0:02 in early 2020 I started becoming
0:05 increasingly interested in finance I
0:07 know but this was mostly trying to make
0:10 sense of the logic behind what the
0:12 Federal Reserve did in response to co
0:14 which I'll get into later but the more
0:16 and more I learned the less and less it
0:19 made sense so I started deeply analyzing
0:21 stocks from companies that I was
0:23 personally and professionally familiar
0:25 with such as curiosity stream and
0:27 Spotify which led to me starting a
0:29 private fund that strategically shorted
0:31 those companies I even ended up getting
0:33 hired as a freelance consultant for
0:36 Venture Capital firms me a musician with
0:38 no higher education whatsoever and the
0:39 more time that I spent looking at and
0:42 studying the big picture the more that I
0:43 doubted myself as if the only two
0:46 options were option A me being unable to
0:48 understand what every 25-year-old day
0:50 trader understands or option b I'm right
0:52 and every hedge fund manager and
0:54 billionaire is wrong but what if there's
0:56 a third option what if capitalism's
0:58 death wasn't a mistake or something that
1:01 the ultra wealthy were trying to avoid
1:02 what if the pesky burden of labor laws
1:04 and Taxation could be avoided by
1:06 deprioritizing the goal of financial
1:09 profit or maybe even money itself this
1:11 video is going to explain or explore
1:13 what I and an increasing number of
1:15 economists think is happening or has
1:17 already happened to capitalism more
1:18 importantly I'm going to try to
1:21 encapsulate the unsettling socioeconomic
1:23 reality that we're living in as so much
1:25 has happened in the last decade that it
1:47 you can't fairly describe capitalism
1:49 without mentioning its predecessor
1:51 feudalism and feudalism was a power
1:53 structure in kingdoms where wealth was
1:55 defined by the control of land rather
1:56 than money and our history books tell us
1:58 that feudalism ended sometime in the
2:01 late 15th century but there's a much
2:03 more recent version of it that would be
2:04 a much better example for the purpose of
2:06 this video when the Civil War ended or
2:08 when the first American Civil War ended
2:09 depending on how far into the future
2:11 you're watching this video a lot of
2:13 former slaves were offered a deal where
2:15 they could continue living and farming
2:17 on the same land where they were slaves
2:19 in exchange for a portion of the crops
2:21 in many cases they would only be able to
2:23 sell their remaining crops through the
2:25 plantation store and with that income
2:27 they could participate in trade which
2:28 would allow them to buy more tools and
2:30 negotiating power and Hope to eventually
2:32 buy land for themselves by the late
2:35 1930s 2third of sharecroppers were
2:36 actually White and the Great Depression
2:38 had shut down enough Farms that many of
2:40 the tenants migrated to large cities to
2:41 become Factory workers it would be
2:43 important to note that sharecropping is
2:45 not technically outlawed today it's just
2:47 that American capitalism's growth made
2:49 it obsolete the former definition of
2:51 capitalism is a system in which
2:53 individuals and private parties control
2:55 the means of production and profits are
2:58 the key driver of economic activity and
2:59 it's important to note that within a
3:01 closed system with no new variables
3:03 capitalism success can almost
3:05 exclusively be measured by the velocity
3:07 of money the classic example is the
3:09 farmer and the mechanic this tiny
3:12 economy has $50 total the farmer trades
3:14 $50 to the mechanic for tractor repair
3:16 and then the mechanic trades $40 for
3:18 corn from the farmer and then buys a
3:20 barn cat for $10 from the farmer and in
3:23 this cycle $100 has changed hands so the
3:25 velocity of money is measured as two
3:27 this is calculated as the velocity
3:30 within a time period equals the total
3:32 sum of transactions over the total of
3:35 money in that economy in a larger modern
3:37 economy the classic way to increase the
3:39 velocity of money is to reduce interest
3:41 rates but when spending becomes Reckless
3:43 and leads to higher prices and reduced
3:44 currency value the classic move is to
3:46 make borrowing more expensive
3:47 governments around the world either
3:49 control or have a lot of influence in
3:51 interest rates and some people think
3:53 that because of this the Federal Reserve
3:54 should be abolished and nobody could
3:56 predict exactly what would happen if the
3:58 Federal Reserve was abolished but it
4:00 would almost certainly result in a lot
4:01 of turbulence in the market that would
4:03 leave a lot of victims in its wake
4:05 around the world a really useful way to
4:07 understand how wealth is distributed is
4:09 to stop using money as a commodity and
4:11 use something that people actually use
4:14 or consume let's say a a can of Coke
4:16 Zero from a 12-pack a person with
4:18 $100,000 and a traditional investment
4:20 fund like Vanguard would come out to
4:24 about 312,000 cans of Coke Zero in 2019
4:26 that same investment untouched is worth
4:29 about 330,000 cans of Coke Zero now so
4:31 sweet 8 15,000 cans of Coke Zero for
4:33 free now on the other hand a person
4:34 working for minimum wage full-time in
4:37 Iowa would have made
4:40 43360 cans per year before taxes in 2019
4:43 today in 2025 they're making
4:47 22,170 cans somehow this person got a
4:49 49% wage cut while the person with the
4:52 market fund got free soda amazingly
4:53 through the miracle of inflation the
4:55 money decreases in value for everyone
4:58 while the actual wealth itself moves up
5:00 to the top
5:01 the concept of the stock market was
5:04 proposed in 1792 but it wasn't until
5:06 1830 when the first stock was sold on
5:07 the New York Stock Exchange it was
5:09 initially filled with railroads and
5:11 Banks but by the next decade everybody
5:13 with a business idea wanted to have
5:15 their name list this rapidly stimulated
5:18 both technological and economic growth
5:20 and by the end of the century the middle
5:21 class was getting more and more familiar
5:23 with investment by the 1920s you might
5:25 be seen as a fool for not being involved
5:27 in stock trading in fact you might be
5:29 seen as a fool for not borrowing money
5:31 to stocks many middleclass investors
