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Episode 484 - Boomers and Misinformation

Topics:

Boomers, Misinformation, and Market Monopolies: A Weekly Review

The podcast opens with the hosts discussing technical difficulties experienced by Joe, the tech guy. They then delve into a conversation about generational differences, particularly focusing on Boomers and their susceptibility to misinformation. They explore why older adults are more prone to believing fake news, attributing it to memory deficits and repetition of information. The discussion shifts to climate change scepticism, where they highlight how individualistic beliefs and a lack of environmental concern contribute to such scepticism. The hosts then address the influence of Amazon's business practices on market efficiency, describing how the platform's dominance leads to higher prices and market distortions. They also talk about a recent defence deal between Australia and Papua New Guinea, examining the strategic motives behind it. The conversation rounds out with criticisms of the Trump administration's authoritarian moves, especially in the context of handling Venezuela and domestic unrest. The podcast concludes with a lighter note on Barron Trump's tech-savviness as described by Donald Trump.


00:00 Introduction and Technical Difficulties

02:11 Boomers and Generational Differences

05:17 Political Shenanigans in Australia

11:07 Climate Change Skepticism

28:15 Amazon's Market Dominance

43:59 Debating Bernie Sanders' Electability

46:12 Australia-Papua New Guinea Defense Deal

47:57 China's Influence in the Pacific

55:12 Fluoridation and Public Health

56:34 Trump's Authoritarian Moves

01:12:53 Venezuela and U.S. Foreign Policy

01:15:43 Trump's Legacy and Future

01:18:39 Podcast Wrap-Up

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We have a website. www.ironfistvelvetglove.com.au

You can email us. The address is trevor@ironfistvelvetglove.com.au



Transcript
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We need to talk about ideas, good ones and bad ones.

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We need to learn stuff about the world.

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We need an honest, intelligent, thought provoking and entertaining

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review of what the hell happened on this planet in the last seven days.

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We need to sit back and listen to the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove

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and possibly Joe, the tech guy, depending on whether Joe, the tech guy, sorts

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out tech guy problems that he's got.

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Dear listener, as we were preparing for this podcast, um, Scott and myself,

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our microphones, our headphones, uh, they were working fine and the only

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person with a problem was poor Joe.

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Where.

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We could hear him, but he couldn't hear us and he is on the screen and

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I have no idea whether he's even hearing what I'm saying right now.

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I am.

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Well, there he is, but using a different system obviously, because

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the microphone sounds, um, like you're in the bottom of a cave or something.

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Joe, the tech guy.

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Oh, it's probably 'cause I had my phone going.

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Is that better?

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No, it's not your new, it's not your usual microphone.

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It's a different microphone.

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It's the exact

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same.

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Oh, hang on.

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I'll just check my settings

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up there in regional Queensland.

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Um, a bit of a Luddite but managing to get through without any hiccups at

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all is, uh, Scott, the fill the club.

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How are you Scott?

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Good, thanks Trevor.

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Good day, Joe.

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Good day, Trevor.

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Good day listeners.

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I hope everyone's doing well.

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Hit me with a deep bassy voice you've got now.

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There.

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There you go.

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Is

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that better?

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Yes.

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That's, that's it.

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We can understand you now.

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Good.

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We can, yeah.

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Yeah.

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That was, um, that was perplexing everybody.

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So.

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Alright.

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Well I guess the system was in shock 'cause we've managed to do a podcast

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two weeks in a row, so I think that's, uh, I think that's what's happened.

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Oh.

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If you happen to make it into the chat room, say hello.

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We will try and incorporate your comments and, um, what are we

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gonna talk about, uh, initially.

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As you know, dear listener, I am fascinated by boomers, even

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though technically I am one.

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I'm quite derogatory about them, aren't I?

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Um, but just I don't think you actually were a boomer though, are you?

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Well, born in 64.

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Um,

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yeah.

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You must be

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one of the early Gen Xers.

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Technically just on the boomer side.

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Um, really on the cusp.

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Mm-hmm.

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Yes.

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Um, my brother born in 63, definitely Boomer 64.

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Touch and go, given that, um, my dad was in the second World War, came back and um,

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had me, kind of puts me in that classic boomer sort of category, doesn't it?

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You know, a child 19

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years after the war had ended.

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Well it's still a, a child of the, of the, the soldier.

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Yeah.

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Yes, that's it.

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You know, anyway, I dig, I do rabbit on about them 'cause I find that fascinating.

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'cause I do have interesting people that I know who, who, it just fascinates me

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with the ideas that they hold and I try and figure out why they hold those ideas.

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And as you know, I more often than not blame the Murdoch press.

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But, um, you know, there's reasons for why they're susceptible to the

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Murdoch press more also than others.

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So, so we're gonna talk about, uh, how people's memory works for older people

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came across an article, which we'll sort of explain a little bit about

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why boomers think the way they do.

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Of course generalizing, I know not all boomers think the same.

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There's always exceptions, but we're just talking sort of broad

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brush approach to things here.

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Then, um, what else is on the agenda?

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Um, look, it's a bit different.

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Um, Amazon, dear listener, do you buy things from Amazon?

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Um, no, I don't.

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Mm, I do, I have to admit.

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Um, and just how Amazon works and the effect it has on, on the market and how,

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you know, on the face of it, people say the market economy free enterprise drives

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efficiencies, but when you look at what Amazon does, you find the exact opposite.

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So we'll look at that.

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Um, John, regular listener dire Straits wanted us to talk

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about the p and g defense deal.

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So we'll slip that in at this point, at that point.

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And then we'll get on to talking about, uh, uh, the shenanigans in

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the US of a, for a bit of humor.

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Uh, what is that regime up to?

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Um, we've got Hegseth saying that they're just not gonna be bound by the rules of

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the Geneva Convention or any of the normal rules of war that civilized people like to

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think they abide by God, have they ever?

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And yes, but you know, they've, at least they've pretended at least

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they've given lip service to it.

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And, uh, and then there's a few clips of Donald Trump doing and saying stupid

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things, um, as a bit of light relief.

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Mm. Um, so that's where we're heading.

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Mm. So, mm. Um, Scott, before we go into that, just locally in Australia,

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you were banging on about, um, Barnaby Joyce and Matt Canavan.

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Is Matt Canavan also thinking, I know Barnaby Joyce is,

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is Barnaby Joyce actually

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said it in public.

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And is he, he said he's going to

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Hansen.

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Is that the one?

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Well, he said that he might actually go to Hansen at the next election because

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he is not recon contesting his seat.

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Right.

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So that means that he would have to.

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Presumably contest a seat for her in the, uh, Senate, which had been down

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in New South Wales, I would've thought.

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Mm-hmm.

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Um, if he comes up here, that'll piss off Matt Canavan because Matt Canavan's

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also making the same sort of noise.

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Now he's already a, currently a National Party Senator.

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Mm-hmm.

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So in a, if I just think the mathematics of it don't work because the Greens

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are consistently polling a hell of a lot better than what One Nation is.

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One nation.

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You know, according to something I read at the time, Pauline Hansen had to call

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and get some new underwear for her for the night of the last election because

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she was shitting herself over the, over the results as they were coming in.

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It looked like she wasn't going to win, but she managed to scrape over.

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So I just don't think there's room, you know, unless Ken and Ann could

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guarantee that he could bring over enough National Party voters to vote for one

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Nation, which I don't think he can.

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Even if he, even if he guts the, even if he guts the, um.

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National Party vote in half, that's still not going to get him

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across the line for One Nation.

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Yeah.

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If half the National Party vote went across, he still would not get.

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Wow.

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He will, because it's just, you'd have to, you'd have to elect,

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you'd have to elect two senators.

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Mm. Which is two quotas.

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Mm-hmm.

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And they do not have a chance of getting two quotas, so, oh, wouldn't it

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be sad to see Mad Canavan depart from

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politic politics?

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Oh God, it would be absolutely hilarious.

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Yes.

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And Barnaby Joyce.

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Oh, Barnaby Joyce.

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That'd be nice if he lost two.

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You know, it's just, um,

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I, I thought one notion got as many votes as, um, the greens in the last election.

