[SPEAKER_00]: Discipline I think is it has a couple of meanings and and I think most people look at disciplines like getting disciplines, you know, getting spankings or whatever happens. [SPEAKER_00]: That's one part of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then there's actual self-discipline of, you know, knowing the way to do things and doing it the right way consistently, you know, when you when you farm and you're up at six a.m. [SPEAKER_00]: or five thirty a.m. [SPEAKER_00]: and you get home after dark during the summer, which can be nine thirty ten o'clock sometimes, you know, having that discipline to stick to
[SPEAKER_00]: You know doing what you do and and I guess having a little bit of faith that you're actually gonna make a crop and be able to sell it You know it's a big big part of being a farmer you you have to have a lot of belief which is very you know not dissimilar from the restaurant business Super high failure rates there too so I guess we like to do stressful things let's go [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm going to sit and we got a special guest today, Jamie. [SPEAKER_02]: Shira.
[SPEAKER_02]: Beautiful mustache. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: And you said my last name correctly. [SPEAKER_02]: Do people normally not say it correctly? [SPEAKER_02]: How else would you even say it? [SPEAKER_02]: Shira. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, it's not a fucking wine. [SPEAKER_02]: Although, you know, maybe this. [SPEAKER_02]: What do I know? [SPEAKER_02]: How are you doing, buddy? [SPEAKER_00]: I'm great. [SPEAKER_00]: Great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just busy getting some restaurants open. [SPEAKER_00]: How about you? [SPEAKER_02]: I selling booze mostly. [SPEAKER_02]: You've had it. [SPEAKER_02]: It's pretty good. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to talk about all sorts of nonsense today, but let's get into [SPEAKER_02]: Let's get into you. [SPEAKER_02]: And I don't mean that sexually, obviously. [SPEAKER_02]: Where did you grow up? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so a group in Southwest Georgia.
[SPEAKER_00]: We call it an hour from everywhere. [SPEAKER_00]: We're an hour from Belladossa, Albany, Dothanel Bama, the Void, a group one a small farm family farm and [SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, commercial quail preserve that my dad built over years. [SPEAKER_00]: And so spent all eighteen years there on the farm. [SPEAKER_02]: Is it where I went hunting before or is that somewhere else? [SPEAKER_00]: I was just a here south of where we went.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, it's about forty minutes south of there. [SPEAKER_00]: So even further away from anything. [SPEAKER_00]: Wow. [SPEAKER_00]: What was that like? [SPEAKER_00]: Incredible. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, you don't know what you don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: And when you're in kind of a vacuum like that, and you graduate and go to the University of Georgia, it is quite an eye-opening experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: But growing up on a farm, I think, is one of the better ways you can be raised, no bias, but having [SPEAKER_00]: a lot of family really close having a super close knit community seeing your dad your family investing in something that you own and working towards goals and and all that's a really [SPEAKER_00]: incredible way to grow up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, you know, we were, you know, a group, a bad test and grew up, you know, very disciplined and, and that was kind of the, the, the, the knack of things. [SPEAKER_00]: You either worked or you played sports and, and most of the time you did both and that was like pretty much it. [SPEAKER_02]: What do you mean by? [SPEAKER_02]: When you say discipline, you mean there was something you had to do, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like there was a connection, I guess, between effort and outcome. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, like, there were, you know, discipline I think is, it has a couple of meanings. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think most people look at disciplines like getting disciplines, you know, getting spankings or whatever happens. [SPEAKER_00]: That's one part of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then there's actual self-discipline of, you know, knowing the way to do things and doing it the right way consistently.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when you, when you farm and you're up at [SPEAKER_00]: sick they am or five thirty a.m. [SPEAKER_00]: and you get home after dark during the summer which can be nine thirty ten o'clock sometimes you know the this one just to keep doing that especially in the face of absolute uncertainty um if you you know follow the farming market trends they are as bad as they've been in a long time stuff says is as expensive as it's ever been to grow it and it's uh
[SPEAKER_00]: cheaper to sell it than it's been in a long time. [SPEAKER_00]: And so like, you know, having that discipline to stick to, you know, doing what you do. [SPEAKER_00]: And I guess having a little bit of faith that you're actually going to make a crop and be able to sell it, you know, is a big, big part of being a farmer. [SPEAKER_00]: You have to have a lot of belief, which is very, you know, not dissimilar from the restaurant business.
[SPEAKER_00]: Super high failure rates there too. [SPEAKER_00]: So I guess we like to do stressful things. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, nothing. [SPEAKER_02]: good or lasting ever came easy. [SPEAKER_02]: Why do you think it's more expensive to farm now but less expensive to sell? [SPEAKER_02]: What's causing this issue? [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you would think that food security would be national security. [SPEAKER_02]: That would be something that the government would take seriously.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, inputs are more expensive than they've ever been. [SPEAKER_00]: Everything, you know, from the field that you use, [SPEAKER_00]: the chemicals that you use, the seed that you use across the board, everything's more expensive, labor, everything. [SPEAKER_00]: Commodity prices are continually [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, suppresses probably the wrong word, but they're low because we get so much stuff from outside the United States, which does it make a whole lot of sense to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that it is somehow cheaper to buy a cowl that has been raised slaughtered and shipped to the US from either Australia or South America versus getting one off the farm within two or three hours from you makes [SPEAKER_00]: no sense to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think to your point, you know, boot security being national security, there are a lot of subsidies out there for farmers, but, and I'm not fully read in on the policies and stuff of, you know, how pricing and subsidies are for cattle farmers or stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it has to be a priority of our government, of our country people to [SPEAKER_00]: to make our products that we make here specifically in the food arena more profitable so that you can actually attract people to that industry so that you have the best people going or you know a very good people going into that industry. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, no one's going into farming. [SPEAKER_00]: right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and on the restaurant side of things, we spend a lot of effort on trying to buy and build relationships locally with local farmers. [SPEAKER_00]: People, you know, we get our eggs, our vegetables, our fish straight from the golf. [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, we get our all of our beef from either Texas or Iowa.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, we try to not to buy stuff that's imported in that regard, but I don't know the answer to why it's cheaper and I don't understand why there's not more [SPEAKER_02]: You know, done to well usually usually when it comes to this isn't always true for all of all products but when you talk it about [SPEAKER_02]: American-made commodity products. [SPEAKER_02]: One of the primary reasons you see spikes in price.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I say spikes in price, I mean, cogs, like cost and goods and shipping. [SPEAKER_02]: Because of unnecessary regulation, I've got to have [SPEAKER_02]: this, this, this and this thing done and pay the government to regulate it. [SPEAKER_02]: I have to pay them to look into my business. [SPEAKER_02]: And then that's part of my net revenue. [SPEAKER_02]: That's part of the profit of the business.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the profit of the business and a small to medium sized business almost exclusively goes back into the business, which means as inflation goes up. [SPEAKER_02]: And it will sometimes, in spikes, sometimes in gradual numbers, but as inflation goes up, larger companies or companies outside of the US who don't deal with American inflation have the advantage over American producers, which is fucking crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that is a system that cannot be allowed to persist if we're going to take
[SPEAKER_02]: food security is natural security is seriously and then addition to that you know this is a hunter we've hunted together actually some places don't have some states or regions don't have the right kind of processor or something like that so you can't hunt and then sell the meat that's extra you can give it away to your friends but technically to an organization that's a five o'clock see three that tracks and kind donations you can't give it to them either because that's technically not FDI FDA certified me to whatever the fuck
