The Week of Minor Apocalypses
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Hello and welcome to sleep money, your guide to the business and finances use of the week, I feel like kind of exos with Emily paces hello, hello with elisabeth fires of slate meantime, Prices like that. No, we are going to talk about the craziness that is happening in democracies around the world. We've had various crazy in france for various crazy in south korea, and whether things are just going off the rails generally in the world.

We are going to talk about headlights and what on earth is happening to them, and whether blinding people, the roads are becoming less safe as result. We have a slate last segment, which is extensively about bitcoin, that somehow that way into a discussion about last. And of course, we are gonna start by talking about the the tragic use that happened this week, where an exactly was filled and a bit about health insurance companies. It's all coming up sleep money.

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disclosures. So as you have undoubtedly had, the big business news of the week was the cold blooded a fascination of a healthcare executive on the street in midtown manhattan, which first of all, like is terrible in as kids and he was fifty years old and it's just genuinely tragic. And second, all that has been this quite loud is not particularly settled sort of reaction of happiness.

And lee on the socials, not just from the sort of sudna ious troll on twitter, but from actual people, you know, using their real names. IT. Turns out this male may not be a surprise to you that people really hate health insurer. And I guess a list with the pyres is here to sympathy with them.

Well, here's the thing. I don't think that what people are expressing so much as clear happiness about the death of this specific person. I think what happening is everyone in amErica has a hore story about health insurance, maybe more than any other industry, something that affects every person individually or somebody they know. And we just have nationally, a lot of collectively bad experience with health insurance companies. And all of this is happening as the backdrop of a lot of specific things with united health care, which is the company in amErica most responsible for denying coverage for insurance claims they deny around deserve insurance claims that .

the highest share for any health insurance company. Yes.

also, there are some weird stuff going on with united. Anyway, they're under investigation for potential insider trading. They're being sued by a firemen's pension because of that. We still don't really know what the motive of the assn was, but the reaction on the internet was mostly people who just immediately made people think of potential motives because everybody to just start these horrible experiences.

right? There's comments like prior authorization is required for thoughts and prayers and things like that. Just I think for me, I was shocking to see.

I don't have shocking the right word. IT was shocking that a CEO was shotted at in mental manhattan in the morning in broad daylight by a guy on a bike. And then IT was sort of surprising, and a little IT was a little sickly.

Elizabeth like to see people attach with their names. IT was like university professors, academics being like, I don't condone murder. IT was just like, no, no, no, don't say that is, is I understand. And I joined the crowd who has issues with health insurance companies and the health insurance industry in the united states, all of IT. But um I think IT was surprising and a little kind of growth to see the reaction on social media.

I think most of the reaction that was not that there, I think won't anything bad happens. So we're going na be a troll and shit posters. But most of what I saw was people telling their own personal horror stories.

You know, there were people working in pediatric neurology who were saying, you know, my kids that I treat can't get a drug that we know is perfectly effective for them because they're require to take a drug that we know isn't until they have so many seizure that becomes, you know, life and death matter. Anybody had a kid in pediatric c oncology you're dealing with maybe is the worst thing that could happen in your life. And you're dealing with denials from insurance company that could potentially bankrupt to you.

I mean, these are things that really just point to the fact that we have such a weird scare up healthcare system because we have the start of combination of public and private. And the private aspect of IT really is gear toward profits and very often at the expensive of patient care. And that's what I think people are ended about.

Okay, so this is where I need to come in and like defend the health insurance because there's an interesting dichotomy going on with health care and united states, which as we know and this we've talked about this many times, is by far the most expensive health care in the world, that amErica expands way more money on health care than any other country for worse outcomes than any long list of countries that you might want to mention isn't incredible, inefficient and incredible of pensive system.

And the insure is a kind of the bad cop. So are keeping IT in control when we talk about something like my kid with cancer needs this cancer drug, or I need this surgery or whatever IT is whatever piece of health care that our doctor has prescribed ed to us, we kind of accept, almost without complaint, the absolutely insane nominal cost of that. We like well, that this is a cancer drug that costs two hundred thousand dollars in my in pay and the problem is the the drug goes two hundred thousand dollars and there is no incentive for anyone in the healthcare system to pull back on describing such things.