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Primary votes,

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I don't think so.

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Uh, still could be the case, but in order to get the second place, if

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what Scott's saying could make sense that the national vote was so low,

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that, uh, getting half of it wouldn't be enough to get an extra number.

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Makes sense.

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That's just one of, I

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dunno, when Canavan was elected and all that sort of stuff.

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Whether he is due, whether his, uh, Senate term ends at the next

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election or whether he can keep going on for, for the rest of the five.

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Um, it's a four.

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It's a four.

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Uh, no, it's an eight year term.

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It's a six year term, isn't it?

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In the Senate?

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Mm-hmm.

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Yeah.

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So it depends what he wants to do.

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If he wants to, if he wants to really piss off his National Party colleagues,

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he could actually announce that he's sitting in with One Nation now.

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So then they'd have three of them in the Senate and then Barnaby Joyce

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could actually attempt to win another Senate seat in New South Wales.

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Anyway.

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It's just

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one of those things.

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I think they're all, honestly believe they're smoking wacky tobacco if

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they honestly believe they can do it.

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I, I saw an editorial from R Dean saying that the, the, um, liberals need to

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dump the, uh, target zero or whatever it is, the zero emissions policy.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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Net zero because Yeah, net zero because, um, you know, he told them

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before the last election that if they didn't dump it, they'd get drowned.

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And obviously they need to do dump it now because otherwise, um,

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they're not gonna win any seeds.

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I'm impressed.

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Joe, you are reading Rowand Dean, where are you doing that?

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What's, what's going on?

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Uh,

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so I get

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Apple

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News.

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Okay.

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And I just get a, you can say, show me more of this, show me this of that.

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But I deliberately don't, I want to see an unfiltered view and

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generally from the headline, I can pick what source it's from.

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You know, it's, this man was a bastard to me.

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Oh, well that's Mama Mia, or, uh, oh my God.

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Uh, woke people.

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It's the Daily Mail.

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Mm.

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Um, yes.

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And so I saw this thing that was an editorial about Net Zero, and I went,

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okay, let's have a look at this.

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I went, Hmm, well hopefully they'll do that and that'll

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make 'em even less palatable.

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That could be another spectator.

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They, honestly, the, the sky after dark lunatics have completely lost the plot.

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You know, it's.

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If the liberal party wants to actually be elected next time, now they've gotta

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look at at least two elections on the opposition benches before they can

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have a, any hope of getting anywhere.

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That's a good one.

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In the chat room from old noisy human who says maybe Net zero was the number

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of votes that were trending too.

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Yeah,

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exactly.

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Which is always a possibility.

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You know, I, I just, if they want, if they want to, if they want to ever

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again occupy the treasury benches.

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They're going to have to try and target back those blue li blue ribbon liberal

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seats that were lost to the Teals.

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Now it is utterly ridiculous that Kate Cheney is not

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standing for the liberal party.

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She's an independent teal.

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It's uh, God knows why.

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And you've got also the other women that have won those seats.

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And if you actually looked at them, they're what John Howard used to

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refer to as the doctor's wives.

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And they're not the doctor's wives.

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These are the doctors.

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You know, they've actually said a hell of a lot of stuff.

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That makes a hell of a lot of sense.

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Now, admittedly, I don't really agree with them on their income tax policy,

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but that's something that you could work around, you know, it's just, alright.

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Yeah.

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Well, well that's local politics in Australia for the moment.

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Um, okay, let's, uh, scoot cross to the topic that, um, I mentioned

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earlier and, well, you, we've just talked about, uh, climate change

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and climate change skeptics.

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So there was an article in they, not skeptics, they're deniers.

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Yes.

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Or, and might call themselves skeptics.

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But, uh, so, uh, in the conversation, uh, there's an article saying that,

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uh, climate skeptics are unmoved by the near universal agreement amongst

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scientists on the reality and impact of climate change and past research,

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uh, found people are more likely to express skepticism if they are older.

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Male, highly value individualistic beliefs.

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Um, I'm thinking libertarians there and don't value the environment.

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That's, um, a sort of a, a cross section and a, well, a likely

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dis of, uh, a climate skeptic.

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Some people come to mind for me on that one, Alan Stale.

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So, um, what they said here is our latest study of Australian skeptics focused

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on potentially more malleable factors, including the thought processes of people

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who reject climate science messaging.

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And, um, yeah, what they found was those who favored explanation of chance,

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believing that luck determines outcomes, also more likely to believe there's

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no need to act on climate change.

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And yeah, those with strong individualist worldviews, um, more skeptical.

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So, um, that led me to another article somewhere about, um,

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old people.

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Um, I've titled, um, about misinformation and this was an

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academic article that I was looking at.

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Links were in the show notes.

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And, um, what they found was that during the 2016 US election.

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Older adults Twitter feeds contain the most fake news over 2% compared

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to less than 1% of young adults.

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Exposures and users over 50 were also over overrepresented.

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Among super sharers, a group responsible for 80% of fake news shares.

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So in the US 2016, older folk more likely to have fake news in their

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newsfeed compared to younger people.

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And um, what they said was, um, the most obvious scapegoat for older

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adults, vulnerability to fake news, um, involves cognitive deficits, thinking

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that people are, you know, lose their cognitive abilities as they get older.

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And, um, they said people of all ages rely on mental shortcuts.

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To judge whether incoming information is true or false.

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One such rule of thumb involves repetition, repeating statements

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like the thigh bone is the longest bone in the human body makes them

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feel easier to process or fluent in this thus truer the new ones.

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So for people, if you hear something repeated a lot, it's

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easy to process that as being true.

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And that's what people do of all ages.

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And this occurs unfortunately with fake news.

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If you hear fake news repeated a lot, then you are likely to process it as true.

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Herbals found that out.

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Did he?

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Yes.

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So, um, several studies investigated whether susceptibility to this illusion

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will increase with age and young and older adults were evaluated Pieces of trivia.

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And across experiments, repetition, inflated perceptions of truth to the

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same extent in young and old adults.

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So basically young or old susceptible to this, this, um, thing that we humans

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suffer from in that if we're exposed repetition, we tend to think of it as

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being true 'cause it's easily processed.

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Now what they looked at was cases where third party fact checkers, like Snoop's

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or PolitiFact flag false content.

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So, um, uh, users, um, or what they did was they showed these people

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information and um, they had it tagged as either false or true, and

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then they repeated it to people.

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And what they basically found was that.

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If a piece of information was flagged as false and shown repetitively

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to young people, they would think, ah, that's false information.

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Don't believe it.

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Whereas if they tagged information as false and showed it repetitively to old

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people, old people, uh, when exposed to that information later without the

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tag couldn't process that, it was, were less likely to see it as false.

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And the reason is that as you get older, you forget the source of

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the information that you have.

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So people remember information as they get older, but they forget the source of it.

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And, um, so anyway, this academic article was saying that, um, um,

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even though information could come from untrustworthy sources.

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And even with a big flag on it, saying this is false.

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As you get older, provided it's just repeated to you, then you are more

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likely to accept it as true than younger people because of, uh, with

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age, you, you lose track of the source.

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I found that very interesting ring true for anybody out there.

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Well, I do know one, I do know.

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No, I do know of one skeptic and everything like that, that I actually

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talk to at park run every week.

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And he just, he won't, he will not believe that it's human induced.

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Yeah.

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He said, he said it's, he said it's, it's gotta be part of a natural, it's

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a natural cause and that sort of stuff.

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And I said, yeah, okay.

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People, people will dismiss facts that don't agree with

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what they already believe.

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Mm-hmm.

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And the only way people have to want.

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To discover the truth before they'll change their mind.

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Mm-hmm.

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Um, and quite often it's part of a social set, uh, and social death

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is worse than physical death.

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Uh, and so if it means them being excluded from their group.

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Then they will cling to that belief no matter what.

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Mm. And it is entrenched, and really the only way you can challenge that

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is to ask people to explain why they believe what they believe.

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And in the process of them explaining it to you, quite often

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it's, it's an unchallenged belief.

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They've heard this from wherever.

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And if you go, you know, what, what, what's convinced you, you know, how would

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you know whether this is factual or not?

