C. Suite Unfiltered: FTX, Qatar 2022 World Cup, and 8 Billion People

Welcome back to the Mike Andes Podcast where we discuss ins and outs of owning a small business. If you're new here, the Mike Andes Podcast is all about taking your business to the next level. While we're gearing up for Landscape Summit, which is in a little over two weeks from now, by the way, we want to show you some feature episodes from our new show we have called C Suite Unfiltered with Mike Andes and Lee Park. Mike and Lee talk about the recent FTX debacle, the World cup and lots more. We're going to be hosting a couple episodes from this show as we go along, so we hope you enjoy it. You can find all this and more over at the C Suite YouTube channel. Without further ado. Let's go get into it.

Yo, what's up? Welcome back to another episode of Se Suite Unfiltered with Mike. And that's what I'm going with. That's what I'm going. I did have an idea.

Popular demand.

Yeah, I. I had an idea, maybe something like corporate, like using corporate instead of C Suite. Cuz C suite people don't. I mean it is, you know, chief, but also some people say, you know, corporate suite, chief suite.

Right.

So I don't know, something corporate, blue collar corporate or I don't know, I don't know. Trying to think of some ideas to.

Working title.

It's a working title.

Do you get anyone recommending the first couple episodes? Better episode titles? No, no recommendation. We still need recommendations. Yeah, we still without a title.

Yeah, it just, it's not polling well. It's just people aren't big fans of it. Let's just say we'll, we'll figure something out, but. Cool, man. How's your week been?

Good, Good. Today's Tuesday, so it's not Friday like usual when we record.

Yeah, it's Tuesday. This will probably come out after Thanksgiving. But what were your Thanksgiving plans or what did you do on Thanksgiving?

Mom's in Australia so we're actually. We did all our Thanksgiving like a couple weeks ago with all the family.

Okay.

So it'll be like a super chill lowkey.

Well, your mom's Australian and then a lot of your family's Canadian too.

Yeah. So we went up to Canada in like October. Yeah. And did all that stuff.

So how about you?

You going out of town?

Staying local.

Let's go.

Yeah, staying local. Going to the parents house. Good time. I know you're very well versed in this world, so why don't you talk to us a little bit about FTX what the world wants to hear.

Yeah. Like I think honestly everyone's probably, if you've been listening to podcasts, you're probably gonna. It's kind of been being a dead horse by now.

Yeah.

And obviously we are not necessarily on the inside circle of what's going on, but it's definitely interesting. I think what's really interesting is the fact that the mainstream media is kind of giving Sam a little pass.

It's weird.

So I think if this would have happened to a host of other people, this would have been a bigger deal. It's just amazing that this is basically a multi billion dollar scam.

Yeah.

And that's just, it's just like out of the news cycle and people have interviewed him and not said anything about it. Yeah. It's just the weirdest thing.

Well, let's say if you've been living under a rock or let's just maybe for the people that aren't too aware of the crypto world or stocks and NFTs and all those things. Could you give us a brief explanation what FTX was and essentially like a brief storyline? I mean I have some points.

Cryptocurrency exchange, basically trade cryptocurrency. Sam Bankman Fried was the quote unquote whiz kid genius that started it. His net worth personally went like 27, 28 billion dollars. They moved the Bahamas, which I thought was pretty sketchy back in the day, but like hey, whatever floats your boat, dude. And part of that is because there is hardly any regulation whatsoever when it came to crypto. But all that say he used FTX funds to basically Alameda, which is the hedge fund that he also was owner of and he basically commingled funds, used funds from one to fund the other. And everyone thought this was like a well oiled machine and well funded. Like so when crypto drops and people pull their money out, like theoretically you should have all the money in there, like the bank, it's FDIC insured. Well, crypto isn't, it's not, it's not backed by the government in any way. So if everyone comes and says I want my money out, then if you don't have the money, you go bankrupt.

Yeah.

