So, I did a debate, kind of a debate discussion with Toby Young of the Free Speech Union in the UK the other day, and he is a supporter of not exactly clear what, but some kind of government intervention with big tech with regard to free speech, and he considers what they do, censorship, and he also talked about other laws he'd like to see passed and regulations and laws that he would like to see passed, and we're having this discussion, and as we talked about this, and he was articulating why he held that position, I had this thought about tribalism that I think is important and I think explains a lot of what I'm seeing in the world that I didn't really understand until now, and that is Toby's perspective was that that pretty much anything was okay, that he was willing to compromise if you will on principles, if it stopped a left, if his team would win as a consequence, and it just the way he said it and the way he expressed himself, I found really intriguing, so I'd always thought, I'd always thought, naïve me, right, I'd always thought that people who are conservatives have a certain set of beliefs, and they believe in those things, and that they, yeah they sometimes compromise on those things, and they sometimes don't get everything they want, and sometimes they don't understand the implications of everything that they hold, and so on, but fundamentally I thought they have a set of beliefs, and that is what motivates them, that set of belief, and they won't purposefully go against that set of beliefs, right, that the core was this belief set, even if it's ambiguous and not well-defined, and you know not very solid, but they wouldn't explicitly go against it, and the same on the left, that people on the left have a certain set of beliefs, a certain set of ideas, and that's what motivates them, that's what motivates them to be of the left, that's what motivates them to support certain pieces of legislature, and reject other pieces of legislature, it's basically this orientation around ideas, I guess because that's how I am, and I project that, right, so I have a certain set of ideas that's what I want to get achieved, and that's what I fight for, and you know if I was in politics I'd be willing to compromise on the way there in order to get where I want to go, but generally it'd be the signpost, the direction will all be driven by these ideas, by these principles, by these ideals that I'm going for, and my assumption was implicitly that that's what people on the left and on the right also do, and that even though they're inconsistent and even though their ideas, again, are not well-formed, that their motivation is all driven by ideas, and what hit me until we were saying was that, yeah, that there's certain set of ideas very vaguely represented that identify somebody as left and right, but it seems that more and more people today, in how they apply to the specifics, are not so much using the ideas as a reference point, but they're using the impact on the other guys as the reference point, and of course this has been obvious over the last few years where I've seen more, and this has been shocking to me, and I haven't, I still don't quite understand it, but it's taking me a long, long time to understand it. People would say things like, yeah that's bad, but it'll stop the left, so I'm for it. So the standard becomes what will stop the other team, the other group, the other tribe in this case, not what is consistent with their ideas, not what will get me to where I want to go, but purely it will hurt the other guys. That's the motivation, that's the incentive, and that is really hard for me to grasp, truly hard for me to grasp, but it's obviously true, and you can see that in many people who support Trump. It's not about this will get me a positive, it's this will slow them down, or this will hurt them, or this will, so for example, on the issue of Big Tech, on the issue of Facebook and Twitter and all of those, there is no free speech argument to regulate speech on Twitter, Facebook, because they are private companies, private platforms, and regulating them would be a violation of free speech. Their speech, their ability to discriminate, so it's not about that, it's not about defending speech, it's not about issues of speech, it's about power, it's about power to estrange what people are afraid of, which is the advance of the left, it's about power to hold the left back, to control the left, it's about power over these companies, to be able to use them to promote your ideas over other ideas, it has nothing to do with the principle, which is the right supposedly stands for free speech against the left, it stands against free speech, and indeed the left, when the left argues, right, that I mean what the left wants is power to control speech, what the left wants is power to control your speech, they're not, but they can't say that they're against free speech because explicitly they're the party historically that has been pro-free speech, so I have to invent an excuse to justify the power grab, and the excuses we don't want to offend and people have a right not to be offended and people have a right not to feel bad because of your speech and speech can hurt, so speech is violence, they know this is crap, this is self-evidently the opposite of free speech, but they can't admit probably even to themselves that they're actually anti-free speech and they want power over speech, they want a control speech, so they need to create these excuses, so all of this is about power and about the other guys, and of course that's what power is, which power is power over people and power to hold back the other tribe, it's my tribe over your tribe, my tribe controlling having power or your tribe controlling having power, and it's, you know, it's the same as, you know, we're for free trade until power demands that we have tariffs, if in order to maintain power we have to protect steel workers and we have to pretend to protect their working class and we have to pretend to protect all these other play, then the principles go out, power dominates, power and holding back the other team, power and restraining, restraining the opposition, the primary is my group having power, my group being in control, my group dominating over your group, over the other group, so I think in my mind now it's clear that for so many people out there in the culture, they picked a team and they're willing to do anything for that team, you know, and you can see it right now, where, you know, people who I think normally are basic decent okay people, you know, willing to abandon reason, abandon evidence, abandon standards of evidence so that their team can win, so that their team can win, so Maradona when he played soccer, you know, Maradona died last week, maybe one of the top five soccer players in all of history, just a phenomenal soccer player, you know, what he could do with the ball, it was just stunning and amazing, but if he needed to use his hand, as he called it the hand of God, in order to score a goal, then he used the hand and none of his fans, none of his team, nobody who supported Argentina in the World Cup bemoaned the fact that he used his hand to