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Mm-hmm.

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You, you get challenging the process not, not challenging

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in a, in a, an aggressive way.

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Mm-hmm.

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Just, you know, how do you know this?

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I, I'm interested.

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I, I've, I've come to a different conclusion, but I'd like to

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know why you believe that.

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Well, what they'll often do, Joe, is they'll refer you to a three and

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a half hour YouTube video by some, that pure Austrian guy and say,

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that guy there has all the answers.

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A a and the the correct answer to that is, so if you discovered that they were wrong.

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Yes.

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Would you change your mind?

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Yes.

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I wanna say, well, he is, you know, he's not wrong.

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He's right.

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And there are people just like him.

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If, if later on somebody discovered that the, that what

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he was saying was wrong Yes.

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Uh, would that change your mind?

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Yes.

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Because that, that,

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yes.

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Because people will always throw out these, oh, well, this,

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and you're going, but hang on.

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Mm-hmm.

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I, if that was wrong, you know what other things

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would.

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Yeah.

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Yes.

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Anyway, it's all part of trying to understand what's going on in our society.

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Mm-hmm.

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And, um, and, and also.

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Um, there are comp uh, companies, there are countries who love to sow

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division in democratic societies.

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Mm-hmm.

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Um, for, because they believe that they're at war with us, at

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least, uh, in a cold war situation.

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Mm-hmm.

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And, um, they love to spread shit on the internet.

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Mm-hmm.

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And stoke this misinformation and amplify it.

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I thought you were talking about multinational companies initially,

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but now you're talking about, uh, tyrannical authoritarian regimes.

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Is that what you're talking about?

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Well, that,

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that's, that's part of it, but also also I'm speaking

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tobacco companies as you were saying that initially.

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Well, yeah.

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Uh, as well.

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So I mean, the question is, do you believe that there's a conspiracy between

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all these scientists worldwide Yes.

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Who are funded by some magical cabal as opposed to the oil companies

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who make a huge amount of money digging up the shit outta the ground

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and selling it for us to burn?

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Yes.

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Yet, yeah.

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Which one is more likely to be funding the conspiracy?

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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Yes.

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The same with tobacco.

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Mm-hmm.

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Do you get into these arguments with people, Joe, any online,

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or do you just give in?

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Um, less these days when COVID, when the COVID deniers were out there,

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particularly in my chronic illness forum.

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Mm.

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Um, I challenged them, not because I ever thought I was

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gonna change their mind mm-hmm.

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But when they're spouting misinformation in a public forum Mm. I think it's

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important that it doesn't go unchallenged.

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Yes.

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'cause you didn't want people on that forum to start, um, yeah.

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Falling into that.

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Um,

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absolutely.

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In that

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rabbit hole.

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Yeah.

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And, and I think I did successfully go, well, hang on a second.

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Where did you get this information from?

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Because the manufacturer's own website doesn't say what this

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person has claimed it said.

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Mm-hmm.

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And look, I, I don't blame you for, for falling for this, but

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it's obviously misinformation.

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And had you checked it, you would've realize that.

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Mm-hmm.

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And possibly don't spread these things without actually going

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to the manufacturer's website and seeing what you say is true.

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Is true.

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Mm-hmm.

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And I think that's a valid approach is that, look, you've been taken in by some

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horrible person who's trying to con you.

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And maybe you should check this before spreading it.

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I'm not blaming them, but saying, look, you got suckered in and, and

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here's how to check in the future so you don't get caught again.

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Mm-hmm.

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Um, because public shaming just doesn't work.

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People double down if you shame them publicly.

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So was that in private messaging or was that on the open forum?

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Uh, that was in the open forum.

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I said, hang on a second.

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Look, the manufacturer's website doesn't say what you're saying.

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It says, uh, look, I think you've got conned.

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I don't think you are doing this maliciously.

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Um, but yeah, I quite often, certainly in a public forum, you can't if,

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'cause I said, where did you hear this?

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And they said, oh, it was so and so told me.

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And I said, well, they're, they're telling you lies.

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Um, whereas if they just flat out said, oh no, no, no, this is absolutely true.

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There's no point arguing yes.

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Mm. Whereas if they pass on what they think is factual and they think they're

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helping, then yes, you can challenge them.

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Mm-hmm.

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Yeah.

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I've been seeing a lot of stuff lately, um, with, when it comes to climate

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change with, with people banging on about how much room windmills take

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mm-hmm.

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And, and how terrible they are for farmers and, and solar panels

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and, and the space it takes up.

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And I'm just like, it doesn't, are they really, where are they, are, are genuine

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farmers really concerned about this?

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Because a lot of solar farms actually provide shade.

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Um, yeah.

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You can

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grow coffee under a solar farm.

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Yes.

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Because it provides the shade that they need.

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Yes.

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And, and like who c do these people really care about windmills?

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You know, 20 K shore in the middle of ocean.

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Well,

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it's like that, it kills birds.

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Yeah.

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And you go, okay.

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What about the pollution from a coal fired power station?

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Are you worried about the, the pollution killing the birds?

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Yeah, just,

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I just see so much of that shit.

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I just go, that is the worst argument.

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Mm. And, but they rabbit on about it.

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So Scott,

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I, I don't understand why they're still banging on about that, because

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a wind turbine, even if you stick them in the middle of a field and all that

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sort of stuff, the rent that they're going to generate from the company

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Yep.

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Mm-hmm.

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For having those wind turbines on their property will more than compensate you

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for the loss of the crop that you can plant, which is, you know, the foot, the

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footprint of these things is bugger all.

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Hmm.

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And it's even less if you put it offshore, but for some reason, apparently

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Donald Trump has decided that they hurt the whales or something like that.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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I dunno if it was Donald Trump, certainly the, the ones in

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Victoria, they were suddenly worried about the whale migration.

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Yeah.

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I was reading.

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That's why, because it was only when did we stop wailing in this

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country and 50 odd years ago.

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Yeah.

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You

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know, it's just the whale population has, has recovered and they're more

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than an, they're more than smart enough to swim around something.

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Indeed.

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You know?

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Yeah.

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It's, it's just a terribly poor argument, but, uh oh, it

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is, it's pathetic.

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I was reading, uh, something, uh, just the other day about, um, a lot

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of these mine sites, which are in.

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Uh, remote areas mm-hmm.

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And so difficult to access, um, grid power and are relying on,

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um, diesel generators and whatnot.

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And some of 'em have a substantial amount of their power

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generation from renewables now.

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Yeah.

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Like

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yeah.

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Like wind and solar, um, providing, you know, 70, 80% of, uh, one

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of Gina Reinhardt's mines.

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Yeah, I know.

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Yeah.

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So, um, that was

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absolutely hilarious when I read that.

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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So, uh,

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even though she's opposed to renewable energy for the rest of us, but in her

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mind sites, it makes perfect sense.

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Yeah.

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And again, we have a huge amount of desert.

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Yeah.

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Yes.

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And, and whilst natural beauty and all the rest of it, I'm sure we could give over

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a small proportion to make us completely.

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Um, no longer dependent on fossil fuel.

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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And it would have a much better outcome for the

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environment.

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And even if you don't like that, at least be on board with offshore wind.

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Yeah.

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I just,

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yeah, anyway.

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Makes

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no sense.

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It's, you know, it's, and Donald Trump goes over to Scotland, he says, oh,

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you know, I hate those, I hate those windmills offshore and that sort of stuff.

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I'm thinking, well, it's your, it's not your country buddy.

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You know, you should stay out of it.

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They do actually have a big problem in Scotland with the offshore

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wind, well, not the offshore, um, up in some of the outer islands.

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They generate so much power that the grid between the islands

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and the mainland cannot cope.

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Ah, instead of having to dump electricity.

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'cause they're generating so much.

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Wow.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Mm mm Right.

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That is ridiculous, isn't it?

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It it's just one of those things, again, it's, they've gotta, they've,

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they've gotta actually find it.

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Sorry Joe.

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They, they've just gotta find a better way of moving the electricity

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from the wind and that sort of stuff where they generate it.

