Cold War Narratives and AI Competition

Are you offsetting these environment with con sters? Well, I'm actually the only developer of data centers on Eth that graduated from environmental studies. I think I'm the only guy doing this that graduated from environmental studies. You talked about the environment By the way, I'm a graduate environmental study, so I understand the issues. I am going to show them these data centers. There are going to be this shining example of how you do this sustainably because I'm the only guy. is graduated out of environmental studies and builds data centers. No one else on Earth has done that And welcome back to A bit Fruity. I'matt Bernstein and I would like to start by saying that neither Kevin O'Leary nor his wife, Linda ever killed anyone with their boat Anyway, I literally have to say it, this man is litigious. Good job protecting yourself legally, I gotta say. Thank you, dear. I knew I had to make this episode a few months ago when I watched a video of Nkki Minaj declaring that she was Donald Trump's biggest fan I am probably The president's number one fan. To her left, of course, stood Donald Trump But to her right Stood shark tank panelist, Mr. Wonderful. AKA, Canadian scammer, I mean businessman, Kevin O'Leary What was Kevin doing on stage with the MAGa Queen of Rp and Trump himself? I watched Shark Tank. I feel like we all had that phase I never particularly enjoyed Kevin's contributions to the show, but his meddling in right wing US politics seemed new to me Of course that shock did not last, as Canadian Kevin, in short order, has become part of everything bad happening in America. When Billy Eilish spoke out against IC at the Grammys Kevin went on Fox News the next day to tell her to quote shut your mouth and just entertain. He told Pete Hgseth that student protesters for Palestine should abandon their cause lest future employers use AI to identify them through their masks And speaking of AI, he's currently at the helm of a burgeoning forty thousand acre data center in Utah which will use more than double the power of the already drought stricken state the entire state He was in Marty suupreme And of course, he wants young people to stop spending twenty eight dollars on lunch I can't stand it when I see kids that are making seventy grand a year spending twenty eight dollars for lunch. I mean, that's just stupid Today, in service of my Utah listeners who are battling it out with this piece of shit and for the Canadians who have long dealt with their own more pathetic version of Donald Trump We're diving deep into Kevin Oh Leary past. present and the two people he did not kill with his boat You guys got the great Canadian on a few weeks ago, the incredible Naomi Klein And now you get the bad Canadian How was that for an intro Emma Viggland, welcome back to the show. And I really think if I'm going to put a bad Canadian at the top of my list,s hard imagine O'Leary wouldn't at the very least be in the top three. But hello, Matt Bernstein. as always, good to see you, my dear. Em I'm so happy that you're back. I hope I'm not like guilting you into doing this with me, but and I told you this privately, I was out and about this past weekend, Memorial Day weekend, and I had multiple gay guys come up to me and say They listen to my podcast, which thank you so much and that they specifically loved when I do things with you. And I was like texting Emma every time this happened to me. and I was like, just saying, in case you wantna come back, the gay guys really like you Well, I come on because one, I think you do phenomenal work and I love to be able to contribute to it when I can but also because I just adore spending time with you. And the more that you do this kind of work, the more you realize that podcasting can also substitute for social interaction. So since we're not hanging out this week, we might as well talk about The Shark Tank, dude. Have you been following any of Kevin O'Leary's latest exploits before we get into his life? I have. I have been following his lecturing of young people who have to spend more money on lunch than he deems morally acceptable. And I've specifically been following the construction of this AI data center, which is absolutely egregious and is resulting in a real grassroots opposition to O'Leary's project which is why he's been using some horrific tactics that I'm sure we'll get into to go after the organizers in the state itself. The more that I learned about Kevin O'Leary over the last week as I prepared for this The more I realized that this is a good episode to make because Kevin O'Leary, he's like a stand in of every rich person and the lies that they tell everyone else about how they became rich and also the lies about how they can become rich. like everything, everything he says is a lie. Everything he says is a lie, He is such a scammer. He's scammed continuously throughout his entire life. He's rich because he's a scammer. He is not rich because of all of the things that he says he's rich for. And he can't be honest about that because the truth of the matter is Under capitalism, there's to like spoil my thesis too quickly only room for so many Kevin O'Learyies. like We can't all be successful scammers because then there's no one to scam. which is why he has to make up a story about how he's actually rich and how you could be rich too, because you can't actually do what he does because then there would be no room for him to do it Does that make sense? Absolutely. I was gonna to say that I think he really epitomizes the myth of the endless growth fantasy in capitalism and AI data centers are a real really big part of that. The idea that there is endless profitability and we only need these plucky entrepreneurs to come up with the right idea currently has grown to a place where there's no longer any capacity for growth. so they're pivoting to AI, these data centers that are destroying the environment and guzzling up people's water And it's essentially a large scam. And I think, you know, Kevin O'Leary as a figurehead for that, in addition to the fact that he marketed his services on television, much like our amazing president, Donald Trump, that I think you can draw a lot of parallels and you can see a lot of society's sickness through the eyes of this discount daddy wararbx Shall we get into his early life? Kevin O'Leary is born on july ninth, nineteen fifty four in Montreal His mother, Georggette, was a small business owner and investor His dad died when he was seven. Kevin calls Georgette the most influential person in his life and credits her with teaching him how to invest And here iss where we start to get into very quickly some of the mythology that Kevin O'Leary tells about himself Every person like this has a sort of mythos. that they just repeat over and over and over and over and over and over and over again in podcasts, in interviews, in books And this begins with the claim that Georggette, his mother, invested a portion of every paycheck she ever earned into stocks Now there's variations on this story I found a Facebook post from him that said it was ten percent of every paycheck. a linkedIn video from him where she said it was fifteen percent of every paycheck. She would take fifteen percent of her salary and invested and a tweet from him where he said it was twenty percent of every paycheck. She took twenty percent of her paycheck each week and invested it. Mother, she'd always invest a third of her paycheck. I learned so much from my mother about how I conduct myself. She said this to me. Always tell the truth and you'll never have to remember what you said There's obviously like some bullshitting clearly happening there, but The concept of save a little bit of every paycheck you get is, I think fine advice. like my parents have also always given me that advice. Most of his financial advice, which we will get further into stems from this, which again, isn't bad, but it also just relies on the assumption that people have tencent to twenty percent of each paycheck available to save, which is just increasingly not the reality. Not a lot of people anymore. We continuously hit records of credit card debt in this country. It dipped slightly last quarter, but prior to that, it was a record We have incoming wealth inequality that is just absolutely staggering. There have been analyses about how much money the nine hundred thirty five billionaires in the United States made in just the last year. they now have a combined wealth total of over trillion dollars and we're at levels of incoming wealth inequality. that exceed the gilded age. And so yeah, it's a little bit difficult for younger people put away that amount of their paycheck when increasingly The cost of living is getting worse and worse. People are putting more and more on credit. and you have old guys like this lecturing to you about your individual choices when your choices are entirely limited, if not non existent Yeah. We'll get into more of it, but again, it's just like so much of his financial advice. It reminds me a lot of like, have you ever been on like landlord TikTok? I don't engage with TikTok and I'm, as you know, a bit of an old woman at heart. so you're gonna have to educate me. I mean, I also don't go on a lot of TikTok except to look at these people who do scams because I think it's fascinating There's a whole portion of TikTok that's people encouraging other people to become landlords as a sort of get rich quick scheme. basis of their advice always starts with like just put one hundred thousand down on a building and then and then they go on from there. but it's like, wait a second How'd you get a hundred thousand dollars? Yes, rightight. and the self help stuff from him, that is just one thing I want to touch on really quickly. Self help for the most part is immensely right wing coded because there's no collectivist understanding that is embedded in the analysis. And it is rife with scammers because you can convince a lot of individual atomized people that all they need to do is make the choices that his mommy made or you got to just cut down on your sweet green or whatever. And you'll be rich just like me But as we're going be getting into in this podcast, to be just like Kevin O'Leary would mean to abandon a lot of moral principles and to be one of the luckiest people over the past how many decades? His mythology goes further. When I announced that I was thinking about making this episode I got a message from a Canadian listener and they were like, please talk about the ice cream shop story Do you know the ice cream shop story? I do not. There were a few things that I chose not to read through in the outline because this just seemed too delicious, no pun intended for me to eat alone. upid for those two. Okay Kevin O'Leary has this origin story that he has told over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. It's about something that happened when he worked for one day at an ice cream shop in high school. Every entrepreneur I've ever talked to that finds himself where I am today has a defining moment where they are pushed into this path. It's something they can remember And they remember it in perpetuity. And I'll remember my moment. getting fired in an ice cream store That's simple. first day on the job, asked to serve scoop ice cream And u I do that all day, but when people sample ice cream, they get a taster and they take their gum out and they throw it on the floor Sbody's got to scrape the gum off the floor at the end of the day I only took that job because I was very interested in a girl who was working in the shoe store, and I figured hang out with her afterwards And I saw her waiting for me and woman who owned the store said, you've got to script the gun off the floor I didn't want her to see me on my knees with a scraper. bad for my brand. I was in high school and She said, no, no, you have to do it. And I said, you know, you hired me as a scooper, not a scraper She said, u How about you're fired And I didn't know