The professionals in the healthcare system and vastly more money than they do in any other country. You get, you know, residents and doctors and surgeons who make you know, started like half a million and go up into the millions very quickly. There were people who have incredibly highly.

But the only break on any of this kind of runaway spending is the injuries who I like. Look, if you want to be in network, we're gonna cap the amount that you can charge at some point. The lot to this whole story this week was the thing where people got up in arms about anthem blue cross saying they were gonna cap the amount they were gonna spend on on anesthetics, you know, in in certain surgeries.

And everyone is like, this is terrible. Like i'm going to have to start paying for the anesthetist if my surgery runs over like no is not that is just the insurance company is trying to say, look, if you're doing the surgery, this is how much were going to pay for the eye theologist. And they are trying to keep this thing under control. If there was no one keeping IT under control, then we would rapidly have health care costs like above one hundred percent of GDP.

That's like, I think two of your assumptions are wrong. You know, one is the health insurance companies make health care in amErica more efficiently. Don't they add a huge level of strait burton that's incredibly costly.

They don't necessarily allocate payout ts for claims in a way that leads a bit health outcomes, which in the longer term, not very often becomes more expensive. And also part of the reason why people are angry about IT is that there's no other cases, there's not a human evaluating every case and making sure that this is appropriate for the patient. This is why that there was some outrage over the anesthesia problem because surgeries differ based on in individual patients and all the conditions and complications to go with that. And there is no way to really fully estimate in the middle of surgery how long it's gonna take.

Basically, they think it's precisely because what Elizabeth is not precisely because every patient is different and the amount of surgery they need, amount of anesthetic they need is different. It's silly to kind of just come out and say, well, obviously, if you need more anesthetic, that's going to be much more expensive. Why not just charge everybody the same amount for the same procedure? That's much more sensible. That's much more logical. And yeah and IT helps to and then the anio .

logic you think don't comply with that because there is still gonna build a health insurance company for more money than they agreed to pay and then patients will have to pay the difference.

But that was never okay. This is this was, by the way, the number one hugest misunderstanding. And this is why the whole new cycle was Thomas. And right, the big misunderstanding was this idea that what the insurance company wanted was for the patient to pay the access. That was never the point.

So IT work.

No, that's not how IT works. When an insurance company negotiates down and negotiates the Price for a service and they like, we don't care how much you're officially billing, we will pay you this Price for this service and we will be nothing left for the patient to pay. That happens every single day.

One of the crazy things about health insurance in this country is the IT makes perfect sensitive for people to pay real money for health insurance that has a one hundred percent cope in no deductable. This is the thing that people do, and that makes sense, that you pay an insure of money, and then the insurance company pays nothing to the health care p provider at all. You pay the full amount to the health care p provider for every single doctor via every single procedure. And yet IT still make sense for you to have an insure to be insured, because the amount you pay if you're insured is so much lower than the important you pay. If you're not.

ensure that because we don't have a light dots care in this country, like there's there's no reason for privatise health insurance to exist in. The only reason why IT does is because we have a largely for profit system. So again, go back to the na sio logic example. What happens in practice is that those costs do get passed onto the patient. The providers don't eat them.

They are not cost their bills and they almost never get paid and they like that. okay. I am just telling you the the anthem blue crosses out very explicit, saying, no, we were never intending the idea here was never that the patient would end up paying the access cost.

The whole absurdity of this is that your insurance company can overall your health care provider using an algorithm without knowing anything about your case. I just had an emergency APP and text to me three weeks ago, and blue ross blue shield rejected paying for that claim. And IT was probably a billing error.

But if you look at their explanation, they suggested that acute and deciders didn't worn an appendix. Me is as if you know two. First of all, what else would you know? It's like you can't get a cosmetic up and act to me. But secondly, even just as a matter of geocache y and process the fact that we have a system that could deny that claim as if there is any emergency room in the united states where you could walk in and get an up induct to me just because you wanted one is crazy. That's not a system that really works on behalf of patients, and it's particularly ny for people who are sick and don't have the resources are the energy to navigate the system in order to make sure it's not being rupin them.

I one hundred percent agreed that the system is absolutely terrible. And if you are designing IT from scratch. You would never design IT like this.

And this is a recipe for anger and inefficiency and unintentional cruelty, and even sometimes intentional cruelty, but very rarely. Mostly is, as you say, is just like algorithms. That is not humans trying to be cruel.