5:34 were borrowing with a 1:3 ratio meaning
5:36 that they would borrow $300 for every
5:39 $100 they invested this sounds
5:41 absolutely insane but it didn't seem as
5:43 risky due to the introduction of Futures
5:45 in the mid- 1800s the Chicago Board of
5:47 Trade had a pretty great idea to make
5:49 grain trade a lot more reliable and a
5:51 lot less volatile rather than grain
5:53 Farms having to guess what demand would
5:55 be at the end of the season they could
5:57 sell it at a discount in advance a
5:59 future is not a stock or share but a
6:01 contract guaranteeing a future
6:03 transaction it just so happens that I
6:04 have a whole bunch of healthy female
6:06 chicks who will shower me with more eggs
6:08 than I know what to do with in about 3
6:10 months and I really could use a little
6:11 bit of extra money to build an addition
6:13 to their Coupe so they could have room
6:15 to run around with and be healthy egg
6:17 layers when they become adults so you
6:19 being an opportunist and a capitalist
6:21 can buy my egg Futures off of me and
6:23 then sell eggs to restaurants in the
6:25 summer at a profit and make money
6:27 without ever having to shovel the
6:29 heaping amounts of chicken that
6:31 I'll have to shovel all right let's go
6:34 back to the 1920s by 1919 due to the
6:35 popularity of Futures and people's
6:37 willingness to borrow money to buy them
6:40 a farmer could get $2.9 for a bushel of
6:42 wheat this was inflationary to say the
6:44 least and even made the sharecropping
6:46 economy I mentioned earlier more
6:48 desirable for a brief period of time it
6:49 started getting really out of hand so
6:51 the grain Futures Administration was
6:54 formed and implemented a large mandatory
6:55 Daily Ledger and Reporting System for
6:58 Traders the US Secretary of Agriculture
6:59 would repeatedly suspend the Reporting
7:02 System creating more volatility and more
7:04 opportunists taking advantage of that
7:07 volatility then in October of 1929 as
7:09 there was more money out on the loan
7:11 than there was circulating in America at
7:12 the time and as more wheat was being
7:14 produced than the population could ever
7:16 hope to eat the elephant in the room
7:19 woke up and took a giant on the
7:20 floor everybody tried to get ahead of
7:22 the crash which more or less caused the
7:25 crash and by the end a bushel of wheat
7:28 was only worth 49 and for the next 12
7:30 years capitalism was a failed experiment
7:32 well wait actually for the next 20 years
7:34 we like to think that capitalism made
7:35 its great comeback during the second
7:38 world war but by today's standards that
7:39 was I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to
7:41 say this word in public anymore without
7:43 being arrested communism but we didn't
7:45 just go from the freezer to the frying
7:47 pan immediately Franklin D Roosevelt's
7:49 New Deal founded the SEC to protect
7:50 investors moving forward it also
7:52 introduced the Social Security Act and
7:54 the fair labor standards act and
7:56 prohibited child labor while securing a
7:58 national minimum wage and workers rights
8:00 to unionize successful fellas with even
8:02 a fraction of the wealth that Elon Musk
8:05 or Jeff Bezos has would have paid a 79%
8:07 income tax and companies like Tesla and
8:08 Amazon would have paid a corporate tax
8:12 rate of 15% but the seword wouldn't come
8:14 until the US got involved with World War
8:16 II to say that the war effort stimulated
8:18 the American economy would be a vast
8:20 understatement but this was under a
8:22 closely guiding hand from the federal
8:25 government and it was every free market
8:27 capitalists worst nightmare by today's
8:29 standards many companies were told what
8:31 they would be producing and how much of
8:33 it they would be producing and how much
8:34 they would be paying their labor force
8:36 American citizens got ration books and
8:38 stamps and were only allowed to buy
8:40 specific amount of staple consumer items
8:42 like bread and sugar and if you wanted
8:44 to buy a car or gasoline you had to
8:46 justify a need to the government most
8:48 consumer items that came in metal
8:49 containers which was like everything
8:51 back then could not be purchased again
8:53 unless you recycled the container first
8:55 this rationing more or less lasted until
8:59 1947 and into the 1950s fellas like Elon
9:00 and Bezos would have had their income
9:04 taxed as much as 92% and again yes in
9:05 modern times this sounds like a
9:08 capitalist SCE nightmare but it resulted
9:11 in a 37% growth over the next decade and
9:13 made America the richest country on
9:15 Earth it is now literally referred to as
9:18 the Golden Age of American capitalism
9:20 and despite a few brief bumps in the
9:21 road things just kept growing and
9:24 growing and growing exponentially making
9:33 in the early 2000s capitalism got so
9:36 complicated that investors didn't fully
9:37 understand what they were buying and
9:39 that's not an exaggeration this was by
9:41 Design there were trillions of dollars
9:43 to be made by OB fisca what Commodities
9:45 were being sold in Your Average stock
9:47 market transaction a great example
9:48 everybody watching this has heard the
9:50 term subprime mortgage but I'd guess
9:52 that not everybody knows exactly what it
9:55 means it means a risky mortgage if
9:56 you've ever purchased a house you may
9:58 have witnessed the wild auction that
10:00 takes place without your consent or
10:01 knowledge the moment you sign the
10:03 mortgage papers and the average mortgage
10:05 is sold two to three times before it's
10:08 paid off here's an example of a 2005
10:10 style mortgage it's an expensive house
10:12 it had ninja verification which means no
10:15 income no job or assets the credit score
10:18 is around 500 and it has an 8% or higher
10:20 interest rate that's an arm loan meaning
10:21 that it will be adjusted to the market
10:24 in the future the delinquency rate of a
10:27 mortgage like this in 2008 was 25% so
10:28 anyway if you want to buy it I'll just
10:31 take 2% % of the overall value and
10:32 you'll still make a bunch of money when
10:34 the loan is paid off why don't you want
10:36 to buy it hang on I have an idea let's
10:38 make this a little bit of a safer bet
10:39 let's mix it up with some other
10:41 mortgages here and I'll get somebody who