what that meant. And it was the defining moment for me because I realized there's two kinds of people in the world as people Then on the store. And there's people that scrape the shit off the floor. And you have to decide who you are Wa, wait,, wa Hold on, that was the lesson that he took from that story. That was the lesson that he took from that story. that there's two types of people in the world There's people who own the store and people who scrape the shit off the floor. There's two types of people in the world Those that own the store and those that scrape the off the floor. There are people who own the store And there are people who scrapeed the shit off the floor. So I learned that day that there are two types of people out there people that scrape the off the floor and there's the people that own the store. I wanted to be the guy that owned the store. No, I did that Okay. so instead of having empathy for workers, he realized, huh This is a hierarchy and I want to get on the other side of the hierarchy so I can be directing people to scrape stuff off the floor and not be humiliated in front of this girl that I like for having to do such deegrading work. firstirst of all, I have worked in an ice cream store. I worked at it in my hometown one summer. and There is not a large staff typically at ice cream stores. You're scooping ice cream and you're also scraping shit off the floor when the doors close and when it's time for closing. I'm not sure exactly what differentiation he's making there, but I guess his stratification is the business owner and then the scraper. There's no in between of course to So I have a couple clarifying questions here that actually aren't about the moral of the story. quQuick interlude. First of all, to any Canadian listeners, is it typically pronounced I scream Because in every version of this that he tells, he always says I was hired to scoop ice cream. I was working in an ice cream store and so I got a job as a scooper U sccooping ice creams. firstirst day on the job to serve scoop ice cream. It was my second day working there and the owner had hired me to scoop ice cream I cream I mean, if he's screaming for ice cream, that would make sense, but ice cream. Ice cream for ice cream. I don't know. Place the emphasis on the wrong salabable, Kevin Olerree And then the other question that I had and I could just be in the dark about this, but He always tells the story and he's like, it was common for everyone who ordered a sample to spit their gum on the floor. Is that something that happens a lot? U I don't know, Was he in some sort of bar at two AM? Was everyone just really horrible at this specific ice cream staore? I mean, I don't doubt that he was asked to scrape gum off the floor, but he did make it sound like this was happening frequently enough for their should have been like someone hired to just scrape shit off the floor. And I said the owner of the store, you hired me as a scooper, not a scraper. You hired me As a scooper, not a scraper. And I said, No, you hired me as an ice cream scooper, not a scraper. Well, it sounds like he's trying to overemphasize the degrading nature of wage work and speak about being a business owner as the privileged position that it is. Now he's fetishizing it and he's reifying horrible hierarchies that have put us in the position of, as I mentioned, untold incoming wealth inequality it's a way for him to I guess reify the class differences that he so wanted to exacerbate, but just be on the other side of. It's incredible to tell that story And the defining feature of it be I chose to abandon any empathy that was right in front of my face and proceed to be like, no, I just want to be the person doing this to other people I know I know the term spiritually Israeli. very overused online, but there really is something spiritually Israeli about this to me Israel is of course, founded on and upheld by exploiting the trauma of the Holocaust and the belief that Jews need this like highly fortified armed lethal ethno states that we can dominate rather than be dominated Zionists view this dynamic either an oppressor or oppressed as like the natural and unchangeable order of things. And I think what Kevin O'Leary is describing is like the same thing. He's like you're either scraping shit off the floor in humiliation with like horrible working conditions and an abusive boss or you are the abusive boss. So I set out to be the abusive boss And the comments on these videos are always just like inspiring. Yes, I know. That could be me too. I'm definitely not a sheep and it's not gonna to work out for you. That's the part about the self help scamming Ellen whichich is you were kind of touching on who is this appealing to as he speaks in these terms. It's to people who have already made it, who want to have almost like visual and emotional evidence that they are in the superior class and that everybody that was unable to achieve what they have achieved, like the great Kevin O'Leary has made choices and made decisions that make them inferior. to Kevin O'Leary I would like to take a quick break from the show to give a shout out to our friends over at Belessa. Belessa is a bi women for everybody spicy toy company that has been supporting my work on Instagram for a very, very long time And this week we are supporting you. becausecause this week, Belessa and I are giving away free spicy toys and gift cards to each and every one of you. If you want it I'm not gonna force you. If you're not familiar with Belessa, they are perhaps best known for their viral rose suction toy and for their whisper collection, their iconic Whisper collection, the first collection of completely silent vibrators. You worried about your roommates hearing you Not anymore, my friend. Belessa also, and this isn't related to the product, but it drove me insane and not in a good way. Their Instagram page, which was followed by seven hundred thousand people, was recently permanently terminated by Ma for using anatomically correct terms like clitoris in their content It's just Interesting to me, how many erectile dysfunction companies, for example, not only continue to use Instagram, but also advertise on Instagram seemingly without issues. So Anyway, like I said, Belessa and I are giving away free spicy toys to each and every one of you. You can claim that by clicking on the link in the episode description or heading over to bbvibes d. com slash fruity BB Vi B ES d. com slash F. Thank you so much to Belessa for sponsoring this episode and now let's get back to the show Shall we talk about some of the amazing decisions that Kevin O'Leary makes to accrue his very ethical wealth? I would like to. As it goes, Kevin O'Leary initially wants to be a photographer which I also started my career wanting to be a photographer. people didn't know that Buing bridges between Cabin and I but his father many fathers told him basically to get real So he decides to go into business take his passion for investing, at least the one that he claims to have had as a result of his mother Kevin gets a bachelor's degree in Environmental Studies, something he would disregard completely later on in his career And then he got his master's at business school. While at business school, he had an internship at Nabisco cookie company. He briefly works in TV production and helps coound special event television a sports programming network, which he later sells his share of for twenty five thousand dollars In nineteen eighty six and this is where things really get going. so I'm going to need everyone to lock in. Sorry, I sound like a I don't know I sound like a TiTok.'m like lock in, I don't know, trying hard. You got way too straight there. Lock in, bro. In nineteen eighty six, Kevin O'Leary starts Softkey, which is a computer software company which becomes a catalyst for his success The way Kevin O'Leary tells it is like I was just living in my mom's basement and I started this company that I ended up selling for. billion dollars. Did you know Kevin O'Leary built a three point seven billion dollars empire from his basement using a simple three step formula? And he uses this story, of course, to prop himself up into you know venture capapital royalty, Shark Tank, Dragon's Den, becomes a TV personality. Th written three books based off of it called Cold hard Truth on business, money and life The cold hard trruth on men, women and money and the cold hard truth on family, kids and money. Can we pause there for just a quick second take a look at these titles? I mean, if you're buying this book, you're a sucker at this point. I mean, the way that it looks, it looks like a scam and I'm not trying to disparage anybody that's trying to make their way in the world But man, this is like the b stop ads for lawyers, but just in book form, this guy's a self marketer. That's his greatest skill. Where have we heard that before? Yes, exactly. And if he was just like if he was just rich because he was so good at business He wouldn't have to be Also like writing a book series and doing multiple television shows and on the news every day. like so much of Kevin O'Leary's wealth comes from propagating his image of a wealthy person. Like Kein O'Leary has never been a billionaire, but he wants everyone to think that he's a billionaire. You know what I mean? Yes. And the fact that two of those titles include family slash women, like You see a lot of this in the self help space, even online now with some of the manosphere influencers where a lot of times under capitalism, masculinity and financial success are conflated. And so if you want to bring people into your financial schemes or scams and that's your brand You might as well tap into the anxiety that a lot of men feel about their masculinity and connect it with their ability to exist under capitalism. A lot of this is like masculine oriented Mel Robins Yes, like, I mean sorry. I know some of you probably like Mel Robbins, but like I really don't. Yeah. And she's such a scammer. in many ways, she's Kevin O'Leary for women And if you want an episode about that I don't know. Well, maybe another time, but like I just got to say from somebody that grew up in a nonenominational Christian household, it sounds a lot like some of the evangelical preachers that would be on TV just in the background. My family was not religious, but I know that there are a lot of Christians in this country that listen to those kinds of people And it should not be a shock to you that Trump is essentially a prosperity gospel idol in that he is the kind of person that takes the place of religious idolatry. And he did that by presenting himself as a capitalistic deity to an audience that was already primed to worship both wealth and power, their sheep And that's the same audience that O'Leary is after, notot to be too disparaging, but I mean, come on, baby. It's like, yes and no. I try to keep the blame on these figures because ultimately, like they're just propagating the system that turns these consumers into sheep. Like they're just so desperate I know. They're so desperate. I know. I don't know. No, you're right. And you sound like me like two or three years ago when I spent a little less time with Sam. But keep going Anyway, this story about Kevin O'Leary building Softkey, the software company in his mom's basement and then selling it a few years later for four billion dollars is technically a true story contains my dear So very many holes First being that he started that company with a ten thousand dollars investment from Can you guess who U H mom? His mom. How did you know? Because it's the most self aggrandizing way that he could potentially describe his origin story. And that's when the tie goes to the runner, the tie goes to the bragger. He recently made a video on Inagram. I'm gonna try to find it because I was scrolling through his Instagram morning But he was like, the fastest way to make a million dollars, your first million dollars is to make your first ten thousand dollars. The fastest way to make