What Comes Next? Meme Coins, Globalism, AI, and the Death of Meaning | Tom Bilyeu Show
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January 27, 2025
TLDR: Exploring pressing topics like AI disruption (Chris Sacca), crypto landscape & regulation (David Sacks), societal implications of tech advancements, globalism vs individualism, and meaning/purpose in an uncertain era on Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu.

In the latest episode of Impact Theory, hosted by Tom Bilyeu, a thought-provoking discussion unfolds on contemporary issues shaping our world. Joined by Producer Drew, they address the intersection of artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, globalism, and the evolving definition of meaning in modern society. Below is a detailed summary of the key topics discussed during the episode.
Uncertain Job Market Fears
The podcast kicks off with fears over the uncertain job market, especially in light of AI advancements. Guests Chris Sacca and David Sacks emphasize the potential disruptions to conventional employment, with many traditional roles becoming obsolete. A looming concern is that people might struggle to find jobs, leading to feelings of helplessness.
The Age of Abundance With AI
Tom and Drew debate the prospect of an 'Age of Abundance' thanks to AI advancements. The excitement around AI’s capabilities suggests that while job loss may occur, the resulting wealth of technological resources might create a more prosperous world. Sacca argues that AI may dramatically reduce energy costs, making essential goods more affordable and leading to a shift in economic paradigms.
- AI's Role: The episode suggests that AI can produce high-quality results with minimal human intervention in various fields ranging from law to marketing.
- Innovation Amidst Disruption: Historical precedents show that tech disruption often leads to job opportunities, albeit through challenging transitions.
Meme Coins: Cultural Moment or Financial Instrument?
The conversation transitions to meme coins, a phenomenon seen as an expression of current cultural trends. Tom notes that while meme coins can disable traditional financial constraints, they also symbolize a cultural shift toward speculative investments, especially among younger generations.
Key Points on Meme Coins:
- Cultural Commentary: Meme coins reflect societal desires to engage creatively with finance, yet carry the inherent risk of gambling.
- Crypto's Regulation: With Donald Trump's recent regulatory initiatives, the crypto space may see a shift toward greater legitimacy, fostering discussions about meme coins as collectibles versus traditional investments.
Globalism vs. Individualism
The discussion moves to the tension between globalism and individualism heightened by AI technology, projecting a future where economic structures might not rely on geographical constraints. This cycle, described as one of aggregation and disaggregation, suggests that the current push for global interconnectedness may eventually face pushback.
- Business Cycles: Economic and political structures are seen as cyclical, where periods of collaboration lead to re-evaluations of local economies and governance.
Meaning and Purpose in a Post-AI World
A significant takeaway from the episode revolves around the implications of AI on human meaning and purpose. The hosts express concern that as AI systems take over tasks, humans might struggle to find fulfilling roles in society, which could heighten existential crises.
Spiritual Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):
- Defining KPIs: The episode proposes tracking personal fulfillment and emotional well-being as a means to combat the void left by machine efficacy. Listeners are encouraged to focus on inner peace and personal joy as critical indicators of success.
Final Reflections
Tom emphasizes the dual nature of progress. While there are fears surrounding the future, aligning with spiritual values and focusing on meaningful human connections can lead to a fulfilling life. He invites listeners to embrace change, seek purpose, and adapt to the unfolding global landscape.
In summary, the episode presents critical insights into the rapidly changing world influenced by AI and cryptocurrency, encouraging listeners to reflect on their individual paths and the broader implications of these societal shifts.
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This just in an asteroid is hurtling towards Earth and it's called AI. Billionaire Chris Saka and the dinosaurs tell us to brace for impact all while X reminds us that Sam Altman himself expects AI to end civilization and yet we can't help but be excited legitimately. CNBC anchor Andrew Sorkin says someone should meme coin him and they do whoops be careful what you say sacks
says America will be the capital of crypto. It drew. We got a hot one today. Tell us about it. It's going to be rough. Let's depress all our friends. Let's play that clip.
I think other than most computer science, the highest level of computer science, almost all of the rest of coding is fucking useless. You and I can go to chat. You can be like, I want to build an app that does this, this, and this and give me the code and it spits out the code. And then I've literally said, Hey, by the way, I haven't coded since basic. What do I do with this? And it's like, Oh, no problem. Go here, download this, open this Python thing, and then shove it in here and then do this. And it just talks you through it. And now it'll be agentic and agents going to do all that for you. You just don't need to fucking do it anymore.
Would you send your kid to law school right now? No, definitely not. We have fewer lawyers at our firm now than we did a year ago. It's just fucking great. I can tell it. Hey, you know what? Great job. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. Hey, you know what? I forgot to tell you. We have all the leverage. Oh, in this case, actually do this. Hey, add this. Hey, right out.
the exhibit A schedule of services, which usually takes a couple hours. It's just so fucking good. Would you teach your kid accounting, accounts receivable, accounts payable, bookkeeping right now? Would you have your kids write marketing copy? Would you train them to write any news other than writing for the very top newspapers? No, probably not. Dude, go down the list of fucking skills, man. So what's left?