10:44 depends on me for business to give it a
10:45 rating and then we can just call it a
10:48 mortgage backed security which is a type
10:50 of bond and it's a bit like a future but
10:52 it's even better because you can exit
10:54 the investment whenever you want just by
10:56 reselling it [Music]
10:59 [Music]
11:01 now look at this if that little risky
11:04 mortgage forecloses the loan will still
11:06 be backed by all of the others and I bet
11:08 you can't even make out which one was
11:10 the original loan and this isn't like
11:12 some risky stock this is an investment
11:14 on housing and land and you and I both
11:16 know that God ain't making any more land
11:19 right it is the Bedrock of American
11:21 capitalism and it's a safe place to put
11:23 youry it's
11:26 gone a lot of batshit insane things
11:28 happened in the 2008 financial crisis I
11:31 bet you could probably make some really
11:33 successful Hollywood movies about it I'm
11:34 Jack to the
11:37 test good ultimately in just 6 months
11:41 the Dow Jones Lost 54% of its value
11:43 massive Banks perished Washington Mutual
11:45 Bear Sterns Fanny May Leman Brothers toy
11:47 name a few we needed another New Deal
11:49 before people's bank accounts were wiped
11:51 and this time we tried something a
11:53 little bit different these are not normal
11:54 normal
11:56 circumstances the market is not
11:58 functioning properly instead of doing
11:59 something utterly Reckless list like
12:01 revamping and updating laws to protect
12:03 workers or creating programs to help the
12:05 middle class so we could be you know on
12:07 par with the rest of the developed world
12:09 we figured that if we just gave $700
12:11 billion in bailouts to banks that money
12:13 would trickle down and more or less
12:15 accomplish the exact same thing now
12:17 you're never going to believe this but
12:19 it did not ultimately while unemployment
12:21 and foreclosure skyrocketed the banks
12:23 experienced a generous heaping spoonful
12:25 of socialism and to pay for this we
12:27 borrowed money and we printed money in
12:30 2006 the Federal Reserve print at $148
12:33 billion in currency by 2012 that number
12:37 had increased to $380 billion the
12:38 inflation was immediately reflected in
12:40 home prices and even more so in the
12:43 great awkwardly socialist rebound of the stock
12:44 stock
12:47 market in 1994 Jeff Bezos was a hedge
12:50 fund manager who wanted to start an
12:52 online bookstore which was already a
12:54 hard pitch at the time why would anybody
12:55 want to buy books online when they could
12:57 just go to the library but it was even
12:59 worse he was allegedly transparent to
13:01 his investors and told them that he
13:03 intended to prioritize growth over
13:05 profit for a very long time all in all
13:08 he had 60 meetings offering 1% of
13:10 ownership for $50,000 and the biggest
13:13 investors were his parents buying up 6%
13:16 with 22 investors amazon.com got off the
13:18 ground with a million dollars by 1999
13:20 Amazon was selling everything from books
13:21 to DVDs to household goods to
13:24 electronics and soon after the company
13:26 transitioned from being a retailer to an
13:28 online Gateway for other retailers
13:30 Amazon customer could pay a low annual
13:33 membership fee for unlimited free 2-day
13:35 shipping and both retailers and
13:37 manufacturers began to become dependent
13:39 on that convenience retailers weren't
13:40 the only ones with the dependency
13:43 problem here's three stats that will
13:45 probably up your whole day by 2021
13:48 it was estimated that 60% of the US
13:50 population were part of an Amazon Prime
13:52 membership it is now estimated that only
13:55 1% of Amazon Prime members compare
13:57 prices with other online retailers and
13:59 Incredibly while Amazon refuses to
14:00 confirm this there are thousands of
14:02 reports of people finding examples where
14:04 prices for the exact same products are
14:07 higher for Amazon Prime subscribers does
14:09 that sound like free market capitalism
14:11 to you Walmart had to resort to
14:13 emulating Amazon's business model in an
14:16 attempt to keep up a decade ago Amazon
14:17 had surpassed Walmart's market cap
14:19 despite Walmart having over
14:23 10,000 massive theme parks size stores
14:25 worldwide Walmart is far from the only
14:27 company trying to mimic Amazon's growth
14:29 and chokepoint strategy and that's a
14:31 vast understatement is fast scaling and
14:33 Blitz scaling has become a normal game
14:35 plan for startups the definitions vary a
14:37 little bit but fast scaling generally
14:39 means to prioritize growth initially
14:41 with an open-ended plan to make a profit
14:44 later so for example if I wanted to fast
14:46 scale a lemonade stand I would make a
14:47 pitch deck for Venture Capital investors
14:50 that proposed selling lemonade at 50% of
14:52 what it costs for me to make it this
14:54 would grow my customer base
14:55 significantly and starve out the
14:56 neighborhood children who I'd be
14:59 competing with and then once I disrup
15:01 rupted the lemonade Market successfully
15:02 i' work out a volume deal with lemon
15:05 plantations and lower my costs while
15:07 slowly raising prices for the customers
15:08 so a profit could be realized blit
15:10 scaling on the other hand is a lot more
15:12 Reckless and assertive my VC proposal
15:14 would be to sell lemonade at half the
15:16 cost but buy out all of the neighborhood
15:18 children for their stands and then I'd
15:20 buy some lemon plantations and I'd pay
15:22 $100 million to have the local football
15:24 stadium renamed Ben's lemonade stadium
15:26 and every person in attendance would be
15:28 given free lemonade if they downloaded
15:30 my app you may be asking how on Earth
15:32 that would ever make a profit but we're
15:34 going to figure that part out when we've
15:36 dominated 80 to 90% of the lemonade
15:38 market and have millions of lemonade
15:40 drinkers right now we just need to
15:42 concentrate on disrupting that probably
15:44 still sounds like a terrible investment
15:45 but if you buy into the initial seed
15:47 round of the investment you'll have the
15:49 opportunity to sell that Equity at a
15:51 premium in a series a or series b or
15:53 even better during an IPO launch when
15:55 the company enters a stock market valued