But like, yeah, no one likes the insurance companies. No one likes the hospital dead collectives. No one likes the fact that people are going bankrupcy because they have raked up medical debt.

The U. S. Health care system is atrocious. IT is broken. And IT is my I guess my point is that IT is systemic.

And coming around and just like blaming the insurance rather than trying to understand the vital role they play in the system is like IT is true that the insurance are making a lot of money. IT is also true. They are basically because of political reasons, the only break we have on runaway health care costs.

And now, yeah no, i've just talked about the .

insulin cap that .

is the government .

break and series public public policy .

left unchecked, insurance companies would go bananas. There is a great in our prep investigation from that news about how united has been using A I to deny elderly, sick, elderly patients long days in nursing homes.

They like start trying to get them out after like twenty four hours and usually when the family go to court to get the insurance companies to pay like eighty percent of the time, the judges like, oh yeah, the insurance company should pay. And then as soon as that ruling comes down, the insurance company again refuses to pay for the nursing homes state like this is how insurance companies work. And I feel like feel like you're defending them a lot. But I mean, come on, we've all doubt with them.

These are not like the war of the the .

health care system. You know how to keep our cost.

The health of system is broken.

Yes, I agree on hundred percent that the health care system is broken. And just like you said, no one's in setting out to be cruel. The system itself is cruel. And that's a big problem because there's no when IT becomes so systemic and so broken and there are no quote, quote villains, then it's confusing.

So yeah I mean, like one of the other points which I feel this important to make is the americans have more access to more health care as a general rule than almost anyone else in the world. For instance, my, if you talk to my camping riots in the united kingdom, basically no one under the age of sixty five in the U. K.

Is getting the covered vaccine anymore, is just like not something that offered somewhere in the great national health. You obviously the national health services, hardly a shining beacon of light for anyone. I'm not saying we should do what I happen.

D N. A, yes. But like these kinds things, you you see them everywhere. Some, like someone somewhere, basically says, like copy s they only go to now and then only american heart at the sort of top end of destruction.

American health care for the five percent of americans, is pretty much the best health care in the world. It's extremely good. And there is a lot of push in the healthcare system to as much treatment to as many people as possible. And a lot of these drugs that people are complaining that they can't get in america, they couldn't get any other national health care system either, but because they've available and because they prescribe that, like, well, obviously now my insurance has to pay for IT.

This insurance, by the way, is not insurance like, I mean, so so health insurance is this weird thing that does two different things at once on on the one hand, it's a bit like fire insurance or earthquake insurance or car insurance, which is like we are protecting you against some incredibly expensive, unlikely think that we all hope is never gonna happen. On the other hand, IT is also paying everyday medical costs. The people have like almost no one with health insuranc Epace m akes n o c laim o ver t he c ourse o f a y ear.

And so a lot of the basic day to day Operation health insurance is you go in for your annual and you have insurance and the your primary care provided build your insure and they pay IT and that kind of thing, right? And the fact is that if you subtract out that kind of predictable annual expense from your health care premiums, the amount your spending and insurance premiums to, like ensure yourself against something incredibly expensive and cats traffic is not actually that enormous. And I disagree with that.

That is you're recently healthy adult, what we have to pay for insurance in his bonkers and and plus ever you add in deductable, which you're paying for anyway, with the exception of the appendix to me, if i'd paid for all of my health care this year out of pocket and I know I pressed IT to see what this would be way less than what we're paying for an an insurance.

And we Operates to require dev insurance in this country and it's time to employment, which is your problematic and three other different levels. So I just don't think that's true. I don't think that the mouth really works for a lot of people. And that's part of what enrages everybody is that we pay so much for health insurance in this country and and it's so difficult to use IT doesn't really guarantee safety from a medical bankrupcy.

And it's it's very frustrating people when they see the companies like united or have made sixteen billion in Operating profit last year and they're make they are making choices that actually do harm people, especially that choices is specifically around delaying and delaying and using that process to present people from accessing healthy care. Just delays and denials have killed around seventy thousand people in the us. annually. And that's very close to the number of people who over those some final this but which of these problems you read more about in the news. And so I think some of us was just pin up rage because people know it's happening and it's just not being acknowledge.

Let's leave .

IT there and leave .

one I know.

