From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noela.
They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here.
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. And Guys, I was thinking about this. We've talked a little bit off air about it. What a time to host a critical thinking conspiracy show.
Man, We're not wrong.
I mean, if we had known what we know now.
Say something something we knew a little bit. I mean, you know that ebbs and flows, but boy is it flowing.
We always knew that at the end of times there would be folks someway or in their basements or a room in their apartment going the end is coming. The end is coming, and we weren't doing that for way too long.
Well, the world is ending for someone somewhere every day, right.
And for all of us very soon.
I'm gonnasy to change it too, Buddy.
Flags on the way here.
It's so cool. Everybody look up Gulf of Tonkin.
In tonight's episode, we are going to explore a genre of conspiracy that we have often referenced, but we've never fully explained. We often speak about the nature power and corruption, but how do we explain the tendency of powerful people to compromise institutions. That's tonight's question. You know, what exactly is an oligarch? Do you guys remember our earlier conversation with Jake Hanrahan, the creator of sad Oligarch?
How could I forget? I also remember learning about it in school, like in you know, Civics class, about what an oligarch was, and I just remember it was like it was not a good thing the way it was presented.
Well, it was a great thing for the folks who were smart enough and had enough capital at the fall of the Soviet Union, it.
Was great, for sure, I guess, I just mean the way it was taught, it was like, this is an anomaly. You do not want this, This is not something that.
We have, sure, right right, yeah, but I don't want this. As we'll see the definitions of we versus them and your mileage is going to vary sociosifly at best, right, and often the oligarch is in the West associated with post USSR Russia, to be quite clear. But tonight we have to ask more importantly, is the United States itself an oligarchy?
We'll be right back.
Here are the facts, all right, how would we define oligarchy? I think we can do it pretty easily.
Right, tycoons who reaped enormous fortunes in the collapse of the Soviet Union in nineteen ninety one. That's how Encyclopedia Britannica puts it.
Yeah, and that's a genre of oligarchy for sure.
And I guess I would think of it as sort of like non government forces that are able to influence government through sheer wealth alone.
Yeah, that's a great observation.
My forces, I mean individuals, But now that can also include corporations, It can include powerful people within corporations, and it can include a lot of different within the you know, main flavor.
Yeah, I mean, at the basis, folks, an oligarchy is a form of government in which all of the power, or the majority of the power is vested in a small, exclusive class for all our fellow etymology nerds. The word goes back through the French from the Greek oligarchia, which translates to government by the few. I think that makes sense, right, Most most governments are in practice oligarchical.
Sure.
It's also an interesting thing to try and suss out the difference between say a dictatorship or a more iron fisted, you know, singular ruler situation and how oligarchs figure into that, because oftentimes it's easier for oligarchs to flex that influence if they're tid end with someone that can unilaterally affect policy without you know, fear of pushback from lesser government forces like Stalin's.
Stalin's Soviet Union was very much an oligarchy.
Yeah, it's always a little bit murky there. And I don't know that there's ever been a true, you know, single person dictator ruling a thing, because there are always folks around those people who are in their ear who are the uh maybe they don't wield the power, but they're certainly getting their way or having an idea, and then it kind of transmits through whichever person is in charge there.
Phenomenal.
Yeah, Yeah, Like a recent example would be North Korea, an early example would be the Ottoman Empire. But I love what you're pointing out, Matt, because there is always a king of the hill, and we don't mean Texas.
That's right.
Benjamin Nett Yahoo in the United States, all.
Right, I'll say it on Netflix, not my favorite Ben.
The people who are just starting to call him BB all the time. I had never really clocked that, but boy, am I hearing it a lot now. Maybe it's just because he's more in the news, but I am hearing people kind of diminutively referring to him as Bebe whispering in Trump's ear. And I thought it was being cute, But that's second nickname, I.
Guess, anything but him having to face the legal consequences of corruption, to be quite.
Honest, right, we're at a point now where there are folks in charge where the moment they are no longer in charge, they're getting in big trouble. So you gotta grasp the reins.
Baby.
But there's a great clip of Benjamin Nett Yahoo going before the UN and before Congress here in the United States and making the claim I think starting in gosh, I think it was eighty five with the first piece of the superclip and in nineteen eighty five saying Iran is about to have a nuclear weapon. We're weeks away from Ron having a nuclear weapon. And then it happens every couple of years, and you can just see him making the same statements until finally he got his way.
Yeah, and we were talking a little bit off air about that one. We know that any nation in Western Europe and Israel and the United States, we know that any nation calling itself a democracy is often a theoretical democracy, a place ruled by the public. But some people and
families still have a leg up. I was thinking about this when recently here in the United States, someone with a last name like Bush, Kennedy, Clinton, or Roosevelt gets a certain unwritten boost, an unwritten buff to their character, more so than say a Fagan of Frederick, A Brown or whatever name I'm using now.
Well, yeah, it's also like those guys I think are more associated to me with the idea of political dynasty, which is another murky aspect of oligarchy, Like is that the same thing, like does the Is their influence and political power derived from their generational wealth or is it just right time, right place? You know, their fathers were in the same business that kind of situation.
What I'm seeing, guys, is is kind of that right time, right place kind of thing in ingenuity and having an awareness of the economic layout and what's happening, because it does seem like the people were talking about who become oligarchs throughout time are the ones who have a bunch of capital already, and then they're watching what's happening with let's say, the economy of a country that they're in, as well as what's happening from a government perspective in
that in that country. And then when those two things one kind of starts to get out bound balanced by the other, they make these really smart moves and they end up way on top. And that doesn't mean they can see the future, right, it means they understand maybe the way the market will change, in the way often things like inflation are going to operate. It's creepy stuff because it can happen anywhere.