15:58 at I don't know $15 billion to investors
16:00 in this stage it's much less about
16:01 profit and more about a lucrative and
16:04 risky game of hot potato an excellent
16:05 example that we're all familiar with is
16:07 Uber here's the original pitch deck
16:09 proposing the disruption of the taxi cab
16:12 industry it's nearly delusional claiming
16:14 that a city's Medallion system for cabs
16:16 is a monopoly and that licensed cab
16:18 drivers paying for the medallions have
16:20 no accountability in the future digital
16:23 taxi cab hailing can make I guess
16:25 lifting up your hand unnecessary and
16:27 when they say luxury they mean
16:30 prestigious Vehicles like used Priuses
16:31 and these Priuses driven by
16:33 non-employees who sign up can be used to
16:35 drop your kids off at school or
16:38 transport the elderly Uber has had over
16:40 25 rounds of funding that it is used to
16:42 Raw Dog its way into the cab economy and
16:44 pay for everything from lobbying local
16:46 governments to settling hundreds of
16:48 lawsuits naturally once the traditional
16:50 cab industry was more or less destroyed
16:52 the prices got jacked way up and between
16:55 2018 and 2021 the average price for an
16:59 Uber ride Rose 92% those early pre seed
17:01 investors who unloaded Equity when the
17:03 company went public will obviously never
17:04 have to work again public investors did
17:07 not Faire so well and the great Uber IPO
17:10 launch crash show made some of us
17:12 think that maybe finally people are
17:13 learning not to be bullish about
17:15 companies that have an annual operating
17:17 income of negative billions of dollars
17:19 and despite this by 2019 the American
17:22 Stock Market gained an impressive 30%
17:29 baby well Co is a Hot Topic for debate
17:31 these days between scientists and cult
17:33 members let's try and remember how
17:35 utterly terrifying 2020 actually was for
17:37 us the economy obviously screeched to a
17:39 halt and many Industries have still and
17:41 probably never will fully recover as
17:43 Society was forced to change their
17:44 economic habits and while the stock
17:47 market initially crashed in 2020 within
17:50 one year it had risen to over 30% of its
17:53 prepandemic levels despite the economic
17:54 Apocalypse happening around the world
17:57 this is because on March 23rd 2020 the
17:59 Federal Reserve announced that it would
18:01 be launching a bunch of new programs
18:02 like the primary corporate credit
18:04 facility which would buy new corporate
18:06 bonds and other programs that would buy
18:08 existing corporate bonds mortgage back
18:10 Securities and asset back Securities
18:13 filled with student car credit card and
18:14 business loan debt the federal fund
18:17 effective interest rate dropped to
18:20 0.05% and all of this was before any
18:22 person or local government received so
18:24 much as a dime in relief the following
18:26 month the car's Act was announced which
18:29 was a free $1,200 check sent out to
18:31 every American making under $75,000 a
18:33 year regardless of their circumstances
18:35 with no questions asked on how or where
18:36 it would be spent this would be the
18:39 first of three such checks that American
18:41 citizens received with a federal tab
18:44 totaling $814 billion and for those of
18:46 my viewers who have been longing for an
18:48 explanation for the massive increase in
18:50 Hammock sales that year now you have
18:51 your answer these stimulus checks were
18:54 just a tiny sliver of the overall $5
18:56 trillion that the American government
18:58 spent on subsidizing the economy and you
19:00 would be right in assuming that the list
19:03 of recipients was outrageous Airlines
19:05 received more money than snap or food
19:07 assistance programs payroll tax
19:08 exemptions got more than housing
19:10 programs and Farmers combined massive
19:12 loans and grants were given to the likes
19:15 of Kanye P Diddy Jared Kushner the
19:16 Church of Scientology but more
19:18 importantly for the purposes of this
19:20 video a huge portion of that money went
19:22 to fintech lenders investment firms and
19:24 Venture Capital groups like injuries and
19:26 horowits which was immediately
19:28 repurposed into investments into a new
19:30 rapidly growing type of economy that
19:45 as to help properly explain post
19:46 capitalism I need to remind you of the
19:49 utter absurdity of just having a billion
19:51 dollars not only is it impossible to
19:53 spend on even the most lavish things
19:54 that you would desire but it's also very
19:57 much not like having a garage full of
20:00 cash for example if Elon Musk with his
20:03 value of $450 billion at the time of me
20:06 recording this if he negotiated a deal
20:08 to buy South Africa with its total gross
20:11 domestic product valued at $381 billion
20:13 he wouldn't be able to afford it due to
20:14 the value of his Holdings dropping
20:16 significantly as he liquidated the
20:19 equity if 13% of Tesla's shares
20:21 immediately went for public sale it
20:23 would create an enormous Surplus and the
20:24 company's value would crash all net
20:27 worth does is oisc things cash is only
20:30 powerful when you're broke and it's only
20:33 valuable when you need or want something
20:35 that you otherwise couldn't get without
20:37 cash what I instead want my viewers to
20:39 be concerned with is your personal
20:41 levels of power or control over the
20:43 things that you earn consume and trade
20:46 in 1996 the US Stock Market had around
20:49 8,000 companies listed and since then
20:51 our economy has grown by over $25
20:54 trillion and now our stock market boasts
20:57 nearly 4,000 companies in that same
20:59 period of time the number of of listed
21:01 companies around the world went from
21:04 around 24,000 to 51,000 so what is
21:06 happening here why would our variety of
21:09 public Securities dropped by 50% while
21:11 the rest of the world's doubled
21:13 doubled [Music]
21:15 [Music]
21:17 private private Equity the term private
21:19 Equity means more or less what you would
21:21 expect it to mean these days it's
21:24 usually a larger company or firm that
21:26 buys smaller companies and either
21:28 transforms them from public comp
21:30 companes to private companies or just
21:31 keeps them as private companies as
21:33 opposed to a publicly traded company