score a goal, even though the evidence is quite clear, I mean, there's video evidence, so if it's your team cheating, then it's okay, so if we have to pretend there was election for it so that we can win and we can maintain power and we can control, then so be it, you know, generally, I don't believe in cheating, generally, I don't believe in lying, generally, I believe in an American political system and a very pro-constitution, but because my team lost, to hell with all that, I mean, I don't know if you saw General Flynn, the other day, his tweet about Donald Trump should suspend the constitution and declare martial law, this is Flynn, this is the guy who was supposed to be the national security advisor to Trump, he was for a very short period of time, actually met Flynn a few months before the election in 2016 and a smart guy, he had good proper views on Iran, I mean, I didn't like him completely, but he was good, normal, pro-constitution, pro-American, but the tribalism over the last, I don't know, maybe it's 10 years, particularly over the last four, is such that truth doesn't matter, reality doesn't matter, principles don't matter, what is matters is that the team, the you're backing wins and they'll do anything, just like, in a sense, just like the soccer, soccer hood, you know, some of those soccer, crazy soccer fans, they go into stands and yell and scream and fight and, I mean, I'm sure in their normal lives are pretty normal and nice guys and everything, but once they've picked the team, once they've chosen which team is theirs, reason is complete out the window, rationality is completely out and they become these, you know, little monsters who are willing to commit violence for the team and the same is true on the left, it doesn't matter what Obama did or didn't do, I mean, doesn't matter what AOC says or what ANTIFA, ANTIFA is just a myth and it doesn't matter how much evidence because they know that if ANTIFA is real, it's harder for them to get elected, it's not that they like ANTIFA, it's that ANTIFA hoots the team, so they're anti-ANTIFA because it hoots the team, I mean, they deny that ANTIFA exists because it hoots the team if they do exist, if they are doing what they're doing and to hell with the evidence, these are people who in their day-to-day lives and their jobs are very dedicated to evidence, but when it comes to politics, it's like team sports, but with much more emotion and with much more commitment and the stakes are gazillion times higher if the stakes in sports are non-existent, really, other than your emotional state at the time, in politics, the stakes are massive, the lives of people, the livelihood of people, as we can see right now with COVID, is at stake. So, I mean, I should have known this and I did know it at some level, but it's, it really is completely, it really is completely rationed, it really is all about, all about their team, their tribe. It really is tribalism. I mean, it still doesn't quite compute. It doesn't quite quite grasp it because, I mean, to me, it's so irrational that it just doesn't sit right. But, you know, when Toby said, and I like Toby and he's a smart guy and he does some really good work, but when he said something like, we want to pass a law that does XYZ and, yes, I know it's not purist and, you know, if you're a purist, you'd be attended by, but he said, but it all slowed down the left. And it was like, whoa, wait a minute, that's the standard? Not what is good, what is right, what is true, but it'll slow down the left, even if it's a violation of your principles.   So we have to slow down the left and we'll deal with principles later. But no, I don't think it's that. I really do think it's because I think this was, this is not this left. And I wonder, so this is the question I have and I don't have an answer to it. Has this always been the case? Have politics always been this tribal? Do Republicans always support their president? No matter what, the Democrats always support their party? No matter what, no matter what they did, what they said, what was happening? I don't know. Some people tell me it's always been like this. I never saw it. I mean, to me, it's a new phenomenon. So it's a phenomenon that became real during the Trump era. But looking back was there during Obama. But I don't remember it before that. I remember people being very loyal to Bush, but it wasn't the same thing. There was more credibility to the idea that they were making a mistake rather than this blind, this blind loyalty. That I think so many out there have towards their political party, towards their political leadership. And again, both parties. Anyway, just just a thought on tribalism and remember what tribalism really means is in the context of politics, specifically, is power. It's about me having power over the rest of you. It's about my group having power. It's not about even me having power, but my group having power and preventing you from having power. It's my group versus your group, my team versus your team. And anything goes because it's politics. Anything goes because, again, politics is about force. Politics is about coercion. Politics is all power. So if I have to use force, coercion, then so be it. Even if I know deep down that it goes against my principles, even if I know deep down that it doesn't, it isn't, you know, I say I'm for free speech, but it really isn't for free speech. It's really undercut free speech, but it slows you down. So it's OK. Slows them down, their team down, their tribe down. So it really is unprincipled tribalism. So I think that Toby, like somebody like Toby wants to be principled. He has an idea of principles, but the principles don't seem to get him where he wants to go, which is the defeat of the left is the primary. And that's what he becomes a pragmatist. He abandons the principles in the name of defeating them in the name of my tribe over their tribe. And I think that's true of a lot of people. I think that's true of the Tea Party. The Tea Party seemed to have principles in the early 2000s. They seem to stand in the early 20 teens and they seem to stand for something and they seem to have certain beliefs, but they didn't quote work. It didn't get them the result they wanted. They couldn't defeat Obama. That was the big thing with the Tea Party. They defeated Obama in 2010 and in 2014 in the House in the Senate, but they couldn't defeat him as president in 2012. And they were sure they would win the 2012 election. He was so unpopular because of Obamacare that it seemed like it would be a slam dunk. And they had principle quote on their side. Now, they elected a nominee who was very unprincipled, which is which is. Romney, but, you know, of the choices they had, they were all pretty unprincipled. And. But they lost. And what they did when they lost was they gave up on the principle. And they said, OK, well, principles don't work. Well, we really need, you know, we need to stop these Obama people. We need to stop the Democrats. We need to hold this. We need it. And I think since then they become more and more and more tribal, more and more focused on being against the left than for anything. And I think they've abandoned all the principles and they're not for anything. They're for a vague notion of America. And that's why Trump's was brilliant in coming up with it. Make America great again, because he identified that what what unified these people was a certain sense of patriotism without a real fundamental principle, substance behind it and that patriotism drove them and he captured that with make America great again. There was also a sense with all these people with the Tea Party of nostalgia, so make America great again, taps into America and taps into nostalgia and drives you forward. All right. So a thought about tribalism, lack of principle and power, power. Remember, that's what it's all about in the end of the day, because in politics, your team, meaning winning means your team has power. