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Energy, Conflict, and Global Instability · Bourbon & Rum

0:00
I think the nature of warfare is being changed, arguably as much
0:06
as the original invention of the airplane and maybe even the game
0:10
changing that nuclear weapons were.
0:13
Republicans are always famous of talking about energy
0:15
independence. Well, it's kind of ABS concept.
0:18
Some dude gets a drone out of his garage with a remote control
0:22
that he bought at Best Buy and you blow up a tanker.
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Welcome to Bourbon and Rum, the podcast dedicated to civil
0:31
conversation. I'm Kent, I like rum and I'm
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from the left side of the aisle. And I'm Kyle.
0:36
I like bourbon. I tend to be a little more
0:38
conservative. We're brothers talking politics
0:41
over bourbon and rum. What are you drinking?
0:56
I am drinking a, a Memphis bourbon.
1:00
It's called Blue Note. I don't know if I've had it on
1:02
this podcast before or not. It's a it's a source bourbon.
1:08
I think Green River Distillery actually makes the juice.
1:11
But this is like one of these distilleries where, you know,
1:14
they get other people's stuff. They brand it, but they're
1:17
pretty high proof, 120 proof and kind of a high rye, but but a
1:23
little sweeter than some of the rice.
1:25
What are you drinking on? I'm just, I've got one of those,
1:30
I'm trying to thin the herd a little bit and I've got a bunch
1:33
of bottles with about, you know, a finger and a half left in the
1:37
bottom of them. So this is one of those, the
1:40
Venezuelan rums that's terrible. This, some of them are good.
1:45
This one's not good. So I'm just going to try to get
1:49
rid of it. I won't besmirch.
1:51
What's the name of? That.
1:52
I can't even remember it's over in the other room.
1:55
And I wouldn't want to, you know, slander a otherwise fied
1:58
Venezuelan rub distiller. So.
2:00
Well, yeah, you wouldn't want it for that.
2:03
I'm doing the same thing. I haven't drank this any of this
2:06
stuff in like 6 months but I'm looking same thing at the shelf
2:09
and I'm like oh this one's a little low so I better start
2:12
making these out. Create some space.
2:14
Well, what's going on? What?
2:17
What's happening in the world? You know, the war continues to
2:20
rage on and I ran hard to hard to know exactly, you know, the
2:29
progress. I mean, it sounds like they're
2:31
taking out a lot of the targets. And I think there's questions of
2:36
whether the the current Ayatollah's son is alive or I
2:42
don't think he's been seen publicly, but they they say he's
2:47
alive and well. So we'll see if that turns out.
2:51
But, you know, I think there's hope again that there's going to
2:55
be a overthrow of some kind. I think obviously the, the
2:59
government's pretty entrenched. I know I've been reading about
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the former Shaw's son. Supposedly he's working on some
3:06
angles. I mean, I just, you know, not
3:08
sure how, how and when the the people can stand up and what,
3:14
what that tipping point looks like.
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I think the other big issue right now is the Strait of
3:19
Hormuz and the right, you know, lobbing up little drones and
3:24
stutch. I mean, I think we've pretty
3:25
much taken out their Navy. We've taken out the big ships,
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but it now it's a problem with these little drones they lob up
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and creating havoc and scaring off the tankers.
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Well, I won't pass myself off as a military expert, but I think
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this is being keeping with things that you said in the
3:41
past. I mean, if we've learned one
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thing from Ukraine and the use of drones, you know, maybe big
3:50
capital warships are not where we ought to be spending our
3:54
billions. I mean, seriously, like for all
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of this, we got all the Tomahawks in the world.
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We're, we're flying B twos around the world and ultimately
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it's floating mines and drones that have choked the world's oil
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supply. I mean, I, I think that is, and,
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and I'm not saying this just to beat a drum on the
4:23
administration, but it's like, man, you have got to look at the
4:27
world has changed really, really fast.
4:30
I, I think, I think this is, this is going to sound stupid,
4:36
but I think that the nature of warfare is being changed
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arguably as much as the original invention of the airplane and
4:49
maybe even the the game changing that nuclear weapons were.
4:57
What changed was not just the ability of nuclear weapons to
4:59
kill a lot of people. It was like the like the
5:03
ultimate trump card and it required this just massive
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capital and scientific investment to do it.
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Well, you have something doesn't kill people at the rate like
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nuclear weapons do, but three dudes in a basement can now make
5:20
stuff that can, you know what I mean?
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I think it's, I think it's really profound.