Let s have a last word on this one, and we should say away cleanly into much latest subject like military cousin south korea.

Actually, it's a very positive story.

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So Emily, bring us up to speed what happened in soul this week.

I'm doing, alright, alright. Yes, I will get us up to speed on what happened in sol. No problem. Let me just look at these names really quick. okay. So earlier this week, we woke up to the news that south korea's president had declared red martial law.

What I don't understand south korea's democracy, what's happening will turns out president union had declared martial law, meaning, like the military is taking control, they can lock up people who are protesting. Sara, south korea has sort of a bad history of martial lab, although it's been pretty smooth and peaceful. Licence the one thousand nine hundred eighties um so everyone was like, oh no, a democracy has exploded.

The world is in absolute chaos. However, what instead happened was south korea's parliament basically rallied ed and rush to parliament. Some of them scale the walls. There is one story in the walls y journal of a woman who face down a soldier with a rifle, pointed at her SHE like, pushed his rifle out of the way, like you would see in a movie, and then said, you should be ashamed of yourself and went in there and they unanimous ly voted to end martial law and so six hours after he had declared IT and prompted everyone to freak out and say, like democracies are crumpling all over this this world they had this anonymous vote upholding their democracy and now um as we're taping on friday and looks like president likely get impeached. Although it's not totally clear the leader of his own party has spoken .

out against ham is the party like you know in so of mike pence situation on genuine exec president and apparently put out in the rest warrant for the leader of his own party like when he declared the law? And yeah, so my favorite part of this whole story is that this dominated the sort of new cycle in the united states. In korea, the decoration of martial law happened at eleven pm. Local time had been lifted by about six. I so anyone, mal, you just one woke, woke up to a bunch of headline and saying, actually.

don't worry, nothing to see here. I was a micro dictatorship .

that everybody slept her. I was a flash.

flash dictor to crash of democracy, the sleep through military dictations.

But I mean, I thought I was really like, amazing. If you start to read the reporting, IT was a real trip. H of democracy and rule of law.

And unlike what we have, may be someone suggest in in the united states, at at least in the wake of january six day, where IT was just really all the members of parliament coming together, voting unanimously, like, no, this isn't what we want. This isn't okay. We're going to impeach this guy. IT just seems to me like, no, we don't want anyone declaring martial law and democracy for no reason during peacetime. But hey, as well, that ends well .

as in all countries. IT really ultimately comes down to the military. When push came to serve the military and korea was not willing to use force, let's statement on force on elected M.

S. And they were like, okay, if you want to go in there and have a vote, go in there and have a vote. And then the halting, like, became unstoppable.

If the military had supported the president, IT would have been very different. And this is why we should be very careful to not call this a military cook, because the military was not actually doing this. And if they had done that, they would probably have been successful.

And that is extreme terrifying. I mean, it's true in every country that if the military wants to take over the government, they can. But in most major democracies that such a strong norm against that, that you is basically unthinkable.

I do think that like things are falling apart, we should talk like a little bit more seriously, perhaps depending on how you engage these things. Like the french government has collapsed, there's no french prime minister anymore. There's a massive budget deficit.

No one how this is gonna yourself. The president is refusing to step down. The president has to come up with the new prime minister, who is almost certainly gone to meet the same fate as the old prime minister.

And it's not a constitutional crisis in france. But like IT, france hasn't been in this level of like no government chaos. Basically know in living memory, germany doesn't have a government.

The german government has collapsed. This just a lot of generalize sort of this function. And I think you're right that there is like silver lining here. Career proved itself to be sustained, strong enough to be able to understand this attack.

People forget that france, already IT, was without a government for like fifty nine days or fifty one days or something like that like during the olympics, and managed to sort of model to IT OK. So not having a government is IT turns out not the end of the world. I think belgian didn't have a government for over a year at one point, and no one noticed because it's belgian. But the broader idea that countries have the ability to run themselves along democratic lines with accountability to the public and investor, when you have countries like declaring martial law or Operating without a government, and that's not the case, what mean? I mean.

these are good examples of things that are going very smoothly at the moment. But I feel like at given point, things aren't going very smoothly in a variety of .

of country. I think the U.

K. Recently went through its own problems with this trust, who asked IT, as long as I head of, let us, or I guess not as long as I head of let us, or whatever they had, their problems braxy obviously has been. We've talked about IT a lot on the podcast over the years, hasn't gone well.