21:35 that has a lot more obligations with the
21:37 Securities and Exchange Commission in
21:40 the 1990s it was estimated that about 2%
21:42 of the businesses in the US were owned
21:44 by private equity and that number has
21:46 since grown to over 25% and this
21:48 includes everything from chemical
21:50 companies to Farms to vets to grocery
21:52 store chains to food delivery apps to
21:54 gyms to medical facilities to drug
21:56 companies and many of these related
21:58 businesses are owned by the same
22:00 investor M firms or their Partners which
22:03 sets the stage for an entire gallery of
22:05 anti-competitive business practices and
22:06 tax shielding using tactics like
22:09 dividend recapitalization in fact this
22:11 is almost unnecessary these days as a
22:13 newer trend is private Equity firms
22:15 literally giving one of their portfolio
22:18 companies a value and then selling it to
22:19 themselves but the classic private
22:21 Equity business model is borrowing and
22:23 raising as much capital is possible to
22:25 buy and sell companies at a profit and
22:27 the faster this process is done the
22:29 better as this be the velocity of money
22:31 demonstration that I gave you earlier in
22:32 this video you can argue that these are
22:35 just complex capitalist Maneuvers or
22:37 perhaps late stage capitalism a term
22:39 that's been used since Warner some Bart
22:41 coined it in 1928 but even that is not
22:43 happening anymore the velocity of these
22:45 transactions is slowing down
22:46 significantly and the average private
22:48 Equity holding time is the longest that
22:51 it's been in 20 years the co stimulus
22:53 and the market effect from it led to an
22:55 enormous boost of Acquisitions in 2020
22:57 and even though we're now past the
22:59 median average private Equity holding
23:02 period of 3 to 5 years exits have been
23:03 stagnant what's more alarming is that in
23:06 2020 many workers proved to corporations
23:07 that they don't need to come into the
23:10 office at all which also proves to
23:12 corporations that many of them can be
23:14 replaced by labor by anybody in the
23:16 developing world who speaks English that
23:17 is a private Equity investors's wet
23:19 dream so what gives does nobody like
23:21 money anymore the point of all this
23:23 maneuvering is decreasingly about
23:25 turning a profit and increasingly about
23:27 transitioning to a rent-based economy
23:29 that hedges inflation right after the
23:31 2008 financial crisis investment firms
23:33 started betting big on Farmland
23:35 typically hiring local farmers to manage
23:37 them but more frequently offering lease
23:39 backck programs where the farmer
23:40 continues working but rents the land
23:42 ultimately losing control over their
23:44 working budget and circumstances
23:46 otherwise since then and especially
23:48 since 2020 in almost all cases
23:50 investment is not attracted to
23:52 Innovation or profitability but to
23:54 business models that act as a middleman
23:56 offering subscriptions to products or
23:57 Services you would otherwise buy
24:00 directly for example uh software movies
24:03 video games parcel pizza delivery
24:05 headphones cell phones groceries
24:08 clothing underwear heated car seats
24:10 pregnancy a rent-based economy has
24:12 always been present in real estate but
24:13 if you're an American homeowner then
24:15 you've probably had an annoying amount
24:17 of investment groups asking if you'd
24:18 like to sell your house and it's not
24:21 unusual for those investment groups to
24:23 pay over market value for single family
24:25 homes it also shouldn't surprise you to
24:26 hear that home ownership has been
24:28 declining particularly for millennial
24:30 with nearly two out of three people
24:32 under the age of 40 being renters many
24:34 argue that this is primarily due to
24:36 inflation and sluggish wage increases
24:39 but the cost to income ratio has risen
24:41 for renters and dropped for homeowners
24:42 the wealth gap between renters and
24:45 homeowners has widened by over 50% in
24:46 the last decade in lower and middle
24:49 class households white people are nearly
24:51 two times more likely to be homeowners
24:52 than people of color meaning that
24:54 younger minority groups are likely to be
24:57 increasingly disproportionately punished
24:58 in the future when you take olve this
25:01 data into consideration profit and even
25:03 money itself is only really valuable
25:05 when it buys power and if a societal
25:08 system can be engineered to gain power
25:10 without profit or money capitalism
25:12 begins to exist as something to exploit
25:14 within that system under its umbrella
25:15 The Sounds hyperbolic but it needs to be
25:18 said a lot more often most of us do not
25:20 realize that we are in a constant battle
25:22 with billionaires who don't want us to
25:24 own things but rent them and when we
25:26 don't own things we lose control over
25:29 our own budgets lives decisions and
25:31 ultimately our own Destinies here's a
25:33 pertinent example did somebody that you
25:35 know send you a link to this video or
25:37 did you type in Ben Jordan new video and
25:39 find it that way or was it recommended
25:41 to you by an algorithm or was it placed
25:44 on your sidebar or did it autoplay when
25:46 another video ended this next and final
25:48 chapter is very much about the type of
25:51 transaction that you and I are having
25:53 right now me working without benefits
25:55 guaranteed pay or protections to make
25:57 something to use as bait to get you to
25:59 either watch targeted advertisements or
26:02 pay $14 a month without even being
26:04 offered a chance to indefinitely play
26:05 the video file offline on your own
26:08 device and while you do that your every
26:10 move is being harvested for data to
26:12 empower the company let's take a look at
26:13 this definition again and let me know
26:15 how well it describes our little
26:17 transaction here capitalism is formally
26:19 described as an economic system in which
26:21 individuals and private parties control
26:24 the means of production and profits are
26:39 long before the pandemic the foundation
26:41 had already been laid for an economy
26:43 that transcended goods and services
26:45 Facebook's Cambridge analytica Scandal
26:47 where 87 million users were