a million dollars is to make the first ten thousand. And I was thinking, man, right. Wouldn't it also be nice if you had a mom that gave that to you? Right, I love that. Make it by having a mom that loves you ike I'mli likeke you, you pathetic poor person. It reminds me so much. There's this meme. It's this person made up of all these puzzle pieces and there's just one missing. It's captionsed. Like sometimes what a person needs is just the one missing piece And then of in the distance, the puzzle piece is just labeled generational wealth. That's the one piece that they were missing. That's exactly right Anyway, Softkey begins focusing on educational software and by nineteen ninety three, seven years after its founding is a publicly traded company with revenues of one hundred ten million dollars But is operating nonetheless at a loss of fifty seven million dollars Soft key went on to acquire other educational technology companies Two of which, by the way, were called by Dartmouth's Tucker School of Business, quote, T of the ten worst US acquisitions during nineteen ninety four to nineteen ninety six as measured by shareholder value. It was a lot of like shady and bad business, which came to a head after Softkey put in a bid for a San Francisco based company called the Learning Company, or TLC be confused with the television networ TLC in the process of being acquired by SoftKy hired a forensic accounting firm to investigate Soft Key's financial health, and the firm found that Softkey may have overstated its earnings by bundling various general and administrative costs into its write offs. In any case, SoftKy's acquisition of TLC went through and Softkey adopted the TLC name. Kein O'Leary's big company at this point is called TLC now TLC continues to grow and its revenues reach eight hundred million dollars But is it making a profit? I would guess that it's not. And I have some thoughts in general about educational software that I'll jump into after you're done. So this is a quote from a twenty twelve article called Kevin O'Leary. He's not a billionaire. He just plays one on TV, written in Globe and Mail Canada. It's a very good long form article that you should go and read. if you're curious about what happened with this business While O'Leary says in his memoir, Cold Hard Truth TLC was a money making machine. An SEC filing shows that TLC suffered net losses of d d da. three hundred seventy six million dollars in nineteen ninety six four hundred ninety five million dollars in nineteen ninety seven and one hundred five million dollars in nineteen ninety eight. TLC's accumulated deficit One point one billion dollars by the end of nineteen ninety eight. W. I mean, how can you not respect that business acumen there, Matt Don't you love capitalism and how fair it is? Do you want to put in your two cents about educational software before I tell you what happens? I mean, sure. L I don't know the specifics of the educational software and of the company that he ran, but this was a real part, the nineties and the early two thousands of wealthy people, Bill Gates, notably, coming in and saying that a lot of educational policy should be outsourced in a way that benefits technology companies and the emerging tech sector and the dot com bubble that I know that Kevin O'Leary was very much a part of. At the very least in Bill Gates' case, he did a complete takeover of education in many parts of the country. And there has been an analysis of that takeover and that privatization showing that learning standards went down. And that really, it turns out teachers knew best. and it was more important to have things like adaptive learning and educational policy that was more tailored to the students as opposed to this push that like technology has to be involved It seems like O'Leary rode that wave, but it really was a wave of privatizing education, and it was bipartisan, unfortunately, that is hopefully no longer in vogue. But you know, you have existing politicians in the Democratic Party right now that still were very much a part of that push. I think Coreory Booker comes to mind from New Jersey This was a giant scam in and of itself, and it looks like O'Leary's participation in the broader scam was a scam within the scam, a Russian doll, if you will. Yes. And by the way, and I'm just gonna say really quick, everything that I'm saying is alleged because well, it's alleged, however you might be wondering like how can you have like revenues of eight hundred million dollars with a software company and still be losing so much money? And one of the things that was eventually uncovered was that TLC, at Kevin O'Leary's company It would at the end of a quarter to at the end of a financial quarter to really boost its revenue numbers up, it would repackage a lot of unsold merchandise and send it out to be sold in drug stores and would mark those sales as revenue But then after the quarter came to a close and they had reported it as revenue, a lot of that merchandise ended up getting returned because no one was buying it Yes, it was the dot com bubble time and they were buying anything that would come in front of them that had some sort of shiny text branding associated with it. So O'Leary's a scammer, it appears, but it also appears like the purchaser did not do their due diligence Once again, the myth of meritocracy under capitalism just exploding before our very eyes. Speaking of purchasers not doing their d d In nineteen ninety eight, Mattel, the toy company put in a bid to acquire TLC, believing that educational software was the future Mattel purchased TLC about four billion dollars in the spring of nineteen ninety nine. O'Leary took over as president of Mattel's new TLC digital division His salary increased to six hundred fifty thousand dollars a year and his severance package grew to five point two million dollars A few months after the sale went through O'Leary sold almost all of his stock in the company and made immediately around six million dollars. And if you think this sounds a lot like insider trading, I can't say whether or not you're right You can think what you want. Coincidences happen every day. Coincidence happens every day All legic In the third quarter of nineteen ninety nine, Mattel initially announced that it expected a fifty million profit from TLC. uppon realizing the company they acquired was actually collapsing, they revised that estimate to a loss of between fifty and one hundred million dollars which wiped out two billion dollars of shareholder value in one day The actual Q three loss ended up being one hundred five million dollars And the following quarter, the loss was two hundred six million dollars That November of nineteen ninety nine, Mattel fired Kevin O'Leary six months into a three year contract And finally In two thousand one year after the acquisition went through They sold it For around twenty seven million Business weeek called Mattel's purchase of TLC, one of the worst deals of all time Mattel shareholders launched a class action lawsuit accusing Kevin O'Leary of insider trading and obscuring the actual health of DLC. which Mattel eventually settled by paying out one hundred twenty two million dollars to shareholders. But in the end, D didnn't really matter for Kevin. He made roughly eleven million dollars between his severance package and the sale of his matel stock. So Essentially he took a pile of crap put a bow on it Sold it to Matel got out when he could, left the rest of the shareholders with the bag as well as the purchaser of his software and then has decided to market himself as a business genius. Now That's not necessarily too far afield from the truth Everything under capitalism, I would argue, requires some level of scamming. I mean, the fact that workers don't own the means of production for the products that they produce and put their labor into is a scam in and of itself. At least there should be some sort of hybrid model where workers have a part of the company in a way that isn't so disproportionately oriented, I think, also towards financialization and towards that being stock options. It's about like the physical product that's being produced. But I digress, he is a scammer allegedly It appears like he is now selling that as something that other people should replicate And the reality is that this dot com bubble, this period where all of this kind of software was being purchased Really the result of a lot of luck And it doesn't seem like his product was very good He just rode the wave of the dot com bubble, cashed out And kind of left everybody to be screwed over. and that's not replicable, especially because he only was able to start this with ten thousand fucking dollars from his mom. Exactly. His rich mom. I mean, look, I grew up with a certain amount of privilege with parents that are both lawyers. It gave me a head start in life. It allowed me to not have student debt, which so many of my friends and family members have to deal with it allowed me to live at home for a year when I was making a very low wage when I first got my media career start at TYT and so I was able to save up to get an apartment. you can acknowledge those things and still say, hey, I'm lucky to be in the position that I'm in. And yet guys like Kevin O'Leary do the exact opposite. They create media ecosystems that are supposedly about empowering other people when in reality, it's creating a misperception that this level of wealth is achievable if you just put your mind to it. That's right. The fact that he's even like a shark tank guy, where like nothing, as you say, nothing that he did to actually accrue his wealth is replicable least of all through sort of like organic thoughtful entrepreneurship. And speaking of which, I want to I was gonna to save this for later, but there's a video that I found on his Instagram that I saved, and I want to show you it. This is actually the one where he's talking about the fastest way to make a million dollars. The fastest way to make a million dollars is to make the first ten thousandllars. That's really how it works But really, it's not about Anything else except focusing on what people' wants and how to bra solve their problems peopleeople get wealthy, not pursuing money out of greed, but pursuing a passion around a problem solving exercise. That's what business is all about peopleeople't want to walk around with their feet, so they buy shoes. It's a simple outcome, isn't it? So think about that Try and find something that's a pain point that you know everybody has and then provide the product or service as solves for that That's how you make a million. That's how make five million. That's how you make a hundred million. That's how you make a billion. People don't like walking around barefoot, just invent shoes. That was simple. Did he say a pain point at the end? A pain point yeah. Just interesting. His support for Donald Trump, his support for capitalism that is unfettered. There are a lot of things that are pain points for people having a home or not having a home being able to have a roof over your head. That's a point of pain Should that be exploited by the market your ability to pay for your cancer treatment. That's a point of real pain Should that be exploited by the market These are the questions that should be asked of somebody who espouses this ideology Mhm. It's also, I mean, I don't want to belabor the point too much, but like finding a hole in the market, which is what all of these like entrepreneur influencers say is like the first thing that you have to do, which like Kein O'Leary is ultimately like an influencer. Again, it just bears repeating over and over again. as many times as he repeats the lies that he is lying. He didn't become rich by finding a hole in the market There wasn't a hole in the market for the thing that he created. So he inflated the worth of the company, sold it for a million dollars, well, actually four billion dollars, made out like a bandit and then had everyone else sort of cover up the mess Like it's