[SPEAKER_02]: that is wild as hell to me. [SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_02]: I understand liability and stuff like that, but these measures that it's almost always the case that these measures that are intended to [SPEAKER_02]: protect us from ourselves, end up just being one of two things if not both. [SPEAKER_02]: One is just regulatory madness, red tape that stops the industry entirely and then two away for the government to steal your fucking money.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's usually what it is. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, I mean, laws should only be created to protect you from other people, right? [SPEAKER_00]: When we start creating laws to protect you from yourself, [SPEAKER_00]: where we need to stop. [SPEAKER_00]: To talk specifically about chain and custody and all of that as it relates to wild game or any type of food. [SPEAKER_00]: You've been to our farm. [SPEAKER_00]: You see how many deer there are.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see how much food that is. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, forty to fifty pounds per deer. [SPEAKER_00]: We should never have a protein problem in this U.S.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just just managing the herds of wildlife like we do and I don't I don't know the numbers specifically, but I know at least in my local market or in the state of Georgia, specifically most of the Southeast or United States, there are enough deer in and of just that species alone to to solve like the food problem and then to your point of having to have a specific FDA approvals and and all that like, you know, things are generally created
[SPEAKER_00]: Laws like that, regulations like that, because there was a bad actor somewhere. [SPEAKER_00]: And I totally understand that and appreciate that. [SPEAKER_00]: But when you get to the point of O'Reach where you literally make companies spend a disproportionate amount of their time and money simply to satisfy requirements that don't really have anything to do with their business. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, we're overreaching. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you don't alcohol, alcohol beverage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, you've dealt with quite a few hoops that you have to jump through. [SPEAKER_00]: If you look at owning a restaurant, I mean, the amount of agencies that I have coming in to my business every month. [SPEAKER_00]: every quarter.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to be highly sophisticated just to stay up to date on everything that's going on and then you've got to pay money to get certificates so that you're in line with their requirements and, you know, you to your point, you know, you get squeezed out of it making sense to do business at some point. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, for me, for example, you know, I get taxed at a higher rate when I buy alcohol.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I sell alcohol, I get taxed when the income that I take out of the business from selling that alcohol. [SPEAKER_00]: You're getting hit three and four or five times down the chain. [SPEAKER_00]: And you look at, you know, your total income getting up by thirty to forty percent in taxes and regulation and stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: It is quite disincentivizing system. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's wild man.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'll say to the thing about [SPEAKER_02]: The government wanting to police the individual, or I guess force the individual to police themselves, maybe I don't know how you would even frame that. [SPEAKER_02]: It's nonsense. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a crime requires a victim, and the victim cannot be the state, and it cannot be yourself. [SPEAKER_02]: The victim is another individual.
[SPEAKER_02]: this collectivist nonsense is on both sides of the political aisle in America right now it takes a lot of different forms on the left it's you know groups that feel like they're in need of resources or social justice or some other bullshit and on the right it's usually from the punishment or blame sides like [SPEAKER_02]: The majority of this thing comes from Group X, so Group X must be collectively responsible. [SPEAKER_02]: No, that's not how life works, my friend.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not how this country works at least. [SPEAKER_02]: There's this new phenomenon in the past few decades where the left kind of jumped onto that old school train to sort of blame at white people for everything, which is an interesting way to deal with the majority. [SPEAKER_02]: And of course, the horseshoe is everybody blames Jews for everything now to you, which is retarded, but it's like eight million people. [SPEAKER_02]: But let's let's be really clear.
[SPEAKER_02]: Every individual is responsible for his or her own behavior. [SPEAKER_02]: We don't blame groups. [SPEAKER_02]: We don't reward groups because groups don't have responsibility, nor do groups have rights, only individuals do, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, when we're looking out on the, we're serving [SPEAKER_02]: the needs of the country and the potential of the country. [SPEAKER_02]: I agree with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's there's not a big divide between our ability to do sustainable farming and whether it's ag or [SPEAKER_02]: animals right or I'm sorry whether it's farming or animals at the whole agonistry and what we need it's it's just not true all the shit that Bill Gates is trying to pull like oh we're running out of space we're running out of this fucking bullshit none of these people have ever picked up a rifle and gone into a herd like oh this is enough
[SPEAKER_02]: If we manage this, even semi-correctly, this is enough protein to service this state for a thousand years. [SPEAKER_02]: What the fuck are you even talking about? [SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_02]: But it's because people are disconnected from reality and disconnected from the land.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think being connected to [SPEAKER_02]: the source, whatever that source is, whether it's the source of your food or I guess you could say the source of our culture and politics is our history, right? [SPEAKER_02]: People are disconnected and civics as well. [SPEAKER_02]: We're disconnected from these things and you have this really, it makes you very susceptible to be propagandized. [SPEAKER_02]: So now you think that there's some problem that exists and it really doesn't exist.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the obviously the worst part of that is that they are going to offer you some solution that's one completely unnecessary and two takes advantage of you and in most cases strips you of your liberty to some degree, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, generally marginalizes either a group or an industry of the to some degree. [SPEAKER_02]: And the American farmer has gotten hit as hard if not harder than any group that exists.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was actually talking to my dad, he's still farmed to this day, much smaller operation than when we were younger. [SPEAKER_00]: But he said, you know, I don't know the specific numbers, but effectively he is producing like per acre, five, four to five times more than what he was in the nineties. [SPEAKER_00]: And he's still making less money per unit than he was then. [SPEAKER_00]: Now obviously there's a lot more units.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you kind of get some sort of equilibrium between the increase in production. [SPEAKER_00]: People don't do jobs out of the goodness of their heart. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you want to see where the actions are going, you have to see where the incentivization is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if people aren't incentivized to get into some type of agriculture or raising cattle or chickens or sheep or pigs or whatever, the chance that they choose that because it's not an easy lifestyle is very, very slim. [SPEAKER_00]: We have all the resources and technology that [SPEAKER_00]: you know, that we need to produce plenty of food and have it produced to where it's affordable simply by just using what we have.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if you've ever, you know, into your point like, you know, I think that a lot of times your perspective determines what you think, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's your kind of only a collection of your experiences. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you've never [SPEAKER_00]: been out in the woods or you've never traveled much outside of your city or to another state or more importantly to another country.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very easy to get in your own head about everything that you need and the sport that you need and not what you have being grateful for that and making something of it. [SPEAKER_00]: I think if people would just spend a little bit more time outside and go to your state parks, go to national parks.
[SPEAKER_00]: I drive back and forth to Alabama all the time to Birmingham because we have a restaurant, three restaurants in Birmingham and just the amount of deer that I see on the side of the road. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, dead and we're living. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the amount of food that is is a tremendous number.