And so what's really interesting, the whole Binance situation and the fact that the founder of Binance kind of like seeded the whole thing by saying ftx, FTX might go down. Well by doing that it creates like a bank run where everyone wants their money out.

Yep.

And so it's. I don't think it's any, any bank. If you have a bank run, they can't afford it because they usually will leverage every dollar by nine. Yeah, Right. So you can't have that kind of fear and panic happening in any banking situation when you're leveraging 9 to 1 or if you're leveraging 100 to 1. So at the end of the day, you're the Ponzi scheme.

Yeah, that's your take.

Your PayPal, my take. Oh, man. Anything that, that's, that sounds that good is probably like, it goes up that fast, it's going to come down fast.

Yeah.

Seeing them all over the place like sports arenas and the MLB and like everything was just like, I don't know, it's just so weird because like no one said anything bad about Sam Bankman fried.

Right.

Because he had such good altruistic, you know, theologies, I guess.

Yeah, Ideology.

Ideology, let's go with that one. So, I don't know, man, it was weird. I remember thinking like, it was so strange that FTX was still pumping out so much money in marketing when everyone was stopping. So like when all these other, other crypto, Crypto exchanges went down, I'm like, dude, FTX is still pumping it out. They are spending money on marketing and MLB thing. Like, I'm like, man, they just like shelling out cash. And then you look at the founder like, oh, maybe he's just backing it all. Well, that's surely what it was.

Yeah.

So I don't know, it's just, I think people will approach crypto with a lot more skepticism and it's going to have to go through a 5 to 10 year cycle of kind of getting momentum back in its favor.

Yeah. It's funny, the. I can't remember his name. You may know off the top of your head, but the CEO of Coinbase is like now making his rounds on all the media outlets, basically being like crypto safe. Like it's fine. Coinbase is safe. You don't have to worry about that. Us, I don't know what happened with Sam, but that's never going to happen with us. And Coinbase did come out and say they are one to one backing. So if you own something in Coinbase, they physically have that backed up.

Right.

So. So there is more security measures that I think people need to be aware of when they get into crypto and investing and NFTs and things of that nature. But a thought that I had when it first kind of exploded, if you will, and I didn't really, you know, I don't own any crypto. I'd like to get into it, but I think I'm just too skeptical, honestly. Do you own any crypto?

Yeah, I've always had about 2 to 4% of my portfolio in crypto.

Yeah, I'm just too, like, just Bitcoin and Ethereum. Yeah, I'm just very old school. Like my dad's like S&P 500. Railroads, oil. Right.

Yeah, it's like, like I, I was fortunate to trade it all the way up. Like, I did a bunch of trading on it, but like the, the part I sold a whole bunch of October, fortunately, because that's when crypto was like doing great.

Yeah.

But I still kept it my. Between like 2 and 4% of crypto.

But I, I was, I had a thought about this. Like, okay, so it's, it's a Ponzi scheme. It's this guy's corrupt, whatever you want to label it. Right. And then you think about like, people that back crypto. It's a lot of like, I don't say like fringe groups, but people that are very like, deregulation. And like, it's, it's, it's for the common man. And then you're like, well, yeah, but then an uncommon man, right, Sam, can just come along and just like basically pull the wool over your eyes and steal all your money.

Yeah. And it's like with any business, if you take the. Or from an organization standpoint, everyone wants to have like the. No hierarchy, no meetings, kind of very entrepreneurial. It's like, yeah, that's fine until you grow to a certain point where it's not.

Yeah.

And so everyone wants to have deregulation. And you know, my, you know, my crypto, my key, like all that stuff, my. They want control. And no one would be regular, no regulation until it gets the size of what we just saw.

Yeah.

And so I think a lot of, a lot of it's going to shake the core of who believes in the crypto technology versus who is just trading. And I believe in the crypto technology.

Yeah, definitely.

But the actual mechanism of being an investment is stupid. Like, I don't go get money from the bank and be like, I'm having this cashier as an investment. That's what crypto is. It's a currency. Right. And so the fact is, I don't keep dollar bills thinking they're going to go up in value. And so I'm not going to keep crypto to think it's going to go up in value. It's A trading mechanism.