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I think it is too. And I, I would say one of the
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things that highlights is something that is bigger than an
5:34
administration and that is the, the military industrial complex.
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I mean, it moves like a slow, huge aircraft carrier.
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And, you know, in the world of AI and rapid advancement in
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technology, I think that's our biggest risk is the ship is not
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going to move fast enough because, you know, the the B21
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that we're spending gazillions of dollars on right now, Well,
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you know, that's technology they decided upon a decade ago.
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You know, and it's like we got to be able to move faster to
6:13
these really asymmetric threats. Yeah, I think that that's really
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the the lesson on this. I think it's telling that we're
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not even ready to claim that we can protect ships through the
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Straits of Hormuz. You know, we I don't know and I
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don't know if they could right. What do you do?
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You send a destroyer alongside and you hope that they're that
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they're anti missile defense can protect the ship next to you.
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I don't know. You know the part.
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I'm I am not an economist and I don't even play one on
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television. But I don't, you know, one thing
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I don't understand and maybe you can help me with is the price of
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oil and how, you know, I get that it's a global commodity
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market, but why is it that, you know, OK, the price of oil goes
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up because this issue with the Strait of Hormuz.
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But if I look at the United States, we get like 4% of the
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oil or oil from the Middle East. So that supply disruption, it's
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not disrupting our supply, it's just disrupting the global
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supply. And thus the price goes up.
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And it's like how why can't there be a way to carve out
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price of oil in the US versus the price of oil in places that
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are much heavier dependent on the Middle East?
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Yeah, it's a it's honestly a really good question.
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And you know, opponents of globalization would point to
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this and say, you know, how is it that we we've got plenty of
8:00
oil in Texas and in Oklahoma and California and off in the Gulf
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of Mexico, we have plenty of oil.
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We're virtually self-sufficient. Well, why are we?
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Why are we paying these domestic companies that and it?
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Seems like if again, now this is my simplistic understanding, but
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oh, the price of oil went up. Well, I'm going to, I was
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charging $3 a gallon last week. This week I'm going to charge
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$4.00 a gallon. But you know, but I guess their
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price is going up because the global price is going up.
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But it it just doesn't make sense to me.
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If anything, the price of oil should be going down, right?
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Because we've got the world's largest supply in Venezuela is
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now not under the thumb of this, right?
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And even if we don't have enough oil in the US, if you add the US
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and Venezuela, keep your tankers in the straits, I don't care,
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right? But that's not how it's playing
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out. Well, but I think it's a, you
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know, it's, it's also kind of a point when you think about it,
9:12
when you know, the Republicans are always famous of talking
9:15
about energy independence. Well, it's kind of ABS concept
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because there is no such thing as energy independence because
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we could be supplying 100% of it and we're still going to charge
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the, because it's all futures based and everybody's paid for
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it based on the global price. So there is no such thing as a,
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you know, independent oil energy independence.
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Yeah, I agree. I agree.
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Yeah, it's. OK.
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So then that brings me to another question.
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Could other things become commoditized and sold in the
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futures market? And I guess where I'm going with
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that is like we've been playing around with calci a little bit
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and these are in that whatever the other betting website like,
10:02
could other things become commoditized that aren't
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commoditized now? Well, actually you're talking to
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me from Texas. And it was about 25 years ago
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that a little company in Houston called Enron set out to
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commoditize the market for broadband.
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That was one of their things. And I'm going to find this
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should be good for the show notes.
10:29
I'm going to find this is worth, this is worth viewing.
10:36
I'm going to send you this. It's just the most beautiful
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thing. This is an actual Enron
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commercial. Can you see it?
10:46
Yeah. Looks vaguely familiar.
10:49
Oh, a new market? Ask why.
10:56
But it's a good point. Like what else is out there?
11:00
What about data centers? Yeah.
11:03
Oh yeah, that's true. I mean commoditized compute
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price. One could be water rights.
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That would be interesting. Yeah, talking about a scarce
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commodity. Yeah, definitely.
11:18
So. So how are you feeling about
11:22
things? I, you know, I guess I'll state
11:24
my position. I don't want to just sound like
11:26
I'm griping about things. I I'm not willing to.
11:30
I got a lot of friends, a lot of the left is up in arms.
11:34
I'm not going to say that it was a bad thing to take out the
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leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
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I mean, I, I don't think that that's an inherently bad thing.
11:45
I am concerned about confused war aims, you know, like, when
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do we know that we won? Trump's kind of prevaricating on
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that, you know, oh, it's almost over.