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that you can't, you know, slaughter pigs in the wild and sell them or use them for, you know, less fortunate homeless people or food insecure groups is, is assinine. [SPEAKER_00]: You have to have some type of regulation, you have to have some type of new license to be able to do that. [SPEAKER_00]: You could solve the the food and security problem, pretty instantly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's um, there's [SPEAKER_02]: There's eighty-six point seven million head of cattle right now according to the Department of Ag and the U.S. [SPEAKER_02]: which is by the way the smallest it's been in seventy-five years and in proportion to the population obviously. [SPEAKER_02]: They blame high feed, cause, and droughts, and all the other things, low-heifer retention, too, has become a problem for some reason or another.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, the input cost, as you mentioned before, have gone up.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is why a lot of stuff, when you're talking about, [SPEAKER_02]: And you know you know this from Running the Cogs in your own company and stuff like that when energy costs are high everything goes up no matter what right and when it's oil is the basis of everything yeah The freight what like especially if you're so you you've got a restaurant group is if it's just one restaurant That cuts into your net revenue a little bit, but if you're running
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're producing a product or you're purchasing stuff in bulk because you run a number of different places, now you're in trouble, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Because every like you in a variable price model, the only way that a variable price model works is that it gets less expensive as it gets expensive. [SPEAKER_02]: Otherwise, if it doesn't scale, then you have to stay under a certain limit to even be able to make money in that industry.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you have a variable price model that goes up as you scale fucked, right? [SPEAKER_02]: But that's how it's happening a lot these days with the fuel costs of sub. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, these are, these are challenges. [SPEAKER_02]: I think anytime, like this, this is a, if you're going to be a single issue voter on something, gun rights is a good one. [SPEAKER_02]: I'll always, anybody that's against that, I won't vote for him no matter what they, what else they say.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I would say the number two thing should be energy. [SPEAKER_02]: If they're not, if they're not actively trying to do stuff that makes sense to reduce the cost of either liquid natural gas or oil specifically. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't give a fuck about anything else. [SPEAKER_02]: Or if they want to build a bunch of nuclear plants, which is, like, in my opinion, I think we need to build ten to fifteen, maybe up to thirty nuclear plants in the next ten.
[SPEAKER_02]: Ten, twenties, you know, but to reduce the strain on the LNG and oil industries, especially the downstream effects of that would be huge. [SPEAKER_02]: If oil gets down to and stays around sixty dollars a barrel, and there's a broad supply of it, [SPEAKER_02]: then everything you do in life becomes cheaper. [SPEAKER_02]: Forget about like we can subsidize it as at the pump because that's what we see the number but that shit doesn't matter at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything that you buy. [SPEAKER_00]: is touched with oil at least probably three to four times, right? [SPEAKER_00]: From the time, the raw good is moved to the jugs that hold the fertilizer to the tires that are on your vehicle. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, everything oil is touches everything. [SPEAKER_00]: Let me add to this and I've heard a conversation that really kind of opened my perspective. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, when was the last time your power bill went down?
[SPEAKER_02]: Fuck, to be honest, I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: Energy is cheaper every year. [SPEAKER_00]: And yet our power bills continue to go up. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's, you know, talking about like variable price model, like as they scale it should get cheaper. [SPEAKER_00]: It's more, we're more efficient than we've ever been. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, more technology than we've ever had. [SPEAKER_00]: And somehow the price keeps going up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I think a large of that part of that's due to insurance costs and that whole industry as a whole is, [SPEAKER_00]: not in a good position and then the government regulation. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm kind of about to take a left turn, maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you look at Trump's terror policies, that's like step one to try to balance the book a little bit because the second thing is decreasing the cost of oil, which then increases the capacity to create production in the US cheaper, which is the second part of the whole situation. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that, [SPEAKER_00]: If we can't figure out a way as a country to make, I mean, energy in and of itself, it affects everyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it affects rich people, it affects poor people, it affects every industry. [SPEAKER_00]: And it is the basis, you know, for, to, to your point of inflation in my opinion, because it's, it's the one thing that everything touches. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the more logistics that you have, the more packaging that you have, the more hands that touch things, the more oil has an impact.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if I buy something that's made locally and it's one person single source making it, it's not really going to be affected by that very much. [SPEAKER_00]: But when you buy, like at restaurants, for example, if I buy a case of [SPEAKER_00]: napkins, for example, like how many people are touching that product, right? [SPEAKER_00]: There's raw goods that are made, the load of facility. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like seven to eleven people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, and, you know, and then it's not effective anymore, but it's not cost effective anymore. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Milton Freeman did a great bit on that back of the day with a pencil, like all the different elements of a graphite pencil, the graphite pencil, the graphite, the wood, the clamp on the bottom of the lever, and the copper was sourced and all this stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's [SPEAKER_02]: creating.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, there's a number of ways to bring the price of something down a number of ways. [SPEAKER_02]: But the most effective way is to create a surplus, right? [SPEAKER_02]: We need to do this with housing, by the way, as well. [SPEAKER_02]: And it isn't always what you think. [SPEAKER_02]: It isn't always just building new houses. [SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes it's keeping rates low so that people exchange houses more. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's just moving around, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a number of ways to solve that problem too, which we're not doing any of those right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there are two really [SPEAKER_02]: two ways to create a surplus one is to produce more the product and then two is to widen the product mix that solves that particular problem right so we can produce more oil which I agree with we should definitely do that we should drill as much as we possibly can right now but the other way is to [SPEAKER_02]: widen the product mix and solves that problem and building nuclear facilities is the only way that makes sense to do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: When is stupid, that'll never work, it'll never work, ever. [SPEAKER_02]: Solar is just not ready for prime time yet. [SPEAKER_02]: We're getting pretty close to being able to do that. [SPEAKER_02]: But the pollution created by the panels and the panels ability to absorb and store more importantly store energies is not there yet, right? [SPEAKER_02]: It's a nice hobby, but it's not a fucking full-time job yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: We need oil, we need refineries, we need nuclear power, [SPEAKER_02]: as much of it as possible to create a surplus, to make energy as cheap as it possibly can be. [SPEAKER_02]: That should be our goal, not to hit some marker, but to continue until oil is so cheap that it's not even something people consider anymore. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a direct line between that and economic success in any country or region that it happens in.
[SPEAKER_02]: seventy-five percent of the world is still burning wood for energy seventy-five percent of the world so you know that's and there's a reason why if you're in a if you can hear the sound of my voice during the top one percent of earners on earth [SPEAKER_02]: which may not sound right to you because maybe you're struggling. [SPEAKER_02]: But in reality, you are one of the top one percent of earners on earth, if you're listening to this right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the disparity, right? [SPEAKER_02]: That's the difference between having energy and not having energy. [SPEAKER_02]: Now think about what happens when you peak, when you have peak energy, and there's no, it's not even consideration anymore. [SPEAKER_02]: What happens to that? [SPEAKER_02]: You know, seven to fifteen percent of your revenue that you're spending on energy as a company, especially, well, that goes back into your business now.
