Navigating Crisis: Race, Economics, and Unity in Turbulent Times + Tribute to Charlie Kirk

Highlights

Multiculturalism Is Core To America's Strength

• America is inherently multicultural and trying to expel groups is incompatible with our founding and strengths.
• Tom Bilyeu warns that racial narratives online amplify division and worsen outcomes unless grounded in first principles. Transcript: Tom Bilyeu Becoming a problem. This is wild. Now, again, some of this is it starts online, but what online does is it gives people the narrative. And part of what I'm trying to do, because I will routinely get criticism from people that encountered me in phase one when all I talked about was empowerment, who are like, yo, you fell Off. Like I really miss when all you did was put out empowerment. My response to that is the message has to meet the moment. Otherwise you're just making noise. And we are in a moment now where we have a cultural problem and we are now dealing with the consequences of all the things that come downstream of culture from bad policy. I have a firm belief that when you have the wrong policies, your culture will ultimately fall. And that falling has, call it roughly a hundred years of horrifying consequences. So I'm trying to stop us from going down that path. And so when I look at what's happening with race, race is ratcheting up. I'm trying to give people a narrative and it is a narrative trying to make it as true as possible. But every time you choose a word, you're picking a narrative, but I'm trying to give people a narrative that will lead them to first principles, that will allow them to build up from that, That will hopefully stop them from sliding onto a team, stop them from being ideological, get them to define their own value system, not necessarily mimic mine, but to have a value system That they can articulate such that they would be able to respond in a moment like that because they know what they expect of themselves. So when I watch race ratcheting it up and I hear somebody like Nick Fuentes or I hear somebody like Scott Adams, putting that narrative out there is only going to further exacerbate the Problem. So I don't like those narratives as, um, when I look at their utility of what it's going to do, because it's only, we are a multicultural society period. End of story have been since our founding. So, uh, it won't play out well for us. The Chinese can do it. They can kick everybody out. Uh, if they think that, um, there's any sort of detriment to their cultural integrity. But that's not America, man. That wasn't the gamble that we made. And we become the most effective country on planet Earth because of our geography. Let's not get it twisted about that. That's a huge part of it. But then also because we over optimize for freedom over everything else. And so that's created this incredible thing, but we are a multicultural society. (via) ^rwhi937131333

Exit Emotional Arguments Immediately

• Eject from conversations driven by emotion because emotional reasoning makes false connections feel true.
• Build conclusions from first principles and facts to create useful solution sets. Transcript: Tom Bilyeu Out of your emotions. Get out of your emotions. And anytime you see somebody locked in their emotions and they are reasoning from a place of emotion, eject. First of all, you're not going to be able to convince them of anything. Remember that emotions make dots feel like they connect that don't actually connect. Meaning when they're looking at the race of it all, it feels right. I see a black man. He is killing a white woman. He said the words. I got that white woman. So it's like, yeah, yeah, Like, this is our problem. Race. Once you try to build up from first principles, you then have to contend with, well, hold on a second. He had schizophrenia. What is more likely to have played a bigger role in his decision making process? Racism or schizophrenia? And I think you'll see that schizophrenia comes first and everything else cascades down from that. So then it's like, oh, okay, cool. I have a solution set now that's being informed by the facts on the ground. (via) ^rwhi937131318