Here's my grand theory. We are super fucked. There it is. There it is. This is, okay, look, as I said in my tweet, this is the sounds that people make when they can't see over the horizon. When you look back on however many millennia of technology, it has always made things better. It has always, as you get into modern times, it's always ended up creating more jobs. But the period of disruption is brutal. Yeah.
So, I don't want people to take it literally that we are all super fucked. What they are saying is, I don't know what it's going to look like and that is very scary. That's why I think 2025 is really going to freak people out because you're going to start to feel the job markets often. Suddenly, it doesn't take three to six months to find a job. It takes 12 months. Maybe it takes 18 months. Maybe you don't find another job.
And that kind of thing is going to get scary, but there will be a world on the other side of this. That world will be unfamiliar to all of us, but odds are that that world is going to be better than this one for reasons that I've talked about ad nauseam, but I'll give the very quick thumbnail sketch.
You're bringing on people say that it takes 18 years to make an 18 year old. That is no longer true. AI will be able to produce an embodied robot. What you'll hear people say, a Gentic AI. What they mean is that AI can do something. First, it'll start digitally, but then they'll be embodied in a robot. And so you're going to be able to make an army of 18 year olds, 25 year olds, 30 year olds, whatever. And they're going to be smarter than all of us.
And you'll be able to do it instantaneously. And the level of disruption that's going to cause is insane, but it's going to drive energy costs to effectively zero. That's going to make everything effectively free. And all of a sudden you're in a post capitalist world, what everybody on the left certainly is screaming that they want to be, but you don't have to do it by taking away from everybody. It will just be an age of abundance.
And the reason I think that's gonna happen is unless AI has a need to have it their way, you don't have to get into this doomsday scenario where AI wipes us off the face of the earth. That is very much us projecting human behaviors onto AI where we have to have things our way. But if AI literally doesn't care whether what it's trying to do is accomplished or not, if a human says, please stop doing that, then it stops.
So you get to the point now where you can leverage the intelligence, you can have something do something for you. And the thing that I don't think people realize is things are expensive because people are expensive. Once you can get these things done without the expense,
you're entering an age of abundance. There's something to that though, that when you remove the people expense, things get cheaper, but doesn't that also eliminate the people who can then afford your product and that kind of, are we shooting ourselves? Well, what you're doing is breaking off half of it and saying that, well, oh my God, wait a second, everything is cheap now. I have all these people that are making this thing, but then wait a second, nobody's going to buy my thing. That's why I say it's post capitalist.
You're not going to need anybody to buy your thing because you don't have to pay for anything. Now, again, that's a long enough timeline. That's going to be a very rocky road. I am choosing to look over a horizon that I can't actually see and imagine a better world. I get it. I can't see around that corner.
either. What I'm doing is saying, I think Matt Ridley's idea of the rational optimist, you cannot look backwards at an unending string of progress. And then look forward and say, it's all going to fuck up now. It is very understandable to be paranoid. It is very understandable to try to do things like align AI.
And not just assume that this is all going to work out miraculously well. We won't accidentally end up in a better future, but I don't see a reason why it has to be a negative future. The thing that I think that we have to worry about is meaning and purpose. That's the one thing that I'm like, oof, I don't think people are good at
putting meaning and purpose in their life now in a world where that's far easier than when we really don't matter. We're not necessary for that sense of progress. That I think is scary. That I think people are going to have to address. There's going to be a great need for some kind of new spiritual awakening. And so that's going to be interesting. But I am going to be very confusing to people because I am both
completely freaked out by what's happening, and choosing to not be paralyzed by that, and to focus on making sure that we end up in the positive future. But it really is an asteroid hurtling towards Earth. There's no choice about it. I'm kind of conflicted because I do see all the positives, and we talked to a lot of the same guests, the people that are coming into the show. So I see the glass have full perspective of it, but I am really thinking about, you called it a period of disruption.
Yeah, it's gonna be. It's no longer a glass, full glass, half empty. It is glass thrown at a thousand miles an hour at the wall that is shattering and water is going everywhere. That's the reality of what's about to happen, for real. Yeah. And we are all going to live through it. And look, I've mapped out, you and I've talked a lot about this. So 25 is the year that people's souls start to get eaten, in that they just, they really see now, they can't see the future.
And that's terrifying. People are not going to respond well to that. There will be, for sure, I guarantee it. Play this clip back. And if I look like a fool by 2028, let's say just to give myself some padding. So be it. Great. Because my prediction is there will be pockets of violence. How bad those pockets of violence get? I don't know. I'm going to clock it now at call it 2020.