[SPEAKER_02]: So your product gets better, or there's more of it, or you have a better product mix or something like that, right? [SPEAKER_02]: That's what happens. [SPEAKER_02]: This is why any of these plans to close like these earned-income loopholes or any of these stuff loopholes, as they call it, that basically prevent you from having to pay
[SPEAKER_02]: forty percent tax and something that should be a capital gains tax at if not no tax at all any of that stuff should go away people talking about trying to retax things that have already been tax that's got to go away this government regulation bullshit uh... is we we haven't had an honest conversation about this in my lifetime i don't think because the conversation is always what we spend money on as a country and never why are we spending money
[SPEAKER_02]: How does that affect your business, man? [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you're running a number of restaurants, you've got other irons in the fire. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a direct line from any of this stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: People don't want to be involved in politics because it's stupid and boring and the people suck, but every decision they make affects your wallet, every single one of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, you know, to your point about energy, like it's specifically nuclear energy, I mean, I was reading article other day where there's a company that's making nuclear reactors that basically fit in like a, like a semi-trailer, twenty by forty, or whatever it is. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it is. [SPEAKER_00]: It is a small amount of reactor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and they park those beside your data centers so that they don't need outside energy, and their self-contained, and it can power a freaking, you know, the standard one is three hundred kilowatts. [SPEAKER_02]: They have a newer model that came out last year that can go up to five hundred kilowatts. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's crazy. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a crazy amount of energy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and then if you look at like, you know, the whole issue with our infrastructure, anyways, with power infrastructure and how vulnerable it is to attack and everything, we've already seen that happen multiple times. [SPEAKER_00]: and different areas. [SPEAKER_00]: It's right for a major disaster.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you have those deployed throughout the US, or at least the capacity to deploy them in the areas that need, like you're the way that you can come in after a natural disaster or something's pretty incredible. [SPEAKER_00]: But the fact, I don't know, I've always [SPEAKER_00]: I guess there's a generation that still is afraid of Chernobyl happening again. [SPEAKER_00]: And obviously, there's a risk with nuclear energy, sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think the benefits drastically outweigh the risk associated with them. [SPEAKER_00]: And to me, that seems like the clearest path forward, I think, agree. [SPEAKER_00]: We have a ton of solar projects in South Georgia.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, the other thing that we don't talk about is clearing that much land of trees that are, you know, if you want to talk about environmentalism, when you clear cut, you know, five thousand acres of old growth forests to put solar panels that don't have very good retention. [SPEAKER_00]: It seems a little bit backwards to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but if you, you know, if you [SPEAKER_00]: If you're talking about politics, they obviously, most of what their job is is figuring out where to spend money within the government. [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't spend your budget, it gets reduced. [SPEAKER_00]: So you want to spend your max budget that you get every year and everything's more expensive. [SPEAKER_00]: So we always need to raise the budgets at every level.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that if we are going to [SPEAKER_00]: ever have some sort of a balanced budget. [SPEAKER_00]: You can't tax that enough or tariff that enough. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the government thinks estimated making like, or the treasury, you know, like, fifty billion a month right now with a new tariff set of come in. [SPEAKER_00]: The fact that, yeah, that's a great thing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, whatever, twelve months, that's, you know, what, six hundred billion, which is
[SPEAKER_00]: compared to thirty trillion not a very big percentage so you're looking at a time horizon that's extremely far down the road and then guess what next administration pops in they want to change the tariffs and you've lost whatever progress so if you can't you cannot raise money faster than we're spending and we've got to cut spending across the board you know there's a lot of where I mean you looked at the whole USA thing and doge thing and
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, whenever you cut spending at the government, that's going to have some secondary and tertiary effects, you know, which is eliminating positions number one, which is income for people and jobs. [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, that creates short-term stress within the market and, you know, specifically in restaurants, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, people lose jobs that are making, you know, hundred and eighty two hundred thousand dollars a year.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not coming to eat at our restaurant anymore. [SPEAKER_00]: But, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, one of the things that we are really bad about us, just as society is looking for instant gratification. [SPEAKER_00]: You're talking about, you know, a hundred years of [SPEAKER_00]: You know, mismanagement that's gotten progressively worse over time. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to be fixed in a month. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to be fixed in a presidential term.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to be fixed in a decade. [SPEAKER_00]: You can make a lot of progress in that amount of time. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's going to cause problems anytime that you change, you grow, you redevelop, it calls fractures. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just a nature of change. [SPEAKER_00]: Those fractures are bad for some people. [SPEAKER_00]: They're good for some people. [SPEAKER_00]: If we don't, I mean, it's like I want a business, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: If I spend five x what I make every year [SPEAKER_00]: I will go out of business very soon, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Because I don't have the ability to pull a switch that prints out more money to fix the deficit. [SPEAKER_00]: And the problem is, is that printing a more money cheapens the value of what you had?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because increased supply, decreases demand, and all the other countries taking note of that and saying, hey, this dollar isn't as valuable as it could be, or maybe they are as powerful as they were or whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just not sustainable. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's very plain to see by everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm, you know, personally, more of a, more of a no politics guy, like there are no politicians guy, like less is more when it comes to regulation and all that stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think most people would agree with that. [SPEAKER_00]: in their own world and in their own kind of jobs and industries and stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, man, it's more expensive now in my restaurant space to do business than it's ever been.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you have to really, you know, whether it used to be like, it's [SPEAKER_00]: You know this, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I buy your product or just say, just put a rough number of a dollar account on it, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I sell it for eight dollars a can, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody looks at that and gets, oh my god, you're killing it, man, you're seven dollars. [SPEAKER_00]: You sold, you know, five thousand drinks or whatever in a bar-type model, like, oh, you're killing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what they don't understand is that the input costs of everything else is so much higher that [SPEAKER_00]: you get eaten alive. [SPEAKER_00]: And the reason why most restaurants go out of business isn't because they don't have business and they aren't doing sales and what have you. [SPEAKER_00]: It's that they don't even know that they're losing their ass while their business is growing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that it's making the economy itself is making it harder for [SPEAKER_00]: The people that are just simply less experienced, I won't say less educated, but people that are just less experienced, like if you're trying to get your store and you try to open up a restaurant and you do like the barriers to entry are insane now.
[SPEAKER_00]: The amount of regulation and legal fees and permitting [SPEAKER_00]: and everything that I have to do to build a restaurant and the amount of documentation that we've had to go through to get an SBA loan for less money than I have owned a deposit in the bank. [SPEAKER_00]: If we were not well capitalized and very good financially with managing our businesses, we would have gone out of business. [SPEAKER_00]: We signed a lease in May, I think, of last year.
[SPEAKER_00]: We started the S or maybe, no, actually sorry, it's September. [SPEAKER_00]: We started the processing at the SBA loan in October of twenty four. [SPEAKER_00]: It got approved about two weeks ago. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, say you're a first, first restaurant owner. [SPEAKER_00]: You got this great idea. [SPEAKER_00]: You want to open this business. [SPEAKER_00]: You got a great addressable market and all that. [SPEAKER_00]: If you do that, you're out of business before you even start.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if you're sitting paying rent at twelve, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars a month and you have no income and you haven't started building, [SPEAKER_00]: Now you get your money to build your space. [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to take nine months to get that. [SPEAKER_00]: You have to go through all the regulation and loop, jump through all these hoops to get all your permitting and everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you've never done that, that's going to take thirty percent longer. [SPEAKER_00]: All of a sudden, you're two years after you signed a lease and are paying rent before you open your space, you're bankrupt before you start. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's not just the restaurant industry. [SPEAKER_00]: That's pretty much any industry in today's world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to go back to the government making, you know, fifty billion dollars a month, and nothing happening with rates, which to your point about housing. [SPEAKER_00]: The reason why there's no housing available is because there's no velocity of housing movement. [SPEAKER_00]: I can't sell my house because what my house is worth today, my mortgage would be four X, what I paid because I got it in March of twenty twenty and two point four six percent or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, that is all downstream. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the, the, the, I mean, our SBA loans and stuff like that, you know, at nine, ten percent and stuff like that is just, you're eating, you're eating a life and you look and it's like, you have a restaurant company. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, man, you did, we had twenty five million dollars this year and then you look at the bottom line and you're like, [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, like, where did it all go?