Start Building An Asset-Based Portfolio

• Own assets to protect yourself from inflation and economic decline instead of relying on wages alone.
• Study Ray Dalio and Lynn Alden strategies and diversify across stocks, risk-on assets, and protective bonds. Transcript: Tom Bilyeu So from an economic standpoint, you have to separate the average person, the person that doesn't own assets from the person that does own assets. If you own assets, the economy is awesome. It's probably in a bubble and you're probably about to go through a multi-year recession. But nonetheless, whatever, those happen every now and then. And as long as there's not some massive like trend coming that I can't see, like stagflation or something like that, your way bigger concern is that America ends in revolution or civil War by by orders of magnitude than that you end up in, you know, 30 years of stagflation like Japan. So I don't think that we have that problem because we are still the world's reserve currency. So you'd have a managed decline there. For people that don't own assets, this is a catastrophic time. Catastrophic. And so this is why I am really… So I'm driven by meaning and purpose. So that's the thing that pushes me. So for anybody that's confused why a guy with as much money as I have, why I do what I do, why I didn't just ride off into the sunset, it's because I want to matter. I want to make sure that my cycles on this earth, I feel like I'm contributing to the group in a positive way. My intelligence, my passions, the thing that I'm good at is helping people think through these kinds of problems. And right now, going back to this idea, today's theme of the show, I guess, is level of analysis. You get somebody like Gary's economics, he's identified the problem. Someone like Momdami, he's identified the problem, but their solution is retarded. So it's like, that's where I fit right now. And over time, maybe that'll change and maybe people will figure this out. But right now, that's the thing that I'm really trying to drive home for people is there are traceable physics to why the economy is booming for people that own assets and why it's a horrific Train wreck for people that don't own assets. And so now it's like, well, do you want to keep being in that side of things? Or are you going to finally make the transition and learn about this? And as somebody who's now spent five years learning about investing, it's like even I now I'm like, I was talking to Lisa about this over my vacation is like, oh, I now see a future where I don't have to worry about making money off of entrepreneurship, which is where I've always focused. I'm good at making money. I'm not good at investing money. But now as I get better at investing money and I understand this game, I haven't made more yet off of investing than I made off of entrepreneurship, but I made a lot. And so it's like, whoa, this really works. So that's the thing I become evangelical about is getting people to understand. You don't have to remain in the camp of like, well, I'm not part of the elite. I'm not in the top 10%. I'm not in the 1%. It's like, stop. That's emotion. That's narrative. Get to the physics of money. Okay. It works in a knowable way, which means that you can do knowable things to have a knowable outcome. (via) ^rwhi937131312

Why Socialism And Money Printing Collapse Economies

• Socialism fails because people won't consistently work for free and tax revenue depends on entrepreneurship.
• Money printing and manipulating capitalism, not capitalism itself, are key sources of economic breakdown. Transcript: Tom Bilyeu Socialism breaks down because you, dear viewer, won't work for free. Period. That's it. None of us will work for free. Because none of us will work for free, giving people things for free never works. Because you were saying, oh, you need to do that thing for free. People also don't understand how tax revenue is generated. So because they don't understand how tax revenue is generated through entrepreneurship, period, end of story, full stop, nothing else. Then it's like, oh, well, if you break entrepreneurship, then there's nothing to give for free. So the very thing that's putting them in this impoverished position that's breaking the economy is money printing. So it's the part of the government that deviates from capitalism. Now, capitalism needs to be checked. It needs regulations. But as we deviate more and more from capitalism, we break the system more and more. That's what's messing people up. It isn't capitalism. It's the way that we've manipulated it, corrupted it, that that becomes the problem. And socialism is that on steroids. Socialism is let's take all the things that we've done to break the economy and magnify it a hundredfold. (via) ^rwhi937131307

