0:00:00 - 0:00:23 To uh share some insights on complexity. And I think uh more than anything else, I, I wanna sort of pull back the edges a little bit on life and, and what's really going on in the world and why things are the way they are. Um And so I'm gonna dance across the heads of a whole bunch of pretty deep ideas 0:00:22 - 0:00:45 . Um And obviously, I can't get into them too much. This is just sort of a, a lightweight exposure to this. But um I was looking at the news the other day and I saw this in the comments and I copy, pasted it and emailed it to myself. So I'd remember to make a video about this. So this, that someone typed 0:00:45 - 0:01:10 this up and they, they made the fonts this way. They, they emphasize certain words by putting them in caps and reading this. You know, it, it takes time to write something. It's um it takes a certain level of intelligence to organize arguments and process thoughts and convey those via, via words. And 0:01:10 - 0:01:30 it's not something you would do unless obviously you cared, there's a certain threshold of concern that you have to surpass to, to care to write these things. But furthermore, you have to think that your ideas are worth sharing, right? I think that's the tagline for Ted the, the series of talks. I think 0:01:30 - 0:01:50 it's ideas worth sharing. You know, that's, that's a good threshold before you open your mouth. You should really believe that what you have to say is worth hearing. Um Sometimes in conversations with uh Children, for example, sometimes you scratch your head and you say like, was that really worth sharing 0:01:49 - 0:02:13 ? But um hopefully, that doesn't happen too often as people grow up and they develop a filter for things that other folks might care about or might benefit from. So obviously, this person felt like this was worth saying. Now this person is not alone. This is just an example of something that's extremely 0:02:12 - 0:02:37 common these days. That is. So I mentioned I pulled this from a news article. So there are many news sites that now have the uh ability to make comments on the articles. And it's very interesting. Iii I enjoy reading these things because it's a really good pulse on what people are thinking. Now there 0:02:37 - 0:03:01 is a a bias because uh most people will not make comments. And so you have some sample error. It's not true that this is a an accurate representation of what the majority think. If you read through say 100 comments, that's not, that's not a an accurate lens necessarily on what everyone thinks, but that 0:03:01 - 0:03:26 the value of this is, is counter weighted by the fact that, uh, it's, it's been shown that in anonymous venues, people are more willing to speak their mind. And so on most sites, the, the handle of the person is not the real name, but even if it is, you don't know that person and, and how would you even 0:03:25 - 0:03:46 go find them? Right. And it's not like this is your neighbor or your mother in law who's, who's, you know, who, you know, and you, you could come back to. So there's no impact whatsoever on their life by writing whatever the heck they think. Um, it's, it's the only, the only limitation is some kind of 0:03:46 - 0:04:10 grander. What might someone I'll never meet, think about me type of barrier or maybe I'm afraid of what the three letter agencies might do. I don't want to get my house rated at 4 a.m. or get audited on my taxes because I said something against the government. But other than that, um, you know, people 0:04:10 - 0:04:38 speak their minds and so it's terribly troubling to read these things, um, in a sense because you, you see just how uh unintelligent or um motivated by baser things, uh, quote unquote normal people are. And maybe the scariest thing about it is this, uh Dunning Kruger effect where people who just aren't 0:04:38 - 0:04:59 that bright, think they know everything there is to know about anything, or at least everything there is to know that matters. They think that whatever they understand is all that's worth understanding. And that's, that's deeply troubling because we live in a complex world. And if you're a student of 0:04:59 - 0:05:25 complexity, uh that will mean a lot more to you than if you're just thinking of that colloquially. But um boiling it down to the basic elements, complexity is a measure of the unknown. And um the world is the most complex system. Reality is the most complex system. Everything else is just a, a microcosm 0:05:24 - 0:05:51 of that. It's a, it's a subset of that, that grand complexity. OK. So, so not to wax too philosophical here. Let's let's bring it back to the comment. So this person posted three examples of I believe this was on an article whose topic