[Music].
So I didn’t want C McBeats to
end up the anti-billionaires podcast.
But all the news, all the
stories that have been
coming out are built
billionaires that sort of
catch your attention and
stuff. And they live this very
different lifestyle. So of
course that I think in itself
is going to be kind of
fascinating. But it’s the
level of ignorance they
seem to actually live in.
And I think this is again the result
of insulating themselves and living
this sort of stratified world where
they are separate from everyone else.
They start to not realize that their
lives don’t equate to everyone else’s life.
So of course the billionaire of billionaires
right now is sort of the poster boy.
And the fact that we all know
I’m talking about Elon Musk before
I even say anything shows
you that he’s actually messed up.
A really good billionaire, you’re
not going to know his name. You
stay behind the scenes, you
stay out of the spotlight and stuff.
You don’t start your little cult following.
There was a story I did a few months ago.
And it was about
billionaires building bunkers to
protect themselves from the
upcoming ecological disaster.
Because last week we hit the hottest Monday
or the hottest day globally in the world.
And they’re talking about crop
failures and this is something
that passed that Mark and
basically we’re all going to die.
And then Tuesday happened
and we had another super hot day.
So these billionaires
are like we’re going to
build bunkers, we’re going
to stock them with food.
Of course I’m going to need people
to protect me from the rabble rousers.
Things like that. Not realizing
that the people they’re going to
pay to protect them are might turn
on them because they’re assholes.
And so they were having an actual meeting where they
were like well how do we get these guys to follow our
orders when we are essentially useless because the only
power that billionaires have comes from their wealth.
And then when money, when
the financial system collapses
they have no wealth, they only
have what they can contribute.
And a group of military
guys that they’ve hired.
I mean it’s more sensible for them to
be like well just pop one off on this guy
and then we have the bunker and we don’t
have to listen to this bullshit anymore.
And actually everyone in
our group will contribute.
So they were like literally
talking science fiction
shock callers and stuff
because they’re so fucking dumb.
They don’t realize that the
solution to that problem is to be nice.
The solution to the
problem is fix the
environment so there
is no ecological collapse.
If you want to build loyalty
among a group of people you be
nice to them and build loyalty
and actually care about them.
And then the amount of money
you have won’t matter anymore.
That was all inconceivable
from that article.
So Elon Musk and again this is this
disconnect that I’m finding the most
interesting part because these
guys talk about like leading the world.
But they’re trying to lead a world
and they don’t seem to understand
that there’s people in it and
they have to be taken care of.
On a much lower level Elon Musk
gave an interview and he’s talked
about people needing to return
from work from home to the offices.
This has been a big push.
Now there’s a couple of reasons.
There’s an interesting side notes.
The push to go back to the
office is not about productivity.
They are now coaching it
in that it’s more productive.
Your teams work together.
People work together.
It’s better for you.
There’s all these actual
financial papers being written.
I mean like newspapers articles and stuff.
And they’re talking about like how it’s
unhealthy to be at home alone all day.
It’s unhealthy to have like this
kind of disconnect and working
through the Internet and how
you talk to other people and stuff.
Except when you talk to people who work
from home, they all say they’re happier.
They all report gains in
happiness from working for home.
So there’s got to be another reason.
One of the main other reasons
is real estate, financial real estate.
If everyone is working from home,
all those giant buildings, the towers
they’ve built to represent their
their falliveness, those have no value.
So we’re we’ve probably
locked into contracts.
We got that we got to pay for this
building for years and years and years.
We’re locked into it.
What are we going to do?
We got to bring everyone
back in the office to justify the
cost that we’ve already put
out to build up this building.
It’s a dumb shit like that.
Also control.
So I don’t care if you’re less productive.
I don’t care if you’re less happy.
As long as if you’re
sitting in the desk because I
told you to sit at the desk,
that’s what’s important.
My job recently, this
is not the same level.
My boss was actually very
nice about it, but my team
tended to leave earlier
than a lot of other people.
Because we were more valuable
at the beginning of the work day.