[SPEAKER_00]: And thirty percent of it being eaten up and stuff that has no impact on your actual operation of your business. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's just attacks, basically. [SPEAKER_02]: Whether it's an actual attack. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the biggest taxes are inflation rates and energy costs. [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, it's [SPEAKER_02]: For people that haven't owned businesses, it can be hard to understand sometimes, so I like to break it down for people.
[SPEAKER_02]: You mentioned napkins are some shit before. [SPEAKER_02]: Think about this way. [SPEAKER_02]: Let's say, just for round numbers, say, there's five touch points for that product. [SPEAKER_02]: Whatever happens to be, from the source material, from source to the creation of the product, to the packaging of the product, [SPEAKER_02]: Um, freight of the product and then to the delivery of the product. [SPEAKER_02]: It's five different ones.
[SPEAKER_02]: And each one of them are paying twenty percent more in energy costs. [SPEAKER_02]: You end up paying somewhere between fifty and a hundred percent more for that product. [SPEAKER_02]: And maybe it's just a napkin. [SPEAKER_02]: But when it's a hundred thousand napkins, [SPEAKER_02]: then every one of those fractional pennies matters, and that's a bunch of money that comes directly out of your net revenue.
[SPEAKER_02]: Certainly, in some ways, you're forced to pass some of that on to the customer, but you still have to be competitive, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, this is a big issue. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, what I think a lot of people don't understand is that shit rolls downhill.
[SPEAKER_00]: increase in wages goes to the customer increase in taxes goes to the customer increases product cost inputs goes to the customer because as a business owner if I don't raise my prices and do what I have to do to make a reasonable profit [SPEAKER_00]: I go out of business. [SPEAKER_00]: And we're just using restaurants because that's what I'm in.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you want to talk about raising minimum wage and making it double or triple or quadruple what it is, I understand the argument for that. [SPEAKER_00]: And I can empathize with the argument for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem is, is when you mandate stuff in an economy and you get rid of free market capitalism to where people can make the best decisions for their business and you mandate stuff like that, that is instantly just going to go straight into the cost of the consumer pays. [SPEAKER_00]: Period. [SPEAKER_00]: Like there's no other way around it, and then there's the argument of whether we need to get rid of tips, society, and just pay people that are in tip to businesses.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of the people that I know that work in the restaurant business that received tips want nothing to do with that, especially now that there's no tax on tips to a certain point, they're taking home a lot more money that way, because
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, sure we can do that and you know there are restaurants to do that and you know that it costs like three hundred fifty dollars a person to eat there and they're fine dining so you know it's a little bit more price and elastic when people's people's you know choice to eat there but the the companies aren't saying you know what we're gonna actually reduce what our targets are down to three or four percent net
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're not going to pass in that custom, cost them to the customer. [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, that's not going to happen. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the here's and people think like, oh, these greedy corporations, you don't, you have to be that sometimes understanding the business owner gets hit from three sides. [SPEAKER_02]: They get hit from the product cost. [SPEAKER_02]: to get to them in the first place, they get hit on the labor costs as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then they get hit on the customer dealing with a market where their individual costs have also gone up. [SPEAKER_02]: So for the business owner themselves, there's really no way out of it. [SPEAKER_02]: It becomes, unless you have built in margins that are pretty good already, [SPEAKER_02]: You're in a very precarious situation when energy goes up, fifteen, twenty percent. [SPEAKER_02]: You're in a bad spot. [SPEAKER_02]: Just right off the bat, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Which is why that should always be a priority for us. [SPEAKER_02]: Food and energy. [SPEAKER_02]: Food and energy housing. [SPEAKER_02]: Those are the three things that everybody needs to live. [SPEAKER_02]: Like food energy housing if you don't have that stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: And then in the broader market, when you're talking about, you know, having a good idea, you've got a successful model now. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I want to scale it a little bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: Being able to have access to capital is a big deal. [SPEAKER_02]: We're going through it right now. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a pain in the fucking ass. [SPEAKER_02]: We filled out more paperwork than we've ever filled out in our lives collectively. [SPEAKER_02]: And I think some of it comes from [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of it I think at the top level comes from either a denial or misunderstanding from how market capital works.
[SPEAKER_02]: People think this hedge fund has a hundred million dollars in the bank so they're going to loan somebody there. [SPEAKER_02]: Ten million dollars out of their bank account. [SPEAKER_02]: That's not how it works. [SPEAKER_02]: They leverage the amount in their bank account. [SPEAKER_02]: They take a loan of their own from a bank for ten million dollars at a small interest rate because they know that they're good for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then they charge you two, three, four times at interest rate, which whatever they're trying to, they're leveraging their capital to make money. [SPEAKER_02]: That's fair enough. [SPEAKER_02]: But that's how it works, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So when rates on that capital are at six and a half, seven, eight percent instead of that two or three percent,
[SPEAKER_02]: people that are in small businesses that are trying to get money good fucking luck right because nobody's taking that either you have to uh... like people have approached us with some like super predatory stuff and so yeah if i get twenty mils of them day we've got financing for you it's at like twenty five cents and shit sometimes like i'm not a private the army do not do it uh... uh... uh... but it's yeah this thing it's just like all these touch point so i would say the core economic stuff is is
[SPEAKER_02]: food energy and housing, but the next one is interest rates for that very reason, right? [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, these are the things. [SPEAKER_02]: These are the only things when it comes to politics that I really care about at this point. [SPEAKER_00]: What big, what big company operates with their own capital to your point? [SPEAKER_00]: Not a smart one. [SPEAKER_00]: None of them. [SPEAKER_00]: And at least, holy, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they are leveraging their assets or their inventory or whatever they're product to [SPEAKER_00]: get money from whatever institution to fund their business. [SPEAKER_00]: That's how they make the product that you buy. [SPEAKER_00]: And if the cost of that goes up, if the cost of oil goes up, [SPEAKER_00]: the cost of labor goes up, if the cost of rent goes up because interest rates went up.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now it's, it's, I mean, you're hit at four or five different areas and that's where we are. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, as an economy and the solution to that for the longest time has been like, oh, just by it from China, because it's cheaper because they don't have that. [SPEAKER_00]: They don't have any labor standards. [SPEAKER_00]: They don't have any cost associated with that. [SPEAKER_00]: We know to be a lower quality, but you know, whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, the... [SPEAKER_00]: The issue is that obviously it just devours any of your ability to produce stuff in your home country. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think if we're going to bring back the whole manufacturing thing and just production, maybe not in manufacturing specifically for production, it's going to be rocky, it's going to be tough, it's going to be hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think that that's a journey that all of us as Americans should kind of want to take on together. [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, if we can start, you know, it's like, you want to talk about how to, you know, you can't change the world, but you can change yourself and you can change your own purchasing behaviors and how you act and maybe you affect the people that are immediate to you and as a society, you know. [SPEAKER_00]: It starts with one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And with our companies, of course, we buy all of our disposable stuff, broad line. [SPEAKER_00]: There's just no, you can't. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know if there are any suppliers that you can buy plates and cups and napkins from that are local. [SPEAKER_00]: But as far as produce and protein and all of that, we try to buy as local as we can. [SPEAKER_00]: And it makes a big difference. [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, not our Japanese Kobe beef.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: especially item but like you know if if it's kind of you know go back to interest rates like you know I touched on a minute ago like our ability to loan money first of all we own restaurants our ability to loan money period is like not there knowing cares they're like
