Read Books You Disagree With

All right, so today's episode, we're talking about, you saw the title probably earlier, read things and listen to things that you actually openly disagree with. So a few weeks ago, my wife was sharing with me something she had learned from one of these guys she's watched online. She's learned a lot of stuff, and he said something so interesting, and it really stuck with me, and I wanna share with you guys today, was the concept of reading and listening to things that you openly disagree with. And this guy was, he was mentioning how they would study topics of political matter, and we're not gonna dive into political stuff on this show, There is a thousand million terabytes of content like that online that you can go knock yourself out. Joe Biden, Trump, I mean the whole nine yards. You can go, and it's actually, I actually love listening to politics stuff and it's pretty darn fun. But today we're not gonna talk about that. In the video, he was referencing for politics, a lot of us, and this is true for finance, for business, for whatever we're doing, we love to have confirmation bias. Meaning if you've been on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook in the last decade or on YouTube, right? If you're watching this on YouTube or podcast, you know this is they will suggest videos that they believe you like or agree with your agenda. And it's very interesting if you are online on Instagram and you like on the explore page like a Joe Biden post or a Donald Trump post, just be ready, you'll see probably 10 to 15 more of those types of posts. So what I do, and it's because my wife was— she mentioned we got to switch up our feed. I typically see political stuff from one side all the time and I'm like, man, where is the other side online? It's really interesting, I talked to a buddy who totally thinks the other way politically than me and we actually are really good friends. We talk about politics all the time very openly, it's actually really fun, and he said, Oh, my feed is telling me the exact opposite thing. And I thought of this concept of I need to switch it up. So I started to go look at the other side and I started to like their posts and I started to comment, you know, hey, whatever, so that I would get targeted by their flow and their feed because I want to be informed. I don't want to just see the same 10 things one-sided about how I agree and I look at that and I go, yes, they're exactly right. I love how they zinged the other side and they, you know, they proved their point so well. And we love that and it hits a little dopamine in your head and that concept has helped me a lot. So recently, I just picked up a book on finance that I very openly disagree. You guys have seen my stuff about capitalism. I love capitalism, all about it. I will be very, I have no problem being forward on this podcast about capitalism. I love capitalism. I think capitalism can solve all the world's problems, hunger, healthcare. I mean any problem you put out there, I think capitalism can solve it the quickest and most efficient way possible, pure capitalism. And this book was very, very interesting. It's contrary to a lot of the beliefs I have about capitalism. And I read the entire book. It's a long book. It's called The Finance Curse. This book is actually a very well-written book. I started the book and it talks about the negative effects of finance in general. It goes through the negative effects of private equity funds, hedge funds, pretty much all the stuff we preach about and talk about all day on the show. It went into the negatives of it. How offshore accounts have ruined society and how finances has ruined them. The premise of the book, I'll give you a quick preface of this book. It's pretty cool. The preface is he talks about countries in the Middle East. He uses like Ghana and Iraq and all these different countries, but I'll give you just a quick example. He says, Imagine a country, let's call it Ghana, finds a bunch of rubies and jewels in the jungle, okay? And they bring all these rubies and they start making money. There's actually lots of rubies out there if you go dig and find these rubies. And so what happens is people that are finding the rubies obviously are making a lot of money, and you would think that would obviously help Ghana. They have money flowing into Ghana now. Now Ghana will make more money, the society will slowly grow over time. Let's say, and let's say there's a constant supply of rubies. He uses the same thing with oil, okay? You strike oil in the Middle East and now, yeah, all these resources are gonna come to the Middle East. He says, actually what happens, and this is what we call the finance curse, and what he goes into is what happens are the kids that were gonna go be a doctor or gonna go study biology or gonna go be a teacher, the smart ones are gonna say, screw that, I'm gonna go work in the oil or I'm gonna go work at finding rubies because there's so much money there. And what it does is it sucks the best talent you have to that one Asset class. He calls it the finance curse because ultimately you think something you think is helping you is actually really hurting you, and he mentions the same thing in America, the United States. Investment bankers and teachers in the 1950s were making about the same amount of money. How wild is that? An investment banker or a teacher were both like, yeah, we're making about the same amount of money. Today, bankers are making I don't know six times