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And then Pete Hegseth is out there that, you know, we're in
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for the long haul. So I don't know any any thoughts
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on that? Yeah, You know, I don't know.
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I always liked, you know, when I was in the military and then as
12:15
I got to know politics. I always liked the the
12:19
Weinberger doctrine they talked about in the 80s, which was we
12:24
only go to war when there is a, you know, material threat to the
12:29
United States. Then we we go at it with
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overwhelming force, with a clear objective of when you're
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completed. I mean, I'm a little mixed on
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the threat. I mean, I think it's a threat.
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But, you know, I saw a somebody aired a video, a conservative
12:51
commentator I watch, he was griping about it early on,
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showed this reel of Benjamin Netanyahu talking in different
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snippets from like 1978 until now.
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Like Iran is weeks away from centrifuges creating a nuclear
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weapon. You know, it's like they've been
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weeks away for 40 years, you know, and not 78.
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It was something like, but it was like 80s.
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I mean, it's a long time. So that has been said for a long
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time. I do think I don't to me, I
13:31
don't really think I, you know, and maybe Imran, maybe they get
13:36
in there and they're like, yeah, they were really close to a
13:37
nuclear weapon. To me, the nuclear weapon thing
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is like North Korea, It's their it's their chip, their golden
13:45
chip to for keeping people away from them.
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Like, I don't know that how big of a threat that really is.
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I'm more thinking along the lines that Iran is a threat to
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everything else in the world or and world order, you know,
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whether it be Ukraine, whether it's be whether it be what's
14:07
going on and Russia and China and all these places in
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Hezbollah and Hamas. And so I see them more as a
14:14
global bad strings puller than like, I guess I wasn't as
14:20
fearful that they were going to slap nukes on a ICBM and lob
14:24
them over here. I was more of the these guys are
14:28
a pain in the ass and they need to be dealt with.
14:30
OK. So I the number one of the the
14:34
Weinberger doctrine I'm good with #2 overwhelming force.
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I think it's is overwhelming a force as we're willing to use is
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the, is the key there. Because I mean, I don't think
14:48
anybody wants to see a million troops storming that.
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And, and I guess that's the part that gets then tricky is this
14:58
when do you know that you're finished type of a thing.
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And I think what we, I, I think that was one of the mistakes of
15:04
the, of the Iraq war is a, we're going to send in brigades and
15:08
divisions and we're going to make this place a democracy and
15:11
we're going to make everybody happy.
15:12
Well, I think, you know, we talked about this the other day.
15:16
I mean, I think it was a really painful journey.
15:19
I think Iraq's in a pretty good place now, but like, I don't
15:23
know that sending people door to door was necessarily the way to
15:27
get there. So I kind of like the approach
15:31
with Iran where it's much more air power driven.
15:37
I'm OK with ground power as long as it's special forces and it's
15:40
pinpointed. And you know, I don't think we
15:43
should be going door to door because again, like to me,
15:47
that's the problem to solve. And that's the other thing.
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I mean, the problem to solve Iran isn't like World War Two.
15:54
We got to break the will of the people.
15:56
I mean, the people aren't the problem.
15:57
It's the Yahoo's in charge. And so that is where I find it
16:03
challenging. Here is like, how do you define
16:06
that point? I think one way you could define
16:09
it is when the government's obliterated to the point where
16:14
the people actually can jump up and and take control.
16:18
But the part I'm worried about is can you get to a place where
16:24
the government is debilitated enough, but the people still are
16:30
there and can make a difference? Or does it get to a, you know,
16:36
look at the situation in Gaza? Does it get to a place where the
16:39
whole place is just in ruins and nobody's going to be in control?
16:42
So I don't know, I, I'm all, I'm like, I'm with you.
16:45
I'm and and, and I think I would hope that no matter who's in
16:50
charge, I think I would have supported something like this.
16:53
But I also think this is a problem that you know it it it
16:58
don't know that this is a solvable, easily solvable
17:00
problem for either side of the aisle as part of the challenge.
17:03
Yeah, on that front about bipartisanship, I will refer to,
17:08
I don't know if you saw the editorial by David Boies in the
17:13
Wall Street Journal. It was really good.
17:16
He's a prominent Democrat. And he said we basically we
17:21
shouldn't be airing our laundry in public.
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Right? Like if the United States has to
17:26
undergo a military effort, we we can debate the prudence of it,
17:31
but we're not going to undercut the successes of our military.
17:36
I I mostly agree with that. I mostly agree with that.