Well, because crypto is ultimately a fiat currency.

Right, Right.

There's nothing technically backing it. I don't understand, like, bitcoin mining and how that works, but it's essentially fiat. And if you don't know what that means, it's just nothing's backing it. Like, so people like to comp the U.S. gold standard. Right. And the U.S. is off the gold standard by all terms. But it's just interesting that you can just basically, like, bankrupt someone or take wads of monetary value from them by crashing a hypothetical Ponzi scheme on the Internet.

Yeah, I know. It's crazy.

It's just weird. And it's funny too, because, like, you have guys like Mr. Wonderful, Kevin O', Leary, he's super back saying.

And he still is. He still feels like he's still a good guy. Dude, you are so full of it.

Yeah.

Paid. He was paid by ftx.

Oh, well, there you go.

He was a sp. Like a paid spokesperson. Spokesperson, kind of. For ftx.

Yeah. So, like, he's been doing. Making his rounds on the interviews. Like, still backing such a baseball.

Yeah, he's.

He's kind of a weirdo. And, like, I wouldn't say I necessarily, like, respected him, but I think I respected Mr. Wonderful's, like, status. Like, clearly to get to that level, you have to be smart. Like, you have to make some good decisions. Maybe. I don't know. Unless you have other thoughts on that.

I think he did a good job with his one company that he sold.

Yeah.

The children's education company. But he is an absolute joke for the entrepreneurial community in terms of what he does and money pitches. He is willing to sell his soul for a couple hundred bucks. Like he is. Oh, it's brutal. Just because he has the status of being a TV star. That's what he is. He's a TV reality TV star. He is not an entrepreneur, in my opinion.

That's fair.

That's fair. And then you look at saying, like.

Just go back 12 months ago and every single episode and an interview you saw with him, he talked about crypto and all these weird coins no one was a part of, but he was backing. And yeah, there's like, up 2,000%. Well, guess what? They're all at now, like, 90 to 95 to 99% down.

Yeah.

So, like, if you saw his net worth on a chart right now, it would not be pretty. And if you look at it, when he was at the top, he was pumping the stupidest altcoins in the world, so.

Well, And I was listening to a finance podcast and I'd credit them if I remember who said this, but I'm not stealing like anything crazy, but they're basically said, you have to be careful when you get to listening to that level of influencer because at some point they're just playing roulette, right? And they're throwing chips on the table and they're hoping that it lands. And because they have the ability to do that, right, their risk tolerance is so high, they can throw a couple of million on here. And if you're watching trades and you're tracking stocks and you're tracking NFT, you're like, oh, this major player made a $2 million move. Well, maybe I should make a $20,000 move. Well, a $20,000 move for the average American is going to drain their bank account, right?

Yeah. Well, the thing is again, in stock, in the stock market, most publicly traded companies that are half decent and reputable are sizable hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues and in valuation. However, with these, the thing of the altcoins is you could literally with $10,000 and a few buyers get the valuation. These coins do a so up so fast. So you could manipulate the market so much. You can't really manipulate the market for even a small size stock is like a couple billion dollars, right? So if someone like Mr. Wonderful is like, I'm going all in, he better be buying like, I don't know, $50 million worth of something for it to move the needle, right? And so you can't, but you can't do it in the stock market. But with crypto, these influencers saw that and it was, it's just so easy to manipulate the market and have things go up 10, 20x in a day. And so anything that goes up that fast, I just run away from 100%.

Yeah, that's fair.

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I was talking to someone earlier today and they said that they shout out, Brian. They said that they had unsubbed from all business influencers that were pushing FTX that were sponsored video. Sponsored ads. Yeah.

Brian Shadow, Brian R. They offered to sponsor me. They did everybody.

That's insane.

Yeah, they. I feel like they basically said anyone above like 20, 30,000 subs and just offered everybody.

