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April 30, 2025 • 32 mins
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Michael. Sometimes I get sick of buzzwords.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
One of them that I've been tired of for a
really long time, it seems, is deep dive. It's metaphorical,
I get it, but let's use it in a more
literal way.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
We get some of these ultra lefties.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
To take a deep dive into a shallow pond, well,
or just.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Take a deep dive into a really deep pond and
then you know, surface too quickly and get the bells
and just you know, take care of them. I just
I have often, very often talked about how we have

(00:43):
our blinders on, whether it's energy, food supply, travel to Mars,
living on Mars, any number of things, we have our
blinders on, and we think that the way things are
today is static and that things are never going to
change or improve or they're actually going to get worse.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
And in fact, the whole.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Concept of communism and socialism and fascism is, when you
look at some of the nuggets of them, is that
it's the collective has to come together because there's a
limited resource, limited supplies, and so we all have to.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Sacrifice in order for us to all survive.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
And of course then you look at the wacos that
are the congregants in the Church of the Climate Activists,
and they believe that, you know, we would be better
off with fewer humans.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
And the more humans we have.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Then the more difficult and expensive and and cataclysmic is
going to be because we won't be able to feed
people or the earth won't be able to sustain this.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Blah blah blah blah blah. It's doom and gloom.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
I discovered something yesterday that I never heard of before.
I didn't even know this exists existed, But it's called
the Simon Abundance Index. Here's the TLDR of it. But
I'm not gonna seem to do the TLDR. I want
to give you some example. I want to explain what

(02:16):
it is. The TLDR is the Earth was five hundred
and eighteen point four percent more abundant in the year
twenty twenty four than it was in the year nineteen eighty.
So what is this the Simon Abundance Index. You can

(02:40):
go look it up. In fact, I'm going to predominantly
read from this story because it's the only way I
can explain what it is.

Speaker 4 (02:49):
If you give it a minute, you can probably find
it at Michael says, go here dot com.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
You've already found it very good. The Simon Abundance Index
measures the relationship between resource abundance and population. It does
that by it converts the per capita abundance of fifty
basic commodities the size of the population worldwide into a

(03:14):
single value. The index began in nineteen eighty, so that's
the base value of one hundred. Last year, that base
value had gone from one hundred to six hundred and
eighteen point four, indicating that resources had become as I
said in the TLDR, five hundred and eighteen point four

(03:37):
percent more abundant over the past forty four years. All
fifty commodities in the data set were more abundant in
twenty twenty four than they were in nineteen eighty. The
global abundance of resources increased at a compound compound annual
growth rate of four point two to two percent, which

(03:59):
means it double every seventeen years. It's it's based on
the idea of a guy named Julian Simon, a University
of Maryland economists. He's also a senior fellow at the
Cato Institute. He pioneered the research and the analysis of
the relationship between population growth and resource abundance. Now, remember

(04:23):
those on the leftalty that that should be inverted, that
the more population grows, the less abundant are these commodities
because there's more people consuming and using up more of
these resources, when in fact it's the opposite. It's true,
they write, if resources were truly finite, as too many

(04:47):
people believe, an increase in population would be expected to
lead to scarcity and higher prices. But Simon discovered through
research spanning decades that actually the opposite is true. As
the global population increased, resources tended to become more abundant. Now,

(05:12):
the article asked the question that I had, which means
it was.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
A very well written article. How can that be?

Speaker 3 (05:24):
Here's how they describe it, which is kind of esultary,
but nonetheless, let me just read it to you. Simon
recognized that atoms atoms, just you know, atoms, those little, tiny,
little tiny particles. Simon recognized that atoms without knowledge have

(05:46):
zero economic value. But knowledge, human knowledge, transforms atoms into resources,
and the supply of undiscovered knowledge is limitless, which is true.
We don't even know what we don't know. We don't

(06:07):
even know what I mean, I guess that could be.
One of the things that we are one hundred percent
certain about is that there's a lot that I don't know,
and and the amount that we don't know is unknown.
It's it's probably inexhaustible. He also understood that only humans

(06:29):
can discover and create new knowledge. They right, Therefore, resources
can be effectively infinite, and humans are the ultimate resource.
And they give an example, and this, this is a
great example. It's almost like the pencil story, you know,

(06:53):
about how a pencil is created? Who the economist, Yeah,
Treaven does that short little video he does about a pencil. Well,
this is kind of a similar example. They right. Consider
this example. Before the nineteenth century, agriculture relied heavily a
manure for fertilization, and that limited crop yields because of