So I actually my team
came in earlier than
the normal work day so
we could prep anything.
They would be present
for the beginning of the
work day where they
could help other people.
And then that would mean their work day
ends before other people’s work day ends.
Now, I was asked to
have my team present, a
member, not everybody, a
member of my team present,
till the end of the work day to answer
phone calls or something like that.
So we did that.
We sat down.
There’s five of us.
So it’s like, okay, everyone take one day.
It’s not a huge burden on anybody.
I made sure, again, trying
to be the good team leader.
I was like, I don’t want one
person to work late every night.
I don’t think that’s fair.
So I wanted to be fair.
Fair is very important to me.
That’s probably again why I’m fascinated
by the business billionaires and stuff.
Because for all their talk about
competition and capitalism and
stuff, they don’t actually ever
worry about whether it’s fair.
And when they use the
word right, which is what Elon
Musk does in the article,
I’m going to talk about,
I don’t think he really gets it
because it’s just fair and honest
and good is what he wants or
what all these billionaires want.
Dave’s enjoying the cool
floor, floor back there.
So, yes, my team was like,
okay, we will have one member of
the team available and stay
till the end of day every day.
So I’ve been staying late on
certain nights, just like everyone else,
because it’s not like I separated myself
from the other members of the team.
Even though, again, I probably
could have gotten away with it.
And I have yet to get a phone call or have a problem
that could have been dealt with that needed to be
dealt with right away in the evening, which is why we
ended up with those early shifts in the first place.
So, anyway, that’s irrelevant, I
guess. But it was like, again, my way
of looking at it was like, this isn’t
about actually solving problems.
This isn’t about efficiency
or work. This is about
everyone gets annoyed
that your team leaves earlier.
So, we have to make it look like
you’re here with everyone else.
So, we are. And again, not a big deal
because we did it as fair as possible.
Elon Musk is talking about work
from home and how he doesn’t
like work from home and everyone
should get back in the office.
And he doesn’t make an
argument like, this is what I want.
He just, he jumps to, it’s a moral
issue. And it’s unfair that people,
other people are getting away
with this thing that he doesn’t like.
That’s really it. Okay, so, I
pulled quotes from multiple articles.
So, some of it’s quotes from Elon Musk,
some of it’s the writer of the article.
So, Silicon Valley,
laptop classes. So, he’s
already said, this
is a class of people.
The people who work from home are laptop
classes. So, they get their own grouping.
Again, to separate them from all
other workers. And that’s not accidental.
He probably doesn’t realize he’s
doing it, but that’s not accidental. That’s
like, I want to talk about these group
of people that I’m angry at right now.
So, if I’m angry at them, we’ll fuck them.
They need to get off their moral high
horse with their work from home bullshit.
This is all very Elon
Musky kind of talking.
And actually, I saw, I thought he
was smart until I listened to him talk.
I think he has ideas,
but he puts those ideas
into engineers’ hands
who are smarter than him.
And they make those
things happen. So, Tesla,
I’m not saying it’s
a good car, bad car.
I’ve never driven one. I know it
has one engineering fault where the
back window, so the boot or the
trunk, depending on where you’re from.
If you open it and
it’s raining, the water
goes, it hits the roof
and goes into the trunk.
That’s an engineering
fault. I don’t think they’re
going to admit that’s
an engineering fault.
But it was one of the more interesting
aspects of the Tesla to me that
they’ve talked about how advanced
this car is, but at the same time,
it’s got this very obvious
thing that could be fixed
through a little more
engineering, but whatever.
I saw him on Joe Rogan.
This is before I quit Joe Rogan altogether.
I couldn’t listen to the man
talk for more than five or ten
minutes before I was like,
“This is just inane rambling.”
But everyone takes him really dead
seriously because he’s got so much money.
And I actually think if you took
away his money and he talked
to everybody, “Dude, shut the
fuck up. You are so annoying.”
I work with people like
this. We’re just constantly
talking about their great
ideas to make everything.
And then they have an opinion on
everything. They haven’t taken any
time to think about it. They just
shoot their mouth. That’s musk.