I just want to be in front of. They want to be in front.

Yeah. The one that offered everyone is Masterworks which does. Selling pieces of art.

Oh yep.

They do everybody money laundering.

What is that? Money laundering?

What selling. Selling pieces of art. Yeah.

I mean.

Oh, I don't know. I'm not going to say anything about them but there's a couple others that over the past couple of years, basically every influencer that did finance, they were offered money.

Yeah.

And. And like it's a good chunk of dough.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. It's weird like hearing you talk about ftx. Like I obviously read a couple articles, did a little research for this, but I didn't realize how much it was in front of us until this happened.

Oh, he didn't like.

Well I, I mean I think it's just, you know a lot of times we just tune out advertisements but then I think about like no like umpires and baseball like had it on the hot.

On the patch. I know man.

And like I never thought about it like I knew what it was. I think the first time I saw it like it registered.

Yeah.

But then after that I never, never thought about it. It was just always even right now.

In the The World Cup Crypto.com is all over the place.

Yeah, that's true.

So there's a whole bunch of them that you can't. The contagion of like one like someone like FTX going down and there's others have already on down Luna and all the rest of it. So when that happens it really shakes the core group of who is actually believes in crypto in the long run versus the people who have just been trading it. Because if you've been trading crypto for the past 12 months, you're down very.

Yeah, oh yeah.

Especially if you've gotten on the fringes of like polka dot and all these other garbage.

Yeah. Well you mentioned the World Cup. It just started at the time of recording. It started two days ago. It was the first match the US had a draw.

One one. Oh really?

I didn't know that. A draw versus Wales. So let's go. Let's go boys. But basically, yeah, a lot of controversy surrounding the World cup not just with the crypto stuff but with everything going on and the fact that it's in Qatar. So it's the first World cup ever in the Middle east. And it's actually.

How did you say it?

Qatar?

Is that how you're supposed to say it?

I mean, not Qatar. I've done a lot of research for this. So it's weird. You go, you watch one like I watch ABC News videos and then I watch like BBC and then I watch like an Australian. Because Australia is really salty right now because they were one of the top countries for the bid versus Qatar. And so their news is obviously all over all the drama. Right. Because they just want to stir the pot. Right. Because they were like, we should have hosted it, look how bad it is. So the most recent videos I've been watching to kind of research all the hosts in Australia say cutter. So I'm just gonna say the Australian way.

They have an accent, bro.

Qatar, cutter.

That's what you get for watching foreign news.

Yeah, I want to be well informed.

But basically next thing you're gonna be.

Like, we're have our morning tea.

No, I'm not a tea guy.

Let's breakfast in Australia. I've heard on the news a coffee.

Guy, I'm a Red Bull guy. Smallest country to ever host the World Cup. So it's like they have just over. I think it's like 2.4 million people. That's their population. They're expecting a million people. Well, in terms of the whole World cup, that's how many a million people.

Show up for that.

Yeah, because like it's like a month and a half long thing, right? It's. It started in what like it started two days ago. So like the 20th of November and then it goes like through like Christmas. So called the US ads, if you've seen them have like, like sexy Santa in them. It's like it's very like slim Santa and he's like, he's like reading letters from kids. All I want is the World cup for Christmas and stuff. So. But there is a lot of drama around this. Have you seen any of like the news articles?

A little bit, but I haven't dug into it much. Like I outside of finance and businessman, I just don't know much because I don't have the news apps anymore. I used to know more about this stuff like politics and like all this.

I don't do it like I've seen.

Some of the architecture of like the stadiums and like the AC and like then everyone's in uproar. But because it's like child labor and stuff. Like that. I think a lot of it's just like kind of like posturing themselves as. Yeah, so moral citizens.