was something like um interest rates rising have not had an effect 0:05:50 - 0:06:13 on inflation. So inflation is still raging even though interest rates are rising. All right. So you what we have here is a complex problem. Inflation and a simple attempted solution raise interest rates. Now in the past, there's at least one example where Volcker jacked up the interest rate. I believe 0:06:12 - 0:06:45 it went over 20%. Imagine that. And uh inflation subsided thereafter. So was that causal? Who knows? It's not the point of this video to figure out that mystery. However, the world rages on in complexity and people stumble on in simplicity, human nature is to be simple. But reality is not simple at all 0:06:45 - 0:07:12 . And just because you choose not to discover or recognize or admit the complexity of situations that doesn't spare you from the consequences that are coming for you, whether you like it or not. And so it behooves us to learn the game so that we can play the game. You need to, to learn what the rules 0:07:11 - 0:07:47 are and you need to learn what the structure is and then you can strategize, right? So these examples provided by this poster were to support his argument or her argument that the greed of people or corporations in setting prices is the reason why inflation has not subsided. So this is very interesting 0:07:47 - 0:08:13 because uh for one, we don't have the ability to ask this poster what they think the cause of inflation was, which is also multifaceted. But they have reduced this complex problem down to a simple so uh explanation, it's a solution, but the, the explanation suggests a range of solutions, none of which 0:08:13 - 0:08:43 will work and most of which if not all of which will absolutely make it worse. And here's the problem. And we're gonna go through these to give you a taste. Here's the problem. And it's interesting because it's um it's a problem that's manifested in this, in this uh this ironic um meta example, the only 0:08:43 - 0:09:08 reason we have access to this person's thoughts is because you're watching me, some random guy on youtube and I read an article on a news site. And so we have a chain of, well, actually three levels, at least of ease of information. Let me explain that because it's very important. So this person will 0:09:08 - 0:09:34 call it a guy. This guy only knew about any of these things. He only thinks he's informed because he lives in a world where he has access to way more information than a person like him would ever have access to in the history of the world. So let's start there. So through no merit of his own, he has 0:09:33 - 0:09:58 access to tons and tons and tons of more information than way better people than him have ever had in the past. Where did that access come from? We could launch a long conversation here, but I'll just jump to the point it came from oil. Oil is the reason that we have unmerited prosperity, so, so great 0:09:57 - 0:10:19 , unmerited prosperity today, it's not because humans are smarter than they used to be. It's not because we're more moral than we used to be. If anything, those two things are trending in the opposite direction, you can make a strong case for that. It's because of cheap oil. Ok. So let's just suppose 0:10:19 - 0:10:43 that to be the case, since I'm not arguing that in this video, we'll just suppose it's the case. No, this guy has access to all this information and it didn't come because of his merit and he's not using it to increase his merit. What do I mean by that? You send a normal kid to public schools, they will 0:10:42 - 0:11:10 come out more educated than people before mandated public education, but they will not come out smarter on the average, they will come out dumber than someone who was raised in, say 1824 on average in the United States. And you, you might say, well, how could that be? 12 years of compulsory education 0:11:09 - 0:11:31 ? Of course, they're gonna learn how to read and write and, and how to do math and they're gonna be informed about things that matter. Uh Maybe, but probably not. I just read an article the other day. I think there are 13 schools, high schools in Baltimore City where, where I'm from uh where there's 0:11:31 - 0:11:55 not one student who can pass proficiency tests in math, not one. And you might say, well, that's Baltimore, it's a cesspool. Well, guess what? You meet the average person graduating from high school today, they will be dumber, less able to think critically and make wise choices, less responsible, less 0:11:55 - 0:12:29 prepared for life, less capable at life than a random person born in the United States. 