[SPEAKER_00]: You know the only thing you're going to get alone on is FF and eat with your beer like your chairs your equipment stuff like that and that they're going to give you pennies on the dollar so if I've got a million dollars worth of equipment they're like oh yeah I think we can give you a you know a hundred fifty k um you know we started in the restaurant industry just to give you an idea of like how much pricing has changed and we started in the restaurant industry our first base which was
[SPEAKER_00]: the space that we're actually redoing now cost us about one point two to three million to build out to stock to staff and everything now granted that was in two thousand and ten when there you know we're still in the throws of the great economic collapse things were a lot cheaper than in general but [SPEAKER_00]: The new restaurant we're building is going to cost damn near five million dollars. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's just downstairs doesn't include upstairs.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're talking about the Ivy. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, a five X cost and if you look across the board at [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, I was actually having a conversation the other day with my buddy. [SPEAKER_00]: We were just talking about how expensive stuff is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, man, you remember going to the ballpark, like when you were playing like, midgetly baseball and stuff, and like for two bucks, you could get your full dinner. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, hot dog, coke, you get like a thing at Cotton Candy, you get like five suckers, and you know, you're set. [SPEAKER_00]: And you can't buy anything for two dollars.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I mean, you, you, I mean, what they're talking about eliminating what pennies and nickels and or coins in general. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: because the cost is like, cost like twelve cents to make a penny or something. [SPEAKER_00]: That's stupid. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's just being upside down entirely. [SPEAKER_00]: And to your point, I think it all goes to interest rates, it goes to oil, it calls, it goes to labor markets.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know the solution to that one. [SPEAKER_00]: The labor market situation. [SPEAKER_00]: because you have kind of a chicken or the egg situation. [SPEAKER_00]: Like if your cost of living is consistently going up, how do you decrease labor? [SPEAKER_00]: And the only way that you can is by not having as many people working or finding alternative solutions that are cheaper. [SPEAKER_00]: That's really tough in the rest on industry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, from the business side, that shouldn't be something that you even are concerned about.
[SPEAKER_02]: or I guess be concerned about it but it's better to say that that's not your purview you know what I mean it's the people that are managing our currency that should be dealing with that and there's very obvious ways to do it stop print and fucking money which means you're going to stop spending it on entitlements and on foreign nonsense and lower the rates right I mean that's it
[SPEAKER_02]: keeping energy and housing low has the biggest downstream effect on the economy that any other two things you can do and whatever you have to do to make those two things happen has to happen always no matter what no matter what second third order effects come from that that you might have to deal with on the clean upside at some point it's invaluable for people to be able to afford housing and be able to afford energy that's it right so you know it's it's
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know that we're really taking that particular issue seriously. [SPEAKER_02]: I do think that the reason people got but not not everybody but a lot of people got but hurt about to about the tax cuts coming in the form of a certain amount of no tax on tips and a certain amount of no tax on overtime.
[SPEAKER_02]: The reason [SPEAKER_02]: that those two things specifically were targeted is because those are the two of the groups, two of the biggest groups actually in the country that are having issues with housing right now. [SPEAKER_02]: So I wanted to give them a little bit of breather so they can, but you know what? [SPEAKER_02]: All right, good.
[SPEAKER_02]: I make, I mean, an extra fucking twenty grand this year that didn't have to pay in tax, any tax on or twenty five or whatever it is. [SPEAKER_02]: Now I can go fucking by house, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So that's one step in a longer process to open up some of this revenue.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, [SPEAKER_02]: This is why a lot of these, and you grew up in the South too, like I did, there was a lot of this company store bullshit back in the day where you worked at a textile mill, and they paid you partially in like fucking sears bucks or something like that. [SPEAKER_02]: You could only spend it there retail partner stores or their own company stores. [SPEAKER_02]: I owe my soul to the company store, there's a fucking song about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: that you probably heard before. [SPEAKER_02]: Actually, you may have heard it on South Park doing that Amazon episode that they did. [SPEAKER_02]: But it's, that's a real thing. [SPEAKER_02]: And like commodity stuff staying cheap is important, but it's mostly a function of the energy and housing stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of work to be done there. [SPEAKER_02]: And I think we're on the right.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we're getting back on the right track. [SPEAKER_02]: Now I think that there's going to be a big boom in American industrial products and stuff like that. [SPEAKER_02]: We've got a large need for. [SPEAKER_02]: We've got a large need for good paying factory jobs. [SPEAKER_02]: The new data centers that are getting stood up. [SPEAKER_02]: are going to be a big thing to, although they're going to be a strain on the energy things. [SPEAKER_02]: So we got to solve for that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the chip factories that are moving over here, what is it, TBS, or whatever the fuck it's called. [SPEAKER_02]: I can't remember that name of the company. [SPEAKER_02]: But that's going to be a big thing. [SPEAKER_02]: American auto manufacturing is going to be a big thing again. [SPEAKER_02]: So there's relief coming. [SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_02]: I just like, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I really think that the last two pieces to fall right now are a huge infusion of energy production and the second one is obviously these rates have to go down. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, Jerome Powell has been so wrong about everything for so long. [SPEAKER_02]: The only time he lowered rates was during the election last year. [SPEAKER_02]: in a very light and like three years or something that's the only time that rates have gone down.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the economics were worse than than they are now. [SPEAKER_02]: He chose to do that for political reasons. [SPEAKER_02]: There's no question my mind about that. [SPEAKER_02]: But in June, I think it was June six, he said, we're going to hold off on rates because everybody's telling me that these tariffs are going to cause inflation. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, guess what? [SPEAKER_02]: It went down, fuck face. [SPEAKER_02]: So we're all hoping there's another meeting.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the first week of September, [SPEAKER_02]: with Powell where he's going to probably lower rates a quarter or half some like that. [SPEAKER_02]: That's what the expectation is right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: that is going to be massive right for a number of reasons one because a lot of companies are going to get that financing that they need and because that's when the fiscal year resets right right after September going into Q four a lot of those a lot of people a lot of people are going to get a lot of financing there's going to be a fuckload of money floating around not just in tech like it was
[SPEAKER_02]: over the past fifteen years but everywhere in the industrial market and you're going to see that money show back up in the form of middle-class savings and spending that's where you're going to see it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah if you did to your point to about you know the no tax on tips things you know when you look at like your local economy you know people's ability to [SPEAKER_00]: You know, when you make cash from a business, for example, you're going to go spend that money directly back into your economy, where you buy groceries, where you, you know, take your kid to school, or whatever that is, the revolution of that money is hyper important to, you know, your economic stability.