just a lie, and this is why I think this episode is good because that is the case for basically everyone who is that rich. I know people are going to take issue with that and find like, oh no, I know the guy who invented the granola bar. Okay, congratulations. But like you can't become a billionaire and I'm not even accusing Kevin O'Leary of being a billionaire. I know that would flatter him way too much But you can't become that wealthy without exploiting people. I've said this before. It doesn't necessarily matter if sociopathy is a prerequisite for achieving that level of wealth or if you develop a sociopathy because you are so inculcated from the human experience once you develop that level of wealth It's a chicken or the egg situation The end result is largely immaterial means that we should not allow people to accrue this kind of wealth and we should be able to tax the hell out of them if they get to that point. because that level of wealth inherently involves exploitation regardless of the intentions from the outset, which I don't believe if you want to take them in the best faith interpretation, it doesn't matter. We're not talking about your moral character. We're talking about how we structure a society And no person should have that level of wealth because of the amount of power that it gives to them. It's undemocratic in addition to being exploitative just from an economic sense. Kevin now with his ten plus million dollars goes on to become an investor. He becomes a venture capitalist. He invests in some things that work and he invests in some things that don't work. But at this point he has kind of so much money that the money itself just sort of like compounds two thousand three He clearly wanting to be some sort of influencer, which I think in common with Donald Trump and a lot of these other figures, he's always wanted to be on TV He reaches out directly to a Canadian television producer, he's like, I think I would be great on TV. Props to Kevin, a cold call And he gets on TV. He's first on this show called Squeeze Play, but then he really comes into the limelight, at least in Canada. After being cast on Dragon's Den a TV show where aspiring entrepreneurs pitch their business to a panel of venture capitalists The show is, of course ted for the U. S. as Sark tank in two thousand nine, which O'Leary was brought onto prodroucers have always liked the way that he can play an asshole on TV and seemingly off of TV as well. This isn't really an episode about Shark Tank I don't have that much to say about Shark Tank. I had a phase watching Shark Tank. I feel like probably most people have had some phase where they're like It's ten PM and I'm on a weeknight and I'm eating microwavable mac and cheese on the couch and like shark tank's on, so I'm gonna watch sixteen episodes of Shark Tank. you know, I enjoyed it fine. I think I initially watched it to support Bethany Frankl, who was robot capitaling capitalism. And at the time, I was obsessed with her. I look back on that obsession differently. God, if we could do a housewives episode, I don't know I don't know what I would do with myself. What happened with Bethany Frankl, I'm not a houseize person. I mean, there's nothing really to say. It's just that like I've grown out of thinking the girl boss like feminism thing and her also kind of ridiculous self mythologizing is anything of value. but God to her seasons of Real Housewives of New York still hit seeasons seven through eleven, baby. It's the literal peak of television. I'm taking us too far afield. This is why the gayen love you. That's good to hear. No, I mean, I had a phase with Shark Tank. like it was entertaining. I think eventually it started to feel like a little gross. whatever. You could say like I'm being too woke about it because this is how like investing works. and like you do have to pitch your ideas to rich people, but like I think A a certain point, especially as the world reaches like where we are today, with wealth inequality, with like basic health and human services not being available to people Watching this sort of like monopoly man panel and watching like oftentimes poor people just like beg and then be brutalized by someone like Kevin O'Leary on TV, to me, it just started to feel like icky, I guess. It really fit in as we're going draw a lot of parallels to Donald Trump, in with the Arentice as early two thousands reality show that was about a wealthy boss who understood things, whether it's a panel of capitalists on Shark Tank or Trump and his family, himself that performed this for television And it allowed people who didn't have economic circumstances that have empowered them to visualize themsel in the role of the boss or the person that's deciding whether or not pitch for the shark Tank panel is something that is viable It's entertainment that places you in the power position when our economy has so thoroughly disempowered those people. Every person that comes onto Shark Tank has infinitely more in common with the rest of us than we do with the zero point zero one percent that would be making determinations based on investment. And yet what this television programming has given to people is the vicarious experience of living in the position of being the boss in a time when that's been so thoroughly stolen from them That is Best analysis of Shark Tank I've ever heard. Thank you so much. In fairness, I haven't heard that many analyses of Shark Tank, but that was a really good one. Should I start a video essay channel? I mean, honestly, that's like a dream of mine that I've never really been able to achieve. But those video essaysays, the gosh, I mean, you know, with all your editing and stuff like that, it's tough. I was gonna to say, we're halfway there with a bit fruity I have really hate that show at this point because even like the nice one is Mark Cubin. I'm like, I can't even stand Mark Cubin anymore. Mark Cuban just sold the Dallas Mavericks, which he said was like his greatest love in life. Miriam Adelson Wow. if people don't know who Miriam Adelson is. Trump's one of his top donors, mega Zionist donor. Her husband Sheldon Adelson, has died. He funded a right wing paper in Israel. She continues to support it. She wants the entire West Bank essentially annexed by the state of Israel and did a quid pro quo with Trump to allow for that to happen. She donated a hundred million dollars to his last reelection efforts. So Unfortunately, yes, Mark Cuban, who I have met in person before and is a very firm handshake is not one of the good billionaires because those don't exist. There you fucking go. I want to take a quick break from the show to give a shout out to the American Humanist Association for supporting this episode I was so grateful that the American Humanist Association continues to want to work with this show because their value system is so organically aligned with my own Humanism is fundamentally about living ethically. It's about living in community with other people, who you care about, and it is about valuing evidence over dogma, valuing science over religion. creating legislation that prioritizes that as an ethic. The American Humanist Association is an organization that works to materially protect us from laws that value religion over people. And if that's a battle that resonates with you, I would love for you to check them out at humanist. org slash fruity. You can learn more about what they're up to, and if you feel so inclined and able, you can make a donation. No donation, of course, is too small And you'd be shocked at what five dollars can do. When you send five dollars to the AHA, you are directly funding legal work that protects our right to live under a government that doesn't use religion when it makes laws. You're funding policy work that helps strike down bills that would otherwise target marginalized communities. and this is work that Lord knows we need it right now. So big shout out to the AHA. Thank you for sponsoring this episode. and now let's get back to the show I want to take a beat and talk about some of Kevin O'Leary's Persal finance advice And I want to start with one clip that has made the rounds recently and that I mentioned up top. Let's listen to it I can't stand it when I see kids that are making seventy grand a year spending twenty eight dollars for lunch. I mean, that's just stupid. It's just think about that in the context of that being put into an index and making to eight to ten percent a year for the next fifty years. Emma Why would you eat lunch? Why would you eat lunch And you could invest that lunch money. skkinny. All right, yeah, first of all, not a ton of body positivity from Kevin O'Leary there We're doing the avocado toast thing, I guess. That's right. I mean, come on, we've grown up with this at this point. Yeah, it's not a problem that food prices are so insane and that wages have fallen below the pace of inflation. And by the way, you have an administration that O'Leary supports that's telling you that you have to control your health through your individual consumption choices. and that's the only thing we're offering to you is some advice about I don't know, seed oil and the amount of meat and vegetables that you should consume. Make that decision yourself, but also make sure that you skip lunch and get the hot dog from the vendor that's a few bucks or get the Big Mac as opposed to the salad that we're telling you that you need to eat to make yourself healthy, but also don't eat it because if you do so It's your problem for not making smart and financial investments. Thank you to the boomer class and the capitalist class for giving us such sage advice. Can you explain because a lot of people listening are probably either like too old or too young to know what I'm calling is the millennial avocado toast fallacy? Yes. I grew up with it a little. You're a few years older than me, so you definitely were like in the heart of that. All right. Sorry, you're actually we're the same age I'm nineteen Yeah Because this is the millennial avocado toast fallacy just recycled for Gen Z. Wait, so you're like at the beginning of Gen Z, right? I'm at the end of millennial. I think that's how it works. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm right on the cusp. I'm ninety eight, so I don't know P peopleople put me where they want. My sister's ninety seven and I think about her as on the cusp as well, but I'm towards the end of the millennial experience, just to clarify that for the audience, obviously, important stuff Like this was a kind of an Obama era fixation on conservative media that spread into the mainstream, which was like, can all of you kids that are coming out of college in the financial crash and there are no opportunities for you, just shut the hell up and stop spending all of this money on avocado toast, which by the way, at the time it was like, eleven dollars. Oh my god. Now it's like sixteen dollars for an avocado. this is the thing. It's it's the same fallacy, but with the number pumped up to twenty eight because like that's how much lunch is now. I mean, one, again, if we want to bring it back to the Trump administration, does O'Leary want to talk to him about the fact that he started this offensive criminal war with Iran that has driven up fertilizer prices to the point where everybody's food is going to continue to go up? It doesn't matter what part of the world that you're in. There's a disproportionate amount of fertilizer that is made from byproducts that come from oil and gas And that a large portion of that comes through the Strait of Hormuz. So it's not just going to be your gas prices that go up, it's your food prices too And O'Leary is trying to say, and this is where, you conservatives you can put a pin in their arguments where you can flag them when you see how they're trying to disempower you politically because that's what he's trying to do. Don't look at the systemic reasons. Don't look at capitalism, Don't look at all the tax cuts to the wealthy that have occurred