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think, meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, women or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist growth. All right. Before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes. That should be at least a hundred. I figure at least a hundred of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it, but at least the people who are liking it, you know, I want to see, I want to see a thumbs up, there you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to a hundred. All it takes is a click of a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know, the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So, you know, and if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes. But if you like it, don't just sit there, help get the show promoted. Of course, you should also share and you can support the show at your own book show dot com slash support on Patreon or subscribe star or locals. And, and show you support for all, for, for, for the work, for the value. 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What's up everyone safe down here welcome back to another video game pickups video I'm really excited for this because every game that we're gonna be talking about today is a physical copy You guys seen in the past video game pickups that most of my games are ones that I get on sale in the PlayStation store Today all three games. I'm gonna be talking about are the physical copies that I gots for a really great price Let's just get into it here So up first is a PlayStation 4 game and that is Shaq Fu a legend reborn Now this game here was new whenever I purchased it at EB games It had the original sticker price, which was $39.99 and they had it on clearance for $14.99 which was a great deal for this game now even though it was a new game It does have a tiny bit of damage on the cover right here But still for that price for a game that I definitely just wanted to try out. That's not that bad That is still a great price now this game here I haven't really dove into it too much, but it does have I think 35 trophies and they're all bronze trophies. So there's no platinum for this game But still a lot of great fun in this game It looks like just a simple beat-em-up style game with of course Shaq now I do remember if I remember correctly the original game that came out for this was a complete flop This game here. I'm not totally sure. I didn't look up the reviews or anything I just looked up the trophies and seen that it was $15 for a new game and I decided to buy it I said why not for that price? It looks like a little fun game that I can play in between my main games and it was only $15 so this one here. Hopefully it's really good the graphics do look awesome the story might be okay But I'm not sure how it's going to be. I really hope this is a great game Let me know down below if you guys think it is, but this is my first game that I recently picked up at eb games I thought for a new game for $15. Why not even if it's not that great a game It's nice to add that to my collection I think the next game is the first PlayStation Vita game that I purchased since I bought my PlayStation Vita And I actually bought this at the same eb games at the same time I bought the ps4 Shaq fu game and that is this one here assassins creed 3 Liberations now of course this game does not have the original artwork on the cover here But that's completely fine All I'm going to do is literally print it off slip it in here And I'm not going to be really bothered by that. It is a great game. I already started playing it on my Vita It's a lot of fun. It's a little bit lesser quality graphics for an assassin's creed game But of course that is because it's on the PlayStation Vita The story and gameplay is really awesome, and it definitely feels like an assassin's creed game It's a lot of fun, and I'm definitely going to spend a lot of hours into it Now this game here was only eight dollars at eb games And I thought for an assassin's creed game and for the first game for a PlayStation Vita that I'm buying Why not I find PlayStation Vita games especially because it's now discontinued. I think a year or so ago It's extremely hard to find games Especially at eb games a lot of them just don't carry them anymore and don't have them So finding this game was definitely Really exciting for me, and I knew at eight dollars for an assassin's creed game and for a Vita game I just had to have it for my collection, and that's exactly what I did for eight dollars The game looks like it was barely played too So I'm really happy with that game And the last game is one that I actually bought on ebay And it's a game that I was looking for for the ps3 and that is WWE Legends of WrestleMania You guys know I collect the WWE games, but at the time that this was released I was only playing and collecting the annual Smackdown versus Raw games this one here was an extra game that they released that year now at the time That this was released for the PlayStation 3 the PlayStation Trophy system was just Shortly released so this game here actually has a platinum trophy, and there's no online trophies Of course if this was an online game or had an online aspect to it The servers would be no good anymore, but they do not have any online trophies And I can earn a platinum with this game So I'm really excited for that a lot of great legends are in this game And I'm really excited because I never played this game back in the day But one thing I find is really cool is if you had this game and smackdown versus raw 2009 You could connect the rosters from both games together So the legends that are in this game you could play against the roster that is in smackdown versus raw 2009 Which is crazy, and I was really excited at the time I bought this on ebay because I thought I was gonna be able to bring the roster over or bring this roster on to smackdown versus raw 2009 And then it hit me smackdown versus raw 2009 I do have my collection, but for the PlayStation 2 not the PlayStation 3 Regardless, this is still gonna be a fun game. I love wrestling games And this looks like it's a classic with all the legends in it I honestly think this is gonna be a lot of fun This game here was only $11 plus shipping and to get this a PlayStation 3 game and A game that I'm going to eventually be able to platinum I'm really excited