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So it can be used by people that can, that can use it

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well, it's the perverse incentives and it's the same over here about the, the

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most expensive generator on the grid sets the price for everybody else.

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Um,

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there's something, I can't, I, I'm not a exactly sure what it

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is, but, uh, basically it's a perverse incentive that doesn't

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make, um, renewables cost effective

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because not sure that,

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um, yeah.

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There, there's some weird thing.

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I did read all about it.

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I forget what it was.

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Well, speaking of market distortion, let's move on to Amazon.

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So, um, this was an interesting article from The Guardian and, um, basically

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his, uh, his article, he's talking about lots of sort of aspects of the internet.

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And invariably what you find is that, uh, in step one platforms

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are good to their users.

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In step two, they then, uh, abuse their users to make things better

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for their business customers.

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And step three, they abuse the business customers to call back

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all the value for themselves and become a giant pile of shit.

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So that, uh, three stage process is basically what happened with Amazon.

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So in stage one, the company raised a fortune from early investors,

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uh, and then a larger fortune by listing on the stock market.

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It used that fortune to subsidize many goods, selling them below cost,

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and it also subsidized shipping and offered a no questions asked.

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Hostage paid.

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Paid returns policy.

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So far so good.

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Everyone.

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That sounds great.

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Cheap goods.

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Cheap freight.

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Return policy.

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Magnificent.

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So what happens is, of course, people sign up, they hook them in with

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things like Amazon Prime, get people committed to using the service, and in

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the meantime the competitors drop off because they don't have the deep pockets.

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And they need to charge a proper margin, but they disappear.

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So in step one, users get locked in.

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So, uh, the next stage is to lock in the business customers, the people

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making stuff that gets put onto Amazon.

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So, um, initially Amazon was great for business customers.

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It paid full price for the goods, then sold them below cost cost to customers.

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Uh, it subsidized returns and freight ran a clean search engine, which would

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put the best matches for shoppers queries at the top of the page.

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Um, creating a path to glory merchants could walk merely by

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selling quality goods at fair prices.

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Then once the merchants were locked in, Amazon put the screws on them.

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So the merchants became dependent on those customers.

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Um, which allowed Amazon to extract higher discounts from those merchants

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to bring in more users, which makes the platform even more indispensable

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for merchants allowing the company to require even deeper discounts and

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around and around the flywheel spins.

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So Amazon extracts discounts from merchants to be on their service, and

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the merchants have become conditioned and um, and reliant on the Amazon service.

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The other customers have disappeared 'cause Amazon has

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driven them outta the market.

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So there used to be antitrust law, which treated large companies as

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threats simply because they were large.

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Once a company is too big to fail, it becomes too big to

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jail and then too big to care.

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So.

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Antitrust law used to say, too big to fail.

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We need to split you up.

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Um, and um, unfortunately, a sort of a rival, uh, idea came into play.

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So, um, the rival idea was that the only time a government should intervene

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against a monopolist is when it is sure that the monopolist is using its

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scale to raise prices or lower quality.

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So it's like a consumer welfare standard theory.

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Oh, you know, a monopoly's, okay, if it's clear that prices

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are not, um, uh, being raised.

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Um, so, um.

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So this is the consumer welfare standard theory and its premise is that when we

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find monopolies in the wild, they're almost certainly large and powerful

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thanks to the quality of their offerings.

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Anytime you find that people all buy the same goods from the same store,

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you should assume that this is the very best store selling the very best goods.

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It would be perverse for the government to harass companies for being so

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excellent that everyone loves them.

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And it's that theory that Jimmy Carter used to start removing some of the

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antitrust system, and Ronald Reagan came along and got rid of the rest.

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So, um, so stage three, Amazon uses its overview of merchant sales as

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well as its ability to observe the return addresses on direct shipments

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from merchants' contracting factor.

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To cream off its merchants best selling items and clone them.

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Relegating the original seller to page ty million of its search results.

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Dear listener, if you found a great widget and you went to China and you and

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you bought a million of them and either stuck them in your own warehouse or put

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them in the Amazon warehouse, Amazon would look at that and say, Hmm, that

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widget's selling well, we'll go and just get our own widget and we'll copy it

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and we'll sell it as our Amazon widget.

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And that poor seller will just get rele relegated to the back of the the website.

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So it's really risky to put stuff like that on Amazon 'cause they

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watch carefully who's going well.

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And simply steal their market.

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It's like having your, your competitor being able to go through your books.

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Mm-hmm.

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Um, terrible thing.

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So Amazon also crushes its merchants under a mountain of junk fees pitched

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as optional, but effectively mandatory.

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Take Prime, a merchant has to give up a huge share of each

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sale to be included in Prime.

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Um, if you don't use Prime, you'll get pushed back down in the search results.

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So you, you may as well not exist, nobody will see you.

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So same as Fulfillment by Amazon, a service in which a merchant sends its

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items to an Amazon warehouse to be packed and delivered with Amazon's own inventory.

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So this is a far more expensive than, uh, shipping it yourself in

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a merchant that ships, uh, through those rivals rather than through a.

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Amazon, well, you get rele relegated.

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You get demoted in the search rankings.

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So Amazon makes so much money charging merchants to deliver their wares, um, that

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their shipping costs are fully subsidized.

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Um, so when you in Amazon and you're searching for a widget, the best

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matches are not the best products as in best quality at the best price.

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What crops up first is the merchant that's paid the most fees.

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That's why Amazon makes the most profit on.

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Yes,

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that's who gets to the top of the search list.

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And, um, and so a merchant that pays Amazon through the nose needs

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to make up the money somewhere.

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Um, Amazon's fee isn't 10%.

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Add all the junk fees together and an Amazon seller is being screwed out a 45 to

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51 cents on every dollar it earns there.

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So merchants must jack up prices, which they do a lot.

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'cause otherwise they'd just be selling at a loss.

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So, so in order to succeed on Amazon, you have to ultimately jack your

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prices up a lot because of the fees that Amazon will extract from you.

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And there's a no compete clause that says you can't sell cheaper anywhere else.

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Correct.

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So if Amazon discovers that you are selling your product

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somewhere else cheaper, um, you're in big trouble with Amazon.

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So that means that the prices everywhere are higher.

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So this dear listener gets to the crux of the issue.

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This whole sort of the capitalist system, supply and demand.

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Mm-hmm.

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Free enterprise efficiency of the market has completely broken down.

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In the case of Amazon, because of its market power, it has actually

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forced prices up, not only on its platform, but everywhere with the

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profits going to Amazon in the most, in, in the, in the main.

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So, uh, I, I found that last part to be the most incredible part of

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that, just recognizing the flow on effect to the rest of the market.

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Mm-hmm.

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Because of these, um, um, these rules that these companies have, that that's

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why they offer a Bunnings in that offer.

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Find it any cheaper anywhere else, and we'll beat it by 10% because they've told

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all their suppliers, you better not give a discount to anybody that we don't know

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about and that we don't get the something.

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Well, I did see there was a, an article about how.

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You have to find the exact same product and a lot of the products

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on the shelves, even though they don't say they're Bunning zone.

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A Bunning zone.

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Right.

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Ah, okay.

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So you cannot find that product anywhere else for cheaper.

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Ah, okay.

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Even a particular brand will have a special battery pack

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option combo type thing or Yeah,

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possibly.

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But you know, I dunno.

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A ladder.

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Yes.

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Uh, and it's a ladder sold by the ladder company.

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Yes.

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It's actually owned by Bunnings and there is no other ladder sold anywhere else.

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And so you go and try and find a cheaper one on at a different

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store and you can't Yes.

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Yes.

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If you were to say to the average Joe, not a tech Joe, but an average Joe,

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this means we have to just split up, um, companies like Amazon or we have to.

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Um, systematically do things like, say this, this rule where suppliers must

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give you the best price and can't offer a best price somewhere else is illegal.

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Things like that are the sorts of laws that we have to do to try and,

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well, I think make this also, if you sell it as your own product, you

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have to label it as your own product.

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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Yep.

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Uh, Amazon makes $50 billion every year charging merchants for search placement.

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Mm-hmm.

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Um, on average, the first result on an Amazon search is 29% more expensive

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than the best match for your search.