So when we went through that summer and it was brutal and there were mostly peaceful protests, you're going to see that. My hope is that the violence is relegated to violence against robots.
think that's going to be the initial pushback as those really begin to flood the market. You said something to me today that I was like, well, maybe that it happens a little bit sooner because as people can't find that next job, they are going to freak out. And so we'll see. But I think
I think you've got 18 months before people really start to go. Oh, wait a second. This isn't bad in theory. This is bad in practice. 18 months. Are any doomsday preppers in our community? Let me know. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker. I need a bunker
That's, that's gonna, that's gonna hit, that's gonna feel some kind of way. And that's coming in the next seven years?
I'll pat it and say 10, but you've got a billion robots in 10 years for sure. Humanoid robots. Yeah. Like walking and doing all the things. Yup. For you though, that's the thing. Like all the sudden, it sounds good. I watch I robot. I don't think so. I think it should sound a mix of terrifying and exciting. That's the right blend. Man, it's interesting. It's interesting. So we're trying to get a panel put together of sci-fi writers because I think that's what we need right now is people that
Sci-Fi writer's job is not to imagine the cars to imagine the traffic jam. I want to sit down and have these conversations about what is this really going to look like over this horizon. Of course, everyone's going to be wrong, but directionally, I think sci-fi writers are going to help us think through this problem. It'll be interesting.
Well, coming soon, coming soon. In the meantime, I got to get rich on the crypto market because meme coins are back. You said it in the intro with the Andrew Slurkin coin being made. And then Ivanka Trump got an unauthorized coin made of her in that launch. And of course, we all know the Trump and the Trump and Ivanka coin that went live on inauguration day.
I feel like crypto had a busy week. And while on one side, the strategic reserve is now looking interesting to now this side of like memes, can you just lay out the atmosphere for us? Because I feel like with AI, how we don't see how disruptive this is to the job market and to technology, I feel like crypto is having a similar moment in like the finance industry.
Yes, let's play the David Sachs clip. I think this one sets the stage for what we're about to see here. Donald Trump said on July 27 that he would stop federal agencies from targeting the crypto industry. He made good on that promise today, right?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, President Trump campaigned to be the first crypto president. He gave a now famous speech in Nashville where he described how he was going to change the regulatory environment for crypto. And he has now acted on that promise. He signed this executive order today. He's directed our working group to produce a regulatory framework that's going to encourage innovation and crypto in the United States, keeping the industry onshore rather than driving it offshore, which is what was happening under the Biden administration.
or I believe that what we should be doing is extending the dollars, dominance into digital areas, extended online. And I think that could actually create trillions of dollars of demand for U.S. treasuries. It could be really useful to us in basically supporting our debt and also bringing down long term interest rates. I want to get your take on the Trump coin, which started right before he took office. Are you concerned about a conflict of interest there?
I don't think so. I think the Trump coins are collectible. Like I mentioned, there's different categories of digital assets. That's a collectible. It's like a baseball card or a stamp. People buy it because they want to commemorate something. So this is just my personal opinion. I'm not a regulator, but my personal opinion is that it's totally fine.
Yeah, there is a lot in that announcement. Now, be very clear, as David Sachs said, he is not a regulator. It is not going to be up to him. This executive order is not putting a bunch of things into law. So there's going to need to still be a lot of clarity that comes out of this. But when he talks about the lack of regulatory clarity, to me, that is crazy. The way that they were running that by
there's a name for it, I'm forgetting it right now, but basically they do everything through pursuing people legally. So rather than just saying, here are the rules of the road abide by this, they're like, go ahead, try it, see if we sue you. It's crazy, that is so absurd. It would be like saying, okay, we have these new things called cars and roads, but we're not gonna tell you whether you can drive on them, we're not gonna tell you what side, we're not gonna tell you what stop signs, we're not even gonna put stop signs or lights or anything, just figure it out. But there are rules, which is a whole bunch of cops lined up
Literally. So dude, it is the most abusive system ever. So giving people now clarity, I think is really, really important. And to this point, it's going to bring that innovation back. Now, I think the thing that we want to be talking about is online denizens is
Is this good? Is this bad? Is crypto good? Is crypto bad? You're getting a lot of that argument happening. And so now having some in the creation of the regulatory framework and getting the people to lobby Congress and let people know what they want to see out of this, now this can become a really fruitful debate. So stepping back up to the 30,000 foot view and saying, OK, wait a second.
Why does crypto matter? So this has been the drum that I've been beating forever is that web three crypto is it's a technology and when you understand it as a technology and you understand
what that technology opens up, then things get interesting. I don't think that we're going to survive AI without the blockchain period, full stop, end of story. You will not know what's real. So the blockchain is a way to bring the properties, some of the properties of the physical world into the digital world. So for instance,
Is this AI or is this real? With the blockchain, you're going to be able to stamp that and you'll be able to have things like on X where it just auto reads and says, yes, this is signed by the account that says that they're putting it out. So let's say that I make a statement.
And I stamp it with something from the blockchain and I say this really is a message brought to you by Tom Billu because hearing my voice and seeing me say that this is a message by Tom Billu isn't going to make any sense anymore because people will be able to fake that. Deep fakes and all that. Right. But they won't be able to fake my cryptographic signature.