But I mean, britain still standing, U K. Is okay. France is probably gonna fine ah .

there's also a bit of an economic correlation to democracies leaning more right wing and Anthony's arian as lead developed more austerity policies. Anything that's part of what's happening inference is difficult in part of .

what happened in germany. Well, influence is interesting because I was twenty eighteen, I believe when president micro and the the government tried to was IT raise the retirement edge, Sparking those yellow vest member.

the yellow vest. And so apparently ever .

since then, and that was such a political blender, micro and the french government of been spending a lot of money in cove IT, especially just like in the U. S. They spend a lot of money, I guess, to keep people employed.

The government take on paying for people on flow or something. They've been spending up a storm. And now they, as they try to rain that in because bond investors don't like these really big deficit, they find they can't do IT. So I feel like it's not just the austerity that pieces people off. It's like that you gave us so much and now you're taking IT back, which isn't is I guess .

you could say is austerity. And only what are you talking about? Very much the party of austerity. They basically ran the country for twenty years and they screwed up everything, including the national health service. And at the same time, they moved very, very far to the right.

And to that, I feel like putting the anti immigrant fire right sort of in opposition to the austerity camp is certainly not something you can do in the U. K. The party right in the U.

S. Is sort of become more interesting because no one wants austerity any more, and no one one's budget cuts anymore or deficit is ballooning .

except for apparently um you know incoming treasury secretary as he wants to reduce the butter deficit to three percent of GDP, which counts as austerity. By the way, these days I I am old enough to remember the masters c agreement, which said, well, every country should always have a budget deficit of no more than three percent be and now it's like, if he gets a three percent, that's amazing.

I think france is six percent, yes. But I saw on the reading, which is, I guess.

bad also, I think americans have a fetish ization of small government for its sonic ke without really understanding what government does. So there would be huge back last year if you really cut major title ments, especially medical and social security, that when people talk about winning smaller government, they don't necessarily connect the to.

So I think part of the appeal of trump for a lot of conservatives is that he is promising to get federal agencies. And when you see people agreeing with you on mask that you get, you probably could wipe out a third of the budget that would be fine. That's where that's coming from. They don't recognize that as something that would result in the effects of an austerity policy because they don't necessarily recognized that. Is that to begin with thinking it's about cutting waste.

Some things got a maybe give. I don't know everyone. I says that something has to give in the stock market can go up over and then it's like up goes going up again.

Maybe something has to give with deficit getting bigger and bigger in the U. S. At some point and maybe IT won't, but at some point will the bond vigilantes appear, if felix and will have to do something, something will have to be cut. Some tax will have. I think .

we're still away, away from the bond vigilante appearing in the united states. We've definitely appeared in france. They made a brief appearance, as you mentioned, in the short lived liz trust premiers in the U.

K. But then they kind of slung back with their tails, betwen legs. They certainly having appeared in germany. Yeah, know.

One of the more we trade ideas out there is that as interest rates, right? As we enter this era of more Normalized interest rates were not insert anymore. We don't have a zero interest rate policy anymore.

One of the major areas that the government spends money on, the U. S. Government in particular, is interest on the national deck. You know that could easily reach like ten percent of the budget pretty soon.

So that is an interesting area where certain like mmt types, and i'll say that there is a lot of scope for saving. Maybe you get the fed to keep industries zero. Maybe you just print money instead of borrowing ing money.

You know, these kind of things, which may or may not be inflation me depending on he talk to, but like ultimately, I think I do agree with them. The inflation is a function of. Demand exceeding the capacity of the economy to supply that demand rather than what the central bank that as long as you making the economy run too hot, that shouldn't be inflation.

So you're saying the solution to a ballooning deficit in the united states is to cut interest rates, and you don't think that will cause .

inflation because no. Well, I mean, you don't even need to cut interest rates. You can just print money instead of borrowing the money and .

then it's not a deficit anymore. You your team in .

the coin okay, so that so yeah, the america, america, by the way, we who have talked about this million times on the show, amErica is unique diffunce. It's kind of astonishing that this fan survive as long as he has given this unique diffunce that congress passes budgets, which bylaw force the government to spend money, and then IT also passes debt ceiling.