50 years ago, I will put every dollar I have on that argument. So, um education is not intelligence. Uh and, and, and I'm using uh the, the common sense of the word going to school. So, um anyway, so I know about 0:12:29 - 0:12:48 what this person said because I was able to read the news, but I actually use what I read to inform myself and become more intelligent, which doesn't make me special. It's a capability that we all have. I just make use of it. Right. Because I've invested a whole lot of time and effort into learning and 0:12:47 - 0:13:11 addressing biases that we have as humans. I'm fighting that battle and it's a continuous battle and I'm learning things as I go every day I learn something, I learn many things. So now you know about this because I'm sharing it. And so all of us, all three of us in this present chain, we have access 0:13:10 - 0:13:35 to unprecedented information. But the question is, what are we doing with it? Now, not all people are going to be able to reach a point where they can handle substantially more complexity than they otherwise could. So if you take a random person and you chuck them into a subsistence farming situation 0:13:34 - 0:13:58 from birth, they will probably get to the point where they can produce enough food to eat and to support a family. In fact, statistically speaking, at least 85% of people would be able to do that. However, there will be some who fail at that through choice or capacity and they will have to be cared for 0:13:58 - 0:14:30 by others for their entire lives. About 15% as you scale the complexity from subsistence farming, which is as simple as it gets to the modern world, which is as complex as we know. What you'll find is that there's an exponential decrease in the capability of an average person to um we'll say, contend 0:14:30 - 0:14:55 with that. And, but what I mean by that is to face those challenges in a way that they can support themselves and those they're responsible for. Now, that's the baseline caring for yourself and those in your family, even rarer will be the person who is so capable of generating a surplus of such quantity 0:14:54 - 0:15:22 in wisdom and the material gains that you encounter through exercising it. Uh Typically, obviously, there are exceptions that you have the capacity, the spare capacity to help other people, this includes in governance, ok? Not necessarily government, but, you know, anciently wise people would hang out 0:15:22 - 0:15:38 at the, the gate of the city and um they didn't need to work for a living because they had sort of solved that problem and they would stand there ready to help other people. And so someone would come up and they'd say, well, I'm facing this problem. What do you think I should do? Or this is my life so 0:15:38 - 0:15:55 far, what do you think I could do better? And the person would say, well, it sounds to me like you might do this, you might do that. And there'd be other folks there in the gate and they could just have a conversation with folks who had the at least appearance of being wiser and you know what very often 0:15:54 - 0:16:17 they got the key to the city, so to speak and they jumped ahead in their lives by taking advantage of folks who had figured things out to a greater extent because complexity is never ending and all of us will eventually be overcome. Ok. This is a fantastic argument for the need for God. However, um there's 0:16:17 - 0:16:40 a whole lot between those two points and that's where we live today. So, um in the modern world, we don't have a gate to the city, we don't have people who are there. And if they were there, they would not only not be recognized, they'd be denigrated because the, the very attributes that, that uh that 0:16:40 - 0:17:09 belie wisdom, that uh the demonstrate wisdom, that's a better way of saying it are regarded by common people as negative. OK. So this is you call evil, good and you call good evil. That's what this is. There's an inverted valuation once the differences become extreme enough. So if you met a good enough 0:17:09 - 0:17:35 person, you would regard them as the epitome of evil. So, um but we operate under the illusion of tremendous merit because we have such tremendous, unmerited prosperity. OK. So what does this have to do with anything? Well, if you look around today, the situation is that we've got governments and institutions 0:17:34 - 0:17:55 with tremendous power compared to I'll say influence. I don't like power. I don't think it's a very precise word. I think it's used to mean something other than what it actually means very often, but let's say, influence. Um where, for example, I worked at a university when COVID broke out and there 0:17:55 - 0:18:14 was an unnamed council of people who knows who they were. Uh and it was just a few of them who got to make all the decisions