Yeah, also a lot to be said about just like you know, being first to market or like being in on the ground floor of something early enough, especially when family is concerned, and that kind of generational wealth and the influence that goes along with it.
Yeah, well, said guys. And it's always been so strange that, Look, when you hear about oligarchs, now you're going to hear them portrayed as Russians, right, due to the fall of the uss Or. But it's so strange to realize that for the majority of human history, most civilizations were essentially oligarchies. You would have your tribe leaders, you have your despots, your emperors, your monarchs, your god kings, your religious authorities, of course, let's not forget about them. And people did
not get to vote. Mainly, they were lucky if they were able to eat or drink clean water that didn't give them a bunch of really nasty parasites.
Hey, and we're heading right back there, are we.
What a time?
We also just say, speaking of what a time, Matt, I'm really glad you got out of Cotter when you did. Just putting that out there, that was a timing situation.
I hesitate to repeat myself, but I know that I spoke to several people there who basically said, yeah, it's coming, but it's not going to happen now because there's this big oil conference happening in Qatar, and there's also this huge tech conference. So all those the people that we're talking about today that play in those circles, they're not going to be immediately targets on unless, let's say, especially as somebody who's like European or American hanging out over there.
The US isn't gonna isn't gonna fire missiles like that, and then because they know that Tehran would fire back.
And as we're recording on Friday, March sixth, the airport in Doha remains closed. I don't know if you guys, yeah, checked in with any of our contacts on the ground there. But there's this crazy rush right now for people who can afford private jets to figure out whether they bunk or down, or whether they get a ride to Dubai or maybe take land routes to Oman and get a plane out of the country. I mean, this is this is a result of oligarchical reasoning. Most wars actually are
in the modern era. I mean, scholars spend so much time figuring out this historic tendency. Like we could admit, we are humble enough to admit that the human being is one of the most intelligent animals on the planet. So it's kind of odd and counterintuitive that the inherently inefficient social dynamic of oligarchy would be so incredibly common.
You know, if you think about it, and if you're a smart human, then you want to preserve your civilization, You want members of your civilization to succeed, and you want to expand the future opportunities of your overall civilization or species. I mean, logically from that, and I know this is a hot take, theoretical communism would be the best choice, right, Theoretical communism well.
And a lot of this oligarchy stuff seems, or at least the way it's sort of filtering into this country and our system, it seems to have resulted from things like Citizens United, and you know, the increased ability for
very wealthy individuals and corporations to wield political power. But there's this sense that it's good for these very wealthy people to have power because money makes more money, and it's this trickle down thing that I think has historically proven to be not true, and that these folks look out for their own and their own class, and that
there is no trickle down. It's just about consolidating all that power and wealth in these top top top tiers and leaving everybody else out in the cold because you can't have you can't amass more if you don't take it from somewhere.
A snowball effect. Yeah, the idea, Now we know it's a hot take, but the idea of theoretical communism has never really resulted in the practice of the things that people like Karl Marx wrote about. The concept would be each member of a society provides as much as they can according to their ability, and each member also receives all kinds of support commensurate with their needs.
This is not the case.
I mean, think about it. Let's think about it this way. Guys, say we have ten people in a society. We're in a tribe. There's ten of us, and every month we generate a collective one hundred dollars. All other things being equal, every member of that tribe would receive every month ten dollars, your little piece of the pie. But to your point, there noel. If of those ten people, one or two is a warlord, then that minority of the civilization one to two of the ten will accumulate the lion's share
of a tribe's production. So it's like eighty bucks for me what is left maybe doled out to the rest of you, you peasants, deal down and pray.
Well, do you think it's because this idea of communism never working out in practice the way it should in theory.
Is it just the.
Inherent corruptibility of people or the types of people that seek that those types of positions that it really just requires like a well meaning individual to ascend to that level of power, and it just doesn't typically happen.
You also have to have policies in place or rules right in place that make sense to those benevolent goals, and they have to kind of fit along with that stuff. Then everybody has to agree, and then nobody can get greedy because you get greedy. But that's the thing, You're playing a game where nobody get greedy.
It's the corruptibility factor. I think.
I think it's just really hard to get to that level and not want to take a little more for you.
You know, you.
Also have to have timeline right. You have to be able to see perceivable significant results as a member of a tribe of society, a civilization right. You have to be if someone says, hey, give me ten dollars, then the person giving the ten dollars will naturally ask where does the money go? How does it benefit me? Qui bono?
Right, I don't know, it's crazy.
Because it's so normalized. We read a lot, folks, and most history books are written in the milieu of oligarchy. Most history books are coming from a perspective that acknowledges and inherently supports this a logical, bizarre beat me here, Dylan, Carie.
And that's why, from fiction.
To film, from policy to profit, we have normalized a very sad and cartoonishly stupid state of affairs. Like to your earlier point there, every communist country on planet Earth so far has ultimately done exactly the opposite of what communism is supposed to do. They have generated a de facto in practice upper class of corrupt rulers. I still you guys, remember when we talked about Dunbar's number.
The number of people that are truly human to you?
Right?
Yeah, I know it's a controversial idea, but maybe maybe human tribes reach a diminishing return of efficiency after they get past Dunbar's number. Maybe after like what was it, two hundred and fifty people, maybe you should close the group?
Uh, can we talk a little bit just about specifically how the Russian oligarchs came into power, because there's there's two things that I think we need to be aware of before we even have our conversation about how does you know how could America get here? Just to set us up from a historical perspective, because I didn't realize
there were two major factors. The first one was that hyperinflation was occurring in the Soviet Union, like as it was about to collapse, and then immediately after the collapse, like the Russian ruble was just in crazy hyperinflation every month it was losing like twenty five percent of its value. But people who already had a bunch of money and a bunch of capital had already transferred their rubles into other you know, things like US dollars, let's say, or
something British perhaps, or just whatever. They're changing their money, their currencies from rubles as they're watching it happen into other currencies. Then they can buy things or make promises to pay for things in rubles. Let's say, sign a contract. There's a great example. Britannica gives of a contract that one oligarch signed to pay the equivalent of around three thousand dollars US for thirty five thousand cars. But he knew that hyperinflation is in effect and as continuing to go.