for decades, a regulatory framework that Reagan and the conservatives have gutted for decades, donon't look at the fact that we've taken the chains off of corporations, so they can charge you whatever you want makeake it about your individual consumption choices. and that makes people look less collectively and turn inwardly. And so for all the talk on the right about these mental health issues and why do young men feel disempowered by society? I don't know mayaybe because the entire crop of influencers that are telling them how to be a man or how to make money in this society are specifically skirting the systemic issues that have led to their emiseration and are more focused on blaming individuals for their circumstances because this is not the actual audience, right? Like I just want people to be clear about that. From the avocadoos phenomenon on Fox news that spread elsewhere to this talking point from Kevin O'Leary This is about being a bedtime story for grandpa watching Fox News. That's right. This is about him being pissed that his non binary granddaughter talks back to him at Thanksgiving or non binary what you get what I'm saying, grandchild non binary grandaughter. It's a bedtime story for already existing rich old white men And the self help stuff is a very thin veneer, but the people that do get dragged into it I feel for them because they're being misled and they're not necessarily seeing what their power is. And it's it's a self soothing story for Kevin O'Leary as well. because right once again He did not become rich by doing the things that he's telling us to do. He did not become rich by what getting a cheaper lunch And then setting aside the money than he would have spent on a sweet crereen and instead investing it and letting the wealth grow over time. and now he has ten million dollars chalet second home on a lake somewhere. That's not he did it by scamming people. Yep. And what is a scam, if not saying You're the sucker and I'm the exploiter And there's not enough exploiters to suckers in the ratio to make this an actual viable path for advice for other people. And I also just have to say, like maybe there are places in probably more like rural or suburban in the middle of the country areas where twenty eight dollars is like a nice lunch But if you live in one of the cities that Kevin O'Leary no doubt thinks that young people should live in if they want to get the best jobs twenty eight dollars is sweet green and a can of seelzer Absolutely. This is fast casual pricing. So essentially what he's saying is like any form of like not packing yourself a sandwich in a brown paper bag is luxury that young people should not be partaking in if they ever want to own a house, which is just crazy. It's just crazy. Especially when you look at home prices and you look at how disproportionately they're being held on to by people who have owned that property for so long, they're probably not even paying a mortgage on it. And they probably had an interest rate of like two or three percent. And so there's just not enough housing anymore. It's a literal shortage in terms of the actual physical housing that's available to people because we've allowed it to be so overly financialized But yeah, it's your lunch. It's your lunch. But Kevin O'Leary's advice for us doesn't end with food. He's also graciously offered advice on what clothes We should be buying Here's Kevin My mother Georgette taught me and this really probably flows into why I buy these watches. Don't buy crap She used to only buy one Chanel jacket a year but a really good She loves Chanel. When she died, there was a cat fight for her clothing amongst the women in my family. becausecause they were now vintage chanels that were worth way more than what she paid for them. So she really, so most people you go look in your closet, it's full of crap. you don't need. You bought crap that you just don't wear, you wore it once and it's just crap D't buy a crap. By the good stuff and just buy less of it I would love to see his mother's dry cleaning bill I mean, the more that I listened to this man over the last week, the more it crystallized to me. that his mother was fucking rich. And that's fine. But does Kevin O'Leary know what a Chanel jacket costs? Do you know what a Chanel jacket cost? As a tomboy, I'm gonna guess a Chanel jacket's like two thousand dollars No Oh I'm not into clothes, and fashion. I'm really That's a lot of money. Do you think a Chanel jacket cost two thousand dollars today? Yes, that was my guess. Oh, I was gonna say like maybe In the sixties or seventy, No maybe they were a little less than two thousand dollars, cent Uh, if you ake a scroll on Chanele's website as I did. Okay. Chanele dot com is that where I go? I'm just gonna do this in real time I love the gender role reversal we get to do though. It's fun. It's f. Yeah, I mean, like look, yeah, my personality, I've never been into fashion. there's no way for me to even look at prices. It's just photos. Can you tell me Okay, well, that's ' you're in the Hokaor section. Hokaor is. Okay, H aotur It's basically when the fashion house designs specifically for a person. There are only, I think like four thousand people around the world who are rich enough to be customers of H Coutur. You have like a direct relationship with the fashion house. Don't ask me how I know this. Clearly, I'm not one of those customers But I mean, look, you were talking fashion the other night when we went out to dinner and I had no idea what we were talking about then. So I' you're educating me. I've been working on it ever since they crucified me Anyway, I mean, Hokoutor, that's not even what we're talking about, but that can be like hundreds of thousands of dollars for an outfit But ready to wear. if we just look at ready to wear, which still on hundreds of thousands of dollars for an outfit. Yeah, ye, yeah Okay. Ready to wear, which is the things that like if you went into a Chanel store and you saw a jacket and you were like, I'd love this in a medium or whatever, like that's ready to wear. That's like, they've made it, it's ready to wear off the rack. I went to the Chanel website because I was like, these things kind of get more expensive every year. What is what's the going rate The most sort of like basic standandard Chanel jacket that I have clicked on that you would think of when you think of a Chanel jacket. is thirteen thousand three hundred and fifty dollars Okay, I was Pretty awes I don't think Kevin O'Leary knows that. I don't think he cares. Exactly. It's a scam. He's just I mean, who knows if this is even true about his mother? I have no idea if this is the case. Why would it matter? And the fact that he keeps invoking her in this business context It feels like another scam in and of itself I'm seeing if you got twenty eight dollars lunches every day. wouldould it equal one chanel jacket? It would not. It would be about ten thousand dollars. Wow. Keep your sweet green kids. But if you put it in some sort of investment vehicle, after a year, if you skipped your sweet green, you could potentially if the investment goes the right way and Trump doesn't crash the economy Save up enough for all of your missed lunches to be one Chanel jacket that you can get dry cleaned every week. every day, potentially because you don't have any other clothing. You could also just eat the jacket Those fibers have got to be nutritious. I mean, how else can you justify that cause Mewhile I'm like should I spend forty dollars on this nick sweatshirt that I really want? Geez I should mention Kevin O'Leary briefly ran for leadership of Canada's Conservative Party. Did you know this? Yes, I did. All I know about it is that he like tried and failed to be like Canada's Trump. I think that they had some better conservative representation by, you know, Ford, but I'm not necessarily sure if I remember anything more than this. Shout out to Canada. I know you guys would grill me if I didn't include that he had a sort of failed political run, but he still tries to you know, influence politics wherever he goes, including the United States, where he now lives in Miami Beach. A one vating incident I'm going to tell you about booatinging incident. And before I do so, I will tell you that in march twenty twenty five, a crypto influencer named Ben Armstrong accused Kevin O'Leary of murder and claimed that O'Leary had paid millions of dollars to cover up the boating incident Kevin O'Leary responded with a defamation lawsuit and won approximately two point eight million dollars So I would just like to once again make it very clear look into the camera that the O'Learys have never murdered anyone with their boat or paid to cover it up any suggestion that they did categorically false. and now I would like to tell the story of what happened in August of twenty nineteen. I would also say that the O'Learyies had never murdered anyone with their boater or paid millions to cover it up. Any suggestion that they did is categorically false Shall we Yeah On the final Saturday of August twenty nineteen Kein O'Leary and his wife were at their idyllic estate on Lake Joseph. Lake Joseph is a tiny body of water in an exclusive cottage country region of Canada two hours drive from Toronto. The lake is surrounded by expensive summer homes, including the O'Leies. ten bedroom, eleven bathroom, nine thousand eight hundred square foot mega manansion. That's too big of a house to have for your vacation home. I'm sorry. you got to max out in single digit bedrooms. done I'm done with this crap. They need extra rooms for all of Georggette's Chanel jackets that she didn't need Across the lake that night, some of the O'Leary's wealthy friends were having a dinner party. The O'Leies decided to drive to said dinner party on their luxury speedboat coobalt bow rider They stayed at that party until approximately eleven PM when it was time to boat home in the dark Linda was driving and she'd been drinking. which her lawyers never disputed But when she had the drinks was disputed, put a pin in that She was also driving at a quote, significant speed per police records, but the exact speed was never specified. Just gotta say girl bossing here and shout out to Kevin for being such a feminist that he allowed his wife to drive the boat in pitch black. he got to sit as a passenger. Well, I will say after all of this went down There was sort of like the rumor mill around like, did Kevin O'Leary throw his wife under the bus And was he actually driving? I believe that Linda was driving It's alleged Anyway, around the corner from them, also on the lake, another dinner party was being hosted that night by Irve Edwards, a doctor and businessman Edwards and eleven of his friends headed out on his speedboat to Stargaze on the lake. Irve Edwards allowed his friend, Richard Ru, a general physician from New York to drive the boat that night They drove the boat a little ways out from their house and stopped on the lake and turned off their navigation lights so they could see the stars better passengers of that boat would later say that they actually turn the lights back on The O'Learys dispute this. They say the lights were totally off on that boat. not seeing the Edwards boat due to some disputed combination of darkness, alcohol and speed The O'Leary's boat slammed into the front of the Edwards boat Then traveled up and over it At the time, two people were stargazing on the front triangle section. You know how the front of boats will have that little like triangle where you can sit. There were two people sitting in that section of the boat. Susanna Brido, a forty eight year old mother of three and Gary Poltash, a sixty eight year old man from Florida Pal Hash was killed on impact Brito was knocked unconscious and later died in the hospital a few days later Linda O'Leary injured her ankle Kevin was unhurt Ooof. Yeah. Okaykay. U There are way too many just in terms of like the proportions incidence of boating issues while drinking with wealthy people probablyroably because