17:43
I'm not convinced that this is an inherently like an inherently
17:49
immoral, you know what I mean? But yeah, I think that I don't.
17:54
I also don't think we should try to refuse people the right to
17:58
make their beliefs known too, you know?
18:01
So yeah, yeah. I mean.
18:06
I'm rooting for us, you know, and I and I and I hope that I
18:13
need to hold me accountable because we're going to, we're
18:15
going to keep doing this podcast for the next 20 years, Kent.
18:17
So, you know, the next Democrat gets into hold me accountable to
18:22
be rooting for the US regardless of where we're at.
18:25
I mean, if we're in the thick of it, we need to root for our our
18:30
country. But of course.
18:32
My criticism is I think that the idea of being able to effect
18:37
regime change from the air, I, I don't, I don't think that's
18:43
happened in history and I don't think it's going to happen here.
18:48
And you know, some of that's for me, Like I, I don't know if,
18:53
like I said the other week, you know, if Russia decided, hey,
18:56
they think Trump's really on the ropes, 66% of the country
19:00
doesn't support the guy. Well, let's just, let's just
19:04
blow up the White House and maybe the people will rise up
19:07
against Trump. And I'm like, I'm making a false
19:12
equivalence because I know it's not the same thing, but nothing
19:16
would galvanized me in support of Donald Trump.
19:19
Like, yeah, before in power deciding to try to kill him.
19:23
Yeah, so. No.
19:25
And I, I mean, that makes sense. But I do think the Iran
19:31
situation is a yeah, you can say it's a, a matter of degree, but
19:36
I think it's a significant enough difference.
19:39
And it's also a, you know, I think the the level of
19:44
atrocities and vadnais of the regime is beyond like left,
19:51
right fight. It's like. 100% agree and I
19:54
don't. Need people.
19:56
No, no, I know. But I mean, I think even the
19:57
locals generally see that. But I I really worry about that
20:03
because like again. Great, you take out the bad
20:08
guys, but if bombs are exploding every day in my city and I live
20:12
in Tehran, at some point I'm going to like, I I'm sick of
20:17
getting bombed, you know, and it's like, that's the part I'm
20:21
most fearful about. This is how do you keep the will
20:25
of the people like glad that we're getting rid of the regime
20:30
and not like, hey, you sons of bitches, stop bowing us.
20:34
I don't care who's in charge because that could happen and
20:36
that's to me the. Biggest risk 100%.
20:40
The other thing that you know, that we've touched on here, this
20:43
idea about the straights being messed up.
20:46
And I just don't know that like our ability to to clear that up,
20:54
that is not going to be easy. It could be a pretty, pretty low
20:59
common denominator of what it takes to, you know, that
21:03
straights 25 miles wide at the choke point or something like
21:07
that, you know? I don't know.
21:10
I saw a, a map of dots of all the ships and it shows all these
21:16
ships on the Iran side. And I'm, I was thinking that,
21:18
you know, B50 twos at a 50,000 foot altitude, carpet bombing
21:24
might have an impact, but I don't know they've tried that
21:27
yet, but. I don't.
21:31
Know that was always the the I think that was like Vietnam, you
21:35
know they were B50 twos were doing 50,000 foot carpet
21:39
bombing. I mean, that's pretty precise,
21:41
you know, Well. And you fly your bombs and
21:46
everything like that and you blow up a bunch of boats and
21:48
then some dude gets a drone out of his garage with a remote
21:51
control that he bought at Best Buy and you I blow up a tanker.
21:57
I mean, that's the, that's the real risk of, of this the.
22:00
Other thing I'm I'm really interested in, which I think
22:04
will be a benefit is when Saudi and the UAE and Qatar and
22:10
Bahrain, they're close to a tipping point when they're like,
22:14
all right, you bastards, all right, you keep bombing me,
22:17
fine, we're in. Well, one thing that I came
22:20
across this week when I was doing some reading that I,
22:27
again, this is like confessing that I was so out of it.
22:33
One of the things that that caught my attention, you know,
22:36
there's been a lot of problems with the Houthi rebels.
22:40
Yeah, from North Yemen. And I read a little deeper about
22:47
the situation in Yemen, and I'm not kidding when I say that the
22:53
scale of the problem in Yemen literally just blew my mind.
23:03
Yeah, they. Say it's just the world's worst
23:04
humanitarian crisis. And in terms of scale, so the
23:08
whole country of Yemen, just to put it in context, is 42,000,000
23:14
people. That's more people.
23:17
If a lot of people don't even know where Yemen is.