26:49 psychologically profiled without consent
26:52 and served political ads was hugely
26:53 associated with both the 2016
26:55 presidential election and the brexit
26:58 referendum many people believe including
27:00 whistleblowers who worked in the data
27:02 centers that without Cambridge analytica
27:03 the UK would still be part of the
27:05 European Union better yet here's a
27:07 leaked debriefing slideshow from
27:09 Cambridge analytica giving themselves
27:11 credit for using mind personal data in
27:13 combination with misinformation
27:14 campaigns to win an election As
27:16 Americans were concerned and distracted
27:18 by claims of voter fraud and hacked
27:21 machines we forgot to notice that
27:23 Democratic elections don't work when
27:25 news and information are no longer
27:27 democratized for example in most
27:29 dictatorships the government will have
27:31 an office that permits or denies which
27:34 stories can run in the newspaper in 2025
27:36 every piece of news that the average
27:39 voter sees is manipulated by a third
27:40 party aggregator even if you go to
27:42 something like Google news and select
27:45 the generalized headline areas your feed
27:47 will be different than mine this
27:48 disequilibrating of information was
27:50 concerning enough when it was being done
27:53 for ad revenue and profit but now it's
27:55 about a lot more than that whether
27:57 capitalism is healthy or unhealthy at
27:59 any given point point in time it has
28:01 always provided the framework for
28:04 negotiation between profit and labor in
28:05 Carl Marx's critique of political
28:07 economy labor is broken into two
28:10 subcategories there's abstract labor
28:11 which is what I'm doing right now when
28:13 making this video I'm learning I'm
28:14 gaining experience I'm sharing
28:16 information and overall I'm just feeding
28:18 my passion and the other is concrete
28:20 labor which is what somebody would be
28:21 doing if they were holding a boom mic
28:23 over me or making me coffee capitalism
28:26 obviously requires concrete labor but it
28:28 thrives on abstract labor as it it
28:30 provides organic growth and the problem
28:31 is is that you can't just snap your
28:33 fingers and get abstract labor you can't
28:35 even buy it because someone's passion
28:37 and happiness is more valuable to them
28:39 than a commodity so corporations
28:41 classically try to generate it through
28:43 morale boosting corporate programs and
28:45 Retreats and parties this has been a
28:47 major challenge since the Industrial
28:49 Revolution even when you're paying a
28:51 competitive salary health insurance 401k
28:53 and bonuses but when you hire gig
28:55 workers that have no benefits labor
28:57 protections or even guaranteed income
29:00 which by the way is often below minimum
29:02 wage how can you expect to extract
29:04 abstract labor an abstract labor in
29:07 value is extremely high in Creative
29:09 Industries how can you expect musicians
29:12 to on average spend more in fees to give
29:13 you their music than you'll ever pay
29:15 them in royalties how can you expect an
29:18 app or game developer to give you 30% of
29:19 their income when you're not even
29:21 offering support or advertisement or
29:24 how can you expect somebody to buy
29:26 thousands of dollars of camera equipment
29:29 to start a competitive YouTube channel
29:32 okay other side of the coin why would I
29:34 a YouTuber take a modest salary to
29:36 produce shoot and edit short stories for
29:38 I don't know the New York Times when I
29:40 can have full control over my content
29:42 where I'll be rewarded appropriately for
29:44 all of my hard work or why would
29:46 somebody work for a chauffeur company
29:47 when they could set their own hours
29:49 depending on how much money they needed
29:51 in any given week according to YouTube's
29:54 2024 culture and Trends report 65% of
29:57 gen Z identify themselves as a content
29:59 creator and YouTube doesn't exactly hide
30:00 why this is such good news for
30:02 advertisers who intend on capitalizing
30:05 on this societal Snowball Effect but we
30:07 can assume that if and when that
30:09 generation enters the labor force they
30:11 won't exactly be bringing high levels of
30:13 abstract value to the car insurance
30:15 claims adjuster cubicle but this is
30:17 nothing new long before the pandemic the
30:19 labor force participation rate had
30:21 dropped significantly from its peak in
30:24 2000 and you can see the decline growing
30:26 exponentially as big Tech entered the
30:28 economy it obviously crashed during the
30:30 pandemic and now even though labor force
30:33 participation was at a 35-year low in
30:36 2019 we still haven't even recovered to
30:40 that level meanwhile in 2024 36% of us
30:42 workers were participants in the gig
30:45 economy it is projected that by 2027
30:47 that number will have grown to over half
30:50 of the entire American Workforce hm I
30:51 wonder what could possibly make
30:52 everything that I told you in this
30:54 chapter a 100 times
30:57 worse in the late 1990s we quickly
30:59 realized how powerful marketing could be
31:02 with the innocently named cookies which
31:04 simply track a user's activity with the
31:06 primary goal of optimizing targeted
31:08 advertising when Facebook introduced the
31:10 like button in 2009 the power of
31:13 sentiment analysis was realized and it
31:14 would only be a few years before you
31:16 telling your aunt that you bought a new
31:18 grill would lead to you seeing ads to
31:19 get you to subscribe to meet
31:21 subscription Services hey look there's a
31:23 coupon for the annual plan
31:24 congratulations for the next year of
31:25 your life the meat you grill will be
31:27 chosen for you it won't be graded like
31:29 the meat you get from the butcher it
31:30 won't be FDA approved and you'll pay
31:32 more while a farmer on the other side of
31:34 the world earns less but it wouldn't be
31:36 until the recent AI boom when sentiment
31:38 analysis would become sci-fi levels of
31:41 terrifying Facebook has lost popularity
31:43 while young users migrated to Instagram
31:45 and Tik Tok now to participate in your
31:48 social group you are required to create
31:50 content and when you do that AI analyzes
31:52 the sentiment of the content and if it's
31:53 not saying or showing anything that