So that amount of money that's he that he's contractually obligated to pay is actually going to become by the at the end of the term, three hundred and sixty dollars per car, So from three thousand to three hundred and sixty, and he ends up making one hundred and sixty million dollars on that. So just the people that have the money already understand the system and know how to kind of wiggle around it to end up continuing to make money. Then this is the second part that
I did not understand. You guys, when the Soviet Union falls in nineteen ninety one, they privatize as or they begin to privatize, and they're like heading towards full privatization of all things like oil companies, nickel, deposit mining, con everything you can imagine as like natural resources, right, and even media things like that. Nineteen ninety four. Oh sorry, go ahead, no, I'm sorry.
I just you're describing something very close to home and familiar, as I please continue.
History has never been original.
Yeah, here's where it gets a little weird, guys, and we're gonna connect it back up towards the end. Here in nineteen ninety four, Russia isn't making enough money enough gross domestic product to pay off its debts and to continue to function as a country, so it needs a cash input. It goes to these folks who are already very very rich, who are who are controlling a lot of these companies, and ends up borrowing a whole bunch of money from them around one point eight billion.
Yeah, it could go.
Wrong, right.
Think about the somewhat obscure writing of famous amateur wrestler Abraham Lincoln about debts during the Civil War and paying the power behind the throne. Or think about the movement of tangible assets like gold in the lead up to the current stage of the Middle Eastern conflict.
Right, Oh, do a lot.
But the whole point of they borrow that money from these individuals, right, who are already so wealthy, and the way those individuals get paid back is through these these weird rigged auctions for control of certain things again, things like oil companies, gas companies, a.
Small number of well connected members of business class, former government, and we have to say it the intelligence community.
Oh sure, give those bids to the best you know candidate though, right, there's processes for these things.
Yeah, I'm sure there was a good faith process.
Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot.
We're on video and everybody can see how cynical and sarcas I.
Think we three hundred and sixty degrees, you know, and back around at the same time.
The thing I've forgotten there, guys, that was ninety six when the at one point eight trillion was brow The crazy thing that happened in ninety four, which is when the government issued vouchers, which is really interesting because as things are going down, things aren't looking great. All of these state controlled things are beginning to privatize. The country offers vouchers and these things. It's kind of like money, but not really money. You could take these and you
can trade them. You can sell them. You can just exchange them for other things. You could trade them for an employee's share of a company, like the shares that
they own of a company. You can take these vouchers instead, and like I said, you can trade them, so people who already had a bunch of money could individually buy up let's say a controlling share of a nickel conglomerate by just going to all of these employees and saying, well, I'll pay you more for these shares than what they're worth right now, and now I will have a controlling share of that giant thing that is going to be
massively important for the existence of the country. It's like playing the long game, I guess for people who already have the money.
The rubyl version of pennies on the dollar right, this is what we call regulatory capture. Please check out our earlier interview segment with friend of the show, legendary conflict journalist Jake Hanrahan. He has a series called sad Oligarch which examines in depth the stories the rise fall, sometimes from a third story window, of specific Russian oligarchs. We're not blowing rainbows here, folks. Jake is one of the best in the game. Sad Oligarch is a phenomenal show.
And the privatization, the massive privatization of a post Soviet economy in Russia is still one of the biggest provable conspiracies, and it's definitely the reason that here in the West, when you hear Oligarch, you think Russia but that's as we're going to see. That's not quite the entirety of the conspiracy.
I mean, we all.
Remember the United States from earlier, founded in the late seventeen hundreds to escape the trappings of things like oligarchy and things like monarchy. Our founding fathers far from perfect. They had a weird thing with wigs and stockings, for instance. Several in practice were themselves oligarchs. But they had a noble idea, or they had a beautiful idea, which was to eschew the old, historically unfair systems of government in favor of a meritocracy. All people coffeat asterisk can be
considered equal, and all people likewise are guaranteed. This is our favorite part, by the way, folks, the pursuit of happiness.
Try all you want, baby, roll you can do it.
Roll those dice. Some people have more dice. Some people get to roll twice. But uh, the US is still working on it.
It's like a dog chasing a ball. You wouldn't know what to do when you got it.
Do you remember did we do a I think it's just a video. I think we've ever talked about it on audio. Guys about the city of London conspiracy, that the United States is still controlled in some way by Britain and specifically through like Washington, d C. And some weird I forget the tethers there are, like what it actually is? We should we should revisit that.
It's a weird one. I don't know if I don't know, if I if that one has too much sand well, if I'm not mistaken, it's does the.
UK still control the United States? Wait?
Do we have an audio episode?
I wonder?
Okay, okay, I was so fascinated by that, just thinking, Okay, we've learned, guys over all these years that we're not really told the truth about things often when it comes to what happened in history, no matter you know, well, because we know there's so many lensing effects there and depending where you are and what powers want you to think and all that other stuff. I just I still wonder about the founding of the United States.
Oh yeah, you should.
Also, the massive disadvantage of most canonical history is that it's written by the winners, right, That's why we don't know as much.
As we should.
It's it's so true as in millennia, past evenings past, and as in the present evenings.
You cannot escape.
You cannot argue against the sheer fact that people descended from other people in the political class are going to have a much higher likelihood of achieving later success in politics, just like the children of famous actors are statistically going to have a higher chance of finding their own success in entertainment, competence, talent.
It's all nice.