regarding how the university handled COVID, they had an email address but they didn't respond to it. And so there were this faceless unaccountable cohort of people that got to 0:18:14 - 0:18:38 decide some really serious things. And uh there was no accountability to the people that allegedly they were serving. Now. The government in any level today, in any developed nation is not too different from that. Even at local, I live uh in the middle of nowhere in Montana. I think there are 10,000 0:18:37 - 0:18:57 people in the district that uh are, are state representative. So I'm talking about the state legislature. Um He's, he's got a district of about 10,000 people. I can't get the guy to respond to an email and it's not like I've harassed him or anything. This is, I think he's been in office at least eight 0:18:57 - 0:19:21 years and I've emailed him twice. And so I'd expect that I'd be able to get a reply to AAA reasonable email that shows that I'm a reasonable person. It's not like I'm saying, you know, I hate you therefore or do this because I say so and whatever, it's just a serious question about, you know, property 0:19:21 - 0:19:42 taxes in this case. So if you can't even get a response from someone in basically the smallest district in the nation, how on earth, do you think you're actually going to have any kind of feedback with a senator or a federal senator or a federal representative? Let alone a president, let alone some bureaucrat 0:19:41 - 0:20:04 and the government's enormous now at every level. Um, so how are you going to get a response? Well, at the same time, these same people are making, uh, decisions that have greater impact on your daily life. Uh, oo, on average than, than those in their position in the past. So when the federal government 0:20:03 - 0:20:21 makes some arbitrary rule about water heaters and your water heater breaks and now, instead of looking at something that's gonna cost you a couple 100 bucks, you're looking at something that's gonna cost you a few 1000 that matters a lot. If the feds dictate that you're going to have to get, um, an experimental 0:20:20 - 0:20:41 medical treatment injected into your arm when, uh, there are existing treatments that might work just fine, that preclude the legal use of an emergency use authorization. Uh, and then people start dropping dead or they lock down those the populace and, you know, you lose your livelihood or they start 0:20:41 - 0:21:02 cranking out stimulus checks. Willy nilly to random subsets of the population, you know, things are gonna change the price of things is gonna go crazy. Well, surprise. So what does this have to do with complexity? Because as the world gets more complex or more accurately, it's always been complex. But 0:21:02 - 0:21:38 as we uh engage with technologies and resources that uh that cast us into greater complexity in the world cuz subsistence farming is pretty cut and dry. Um As we scale up the complexity that we're affected by in life, we have to find people that are more capable of contending with that complexity. Well 0:21:37 - 0:22:02 , so hopefully you're with me so far. We do not have that system today. We are about as far from it as we could be. If someone intentionally, if a bunch, if the world's smartest people gathered together and intentionally crafted the worst possible approach to complexity, they would not be able to come 0:22:02 - 0:22:29 up with something worse than what we have. Now, I think, I think they'd be hard pressed to do a worse job. Ok. Boiling this down to one person in this guy's comment. We see why? So with that preamble, here's the three examples. He gives one gas prices versus barrel of oil, two price of eggs, three insurance 0:22:28 - 0:22:49 utilities and rent. Now, I'm gonna go through these things in a different order than he posted. I'm not even sure if we'll get to gas prices, but we'll see. Wow, what the heck. Let's go and order feeling saucy. Let's go ahead and do it in order gas prices versus barrel of oil. So maybe you haven't even 0:22:48 - 0:23:09 noticed. I would think that normal people would notice this. But from a survey I saw normal people don't even know if they have led s or traditional light bulbs in their house. So, um, maybe you didn't notice this, um, because normal people don't pay attention to things. So, here we go. Maybe you've 0:23:09 - 0:23:34 noticed that you could Google This, you could Google AAA chart of oil price of of a barrel of oil versus gas prices. And what you'll find is that in the quasi recent run up of gas prices to five bucks plus a gallon. Um You'll find that this increase co occurred with an increase in the price per per barrel 0:23:33 - 0:00:00 of oil. But the price per barrel of oil has