what a teacher makes. Their their income has soared, and so right now your best and brightest students in college that you know maybe would have liked to be a teacher. of a sudden like, well, you know what? I'm going to go be a banker. I'm going to go work in a hedge fund or a private equity fund because that's where all the money is. And it sucks some of the best talent out. That's the premise of the book. And he walks through different problems with finance. And actually it was very good for me to listen to. I really enjoyed this book. And now some parts I really just didn't agree with his philosophies and how he came to certain conclusions, but I liked hearing how he thought. As I finished the entire book, I think on Audible, I can't remember how many hours it was, like 14 to 16 hours, somewhere in there. Decently long book. And I finished the book. I remember sitting down and thinking about that and I thought, huh, that gave me a whole new perspective on life and something I typically wouldn't have picked up unless my wife had told me, we got to get out of this confirmation bias thing. So for today's, you know, this episode, the topic is just I think that helped me a lot. I think with politics, we have a heated political year, whether it's finance or whatever you're doing, go read up on the other side. My wife just did this with abortion. So she took this concept, she read everything she could on pro-choice and then she read everything she could on pro-life and she said, and I'm not going to tell you what, I don't know what she agrees with now, but she said one side was actually really, really hard to listen to, and the other side was actually very easy, but she made sure that she spent about equal amount of time studying both so that she could have her own conclusions about something. I think too many of us, and me included, we hear something on CNN or Fox News or wherever you listen to, and we go, yes, I like that, that's me, and you attach right onto a topic or a subject. You say, yes, that's truth, and I'm all in. We rarely wait for the facts. to come out. We rarely look at the other side and I think we've just become so polarized when in reality, most of us as Americans are, I don't know, I think we're pretty actually close to each other. Even though online we feel like we're on North and South Pole, I actually think when I talk to my friends who think politically way different than me, we actually aren't that off. We both want the same goal, we're just looking at 2 different routes to get there and we're actually, you know, most common rational people think rationally, right? And we're actually closer than we think so my challenge for you today, is whatever you believe, whatever you— maybe it's investment funds are the best thing out there, that's what I believe, right? I love investment funds. Go find a few books that are contrary to what you think or find a couple podcasts that are contrary and the whole time don't sit there and go, oh, that's wrong, that's wrong. Really take it in and say there are reasonably smart people on the other side of my topic that think totally differently and they're smart. These are smart people. Why are they thinking that way and how did they get to that conclusion? And that for me has helped me a lot and made me, I think, calm down about this upcoming election a little bit internally. I think a lot of us are feeling the stress of like this election, we're screwed. Like either way, whoever wins, like it's bad, or if the other opponent wins, it's going to be just, you know, the worst thing we've ever seen as a country, and it's actually helped me come back and say, you know what? We're not as crazy as we think. I think we're a lot closer together, and the other side has a lot of good ideas that I haven't considered yet, and the same with that Finance Curse book. It gave me actually a lot of ideas for what was going on and a lot of ideas he goes through, just lastly I'll say, he goes through a lot of tax havens, a lot of problems. Like there's Ireland tax havens, Cayman Island and Virgin Island tax havens, and why do companies do this and why do they use offshore tax havens? And he's like, it's wrong, it's terrible. But in the back of my mind, I'm like, well, I don't make policy, but I can copy what successful people do. You might disagree with it, but you might as well copy what successful people are doing. And so I started to look into offshore Ireland funds and offshore Cayman Island and Virgin Island funds, started to look into that. I was like, whoa. And these aren't, sorry, not funds, but offshore accounts where they hide and scrub taxes. And I was very curious about it. So what it did was actually gave me a a lot of ideas to copy what wealthy people are doing and learn what other people are doing, how they're making loopholes through the system. Help me be more informed about what's going on. So that's my challenge today to you guys. Go find stuff you disagree with. Shake up your feed a little bit on Instagram or TikTok or Twitter, wherever you're at. Go follow people on the completely opposite side of politics or business, whatever you're doing and thinking about. Go follow the opposite and see what happens. I would just comment, yeah, you know, a little fire emoji or something and let them, let Twitter now feed you what they think now you like on the other side of politics and see what comes up and make informed decisions. So, all right, you guys, that's it for today. See you in the next episode. Bye. Bye.