Follow A Diversified, All-Weather Allocation

• Allocate roughly 40% to broad dividend-producing equities, 30% to risk-on/real-protective assets, and 10–20% to bonds or TIPS.
• Avoid over-indexing to tech and learn proven all-weather strategies first. Transcript: Tom Bilyeu Let's walk them through it. Drew I'm happy to get super specific. Tom Bilyeu So the thing that you should be doing is Ray Dalio is the best. So you can just follow him. He's got what he calls the all-weather strategy. So the all-weather portfolio. So go learn the principles of that. He's laid it out endlessly. Just follow him on Instagram. You can certainly read his books, but he details it out over and over and over. We just had Lynn Alden on the program. She has her three pillars strategy. Again, go look at that. I just did a deep dive where I walk through Lynn Alden's, like a distilled version of Lynn Alden's three pillars strategy. You don't even have to go beyond my content to find these answers, but certainly you can. There are plenty of people talking about this, but you have to own assets. The one that everybody understands intuitively is housing, but this is not a good moment for housing. People have been priced out of it due to inflation. So far better to go somewhere where you can own a small piece of something like the stock market. The stock market for all of its corruption is a modern miracle. Invest in the stock market. Find things that have a long-term track record of delivering dividends in a sustainable way to their shareholders. So you're going to look for those. It's going to be, call it 40% of your portfolio. Another, call it 30% of your portfolio is going to be risk on assets. So things like crypto, you're going to do things that are protective like Bitcoin or gold so that you're probably not going to get the insane upside. Certainly not with gold. Bitcoin probably isn't going to look that one maybe still has legs. It maybe it's going to keep growing like everybody says, but anyway, you're looking for things that can't be inflated. That's the key there. Uh, and then have some really protective stuff like, um, bonds, tips, uh, things that you're just trying to make sure that your principal can't, can't, there's no such thing, but that Has what they call a risk-free rate of return. Nothing is truly risk-free, but you get the idea. And so that's going to be roughly 10 to 20% of your portfolio. That's a really bad sort of fumbly way through it. I've done far clearer, simple step-by breakdowns. And again, Ray Dalio, Lynn Alden, both do incredible breakdowns. You can find both of them inside my content, or you can go directly to their own stuff. This is all very knowable. It's very simple. Get into the stock market in a super broad way. Okay. Be very careful about just like over indexing on technology, for instance, because you're probably in a bubble right now. Go a little bit broader than that, though. (via) ^rwhi937131297

Diversify Investments

• Follow Ray Dalio's all-weather strategy and Lynn Alden's three pillars strategy for investment.
• Own assets like the stock market, especially those with long-term sustainable dividends.
• Allocate around 40% of your portfolio to stocks.
• Dedicate about 30% to risk-on assets like crypto (Bitcoin) or gold, which can't be inflated.
• Reserve 10-20% for protective investments like bonds to safeguard your principal. Transcript: Tom Bilyeu Specific. So the thing that you should be doing is Ray Dalio is the best. So you can just follow him. He's got what he calls the all-weather strategy. So the all-weather portfolio. So go learn the principles of that. He's laid it out endlessly. Just follow him on Instagram. You can certainly read his books, but he details it out over and over and over. We just had Lynn Alden on the program. She has her three pillars strategy. Again, go look at that. I just did a deep dive where I walk through Lynn Alden's, like a distilled version of Lynn Alden's three pillars strategy. You don't even have to go beyond my content to find these answers, but certainly you can. There are plenty of people talking about this, but you have to own assets. The one that everybody understands intuitively is housing, but this is not a good moment for housing. People have been priced out of it due to inflation. So far better to go somewhere where you can own a small piece of something like the stock market. The stock market for all of its corruption is a modern miracle. Invest in the stock market. Find things that have a long-term track record of delivering dividends in a sustainable way to their shareholders. So you're going to look for those. It's going to be, call it 40% of your portfolio. Another, call it 30% of your portfolio is going to be risk on assets. So things like crypto, you're going to do things that are protective like Bitcoin or gold so that you're probably not going to get the insane upside. Certainly not with gold. Bitcoin probably isn't going to look that one maybe still has legs. It maybe it's going to keep growing like everybody says, but anyway, you're looking for things that can't be inflated. That's the key there. Uh, and then have some really protective stuff like, um, bonds, tips, uh, things that you're just trying to make sure that your principal can't, can't, there's no such thing, but that Has what they call a risk-free rate of return. Nothing is truly risk-free, but you get the idea. And so that's going to be roughly 10 to 20% of your portfolio. That's a really bad sort of fumbly way through it. I've done far clearer, simple step-by breakdowns. (via) ^rwhi937131239