23:19
It's kind of the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula.
23:24
It has a higher population than Saudi Arabia, but they've been
23:29
in a 25 year civil war. And so the Houthi rebels hold
23:36
the capital of Sanaa. And, you know, again, I don't
23:41
want to, like, give people a history lesson, but this war has
23:45
gone on. And what it's created is a
23:51
genuine, like, present and real starvation crisis for millions
23:58
of people. The the population and size of
24:02
the country is very similar to Texas.
24:06
Wow. It's about as many people in
24:09
Texas, similar land mass, yeah. And the government is completely
24:14
collapsed and there's no services and nobody's got food
24:19
to eat or anything. It's.
24:20
Or even water the capital, right?
24:25
So one of the things that happens is that they do have
24:29
some agricultural capacity, but it all gets diverted into
24:35
growing cat The it's a thing they chew.
24:41
It's kind of like cocaine leaves.
24:45
And so there's this huge drug market that a lot of the water
24:50
that should be growing to, you know, Raisin staple crops to
24:56
feed people gets diverted. It is just a disaster.
25:02
And so a lot of my research was done with the help of AI, but I
25:07
was like, well, you know, first of all, why?
25:10
Why is this the way that it is? And it's this long standing
25:14
civil war that there's been really no resolution to.
25:18
Well, and it's kind of what I'm reading about.
25:20
It's kind of a three-way thing because you've got the Houthis,
25:23
then you've got, you know, the, the UAE is supporting A faction
25:27
and the Saudis are supporting A faction and they're all arming
25:30
these people, which is a little interesting to me because I
25:33
wouldn't have thought the Saudis and the UAE would be against
25:37
each other. But they are kind of a because
25:41
you've got, so you got the Houthis in the northwest.
25:44
They control they're. Supported by Iran.
25:46
They're supported by Iran and then you've got the Presidential
25:49
Leadership Council, which is backed mainly by Saudi.
25:53
They're based in the southern port of Aden.
25:56
And then you've got the southern separatists, the STC they call
26:01
them. And it's a UAE backed movement
26:04
and they want South of Yemen to be its own country again.
26:07
So now you you've almost got like not only they're fighting
26:11
for Yemen, they're fighting for chunks of Yemen.
26:13
It's really complicated, so. I, I don't have any, any hope of
26:21
offering any solutions on it, but it, it struck with one of
26:26
the things that I asked was, you know, when I was a kid, when,
26:31
when we were young, the year that I graduated from high
26:35
school, we had Live Aid and we are the world and there was a
26:41
famine in Ethiopia. And to the world's credit, a lot
26:47
of high society and culture rallied around raising money to
26:51
address this looming humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia.
26:56
And I looked it up at the time, the population of Ethiopia was 8
27:01
million people, 20% the number of people we're talking about in
27:07
Yemen. And I'm not seeing any concerts
27:11
to let's save the people of Yemen.
27:13
And you know why? Why is this not even really on
27:17
the global radar? Well, OK, there's 19,000,000
27:23
Yemenis that need aid today in a country of roughly 34 to 35
27:28
million people. It's been a longer path than the
27:35
Ethiopian famine, but still. Yeah, you're right.
27:41
It's and it and it's not OK, This might be a politically
27:48
insensitive thing to say. And actually, I don't mean it
27:51
that way because I, I don't mean this negatively, but I, what I
27:56
mean by politically insensitive is it may make people throw
28:00
things at me, but is the, is the racial and ethnic background of
28:11
Ethiopians more politically favorable than the IT?
28:16
Is starving blackhead more politically favorable than a
28:23
starving Muslim Arab kid? I don't know.
28:26
I I That sounds awful, but is that a factor?
28:30
I, I think it can't not be a factor.
28:33
And you know, I'll even admit to myself again, I, I knew that
28:39
Yemen had a lot of problems, right?
28:42
And I knew that the Houthi rebels were lobbing missiles at
28:46
at ships in the in the Red Sea shortly after the time of Live
28:53
Aid, when we tried to help out Ethiopia.
28:55
Five years later, we were invading Iraq the first time.
29:03
And so for 35 years of my 58 years on the planet, we've been
29:10
in some degree of fighting with unstable countries in the Middle
29:17
East. And even before that, in the
29:19
80s, you know, we, we were looking back on the, since the,
29:26
since the creation of the state of Israel from 1948 to today, 80
29:31
years of an unbroken cycle of violence and tragedy.
29:39
And, and part of it is that maybe people just get inured.