It's widespread or wide rife, as our pal Frank likes to say. But those connections can be your edge. And I mean, can we really blame people for taking advantage of that?
And then that's not to say that some of them aren't good at it. You know, some children of actors aren't, but they also have access to all of the best schooling and not to mention all of those connections which can be so key. But the way that flies in the face of this notion of a meritocracy does kind of call into question a lot of things.
Right, Yeah, it's not the bill of goods we were sold, nor the bill of right. The bigger question on everyone's mind right now is this, with all we know about oligarchs, and with all we know about the historical tendencies of human civilization, is the United States becoming an oligarchy. Is it already an oligarchy?
Here's where it gets crazy on paper. No, everything's fine on paper.
The United States is a big deal democracy. It's to our earlier point, it's a meritocratic government by and for the people.
I know, I know.
The politicians again in theory, are public servants. They work for millions of people who are supposed to be their bosses, and they are acquiring this very important role based on their personal ability rather than their lineage or their corporate connections. But in practice, not so much the case. You know, all the way down, it's just super packs the turtles all the way down, man. I mean, we've we've said
it before on previous episodes. If you travel outside of the United States, which can be a difficult thing, it can be cartoonishly awkward to say, yes, we are a democracy and then have a very nice friend of yours from abroad say, well, how come so many of your presidents are related to each other if they're really the best people for the job.
You know, Hey, it's in the genes, man like, it's nature and nurture, but mostly nature. Did you guys, are you guys following this what's his name, James Tallerico character that got a lot of buzz in National tax News. Yeah, a lot of buzz. The whole Colbert thing on YouTube happened.
We talked about it on Strange News. His big boast tall Ico was that everything is grassroots in his campaign, and then as soon as he got a bunch of attention, there are all kinds of stories coming out of Texas Tribune, coming out of other places where there's what they call dark money aka super PACs aka where did it come from? It's just flooding into this dude's campaign and he currently I think he just won the primary there against somebody,
so now he's gonna be on the ticket. But you just see how as soon as someone's on that precipice or like or is chosen, they just just money y.
Like when the little microbreweries get bought up by bush mills, but they don't don't change the branding so that you still think you're getting a little local brew, but it's actually you're just putting your money in the pocket of this giant corporation that doesn't want to be you know, acknowledged as part of the part of the equation.
Another example would be Barnes and Nobles. The I said Barnes and Nobles. It's Barnes and Noble, the local brick and mortar bookstore outfit. Right, it's a bookstore chain here in the US. They saved themselves from corporate extinction by quietly buying up other companies or other stores that appear to be independent things.
Channel we.
Both have the same call.
So no Cumulus Media guys, they just they had to file Chapter eleven. But they're going to be fine.
Spare me, Exfinity x E, Blackwater and so on. In practice, though, we do know that the United States has a lot of very smart people who have done a lot of troubling studies and indicate that there's a growing there's a skyrocketing amount of wealth, inequality, corruption, nepotism. These have indeed eroded democratic principles. They have created a civilization that, despite all its proclamations, sure seems to function like an oligarchy rather than a democracy. Oh do we want to talk
about nerds? I got two nerds. I know you got.
Candy the rope.
Let's talk about both of those. Oh man, I love those, I love.
It like the rope crunchy sweet sour. Sorry, carry on, I'm distract.
You gotta love nerds ropes.
Okay.
So back in twenty fourteen, these two boffins, political scientists named Martin Gillens and Benjamin I. Page started looking into this question. They asked themselves theory and paperwork aside, is the United States a democracy or is it an oligarchy? How does the system function? And they did this based off Martin Gillen's earlier book, Affluence and Influence. They analyzed
almost two thousand policy outcomes over twenty years. You know, by policy outcomes, we mean what does the average Johnny blue jeans want and what did the US government do?
Right?
So, if a bunch of people say, hey, I want free lunch for all the kids in the United States, what did Congress do? How did they and the executive branch respond?
Well, they say that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Right, Yeah, which is it's a real initialism in economics, you guys.
Well that's the real thing in real life. You get, Yeah, you don't get a free lunch. Somebody wants something.
And then we also, yeah, we're idiomatically, we're a very lunch centered culture. Are we not eatcause someone else's lunch, someone else's lunch.
That's exactly what I'm say.
Bad move, Ben, I'm excited to the chart you dropped in the infographic into the research doc here is is staggering. But I would just jump back really quickly what I was saying before. How it's so easy to explain away a lot of this stuff by saying no, no, no, no, it's not that they're doing what.
The wealthy people want.
It's that those are just the right things. What the wealthy people want is what's right, and so of course they're doing it.
Hang on, let me break out, do this on camera.
Let me break out, Mike. Can guys see this this.
Isol having some tiny violin, beautiful tone?
Okay, keep going.
I'm just saying, hey, guys, can we actually get in the budget Dylan to get Ben a td tigh violin. It would be hilarious if Ben could just play that every once in a while, Like I have.
A regular sized violin.
I'm going on Etsy right now, phenomenal.
We'll get to accounting, and Noel does have a regular sized violin.
Oh yeah, that is true.
I mean interrupt Ben. I'm just I can see I can see where this is going, and I just I love the rhetoric justifying it.
It's just okay, So this, this study, especially this is of interest. So twenty fourteen was more than ten years ago, just to quick splash of cold water for everybody.
The study is titled Testing.
Theories of American Politics Elites, interest groups, and Average Citizens, and it reached these disturbing conclusions. It doesn't matter what your demographic is, what your political again tribal identifiication is, you should be.
Very bothered by what these guys found.
They looked at what we call political influence through various groups in the United States, and then they checked this against the technical definitions of democracy, oligarchy, other forms of government. And I think, what really stands out to all of us here something I cribbed from the study who holds the raids of democracy? This infographic? Can we summarize this real quickly?