[SPEAKER_00]: When it's taxed and it goes to the government, it is not being used in your market. [SPEAKER_00]: It's being, you know, taken and sent to, you know, one of the [SPEAKER_00]: several foreign conflicts that we have going on in billions and billions of dollars that you know study say we could have solved pretty much every problem we have at home with just the money that we sent to one of those and you know if if
[SPEAKER_00]: If we do get those rate reductions, and I even heard, I remember who I was listening to, but somebody was saying that everything and it could be up to two points within the next year, you're gonna unleash all of this pent-up demand that people have basically been sitting on since COVID. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think you have a really good opportunity to kind of blow the lid off.
[SPEAKER_00]: But to your point, if you don't get the input cost down, money costs the money and the cost of energy [SPEAKER_00]: and oil, it's going to dampen. [SPEAKER_00]: And unfortunately a lot of times when one thing gets cheaper, people take advantage of that and because of increase in opportunity, people increase their input cost. [SPEAKER_00]: So they're not all going to work in concert.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think that we can ever get to a point where [SPEAKER_00]: you know, these whole like omnibus bills like these like giant giant bills that have everything built in and basically it's all like both sides compromises and like I think complexity obviously is the enemy of execution and if [SPEAKER_00]: If we're going to make meaningful change for the middle class, which is the class that establishes basically the security of any economy, we've got to get away from those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think that we can? [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's the only way that we get stuff done today, apparently. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know, honestly. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it doesn't seem like it to be honest. [SPEAKER_02]: What you know, that's the [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's so close to being intellectually consumable for people that they're right there. [SPEAKER_02]: They just don't get it yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what we can't get all this done without [SPEAKER_02]: this big bill that gives something to everybody and so yeah exactly that's what federalism was designed for to say we can't all agree on this so the federal government shouldn't be in fucking charge of any of this that was the point not that we have to compromise each state for the federal government's uh... satiation that's not that was never the point the point was that
[SPEAKER_02]: We are probably not going to agree up here, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to start down here. [SPEAKER_02]: If we can't agree on the federal level and look, this is stuff outside of the purview of the Constitution of the Bill of Rights specifically. [SPEAKER_02]: The tenth amendment's very clear about this shit. [SPEAKER_02]: If it's not a numerator right here, the federal government, it doesn't belong to you. [SPEAKER_02]: Period, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't do that either, which is something I had to conversation about this yesterday. [SPEAKER_02]: We don't do that either. [SPEAKER_02]: But the point of that was, if you can't agree at the federal level, then it goes back to the states. [SPEAKER_02]: If you can't agree at the statewide level, then it goes back to the local. [SPEAKER_02]: And if you can't agree there, then it goes back to the individual.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is called federalism is the system of government that we are under. [SPEAKER_02]: We are a republic, but our system of government is federalism, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So it's like, you're right there. [SPEAKER_02]: You've almost got there. [SPEAKER_02]: Like everybody talks about people that are rational. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, you know, there are some irrational actors just like, oh, we should just never do anything. [SPEAKER_02]: The guy, maybe I guess, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to live in an anarchistic society, just move to fucking Somalia, you know? [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of space between those two ideas of just having no government. [SPEAKER_02]: and having a government that does what the fuck it was told to do in the first place, instead of trying to create all this stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: People are right there, they're so close right now. [SPEAKER_02]: These people that I consider to be very reasonable and rational, you're so close.
[SPEAKER_02]: You got all the way to the point where you made the observation that we can't agree on this stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: And then your solution was, well, we're just going to compromise everybody. [SPEAKER_02]: Instead of saying, well, maybe we should descend it back to the state, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I guarantee if [SPEAKER_02]: There wasn't this political discussion between [SPEAKER_02]: The federal government, California, about who's going to pay for disaster relief, for example. [SPEAKER_02]: Like that's on an issue. [SPEAKER_02]: California, you're just responsible for that. [SPEAKER_02]: If you need help, you can come ask us and we'll loan you money. [SPEAKER_02]: That's how that works. [SPEAKER_02]: But you're ultimately responsible for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, they would pay a lot more attention to who they fucking elect in their state legislature and for governor. [SPEAKER_02]: For sure, wouldn't be a game of the governor and the legislature blame in the federal government because the federal government has no purview there. [SPEAKER_02]: It's not their job, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Ultimately, it's about consequences [SPEAKER_02]: and when people diffuse consequences, nobody knows who to blame, nobody knows what to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's, I think, you know, the old saying that, you know, when you have Scott responsibility, tyranny prevails, [SPEAKER_00]: And like an individual level, you know, what does that mean? [SPEAKER_00]: Like take responsible for yourself, take responsibility for your actions, pay attention to what's going on in your community and the people around you, do the right things, treat people the right way, hold others accountable to those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the government [SPEAKER_00]: is built on a model that consumes responsibility and consumes decision making and consumes power and it does not relinquish that ever. [SPEAKER_00]: They are the masters of never giving up conquer ground and the longer that we go, the more power that they take and unfortunately, a lot of people for short-term benefit and gain give up that [SPEAKER_00]: freedom no matter how small it is or that capacity to make a decision or take an action.
[SPEAKER_00]: Simply because they just don't want to worry about it or think about it. [SPEAKER_00]: Very soon, I don't have a time on it, but very soon it seems that you're going to have a single point decision maker on
[SPEAKER_00]: you know trying to everything that we can or cannot do and you have the illusion of of of pre-choice and everything but when you combine that with private equity at a very large scale which also has those same goals of never giving up conquer ground and taking over decisions in power and there's a lot of control in a very few hands I don't think that's a very good thing for us now it's definitely not I mean decent if if [SPEAKER_02]: I don't support any idea or politician.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I don't support any politician anyways, but I certainly don't. [SPEAKER_02]: I won't even tolerate a politician who's not actively trying to decentralize. [SPEAKER_02]: That's what makes things better, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So you as an individual, you're not going to have much impact on monetary value or policy, frankly, aside from the one federal vote you get.