29:44
Here's a top ten list of top humanitarian crises in the world
29:48
today. Top of the list is Sudan, 33 to
29:53
34 million people involved, civil war, famine, displacement.
29:57
Syria next 16 to 17,000,000, civil war, economic collapse.
30:02
Afghanistan. This high on the list is third
30:05
with drought. I guess I didn't realize that
30:08
2324 million in need Yemen is #4 Ethiopia still 2020 million in
30:14
Ethiopia is a problem. Congo Democrat.
30:19
Why do the hell do they say Democratic Republic of Congo or
30:23
Democratic Republic of? I mean, can somebody at a global
30:29
level say there is 0 democratic anything in the Republic of
30:34
Congo? Like OK, Gaza #7 Ukraine 8,
30:39
South Sudan, Haiti. Interesting.
30:42
Yeah, yeah. But I mean, Yemen, like you
30:44
said, it is square in the middle of some of the worst things
30:48
happening. And it's just a, you know, we,
30:55
you know, you start thinking about us and where we rank in
31:00
the world today. And then like, if you look at
31:02
your the math of like what you make per year and how that ranks
31:08
in the world, it's like we're like the top.
31:12
And I think part of why, I mean, part of the problem here is it's
31:18
like we're at the top and it just looks like a too
31:23
insurmountable, insurmountable of a problem.
31:26
And there's nothing I can do. I mean, if if the top whatever X
31:32
percent feels like there's nothing they can do, well then
31:35
nothing's going to get done for anybody.
31:38
Yeah, yeah. I don't know if I have a point
31:42
on this other than I. Don't know I I love the
31:45
conversation. It it it.
31:48
I mean, I don't love that that sounds really negative.
31:51
I don't love that we're talk that there's fam.
31:53
And I'm just saying, I love that we're digging into this.
31:56
Yeah, no, I, I, I, I think it's more, I think your point is
32:01
right. Like what?
32:02
This left me thinking more than anything was like, I I'm paying
32:07
really close attention to the price of oil and what's this
32:10
going to do to our GDP and. And our, you know, 4 O1 KS,
32:17
right? Yeah.
32:18
And you know, we're talking about movement of a percent or
32:22
two here and there. And just like, wow, you know, I
32:26
can't not pay attention to my my own future, right?
32:30
I got to be prudent about those things, But it's a real wake up
32:34
call to me to think about. I I've got 5 percenter problems
32:41
of first world problems. You know what I mean?
32:45
Like it And I don't I can't, I can't and I don't want to not
32:51
live my own life. That's what I'm saying.
32:53
But how do you reconcile some of this?
32:58
And I think our news media does us no favors because it's very
33:03
selective in what it portrays to us.
33:08
And this is how a relatively well read and educated man can
33:11
be completely unaware that 18 million people in Yemen are in
33:19
danger of of a famine. A $60,000 annual salary puts you
33:26
at the top 1 to 2% of the world. And we live in the time when we
33:35
live in the most prosperous time in the history of human beings.
33:39
So if you're the top 1% in the world today, you're in the top
33:44
100th of a percent, or the top ten thousandth of a percent in
33:49
the history of humanity. I mean, what's crazy is you can
33:55
make 10 grand a year and be in the top. 20% wow.
34:03
You know, one of the things that is always interesting about
34:08
those kind of statistics to me though, 'cause I think I read
34:11
somewhere that in Yemen, like the per capita income, you know,
34:17
it's like $600.00 or something like that.
34:20
But, but they have different markets than we do too.
34:25
I mean, I, I don't know, it's, and, and that difference is so
34:30
extreme that it almost, I mean, to your point, like, I don't
34:37
know, I'm one of the, I'm one of the 1% richest people in the
34:43
history of humanity. It's hard to just say those
34:46
words out loud. And I can do absolutely nothing
34:49
about Yemen. Yeah, well, I guess I could
34:53
surface it on a podcast in our, our, our audience of thousands.
35:02
It's it's not us. It's all the you people that
35:05
that got to take this off. Yeah, it's like.
35:09
That it's like that podcast with Mark Cuban.
35:13
It's like we got to get more money in Ukraine.
35:15
How much are you giving, Mark? Well, yeah.
35:21
So Elon is at the top. At the bottom is 0.
35:26
Says the middle person on Earth makes 8 to 10 grand a year.
35:30
But that OK, that doesn't make sense because the top 20% is 10.
35:33
So this may not these numbers may not be working right.
35:37
Yeah. Is it averages or median?