to check this out and not only check it out But add it to my wrestling game collection because I have over the past I think 17 or 18 years straight of collecting except for their bonus games like this one here I have all of their annual games, but not necessarily ones like this where this was an extra game that was released that year So I'm really excited to try out this game on the PlayStation 3 and earn another platinum So I'm really happy especially since the first time that I started this series Every game that I talked about was a physical copy Usually I get a lot of downloadable Consent that I purchased from the PlayStation store on sale today was not the case Everything is added to my personal collection And I'm happy to finally be growing this collection more and I got all these great games at a great price So I'm really excited to not only earn a lot of trophies, but just have fun in general with these games So I hope everyone has enjoyed today's video Hopefully if I pick up more video games in the future I'll also share them on the channel because I love sharing this content with you guys, and I hope you guys love it too I'm gonna leave this here. Please take care. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace


hello beautiful. do you ever just wake up in the morning and think i want to do some renaissance hair? hi um so i'm over here editing this video right now i realized something i say renaissance instead of victorian during this video i apologize this video is about victorian era walk me up and put me in a jail cell um i didn't pay attention in history it's victorian it's not the renaissance okay so next time i won't **** that up but this time just ignore every single time i say renaissance and replace with victorian all right thank you i woke up this morning and was like the renaissance is calling my name actually though i get recommended a lot of renaissance themed videos on youtube and tiktok there must be something going on with my algorithm that's telling me brad this is for you and you're gonna like it and in fact i do like it so i started looking up some images and realized this **** is complicated the stuff that they do to their hair in this time period was magnificent they look statuesque like this and this and this and this i've been trying to dissect these looks for the last day some of them i just like can't even figure out what is going on because the pictures are pixelated you don't see a ton of detail so i'm gonna give it my best shot doing these looks but i know that i'm going to end up crying it could go well it could go really bad but i'm hoping it's somewhere in between i guess now i have to actually do the hair what a random video let's do it okay so i got my computer here and let's pull up some looks and let's just decide what i'm doing today first of all so i have this first one i understand what's going on here a little bit i don't know what that fuzzy **** is in the front of her hair this one looks much more doable um she definitely has some cute little bangs they all have those like sideburns going on like i don't really know why um then she has this braid that kind of wraps around her head let me have this which looks the most doable i think however still looks extremely difficult these curls girl whoo she said give me the i don't know what's going on at the top of her head i think there's just like braids like wrapped around up top i don't know can't figure this one out don't want to do it this one looks the simplest she looks gorgeous and also the choker like give me that this one she's not really pulling it off very well but i'm into it and that has to be like a hairpiece extension thing going on that big loaf of bread going around her head at the top i think i want to try this this looks like a three day old like hair that needed to be redone but she had a photo shoot that day and she just had to do it and she just didn't have time to do her hair like something happened with this one i feel bad for this girl this is not your luck sweetie no no girl i think what i'm going to start with today is something that i feel the most confident in this photo now we have a braid going on i don't have hair that's that long but i'm going to do something similar to this i like the little bump it going on in the front and then the buns going on i feel like i can accomplish this hello miss many quenos so i don't exactly have a mannequin that has like darker hair but you're gonna get over it um because i'm already over it uh usually people back then they didn't f*** with hair like this we're gonna do it and you're gonna ignore the fact that her hair is bright blonde that sound good it's good okay cool so this is your look over here miss miss many quen what you hate it that sucks we're doing it anyways don't care what you have to say i've told you that before and i'll tell you it again so her hair doesn't look curly like in that picture and i'm feeling like they used her natural texture to kind of form these croissants if you will within her head and kind of just did something like that and pinned it but her hair needs to be smoothed out so i think i'm just gonna smooth out her do a little bit of round brushing and i'll be right back okay blow out complete so where do i begin okay let's dissect this thing my brain isn't working today the plan is brewing and i'm getting the sensation that i need to put her hair up into multiple point tails i think okay we need to put the hair up obviously but we need some volume in the front so what i'm going to do is section out a little bit up here like a little triangle like that i think that's is that even okay so we're gonna section that out and i'm gonna pull the rest of the hair back and we're gonna tease the f*** out of this and we're gonna create this little bump up here i once i get to the front i don't think i'm gonna tease that part that way we have a little bit of hair to lay over this so it doesn't look ugly and like i'll not it and i'm starting to see the vision come alive already and i'm only on the first step we're gonna give it a little bit of separation because that is what our model has okay now i'm going to section the hair out behind the ears and pull this hair back i'm just trying to like perfect this little bump it moment going on here okay i just f*** it up i'm only on step two miss manny quinn you can't let me down now listen if i can do this today y'all need to stop telling me i'm not a real hairdresser we're gonna do another little ponytail right here that looks good enough you know what today's all about the phrase good enough okay i'm gonna live by that f*** today we would now sort of take the hair and do some rapidos around my fingers this would be easier if i just curled the hair but i don't want to curl the hair it's just adding an extra step and i don't want to do this all night long i think i should curl it what i created is not the reference photo so i have to redo it i am sweating very badly right now because when i film i cannot have the air conditioning on it's too loud and just like that all my work is gone removing the jacket guys i can't oh hey so i had a mental breakdown and i don't want to talk about