But yeah, so. So this one is going to blow your mind. I know I briefly showed you my show notes, but I don't think you saw this one. So Russia hosted the last World Cup. Now, Russia was a more developed country and they had more stadiums readily available. So the way FIFA works, and FIFA is like a side note to this because they're an extremely corrupt organization as well, if you look into them. We're talking specifically about FIFA and Qatar right now. But Russia's going to, that is like what's cutter. Okay, we got it. That Russia spent 14 billion to build the infrastructure needed to host the World Cup. Did you, did you see in my notes how much Qatar?

I'm going to guess like 1 or 2 billion.

Dude, 200 billion. No, that's what they're reporting. No, I know it doesn't seem like logical. Like I would, I looked at multiple economists. They're like, how is that impossible? Now they are an oil rich nation with a small population and most of their population is realistically a 1% and a 99. Right. They have the top 1%. Like the oil companies, the shell companies, you know, the, you know, I don't know the people at the top.

Yeah.

But then like everyone else at the bottom, like it's a very hard divide from what I've learned. And so I don't know how they spent 200 billion, but that's what people are saying. But all the stadiums are brand new. So they built eight stadiums.

Eight.

Eight.

Dude, that's nuts.

So FIFA has rules just like the Olympics, right? The Olympic Committee and FIFA, they're these bot governing bodies that basically say if you want, you have to invest a certain amount, you have to build a certain amount of arena stadiums, luxuries, hotels for the players, for our fans, for, you know, our partners, all that stuff.

So surely the FIFA is getting kicked back. That's what's happening.

Yeah, I mean, well, FIFA is extremely corrupt and that's where people are like, well, how did Qatar get in the first place?

Right?

Like, how did they get over Australia? Australia's bid was better. It's a, it's a more established country, it's more developed country. They already have venues, they can do some updates. Right? It's beautiful, whatever. So there's, there's a lot of worry about the corruption behind it. This is one of the funniest things I may have seen. I don't know if you Saw this, but they had what I would like to call paid subscribers or fake fans in the streets. So I don't know if you saw any videos of this. So they literally had fans that were clearly complexion wise, not from let's say England or Poland. Right. And they had shirts that said England FIFA 2022 on the back and then it said fan.

So you're gonna like paid people.

So they were like these paid people to like walk the streets and like parade around the country. And they were getting like all these videos and shots of like big groups of people with the exact same shirt on that said like fan on the back. So like clearly fake to build up hype. Oh, to build up hype. There's all these fans in the streets.

There's gonna be a billion more people or a million people show up.

Yeah. But they're expecting a lot of people to not show up because of like they're saying human rights violations and other stuff that we'll get into. But they have like these paid like fake fans going out in the streets that like clearly aren't like representing a country. And their shirts say like Brazil 2022 fan. And so it's like, like if you were a fan of the us Would you wear a shirt that just said fan on the back? And now, now like you'd wear just a US jersey or like a cool like shirt that had the flag on it. Like you wouldn't like. It's clearly fake. Like there's, there's no official proof of that.

Big pr. Yeah. Basically PR stunt.

Which makes sense.

That's why they justify supposedly spending that much money. I imagine is like to bring awareness to their country, which it sounds like. It's not the best awareness coming.

It's. The backlash on social media is insane. People are just like, this is so fake. And then to get into like, I guess more of like the human rights things that people are really fighting against. This is, this is a weird one. And this is, these are real numbers. I don't know my exact sources here, but there are reports from 3 to 2000. So 3 like the number 3 to 2000 workers died building the eight new stadiums.

Just bad safety and stuff.

Just horrible safety.

Well, I saw the one with like built out like it's modular. It's made out of like storage containers.

Yeah.

Which I thought was kind of cool, but it probably just like.

Oh, just stack them up. Yeah.

There's no like thought into like how it should be.