So musk was discussing return
to office and paratives, but have
caused significant concern among
tech workers in Silicon Valley,
across the US, many
of whom were promised
generous remote work
mandates by top executives.
So this is important. He’s talking about a group of workers who are
made a promise that they could work for home, and now that the situation
is changed in some way, again, I think mostly about real estate,
they’re retracting that promise, and they don’t see a problem with that.
So we’ve promised you can
work from home four days a
week, five days a week. We’re
not going to take that away.
And if you keep working for us and keep productivity high, people took
that promise, they took that deal, they’re working from home, they’re
keeping their productivity high, and then they’re like, “You know what?
I kept walking through the office and it was empty, and I don’t like it.”
So we’re going to take back that promise. And this is something that
executive classes do, and companies do, because they make promises
and then feel that it’s perfectly acceptable to retract those
promises later on, and despite the effect it might have on the worker.
And then it would get annoyed
if the worker complains or
quits that the promise that
they were made wasn’t fulfilled.
Whereas if it happens in the opposite side, this is
again, I think about fairness more than anything else.
If a worker promise made a promise to a company and
did not fulfill that promise, they would be fired.
So an executive makes a
promise, and this sort of goes into
the hole like rich people can
do stuff that poor people can’t.
Changes their mind goes back on that promise, no fallout.
Maybe employees quit, but probably enough of them need
their jobs at the enough quit stay. Enough of them actually
stay that it doesn’t negatively impact the company enough.
If we’re going to talk about Twitter, which I
don’t want to spend too much talking about, Twitter
is just lost all status in my mind. They did
the 600 tweet limit for reading the other day.
I’ve never read 600 tweets because I’ve always gotten so
frustrated Facebook and Twitter and all this stuff. I am
three, four minutes in and I’m like, I don’t want to be
here anymore. This just isn’t how I want to absorb media.
He’s people are saying like he’s
purposely trashing that company, but it
doesn’t make sense to purposely trash
the company because it’s just his losses.
So I don’t know what’s really going on.
But I think this might actually be he makes
decisions. He makes those decisions
happen. He’s not listening to anyone else.
He thinks he knows what he’s doing and he
doesn’t. So he’s actually running this company
into the ground. Threads just is coming out
now from meta and it’s the Twitter clone.
I was vaguely interested in just what it looked like,
but then I just stopped. I’m like, I don’t want to be
on another Twitter. I don’t just don’t want to do these
things anymore. I’m not a big fan of social media.
So this social media conflict is really
driving me away from social media overall.
So then we get to the statement that I’ve enjoyed. I think
the whole notion of work from home is a bit like the fake
Mary Antoinette quote, let them eat cake, must set. It’s
not just a productivity thing. I think it’s morally wrong.
So he’s saying that the fact that employees may be
productive from home, maybe even more productive
from home than they are in the office because
I certainly I work in an open concept office.
Most Japanese offices are and I actually find it’s very hard to get
stuff done. If I have to write something or create something, I cannot do
it in that office because there’s people talking around me. There’s people
who like just turn around and start just talking to me all the time.
Completely, an unimportant stuff that could wait.
They don’t notice that you’re working. So you
being always accessible and available means they
are always accessing you even if it’s unnecessary.
Because there’s no
effort on their part.
They just turn around
and like shout at you.
L’orley wrong is weird. He does
say people should get off their
goddamn world high horse
with the work from home bullshit.
But that doesn’t explain why. Like
why is it morally wrong for someone to
work in a more comfortable environment
than to go to the office and work?
And a lot of articles, I actually looked
at about four articles and none of them
actually put in the secondary quote. So I
found another article that I actually did.
And they did the full-on let’s not edit his
quote. It’s like really you’re going to work
from home and you’re going to make everyone
else who made your car come into the factory.
Musk said you’re going to make the people who make your
food that gets delivered that they can’t work from home. You
know people that fix your home. They can’t work from home
but you can. Does that seem morally right? That’s messed up.
So Elon Musk has created an
equivalency in all employment. So
he’s saying construction workers
don’t get to work from home.