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Ouch.

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Um, that was Corey Dro who wrote that article.

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Mm-hmm.

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Uh, who coined the term in ification to Yeah.

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Describe this.

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Yes.

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But Facebook is the same.

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It started off with being a great place to keep in touch with your friends.

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Yes.

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If you've looked at your feed recently, tell me what percentage

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of your feed that you're scrolling through is actually things that you've

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selected and what percentage is just shit that they're sticking in there.

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Mm-hmm.

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Yep.

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Uh, yeah.

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But you, you can't leave.

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Yeah.

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Because

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all your friends are on there and, and if you leave, then you can't

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keep in touch with your friends.

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Yes.

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It's one of those things I just, I haven't looked at Facebook in a long time.

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Mm. I just use it just to, well, it's the way you guys keep in contact

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with me and I use that for keeping contact with my mates down there.

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Um, but the European Union are trying to make the cost of moving

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between platforms a lot lower.

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Basically there is a, a, uh, European law that has been discussed that if

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you wanna up and move from any social media platform, they must interwork

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with any other social media platform.

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Mm.

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You must be able to move your friends lists and all your contacts

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and, and all your messages, uh, with zero impact to you.

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Mm.

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So you don't get the lock in.

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Yeah.

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So, uh, this writer says To fix Amazon, we need policy solutions.

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We need to ban predatory pricing, selling goods below cost to keep

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competitors out of the market and then jacking them up again.

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We need to impose structural separation on the company so it can either be a

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platform or compete with the sellers that rely on it as a platform.

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Um, we need to curb its junk fees, which suck.

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45 to 51 cents on every dollar merchants take in.

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Boy, that's a lot.

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Mm-hmm.

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We need to end its most favored nation deal, which forces merchants who raise

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their prices on Amazon to pay these fees, to raise their prices everywhere else too.

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And we need to unionize its drivers and warehouse workers and we

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need to treat its rigged search results as the fraud that they are.

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Yep.

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But, uh, you know, when I see guys like Bezos sitting down to dinner with, um,

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Donald Trump in the White House Yep.

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Something tells me that's not gonna happen.

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Gonna happen.

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Yeah.

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Um, yeah.

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Yeah.

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So the path to a better Amazon doesn't lie through consumer activisms

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or appeals to its conscience.

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Uh, systemic problems have systemic solutions, not individual ones.

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You can't shop your way out of a monopoly, meaning don't feel too

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bad for continuing to buy Amazon.

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Um.

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We've really reached the point where consumer activism

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isn't gonna do the trick.

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It requires a systematic approach by governments.

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Um, unlikely to happen, but we'll see.

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Well, I think we were very close in 2016.

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Mm-hmm.

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What happened then?

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Um, the Democratic non, uh, whatever it is, convention picked

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Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that Bernie was in the lead.

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Right.

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Had Bernie been, uh, a candidate for president, I think he would've got in.

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And he was all over this issue.

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Sorry.

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He was all, all over this issue of Amazon.

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Was it?

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Um, he, he's the most socialist of the old guard.

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Mm-hmm.

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I mean, by, by the rest of the world.

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He's not at all socialist.

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He's, he's fairly centrist.

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Mm-hmm.

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Um, but he was willing to look at

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this sort of, um, yeah.

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He, he was very much for the little person, not for the

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oligarchs.

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I'm not convinced that Bernie Sanders would've won because the Americans

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are not prepared to accept anyone that calls themselves a democratic socialist.

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Now by socialist, what he wants to do is do what we do here in

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Australia and have a. Valid healthcare system that is open to everyone.

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Mm. You know, and he also wants the, he wants the churches outta

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schools and everything else.

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So he, he's quite reasonable in what he's asking for, but I just don't

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believe that anyone that calls themselves a democratic socialist has got any

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chance of winning in the United States.

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I, I think a lot of people were pissed off with the status

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quo and they wanted change.

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Yeah.

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Which is

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why Donald Trump won would change.

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Yeah.

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And when they couldn't vote for Bernie, a lot of them voted Trump.

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Yeah.

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Which makes absolutely no sense to me.

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And I think had Bernie been the one who was standing on the

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other side, uh, there's a very good chance he would've won.

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Yeah.

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Well, we'll never know.

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No, but it's, um, it's not a bad theory.

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Mm-hmm.

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It's just that the, um.

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The Democrats were never gonna accept him.

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'cause he wasn't actually a party member or anything else.

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It's just a, a, it's a hell of a mess for him.

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Mm-hmm.

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And

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so he was, he was running as an outsider, just trying to pinch the Democrats.

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Um, he was just trying to run as a democrat, although he was

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actually a, um, independent senator,

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interestingly, just on foreign affairs, um, and Israel and Gaza.

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Mm-hmm.

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He's been terrible on that.

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Like he's, he's very pro-Israel.

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Well, he is.

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He's Jewish.

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Yes.

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But then there's lots of Jews who are against Israel.

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Yeah.

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Against Sinism.

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It's

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just, I don't understand why he is done, what he's done.

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Mm. Anyway, I just think to myself, he's probably, he's probably more of

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a Jew than he's prepared to admit.

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Well, yeah, but I think out of a bad punch, he's probably the best.

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Hmm.

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Absolutely.

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He probably is the best of the whole lot.

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We'll, we'll get back to the, um, United States, the Disunited States of America.

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Yes.

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And its evil Ray authoritarian regime, um, in a moment.

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But before we do, uh, John, um, dire straits, John messaged wanting

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to talk about the Papua New Guinea Australia defense deal, guys.

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So, um, basically Australia's deal with Papua New Guinea.

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We're gonna train their soldiers in our defense force.

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Um, I think something like, um, let me see here.

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Uh, allow as many as 10,000 Papua new Guineans to serve in Australia's

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military and give them the option to become Australian citizens.

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Um.

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Things like that.

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I dunno why John wanted us to talk about it that much as if it's a big deal.

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I think, um, it's sort of small change what Australia was throwing

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at Papua New Guinea in many ways.

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I, except for the football deal, the citizenships,

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no, the football, the football deal is probably bigger than this is.

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It's just, um, I didn't think it was a big deal, John, because I just

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think all they've done is ratified.

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What Australia would do anyway, if they were, if they were actually attacked by a

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hostile nation and all that sort of stuff, I think Australia would go to their aid.

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Mm-hmm.

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You know, I just don't think that.

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There was anything big about it.

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This is probably being done to placate Donald Trump and all that sort of stuff.

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Albanese wants to go to him and say, look, we're not spending Mar, we're not

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gonna increase our expenditure to 3.5% of GDP, but this is what we have done.

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We've gone through here, we have taken, we've taken back control of

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the Pacific Islands from the Chinese.

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We're doing everything you want us to do.

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But that's a genuine fear in the spooks, in Australia's defense industry,

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that

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China is striking up all of these relationships with

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these Pacific Islanders.

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Yeah.

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And, and they're gonna end

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up drowning in

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and irrespective of Trump, they're just going, oh, we can't have the Chinese, um,

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building ports and having police and other people assisting in these, um, countries.

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So, you know, the whole belt and road thing with China, um, at

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least one of the plus sides is.

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Countries like Australia are forced to get into a bit of a bidding war and to

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do things for these countries that maybe we wouldn't have had to do otherwise.

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Yeah.

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I just, I, the thing that worries me about Belt and Road is that we haven't

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seen any of these debts fall due yet.

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So, so there's not one single instance of of coercive measures China.

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Yeah.

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Haven't there hasn't.

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China actually

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happened yet,

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but, well, and there has been plenty of examples of loans

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forgiven and other stuff.

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Okay.

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Well, fair enough.

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It's just one of those things,

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at the end of the day, the risk is with China, like if you've built some piece of

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infrastructure, a railroad, a port, yeah.

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You can't take it away on the other side of the planet.

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Whatcha gonna do, you can't take it

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away.

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Yeah,

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yeah, yeah.

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Like the risk is there.

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Um, it's like the Port of Darwin.

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How stupid are we to be worried about what the Chinese are gonna do with it?

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It's, I know it makes absolutely

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no sense whatsoever.