wealthy people are more likely to have boats. But this feels like another incident where it's just another shady situation where people have been drinking they decide to drive boats. And turns out that's still a motor vehicle and there are other people on these bodies of water. Yeah That's right. After exchanging a few words between the O'Leary boat and the Edwards boat, the Edwards boat rushed back to shore for help, while the O'Learyies continued to their nearby cottage. The O'eary's son, Trevor, called nine hundred eleven after the O'Leary' got home. Wait, can I just ask you? Yeah to clarify, So they went home They didn't stay. when they knew that they had crashed into this other boat, allegedly. Well, Kevin has been litigious about the claim that he fled So I won't say that he fled the scene But they did fact go to their home after the collision occurred. They did not stay together Okay, that is, I think, important information The police officer who arrived at their house smelled alcohol on Linda's breath and had her take a breathalyzer test, which revealed that her blood alcohol content was between fifty and ninety nine milligrams of alcohol per one hundred milliliters of blood Bordering on the legal limit to drive a boat or I believe a car, I think it's the same thing, which is eighty milligrams point eight Iillegal lim I don't know. We live in New York. We don't drive. Yeah. I haven't talk about this in so long. It's why when I go out to LA, everyone is so like less of an alcoholic than us here in New York. It's like becausecause they have to think about driving and we're like, all right, whatever on the subway. When the officer asked Linda what she had had to drink, Linda said that she had been served a vodka drink upon arriving home, Cash and couldn't remember who poured it According to the O'Leary's son's friend, Linda said after she got home that she quote needed a drink. I hesitate, I'm sorry to do another real Housewives reference, but I'm not saying this is the exact same incident. Joe Judice once made the same claim after an incident in which there was a car that had been crashed and there had been drinking involved Yes. You drink when you get home, you definitely weren't drinking during the period where you were driving. No, that's a great connection because a lot of the articles that I read about this, they noted that this is a common tactic and I'm not saying Linda did or didn't do anything. But oftentimes when people are involved in a drunk driving incident or something like that, they'll drink after they get home once the police show up or at least say that that's when they were drinking to be like, well, no, I drank after. I wasn't drunk during. Right. At least say that And we're, you know That's What she said? That's what she said. Linda O'Leary was charged with careless operation of a vessel, Richard Rue, who was driving the other boat was charged with failing to display a navigation light All three parties, the O'Leary', Richard Rue, and Earf Edwards denied responsibility for the crash. And after two years, Lindis charges were dropped. prosecutors couldn't meet the burden of proof to show that she was driving without proper care Paula Briddo, the sister of the late Susanna Briddo, said,Qote, it's a slap on the wrist for them. and a slap on the face for the families I don't know. I'm not usually one to do a cop out of like, I think that there were multiple people at fault here What I do think though is that there were multiple people at fault here I think that Linda O'Leary probablyro maybe allegedly had at least a drink in her at the time, perhaps allegedly And you know, she was probably driving faster than one should drive on a boat at nighttime when it's total darkness And as they tell it, the other boat had no lights on at all, which It seems to be the fault of the operator of the other boat, if true I've read a lot of like forums from like boating people talking about this and they're like, if the other person didn't have their lights on, then it's very, very, very hard to see the other boat. It seems like they were stargazing, which would make sense as to why they had the lights off so they could see the stars. There have been other incidents of vehicular manslaughter that's not this. of course, it's just another incident where there were charges, right? Wh I can understand saying like we should differentiate between somebody who's maliciously killing somebody and somebody who does it by accident. I mean, Caitlyin Jenner is an example of somebody who hit someone with their car and that was clearly not intentional However, I do think that we can still be clear eyed and critiqued a level of impunity that applies to the wealthy. And in these voting incidents I feel like it's on steroids because the people that are out there voting under these conditions tend to be wealthier people. That's right. And and ultimately the people who died we're not operating either of the boats. And based on to my understanding, all tellings of this story from all sides It sounds like both boats were doing something wrong. yet basasically no justice, as you might imagine. Wrongful death lawsuits were filed by the victims' families in the direction of both boat drivers. The claims of Brido's children who at the time of the crash were twelve, eleven, and nine years old at the time Alleged negligence in the operation of both boats resulting in the death of their mother and sought damages for loss of guidance, care and companionship, loss of dependency, and loss of services. The O'Learyies also sued jointly claiming more than three million dollars for economic loss pain and suffering and emotional distress and the loss of enjoyment of life Her Toronto Life magazine, quote, O of the O'Leary's wealthy neighbors said that the O'Leary' felt they were being unfairly persecuted because of their wealth and fame Oh man. They're being discriminated against. It's a protected class. Don't you understand? The rich people who were able to have the means to vote in this elite area at this time of night are the victims for being put in this circumstance The O'Leary' lawyered up, they retained Brian Greenspan, who's a famous celebrity lawyer. They also utilized Kevin O'Leary's agent, Jay Shores, who is the vice chairman of UTA, one of the biggest talent agencies in Hollywood, United Talent agency to flood the press with Kevin's side of the story, which is the following, quote On a late night, I was a passenger in a boat that was involved in a tragic collision with another watercraft that had no navigation lights on and then fled the scene of the accident saying the other boat fled the scene I am fully cooperating with law enforcement in their investigation out of respect for the victims' families, and to fully support the ongoing investigation, I feel it is inappropriate to make further comments at this time. My heartfelt prayers and condolences to the victims, the family, and those affected by this loss I think it's interesting because one could plausibly read this and think that like the O'Learyies were the victims. Isn't that the case kind of, I feel like when you have wealthy lawyers like that And it's these battles between wealthy people. I mean, the Gwyneth Peltrowsky incident comes to mind That is the tactic that is most effective. They have the means from a legal perspective to fight back against endless claims And so you are not going to take a more conciliatory approach as a defense attorney if you understand that you have the resources to engage in a protracted legal fight with the other side. So I feel like you disproportionately see this with wealthier people portrayal of them as a victim as opposed to like if you're poorer You you're going to have some sort of public defense lawyer that is going to say, hey, it might be time to settle or accept these kinds of charges for a lesser sentence. Now, within months, the O'Learys were back living large. They were doing their like rich person fundraiser dinners. like life kind of just continued on as normal. And in January of twenty twenty six Almost seven years after the boat crash, they reached a settlement with the family of the victims. We don't know everything about that settlement Two of the Brido children who were still minors at the time the settlement was made. One of them, like so much time had passed that one of the kids had turned eighteen, the twelve year old Two of the children who were still minors, we know the details of their settlement which is that the O'Leary' paid each child one hundred thousand dollars minus legal fees. And by the time the legal fees, pro rated costs, taxes and fees were added and deducted to the various subtotals each child was given seventy two thousand five hundred and thirty eight dollars and fifty six cents, which is to be held by the court until they turn eighteen Also Alex Poltash, Gary's adult son, the other victim's adult son startarted a go fun mee for the kids which raised twenty five thousand dollars That's what they got. Gotta say for an incident that is that traumatic with that kind of loss, it feels like a bit of a pittance in terms of the settlement that was reached. Yes. I just you know, it is one thing for like an accident to go horribly, horribly wrong Right? I'm with you like there was like memes about this boat crash and people are like, Kein Oer was a murder, Kevinilleer was a mur Whatever, we can we can you in the comments can get into the alleged details of what allegedly happened The thing that I think is very clear is that like the O'Leary' kind of said fuck you afterwards. Right. They could have offered a much larger sum than they initially were forced to agree to. And they probably, I don't know the details of their arrangement with their lawyer. I'd imagine that they paid well over what they settled for each child on an annual basis just to fight it. And it goes to show and I think You can see a lot of this in high profile wealthy legal battles. How immaterial the actual material elements of this are to the people involved. So much of our civil litigation when it comes to these and this is in Canada, so I'm not fully understanding in terms of like their system, or I don't have a great grasp on it. But just from the egos of you know, Western, white, rich people, it's almost a sport for them to play this out in court as opposed to anything that's material because I would imagine that the O'Leary' could have saved a lot of money if they just decided, hey, we're going to give these kids this amount and it's going to be a lot more than we end up settling on, but we're going to just wash our hands of this and make sure we do the right thing. Yeah. They chose something different Yeah, that's a great takeaway. And my only other one, which is kind of the same one, is just that it's just There's no justice in this system if you're up against someone with the money like Kevin O'Leary has. Clearly, it doesn't look like the families or at least the Brido children in that family had the same resources as the two people driving the boats in the incident that killed her And there's just no justice. There's just no justice. And that's another reason why I think Kevin O'Leary is a great stand in for like every rich asshole because he kind of just hits all the beats. Well said, well said. I really don't have too much to add to that, honestly. Should we talk about the data center? Yes So If you haven't heard Kevin O'Leary is currently a primary developer of a massive data center in Box Elder County Utah called the Stratos AI data Center. The data center would be one of the largest in the world be roughly sixty two square miles, AKA forty thousand acres, AKA to Manhattans, AKA thirty thousand football fields The data center would consume nine gigawatts of power, which I believe is currently more than twice as much as the entire state of Utah. Oh yes, you are absolutely right about that for just the Kevin O'Leary data center more important than the entire topography and population of the state of Utah. According