So now all these things that we've sort of taken for granted that you can believe what you see. We all know that that's not true anymore and it's getting more and more sophisticated by the minute. So that's one of the many things that the blockchain can do as a game developer. I am beyond enthralled with what it can do when I think about
trying to make Ready Player One a reality where people can create these incredible experiences inside of a virtual world where you need to be able to say who owns something, where that thing is in the virtual world, what it gives you access to, all of those things are only possible with the blockchain. So the idea of the blockchain bringing the laws of physics to the virtual world, some of them, I'm going to be very clear, obviously not all of them.
But it brings some of the laws of the physical world into the virtual world. It's incredibly important as virtual world becomes more and more meaningful to us to be able to do that. So when people look at an FTX and they think that is crypto and huge scam, people lost a ton of the money.
The reality is what happened there was you had people violating already established laws. You can't co-mingle funds like that. That was already illegal. That isn't a crypto thing. That was just a way for that was the thing that a very horrific company leveraged to do horrible things with people's money.
But again, that was already illegal. So what you don't want to say because somebody did something illegal with the saying that we want to completely get rid of this, that to me would be the wrong way to approach this. So what I think this administration is trying to do is to say, I don't know all of the things that are going to be created, but I do know that if we give people rules that then we will be surprised by the innovation that comes out of this.
So innovation is all the stuff we can't think of, all the things that we didn't know were going to be possible. But if you give people the restrictions, the rules within which to play, then that innovation can thrive. And by bringing it here to America, we're going to be able to reap the benefits of this. Okay, I think that's all incredibly, incredibly important.
Now, you get into as you zoom farther in and you start going, okay, wait a second. Okay, Tom, I buy your argument that cryptography is allowing us to bring some of the properties of the physical world into the digital world. Okay, I can see that that might lead to some interesting and innovative positive things. I buy the argument about AI is just going to be runaway, fakery everywhere. I won't know what's real. Cool, I get that. But let's talk about a really specific thing that's been born of this, something like a meme coin.
Okay, David Sachs, one of the things that he's signaling there is that this administration is going to take the approach that those things are collectibles.
Okay. Debate time, whether these are collectibles or not, I think that that's really worthy of looking out from a regulatory perspective as somebody that is the video game that we're doing leverages NFTs, those have become filthy letters when it's thrown together. But the idea of the skins inside of our video game, those are done on
Web three rails so that you own it, right? So it's a thing that if you want to go sell, you can go sell. Now, originally when I got into this, I thought that it would attract collectors. It doesn't, it attracts gamblers. And so that was really surprising to me. So I don't think that issue is going to be as culturally clean as people think. Whether people should be able to do it or not, I'll come down firmly on the side of people should be able to do whatever they want that's legal with their money.
So I don't see why you need to make gambling illegal. If people want to bet on football games, I think they should be able to. If people want to bet on meme coins, I think they should be able to. But somebody hit me in the comments on YouTube the other day and they, oh, God, I forget what they compared now. But it was like bitcoins. I think it was Bitcoin and meme coins. Bitcoin and meme coins are the same thing, Tom.
And my response was, that doesn't make any sense to me. That's like saying that my mom and my wife are the same thing because they're both women. And I'm like, hold the phone. My relationship with my mom and my relationship with my wife are very different. And that context matters unimaginably as people can imagine. I treat my wife and my mother excruciatingly different.
And so how you put a regulatory framework around that is going to be for somebody else to decide. But if you can't see that there's a difference, even though you can describe my mom and my wife at a layer of analysis or a level of analysis where they will sound exactly the same. But we all know in reality, when you step back and look at that objectively, it's like, nope, it's very easy to draw lines around these and say, behavior with one.
is wildly inappropriate for behavior with the other. And I would say the same is true for Bitcoin and meme coins, even though I get it at one level of analysis, you can make them sound identical. Now, to me, this is not going to be a universally held position, but to me, meme coins are simply a method of gambling.
And to say that a meme coin, for instance, is an equity, that it's like a stock in a company, that launching a coin is the same as launching an IPO. My reaction to that is absolutely not. Now, the reason that I say that goes back to that context. So there is a reason that I think allowing people the stock market is gambling. Hold tight. We're going to take a quick break.
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the stock market is gambling, okay? But not all gambling is the stock market. So let me be clear, the stock market is gambling. It's nonsensical to look at the stock market in any way, shape or form, other than to say this is gambling. That's like saying that my mom is a woman. Yes, this is true. My wife also a woman.
but the reason that I say not all women are my mother is because when you look at, there's what I call a cover story with a stock market and the cover story for the stock market and the reason why I think it is extremely good that people allow for gambling in the stock market in a way that they get weird when we start talking about a football game, even though I don't think they should, but when you look at gambling in the stock market, you're allowing companies to aggregate capital just from people that just want to gamble.