31:55 isn't of interest to the platform for
31:57 example talking about a government Coupe
31:59 on Tik Tok then it is viewed by users
32:01 who have shown interest in that topic
32:03 the content would then be graded by the
32:05 amount of time that users would spend
32:07 looking at it before moving on to the
32:09 next photo or video and the higher it
32:11 scores the more people it's shown to and
32:13 once it's graded as a useful video it is
32:15 shown to people who are most likely to
32:16 feel rewarded by watching it an
32:19 algorithm priority and optimized
32:20 placement in the cycle can be purchased
32:23 at a premium in which case Tik Tock also
32:26 takes between 10 and 15% Commission of a
32:28 sale so if I wanted to make some edgy
32:29 catchy t-shirt that said I don't know
32:32 rip capitalism for example and sell it
32:35 in this vacuum of an economy that Tik
32:37 Tok has I'd go through a Drop Shipping
32:39 service like printify who would then act
32:41 as a middleman for finding a printer and
32:43 printify of course offers a subscription
32:45 too and they make money from both the
32:47 printers and the designers in this cycle
32:50 abstract labor is either unpaid or paid
32:52 Pennies on the dollars in comparison to
32:53 the wealth that their labor generated
32:55 this isn't exactly a speculation or a
32:58 prophecy either as of 2025 one out of
33:00 three young people have shopped on
33:01 social media in the last week and
33:04 another study of 14,000 Global consumers
33:07 has shown that 91% of people prefer
33:09 buying Cosmetics on social media 81% of
33:11 the people in that study prefer buying
33:14 clothing that way while only 57% even
33:15 bother trying clothing on before
33:17 purchasing them and again one could
33:19 argue that this is merely capitalism on
33:22 methamphetamines but a store like Kohl's
33:26 employs 96,000 people printify employs
33:29 760 people call sales have declined for
33:31 11 consecutive quarters and it can be
33:33 expected that their payroll will shrink
33:34 along with it the reason I'm using
33:35 clothing as an example here is to show
33:38 you how powerful sentiment analysis is
33:40 at converting consumers to this new
33:42 economy 15 years ago if you propos the
33:45 idea that the value of a video app would
33:47 be higher than I don't know seeing how
33:49 your clothing looks or fits on you
33:51 before buying it you'd be laughed at the
33:53 majority the income from these everyday
33:55 transactions adds up and now goes to
33:57 firms that were subsidized with venture
33:59 capital and I can only imagine that
34:01 being an actual manufacturer is less and
34:04 less desirable which may additionally
34:06 explain why labor participation is at
34:09 historic lows in the last 2 years as AI
34:11 was being shoved in my face virtually
34:12 everywhere as I'm sure you have
34:14 experienced as well my Google searches
34:17 now open a sidebar telling me about my
34:18 previous search that I don't have
34:20 patience to sort out or if I want to
34:22 make sure that a replacement vacuum hose
34:24 works with my model of shop back on
34:26 Amazon instead of searching through
34:28 reviews and answers I now have to talk
34:30 to a bot named Rufus about it this is
34:32 happening with emails with messaging
34:34 apps image editors everything I was
34:35 initially really really confused by this
34:37 because virtually nobody likes it it
34:40 changes Familiar workflows of users
34:41 which risk somebody leaving your
34:44 ecosystem and it's really expensive just
34:46 one round of training an llm or large
34:48 language model can cost over $200
34:50 million and that's not to mention the
34:52 hugely increased processing power that
34:54 needs to be done every time that you
34:56 query that model and all of this is just
34:58 happening automatically just to beg us
35:00 to use it why the reason that so many
35:02 cloud-based companies are dumping so
35:04 much money and resources into pushing
35:06 this technology on everyone is to
35:08 capture the part of our routine that
35:11 comparison shops or researches or asks
35:13 for advice or arrives at a logical
35:15 conclusion about something if you become
35:18 friends with chat GPT or gemini or Rufus
35:20 or Siri and you consult with their vast
35:22 informational resources on a more
35:24 personal and Casual level you're not
35:26 only supplying them with the purest form
35:28 of sentiment analysis but you're helping
35:30 them build a system that will further
35:32 control not only your decisions on what
35:34 to buy or subscribe to but what hobby
35:36 you'll take up next summer not only is
35:38 it influencing your decision on where to
35:41 buy an engagement ring or where and when
35:43 to go on vacation to propose to your
35:45 partner there's nothing stopping it from
35:47 influencing your decision on whether you
35:48 should get married at all it would be
35:50 very naive to think of digital
35:52 assistance as your assistance they are
35:54 very much not there to help you but to
35:56 help their owners and the conclusion
35:57 that most of us has is that they're
35:59 there to help their owners make more
36:00 money but in the case of things like the
36:03 Cambridge analytica Scandal or Twitter
36:04 quite literally and intentionally
36:06 becoming an interactive right-wing
36:08 propaganda tool there's a lot more to be
36:16 money what we ultimately have is money
36:18 being extracted to systems that do not
36:21 grow or scale the way a capitalist
36:23 system does by expanding the assembly
36:25 line or opening more chain restaurants
36:27 or researching and patenting a new type
36:29 of refrigerant and I am personally
36:30 convinced that the market will crash
36:32 again and more money will be borrowed
36:34 and printed that will ultimately be
36:36 invested into the further transformation
36:38 into a rent-based economy during World
36:41 War I America's debt to GDP ratio was
36:44 35% in World War II as we strained every
36:46 single resource that we had it
36:50 skyrocketed to 121% meaning that we had
36:54 21% more debt than value as a nation our
36:56 debt to GDP ratio once again skyrocketed
36:58 after the 2008 crisis and it just kept
37:02 rising and right now we are at
37:05 123% higher than it has ever been in the
37:07 history of our economy our national debt
37:12 as of February 2025 is $ 36.5 trillion