(07:16):
its low nitrogen content. But as the population grew, farmer
sought more potent alternatives. That's the human knowledge. Wait a minute,
how can I I'm growing ax, one of the crop
is but and I'm putting manure on, but it's not
doing as well as I thought it would. So then
in the early so the human mind starts thinking about this, right,

(07:38):
how can I increase my crop production? How can I
increase the output? As populations grew, farmer sought more potent alternatives.
In the early eighteen hundreds, guano bird droppings rich and nitrogen,
phosphorus and potassium was discovered on islands off the coast
of Peru. That extraordinary if it's extraordinary effect deepness, led

(08:01):
to a global guano trade boom, fueling industrial agriculture in
Europe and America. Then by the late nineteenth century, supply
started to dwindle. Oh, so, imagine that they discover something new, guano.

(08:22):
It leads to a trade in guano. People start using it,
using it more and more and more, and then the
supply starts to dwindle. But the breakthrough they write came
in the earliest twentieth In the early twentieth century with
the Haber Bosch process, a process developed by two German chemists,

(08:42):
Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch. That method allowed for the
synthetic fixation of atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia, producing fertilizer on
an industrial scale. So it decoupled food production from natural
nitrogen sources, revolutionary revolutionizing agriculture and enabling the rapid expansion

(09:05):
of global populations. It is estimated that without synthetic fertilizer,
the planet's food production would be able to support only
four billion rather than eight billion people. So, if you
want to understand how in my simple mind this works,
it's human knowledge that expanded the supply. Guano became more

(09:32):
and more limited. Humans then began for the first problem
was manure isn't producing high enough crop yields. So the
brain start the humans start trying to figure out how
do we increase crop yields. That led to the discovery
of guano. So guano starts being used and that industrializes agriculture.

(09:54):
Then the guano supply, because it's being used up because
you know, the birds can only poop so much unless
you figure out way to make birds poop more, so
the grotto supply starts to dwindle. The human brain steps.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
In once again and says, we got a problem here,
how do we fix this?

Speaker 3 (10:11):
And they came up with this synthetic fixation of atmospheric
nitrogen into ammonia, producing fertilizer on an industrial scale. Oh,
problem solved, and so now we have high crop yields
and we're able to feed rather than four billion, we
can feed eight billion people. Then they go on to

(10:33):
describe what they call time prices, and this is a
little difficult even I shouldn't say, even for me, this
is a little difficult for my stupid mind to comprehend
time prices for individual commodities. So time prices are used
to measure changes in relative abundance. Time prices tell you

(10:55):
how long you must work to earn enough money to
buy something. As long as you work less time this
year than last year to afford something, that means your
standard of living is increasing. Time prices are a simple
and intuitive way to compare the true cost of things.
Time prices for individual commodities decrease on average by seventy

(11:18):
plus percent between nineteen eighty and twenty twenty four, ranging
from a negative two point nine percent for oranges to
minus eighty five point two percent for lamb. That means
that the average inhabitant of the planet saw their personal
resource abundance increase by two hundred and thirty eight percent,

(11:41):
ranging from two point nine percent for oranges to five
hundred and seventy three point six percent for lamb. Put
it a different way, the same length of work that
allowed the average inhabitant of the planet to purchase one
unit in a basket of fifth the commodities in nineteen

(12:01):
eighty allowed him to buy three point three eighty one
units in twenty twenty four. So the same length of
work increase between nineteen eighty and twenty twenty four from
buying one unit to buying over three units. So go

(12:25):
back to the fertilizer example. Since nineteen eighty the time
price of fertilizer has fallen by fifty six plus percent.
So the same length of work that allowed the average
inhabitant of the planet to purchase one unit of fertilizer
in nineteen eighty allowed that person to buy more than

(12:47):
two units in twenty twenty four, an increase of one
hundred and twenty percent. And then they have a chart
that goes through the abundance the percentage changed in abundance.
So I just want to give you some examples. I
already told you about lamb, which has increased by five
hundred seventy eight percent, sugar has increased by five hundred