But you're allowing those companies to aggregate capital from the gamblers and they say, with this money, I'm going to build a company and you're going to be able to see into that company. I'm going to have all kinds of reporting requirements and all that stuff. So you can see them really doing the things with that capital that I said I was going to do. But you're allowing them to aggregate that capital and build the economic engine that gives
this country and many others, the prosperity that is pulled. God knows how many billions of people out of poverty. Okay. So capitalism has this tremendous knock on effect of creating a world of plenty, very unequal distributions. I understand that, but it's still the only thing that we've seen that pull people out of poverty. Okay. So that's what happens when you're allowed to gamble on the stock market by doing an IPO.
Now, why aren't meme coins an IPO? Meme coins are not an IPO because there is none of that quote unquote cover story. There's none of the I'm going to do this thing with this capital and create a thing that is building something that the world considers valuable such that the company itself creates a self-sustaining economic engine. Remember, companies sell a thing of value for more than it costs them to make it so they can continue to pay their employees, continue to make that thing.
So even without the IPO, this is why private companies that are not raising capital from the outside world can also create a self-sustaining economic engine and they can keep going without allowing people to gamble on their company. That tells you that there's a thing there with or without the gambling that really works. This is why you've got these, hey, they're both women but two wildly different things. So meme coins are
people betting on culture. Okay, again, it's gambling. People want to gamble. They want to bet on culture. Launching it to me is not launching an equity. Sax is saying he, as the AI and cryptos are,
Not a regulator, but he views them as collectibles. I think it's wildly different. I wish that it attracted collectors, but that's me applying my definition. So you disagree with that, that a meme coin is a collectible? I probably just disagree on what a collectible is. To me, a collectible is something that has emotional value that people want to own because it's a thing that matters to them. And maybe one day down the line, they'll sell it, but that's not really the juice.
The juice is, I love this thing and I collect this thing. This is an arbitrary definition that Tom Billy was making up. I am not asking the world to adopt it. But if you want to understand the language that comes out of my mouth, about my feelings, about what meme coins are, and whether I like them or not, how I differentiate what we're doing at impact theory, from what other people are doing. To me, I am only interested in the collecting side. I am not interested in the speculation side. I got smashed in the face by that. Just did not see that one coming.
when I originally got involved in Web3. Cool. Not a fan, don't like that energy as a builder. It's just not my shtick. So meme coins though, if you look at
What the phenomenon is at this moment in history, okay, we all know basically for me everything boils down to the way that the financial system is built and that you've got fiat money, people print the life out of it, that's stealing, they're stealing money from people without reducing the number of dollars that you have in your bank account.
the very fancy way of getting that money, which causes people to go, wait a second, I can't save my way to retirement. So now I have to gamble. We lovingly call it investing. And that has created this culture where you've got primarily young people that feel completely isolated from the American dream, where their future is going to be better than today. Their kid's future is going to be better than today. They don't believe it.
They don't believe it because of the things that would normally get them on that wealth building path. They really aren't available and I'll over simplify it to real estate. Okay. Real estate just doesn't really exist for them in, in terms of their ability to get on that property ladder. So now to beat inflation, they can't buy a house and live in it. Uh, so they have to gamble and they are right now gambling on things like,
Bitcoin, they're gambling on things like meme coins. Now, again, I think Bitcoin is very different than a meme coin for contextual reasons. I'm not saying, again, you can describe Bitcoin, it will sound exactly like a meme coin. But I'm saying, contextually, people are using Bitcoin as a way to store wealth. Anybody, Peter Schiff, I love you, but anybody that tries to get you to believe that gold isn't a meme mineral is a fool.
Gold is a meme mineral, silver is a meme mineral. They are used for things, but that's not what predicates their value. And anybody that tries to get you to believe that's just foolish. It's just not anchored to that. And so it's a terrible strategy, meme coins, a terrible strategy from where I'm sitting, to actually generate the kind of wealth that you're going to be able to retire on one day, because people just keep betting and betting and betting and betting. And they're probably going to lose way more than they win.
But that's the cultural moment. That's what we're living in. And as you start parsing these things out and stop staying at that 30,000 foot view of just being like, but FTX, like that is crypto. It's like, it's technology.
It's technology hitting a cultural moment. There's all different kinds of things. And this is why give regulatory clarity and then see what happens. And some of this stuff is just going to be gambling and it's nothing more sophisticated. Some of it is going to be a flight to safety like Bitcoin only because of the context, only because the world is agreed. And the second the world stops agreeing on Bitcoin, then it will turn into a meme coin. So.
All of these things have to be isolated. They have to be looked at individually. But when you start doing that, I think people will, one, be able to better understand what this moment is and what's happening. Two, they will see, oh, this is a technology and technology makes innovation possible. And so we're going to innovate. And then we'll get the regulatory framework that we need to ice out the things that are trash.