dropped precipitously since then, but gas prices have not. Now, if you look at historic trends, you'll find that this has always occurred that the pattern has been. If barrel of oil price per barrel of oil increases, then gas prices will increase. However, 0:00:00 - 0:24:25 if barrel of oil prices decrease gas prices do not necessarily decrease. Now, this person says the only possible explanation for this, I'm strengthening their conclusion. A little is the greedy corporations are charging windfall profits because they don't want to drop the price. Now, it takes approximately 0:24:24 - 0:24:51 2.3 seconds to Google the profitability of gas stations. So that's we'll start at the gas stations. Do gas stations make big profits? No, they do not. Um, there's ups and there are downs, if you filter out all the downs and just focus on the UPS, they would be profitable, however, they have to eat the 0:24:51 - 0:25:12 losses when the prices go down. And the variability is high enough that it's basically a break. Even gas stations basically don't make any money. They make almost all of their profits on what they sell in the convenience stores that are frequently attached to them. I don't know if there's a gas station 0:25:11 - 0:25:36 that doesn't have a convenience store, in fact, for this reason. Ok. So it's not local gas stations that are ripping you off. Maybe it's the corporations. Now, you can look at this and sure enough, uh, companies like Exxon are immensely profitable. Right. But if you dig into their numbers, it's not because 0:25:35 - 0:26:04 they artificially increase the price of, um, of gas versus the price of oil. What you find is that there are a lot of factors in this equation, for example. And the guy even mentions they shut down refineries. It's the feds doing that. It's not the oil companies. You see when the price goes up, they 0:26:03 - 0:26:23 have every incentive in the world to open more refineries. If they don't, the only reason they wouldn't do that is because the feds are constantly threatening them to impose random and sudden, uh, constraints on their ability to operate those facilities. It's like a nuclear power plant. You don't open 0:26:22 - 0:26:43 that to try to recoup your money in a year. The costs are so high and the risk is so high that this is gonna take decades to recover your investment and that's how it is with an oil refinery. And so, um and then you have the cost of running those which comes down to regulations as well from the government 0:26:42 - 0:27:00 . And so it's not like it's this blue sky where, oh, the price of oil is high, let's drop a couple more wells in places we already know about and make some money or just increase as if it's a knob on a stereo. And when the price is high, we just turn this knob and when the price is low, we turn it down 0:27:00 - 0:27:19 and, and it's that simple. No, it's massively complicated, right? And, and then trying to look in the crystal ball and say, oh, this is how much money we should outlay to discovery this year or next year over the next decade. While the government's changing so quickly in the regulations they have and 0:27:18 - 0:27:38 the market is changing so rapidly. That's an impossible tale to pin onto a donkey. There's a massive loss, massive risk. And, and so when you get this windfall profit, that's great. But you have to subtract from it all the things that ended up costing you way more than you ever got out of it and look 0:27:37 - 0:28:03 to the future to say, how much of this do you want to invest in uh trying to prepare for the the unknown that that is yet to come. Ok. But that I think is not even the strongest explanation for this disconnect. It is that when prices go up, demand goes down. So as the price of gas increases, people say 0:28:03 - 0:28:21 I'm going to change my behavior. So I use less fuel because I'm not paying that or I can't pay that. But the cost benefit changes for people and they say, you know, it's not worth driving into town to go out to eat. I mean, most people live in a town but still, I'm not gonna go burn another hour of fuel 0:28:20 - 0:28:46 to go out to eat tonight. And in aggregate those decisions, they, um, or I'm gonna work from home more often over the next couple of months. In aggregate, they make a huge difference in consumption. So what happens is, um, the minute that the price starts decreasing, people make changes in their behavior 0:28:45 - 0:29:12 the other way and they increase consumption. And so it, it, um, it dampens the reaction of the, the fuel cost from the drop in oil price. Does that make sense? Now, what I just explained over five or 10 minutes, it's not that hard to grasp, but you're not gonna learn it in public school or if you, if 