to Utah Clean Energy, the dataenter would use sixteen point six billion gallons of water per year to operate. twenty five thousand Olympic sized swimming pools in a state, mind you that has been plagued by drought for years. This is a fight that's happening across the country and it's not just Kevin O'Leary of it all, but I do think that his cartoonish kind of rich guy thing plus the sheer scale and size of it when you compare it to the overall ability of Utah to serve the people that live there in general makes it such a stark example of how these data centers and the developers behind it are trying to rint to outpace the coming populist anger and rage about what these data centers are going to do to communities. and they're trying to undemocratically Get ahead of the reaction by like other tech compies asking for permission after already doing something that is indelible and that is unchangeable and that the forces of capital are already behind it. So you have the snowballs momentum. B the way, no more snowballs, I guess in Utah anymore, one of the top skiing locations in the country if this kind of thing goes through. it is in many ways an example of how the AI and these tech companies are in a metaphorical sense, the house that we all live in, right They're breaking into it. We've figured it out. We've come back from dinner. We got up to the house. The doors are locked. We can't get in. they're barricaded. We're trying to use our keys. Wait, what's going on here People in AI, I think Zionists too, capitalists interests oil and gas, all of this, the existing power players in capitalism have locked the door and barricaded it and they're ransacking the house and going out the back door. before we can get in the front way And I think O'Leary is an example of this. I think the Trump administration is a real example of this. And it just goes to show how much of a threat, true democracy and populist anger against their actions Air to these very people Well said Good metaphor. Thanks. painting a good picture in my mind Picture But paining it well? Kevin O'Leary lives right now in Miami Beach, Florida, because obviously no shade buy it Walter Masterson, who's great, did this video where he went to Miami Beach, Florida to the specific area that Kevin O'Leary lives in. and he was like going up to residents being like, should we build a data center on the beach right here I think it would be a great way to outpace China in the AI race. And they were all like, what the fuckking get the fuck out of here? No, we're not building a fucking data center It's like yeah, because Kein O'eary doesn't want that in his backyard. No, but also thinks that like anyone protesting it in Utah is id agent of the Chinese govern, which we're gonna get to in a second. Yeah, we'll get into that in a second. and I want to unpack some of the kind of coold War mythology that he's copy pasting onto his own self interests. But I think the reason that Utah is notable and maybe O'Leary wasn't anticipating this pushback is that Elon Musk was smart enough to know that America iss a pretty damn racist country. So I'm going to stick my Grock AI in Memphis, a predominantly black city and poison this area and understand that larargely not going to get a ton of pushback. I mean, gosh, Tennessee just disenfranchised almost that entire metro area by carving it up in the state legislature in a redistricting fight So they've been disenfranchised politically and it's easier for someone like Elon Musk to go in and pollute a population that's majority black. Utah maybe a bit of a different story. so Kevin O'Leary, less rich than Elon Musk more pathetic than Elon Musk and not as good at his job as Elon Musk, just throwing that out there Yeah, and to be more pathetic than Elon Musk, I mean, that is one achievement Kevin O'Leary can say he has. Yes, exactly. This data center project, which is under construction, has garnered massive protests in Utah and really around the country, but huge protests in Utah. Shout out to everyone in Utah who might be listening to this, who has been showing up for that You are seriously like doing the Lord's work in this country Kevin O'Leary does not know how to handle pushback. to anything because like everyone of his stature, he has the most fragile ego in existence Of course, one of the primary motivators of those protesters are the environmental concerns of the data center Kevin O'Leary has this insane cananned response to the environmental inquiry, which is this. are you offsetting the? how are you offsetting these environmental concerns Well, I'm actually the only developer of ata Sanders on Earth that graduated from environmental studies. Emma, hes said this in like sixteen different interviews. I think I'm the only guy doing this that graduated from environmental studies. That's good, That's good to know that you studied environmental science as you destroy the environment. It's almost like you got a peek into the beauty that you're about to completely erase from the planet. He goes on to say in that specific video, which is like I guess he's learning the art of like, oh, we got to do front to camera videos in the car now. L we have to be intimate with our fans and the people who hate us He goes on to be like, as someone who studied environmental science, I'm aware. Of all of these options, we could do solar power. Sustainability is at the heart of what we do in terms of all these proposals. And so we search for the best technology. There's many air cooled turbines now So you're blending in air cooled versus water. There's so many different ways to generate power. We can also put a percentage of the power generation through solar, wind and batteries. I want to he's also said this a hundred times. I want to set the standard for sustainability and data center construction I am going to show them these data centers. There are going to be this shining example of how you do this sustainably because I'm the only guy that is graduated out of environmental studies and builds data centers. No one else on Earth has done that. Meanwhile This data center is just not utilizing any of those methods that he's putting forth. It's being powered entirely by natural gas. Well, the technology is not there to actually How are thesea data centers with green energy, it's just not there. The chips that are necessary, the energy that is necessary, they're using the easiest, cheapest energy systems to make sure that they're able to sprint to the finish line again, ahead of the populous anger this There are technologies that are being developed to make things a little bit more environmentally sustainable like in terms of like how some of this heat and energy can be absorbed, right? But in part, the administration that's in power right now, Trump has killed a lot of these projects that were focused on researching this kind of thing. It's crazy to see Guys like Kevin O'Leary, other folks who are trying to make sure that these AI data centers are built as quickly as possible Circumvent the real concerns that so many people have about this happening in their backyard Now, for example, AI data centers, just like if you don't care about the environment at all are driving up energy costs for so many Americans. Electricity usage is largely flatlining when it comes to the usage by everyday people, but for commercial and industrial usage It's going crazy because these data centers are taking up so much of our electrical capacity and energy capacity across the country And there are no guardrails in place to make sure that they bear more of that cost and it's being offset onto consumers with your regular energy and electricity bills So it's a real problem and they're banking on the fact that the regulatory framework has not caught up to the tactics that they're using and they are right to bet on this. This is a tactic that tech has used more broadly Whether it's Uber in major cities like in New York, where you had cab drivers who had paid and saved up so much of their life. As Kevin O'Leary would say, by the way, they saved up all their money to buy a medallion, which allows you to drive a taxi cab in New York City. It's like an investment in your own individual small business and it's not cheap. And when Uber came to town Basically, they marketed themselves as a tech company and not a cab company and they were able to circumvent the regulations and the medallion requirements that cab drivers in the city had to pay into and invest into the stroke of a pen was able to come in and make sure that so many of these cab drivers not just that their jobs were obsolete But their investment into their own individual small business was all for naught And Zora Mom Dani, current mayor of New Yor did hunger strikes with cab drivers on this very issue But there were also many who truly killed themselves literally, in front of City Hall in protests for how this emiserated them and ruined their livelihood. And if we had stronger leadership at the time, that could have been prevented. It's not to say that Uber wouldn't have eventually come into the city But it's to say that we could have made sure that those cab drivers were whole and that their whole lives were completely destroyed by the emergence of this new ridees share technology And so I see this very similarly when it comes to AI, where they're trying to get ahead of these really salient and important practical concerns about what this is going to mean for the everyday people that they're going to impact with the construction of their data center with this technology And I just want to return a little bit. So the China competition narrative. Can I tea you up for that? Oh, yes, please. And I also just want to applaud everything that you just said because well, I need a glass of water because I've been talking for too long. so this gives me a real opportunity to sip You learned at sister. That was really, really good Like I said, the data center in Utah has drawn these massive, massive protests. to which Kevin O'Leary says the following. The thing that got me motivated though, was watching in the last two years this narrative in North America about how negative data centers are. startarted in Virginia actually The idea that they consume a lot of water, that they are very noisy. and all that's true from stuff that was built fifteen years ago, but today that's not the case. And yet the narrative kept going And I thought, who's doing this Who would not want us to have power, Who would not want us to build our power grid out? Because when you build a data center today, you have to develop your own power and you can sell it back to the grid that's we're doing in Utah I'm thinking to myself The Chinese. They don't want us to do that I went through that whole thing with TikTok, as you may recall, and I actually saw the evidence of how the Chinese were manipulating the algorithm Now they're doing it a different way. and that just kind of pisses me off. So I'm happy to add compute. like I don't want my kids in twenty years who live in New York being told what to eat for breakfast by the Chinese If I were the Chinese, the last thing I want in America is the five or six tech companies that are competing with me on Deep Sk having more compute capacity I want to shut down every single proposal for every single data center in every single state And I want agitators paid protesters, I want environmentalists. I want to shut it all down so that they can't train their models as fast as I can Okay So much there. So what he's basically saying is that An negativity you may feel towards a data center, much less being built in your own backyard is direct or indirect influence China because China's motivated to get you to go out and protest those data centers so China can get ahead with the technology.'s not All of the very real environmental claims that environmentalists have so graciously brought forth and publicized, it is not the threat of misinformation, especially coming up on a midterm election and then a presidential