35:40
The median person is medium. How much does, how much does
35:46
Elon Musk make, like the medians going to be like the median
35:50
income in the planets going to be like a trillion, $500 billion
35:56
or something? That doesn't really tell the
35:58
whole story. There's a the data science
36:02
world. We call that a, a left skewed.
36:05
That's right. Yeah.
36:11
I don't know. I don't know.
36:13
You know what is it? But you know, you bring up a
36:15
good point in that like, OK, well, we talked about this top
36:20
ten list, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia,
36:24
Congo, Gaza, Ukraine, South Sudan, Haiti.
36:28
If you went through every news source, whether online
36:33
television, I mean, everybody's probably heard about Gaza in
36:42
Ukraine. I'll be honest, I haven't seen a
36:46
report on any news article on Sudan in probably a year or
36:52
more, right. And Yemen's on that list too.
36:56
You know, Yemen, you're hearing a little bit now with the
36:58
conflict in the Middle East. But, you know, it's, you know,
37:03
that's the part that pisses me off a little bit like, well, a
37:08
lot like, I mean, I don't watch television news anymore because
37:12
it's just worthless and it's just these Yahoo's up there
37:15
yelling at each other. But you know, I felt like at one
37:19
time television news, like headline news in the beginning
37:23
was actually really informative. I always laugh because we had a
37:28
a friend of our, I got some friends that are big into sports
37:34
betting and gambling, you know, and nowadays you monitor
37:37
everything online, but the old days like to keep track of the
37:40
scores, you had to watch, you know, headline news or
37:43
something. And this one guy, you know,
37:46
friend of ours, he's talking to one of his buddies about a game
37:50
or something. The guy's like, oh, did you see
37:51
about this and the price of oil and this and what like, And he's
37:54
like, man, you're really informed on current events and
37:57
he's like, well, you know, I've been watching headline news
38:00
non-stop for the last, you know, 48 hours.
38:03
So he's really informed. He's mainly watching the scores.
38:08
But I mean, there's not many places you can just get
38:13
information. I always like when I'm
38:15
travelling, I like CNN International or BBC
38:19
International. And I feel like those you do see
38:22
these different feature stories and different parts of the
38:24
world, but like we're so 8 up with our own bullshit here in
38:32
the US. We never know what's going on in
38:34
the rest of the world. And it really is kind of
38:36
sickening when you think about. It well, and to to punctuate
38:41
that point, you know, the the other one that makes me awfully,
38:48
awfully sad is that they're not all 12,000 miles away from us.
38:56
I fly over Haiti going to vacations.
39:01
You know that that is one that's right here in our hem, not even
39:06
in our hemisphere. It's in our backyard, for
39:08
heaven's sake, and we've been able to do literally nothing to
39:14
help the nation of Haiti. OK so now then gets to another
39:19
topic of this and this is good. OK, we all talk about we think
39:28
starving people is bad, famine or all that's bad.
39:34
OK, but let's go down the path of forget war for a minute.
39:38
Say you solve the war, how do you feed all these people?
39:43
And is that possible? And I don't, I'm not saying this
39:48
like I'm trying to get out of it something.
39:50
I don't want to make it sound like that.
39:52
I guess I wonder about is part of the reason these problems
39:58
don't get solved because they're unsolvable?
40:02
Yeah, probably. So probably that's a part of it.
40:06
I mean, it's not for lack of trying that we haven't been able
40:10
to help Haiti, you know, the the amount of and not so much our
40:16
government, but Haiti is a big destination for faith-based
40:21
charitable organizations to do things.
40:24
Yeah. And and there's always this kind
40:27
of like, well, it's not our government's job.
40:29
We should let let the churches take care of this.
40:32
You hear this about welfare, things like that.
40:34
Well, after having spent some time of my career working in
40:38
churches where nationwide the average giving of church going
40:48
people, not of the, but the average amount that people
40:51
actually give the churches hovers usually at most estimates
40:56
are around 1% of the income of the congregation.
41:01
And, and I'm not, I'm not trying to shame people for that, but
41:04
it's like, I mean, well, I don't, I don't want to pay
41:07
taxes. It's not something our
41:08
government should do. We should let the churches
41:10
handle it. I'm like, well, the church is
41:12
going to handle the churches can't keep their doors open in
41:15
this country. The number of churches that are,
41:20
you know, little dying congregations out in the country
41:24
that are shuttering their doors every year.
41:26
And and that's going to be your plan for I guess that's my
41:31
point. You know, government is
41:33
inherently inefficient. I can't argue with that.