(13:09):
and twenty seven percent, cotton by five hundred and twenty
seven percent, pork by four hundred seventy two percent, shrimp
I thought we.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Were like over farming shrimp or something.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
Shrimp has increased by four hundred and forty four percent,
salmon by four hundred twenty eight percent, pulp wood by
three hundred and sixty nine percent. Oh, you got to
recycle because you know we're using way up too many trees.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
Well, wait a minute.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
Pulp wood has increased in its abundance by three hundred
and sixty nine percent. Aluminum three hundred ninety five percent,
hides three hundred and fifty two percent, logs three hundred
and forty one percent, plywood three hundred twenty seven percent,
silver three hundred and twenty six percent, natural gas, oh

(13:55):
three hundred and twenty two percent, platinum three hundred and
thirteen percent, rice a staple three hundred and six percent,
wool three hundred and one percent, coffee two hundred and
eighty eight percent, corn two hundred and eighty three percent,
wheat two hundred and seventy three percent, rubber two hundred

(14:15):
and sixty two percent. Let's see some other soybeans two
hundred and forty percent. Let's see barley two hundred and
thirty four percent, tea two hundred and seventeen percent. I'm
skipping through some of the commodities like, well, let's see,
here's crude oil one hundred and seventy two percent, uranium

(14:36):
one hundred and sixty five percent. Imagine if we took
that abundance of uranium and starting using innuclear power plants
to generate electricity, you almost could say, who needs coal,
who needs natural gas? Who needs wind in solar Hell's bells,
we got enough uranium here in terms of the abundance
to supply electricity for much further than we can even

(15:00):
possibly imagine liquid natural gas out of Japan one hundred
and fifty six percent coal coal one hundred and twenty percent.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
He goes on and on that The is the chart
in the story.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
You put up on the website Dragon, Yep, So go
look at that chart because it's it's a great example
of how politically speaking, we're told that we can't keep sustaining.
Everything is about limiting, everything is about we've got to sacrifice.

(15:33):
And it's always been my contention that the human mind,
and I guess I'm just excited because I found a scientist,
if you will, that has proved my theory that the
human brain is always innovating and coming up with new
things and expanding. We're always growing and expanding. And those

(15:55):
who would tell you otherwise, who would tell you that, oh,
we've got to start limiting. You know, how much we travel,
how much we eat, how much we consume, how much
we do whatever, is absolutely trying to feed you bull crap.
Because what are they trying to do. They're trying to
impose something other than I'll leave it to your own imagination,

(16:20):
but something other than individual liberty, individual freedom, and a
free market. If we live as God intended us to live,
as free, sovereign individuals, then our brains are amazing things

(16:40):
that will always be able to grow and innovate and
create abundance. And isn't that, again, what God wanted us
to do, wanted us to live abundantly. And I don't
mean just necessarily in the things that we consume, but
in an abundant life. It's all the same, whether you're
looking at it from a philosop epical point of view

(17:01):
or a strictly consumption point of view. Go look at
that at Michael says, go here dot com because it
is amazing. Because it's well for me disproof of my
pieces I've been trying to offer you for decades now.

Speaker 5 (17:21):
Michael Brown, we have a position on the baseball field
known as a picture.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
We have a picture of beer and.

Speaker 5 (17:29):
We take a picture with our phones. Not a picture
that drives me batty.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Isn't it interesting how I didn't even ask for this
and yet we get it all the time, things that
drive people batty? So you you do get the idea
that the whole word library or irregardless. And I've got
other pet peeves too that just drive me batty. Fantastic, Yeah,
I know that it is fantastic, So I this is
completely Uh one of what I'm about to talk about

(18:02):
is commpletely.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
What's now I can't think of the word I'm looking for.

Speaker 4 (18:10):
Fantastic.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yeah, it's not fantastic, but it's completely unplanned for. It's
completely spontaneous because during every day, during this break, Dragon
you know, tells me what spots I've got coming up,
and then says, while we're doing those spots or while
we're waiting, uh, start looking for a promo for for

(18:32):
tomorrow's program. And so I started looking for the promo
and in the course of doing that, It's amazing how
fast you can do research if you're released under a
time constraint. Uh.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
The Wall Street Journal has a story. Here's the headline.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Remember our, remember our playing the interview with Terry Moran
from the Oval Office that they did. Well, I don't
when when they did it, but it played last night
on ABC and Trump kept pointing out that Kilmar Abrago Garcia,
that's the guy in Nel Salador has MS thirteen tattooed
on his knuckles. Well, this headline caught my attention. Wall