At the end of the clip there, David Sachs brought up specifically the Trump coin. Do you think that there's a difference in being the president outside of the collectible and all that argument? We still have to address the fact that Trump did launch a coin. In that context, I understand what a meme coin is, but now politically, is it okay that our president is now participating in the gambling? I hate it.
So it seems, I really like that some things aren't a law, but they're a custom and you violate that custom at you violate that custom. And it is not a good look and it's going to make people feel some kind of way. So until 1951, it was just a custom.
that you could only be president for two terms. And it became that custom because George Washington left after two terms. And the vibe on the street, if you will, at that time was like, he's never going to do it. He's not going to give up power. He remains incredibly popular. And he basically has this opportunity to become king of America. And he said, I'm not going to do it. Two terms, enough topping out, going home.
And everybody did the same thing. They voluntarily didn't run for a third term. And then we had FDR who ran and was elected four times. And then when he died in office, people like, yo, we need to stop this being a like thing that we do, like out of the kindness of our heart. And we need to say there's two fucking term limits. That's it. Period. End of story and let's formalize it.
So I think that there's this informal thing that says, hey, pretty gross if a president is coming in and they are enriching themselves off of being the president. And so we put all, I don't know how much was law and how much was just like, hey, don't be a dick.
But we have guidelines around what a president should and shouldn't do. And people would really scrutinize things that they did. Like, did people stay at Trump's hotel? If they did, bad mojo, go after him. We frown on this aggressively. Again, I don't know if that's a law or just something that culturally were like this terrible. Dude with a meme coin? I won't read his mind. I won't say this is why he did it.
but I will say that it would be very easy for anybody to go, hey, Trump, you own 80% of that coin. Wouldn't it be nice if you could sell a little bit when I drive the price up by buying $50 million worth of stuff? And so now it's not a bribe.
Technically, but that's pretty gross. I don't like that. I don't like that. I don't like that it could be there. I don't like the way that looks. I don't love anything about that. So that's one of those where if we're going to say that people in Congress should not be owning stocks, I would say people in Congress or presidents should not have a meme coin. It just, it's too ripe for abuse.
So yeah, not a big fan. But it does let you know that as far as meme coins go, I would say like, yo, if you're gonna fuck with a meme coin.
That's the one to play with because what makes a meme coin and this is what Andrew Sorkin is finding out the hard way is meme coin is, is a bet on a moment in culture. And the problem is all of those moments begin to dwindle and go away because people just aren't paying attention. But people are going to pay attention to Trump for the next four years for sure. And so they're going to be, remember, volatility is what people want.
People want volatility. They want the price to go up. They want the price to go down and back up. But somebody like Trump, that coin is going to be all over the place. It's going to be swinging wildly. And so now it gives people something to bet on. It gives them a reason to care about politics. It gives them the ability to invest in Trump as politician because they can like bet on all kinds of stuff.
Because they're going to be thinking, oh, he's going to pass this law, do this thing, whatever. Like, for instance, I have not looked at this closely, whatever. But I know at some point down the road, you want to talk about the ICE raids and did it backfire, did it work, did it backfire. And so people are going to be like, oh, they're going to do this piece of legislation. They're going to try this. He's going to meet with this world leader. I'm going to bet on it. And you bet on it by buying or selling your meme coin.
That is that that just is now. I will let other people decide if that should be legal, but that is that is what's going to happen. And if you understand that sense of enthusiasm that it makes more exciting, you'll get why people are going to do it more to come. We'll be back in a bit. And we're back. It's interesting that you bring up Trump's third term because a Republican from Tennessee, Andrew Ogles has just issued a
Okay, I'm not going to say it's I just want to make sure that you know that they're putting the legislation out there hasn't gotten voted on has gotten passed. It's not an executive order. So I want to clarify that.
But this does look a little interesting that he's also enriching himself in power, and somebody is now voluntarily teasing out maybe their Trump term would be a good thing. This is also icky, at least that's how I feel about it. Hard pass. Hard pass for me. Yeah, I like me some two term limits, man, because woo.
The fact that our government turns over is our strength, not our weakness. I understand how it plays internationally, but there is a reason that at the end of the fourth term, or not the end of this term, because he died, but once the presidency of FDR ended, there's a reason that people were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, ratify the Constitution.
Okay? Because people didn't want to get stuck in that where the longer you're in office, the more likely you are to get reelected. This is exactly what happens in Congress and the Senate is people are just like name recognition. Yeah. Sure. Like that. I don't want to have to think about it again. Yep. Yep. Yep. Got it. Got it. And you lose that vibrancy of the turnover. In fact,
Can we talk for a second? Okay, for a long time, Drew, for a long time, I was like, I wanna live forever. It is the very thing that motivates me the most. And then at some point, I started going, I actually think now as I get older, I'm more motivated by the reality that unless something changes, I am going to die. And it just got me thinking about, what is it about death?
From an evolutionary standpoint, it's not necessary. There is a jellyfish that lives forever. Now what it does is it basically goes back to this blob-like state where I assume what's happening is it's going back to undifferentiated pluripotent cells and then they redifferentiate and rebuild. This is why we can have children.