[SPEAKER_02]: and then the two additional for the house and Senate and any given year that you cast or every two years or whatever but you can't affect things locally. [SPEAKER_02]: I tell people this all the time. [SPEAKER_02]: If you really believe in these ideas of individual freedom, liberty-based economics, things like that, [SPEAKER_02]: then you've got to figure out a way to solve problems locally as much as you possibly can.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the reason is because when the government shows up and nobody has their hand out, they have no power there. [SPEAKER_02]: And they'll try to change their offering to get power. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's not necessarily a bad thing, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a value proposition, the federal government [SPEAKER_02]: wants to exist it's like any other organism and it's going to take from you what you'll give it and it'll give you and return what you demand for the most part right and we should demand security from them we should demand that the currency is managed well we should demand that they start taking things
[SPEAKER_02]: like commodities into consideration with regard to security the fact that we went from a net energy exporter to fucking buying oil from Russia and Venezuela again under Biden as a goddamn tragedy that should never have happened what the fuck what what the fuck was that right so these things these are things that only gets solved to through two things one is education both the current events and on the history
[SPEAKER_02]: and structure of our government and civics classes, which they've taken out of high schools for some reason. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think there's any mystery why that happened to be honest. [SPEAKER_02]: And the other part is to, again, solve problems locally. [SPEAKER_02]: It's the only fucking real power you as an individual have, is to make sure that that do down the street that needs help doesn't have to go anywhere else for it other than you and your community.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the only fucking power you really have. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, everything that we've talked about thus far, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, to your point, we don't really have any control over, you know, changing. [SPEAKER_00]: The only control that we have is who we vote for. [SPEAKER_00]: And the government, say the government, whatever that entails has done a really good job. [SPEAKER_00]: And two ways to solve it is solve problems locally and be educated.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a third kind of [SPEAKER_00]: thing there that we all, not all of us, but the vast majority of the country gets caught up in, which is the fact that our elections should not be red or blue. [SPEAKER_00]: They should not be based on popularity, contest, our whole election process is just turned into [SPEAKER_00]: something that it shouldn't be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the ability that the government has or the way in which they keep a separated based on issues, single issues, keeps us from coming together as a group and saying, because I think everything that we've talked about, everybody would agree would be a good thing, lowering power costs, decreasing the cost of housing, increasing food security for everybody in the US.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know anyone on either side of the aisle and I have people all friends and family all over the spectrum that would disagree with anyone of those things. [SPEAKER_00]: And the reason, I think one of the major contributing factors alone we can't come together on that shit is because we're so caught up and our stupid personal opinions on people's backgrounds and histories or [SPEAKER_00]: What political party they're in?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you shouldn't be a single party voter. [SPEAKER_00]: You should be an issue by issue by issue by issue voter, and that takes a lot of time and energy and effort, but that's your responsibility as a citizen.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a hundred percent your responsibility to be informed about what's going on around [SPEAKER_00]: you and get your head out of the clouds and pay attention and try to, you know, vote and create, you know, a situation to where you have some type of balance between those people. [SPEAKER_00]: But I think we do such a bad job as society of pointing fingers and saying that conservatives are the problem for this or Democrats are the problem for this or what have you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I think there's such a stink on politicians and the politics in general that the hell wants to even do that. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, go ahead. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you think, you know, I had this conversation the other day, do you think increasing the income for those elected officials changes anything? [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe, I mean, you would have to do it in concert with other things like the inability to own anything individually stockwise, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, it's an interesting conversation to have because there was one, the early Athens [SPEAKER_02]: tried a lot of different things. [SPEAKER_02]: They tried a lot of different kind of forms of government systems of government, shit like that. [SPEAKER_02]: And one of them was a direct democracy where everybody in Athens voted on every single major issue. [SPEAKER_02]: That was a goddamn disaster.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because for all the reasons, I mean, it's just the logistics behind that are crazy. [SPEAKER_02]: They also tried early on, and look, they weren't bad actors, it wasn't bad intention. [SPEAKER_02]: They didn't want people to, they didn't want to attract predators to government. [SPEAKER_02]: So they had a non-funded government. [SPEAKER_02]: The government was volunteer-based.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, the result of that was that only extremely wealthy people could do that because otherwise, like a farmer can't leave his farm for two years to go serve as console or pro-console or anything like that. [SPEAKER_02]: It's just not gonna work, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So they started paying them quite well. [SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, I mean, I think government should be limited as much as possible.
[SPEAKER_02]: But for the things that it's actually designed to do, we should pay them competitively for sure. [SPEAKER_02]: You don't want fucking idiots. [SPEAKER_02]: Now it is a public service. [SPEAKER_02]: There's no question about that. [SPEAKER_02]: I think people should take that seriously as a public service. [SPEAKER_02]: But it shouldn't ruin you financially to come serve and government for two, three, four, five, six years or something like that, for sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you also want to attract the best talent. [SPEAKER_02]: So there's some argument to be had there. [SPEAKER_02]: but as it stands right now, that's an impossible pitch to make because all of these people are stock trading and all of this other stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, this one woman, what's her name?
[SPEAKER_02]: Not Nancy Pelosi, that's obvious, but Lisa McLean, I don't even know what state she's in, but she's on the Armed Services subcommittee [SPEAKER_02]: for cyber information tech and innovation. [SPEAKER_02]: And she just, she purchased Palantir stock last year. [SPEAKER_02]: And then was part of the group that awarded the contract for all this stuff now. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's gone up six hundred seventy four percent since then.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's going to be hard to get people to get on board with a Congress. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: It's not pay raise if that's what's going on. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's not going to stop until somebody fucking stops it and people go to prison as a result. [SPEAKER_02]: It'll never fucking stop. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's, but they passed the past the house, right? [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know actually. [SPEAKER_02]: I haven't been tracking on that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that bill, or, I mean, it's definitely floating around and then Holly tried to pass it in the Senate and Trump called him a trader for some reason. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know why. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Who fucking knows? [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_02]: We can't control any of that stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: You can, you can, you can man it. [SPEAKER_02]: You can play the hand. [SPEAKER_02]: that's dealt to you and you can manage what's in front of you.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I highly recommend that people actually do that. [SPEAKER_02]: Don't become black pill to say, well, I'm not going to do anything because nobody else is because that's how civilization fails. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, some responsibility. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we [SPEAKER_00]: That's one of the huge things we teach and preach and coach in our organization across the board. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like take responsibility for your actions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only focus on what you can control. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we see a lot of people, especially younger generation, getting just completely wrapped around the axle burn out, having nervous breakdowns because of stuff they see on social media. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, [SPEAKER_00]: Hold on. [SPEAKER_00]: You have no impact over that. [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't affect your life really at all. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's focus on what you can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Take care of yourself, take care of your family, stay active, eat well, work out, work hard, pay your bills, keep your debt low, be autonomous in all those things and we're trying to make an impact across multiple businesses and multiple cities. [SPEAKER_00]: I think we do a decent job with it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's something that's super important to us. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, good. [SPEAKER_02]: good. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, uh, we got to get out of here.
[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate you coming to tell everybody where they can find all your restaurants. [SPEAKER_02]: I are at Atlanta area, a lot of. [SPEAKER_00]: Atlanta, Atlanta, Birmingham are our companies called revival restaurant group. [SPEAKER_00]: So you can Google that. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, [SPEAKER_00]: And we have three in Birmingham, one down at Wanton opening a second one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Louis Welles are our most recent coming in along the line, probably in sixty days or so in the bucket market and yeah, we're stoked. [SPEAKER_02]: Good. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, thanks for coming today. [SPEAKER_02]: I'll let you know when I'm heading back out there. [SPEAKER_02]: It's always nice to drop by and do some, do some shows. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you for having me on this. [SPEAKER_00]: It's been a blast.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, any time we'll do it again sometime soon. [SPEAKER_02]: And thank you all for listening. [SPEAKER_02]: This has been a series.