it so here's what we have so far i decided to go for a little bit more of an interpretation this is really f***ing hard um i don't know if i like it uh this is a lot it's really hard to tell what the f*** is going on with her hair too based off of one photograph from the side of her head we're doing our best my perfectionism is getting to me it's proving to be just as difficult if not more difficult than i thought it was going to be it's really horrifying how hard it is but i've learned something throughout this process so far and that is that these looks need a lot of teasing because they are like built up on themselves they need to have a very um a good structure inside in order to start stacking the s*** but like we're getting something like my girl here could have lived back then and like got away with it you know we could like put her in a little time machine and she could be pooped out and i feel like people wouldn't look twice at her or they would and they'd be like girl who's your hair teller maybe like Ramondo i'm just leaving these little curly cues out um also this s*** in this picture um she also had beautiful flowers going on in her hair and i don't have flowers and i honestly feel like those flowers were covering up a lot of like the ugliness i don't know it just looked too perfect so yeah i'm teasing the underneath of the hair and then i'm just wrapping it around my finger and kind of just making like these buns i think these are gonna be my last buns down here until i go into this like braided moment these structures they definitely like spent most of the time just like teasing the hair because what i'm realizing is that they didn't have extensions back then so i don't know where all that hair was coming from um because it looks like a ton of hair but i'm pretty sure they just teased the s*** out of their heads to make it look like these women had like so much hair so what i'm gonna do is take the rest of this hair and do that sort of like twisty twists that you see on the bottom of this woman so i'm just gonna tease this hair like a ton and then i'm just gonna brush it out really get that hair looking like it's full as s*** and then maybe we're just gonna leave that teasing in there a bit all right that we have that really thick looking hair going on and then we'll do the same thing to the other side and if you're wondering if i've lost my mind completely the answer is always yes now it almost looks like her hair is pinned up back there as well okay and then we're gonna take our two pieces and it looks like it's just really like loosely um twisted and we'll just give it a little back comb at the bottom so it stays okay here it is the final look honestly let's talk about this because i'm proud of it like i feel like she could get away with this like if she what girl i know your drum but likes it up i feel like if she was teleported back in time the Victorian era she would fit in and people would not look twice or they would in like the best way possible like i feel like she looks and i feel like it's cute it's giving me a little early 2000s with the bump it in the front but other than that it's kind of nice this is really out of my comfort zone like i love loose undone punky looking stuff so doing something like this with no hair extensions or anything like it was a lot for me i'm gonna be honest but i'm kind of satisfied with the look that has been created even though i lost my mind if i had flowers put in this like i imagine it would bring the look all together i'm sad to see this masterpiece go but i think it's time to try one more look and hopefully i can do it a little bit better this time okay we're gonna do another Victorian updo i've completely lost my mind and i want it back like can you give my brain back like give it to me so now you already know that i've already lost my mind what we're gonna do is something that's gonna make me lose my mind even more okay at first glance you're probably thinking brad this looks easier let me explain to you why it's harder what the f*** is going on in this photo and how am i supposed to recreate it because i have literally no idea what's going on is it a bird's nest or is it an updo i don't know so for me being a very much perfectionist there is nothing perfect about this updo and there's really no structure or anything really going on so trying to um do something that looks similar to that is going to be nearly impossible this is going to come up bad like i want to make it known to everybody that this is not gonna look good i don't know i don't know i don't know okay i literally don't know i feel like she has this sort of like nest up here so i'm gonna start there and we're gonna go in and we're gonna tease because that helps everything in the in this um Victorian hairstyling moment we're doing today okay so it seems like she has this really large like bun you know like something like that in the middle of this hairdo if i can just like bust this out right now that's it that's it like i would be so happy so now i think what she has is like a sort of braid moment going around her head yeah there it is it's giving me prom 2010 right now you know i feel like people weren't doing braids like this though like why does mine look like too current oh that's kind of fun we can pin that right up here i'm just like let's let's have fun with this i just want it to look good what do i do here i lifted the hair up okay if you say so i'm gonna do the same thing on the other side oh my god okay we have a little structure going on a little sun in now we have these pieces here that i don't really know what i was planning on doing with i feel like they would do something like that i'm going on my own at this point okay we're gonna tease the out of this hair and i'm just gonna wrap this around my fingers and we're gonna pin it into place back here also i'm trying to give it that like messy feel oh that looks victorian ah wait why is this like low-key fun though just wait this is gonna get way more victorian as i go so i can't tell at this point if this is victorian or i've just lost my mind i think it's the second one but we're just gonna go with it okay i'm gonna now like pin this here because that's what they did like they did like that i think i mean damn girl i'm going to curl the back of her hair and hope for the best i'm kind of getting something here so i'm gonna continue to do this and voila here it is well nobody sees that anyways right like it's fine she really posing like this i feel like if she were taking a photo and like you have to admit that looks victorian come on give me a little credit here come on like from the back this is how it looked like it was messy it wasn't perfect and i definitely feel like they all had these like weird curls in the front like she has right now this actually like ended up being really fun it gives me that feeling that that picture gave me which was that kind of like messy but refined feel i don't know i'm giving it my best even like one side we could do ooh yeah like imagine this is my second look and my second attempt at victorian hair and i feel like this one is giving me serious victorian energy i'm into it though you look