And the child is an old. So we have within us the ability to start something again from scratch. So why don't we just do it to ourselves? And I think this is, I hate that this is true. I think the reason is that there's a quote from Max Planck that says, science does not advance one insight at a time. It advances one funeral at a time.
Meaning, you got to clear the dead intellectual wood out to make room for the new vibrant ideas. And that as we get older, we are thinking becomes dogmatic. And all the things that made us, you know, brilliant when we were young, they start slowing things down as we get old. And look, I would still like to live forever and be very honest.
I'm happy if you ship me off to Mars and that's the whole people at, you know, whatever 160 or forced to leave. Notice I threw that number pretty high because I think renewal is a real thing. So I think that same thing applies to the political machinery. If we want to stay vibrant, we, you want to age people out.
Not in terms of their actual literal age though, that too, but that's a separate conversation. You just don't want anybody to stay around too long. It stops vibrancy. It stops new ideas from making their way forward.
I don't know if I could live forever. I feel like that's the, the beauty of life is that it's temporary. So if you can, why do you think that in a very weird way, it's kind of the abundance trap. Cause when you have more of something, it has less value. As when you have a little bit of it, then you want to kind of hold on to it. Let me ask you a question. Maybe the answer will scare me. Have you ever woken up and thought, nah, I'd rather be dead.
Um, yes. Okay. Maybe that answers the question. I have it.
And because I haven't, I think, well, I want to keep going. I can't imagine a day where I'd ever be like, I don't ever want another shot at this. And because I believe that, I know that I will be sad when the ride comes to an end. And my enjoyment of this ride, even when I was young, my enjoyment was never predicated on it's going to end. My enjoyment was always predicated on, I can do this and I can do this and I can do this.
And so I think that there are a lot of people that have that algorithm of like,
I'm only able to play this hard because I know I'm not gonna have to play this hard forever. And I like playing this hard because I like playing this hard. And I think that might be part of what is confusing to people. It's also possible that having kids would trip something in my brain that would say, oh, it's better for you to die off and to let them go because I don't have kids, maybe that neurological algorithm just never got tripped. That's possible.
But I also think that people just wired differently. So I never look at that and think, oh yeah, I want this ride to end. But I mean, wanting death doesn't.
I think those are the two things aren't the same. I think that going back to like you appreciate, because you know that people aren't going to be around, you try to appreciate them more. But if you knew that everybody was going to be around, you would think like, oh, I have more time. We'll have more time. We'll have more time. We'll have more time. What I'm saying is in that moment where I'm like, I have more time. I have more time or money. I have tons of money. Those aren't the things that make me value or not value something.
So the very thing that makes me value my life is not that I know it will end, though I do find that now very motivating. But what makes me enjoy my life isn't that it is that I love doing the things that I'm doing in and of themselves. This is why I really, really, really, really advise people. Do not value yourself for success. Value yourself for the sincere pursuit.
So I'm never thinking about finish lines or accomplishment. I'm thinking about right now, you and I are doing something that I find thoroughly enjoyable right now. And as we prepare for these episodes, always a little bit hard. It's always a little bit frustrating. We never feel like we have enough time, but I still love it.
Like, I love that the textures of it are different, that the preparation for the episode feels very different than the episode itself, that that feels like the practice, and then the reward is that we get to think through these things and talk about these things, and I find that absolutely thrilling. Because I'm in the moment, guys, as much as I can, look, I fall prey to the same traps everybody else does.
But I really do enjoy that in the moment while I'm doing it thing and I've tried to construct my life around that. So take even spending time with my mom at Christmas. I'm hyper aware that I only have so many Christmases left with my mom.
But that isn't the thing that makes it fun in the moment. The thing that makes it fun in the moment is a very complex answer, but she makes me feel some kind of way. And talking to her makes me feel some kind of way. And that isn't predicated on, I won't have any more of this.
Nice, nice. All right, we got two catch-alls and then we can wrap this up. First, we have this tweet that we talked about earlier. Globalism is civilizational suicide. And to me, I caught it ironic when you showed it to me that Western nations are feeding into globalism. Now with the AI and technology boom, we're now kind of even departing from capital itself. So now we really can work
without the people next to us in our immediate communities, but that also can be our downfall. I just wanted to kind of get a perspective on this globalism versus individualism debate on the country scale. There is a really powerful idea in business that everything is about aggregation and then disaggregation.
So you look at when the streaming wars were happening, it was just a proliferation of all these different services. And now they're going to consolidate and people are going to buy them up and you're going to have very few. And then somebody's going to realize there's a business opportunity and breaking them back apart and they will break back apart and then they will come back together and break apart and come back together. And that is one of the drivers in the business cycle.