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They can just, you know, it's like I've said before, if they want us, if they

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really wanna know what goes in and outta that port, they didn't need to buy it.

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They could have rented a unit over the road from it and they could

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have had 24 hour surveillance on it.

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Yeah.

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So Australian uh, defense has been spooked by China's cosing up to the Solomon

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Islands and others and has gone in, you know, cynically, you'd have to say quite

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cleverly looking at the Papua New Guines and going, geez, how can we get outta

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this in the cheapest possible way that benefits us the most in offering them?

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An NRL football team was a master stroke and they basically said to

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them, we'll cut you a deal on this.

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Um, but you have to enter into a security agreement with us in exchange

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for a football team of all things, but.

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Foot, you know, NRL football is like a religion in Papua New Guinea.

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And, um, and it was a, or maybe

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they can get rid of their religions and just have the NRL instead.

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Yes.

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Probably healthier.

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Yes.

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So, um, I had to laugh, um, you know, Albanese talking about, you know,

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why Australia managed to secure this relationship with Papua New Guinea.

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You know, reading between the lines instead of China securing a deal with

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Papua New Guinea and Albanese said, um, it's certainly not a secret that

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our relationship is so strong that we work together, and part of that working

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together is because of our common values.

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Does it always strike you that Australia and p and g have common values?

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Well, they're Christian.

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Yes.

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And he says, here we are both great democracies, meaning China isn't.

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We both share a commitment to human rights.

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Is

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PNGA great democracy?

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That's what according to Alpha.

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Okay.

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And Joe, we both share a commitment to human rights.

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Um, questionable with us, even more questionable with them.

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We both share market based economies that are important as well.

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Like, you know, basically you, you mean Australian miners have gone

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and stripped behind half of p and g?

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Yes.

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So, so it is really trying to say that p and g did the deal with us because common

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values, we are both great democracies.

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We share a commitment to human rights, and we share market based economies and

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reading between the lines and, you know, and China doesn't tick, tick those boxes.

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How, how about we have a longstanding relationship?

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With the country A and we owe it to our next door neighbor to help them develop.

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Yes.

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And how about they're right next door to us.

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Yeah.

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And you know, if you're a good swimmer, uh, you could get

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there on a calm day almost.

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And don't forget, we also actually have a porous border with p and g.

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Mm-hmm.

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Mm.

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Yeah.

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So, so, yeah.

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So the, the, the Torres Torres Strait Islands mm-hmm.

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The tribes in the Torres Strait Islands are allowed to cross backwards

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and forwards to PNG and vice versa,

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right?

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Mm-hmm.

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There isn't a strict border, the people who live in that area,

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because historically they have moved backwards and forwards across the

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street, are legally allowed to move.

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And that's why we were running tuberculosis clinics

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up in Papua New Guinea.

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And why?

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It was a very, very shortsighted idea to stop funding those,

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um, tuberculosis clinics.

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Hmm.

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Because now we're getting, um, antibiotic resistance TB

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coming into Northern Queensland.

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Who stopped that funding?

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Hmm.

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I think it was federal and it was probably under LNP, but I'm not sure.

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I couldn't guarantee it.

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It was about five years ago, I think.

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Yeah.

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Well, it's one of those things I just thought to myself it

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would've started with the LNB.

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Mm-hmm.

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Because, you know, why are we paying for whose foreigners to have healthcare?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Rather than going, oh, this is a very cheap investment to

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make sure that we don't get.

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Antibiotic resistance TB into Australia.

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Mm-hmm.

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A shortsighted decision.

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Very, very

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shortsighted.

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But you know, this is a country where we allow councils to

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take fluoride out of, uh,

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town water.

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So, yeah.

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So the cost of dealing with public health is not a council cost, but the,

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the cost of and Asian is a council cost.

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So which one are they gonna

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choose?

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Freedom Joe, freedom for people to choose for local communities to make

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decisions that suit that they, they have no clue whatsoever about that suit,

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the special, local needs of the people.

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See, I actually discussed this with someone once and he said,

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um, you know, Hitler, Hitler and Jewish fluoride to make the people

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more docile and dumb over there.

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And I actually said, okay.

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I said, that's fine that you've got that opinion, but let me tell you

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something, unless you are Jewish or a communist or politically active.

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The third Rike wasn't a bad place to live, you know, if you were actually German

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mm-hmm.

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And you were full blood German and you weren't actually trying to overthrow the

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Nazi regime, that was no problem at all.

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It was a good place to live.

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Fluoridization, fluoridation of the water has, Eli has dramatically improved the,

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um, oral health of most, most Australians.

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Mm.

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You know, and God knows why the hell that, who was that latest council?

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The one that's at, um, was it the Gympie Regional Council was

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just knocked it on the head?

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Yeah, I saw, I can't remember what council it was.

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Now, I hope that we still get fluoride in our water up here.

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I'm pretty sure we do.

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Our, our map is still one of the green parts, but it's just one of

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those things, I just don't understand why people are so scared of it.

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It's nothing, you know, it's, it's something that

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we've been doing for decades.

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Well, because cookers are always around and I think most, say again, cookers.

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Anti-vaxxers.

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Yeah.

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Gotcha.

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Well, you know, autism's on the rise in the last few years and, you

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know, it wasn't around as much when there was no fluoride in the water.

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You

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know, it's just that, um,

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correlation is causation.

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Yes.

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The other thing is the, the autism rate has increased because we're

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getting better at, um, diagnosing.

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Yeah.

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So that is why it has gone up, because we're getting

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much better at diagnosing it.

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Hmm.

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But you know, in America, apparently it's caused by Tylenol when you're

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pregnant, for Christ's sake.

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Speaking of the authoritarian regime in the Disunited states of America, I've got

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a clip here from the Secretary of War.

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Um, now this is good.

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I like the whole, sometimes you know, Donald Trump, it's like the stop

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clock and there's ride twice a day.

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It's got like renaming, um, you know, the, the Defense Department.

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The war department.

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Um, it really is just good stroke of honesty about a whole show.

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You have to sort of applaud it at one level.

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Yeah, at one level.

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Anyway, this is, uh, he, um, talking to the troops,

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we are preparing every day.

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We have to be prepared for war, not for defense.

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We're training warriors, not defenders.

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We fight wars to win, not to defend.

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Defense is something you do all the time.

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It's inherently reactionary and can lead to overuse, overreach, and mission Creep.

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War is something you do sparingly on our own terms and with clear aims.

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We fight to win.

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We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy.

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We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement.

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We untie the hands of our war fighters to intimidate, demoralize, Hunt and

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kill the enemies of our country.

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No more politically correct and overbearing.

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Rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and

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authority for war fighters.

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That's all I ever wanted as a platoon leader.

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Yeah, there we go.

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Just, uh, ignore any rules.

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Yep.

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And.

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That's who we want to hook up with as, uh, under orca shooting rape civilians.

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Yes.

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Steal their goods.

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Yes.

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I mean, you see a boat, you can do it.

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So why come America, you see a boat leaving Venezuela

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probably got drugs on it.

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Yeah.

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Blow it up.

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Just blow it up.

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Yeah.

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That's what we do.

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So the, these are the sorts of people, uh, that we have shared

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common values with apparently.

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Mm. And that we want to continue a deep relationship with.

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Um, yeah.

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Just, uh, not be bound by those pesky rules of engagement and other laws.

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Yeah.

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I think you'll find that a large number of Americans disagree with him, and

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they are the people that we have a common value system with, rather than.

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The wackos that are currently

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in charge, increasingly less and less of them.

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I think, Joe, I think this, um, well, um, you see the No

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Kings March were a hell of a lot of people out there on the street.

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Yep.

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Yes.

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Uh, the No Kings March.

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Yes.

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Um, lots of people on the street.

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7 million apparently.

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Yes.

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Yep.

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Um, did, now this one, uh, doesn't have great audio.

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It's all about the visuals.

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Mm-hmm.

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Did you see the Donald Trump, what he posted?

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Um, uh Oh, king Trump in his plane.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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Well,

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I saw about it.

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I haven't actually watched the video.

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Oh, well, here you go then.

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22 seconds of it.