Inflation Acts As An Invisible Tax Favoring Asset Owners

• Inflation silently taxes everyone and funnels value to asset owners, increasing wealth concentration.
• Bilyeu highlights that asset ownership is the flight to safety created by deficit spending. Transcript: Tom Bilyeu The problem is people want to be fancy. They want to be day traders. They want to get rich fast. If people could just say, I'm going to get rich, but it's going to take me 30 years. If they could just have that mentality, oh my God, they would be in the game. The thing that other people are just absolutely destroying their ability to purchase something, they're doing it by understanding how inflation works, that it forces you to own assets. And so if people just accepted, that is what we have voted for. We collectively as the Western world, because it is not just a phenomenon in America, but we, the Western world have decided that we are so compassionate that we're going to give so many Things away for free, that we are now at a point where we can't even tax the populace enough. We've got to tax them invisibly because they'd never vote for it through inflation. And so we're going to deficit spend, inflate your ability to purchase into essentially nothing, force everybody into the stock market. And hey, if you're in the stock market, you're loving life because it's stealing from everybody, but only giving to the people that own assets. (via) ^rwhi937136494

Defend Your Future Against Deficit Spending

• Vote against deficit spending and prioritize policies that enable saving and asset accumulation.
• Put yourself in positions to own assets instead of relying on political fixes you can't control. Transcript: Tom Bilyeu Possibly to people in the company? Theoretically, though I already don't trust them to do that, but let's say theoretically that they did that. What if the company is not in a position to do that? So the way that you attract talent is you offer them a compensation package. Now, this is one of those where, again, people have a finger on a problem. So income inequality is really problematic. So the question becomes, what do we need to do to actually resolve income inequality? And what I'm saying is socialism is not the answer. This hybrid idea where people vote on it is not the answer. What you need to do to start getting rid of income inequality has a lot to do with globalism and it has everything to do with inflation. So you've got to put people in a position where they can save their money and become like self-sufficient from that perspective. When people talk about not being able to get ahead, what they're really talking about is I'm always behind, always behind, always in debt, always in debt. So the question becomes, why is everything getting more expensive? The reason everything is getting more expensive is because the government is printing money. Why is the government printing money? The government is printing money because they want a deficit spend. They want to give too many things away for free. So now they have to lower the value of the dollar, which makes asset prices seem to go up in value. And in reality, they're not actually going up in value. It's just a place for you to hide from the effects of inflation. So getting people to understand, oh, you have a flight to safety. It's called asset ownership. You would be far better off never again voting for anybody who deficit spends. (via) ^rwhi937136714

How Violence And Martyrdom Fuel Polarization

• Political violence escalates when groups view opponents as existential threats and narratives convert single acts into wide conflicts.
• Bilyeu warns that martyrdom and team identity will likely intensify polarization unless people consciously de-escalate. Transcript: Tom Bilyeu And I did not understand what he meant. But this is what he means, that we reach a point where people believe that violence is not just an answer, but violence is the answer. And then you get into a cycle of violence where obviously many people are going to interpret this moment as being about the other team. The Democrats did this. The Democrats are the problem. And now instead of it being about one shooter who did something, it becomes an entire political party and it only further exacerbates the tension between the sides. This is a muted response that people understand that this was one guy, that it was a person who made a decision that this is not that the most dangerous way to interpret this, barring extreme Evidence, would be the most dangerous way to look at it would be to default to. It was the Democrats and this is now Democrats versus Republican and we've got to escalate. That would be the most dangerous way to move forward. But the least popular thing I think right now is going to be anybody who calls for coming together, finding a path to the middle. But that is for sure what we need to do. I just don't see any other way. All of this stuff, when you look at history, this stuff becomes incredibly repetitive that an assassination will often spark that next move. It does not need to be that way, but that certainly is how humans respond. If the kindling is sufficient, it only takes a spark for something to catch fire. So we'll see how people respond. I'm certainly very eager to see people read this as a sign that we need to calm down, that we need to deescalate. So we'll see. We will see. Is the thing that I would really like to see people take away from this to expressly state that we need to articulate what the goal is that we have in mind. And unless we want to see this country tear itself apart from the inside, we've got to have a shared vision of what the future looks like. But this certainly isn't de-escalatory. This is escalatory. But it comes down to how people respond. As I run the thought exercises of how to get people to de-escalate, the only thing I can think of is to get people to walk through cause and effect. (via) ^rwhi937139863