Yeah. So. So people have like been like really up in arms about that they're like, they, they basically would bring in workers from foreign countries on like work programs and like promise them all these benefits and promise them all this money and like, oh yeah, and then you can travel back whenever you want. And then it was basically was where people are saying it's like human rights violations. They brought these people with all these fake promises and then they were in a foreign country with no money and they were just forced to work essentially like forced labor camps. And that's where people are really upset about all the deaths because they, they got the bid in 2011 I think. So they had like basically 11 years to prepare for this. So 11 years to build eight stadiums. Like you're definitely going to be cutting corners and rushing and a lot of people are saying like a lot of the deaths are like heart attack and respiratory and like cardio type deaths. And basically they're saying the government of Qatar was not listing those as work related. Like oh, it could have been a pre existing condition. I was like, well if you're working with dust and concrete and like mixing all these chemicals, building all these giant buildings, like people are going to die from that if you're not ventilating, ventilating the area correctly, giving people respirators, like those sort of things. So that's the weird part. And like the, the government of Qatar is basically saying like we had, we had three deaths building the stadiums and then other people, other independent sources are like, no, you had like 2,000. Like there's all these lists of missing people from foreign countries and yeah, it's just, it's like really sad when you're like this is like the world stage and it should be exciting.

Well maybe the 200 billion comes from the fact that they're assuming that those people are like highly skilled architects.

Yeah.

But really the cost of them was like way less.

Yeah, yeah, totally. So yeah, so that's just like, I don't know, that was just kind of sad. And then like I was watching a Danish film crew, this went viral. They were just like in the streets and then like it was kind of funny, like a, like a full on like golf cart comes up. But it's like all these guys like from Qatar and they're basically like, they just shut down the live broadcast, like live. So it's like all over, like tick tock and everything. So like what did they not want them to see? Like they were like in the street and they were like, no, like we have all the passes and like they had the FIFA passes and the cutter passes like everything. And then like I saw another thing on social media, like the Poland's team because Poland, obviously the Russia missile had hit Poland recently, right before the World Cup. So Poland had like fighter jets escorting them to the World Cup. Like there's just a lot of like negative things about the World cup right now.

Dude, I'm always amazed by the World cup and the Olympics. Like does it, is it just a money pit and a big PR move for a country? Like I know for a fact. Yeah, you lose billions of dollars. Like I just don't see the big like hoop. Like if you look at Rio for example, like everything they built is like abandoned. Not being used now or falling apart or like a safety hazard or just a complete waste. It's used for like a couple months. Yeah, it's crazy. Like it's got to just be a PR move for these countries because it's not, is not efficient at all.

That's what I like I can't wrap my head around. So you just, you make a money pit and then what? Like what? I don't know. I don't see the value on the other side.

No, like eight stadiums at any one given city is not needed. Right. Seven of them, six of them at least are not going to be used. So the question is either A, they need to be modular or B there needs to be some sort of use case for them afterwards. For example, you could build it in a way that it could be like multifamily living or a mall afterwards. You can do that. Yeah, but you know, I don't think that's gonna ever happen.

Yeah, yeah, just interesting. So we'll see, we'll see what happens. It's just getting started, hoping the US gets far, that's all I gotta say. But keep, keep your eye on it.

Because I think here's the more dilemma. Okay. So if you're, you're a player or an, or one of these performers, like at the opening event thing that have.

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Would you cancel? Let's say you are singing an anthem or doing some sort of performance in the opening event. Would you cancel because of these human rights violations and all the rest of it?

Yeah. So a lot of people there. There has been a lot. What I personally.

Yeah, personally, you.

I mean me personally. I think I look at it this. Let me, let me explain to you via analogy. Let me explain yes or no? My answer would be yes, but let me explain why I would. No, I would go and I would represent the U.S. okay, I would go. Here's my reasoning. And this may stem into a different conversation, but I want to stay on this topic. If you had. So, so like in America, right? The, the nf, the team that wins the NFL, the teams that wins the super bowl, the teams that won the NBA, the World Series, the whole night traditionally go to the White House. Yeah.

Right.

And they bring the president of jersey and he makes a couple jokes about he could have been out there back in the 80s. Right. Like it's the same song and dance for all four major sports in America.

Yeah.