thick girl hope you like your hair for your um victorian party tonight what you're not going to victorian party oh well that sucks you're gonna take it out yourself okay i'll see you later my mental health has rapidly declined since the beginning of this video i will be honest with you but i feel a sort of i'm just gonna say happiness i don't really feel that happy i actually just feel like that was a lot for me i don't think i was supposed to live in the victorian era so i'm gonna stay here y'all can do whatever you want over there because that was hard it was low-key like fun though it also like help with my creativity flow i feel inspired a little bit it was definitely out of my comfort zone but i think i did something so i'm satisfied make sure you subscribe if you're not already right down below click the like button and the bell icon to be notified every time i post a new video make sure you follow me everywhere else here on my social media handles go for it if you like to check out my haircare line you can do so right now at xmondohair.com we have hair color and hair care my hair color currently is super red and super orange mixed together and i am obsessed with it you can also get some hair inspiration on our instagrams at xmondo hair for hair care and add xmondo color for color check out my live your extra life merch it is so damn cute it's so comfy i wear it literally every day of my life you can shop it now with the link down below or at xmondohair.com make sure you text me at this number right here this is really quick to my phone yes i really do see some of your messages and yes i'll be texting back a few of you if you text me right now this will also keep you notified every time i post a new video today's instagram shout out goes to steph she says hi brad i feel very bored with my hair i've had every color at least once probably every cut too i just don't know what suits me best okay okay i love this haircut on you i feel as though you should do a middle part do some curtain bangs add some layering and do a color that's like a mix between brown and blonde a brawned if you will um like a darker root and lighter and sort of moment like this that would look best i would love to see your hair if you do anything to it and good luck that's all for today guys thank you so much for watching don't forget to live your extra life and i'll see you next time bye guys


Our guest this weekend is Charles Hugh Smith who operates the alternative financial website of two minds calm And Charles recently wrote a brilliant article called the new shackle of serfdom clinging to health care insurance And so our topic this weekend is health care in the terrible state of health care services in America today How did we ever reach a point where health care is so thoroughly anti-market so thoroughly captured by the regulatory state in DC and by their crony friends in the insurance industry? And how can we ever get back to a system of paying market prices for basic services and having insurance only for Catastrophic injuries or illnesses. We'll explore these problems And we'll also talk about some potential solutions that the marketplace offers like minute clinics at places like Walmart and CVS cut the Irish care which more and more doctors are interested in now offering and Medical tourism which involves allowing people to purchase services outside the US So if you're concerned about what's going on in the health care industry stay tuned for a great interview with Charles Hugh Smith Charles Hugh Smith welcome so much for the first time to Mises weekends. Thank you for joining us today It's my pleasure Jeff an article you ran on your site up two minds about a week or so ago Also ran on new rockall.com was entitled the new shackle of serfdom clinging to health care insurance And I really enjoyed it because it talks about something I've always talked about this ludicrous coupling of health insurance with one's employment Right when you change jobs, you don't lose your auto insurance. You just pay the premium So let's unravel this event and talk about how we ever got into this mess Where first of all we have health insurance to begin with as opposed to paying cash for basic services But also how it came to be part and parcel of one's job. So I'll open it up to you How did we ever get to such an anti-market health care system? Well, it's certainly a long and twisted road as I understand it Jeff And I don't claim to be an expert in the history, but as I understand it It's a historical accident that Health care insurance was linked to employment and this this came about back when employment was very stable, you know the 40s and 50s when people would tend to work for a company for for decades or perhaps their entire career and and health care insurance was actually more like hospitalization insurance in other words back in the 50s when You know, I was a child My parents and everybody else paid for normal health care in cash, you know, the dentist paid in cash Doctors visit paid in cash so on and so it was only hospitalization that that it had insurance and It was very low-cost and I know this because I found my father's paychecks from Sears Roebuck and company and and the hospitalization that he paid was a few dollars a week and so It started out Looking rather benign, but as conditions changed then we're stuck with this legacy system that makes no sense Well, I've also read about during especially during the World War two period when there were actual wage controls In effect in the US that employers got around that and attracted talent by giving them sort of a backdoor raise By offering a perk known as health insurance And of course, we also have this mess where in most cases anyway Health the provision of health insurance is deductible to an employer as a business expense Whereas it's not deductible in most cases to an individual as a personal expense So it's definitely something that didn't happen by accident In other words, it feels like the government has forced us into this insurance model. We're in well, it certainly is forcing a cartel structure that Basically denies the market any chance to discover Price and and that's why it that's really the core one of the core issues of why it's so devastating is There's no real price discovery. So The pharmaceutical cartel, you know puts a price that the insurance cartel Pays and then the hospital cartel takes care of you know, they're in and so We don't know what the price really is We have no pricing mechanism and imagine if if we still had a system as you alluded to from your own childhood where our mom or dad When we're little go in and pay cash for things. I mean there you would instantaneously Have a huge amount of downward Pressure on prices for basic services But what ever happened in this idea before Obamacare came along and mandated that all sorts of things be covered in even the most basic Bare-bones policy, you know in my own youth time As a young guy in the 80s for instance All I had in terms of health insurance was a very high deductible catastrophic type policy I think the deductible was five thousand dollars a year or something which would have been a ton of money back