So you shouldn’t get to work from
home. People who work in factories
don’t get to work at home. So
you shouldn’t get to work from home.
People who, but then I’m
like, why do you get to work in
an office if everyone else
has to work somewhere else?
So the equivalence falls apart when
you go in the other direction. So why do
these construction workers have to work
outside because they’re building stuff?
Why do you get to work in an office? You could get your
laptop and go sit out in the sun and type on your laptop
and be just as productive and it would be super
uncomfortable because you’re sitting out in the sun all day.
But these, it’s morally wrong
for you to get to sit in an air
conditioned office while construction
workers are outside in the heat.
The factory, factory is depending on where
you are in the world. We have sweatshops.
Why do you get to work in an office
while other people work in factories?
So his justification is equivalency falls
apart because the thing he’s saying like
you should have to work in an office
because other people don’t get to stay home.
But why do you get to
stay in an office when other
people have to stay
outside? Or work in factories?
So his equivalency falls
apart when you actually
try to make, like when
you try to equalize jobs.
So everything should be fair. That’s
morally right. So we’re going to take his
argument. We want to make it morally
right. We want to make everything fair.
When? How is it fair?
Because the problem is the
nature of certain jobs
in certain industries.
So tech jobs require a computer.
You need to work on a computer. You
actually to be productive in that
way probably need a quiet environment.
It’s the construction worker bit and
the factory worker bit and the office
bit are not equivalencies. They all
have to leave home to go to their jobs.
But the jobs are different. So I work on a
computer, a construction worker works outside
building stuff like actually putting, you
know, wood and corn concrete and putting.
Girders up. Why does one worker get to work
in a air-conditioned comfortable crane?
Well, another one has to like pour concrete
in the sun. Because they have different jobs.
And they kind of know that going in because they’ve applied
or worked for that job. And one guy has actually got a
license to run a crane and the other one hasn’t. Why do I
get to work on my computer working for whatever company?
In a technology position and the
guy who delivers my food has to leave
home to deliver my food because
he’s taken a job delivering food.
And the nature of delivering
food means you have to go places
to bring the food to the people
who are paying you to do that.
But that’s an inherent agreement upon the creation
of employment. And it actually is part of the
promise that the company makes like the company
is like we’re going to pay you to go outside.
We’re going to pay you this much money to go
outside and build a building. We’re going to
pay you this much money to take food from the
restaurant to this guy who’s working from home.
And yeah, it sucks that guy who works from home and I have to
drive around all day delivering food. And there are people,
there are social people and stuff who do want to work in the
office. I’m not saying they shouldn’t work in the office.
I think really what it is is these billionaires and stuff.
There is a secondary reason that they can’t say out loud.
And I think again it has a lot to do with downtown and rent
and big buildings that they own. More than anything else.
It has very little to do with morality,
which is what they always claim.
So the second part, which actually
relates to my introduction, is the boss of
Cartier. Cartier in my head is jewelry
and watches, but I don’t actually know.
When we come to luxury fashion brands,
I actually don’t know what I’m talking
about. So anything I say about
this, very possibly could be incorrect.
But the multi billionaire
owner of the luxury, oh jewelry
company, okay, I got that right,
has revealed his greatest fear.
Robots replacing workers and the poor
rising up to bring down the rich. Speaking
to the financial times business of
luxury summit in Monaco, I mean fuck me.
That title, financial times
business of luxury summit and
where in Monaco is one of the
richest things I’ve ever heard.
The fashion tycoon told his fellow elite that he can’t sleep at night
at the thought of social upheaval, he thinks as imminent. So this
relates to the billionaires building a bunker and he’s saying the
problem is what we’re going to do is put so many people out of work.
This is actually judge dread.
So the judge dread story
line, the premise of that
world, is they have a 90 to 93%.
Unemployment rate. So they
have to feed everybody so they feed
everybody to keep them
alive. Again morally, that’s right.
But everyone’s so bored, crime is through
the roof and there are so many people,
so much overpopulation that the death
penalty is just dulled out all the time.