0:29:11 - 0:29:35 it's taught to you, you're not, you're not gonna pay attention because it's much easier to point the finger at the, the boogeyman of corporations and say it's just greedy people. Well, people are greedy, not just people who run corporations. People who write these comments are greedy too. Uh The average 0:29:34 - 0:30:00 person is envious, greedy, they're wicked. It's human nature, it's evil. But the system, the complexity of the system, you have to understand this because the evil of mankind is a constant. It's extraordinarily rare for an individual to overcome that. But it's always at the individual level. The only 0:30:00 - 0:30:25 way to get a utopia is to pluck out all the people who haven't made that choice and transcended beyond it. You see, and that by the way is a key to understanding the end times. If you haven't figured that one out, evil and humankind is a constant. And so if something changes and you wanna explain why 0:30:25 - 0:30:52 you don't point to that. That's never the reason because it's always true, the system can change. But people don't change in aggregate individuals can change, but people do not change. Society does not change. OK. Example two, I like this one better price of eggs prior to quote cond they were around 0:30:52 - 0:31:19 140 a dozen, then caps lock for no reason for no reason. In other words, this person sincerely believes that there was some conspiracy where everyone set the prices way higher for no reason all at once, which it's like the, the greatest marvel of human. Um oh, what's the word I wanna use here of working 0:31:18 - 0:31:38 together as, as humanity, all of humanity came together for the price of setting eggs to 459 a dozen. It's like we, we could have had world peace with that kind of unity. We never achieved it before for good reasons. But man, if we can jack up the price of eggs. $3 a dozen, we solve all the barriers 0:31:38 - 0:32:07 of human unity. 11 fantastic tool for rooting out ridiculous ideas is to ask yourself what kind of human co-ordination would be required to achieve what is claimed here? And there is no way that this happened. Ok. If you wanna convince me that, that uh two banking executives who are like second in command 0:32:06 - 0:32:27 at, at the world's biggest banks, two of the world's biggest banks colluded to set the price of gold. I'm totally willing to believe that. But, you know, I don't even know how many people are in the supply chain for eggs. How many tens of thousands of people would have to come together at a secret meeting 0:32:27 - 0:32:48 and 100% agree and no one goes to the press that we're going to set the price of eggs $3 a dozen higher than, than they were before. That's an absolutely absurd argument. Ok. Continue the comment when people started getting their own chickens. Prices mysteriously went down to a dollar nine a dozen. All 0:32:47 - 0:33:15 right, genius. Like, let's take three seconds and google this. Oh, sorry. It's a little off Hm. So have you been around for the last decade? There's this thing called avian flu, although they like to say influenza to sound smarter bird flu, bird flu. It was all over the news during COVID, that bird flu 0:33:15 - 0:33:38 was going crazy. They were killing millions and millions and millions of chickens. Look at this graph the same time period. This dude's describing it went from almost no chickens killed from bird flu to almost every chicken. So guess what happens when the supply of chickens suddenly decreases by a lot 0:33:38 - 0:34:03 ? The price of the eggs, the living ones continue to produce is going to increase by a lot. And guess what happens when chicken farmers who, I mean, they don't get paid this price. But um, just to simplify it because wholesale is a lot less than retail. But let's say a chicken farmer, normal price is 0:34:03 - 0:34:26 a dollar a dozen. What do you think's gonna happen when all of a sudden you can make 450 a dozen on eggs? Everybody and their brother who has chicken facilities is going to have, get more chickens, right? And then what happens? There's a glut of supply and the price crashes. Mystery solved. I'm a regular 0:34:26 - 0:34:50 Scooby doo. Ok. This person's convinced that they understand that this must be corporate greed and no other reason. Now, I could make an argument here that government intervention made this one worse too. Maybe I should because what I'm trying to say is that as my thesis is, is as we are exposed to greater 0:34:50 - 0:35:16 complexity, the damage normal people can do increases by doing things that normal people do. And government folks are not the best and brightest, the best and brightest don't go into government. They start businesses or do something