then to me And all it covered was if I get hit by a bus or got cancer You know real hospitalization type things and beyond that I was young and healthy and I didn't care about health care insurance Is this the kind of thing that we could ever get back to today? Well, Jeff, I think that's a great question and I think that's we need to map out some route back to that even to the 80s and I can relate because I was an employer in the 80s and I remember distinctly that all my Employees I paid I think fifty four dollars a month You know for for for basic health care coverage, which was a copay, you know 80 20 or something And so it's like where did we how did we get from a situation that health care was once? quasi affordable and and provided a lot of a spectrum of choices to now It's horrendously expensive no matter what you choose and as a self-employed person I I know that the cost is just horrendous if you don't Qualify for a subsidy that is if you have a middle class or above income then you're paying 10,000 15,000 20,000 dollars a year for Obama care or if you're lucky It's a grandfathered in equivalent and and that's insane But since it's so expensive and since it's not deductible generally to the individual Which means if they have a 15 or $18,000 annual premium for let's say their family policy That means they got to make 25 or $30,000 before tax pre-tax to have that money You know it's just you talk about the need in the capitalist society to have mobility of labor and capital And I just wonder how many Americans who have entrepreneurial aspirations are scared to quit their job, right? Because they're afraid of being self-employed and having to go out and get health insurance on the market they're afraid to leave that sort of cozy confine of Employer provided health insurance. I mean it must be a huge drag In the sense that people don't leave their jobs as readily. I think you're absolutely right Jeff I think it's completely suppresses self-employment and the start of new businesses And it also suppresses hiring employees because if you do start a business and Get it functioning to where it can cover you and your family the huge cost of of Healthcare insurance puts a huge burden on on hiring anybody else And so it keeps very small businesses very small because it's a huge leap of faith to hire people and have to pay these Ridiculous healthcare premiums. So it suppresses self-employment Entrepreneurship and hiring that's a bad combination Well, as you point out if one happens to be poor Presumably there is Medicaid there as a backstop or you simply go to the emergency room or whatever and default on the bills when they come And of course, there's also a workaround in the current system for wealthy folks You know someone like Barbara Streisand is not going to call her doctor and wait two weeks for an appointment She can take advantage of something which is now termed concierge care Maybe she pays a hundred thousand dollars a year to a favored doctor and that doctor serves a very small group of people Who also pay him or her that hundred thousand and they can get same-day appointments? They have the doctor's cell phone number. They can call them 24-7. They can get prescription refills Referrals all these things very easily. It's like having a concierge as your doctor There's been some movement to move that down into more affordable middle-class levels like a $5,000 a year annual payment, but I wonder I'd like to get your thoughts on is this viable I suspect if that became prevalent the Fed gov would come along and try to say well You can't do that or you have to accept Medicare patients For example that they would find a way to keep that away from average folks, you know Jeff It's you raise a critical point in this discussion Which is what the federal government and and also by the state governments How they enforce a system that is broken and so when you try to do a workaround You're always you know at least in the lower rungs of our economy You're breaking the law like people write me and they say that they know a lot of people who are just in the underground economy You know they fixed cars, but they only do so for cash So they get their Medicaid coverage, you know paid by the the government, but they're making money cash and and so That's another kind of bad thing that these ridiculous costs do is push people who with marginal businesses into the underground economy where they pay no tax and and then there's they're basically Subsidized by those of us who are paying the tax, you know, I like the idea of of More options, you know and the concierge service is is an option and so, you know That's part of what makes markets work is having a spectrum of choice, right? so that what works for one person might not work for somebody else, but there's another choice for them and So there's another issue that I want to bring up which is when the government mandates all these things like no You can't do that unless you provide Medicare Medicaid a lot of providers and I mean doctors and Nurses and small clinics. They just decide to quit They just you know, they can't make money because of course the government instead of instead of breaking up all the cartels Which would be the way to lower costs the government keeps the cartel structure So all the prices are insane, you know, the every medication is five or ten thousand dollars every hospital stays a hundred thousand dollars and so on and so what happens is If the government imposes the cartel structure, then the only way it can reduce the cost is to Reduce the payments to the providers at the front line So that that means and I get complaints from I'm hearing from doctors via email that you know, they can't survive They get like thirty one dollars for some Medicaid Medicare Procedure or visitor something So they're gonna quit and so then we're not gonna have enough providers to provide healthcare It's such a tough road to become a doctor, you know, you give up your 20s you go into debt You give up a lot of your health and all the stress involved.  It's not it's not just a rhetorical question But you know, we talked about the workaround that the poor and the rich have to go get healthcare But let's talk about some of the workarounds doctors have one is one you just mentioned dropping out Two is perhaps trying to opt out provide concierge care going to research Leave the country etc. But there's a third one which is you know There's some of these areas where it's still cash and and look at how these things have become better and cheaper of years Laser eye surgery is one example It used to be done with a scalpel and it costs like ten thousand dollars now It's done with a laser you see it you see it advertised for like one thousand dollars because of course insurance doesn't cover it There's also an analogy with plastic surgery You know people go to the dermatologist or the plastic surgeon for cosmetic type treatments And these have gotten cheaper and cheaper and cheaper Because of because supply and demand at least to an extent is allowed to operate. So I'd like your comments. Yes, Jeff That that's exactly correct that when the markets allowed to function where innovation