(19:11):
Street Journal front page published today at eleven fifteen Eastern Time,
nine fifteen, so about twenty minutes ago. Trump insists, wrongly
deported man has MS thirteen tattooed on his knuckles. Now
that's a pretty cleverly written headline, because when I just

(19:36):
look at it, Trump insists wrongly deported man has MS
thirteen tattooed on his knuckles. Or Trump insists that the
wrongly deported man has MS thirteen tattooed on his knuckles.
So you can interpret the headline two different ways. So

(19:56):
I quickly scammed through the article and the first thing
that you see is just below the subhead is a
picture of Trump in the Oval Office holding a photograph
of Garcia's must be his left hand with a fist
made and it shows the four tattoos on the four

(20:20):
finger knuckles and above. The tattoos are superimposed above the tattoos,
not on the tattoos, but above the tattoos, so it
doesn't it does not interfere with your viewing of the tattoos.
The letter M s the letter M on the index
fingers on the middle finger, one on the next finger,

(20:43):
and three on the on the ring finger, and three
on the little finger. MS thirteen. Now here's what I
understand about that photograph. It's a marijuana lee a I
guess a smiley face for lack of it's a smiley face,

(21:07):
but it's kind of an odd smiley face because there's
it's got the you know, the smiley part. But then
the eyes are two x's, let's see, and then a
cross and a skull. Well that may or may not

(21:28):
represent or stand for MS thirteen. There are a couple
of gang experts and researchers who have said that these
symbols are not typical MS thirteen markers. They claim that
MS thirteen members often use very explicit tattoos, such as

(21:49):
obviously MS thirteen, usually in Gothic fonts promptly displayed on
areas like to face, the neck, or the chest, or
even on those knuckles. The tattoos on Garcia's knuckles are
described as generic, and some have speculated both ways that

(22:10):
it can be interpreted as coded symbols for marijuana, S
for smiley X and thirteen, and others are argue that
they're personal and unrelated to the games, So that's subject
to interpretation. Whomever at ICE or Customs and Border Patrol

(22:33):
for that matter, of the Department of Justice, whoever put
that photograph together as evidence, they believe that those stand
for MS thirteen.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
So when Trump, you know, both people in the.

Speaker 3 (22:48):
Interview, Terry Moran claimed that the photograph was photoshopped. Well,
it's clearly not photoshopped. It's clearly imposed. They weren't trying
to deceive. They were trying to show that the marijuana
stands for M and a smiley space stands for S,

(23:08):
and the the other one the cross stands for X,
and the or ten X and the last stands symbols
three M S thirteen. It wasn't photoshopped. It was quite
obvious what they were trying to do.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
You just real quick here.

Speaker 4 (23:29):
I would like to also add, at a thought, it
looks like booking photos as if they were trying to
identify this person in.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Yeah, could could be a book photo.

Speaker 4 (23:43):
They need to take photos of all your tattoos once
you're getting right books, so one is only taken photos
like that if you are.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Booked somewhere. Yeah, just throwing it out there.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
It's not just some random I've him making a fifth
somewhere that they've cropped out just to get the face.

Speaker 4 (24:02):
He's not doing a fist bump to the camera exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
That's a great point, which also is further evidence that
this was not photoshopped. This is a piece of evidence.

Speaker 4 (24:15):
And that he may not be a good guy, especially
if he's been booked somewhere.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
Just throwing that out there.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
Well, So the MS thirteen gang affiliation is based on
his deportation orders, his orders of removal in which it
was based on, and that was based on law enforcements
information that he was a member of MS thirteen. Now

(24:44):
granted that came from an informant, so you would have
to know who the informant is and test or question
the credibility of the informant, But it is generally accepted
that he is a member of MS thirteen. Now, to
be objective, if I recall correctly, both Garcia and his

(25:04):
lawyers have consistently denied any gang affiliation, to which I
would say, as a lawyer, but of course you would
deny gang affiliation because that is part of the reason
that you are being expedited, expeditiously removed from the country.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
So again, I guess.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
The whole point of this entire conversation is this. When
I heard the interview and I heard Terry Moran say
that they were photoshopped, I thought to myself, there's no
way in hell the White House photoshopped a photograph trying
to justify this guys MS thirteen gang membership.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
And I thought, well, maybe.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
Later day somewhere I'll go in and I'll see if
I can't find the actual photo and look at it myself. Well, boom,
during the break, the photo pops up in the Wall
Street Journal article and it's like, duh, of course it's
not photoshop, Terry Moran. It's to Dragon's point, it's evidence.
And it's clear that it's either evidence from a trial
criminal trial, or as Driving points out, it's evidence from