else that uh where they can be compensated for their greater contribution 0:35:15 - 0:35:39 . Because you, you really don't get paid that much in the government. Even when you look at Congress, they make an astronomical amount a year. But if you're the quality of person that merits that office, you could make far more in the private sector with far less hassle. You see, it's people, exceptional 0:35:38 - 0:36:04 people. They strongly prefer to be in situations where they're free to do what it is, they're passionate about doing. They don't like being constrained by stupid rules. Um that don't have anything to do with what matters. That's the opposite of government. And so the people who do go into government 0:36:03 - 0:36:29 are either uh narcissists, psychopaths or sociopaths or a mix of all three and or are corrupt and they know that they can use their office to make tons of money illicitly, which they do. OK? And this is why people that go into Congress end up coming out of Congress with a net worth 10 to 100 times what 0:36:29 - 0:36:50 they went in with that can't be explained by their salary. This is why Nancy Pelosi is the most successful stock trader in the history of the world, if you look at her uh gains versus losses because she inside traded her whole career, which is illegal for normal people to do. But legal for Congress to 0:36:50 - 0:37:17 do so anyway. Um this is the problem because people like the guy who wrote this comment vote and they're not voting for people, they think are better than them, which is what you're supposed to do in a representative democracy. Instead, they are molding the representative democracy into a direct democracy 0:37:17 - 0:37:39 . And in a direct democracy, you vote for people who are just like you, you find the person who's most like you and that's who you vote for. And that is why everything is as messed up as it is. There's a reduction of complexity into one simple reason for you. It's because people like this really think 0:37:38 - 0:38:01 that they know what's going on to the extent that they're willing to dictate the actions of others. And there lies the problem if this person said, look, I've tried to study this out and I have a theory of why this is, and the first thing I'm going to do is apply it to my own life and then I'll go from 0:38:01 - 0:38:21 there. If it works out, then I'll scale up great. That's fantastic. That's exactly what you should do. But they're skipping over all the parts of their own life and jumping right into the life of other people, you know, this is like the college uh activists who go to protests that, you know, theoretically 0:38:20 - 0:38:42 to get someone fired for what they think is a good reason where they've never done anything meaningful in their entire lives and everything before them, they're abysmally failing it. So being an abysmal failure in your own circle of influence, you're deciding to spend your time and resources to try to 0:38:42 - 0:39:06 dictate the behavior of other people. There's something wrong with this equation. Ok. Final example, the rent of insurance, utilities and rent starting on insurance, my car insurance went up 50% and I drive thousands of miles less each year. How could this be? I'm driving less but paying more. How could 0:39:06 - 0:39:29 this be, you know, cue, cue the outrage. Let's make placards and go protest something. Well, again, took approximately two seconds to Google this one if you, I guess you have to know what to look for. So what do you think? I'm just gonna point to two things. It's a complex situation. There's probably 0:39:28 - 0:40:01 100 reasons for why. That is why insurance rates are skyrocketing for car insurance. Here's two, two reasons that probably cover most of the pie chart. Ok. One, a whole lot of people are getting electric cars if an electric car is damaged is way more likely to be written off as a total loss. There are 0:40:01 - 0:40:23 many reasons for that and we could sort of dig through the fine print here. But one of the big reasons is that, um, you could see what I googled in the very first thing at the top of the page. One of the reasons is that they have this bank of batteries in their base and almost any collision of any type 0:40:22 - 0:40:47 is gonna damage at least one of those batteries. And they basically have to take apart the car to get to the batteries and they're so expensive to replace. Sometimes they're, they're an entire unit that the, the car is a loss. And so they just pay out whatever the market value for the used car is. Well 0:40:46 - 0:41:05 , guess what that's going to do to the, the payouts of the insurance company and guess what happens when an insurance company that used to be paying out X per year