even know how to talk to each other anymore.
And because of that when you don't talk to people who disagree with you it's easy to form a demonic avatar of them in your head where it's actually dehumanizing. So, if we were to start d-radicalizing people, it would start by just, as corny as it sounds, but I'm an ali hippie, right? Just talk to each other. Like, we need to get people talking to people who disagree with them. But instead of that, I mean, not only are I I think people are just interacting less in person in general these days, but people are interacting online in algorithmic echo chambers where you're fed views that feed into your confirmation bias. And the only representation of the opposite side that you ever see is the worst examples of it. We saw this with Charlie Kirk
>> right after Charlie Kirk passed away. I wasn't even that familiar with his views until after he died and people started talking about his views in a way that was grossly exaggerated and cherry-picking clips out of context and saying that he believes that black people shouldn't have the right to vote or that he believe that people should be stoning gays. all massive distortions of his view. But then I realized, oh wow, like that's literally the only exposure they've ever gotten to him. These 5-second clips that have been selectively edited, and they might not have even met someone who is a conservative. I mean, here in LA, if you're a conservative, you have to be quiet. It's it it's socially dangerous, if not honestly, physically dangerous, too. And um as a result, like people think that conservatives are like this weird thing that only exists in Nebraska when no there's people who have different views from you, but because we're not socializing, you don't actually get exposed to that. And it's kind of like I believe they had these d-radicalization experiments. I think maybe coming out of um maybe like the mid-20th century, I forget who exactly had literal white racists talk to black people and pair them. And yeah, what happened was, you know, when you get exposed to someone long enough, you get to see their humanity and you stop demonizing so much. So that's how I would try to approach d-radicalization,
>> right? And especially if you if you are solving a problem together, that that's one of the other things, right? It's like if you get people who are predisposed to dislike each other in a room where they have to solve a common problem,
>> that's when you actually get proper kind of d-radicalization, if you like.
>> Yeah. Um, and that's I think really comes back to the beginning of our conversation, which is if you don't all feel like this is one country and you ultimately at the end of the day you're all British or you're all American, that's where you actually start to see this breakdown completely.
>> Exactly. And you know, that's why the space race was actually so healthy for America
>> and the Cold War.
>> Yeah. Honestly, it's like it's like the best war you could possibly have. No one actually got, you know, no countries got nuked and everyone got a little bit more tribal in a way that is actually kind of positive. And we need something that gets us beyond our tribal identities and focuses on a hard problem that if we solve, we'll all benefit from. And unfortunately, we don't really have that right now in America. And I think in the West more generally, there's not a collective project that everyone can feel inspired by. And I think we got to find that. Like we need to look I think there's humans there's always going to be war but the war should not be man against man. It should be man against ideas and man against restrictions and man against the limitations of the physical world. That's why I think Elon trying to get us to Mars is a tremendously healthy thing. Uh and I was actually excited when the president uh President Trump during the inauguration said we're going to get to Mars. I was like, "Oh, cool. Actually, make that a bigger piece of the platform because that's something that elevates us beyond whatever quibbles we have as individuals and gets us on board with doing something as a generation that would be truly epic."
>> Yeah. Well, the other thing coming back to what you were saying as well about how social media works and you mentioned Charlie Kirk, what was interesting is you say this is people's only exposure to this guy. I there was a guy in our country called Alistair Campbell who you're probably not familiar with. Uh he was Tony Blair's uh
>> spin doctor.
>> Well, I didn't want to use a loaded term Chinese Blair like media relations guy, let's say. Um who he he tweeted a thing about Charlie Kirk making those kind of completely inaccurate allegations. And then he took it down. And a lot of people are now, you know, I'm a big fan of the fact that online content is monetized. It's how we make a living. is how we do what we do. It's great. But once you create monetization of content, now the incentive structure is, well, let me just say this thing that my tribe is going to agree with, that my people are going to share without checking anything at all.
>> Yeah. Yep.
>> And uh look, I'm going to say something unpopular. We as individuals have to change our consumption patterns.
>> Correct.
>> Because why is there media biased? because they're supplying a demand for biased content. There's always going to be BS that we're fed if people keep eating BS. So, we can complain that people are incentivized financially to spread misinformation, but if we all take it upon ourselves to slow down, verify information for ourselves, unfollow people who are spreading garbage, call it out when someone's spreading garbage, and vote with our wallets and our attention, this problem can get solved very quickly, overnight. Literally if we all just raised our standard for the information that enters our mind
>> like instantly the the industry would disappear.
>> But that requires a level of personal responsibility that is very hard to have.
>> Um and you know that's [Music] I think that would actually create the tectonic shift that people are looking for. It's not tweaking the algorithms. It's not regulating the companies. None of that stuff is going to work. We all have to just get fed up enough that we take it upon ourselves and say, "Look, I'm tired of hostility. I'm tired of nonsense. Anyone who is rage baiting and sensationalizing and spreading garbage, I'm literally just not going to pay attention to them anymore. And if you don't pay them attention, then they don't get paid money."
>> Well, that's actually a really good point. I did a video recently in which I addressed that point with a couple of people that I think are are really out there on that stuff. And that was my point is like the great thing about the internet, the way it's developed is it's ended gatekeeping. The terrible thing about the internet is it's ended gatekeeping. And now ultimately the only way of gatekeeping that I think exists and some gatekeeping is necessary is you gatekeeping yourself.
>> Yes,
>> you are your own gatekeeper now. And you have to go, okay, this stuff is it's it's like eating that's bad junk food, right? you like you can eat it, but at some point if you want to have a healthy life, you go, I'm going to have to resist the urge that I have to eat this stuff.
>> Yeah. And we're all eating we're eating mental junk food.
>> That's right.
>> Right. And then we're getting constipated from eating all this mental junk food and not processing it and then we're sharing it with other people. So it's like of course we're in this situation where there's so much garbage out there and we're wondering why we keep getting more garbage because we keep on consuming it. So, I think this actually can be an empowering message because look, not to hold myself up as some sort of paragon, but it takes me like six hours to make that 3-minute video that you see on your feed in in passing. Like every single time it takes me hours and hours and hours and most of that time is spent refining and researching what I say because I take it really seriously because I know if I'm going to reach millions of people, I want to be saying things that are correct. And even if I'm giving an opinion, I want to make sure it's substantiated. And if we all held ourselves to a high standard for when we say something, when we comment on something, when we share something, everyone who is providing this information to us would be forced to step it up cuz they'd be like, "Oh, this is not working anymore."
>> Kaizen, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. The final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? You know, often I think people are talking about rights, but we're not talking about responsibility and uh commensurate amount.
>> And just like we talked about,
>> it's important for you to take responsibility for the information you consume. I think that's important in every single part of life. And anytime there's a conversation about what you deserve, there needs to be a conversation about what you'll give in exchange for what you want. And if we take that approach as individuals, then society itself transforms because we are society. Society is not this thing imposed on us. It's a thing that we're reinforcing or revolutionizing with every single thought, word, or action.
>> There we go. Thanks for coming on, man.
>> Thanks for having me, guys. [Music] Come on. [Music]