Uh, the same is true at the international level. There will be times where everybody prospers more from cooperation and spreading things out and getting things done the cheapest over here because they're going to invest in that technology, letting China specialize in manufacturing and America's going to specialize in technology. And we break apart and then we realize, Oh, wait a second.
The Chinese economy is getting a little bit too strong. We're weakened by the fact that we don't have any manufacturing. Middle America is really starting to squawk because we have made their lives worse, not better. And so now we're bringing it back and we've got the political will to do that. And so we'll come back together. And then whatever, 7,500 years from now, we're going to break back apart and we're going to go globalist again.
it's part of a cycle, right? So this is the right meme now, but it wasn't the right meme in the 90s. Now people that can predict that this is where this was gonna go, we're just saying, yeah, we'll go through this really rad period, but then on the other side of this, this is gonna suck, but you gotta pass through a really rad period. So it comes down to what's the moment in time, that moment in time is based on how people are feeling, based on what's actually happening in their lives.
And as circumstances change, then the viable change, the policies will change, the reality will change, and it's just a cycle over and over and over and over. Nice. And we have one community question. This is specifically to the biggest pain point of this new level of our future. She's referencing an AI at this point. Whether the pain points of this new chapter for the average person and what are the KPIs to be focused on when facing these challenges separate. And then the second part will be how do you address this topic with others to wake them up from the impending shift?
Well, let's take the last part first. This show, we talk about it on this show, and it's going to be a mixed bag. There's no two ways about it. Okay, so the biggest pain point is going to be meaning and purpose. Meaning and purpose is ultimately all that matters. All the money in the world is not going to help you if you don't feel like you matter, if you don't feel like you're contributing in a positive way, if you don't have a reason for your suffering.
read Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, even in a concentration camp, even in the face of the death of everyone and everything that you love dying and being obliterated, you can find a reason to keep going. The Nietzschean quote, anyone with a strong enough why can survive almost anyhow. So.
Meaning and purpose is the primary algorithm that is placed in the human mind. And this is why you get things as insane as the crusades and you can get people to leave their homes and go fight on another continent to steal all their gold, basically, and all their land because you're doing it in the name of God. This is why people will die for their families. It's meaning and purpose. I will give everything up to and including my life because this thing matters to me that much.
And if you don't have meaning and purpose in your life, it's game over. So AI is going to rob people of the automatic meaning and purpose. I think family's gonna become tremendously important. I think in this coming from a guy with no kids, I think family is going to be the solution. And people refocusing their energy and their efforts on finding love, getting married,
having children, raising them well, that's gonna be the play. And the default play, it's not the path that I'm walking down, but I am so hyper aware of the need to constantly find meaning and purpose in my life. But I think that will be the standard path that people will walk. I think there's gonna be a tremendous spiritual awakening, reembrace whatever you wanna call it, but there is a God-shaped hole in all of us, and that is going to need to be filled. And those are the dangers in this moment, and that's ultimately how it's gonna be solved.
So what KPIs could we address that if we wanted to find what our meeting and purpose is in life?
Okay, so spiritual things are very difficult to turn into a KPI, but the generic thing, because I did not think of an answer ahead of time, the generic thing is just gonna be, how do you feel? Do you have a sense of, I matter? Are you doing something that makes you feel expansive or makes you contract? Are you able to listen to a show like this where I, with laughter, say that there's an asteroid hurtling towards the earth,
But I really mean it. Can you look at that? Can you stare in the face of that anxiety and still go about your life and look at the people that you love? Somebody said, it might be worth putting up. I tweeted this out. In fact, I'm going to end us on this. I'm just going to read this tweet.
And I hope that it answers this question in full and then we'll be leaving people with something very wonderful and very positive. I got a private text message from a friend who was in a pretty dark place.
And they were looking for me to give them that sort of rah, rah, um, motivational thing. And instead I gave them the following. All of life is one big Jedi mind trick. If pursuit isn't bringing you joy, ease off of pursuit and focus on what you already have. If all you have is a pot to piss in, good. You're not dying of cancer. And if you're dying of cancer, good. It will make you savor this moment.
The only reason I enjoy my life is precisely because I don't value myself for succeeding. I only pursue things because I like the chase. If I wasn't having fun with the pursuit, I would stop chasing and never look back. I remind myself constantly that in my back pocket is the option to choose monk-like detachment. Wanting is the disease. Helping others is secure. Read the dao de jing. It will change your life if you let it.
None of us ever achieve our desired level of greatness. Greatness itself is a trap. Sit with your eyes closed and think of those you love. Fill your heart with that love. If you love no one, get a dog. Pour yourself into those who need it. Stop thinking you will love yourself when you achieve you won't. You will love yourself when you decide that you are already enough flawed as you are.
When self-improvement stops being fun, slow down and love something. Want nothing more than you have, need nothing more than a warm room, a full belly, and something that smiles or wags its tail when it sees you. Life really is that simple. Oh, and have cheap hobbies. Love you, brother. Wish life was easier, but it's not. Well said. That's all I got. There it is. All right, everybody. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.
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