So the punishment for
like very small crimes
is death because
human life has no value.
But that of course creates riots and stuff. This guy,
Johann Rupert, told the conference to bear in mind
that when the poor rise up, the middle class won’t want
to buy luxury goods for fear of exposing their well.
Now what he’s not necessarily failed to mention but probably hasn’t taken into
account, the middle class is shrinking. The divestment of funds is so great
that you’re only going to have super rich and poor and there’s going to be so
many poor, they are going to take you over, they are going to take you down.
He said he’s been reading about changes in
labor technology as well as recent Oxfam figures
suggesting the top 1% of the global population
now owns more wealth than the other 99%.
How is society going to cope with structural unemployment
and the envy hatred and the social warfare he said? We are
destroying the middle class at this stage and it will affect us.
It’s unfair. So that’s what’s going to keep me awake at night.
So my thought was let’s look at his statements
and see if we can solve his problem. He’s
saying that the changes in labor technology
are going to make more people unemployed.
There could be other ways we could
employ those people. You could create
social programs of middle class
or poor people helping other people.
We could talk about education, we could just talk about
training, we could just talk about how do we have all these
machines, how to maintain these machines. Now you might get
to the point where the machines take care of other machines.
That means there’s going to be more need for social welfare
and more need for social workers. So you actually could
end up with a society where the machines are doing all
the labor and then people are taking care of other people.
This idea has not entered this man’s head. How is
society going to go? So the Oxfam figure suggesting the
top 1% of the global population now owns more than
wealth than the other 99%. Here’s a radical concept.
You could give away some
of your wealth. That is the bit
is inconceivable to them.
So you have 99% of the value.
wealth in the world. And
you are concerned that people
are going to kill you because
you have 99% of the wealth.
It is very possible. You could give
away 20% of your wealth and not get killed.
The idea of generosity, the idea of
caring for other people, the idea of taking
care of society as a whole, they are
completely devoid of that as a concept.
How his concern is like I have 99%
of the wealth. How do I stop people
from getting angry at me and
killing me for having all the wealth?
Again, I didn’t even suggest he give away all his money.
I’m saying if you were generous, if you took care of the
people around you, if you spent 20% of your wealth giving
back to society at large, you would be seen as a good person.
And then when the revolution does
come, they are like we are going to kill
Elon Musk because he made us go
back to the office if we didn’t want to.
But this Cartier guy, man, he created social
programs, he educated children. That guy
put me through college. He is still rich,
but he is a good one. Let’s leave him alone.
People would actually protect him
from the other people. Let’s say this is a
good one. He could use his 99% of
wealth in the world to take care of people.
And again, that is inconceivable
because then if you are doing that, you are
not holding onto the wealth. It’s not
your wealth. You don’t have the power.
The power to positively affect
society is inconceivable because it’s not.
The only way you
hoard that much wealth is
because you never want
to give any of it away.
So how is society, and again when he says
society, he’s not talking about society,
how is the elite billionaire society going
to cope with structural or unemployment?
So his usage of the word society is
already a misnomer because he’s not
talking about society. He’s talking
about rich people and poor people.
Society in his view, this would quote,
was very revealing to me, is only rich
people. So the people who are not in
that society who are not rich do not count.
That’s why he doesn’t think about like, hey, maybe I should
take care of poor people. Maybe I should raise up the
lower classes in some way. Maybe I should do more training
and education. Maybe I should create social welfare.
Because that, again, do it in a
completely self-interest reason
because that means I can protect
myself. That would be valuable.
Protecting myself is
valuable, but they don’t see
that because I got to do
that and keep all the money.
So how is society, how are
rich people going to cope with
structural unemployment and the
envy hatred and the social warfare?
You could start doing now something
to stop the envy and the hatred.
So either make poor people
rich or start taking care of poor
people so that they don’t hate
you. Those are the two choices.
And it’s really obvious to me as a middle
class person that if I had more money,
if I had enough money to take care of
my family, I didn’t have to worry about it.
The next step with the
more money I have would be
like, well, let’s see what
I can do for other people.