Well, the title of the article kind of says at all, because it's inn order of prominence, Testing Theories of American Politics Elites number one, interest groups number two, and average citizens a distant distant third. We're talking. I mean, you
look at this thing. It's that the bar is the highest big old thick bar seventy eight percent controlled or influence belongs to the wealthiest of Americans the top ten percent, followed by business groups forty three percent, then interest groups twenty four percent, and then ey lavender periwinkle sliver for citizens.
And then this does add up to more than one hundred percent because of the Venn diagrams largely between the business groups and the wealthy top ten percent.
Time e fourteen.
By the way, all before stuff got real whacky.
Yeah, I mean okay, So to have political influence in this case means that the United States Congress responds to you by passing the laws and policies you desire. Right, So Max Powers, astronaut with a secret says that like canther b should be legal in low earth orbit. If he's an average voter, Max Powers maybe gets a nice form letter. If he is an oligarch, he throws a couple hundred mili over to the Senate and they say, yes, forget everything. We got to make werewolves legal in low earth orbit.
But that's not a bribe, and they certainly there would be no presumption of direct influence just because you donated to a political group, right, I mean that would be the argument. That would be the argument because this pay to play thing that's illegal, that's a bribe.
But well, so I know, I know, I know exactly.
Figuratively, you know, I mean, you're.
You're absolutely right. It's just it we see every day, more and more every day that the rules don't apply, right. It's what Ben was saying right there? What was it? Some people? What is the phrase been? Everybody's equal but.
Animal farm, Yes, yeah, yeah, than others, which is inherently a logical fallacy of what equality means exactly.
But we see that that's just the fact, like that's just what how things are, and we become almost accustomed to it because it's hammered home with us every time, every time we read the news, we see laws past.
It's almost like they taught us animal farm in school, not to teach us to revolt against the status quo, but just to understand.
Exactly.
And also, by the way, I don't I don't know if we're all read up on this, but George Orwell hated a lot of people that you would think agreed with him. I mean, he's like, I don't care for these namby Pambies, I want to communicate to the not the fancy white collar types. I want to communicate to the working class. I want them to read animal farm. I don't care you know what the Ivory Tower is going to say about it.
But dorblic school kids. That kind of makes sense, right.
Yeah, he wants the great school kids. Yeah.
And look these guys. In this study again from twenty fourteen a while ago, they conclude that quote economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence. And they're not being like manifesto type, you know, they're not writing
their opinions. They are looking at statistics, traceable numbers, traceable records, and documentation over the years, things that have no opinion of their own.
The good news.
For some of us, Dylan Matt Noll. If you are in the upper ten percent of US society in twenty fourteen and now, your desires will have fifteen times the impact on actual policy in comparison to the other ninety percent of the three hundred and something million people who live here.
There's something I can't square you guys. We know that maybe it's certain acumen. It's something that's taught to you because you have enough wealth. This concept of tax of asia, or being smart, being very careful with your taxes and with business creation, all that stuff where you end up not having to pay a lot of money from the money.
Live Nation paid zero tax. Live Nation zero tax.
Really you did get even a convenience fee. They love those big story.
Live Nation, the company that you know owns all these venues and is just you know, historically been very uh monopolistic in terms of the entertainment Live entertainment. They paid zero tax, and they would argue, we have that that's doing the good, that's doing it right.
They have sponsored or show, they have whatever.
Live Nation's fine. I'm just saying that's just an example of what you're describing.
Yeah. Yeah.
Also, also everybody could see by Larry David come out just a little bit because I did pay taxes.
Eye contacted the camera and the NSA guy. I did pay taxes.
We pay taxes. Everybody listens to this show pays their taxes, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, shout out to our intern Steve.
Once you get to that level, you understand how to manipulate the system, so you're not actually contributing to the shared system that is the taxes thing where there are shared services. But if you are just having to live within this system and you are making ends meet, you have to pay taxes, and you have to pay a good amount a percentage of your taxes. Like what, I
don't understand. I don't understand how we ever let it get to this point because if this thing was a little different in citizens, let's say we're in the forty three percent, even just the forty three percent versus the top ten percent of humans, we would have something like universal health care. But there's just there's no money in supporting the good things that would help people.
No, And that's what the same thing. It's seen as weakness. It's seen as weakness in a way, you know, this idea of philanthropy or like helping people less fortunate, just
just so really quickly. The way that Live Nation did manage to pay zero in US federal income tax was through the Big Beautiful Bill that allowed them to claim one hundred percent bonus appreciation which offset their taxable income in a year where they made twenty five point two billion dollars in revenue and one point thirty billion in
what they're referring to as operating income. The Big Beautiful Bill is a BBL for the United States, by which I mean a big beautiful loss for you know, for like the long term sustainability of the society, because we're telling you folks, statistically speaking, right opinions aside statistically speaking, Uncle Sam doesn't seem to care very much about what
ninety percent of Americans think. And then from this study, we see our authors define four possible systems that might exist in the United States, not in theory but in practice, and they go, is this a democracy? Is this a semi democratic system dominated by interest groups or dominated by lobbyists?
Two separate options. And they look at the fourth one is the United States and oligarchy, and that is what they found. It most closely matches what's happening to you now today, most closely matches the model of an oligarchy. And ever since twenty fourteen, virtually all credible research has indicated this pattern continues to escalate in the modern day. We're at the Gilded Age, you guys, Gilded age levels of financial desperation. And we all remember the Gilded Age, right, It was guilted.
To the twist ending you're talking about Yeah.
Mar Alogo remembers they just had a party about that.
Cool.
Also, it was a series of dumb names in American history. Gilded Age not Golden Age, right, because it's fakeal whatever, and then Great Depression, right, another terrible name or a terrible thing.