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Sorry, for those who only get the audio, but for the, for the, for the people.

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Uh, here, you'll like, you'll like this.

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Yeah, so someone created a clip, which, um, with ai, yes, no doubt.

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Uh, why can't I get that out of the screen?

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What, what am I gonna do here?

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Let's go back to, so that, that was probably

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200 liters of, um, water.

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Wasted on that,

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uh, how I get rid of that.

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Thank you, Joe.

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Um, I couldn't see it.

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So for those who couldn't see it, basically it, it was a, um, AI

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generated clip which had Donald Trump flying a fighter jet and

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with a crown on his head and King Trump written on the side of the plane.

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Yes.

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And it flies over a city, probably Chicago or somewhere like that, and basically

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drops, well, it could be mud, but more likely just shit, uh, on top of the people

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protesting in the No Kings movement.

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And um, and Donald Trump thought that was great and had it on his own timeline.

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So, but yeah.

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But, um, I like the idea of No Kings.

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I think it sums it up well.

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Like he is promoting himself as a king.

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Yes, absolutely is.

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And I think just the name of it, um.

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Makes sense.

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Yeah.

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So, um, so yeah, that was, um, the protest called No Kings to Underscore

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that America does not have, uh, kinds of absolute rulers, a ding against

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Trump increasing authoritarianism and yeah, lots of protestors.

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More specifically, the whole point of the American Revolution was to get rid

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of kings and to ensure that they never had a tyrannical ruler ever again.

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Mm. Mm-hmm.

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And the Second Amendment was to ensure that the populace could up rise against

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an authoritarian ruler, which, where are all the Second Amendment nuts now?

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Yeah.

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You know, um, as you know, uh, we haven't mentioned it in a while,

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but I've always said, um, bill of Rights is a waste of time.

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Mm-hmm.

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And, you know, the Bill of Rights is enshrined in the American Constitution.

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Yeah.

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But's not doing it any good.

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Um, in the sense, no.

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'cause they've got a handpicked supreme court that will

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just rubber stamp whatever Trump says.

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So these rights are being trampled on anyway.

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Yep.

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Um, uh, even though, um, it's in the

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constitution, it's almost like they need a monarch whose sole job

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is to sack the whole government and send it out to a, an election.

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Yes, indeed.

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1975 style.

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Hmm.

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Yeah.

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Does it's almost, but not quite that point, Joe.

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Um, you know, uh, just in terms of the authoritarian things, the

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tyrannical things that they're doing that people are protesting against,

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and these ice agents are unbelievable.

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Uh, the scenes that you see when these guys, um, masked, um.

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Camouflage Army style kit that they wear vehicles.

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Yeah, that's, that are unmarked.

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Sorry, Joe.

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That, that's the scary point, isn't it?

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Yes.

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There is no accountability.

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Yes.

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Um, they're

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deliberately masking up so that they can't be held accountable.

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Yes.

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And, and how could people just have any idea whether they're a legitimate police,

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no enforcement force or just a gang,

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and there have already been people committing crimes

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claiming that they're ice.

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Yeah.

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Well, one story here, ice secretly kidnapped an autistic

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boy during a bathroom break and never notified the family.

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The mother reported him missing a week ago.

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Turns out ice had him detained the whole time he was helping to sell

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fruit and asked to go to the restroom.

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By the time she was done helping a customer, he was gone.

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And, um, yeah, uh, the kid had a mental capacity of a 5-year-old and sometimes

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non-verbal, and I surrounded him up.

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And so

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yeah, people

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are disappear.

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Well, they, people are, hang

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on.

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The, i, the ice agents were upset.

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There was someone more intelligent than that out and about.

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Yeah.

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But

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it's like people being disappeared in, you know, Paches Argentina.

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Yeah.

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Is is Chile, sorry?

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P'S Chile.

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Like this is the sort of,

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I I'm, I'm just waiting for the, um, flights over the ocean.

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Yeah.

Speaker:

Um, you know, there was one I was watching where, um, ice agents snatched

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a journalist and were speeding away in a unmarked vehicle, and as they veered

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out onto the road, they hit Oh, they

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sideswiped a car.

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Yes.

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What sideswiped a car.

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And, um, I was just somebody who was just driving along and they almost

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sort of did a hit and run, but they, uh, after hitting her, but instead

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the ICE agents stopped their car, um.

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Went over to the woman and at gunpoint, dragged her out of

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her car and took her with them.

Speaker:

It's extraordinary.

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Like imagine you were just driving along and some random vehicle rams

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you, and then a bunch of ice agents pop out and just open your car door, haul

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you out, throw you into their van, and you end up in an ice detention center.

Speaker:

And, and they'd been lying.

Speaker:

So they shot somebody dead and claimed that this person opened fire first, and

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then video emerged of what happened.

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Yes.

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And they opened fire and someone who was completely unarmed.

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Yes.

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And this ab they're just the law unto themselves.

Speaker:

This abduction that I've just talked about Yeah.

Speaker:

Was all captured by bystanders on film.

Speaker:

Um,

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what an incredible authoritarian regime.

Speaker:

Hmm.

Speaker:

Uh,

Speaker:

I think the Secret Service will have their work cut out for them.

Speaker:

Um, yeah.

Speaker:

Um, so Republican leader, Trump is openly mulling using the insurrection act.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

He, he's, he's deliberately trying, so he's sending ice in to be heavy handed.

Speaker:

Hmm.

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Because he's hoping to get a reaction.

Speaker:

Yes.

Speaker:

And that's also why he's sending the, uh, national Guard in.

Speaker:

He wants to get a reaction.

Speaker:

He wants to get, uh, protestors attacking the army or ice so he can claim

Speaker:

insurrection and then he can go all out.

Speaker:

Hmm.

Speaker:

As I mentioned, it's

Speaker:

just like, it's just like he was burning the rock stack.

Speaker:

Exactly.

Speaker:

I was just about to say, he's looking for his retag moment, isn't he?

Speaker:

Mm. Was the w right start moment.

Speaker:

It was where the, um, a they blamed him on a judge, on a Dutch

Speaker:

Jewish boy and that sort of stuff.

Speaker:

Who allegedly torched the Reichstag?

Speaker:

I don't know whether or not that happened, but after, after the Recht stag was

Speaker:

torched, Hitler voted himself, um,

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uh, chancellor for Life,

Speaker:

chancellor for Life.

Speaker:

And he also did away with democracy and everything else.

Speaker:

And he could do whatever the hell he wanted to.

Speaker:

Mm-hmm.

Speaker:

So I think he also became, did is that when, um, what's his name also died?

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Uh, no.

Speaker:

That was nice.

Speaker:

Of the long lives.

Speaker:

No, no, the, um, the president, when did he die?

Speaker:

Oh,

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did he die before or after he died?

Speaker:

No, I thought he was

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ill.

Speaker:

I knew he was ill.

Speaker:

Right.

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But I couldn't tell died.

Speaker:

I think he was, yeah.

Speaker:

Hindenberg

Speaker:

Hindenberg, that's him.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

So it's just one of those things like I, I, I just thought to myself, well, you

Speaker:

know, he's obviously trying to provoke a rock stag fire and that type of thing.

Speaker:

Mm. He's quoted as saying, we have an insurrection act for a reason.

Speaker:

If I had to enact it, I would do that.

Speaker:

He said if people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors,

Speaker:

or mayors were holding us up, sure.

Speaker:

I would do that as in, um, use the Insurrection Act and, uh, the Illinois

Speaker:

Governor, JB Pritzker challenged President Trump to come and get me after the wannabe

Speaker:

dictator threatened to jail him for resisting his mass deportation campaign

Speaker:

and his deployment of troops into Chicago.

Speaker:

That sounds good, doesn't it?

Speaker:

Have you guys ever heard of the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker?

Speaker:

Yeah, I have heard of him

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standing up to Trump like that.

Speaker:

Come and get me.

Speaker:

That's what American needs in leaders.

Speaker:

Well, I've

Speaker:

seen

Speaker:

Gavin Newsom, who apparently isn't a great bloke, but has

Speaker:

been great at trolling Trump.

Speaker:

Uh, hang on, I'm just reading down a bit further here.