is now paying out some multiple of X per year, they have to raise the rates. There's no choice. And you say, well, why don't they just raise 0:41:05 - 0:41:29 the rates for electric cars? Well, now you get into another box of complexity, which includes the fact that all large companies get bonus points for how woke they are and it's not very woke to charge people what they cost. In other words, uh for an insurance company to distribute the, the extra cost 0:41:29 - 0:41:59 from electric vehicles over all vehicles is exactly what they do to maximize their ESV score. So ESG excuse me. So, um that's, that's one possible explanation for that. But um, anyway, here's another thing that you're not gonna, you're not gonna realize if you're just a rank and file person. And this 0:41:59 - 0:42:20 is that, well, I'm sorry, there's three things I wanted to mention here. This is that, um, used cars. Uh, this is actually something that most people probably do realize. The third one is one that you probably don't used car prices have gone through the roof because of COVID. And this is another supply 0:42:20 - 0:42:45 and demand thing. The chip shortage, which was because of the government's reaction to COVID caused a car shortage because new vehicles are covered in electronics which incidentally was caused by the government pushing and pushing um the limits of emissions which caused, which required tons of co uh 0:42:45 - 0:43:17 computer equipment uh integrated into the engine. Um And, and so it's, it's this. So, so people who couldn't buy uh new cars, they, they flooded the used car market. Well, uh again, they did all of this against a backdrop of people having way more cash because of all the, the stimulus not and not just 0:43:16 - 0:43:41 the direct stimulus checks. Uh PPP was a huge deal. Tons of money, ok. Tons and tons of money. So of course, this is gonna happen. So the blue book value of your car is the payout on a loss. So even if the same exact number of cars were totaled during the last few years as the prior years, the payouts 0:43:40 - 0:44:01 from the insurance companies are going to be a whole lot more. And therefore, yes, your rates are gonna increase. They have to, ok. Without the insurance companies making any extra money they would have to increase. Now, I, if you add on to that, the fact, the fact that when inflation strikes, if your 0:44:01 - 0:44:23 company can increase its prices, it's going to, of course, it's gonna do that if, if you're a W-2 employee and you have the choice to give yourself a raise, wouldn't you do it? If the cost of living increased by 30% in a year, wouldn't you give yourself a raise? Even if you were the most just person 0:44:22 - 0:44:45 on earth? That's, that's pretty straightforward. If things cost 30% more, I should get paid 30% more because what I produce is now worth 30% more as well. This is why minimum wage doesn't work by the way and it actually hurts the people. It's meant to help the most. However, there's a third reason with 0:44:45 - 0:45:08 the car or I'm sure I'm sorry, the insurance rates going through the roof for cars and that is the insane rise of uninsured motorists. So it turns out that when you admit something like 10 million illegal immigrants into the country, you're going to get an enormous number of uninsured motorists who are 0:45:08 - 0:45:31 now driving around without insurance without driver's licenses. And when they crash into someone, those, you have to pay out two claims on one insurance policy because the law abiding citizen is, is going to, um, have to file a claim on their policy and that's where uninsured motorist coverage comes 0:45:31 - 0:45:53 in. It's when you get into an accident with someone who doesn't have car insurance, which is against the law. And so the, the insurance company has to jack up rates because they're paying out two times what they used to. So if, if every accident were with an uninsured motorist, you would expect insurance 0:45:53 - 0:46:19 rates to increase by 100%. But because only some accidents are with an uninsured motorists, it would be less than that, but still a lot. And so surprise, surprise insurance rates go up 50%. It's a confluence of factors, but I've given you three huge ones. Ok. Now, I'm not gonna go through these other 0:46:19 - 0:46:52 things, but we could do this all day long. Now, if someone cannot explain with any degree of accuracy, the cause of these effects, should they have any influence whatsoever on the decisions of other people? I'll leave that for you to think about. But I will terminate with this question. Is it a surprise 0:46:50 - 0:47:05 that things are getting worse, much faster as we are exposed to ever more complexity while humans get no better.