Ben, you said something and then I think we probably fixed it in the edit, so nobody ever heard it. But you said something that I think you should coin. You said democracy, like dumbocracy. I think that's chef's kiss where we're at right now.
Thank you so much, Thank you so much.
Matt still learning English.
Yeah, oh oh, just to say too that. I mean, there is this American ideal that associates wealth with intelligence, and that ain't how it is.
That sound sorry, just.
Isn't if anything where we're like we are raising up, lifting up the dumbest richest people look at social media influencer culture and like Jake Paul on his jet with like cash everywhere. Yeah, I mean, yes, you know, okay, having a little savvy and maybe luck is cool, but that does not make you some sort of mastermind or some sort of like big picture intelligent, you know, forward thinking person.
Let's take a break, you guys for a word from our sponsors, and during this break, we hope you joined us to go to Nucleus Genomics and per Nol's earlier point figure out the character sheet for the IQ of the baby you want to have.
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Now.
This study, again from over ten years ago, doesn't particularly focus on the origin story of oligarchy as a concept right as a tactic, but the authors do point out the snowball effective power, money and influence, which all of us have mentioned earlier in this episode. And we've got a quote from them, Can we can we share this quote? Who's got who's got a smart accent?
Anybody feeling from that ad that British guy, Let's have him do it?
Okay?
Yeah, Pennyworth, Yes, that dude comes out Whenever I have to make a large transaction I don't know why, and I don't do it very often, but when I do, Lord Penniworth is there.
That's Magic City.
That's where I do my highest value training. Okay, here, here we go. I'll just do it like this. It is well established that organized groups regularly lobby and fraternize with public officials, move through revolving doors between public and private employment, provide self serving information to officials, raft to legislation, and spend a great deal of money on election campaigns. James Tillery.
Fragnize, you say, yeah.
I mean, let's be clear, folks. Your vote does matter, and you should vote as often as you can, and for as long as you can.
And as many times as you can for the same Canada.
That's total. If you're dead, vote right now. Oh my gosh.
Okay, but listen, folks, if you are the average Johnny blue jeans friends and neighbors, your political desires will inevitably take a backseat to the desires of wealthy individuals and institutions because they vote with their dollar right, they vote with their influence. They pour millions into campaign coffers and shadowy private public contracts that the ordinary individual just simply cannot access well.
And sadly, Johnny, blue jeans. Blue jeans just weren't blue enough.
I got to get those dark blue jeans. No, that's another right, ones, what are they?
I'm being funny. I'm meaning jeans with a G like that.
This is why we hang out blue jeans. That's a good joke, blue.
Bloods, you know, like.
The levels to this, folks.
Uh, this is also a genuine improvable conspiracy. It is more than a bit undemocratic. It speaks directly to what another former president, Dwight Eisenhower, warned us about all those years ago.
We'll play a brief clip.
In the councils of government. We must guard against the acquisition of unwanted influence, whether it's so or unsowned by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
So we all remember Dwight, right, we all remember his his earlier statement.
Oh yeah, it's a warning about what happens when the government has all these contracts to build all these munitions, and the government is making a lot of money by selling munitions to other places, right, and then what happens when those folks are the ones who kind of need to make some more profits, and they're directly tied to the US administration. Whoever it is. Eisenhower isn't even talking about himself and his administration in that moment, and he's
referencing it, right, but he's not. He's not saying be warned now. He's saying, worry about it. Oh, I don't know. In twenty twenty six.
He's also he's also, by the way, folks, do check out the full speech if you can find it. He also is on the way out, So this is like Dave Thomas on his last day at Wendy's walking out of Wendy's and right as he opens the door, he says, hey, guys, I think Frosty's are bad, and then he leaves.
That's what happened.
Oh yeah, He's like, you guys should really change the friars. The oil in those friars has been in there for like six years. Anyway, you should probably do that.
And they say what, and he says, I'm off to Monaco.
This could sound like old beans maybe to a lot of us in the crowd tonight. If we are to assume an optimistic perspective and consider a solution. Then we have to note that multiple academics and indeed a lot of politicians have one step, one immediate step to solve the oligarchy campaign finance reform.
Remember, people were really trying to push for campaign finance reform. I remember hearing about that quite a lot. We wanted to fix things.
That all got blasted out of the water.
I'm sorry I keep harping on Citizens United, but I mean I think that's I mean, the worst, the worst of it, and just open the floodgates, right, you're correct.
Yeah, it's also it didn't pull well with the American public. Uh, the increasingly monopolized mass media didn't go out of its way to talk about this idea or to mess with the money.
As we said.
We were saying the media conglomerates had like a stake in not wanting the American people to want campaign finance reform.
We're saying they could have done a better job getting the message out.
Oh sure, it's it's weird because campaign.
Reform, the idea, like to your earlier point about superpacks, Matt, campaign reform gets trotted out every few election cycles and then it gets tucked away with these other pie in the sky ideas like ranked choice voting or open primaries. I think the public, we gotta admit we're partially to blame for this. We are notoriously individualistic in the United States, which I don't see is a bad thing because I'm
quite brainwashed. We don't really think about the big systemic issues until they affect us on an immediate and personal level. So like Johnny Blue Jeans is watching the TV or his podcast and choice, and he says, don't lecture me about abstract sanctions and tariffs and how that's gonna matter in ten years. Tell me while my guests went up fifty cents a gallon, And who I'm going to blame? Key guys, I'm going on Facebook composted. Oh how dare you Johnny blue Jeans with a g bak? You know,
I mean, it is a snoozefest. But the entire time this dog and pony show is occurring, those same powerful people and politics and business they're making money hand over fist or tentacle.
I don't know.
I feel like other oligarchs in other countries are more honest about their standing.
I suppose, I mean, I just I just have never I wasn't in you know, Russia in ninety six when that stuff went down, Like, hey, guys, it's all of us, look at us.