election, not long after that. it is not the total erosion of jobs, especially the first rung of jobs in so many industries that now college graduates can't enter into at all. It's none of those things. It is Chinese propaganda on TikTok What about spiritual Israeli stuff? Are we going to bring that back up again? But I guess we'll stay on track for just a second. To talk about the cynical usage of Cold War narratives to paste your business model into what previously fueled certain investment, which was the idea that we had to defeat communism with the USSR and we have to be engaging in this kind of competition. Now Back in the day, I don't think a lot of this was good. It resulted in many Wars, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Cold War was disastrous for so many people across the world. Kissingers brutalization of Cambodia. I mean, you know, we could the genocide there, we could go on and on. But at the very least, when the United States was competing with the USSR in the Cold War We had the United States's like government involved directly more in, say the space race. That was state investment, which is a lot more direct. It allows for less waste than when you have capitalists controlling certain competitive arrangements, because especially in this very highly financialized system that we live in There are investors that take the top off and extract so much of the value that could be going towards investing in the technology. This is to put aside for a second the immense environmental impacts that he's completely skating over We are not in a system right now in our economy where we can adequately Orient our resources. to be competitive with China on things like AI. It's already gone. It's lost. I encourage everybody to look up carbon brief, this real analysis I cite all the time. It's inconvenient here in the United States But China has been growing at its most rapid pace. in its history And last year, they were able to decline carbon emissions by one percent in the final quarter of the year, securing a decline for zero point three percent for the full year as a whole Meaning China is growing at its largest pace. And they have also, in a year reduce carbon emissions and are building out an infrastructure that is more resilient and less reliant on fossil fuels. That is how a government that has actual state capacity that can direct these kinds of investments is operating It's a government that understands that they want to set themselves up, China to be a future global hegemon. and the way to do that is to reduce reliance on oil and gas, on coal, on all of this dirty energy that's going by the wayside What is the United States doing in comparison We are turbocharging fossil fuel emissions. We are tripling down on it via our investment in the Middle East, and Trump is orienting foreign policy towards that even in the way that we're scrapping these climate projects and it's all going towards building out these AI data centers The way that they're being built is not going to be sustainable even in a neutral race with China about what data is being collected by these AI data centers. So I bring this up to just really say This is a silly attempt to use a Cold War framework that no longer applies to get rubes to invest in certain AI companies so that these guys can make more and more money under the guise of competition with China. When that competition is already done, it's over. It's been lost We don't have an efficient economy anymore These people at the very top are extracting so much wealth that could be going towards even if you only cared. about the AI race with China towards improving that technology. Instead, it goes towards making these guys rich. And they're trying to get and double dip. They're trying to get the American people to bear the brunt of it fromom an environmental perspective, from a government priority perspective in a variety of different communities across the country And so again Kevin O'Leary with his, you know children's hospital closing face that he shows all the time, I think is not being honest about the reality about competition with China. And it's just a way to use a national security framework to obscure valid environmental and societal concerns Yeah, that was said better than Anything I could have said, but I don't know about that. No, it definitely is and I do know about that. But I will add, I heard a quote recently that I thought was really good, which is just that in the race to beat China at AI, the only winner is AI. Right. And I mean, you know, we're about to have one of the worst El Ninos ever. I mean, last year, do we remember that California was on fire like this is really a major problem and an accelerant of climate change. And when we talk about fascism I think it's important because a lot of times people on the left are afraid to call certain things fascism and you have people on the right that will try to corner you and be like You don't even know what fascism is. You're the true fascist because you des demand terms of service for anti translllers on social media companies The reality is that fascism it's an outgrowth of Hitler and Mussolini's ideologies in their reigns in the twentieth century characterize it as High levels of militarism, high levels of nationalism anti democracy that tries to circumvent the will of the people. also particularly, I think importantly here for understanding this moment When you use a mythologized past talk about a revival That involves encouraging suppression of marginalized groups and othering of them as a scapegoat being an important part of your state policy, but also in regards to this conversation about Kevin O'Leary and these data centers the merging of the corporate and the state, the inability to discern between capitalist interests and the interests of the United States So with Peter Tal and the oligarchy it's hard not to look at there immense influence in the Trump administration and not describe it as fascism Kevin O'Leary is not a big player in that space. Yeah, but that's what's fun about him is like we can talk about these broader dynamics, I think, without the stakes that would be involved in, say, a Peter Thal expose. Yeah. And I mean, look to the people in Utah, like the stakes are that high because Kevin O'Leary is that much of an imminent environmental and professional and economic threat to them, but it also is kind of funny to like think of him as like this pathetic little guy who like really wants to be part of the proper oligarchy, but like isn't I want to conclude here, if I may referencing A film. that I saw a while ago. And I'm not one of those people that's like, I want to reference a film that I saw at the Sundance Film Festival in twenty twenty four do When I was at Sundance a couple years ago, I saw a movie called Veni Vidi Vici, which means I came, I saw, I conquered And it was kind of a weird film. I don't even know if I really liked it premise was interesting It was about a really, really rich family that hunted human beings for sports you've learned this pretty early on in the movie and The whole town that they live in is sort of in crisis because they're like, oh my God, people keep getting killed and people keep disappearing and where are they going and who's doing this and who's going to hold them accountable? and what are we going to do? And then one by one within the government and within industry and within press realize that it is this family that is hunting people for sport The family just titillates them into not revealing their secret and not holding them accountable by offering them jobs by offering them scoops, by offering them whatever special interest it is that they need to sort of self soothe And the movie just it's a little too long and it kind of makes its point pretty early on and then just goes on for too long. But I've thought about it so many times, and I think about it with someone like Kevin O'Leary or any of these rich assholes That movie, obviously, I think it would be a little bit of a stretch to say that Kevin O'Leary is literally hunting people for a sport. You know, the point that it was making is that this is the level of like death and destruction and havoc that people like this wreak on society And we let it happen when we allow ourselves buy into the myth that if we just look away, if we just turn our cheek to all of the horrible things that are happening we might be on their side of the equation soon enough. We could be in their orbit. We could have money like them We can buy into the myth the same way that Kevin O'Leary says he did with the ice cream shop story. I don't know. L to me and I try to always have these someome might say rosy takeaways at the end of episodes It is the job of everyone to divest themselves from that myth you will never be able to scam the way that Kevin O'Leary scammed. Because like I said There's finite room for those scammers. And much like you know, multi level marketing scheme Under American capitalism Basically all been filled out. Yeah by people like Kvin O'Leary. When you mentioned an MLM If there's a pyramid and that pyramid is not getting inverted with the scammed being the minority You know, in many ways, capitalism is a large scale pyramid scheme. And it doesn't mean that we should feel like life is worthless or that we can't change anything and that you know this economic system is so overbearing that we can't imagine a better future It's just to maybe release some people of the internalized guilt that they felt Kevin O'Larary is so comfortable promulgating with self help books. And fuck Josh softy casting Kevin O'Leary. What was that? Literally just like so My husband now woked me. Like I kind of liked the movie and he was like, he's such a scumbag, Emma. I couldn't get into it. Why couldn't they cast somebody that just played a scumbag and I could get into it And the more I sit with it, I'm like You out wokeed me. You outoke wokke me buddy. You really did. You're right I mean, it's true. I mean, their whole thing was like, I mean, Kevin said this in press conferences for Marty Supreme, he was like, well, it was just such a good fit because I'm such an asshole in real life and I was good at playing an asshole on TV. And he was good at playing an asshole in the movie. also so would have an actor. Yeah. I got I mean, look, the Sffties. I liked the casting of Kevin Garnett in Uncut Gems, but that was relevant because he was playing himself. You could have cast any Sag after actor. to be in your production that would have been able to play a rich asshole. It's not like they're or dearth of white man in Hollywood that could have done the exact same thing Emma Thank you so much for joining me. I have to go and eat my chanel jacket But this was a real pleasure. Good for you. That is an appropriate allocation of your resources. and you're gonna to be able to have a retirement now. Conggratulations. Thank you so much. I can't wait to be a homeowner Where can people find more of you besides on this very podcast? The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. I am the non Sam Cedar. We are live every weekday, noon, Eastern at the Majority Report We are a daily progressive political podcast. We cover the news of the day We in the fun half do some mockery of right wingers, but for the most part our first half is pretty dry and informative where we have experts on I would encourage people to check that out either on YouTube or in podcast form, join themajority Report. com I've actually figured out how to do a real plug. That was really good That was really good, rattled it off, etched into the back of your brain. Thank you so much for listening to this episode today. I love you. I hope you enjoyed it. to all the Canadians who sent me messages that you were happy. I was covering this burden that you have had to carry. I hope I did it justice Thank you so much again to Emma It' just so much fun collaborating with such a good friend. It really does feel like hanging out.. Until. time much and