That bylaw prevents the government from funding the spending that by law is has to spend. And basically we run into this set ceiling on a very predictable regular cats. And at some point there will be a major constitutional crisis is a salt.

The dead ceiling is the single dumbest thing in america. It's even dump in the electronic college. IT makes no sense.

There's no reason to have IT like both of them should be abolished. But I don't know which one would you abolish first. I I just want to both.

So to get back to the original topic, are we seeing increased amounts of chaos in the democratic world right now? Is is what you're saying. I just .

want to get I think that we had like that sort of post cold war peace dividend thing, like to be the nineteen and the two thousands where everything was very calm and yeah mr. ky. Ama said we had the end of history and there was lots of talk about secular stagnation where nothing interesting is ever onna happen and then yeah, I feel like all of that is behind us now.

And I read a whole book saying that we're going to be in the new, not not the whole bunch of weird, unexpected, weird that is gonna en. And I feel like I was right about that. Things are getting a lot weird than we had got used to a couple decades ago.

IT has been a weird week, I will say that. But as A C E O, gunn down, we had the six hours of martial law. South korea, french government did collapse.

bizarre. There is a five minute tuna, I warning .

on the way. Yes, the sunni warning last is even less time than martial law.

You know, if we didn't have the twenty four, our new cycle though, I mean, a lot of this wouldn't yeah we would slip through a lot of IT. The sunni news was maybe the most ridiculous. Like why was that that I mean, you have to warn people in california, of course, that to get a higher ground, I don't i'm not disputing the at, but like did I have to get a newser eer about IT? I don't know. Probably not.

You went a away like five minutes, just like several apopo things happened within twenty hours, but they were sort of minor. Yeah.

this is the week of minor apocalypse is.

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Let's move on to, like in every day, apocalypse, which is people getting blinded by headlights. And when I say people, I mean Emily peck, because you're the only person out of the three of us who actually drives a car on the rag.

You guys I have to drive at night. I don't want to, but I have to go like heck .

of my kids from .

somewhere. So it's it's very front of mine right now. The ringer has this big story about headlights getting brighter and there's this whole sub reit group and there are these men that are obsessed with this.

And apparently it's true according to the data provided in the article. Although I don't quite understand how you measure headlight brighter, but the T L dr. Is that we now use l delights for headlights and they are brighter than the old headlights were.

So now when you drive at night, if you're like me and i'm not in an S U V or a truck up in a car that's like lower to the ground. So it's even worse for someone like me. These extremely bright lights are are blinding me. I cannot see, I cannot see when i'm driving.

There's like three different things that are all combining to make things worse. One is that no one makes causing my like ford famously does not make cars anymore, that's correct. And generally the proportion of cars on the roads rather than like trucks and sv has been declining for ages and doesn't show any science.

So down if you are in the car especially, but more broadly, like anyone on the road, is encountering cars coming towards them or vehicles coming towards them, which have much higher up headlines and the higher up headlights just shine and straight into your eyes and blinding. That's number one. Number two is that everyone is using l these and the large part of this ring and article, which basically talks about half the auto manufacturer, are making these l these as bright as possible.

And there are official guidelines for how right they can and should be. But they haven't been updated for the L D. era. And there are lots of ways of getting around them.

And IT seems that all of the auto manufacturer are trying very hard to get around the guidelines rather than to comply with the spirit of the law. This one I wanted talk you about because I don't really understand IT. Like what is the incentive for the auto manufactures to do that?

I think I can explain lower down in the piece, they talk about this rating. There's like a safety rating given by native U. S. Government, by another agency or another organization.

If the L, D, A. Brighter because you can see the animal that is crossing the road in front you earlier and break.

That's the whole carrolls in the united states. It's all centers around the safety of the person in the car driving. So the brighter ter headlights are good for the person in the giant S U.

V. Driving around my town at night. He can see everything and is actually safer. But he's making me and my little car less safe.

And then the third thing I just want to finish my list, the third thing that I read about, and again, I find IT difficile to know it's almost impossible to to measure this one imperative. But there is anew tally, a rise in the number of drivers who is just driving around with their right on all the time.