is allowed to flourish and people are presented with The cash price so there's competition then the cost of care plummets and So obviously that's the the the solution that needs to be expanded and I think that There is a movement Toward that and a lot of people look at I think Walmart has a thirty dollar You know flat fee Service and some of their pharmacies and and there there is movement both in corporate America and by individuals to offer just cash services and I know a lot of doctors would Would love that model or they're they're trying to get to that model because they also can eliminate all the paperwork What one fellow wrote me that he says he has like six people on his staff that do nothing But process paperwork to deal with all this government stuff And so if you're paying cash guess what you know you you need one person and so that that's the whole cost of Healthcare will go down the more we move to cash Because we won't need 40% of the money now goes to processing paperwork and some other unknown percentage as high as 25% from what I've gathered is lost to Fraud and corruption, you know in other words people billing the government for services that weren't rendered and so If we could eliminate the waste in our system We could drop pray the cost of the system by over 50% right off the bat never mind allowing innovation in competition Well, wouldn't it be beautiful of despite all the heavy handiness of the state here that someone like a Walmart with its minute Clinics or whatever they call them was able to cut through and at least apply some measure of Market to this in other words what people really want is to be able to go see the doctor same day without an appointment They want to pay a low amount 30 bucks or something for you know You're typical cold flu Erake whatever it might be so so we definitely need to keep an eye on that but I wanted to get back to Something you mentioned in your article, which is you've written in the past about this basically There's two options that we might consider when we do look at health care in Western countries and in the US One is that we go back to what we had which is basically a cash system with honest pricing get the state out of it Perhaps insurance exists but only you know high deductible catastrophic type insurance or the second option is we go You know to the full UK or Canadian model where you literally have what I guess is now termed single payer The government doctors provide you health care of a sort in these dreary clinics with long waits And there's there's scarcity and there's limits on on certain kinds of surgeries and there's end of life Considerations when when things get really expensive all that sort of DMV VA model of health care provision But so those are the two basic models out there in the world today of course the left hates the cash and capitalism model But here in the US we're mired in this middle this sort of corporatist model where we ostensibly have private medicine Through this network of insurance payments and the state and Medicare determined how much is paid So it seems to me and I hate to say this as a as obviously a hardcore anti-status that ours is the worst Our model is actually worse than the other two it in in a in a twisted way We might argue that that that the Canadian or the UK system is better than what we've got I mean I know it isn't in terms of results because you can still opt out I like I said if you're Barbara Streisand, but it seems like we have Saddled ourselves with the worst of both worlds. I totally agree Jeff and I think that we can quantify that It's not just an opinion, you know health care in the US costs far more than it does anywhere else in the world and the results are at least in terms of public health like the our problems with Obesity and and chronic disease and stuff. I don't think we're We're doing as well as other countries that's been a whole lot less money on whatever model So yeah, and you know, let's talk about that. What about if we had a a government-run, you know service like a you know, gigantic VA or something that was available and that Anybody could sign up for but there was also an unfettered open market So that if if you wanted the government service, you could sign up and that would be paid for by taxes But it would be as you said, it would be slow and efficient to be limits on what you could get But it would be like a way of covering offering coverage to everybody, but in an unfettered market Alternative then there'd be this whole other spectrum and I think that competition between these two systems would drive price and innovation because that's what That's what that's what the market excels at is introducing innovations that make things faster better cheaper and Allow people the choice based on the price and and the quality and the service and everything that should be Transparent and that's what's so wrong about our system is nothing's transparent The cost is is not transparent and the quality of services and transparent. You don't even know what you're buying Well, Charles, we only have time for one last question Let's talk about what libertarians might do here and now today to to make things better for themselves and for their families In terms of trying to go out and get health care One thing that pops to mind is this new burgeoning industry called medical tourism I witnessed this Quite a bit in the 80s and 90s when I lived in San Diego for many many years people would go to Tijuana For for especially for dental treatments root canals etc. And pay a much more affordable cash payment How can we go about working within or without the system as libertarians any thoughts or suggestions? well two things occur to me Jeff one is as as you say medical tourism and It's certainly thriving in places like Thailand where my wife has gone for dental dental work and Skincare at like a fraction of the cost in in the US and so and these are often US trained or European trained doctors and so the quality of care is is quite high and it's also transparent in the states I think we need to try to support those doctors nurses and clinics which are offering cash services So and it's hard to find find them sometimes, you know, and so the ideal to me would be to establish like sort of a national network of providers of cash services and so that if if there was a Site that everybody could go to to find cash providers in their area then we'd start supporting those people who were Providing that alternative system. Well, you know, that's a great idea and I must say at the Mises Institute We know lots of doctors who are doing this even surgeons who are involved in groups that are cash friendly So it's definitely something we need to pursue, but Charles Huesmith Thank you so much for your time today ladies and gentlemen If you want to check him out He has a great website called up to minds calm if you like alternative financial websites Mises org zero heads Etc.  He's a brilliant guy And he really has a different way of looking at some of the things that are going on today So I really encourage you to check out up to minds calm Charles Huesmith. Thanks again and ladies and gentlemen have a great weekend