Where the guys the oligarks.
Hey, we're the ogs? Get it?
Yeah, I don't know, if you know, let's say there was some kind of big inauguration or something that happened for Putin. Let's say many around that time, and let's say to your two thousand or something, and then all the oligarchs were just you know, sitting there in the audience with Putin's spouse or something. You know, maybe are.
You you're you're talking about the Zuck and doctor Evil the techno or are.
We talking about are we talking about the dprk uh their habit of giving each other medals, which is honestly kind of wholesome, or are we talking about literally every government in most of history the boy at least, you know, European countries are still going to be a mix of democracies and monarchies. And the quiet part set out loud is that despite moving toward democratic society or democratic practices, there is still phenomenal intergenerational wealth inequality because of their
previous governments, the imperialism, the shadow of colonialism. The easiest way to get rich is to be born rich, right, and Middle Eastern monarchies, to their credit, are pretty upfront about this. They say, Hey, we're the royal family. We influence policy, we influence industry. Get on board or get off the train.
Got to at least respect the chance, the comparative transparency.
I want to be the wrong word, please m M. I want to make one point of just what we were talking about there with Johnny Blue Jeans and being more upset about gas prices because it makes sense, right, because the gas prices are going to immediately affect Johnny Blue Jeans.
By the way, guys, just putting that out there. Thank you, good one.
Your your ancestors are proud of you, sir. I promise you, the.
Future is proud of you.
Yes, yes, the just this point we talked about, I can't remember which episode we talked about, but the amount of fires that are being set and within all of our minds, if we're paying attention to the news right now, no matter where you live in the world, the amount of things that become the most important, the most dire thing that just continually pop up. And oh there's another one. Holy crap, there's another one. Oh my god, there's another one.
And each instance it feels as though that new one is the most important thing, and all of our attention will go to it momentarily until the point where we are absolutely exhausted with trying to figure out what the heck is going on and how we could even begin to fix some of these problems. You just kind of it's not collapse, but you you need to find a place that feels safe.
And is it is fatigue mental fatigue? Yes, yeah, guys.
That's really interesting because it makes me think, I know we're going long here, but this is worthwhile. It makes me think again of the concept of Dunbar's numbers. What if there is a hardwired Dunbar's number not just for the number of people a brain can acknowledge as people, but what if there's a Dunbar's number for the number of distinct thoughts one can hold in one's mind.
Well, yeah, absolutely, and especially the number of massive problems that need to be fixed and in which order you need to fix them.
Right.
We know this just through like puzzle games, any kind of games that we've ever played.
Everybody to check out, everybody check out only Garks.
Well, yeah, I mean here that's great.
Yeah, we heard great stuff about it.
Well, the point is there's an order of operations where wherein you have to fix things, right, You're if you're imagining fixing a tractor or something that breaks down, you have to fix things. You can't just fix one piece and now the tractor is going to work again. If the engine is broken, if the track is broken, if there's all these other things, you got to fix things in an order. And I'm imagining it's kind of the
same way here. The further we can push, we the further whoever these people are that have an interest in keeping campaign finance reform out, the further thing can push the problems away from campaign finance reform, the safer they are in their positions of power.
Right, Yeah, fully agreed.
Also, the concept of pragmatism and practicality arrives immediately. We're not saying Johnny Blue Jeans with a G is by any means a knucklehead for worrying about gas prices. We're saying that, like most people alive, the guy is to your point, Matt, thinking through immediate problems and immediate solutions. Recently,
rewatched pulp fiction by Quentin Tarantino. There's a cameo by a guy named mister Wolfe who is a cleaner, played by Harvey Kaitel, and that guy is helping them clean up a murder, right, And.
In his.
Phenomenal cameo, he doesn't lecture the dudes about climate change and the problems of fossile fuels. He figures out how to clean the car and how to get brain matter and blood out of.
The back seat.
So maybe that's what most people are doing right. I'm not gonna worry about solving my problems fifty years from now. Those are too big for me. I'm gonna worry about solving my problems today. And the oligarchs love that. The oligarchs will, to your point, steer that conversation, especially because our American oligarchs are a little bit different off Mike. I think it was you know who said it's kind of oligarchy three point oh. You know, these guys are
technic arcs. Technically like Ella Musk or Peter Teel. They've hacked the push and pool of legislation versus innovation, and they are making sweetheart policies. They're removing regulations. They're eroding democracy and each time they do it, they go a little more powerful.
They're acting as extra governmental entities. They just are pallunteer doge. They are occupying the same space that typically a an agency would occupy that if not staffed by elected officials, at the very least staff by appointed officials who are appointed by elected officials. There's some sense of representation. That's just not what's happening here, and it's they're not even trying to hide it.
Very little can happen if you don't have the ability to process transactions, or you don't have a place where you can store all of your data rights. Very little can happen without their company's specific help.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, if you want to own the house, the first thing you do is by the door to the house, right yeah, yeah, yeah, you keep the gate.
And that's that's what's occurring.
That's why people are losing their minds about the k shaped economy of wealth inequality. OXFAM recently noted I want to see January, maybe February this year, twenty twenty six, that now we have gone beyond the Gilded Age. Wealth inequality in the United States is now worse than it was in the years leading up to the Great Depression.
Again a terrible name.
Just one hundred billionaire families put two point six billion US dollars into federal elections in twenty twenty four. That means one out of every six dollars spent by every candidate, every party, every community, every super pack. Aside from all the tribalism stuff, the billionaires are running the game.
This is an oligarchy.
It's really depressing, man.
I mean.
To that first time meme, right, we see again that a lot of members of the upper class are arguing that oligarchy is inherently better for everyone than something that acknowledges the public, like democracy or communism.
And then one of the.