Speaker:

With an estimated worth of $3.9 billion.

Speaker:

Mr. Pritzker is a member of a prominent Illinois family that

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owns the Hyatt hotel chain.

Speaker:

Ah

Speaker:

hmm.

Speaker:

Another oligarch just, just 3.9 billion.

Speaker:

Uh, and he happens to be the Illinois governor.

Speaker:

What a

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coincidence.

Speaker:

He's a Democrat.

Speaker:

Totally unrelated.

Speaker:

I'm sure.

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Totally unrelated.

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Um, yeah.

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Yeah.

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He's slightly less corrupt than the Republican.

Speaker:

Uh.

Speaker:

Trump still trots out, um, insults on Obama and Biden.

Speaker:

Um mm-hmm.

Speaker:

He won't shut up about Biden.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

So with Biden having cancer, um, Trump suggests people shouldn't

Speaker:

feel bad for Biden having cancer.

Speaker:

Quote, this is a quote from Donald Trump.

Speaker:

Biden was always a mean SOB not working out too well for him right now.

Speaker:

So when you start feeling sorry for him, remember he's a bad guy.

Speaker:

Trump's just a sore winner, isn't he?

Speaker:

Yes.

Speaker:

He holds a crutch and it's like, you won the election.

Speaker:

Get over it.

Speaker:

Yeah, but I mean, he's, he's forever going on about the past.

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He can never look to the future.

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He can never talk about the positive things he's doing.

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All he can do is slag off his past opponents.

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He's still going on about Hillary.

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Yeah, I know.

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It's, I, I find it utterly ridiculous that none of the journalists

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have pointed out to him that, um.

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Jerome Power was appointed by Donald Jade Trump, not, yeah.

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Um, Joe Biden, you know, it's, God knows why.

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I mean, you said he doesn't talk about the things he's doing, but he

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does, you know, he's stopped, you know, eight wars and, uh, oh yeah.

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Ems, a lot of things.

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But, um, speaking of war and speaking of the Nobel Peace Prize that we

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mentioned the other day, and it was just odd that, um, the relatively

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unknown Machado was awarded the prize.

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This is all happening at the same time that Trump is ordering

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the military to just blow up.

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Um, uh, Venezuelan vessels just on suspicion that they're carrying drugs

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and, you know, he's openly talking about decapitation strikes on the Venezuelan

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government, basically open openly saying, um, there's a price on, um, Maduro's

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head and he just wants him eliminated.

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And, you know, I know there's a lot of people out there who don't

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like Maduro, but he, but he's the leader of a sovereign country and

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there is a, an unwritten international rule that says you don't attack

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the leaders of the government.

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Yes.

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And if Trump breaks that rule, he may find that his position

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is a lot more precarious.

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Yes.

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So they're drumming up a new war in Latin America, like they are.

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It would not surprise if in the next week, two or three that they actually.

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Um,

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uh, attempt to invade Venezuela.

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Yes.

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Mm-hmm.

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Uh, lots of oil and, uh, a few rare earth minerals there as well.

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Well, they were flying the B 50 twos down there, weren't they?

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Um, so yes, it's, it's heating up down there, and the pool of Venezuelans are,

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you know, looking for a terrible time.

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Now, the excuse that the, um, authoritarian Trump regime uses, uh,

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for wanting to attack Venezuela is it says that, you know, basically that

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country is responsible for a huge proportion of the drug problem in America.

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And, and it's on that basis that it's legitimate for the United States to

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attack Venezuela because of that.

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So, um, rooting from this article from Minta Press, um, in reality, Venezuela

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produces a negligible amount of cocaine.

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The top producers are Columbia, Peru.

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And Bolivia, you might ask, well, why isn't, um, America, you know,

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threatening the same sorts of things against those countries?

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And the answer is that there are sort of authoritarian right wing.

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They don't have oil well, they've got authoritarian right wing regimes

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that are cooperating with America on different things as well, so

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that, and they don't have oil.

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Um, according to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, the 200 2025

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World Drug Report, most cocaine enters the United States through Ecuadorian

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ports or overland via Central America.

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Uh, likewise the drug enforcement agencies 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment.

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A 90 page report mentions Venezuela only twice and makes no reference

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to the cartel of the suns.

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So, um.

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So you,

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you know, the country most responsible for America's drug problem?

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Uh, China and Fentanyl?

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No.

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Oh, United States of America?

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Well, okay.

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Yes.

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Okay.

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Because if they'd legalized it and regulated it right, they wouldn't

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have a problem with people dying from unknown drugs of unknown dosage.

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Mm. So, you know, Trump said in his first time, uh, first term that it would

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be cool to invade Venezuela calling the country really part of the United States.

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Ah, uh, yeah.

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So they're beating up a, a drug war as a, an excuse for, uh, a

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possible war against Venezuela.

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And, you know, that's the typical sort of American, uh.

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Response in the last couple of decades.

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They always pick on smaller countries.

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Mm-hmm.

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And, um, when someone big, like Russia against Ukraine, um, they just hold back.

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So I, looking at Venezuela, but

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Yeah.

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Um,

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well, it's a good way to distract from your own social

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problems is to start a war.

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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Eventually, one day Trump will leave the scene, um, after

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his fourth term or fifth term.

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Well, one would hope so,

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hopefully with his lifestyle and diet.

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Mm-hmm.

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Earlier, rather than later.

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But at least we'll have Barron Trump to come along and he's a smart one.

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You wanna know how smart Barron Trump is?

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Not, not Barron King.

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Yes.

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Not Barron Earl.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Barron Trump.

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He here is how smart Barron Trump is according to Donald Trump.

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Yeah.

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But is Baron's aptitude in your view, business or politics?

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Maybe.

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Technology.

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He can look at a computer.

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I try turning off his car, turn it off.

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I turn off his laptop.

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I said, oh, good now.

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And I go back five minutes later.

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He is got his laptop.

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I said, how'd you do that?

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None of your business, dad.

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No.

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He's got an unbelievable aptitude in.

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There you go.

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He's so good.

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He can, he can turn on a, a, a laptop after Donald has turned it off.

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Well, maybe Donald's just so incompetent that

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he honestly believes that he has turned it off, but he hasn't.

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That is, uh, and don't forget, Donald, Donald Trump is the same age as my father.

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Right?

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There we go.

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Ah, we're about done in the chat room.

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What have people been saying?

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Alex says, Trump will always be a loser in his own mind no

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matter what He actually gets.

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Keeps acting out, trying to make himself feel better.

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Yes.

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Mm-hmm.

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Um, also, us need to think deeply about how fragile their democracy is.

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Yes.

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I mean, it relies on norms and decency.

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Yeah.

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And that was the biggest disappointment with Joe Biden.

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Mm. Was, despite all that happened between 2016 and 2020,

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that he didn't do anything about it.

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That there was no pushback.

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There was no Right.

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The president can only do this or Yeah.

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Putting boundaries in place.

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Hmm.

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He just let Trump take power again and carry on doing the

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shit he was doing before.

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Mm-hmm.

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Yep.

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Uh, also, I think reference to the Hegseth clip, he sounds like a

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marketing manager telling you how to run a company using catchphrases.

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He did indeed.

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Yeah.

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Um, what else have we got here?

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Hmm.

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And Oh, hello.

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Alison was in the chat room.

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So, um, and Alex, for the interest of Citizens, government should

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have mechanisms to disrupt monopolies wherever they are found.

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For instance, Brazil solution to Visa, MasterCard, oligopoly.

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What was the, what was, dunno Brazil solution to that?

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Hmm.

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I'm not certain of that.

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Hmm.

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Okay.

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Well that's good.

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Look at us.

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We did a podcast two weeks in a row getting some form back.

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So thank you in the chat and more than

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an hour long.

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Yeah,

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Crikey.

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Alright, good chatting to you all and I reckon we'll be back again next week.

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I reckon we're gonna go three in a row.

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Wish.

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Just luck.

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Anyway, we will talk to you then.

Speaker:

Bye for now.

Speaker:

It's a good night from me and it's a good night from him.

Speaker:

Good night.

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The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove
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