(26:11):
a booking photo. It's not some random photo that's been cropped. Now,
whether it stands for MS thirteen or not, that's a
factual determination. But that factual determination in previous criminal cases
has been determined to be representation of MS thirteen. Now,

(26:33):
whether that's an aberration commonly or not commonly done doesn't matter,
because in a court of law it was determined that
it stood for MS thirteen, or was accepted as such
by the judge and jury that we're hearing his case.
Oh wait a minute, hearing his case in which means

(26:56):
he got due process because if that was a place,
if his gang membership was a part of that original
criminal case that he was involved in, that means that
defense counsel had the opportunity to challenge that designation as
an MS thirteen gang member, and the jury or the

(27:17):
judge had the opportunity to weigh the evidence from both
the prosecution and the defense and make the determination. And
apparently they made the determination that he was a member
of MS thirteen. Now, having said all of that, do
you get how difficult it is to ascertain the truth today?

(27:42):
Because go back, let me just read boringly the headline
Trump insists wrongly deported man as MS thirteen tattooed on
his knuckles. Trump insists wrongly deported man has MS thirteen

(28:02):
tattoo'd on his knuckles, or Trump insists wrongly deported man
has MS thirteen tattooed on his knuckles. I would just
like to give a hearty congratulations to the Wall Street
Journal headline writers for being absolutely, unequivocally, one hundred percent

(28:23):
ambivalent Michael dragging.

Speaker 5 (28:28):
But it's not illegal.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
It's illegal, thank you late. Well, legally it's either way
illegal or illegal. It's a beg illegal illegal beagle. Uh.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
We started out with Colorado this morning. Let's end Let's
end the day with Colorado. Uh. The Denver Post reports
that nearly fifty three thousand Colorados sought housing help last year,
a much higher number than official homeless counts that at
Kilds say provides a better understanding of housing instability in

(29:04):
this state. Now, I don't think they realize that these
so called housing advocates realize what they've done. So are
you telling us that fifty three thousand Colorados who sought
housing help, meaning that they ran this spectrum of being
homeless or being under housed or unhoused or whatever kind

(29:27):
of bull crap word you want to use. But if
it's worse than you say the official counts are, doesn't
that tell us that somebody's lying to us. And if
it's worse than a much higher number than the official
homeless counts are, doesn't that tell you that we've got

(29:48):
a problem in this state. In fact, the executive director
of the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative said this yesterday in
a briefing quote, this report highlights a pretty big affordability gap.
In order to afford a two bedroom apartment in Colorado,
someone would need to work more than two full time

(30:10):
jobs at minimum wage to pay for that apartment. I
wonder why we have a big affordability gap in Colorado.
Let's talk to Mayor Johnston. Mayor Johnson, do you understand
that when you demand that developers meet all these requirements
for renewable energy, and that you want them to electrify

(30:33):
all of their buildings, and that you also want them
to include if you're building an apartment building in Denver,
that you also have to include retail below when that
may not even be part of their business model. And
that now we're finding, as I pointed out, yesterday that
a lot of that retail space is going unfilled, which
means that now they have to hike the rents on
the apartments because they're not getting the income from the

(30:55):
retail that you required them to do in the first
place in order to get the building permit.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
Hmm.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
It seems to me that the executive director of the
Metro Denver Homeless Initiative is, you know, kind of in
a subterfuge kind of way, pointing out that maybe the
problem is Denver City and County government, maybe it's all
of the initiatives, or maybe it's this. Maybe it's the
fact that you provide so much money in benefits that

(31:27):
for many people. You know, again, you subsidize something, you
get more of it. You know, just like when you
tax something, you get less of it. Well, if you
throw more so called free money at it, you're gonna
get more of whatever you're throwing the money at. So
you throw more money at homelessness. Guess what, You're gonna
get more homelessness. Or maybe there's another option, and that
would be illegal aliens.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
Hmm.

Speaker 3 (31:50):
You're in El Paso, you just crossed in from mores
and you're trying to figure out where to go, and
you find out, oh, Denver's got a really good program
for housing. Well, let's get the and go to Denver.
All of these wounds in Colorado are self inflicted. So
to the guy that goober that moved to Wyoming, you're right,

(32:13):
it really does suck.
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