Ideas that we're dancing around here as we wrap up is something we all recognize, social Darwinism. Do you guys remember this concept?
Yeah, I think I was sort of hitting at it in a slightly different wording. At the top is the site of It's an economic version of the survival of the fittest, and this notion that that in some way creates a system that is the best version of things.
Nailed it, my friend.
Yeah, The idea that we are due to lineage or due to the financial success of our forebears, we are somehow better than people, and our opinions should count for more.
Our priorities should count for more.
Everybody is equal, but some are more equal than others.
Yeah, of course we have to be fair, guys.
There are some advantages to that sort of despotism.
You know.
One of the big issues that we have in the United States is that our elected officials serve for a limited number of years. Centralized dictatorship, authoritarian economies and structures do have the I hate to say this, but they do have the ability to enact large scale plans that can take decades to reach fruition because their guys aren't always panicking about whether or not they'll get re elected.
We talked about this too in terms of some of our experiences in Qatar talking to business folks. How there's a sense that doing business with those type of regimes is beneficial because you can set your watch by it. You don't have to worry about the next change that's coming, so you can you can be a little more predictive with what these deals are going to look like long term.
You're absolutely right.
Now, remember those conversations, and to be clear, everyone, thank you for tuning in, but this is not what the United States signed up for. You know, this was not the original pitch of the founding fathers. The idea is that you should be able to succeed based on your individual merit. You should have a say in the government because you employ the government, you pay them through taxes.
But this is demonstrably not the case. It's I don't know, it's worrisome because if things continue on the current conspiratorial path and you're watching this now, your children are going to have even less of a say than you do in the future.
It feels like it's we're right on the edge of it happening here. Collapse, I mean, just like with the Soviet Union, and in that collapse, a handful of people that have enough, you know, capital, step in and buy the shares of the things, if a stock market still exists after the collapse and all of that good stuff. I was reading what is It's a It was a weird website and I don't know much about it, so
you have to fact check this website. But I was getting some worry some information off of It's called Ellisberg ideas somebody named David Roche Again. No, I can't back up what this person says or whether it's correct or not, but it resonated with me because I was reading about AI investment and the fragility, the current fragility of the US economy just based on the way AI investment is happening.
I'm just gonna read a quick thing on this because it feels like something big is about to happen, and it's there are folks out there, countries China know that this is coming and it's going to happen, and it's being purposefully done. I think that's a little conspiratorial, but that's the way I'm feeling right now. I'm going to read from this. AI investment accounted for forty percent of
all fixed asset investment in the US last year. That's things like construction, you actually have something at the end of the investment. Yet it contributed only zero point five percent of GDP growth. So investment forty percent, actual GDP growth zero point five percent, and that's going to fall even more so. So that was twenty twenty five coming up.
It's twenty twenty six falling to zero point two percent. Basically, that has to do with AI can't do anything right now to make enough money, and even a percent, a tiny percentage of the money that's being put into it, it can't do it. It can't do it right now.
And now where yeah shout out to everybody's water bill by the way.
Oh yeah, but that's where a massive chunk of US investment is going and it's not making any money. And you add into that this whole our discussion about munitions and the long game that Iran has to get the US and Israel to spend as much of their existing ammunition and then Iran having a lot more ammunition and a war of attrition. It's just it's becoming a very Nobody can see the future. But if I get I
have this feeling in my chest. I don't know if you guys share that, that just something is about to happen, especially with DHS being not funded currently, with all those FBI people who watch foreign agents within the United States warnings about cyber.
Attacks c I twelve.
Yeah, well, the potential for a major attack not the same as but maybe similar to the September eleventh attacks, and who knows where it would come from or how it would happen, or even who would sponsor the people that carry it out.
And still you tell me over and over again, my friend, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction. I've got to stop listening to that song because I completely agree with what you're saying.
This is an meganith.
It's in a way, in a way, are we headed toward a mega death. That's where we leave it for now, because, yes, folks, the United States is a work in progress. It is an experiment, and it's an experiment worth conducting. It is a democracy, yet it is also functionally an oligarchy. We are profoundly sad to say. History has proven time and time and time again that this type of social structure, this type of conspiracy, often has bloody consequences in the
long term. Right, the exit plan sometimes ends up being guillotines, revolutions, third story windows. But the system can be changed, the conspiracy can be halted. We can build a better place, one closer to what those crazy founding fathers brainstormed from the jump, you know, and that, more than anything, is the stuff the oligarchs don't want you to know. Thank you so much for tuning in. Be safe, out there. We can't wait to hear your thoughts, especially if you are a billionaire.
Is that the one that gets us in trouble? What do you think?
You know?
We accept all commerce. Sure, billionaires hit us up. You can do that by reaching out to us on your social media platform of choice, where we are either conspiracy stuff or conspiracy stuff show.
Before I tell you our number. Guys. I keep thinking about this thing, and I used to think was completely laughably naive, almost wo wo that you would hear on the internet. I think we all saw it at some point around twenty twelve. I think this concept of an evolution of consciousness, like we need a we need a consciousness shift, or the terminology that's used.
For great enlightenment, perhaps this baby.
I used to kind of laugh. I'd be like, yeah, okay, whatever, you know, we we exist in this world. This is how it works, is how it functions. It feels more and more that we got the only way out of this thing is to fully reject sounds, insane money and thing does inconveniences and profits and stocks and all those things and just get rid of them.
It's interesting, Yeah, we still have. Years ago, I had put out a challenge that we couldn't afford, but we got away with it so far. Please votes, do your best to tell us how the concept of money and economy differs in any way from the concept of religion. We'd love to hear your thoughts.
This is your God. Just watch they live again the ones use call us one eight three three std wy. Just give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if we can use your name and message on the air. If you want to send us an email, we've got those.
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