These are the most. These people in, the people who leave shopping carts in parking spaces are the worst people in the world. They are the people. And no, i'm not going never joke about shooting them, but it's really antia social behavior. These people with the rights on all the time IT is so rude. The ringer reporter gives them the benefit of the double as maybe they don't realize their Price around because dashboards are complicated, to which I say, come on, they know i've been out there at night and I I get really frustrated and I get like really worked up because you kind of already a little like on alert driving like I don't wanted heard anyone and you know i'll flash my bright of the people with the brighter and all the time all angry and and they will turn them, turn them off so they know .

i'm going to be sure they are always their brakes. They could, since they are the lights in general so much right, or even on a local setting.

But that's so right.

You think they're right? That's true. That's true. I guess we can give them them benefit the doubt. But I does see .

my people are driving around with, which is know how i'm thinking about you know my my mother lives in a very rural area where there's just no street lights and so he doesn't like to drive at night anyway but if you're driving there and you you have your boots on, it's like, yeah you would see an animal a cross the road but if somebody he's coming toward you IT seems like that would be less safe and so how do you read safety? Just overall it's it's IT .

is interesting that like in general, the bright to your headlights, the more you can see the same for you are there is the second order effect that is much, much harder to calculate, which is the if you are blinding a bunch of people who are coming towards you, does that make them more likely to get into a crash and is that dangerous for them? And the fact is that no one really knows the answer to that.

Everyone is annoyed by being blinded by lights. And IT is intuitively obvious to everyone that if you're blinded by a light, you're going to be less safe than if you are not blinded by a light. But quantifying that and quantifying the sort of decrease in safety as a result of people getting blinded by headlights, and then comparing that to the increase in safety of people having being able to see Better as fast as I can make out basically impossible. Well.

that's too bad. You think, you know, we've invented so many things, things in america, we have A I now. Can we? Can we do something about this?

Can we study IT? So one of the interesting like that are all subplots of this ringing article, is that the europeans have a clever technology that tries to at least address some of this at the margin, which basically it's like a vertical adaptive headlight deming or something.

I didn't understand that part. So excited for you .

to explain that. Actually, IT sounds like know what your phone or your laptop does whenever it's it's sort of automatically .

adJusting to late k and the us. Regulates approved IT yet, which is kind of wild because they haven't really approved anything in the headlight world for decades. But apparently this one needs active a group rather than everything else that is happening, which passive they go along with.

This goes back to the whole discussion about the cyber truck, right, where no one has signed off on the cyber truck being safe. Exit text, self certify that cyber truck is safe. No one really believes IT. But you can't buy IT in europe, most other countries, because tesla put IT in the safety testing .

because that's how the U. S. works. We don't like clear cars the way we clear like drugs. Approve the cars first where like let's see how many people die and we'll figure that out.

I feel like that this is a problem that could corrected by people being creative. There's the singer article that we're all talking about mentions a reit separate called or fuck your headlights. And one of the guys who moderates IT invented something that's like a mirror that pops up when other people's rights behind you, or two, to flash the .

life back in their face.

Yes, really not legal.

Yeah, principle does not neglected. But yeah, Emily, what is worse, having someone with their rights on coming towards you, or having someone with their rights on right behind you coming towards.

I think, is worse bright on behind me like, I don't like IT, but I can deal that and kind of illuminate the road sort of for me. So I don't mind IT as much as the people coming towards me. It's like, I don't know what to do with my eyes.

We all know that I only got my driver's license ced ten years ago, maybe even less than ten years. And I remember the instructor was like, just look away. Looked to the side because the bright headlights me out.

Even then you had driving lessons at night. That's really smart. I never had that because .

I would do IT after work. And as you guys mentioned in the winter .

four P M IT is dark. I will say that Emily, I, uh, exceptional, not only because we are about wonderful podcast has to work as as, but also because we are two of like the one percent of americans who actually believe ourselves to be below after driver.

Yes, I had met at my driver's placental .

expire in twenty twelve and I never bothered to renew and just got an I idea because I don't drive and everyone in my family insists that this is good for public safety. Careful driver.

So wait, that's all three of us well aware that we below average drivers like is any other podcast where that's the case?

I feel like i'm good going forward, but when I have to go over, that's when it's .

i'm exactly the same. My first thing mess me up.

everything and parking, otherwise i'm good if I could just keep going straight, make returns. Basically.

if you're doing something that like an A I could do, you're OK. yes.