37:14 and our total debt is 102 trillion I
37:16 would say that we're well past the point
37:18 of no return but I don't even know what
37:20 that is because this is so unprecedented
37:22 and I assume that it would be easier to
37:25 change the value and concept of money
37:27 than it would be to repay that level of
37:28 debt and it's worth pointing out that
37:30 the primary owner of that debt isn't
37:32 China or Japan or even our own Federal
37:35 Reserve it's us investors as this cycle
37:37 continues to snowball money will be less
37:39 and less valuable not only because of
37:41 inflation but in principle when the
37:43 government is so closely entangled with
37:45 the people who have benefited the most
37:47 from this Mass extraction of wealth from
37:50 a capitalist economy it stops making
37:52 sense to think of wealth is money hear
37:53 me out here's a helpful metaphor from
37:56 the book stalen the court of the red SAR
37:58 there's a story where Stalin and his
38:00 powerful Entourage of officials was
38:02 traveling by motorcade when they came
38:04 across a peasant woman struggling to
38:06 push her cart up a hill Stalin saw this
38:08 and ordered the cars to stop and
38:10 inquired about her situation he wanted
38:12 to give her some money to help her but
38:14 not one person in his entire Entourage
38:17 had a single Ruble of cash on them and
38:18 that's because their wealth was in
38:20 ideological power and influence they
38:23 didn't need cash because no matter how
38:24 lavished their appetite whatever they
38:26 desired would be given to them it wasn't
38:29 until the Deep organized experiment of
38:31 Communism fell that the Soviet ruling
38:33 class had to convert their wealth to a
38:35 tradable commodity as oligarchs
38:37 unfortunately for oligarchs money can't
38:40 buy everything money alone can't change
38:42 laws it can't force people to dress the
38:44 way you want them to dress or to
38:46 identify in a way that aligns with how
38:48 you see them it can't make ideologies
38:50 against the law it can't allow you to
38:52 change the race culture or ethnicity of
38:54 your neighbors you can't buy someone
38:57 else's choice to be or not be a parent
39:00 to graduate or transcend from those
39:02 unfathomable limits of what money's
39:04 wealth can get you you need to control
39:06 the power of information so that you can
39:08 manipulate the world that you live in
39:10 and I believe that that is exactly
39:12 what's happening and unfortunately I
39:14 think it's going to get a lot worse
39:15 before it gets better if you've stuck
39:17 with me this long to listen to and
39:20 consider my entire Manifesto here thank
39:22 you and all I ask is that you consider
39:24 the information in this video when you
39:26 make personal decisions read the news or
39:29 spend your precious time on this planet
39:32 participating in the post capitalist
39:34 economy I suppose you want some advice
39:37 on how to educate yourself about current
39:39 events when an exceeding amount of news
39:41 organizations are owned by billionaires
39:44 and sometimes even governments well
39:46 ground news come here I'll show you it's
39:48 an app and website that collects news
39:49 articles from around the world and
39:52 organizes them by political bias
39:54 reliability and potential conflicts of
39:56 interest such as media ownership ground
39:59 news elves are independently owned and
40:01 funded by subscribers like myself and
40:02 they're vetted by three different
40:04 Independent News monitoring
40:06 organizations so here's an example one
40:07 that'll probably be a sequel to this
40:10 video Trump announces strategic crypto
40:12 Reserve including Bitcoin salana xrp and
40:14 more that's from CSNBC it's owned by the
40:17 Roberts family very high factuality
40:19 Center bias let's head over to the right
40:21 shall we Trump moves crypto strategic
40:24 Reserve forward promises to elevate
40:26 industry Fox Business owned by a media
40:28 conglomerate the Murdo family High
40:30 factuality and it leans right all right
40:32 going left Trump's crypto Reserve is a
40:35 payoff for loyalists published by fast
40:37 company which is individually owned High
40:39 factuality and leans left but my
40:41 favorite is the blind spot feed which
40:44 shows you news that the left or right is
40:47 just completely unaware of for example
40:49 left leaning news organizations don't
40:51 seem too interested in telling you that
40:52 the EU spends more money on Russian
40:54 energy than Ukraine Aid and
40:56 unsurprisingly right leaning news
40:58 organization don't really want to tell
41:00 you about an analysis that shows that
41:02 Trump tariffs will cost the average US
41:05 family $1,600 or more per year anyway if
41:06 this is something you're interested in
41:08 you could go to the link below or go to
41:11 ground. newb and if it jives with you
41:14 that link also gets you 40% off the
41:16 unlimited Vantage plan which will
41:18 probably be the cheapest subscription
41:19 that you use and once again just like
41:21 last time proceeds from the sponsorship
41:24 will go to UNICEF Ukraine which delivers
41:26 essential supplies and education to the
41:29 most vulnerable in war regions children
41:31 just because our leaders have given up
41:33 on them does not mean that we have to
41:35 this video took a lot of research and
41:37 factchecking and was an immense
41:39 intimidating long-term project for me
41:42 that very few of my viewers expected
41:44 much less asked for despite all the
41:46 factchecking that I did a lot of this
41:48 video is kind of philosophical and I'm
41:50 open to being wrong I do think that what
41:51 I said in this video is worth
41:53 consideration as there are some very
41:56 real statistics and scenarios that will
41:57 affect your life in some way way shape
41:59 or form most of all I want to thank you
42:01 for your valuable time and I also want
42:03 to thank my supporters videos like this
42:05 are part of my nonprofit and are almost
42:08 always funded by viewers like yourself
42:09 through patreon and if you'd like to
42:11 support future videos and be part of an
42:13 amazing healthy and inspiring Community
42:15 then we'd love to have you ironically
42:17 it's another damn subscription service
42:18 but it's a worthy one and you can join
42:21 for as little as $1 thank you for