41:37
Well meaning churches who are doing the best that they can are
41:43
are do the best they can, but but equally susceptible to
41:50
problems. Well, and the kind of money
41:54
that's the other part is like the kind of money that it's
41:59
going to take to make a dent in this stuff.
42:02
It's going to be, it's going to have to hurt.
42:05
But then it's like governments are the most inefficient way to
42:09
collect the money because then you're going to pay all these
42:11
idiots and they're going to waste money and all this
42:13
nonsense. Well, you know, I'm not a big
42:17
one for let government fix it all.
42:20
I mean, I, I am a Democrat. I learn more liberal that way.
42:24
I'm less concerned about having government involvement with
42:28
things. But even I would say like, I
42:33
don't, you know, that's not an easy.
42:37
So I think that it's inefficient to expect religious
42:41
organizations to do it. We, EU NS pretty busy elsewhere.
42:46
There have been attempts in Haiti to leverage like, don't
42:54
quote me if I'm wrong. If I'm right, quote me 'cause
42:56
it'll look brilliant. But if I'm wrong, I think it's
42:59
is it Nigeria or Kenya that has been putting their own troops to
43:04
support peacekeeping in Haiti that might be wrong?
43:11
I mean. So I guess what I'm saying is,
43:13
you know what we ought to do. Kenya, I mean Kenya has been
43:16
forking over 5500 people to it's called the the gang suppression
43:25
force. Interesting.
43:29
My thing is, though, back to OK, if I'm Elon Musk, hey, I'm going
43:35
to fix the situation in Haiti and I'm we're going to land in C
43:40
fives full of fun meals and we're going to feed everybody.
43:45
That's not going to fix it. Like you can feed your we could
43:48
we could open up. Food.
43:50
Stores free grocery stores and feed everybody.
43:55
But like, really fixing these situations isn't just like
44:02
handing out food. It's creating a methodology and
44:05
a governance. To me, it's no.
44:08
It's no coincidence that the top 10 humanitarian crises in the
44:14
world are and ten of the most screwed up countries in the
44:19
world. Yeah, 100% agree.
44:23
Is is famine the problem or the symptom of the disease?
44:26
Yeah. What about what about a prize?
44:32
Hear me out on this. What about if you said if if
44:36
you're Elon Musk and you wanted to do something, what if you
44:39
said I have $100 billion prize that I will award to anybody who
44:48
can build a, you know, do it in a competitive way, you know,
44:54
like if you can build a functioning government
44:58
infrastructure in, in Haiti. Well, I think about this like
45:04
this whole rare earth bit. Like, could you create like a
45:10
mining community and people are doing work and they're making
45:15
money? I mean, well, I mean, a lot of
45:17
parts of Africa like Congo, yeah, there's a diamond mining,
45:20
but that is all, not a way of benefiting the population,
45:25
right? Yeah.
45:26
I don't know. Is there a way, though, to
45:29
something not big bureaucratic government, not good luck,
45:35
churches, you can do it. But is there a way to leverage?
45:39
Yeah. You know, my brother-in-law
45:41
always says about big, mostly about big domestic problems.
45:47
You know, Congress is up there having their debate.
45:50
You know, we could hire McKenzie or Boston Consulting to write a
45:54
report about how to fix this stuff.
45:57
And they could probably give you step by step what needs to
46:01
happen in a pretty airtight way for these things.
46:06
You know these are right. A lot of these things are not if
46:11
you. Got the right people in our room
46:12
you could probably solve, but can we get out of the way of our
46:17
own bullshit political nonsense to solve?
46:21
But. Yeah, Yeah, it's tough.
46:24
Well, this is kind of a downer to think about these unfixable
46:27
problems, but I don't know, I think it's healthy to to be
46:32
reminded of, you know, kind of the to me, it's, it's healthy to
46:37
be reminded of the position of privilege that we occupy.
46:41
And I don't say that I don't think you need to just walk
46:45
around open and feeling guilty. You know, we, we're, we're
46:49
blessed and we're fortunate. I think that that I think that
46:54
that has obligations to us and at a personal, but also at a
46:59
kind of a collective level. And maybe that's the eye opening
47:05
thing I need. I think the Bourbon and Rum
47:07
podcast can fix it. I mean, all these other people
47:09
can't fix it, but we can fix it, Ken.
47:11
Well, we are. We are going to leverage our
47:16
global reach and the moral authority.
47:22
That's right. Hey, thanks for joining us on
47:27
this episode of Bourbon and Rum Podcast.
47:29
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47:34
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