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Alright, let's move onto a numbers round. I feel like i'm gonna ick this one off with ten dollars in nineteen nine. Nine cents is the amount of money that mcDonald charged for a half gallon jug of what they called a whole lot of mock rib source. And IT sold out. There is this phenomenon in amErica called the mock rib.

the make rib.

mk rib.

make rib, the milk rib.

you know, all about IT, because we've been doing shots in aioc three times now. It's the only pork product of mcDonald. And IT sits on the menu from time to time.

And when he arrives on, the many people get excited. And the last time I came on the menu in twenty twenty two mcDonalds called IT the fair world tour, because they were pulling like a barber dries. And and now, of course, after the farewell it's back again.

And apparently IT costs a wide range of Prices is four nine nine in atlanta, five forty nine in miami and six eighty nine in san Francesco. So like anyway um there was this theory which was initially promote ted by the great willey daily when he was he wrote this piece of the all which basically said he was a hug. Price arbitrage and the mcDonald would bring out the microbe when wholesale Prices were low. But now this time round, wholesale port Prices are really quite high and they still bring IT out. So Emily, you have an alternative idea that something something to do with biton.

But I don't know. I on twitter, people say that when bitcoin Prices go up, the Price of the .

mic rib goes up is the indicator of .

a big yes, yes, the the mick rib comes back when the Price of bitcoin goes up .

that that as I believe .

where around because goes that comes back.

I don't we will get into that in the sleep less segment. This is a number.

my number sixty three, and that's percent and that's the amount of growth that uh, barn bosting out the double inner had in people ordering guinness in the last year because apparently there is a internet train called splitting the g where people basically chug their first sip of guinness and try to get the line between the phone in the burly rate between in the middle of the g on engineers in class. So two things are kind of driving this.

One is people being done on tiktok, and then now everybody has to do this. But the other thing is that people are certain understand that genesis famous reputation is kind of like a meal, new glass yeah it's it's like four point two percent A B B. And it's lower calorie .

than like omaar. Ony car has less calories.

Think it's easy. That immature reason not to like a beer. Perhaps perhaps my reason .

what's really struggled coming up .

with the number this week, I don't know, was going on. People should be emAiling me number ideas throughout the week.

Yeah, email Emily numbers. People make IT a me too.

Don't force us to do work, Emily.

That packet X O stock .

in that I I like. So anyways, my number is eleven. That is my tally of billionaires who are pick to serve key roles in the .

trump administration of billionaire. Up a lot the time.

Then italian axius has sort of like a nice little graphics showing all the billionaires and how much their network is estimated to be. So I I tally them up. And IT comes out to a collective network of twenty one point five seven one billion dollars of pigs to serve in the administration. That's not counting elan mask in the veck ROM swami if you add them. And then it's a crazy number.

not a billion.

Well, according to our publication that we work at.

he's worth a billion dollars. It's just billions .

are falling out the sky warm buffer himself said billion new million.

I thought the bag was like was like Andrew yang, one of those like techy guys who didn't really have much, I don't know, maybe is. O, K, I take you back. What about David sex? Is David sex on the way?

Yeah, he's on the list.

But what is do you have a number from axial s only says reported billionaire.

He's the new crypto .

s are coming in to and underestimate and then americans for tax fairness. They put out a little report on this and they pointed out that when biden took office, his cabinets collective network was one hundred and eighteen million dollars.

million with an m so what you're think is twenty one billion dollars across how many nominees? He said seven billion, right? An average of about two billion. Lars per, which I just rose an article for axiom, which had that the average billionaire in the world has a network of over five billion dollars. So I guess, again, elon, not withstanding, the old trump is going for the low end billionaire yeah .

these are kind of like the two bit billionaires like doug burgan.

This is his working class policy, the working class billion.

It's like jarred isac man who's like no one's idea even for major million .

IT had enough money to pay to go to space, but not .

enough money to develop .

a space company himself.

Exactly right. I think that's IT for us this week. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks so much to Jason, Molly and jane and married Jacob and the whole slate crew who put this thing together every week. Thanks to you guys are emAiling us on slate money at slate dot come. Or I guess if you want on Emily and I to fight open numbers markets and x IOS got go.

just send them straight to me.

just straight to. And we gonna a slate plus segment on bitcoin, which has reached one hundred thousand dollars, and we will be back next week. But even more slate money.

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