Now that’s not necessarily true.
That’s my attitude now. Whereas if I got
rich, maybe I’m like, oh, I got all this
money. Maybe I can give more money.
And I end up joining this
society that he’s talking about.
He does say this is the most self-aware
part. We are destroying the middle class.
And at this stage it
will affect us. So he’s
saying like we are
destroying the barrier.
The barriers, we need a
healthy middle class is better for
the economy. That’s actually
something I learned a while ago.
That the problem with having an elite
strata group that has all the money is
when you have an economic issue, they
cannot spend enough to solve the problem.
What you want instead of a billionaire
spending a million dollars, you want
a million middle class people spending
an extra couple thousand dollars.
And then you will
make up the difference
significantly and that will
actually fix your economy.
The foreign minister
of China was one of the
most interesting men
I had ever read about.
It was not the current one.
This was one of the previous ones.
And he didn’t interview
and they said, you’re putting
a ton of money into Indonesia.
Why are you doing that?
He’s like, oh, people in Indonesia
are too poor to buy our products.
So we want to raise
up their economic level
so they have enough
money to buy our products.
And so he was saying, I’m doing
this incredibly kind generous thing.
I am taking the base level
of poverty in Indonesia and
moving it upwards so that
everyone in society has more money.
For a completely self-interested
reason, so they can buy stuff from China.
But he’s being completely
honest about it. He’s like, look, I am
doing a great morally correct
thing for a completely selfish reason.
But who cares if everyone in Indonesia
now has a higher standard of living?
They’re not going to be unhappy about
the fact that they buy more Chinese shit.
So we are destroying the middle class at
this stage. It will affect us. It’s unfair.
That’s actually not
true. It’s not unfair.
This again, we are
destroying the middle class.
Dot, dot, dot. It’s unfair. If
you’re doing the destroying,
it’s not unfair that the
consequences affect you.
So that’s again where it falls apart.
Like you can see that
he doesn’t understand.
I am rich and
amazing and awesome.
Everyone should love me.
I’m destroying the world.
It’s unfair that people
might hate me for it.
And then his final sentence.
So that’s what keeps me awake at night.
And I think it should. Because
again, he’s essentially talking about
inevitability where the economic situation
we live in now is not sustainable.
Billionaires have created
themselves as a separate hated class.
If you listen to last week’s Seemig B where I
talk about the function of empathy in society,
people rising up and killing Elon Musk,
people rising up and killing the Cartier guy.
What’s his name?
Johan Rupert, very rich name.
Elon Musk, Johan Rupert.
These are very, very rich names.
People rising up and killing them. You’re
not going to get any sympathy in media.
It’s just going to be people
going like, “Ah, they killed
Elon. What a big surprise.
Ah, they killed Rupert.”
And that is the downfall
of this billionaire class.
Is they are failing to see that
they are actually part of society.
And as they separate themselves
from society and destroy
the society around them,
they cannot escape that.
And that’s what they want
to do. They think they have so
much money they should be
able to escape any consequence.
The consequences sooner or later will come.
I actually think it’s
not going to be social
uprising. I think it’s
going to be crop failure.
So I said at the very
beginning, we had the
hottest day. We’re going
to pass that threshold.
Crops will fail. When
there’s no food to go around.
Yes, the billionaires
will have food for a while.
But when they’re the only
ones who have food, people
will come for the food. It’s
not even about billionaires.
It’s not about morality.
It’s not about what’s right.
It’s like you have food.
There’s 8,000 people
outside who want that
food. They’re going to get it.
You can have your private military
and stuff. You’re not going to stop them.
That’s just the end of the day
sooner or later. They will overrun you.
And yeah, it should keep you up at night.
And the thing is, it should keep you up at night
trying to find ways to solve the problem, which
actually would be spending some of your money
on other people and creating a better society.
That’s actually the short version.
The problem is the billionaires
have the ability to create a
better society for everyone.
And all they want to do is
create a better society for
themselves. And that’s what’s
going to destroy them in the end.
[Music].