But recent, in recent years, like with Obama, some guys didn't go. This is when it started. Like people didn't go for George Bush, then they go for Obama and then they go for Trump and some don't go for Biden, the whole nine. But I had a conversation with my dad once and he said if you were ever on a sports team and you disagree with the president that much, wouldn't you want to go? Because you have the most powerful person in the world in the same room as you and they can listen to you. And so that would be my thought process for FIFA and Qatar would be the fact that I am on the world stage representing America. So if I did want to make a statement or if I did want to have an impact, could do it on that world stage.

But the question would be, do you actually have a stage? Like does any one player have the ability to be able to change that or move any.

Yeah, yeah. I mean there have been a couple instances, so I can't remember what country, but there was a country that in their warm ups, the players, when they line up, it said human rights like across their chest. So one was the H, the U, the. So that was like really cool. That was a demonstration. Denmark completely redid their jerseys. I guess they were like these really cool fancy jerseys and they're just like a muted like maroon and black. And it's all black. It's black top, black shorts, black socks, basically, and like, a protest against human rights, like, wearing all this, all the. All the black. So there are. There have been some.

I know, man. I'm one of those quiet protests with, like, protests and stuff, man. I'm just like, does it really move the needle? Like, I get awareness. I understand that. Yeah. But, like, I just don't know if it moves the needle.

Yeah.

Like, I know there's progress and, like. But I just, man, protesting and like, that sort of thing, like taking the knee. Like, if you have something you want to do, make actions towards, in my opinion, like, I get. I get the whole stage thing. I get awareness is the first step of making change. I get that. But, you know, putting human rights across your. You're. You're playing in the stadium that human rights were violated. Right, right. So that becomes like, well, then, how much further did you go? Well, then, not going. Do you do any good either? Right. So I'm just saying. I'm just being the devil's help.

Yeah. Well, I think. What would you do? Would you go or no?

I would probably go. Especially in the case of. Of something like the World cup that has, like, historical meaning. A lot of people find joy in it. And if I was that in that volvin, if I was good enough at soccer to play, like, I think I would obviously be enjoying it and loving it. But there's, like, it should be an event that brings people together.

Yeah.

And so anything divisive, I feel like, needs to be sidelined. And so I don't, like, protest with sports. Like, like, we didn't come here for that. Came for, like, like bringing countries like that are in war together and, like, playing soccer. Yeah. I think that's a healthy thing to do.

I do, too.

Yeah.

I mean, it's the world's game, right? You have, like, the poorest countries represent, like, some of the poorest countries in the world.

Like, you look at the U.S. yeah, let's go. I'm, like, all about that. Yeah.

I think it's really cool. You have these underdeveloped countries and then you have, like, these superpowers, and they all get to the world stage and they put it all aside. But I think it's more of when you look at the countries that are, I guess, protesting, whether it be silent protesting or jersey changes, I think it's more against, like, the host nation, which I don't know how, like, disrespectful that is, because it's not like we're like protesting like each other or like a war on someone else.

Yeah, it's all incentives. It's all about the money. The reason Guitar does that is because of money. So fix the system which is FIFA and who gets money and how that all works. Because that gets changed, the whole other issue with the human rights gets solved. Yeah, right. If you say, oh like in order to host you must follow these requirements. Oh, and by the way, we're not taking bribes and there's not a bunch of of that sort of garbage. That other stuff gets taken care of. Like just have requirements of how those stadiums are built and like how the labor is provided and don't allow people to be bribed. Yeah, like I just think we're just like same with political or like racial things. It's like, look, we're fighting like the, the, the result of a systemic issue and like let's go after the issue. Not like, oh like this is like I'm gonna make a bunch of noise about.

It's like, yeah, I don't know, I think it's interesting. I think it is, I think being on the world stage gives you a spot too. I, I, I guess last, the last comment on this personally, like I don't know if I'd want to do like a team demonstration with the jerseys or like the shirts, but I think it would be like in the interviews and then you could like tell like people stories back home. Right. It's kind of like think about like journalists, right? They go to a war torn country to show you live footage of what's happening.

Right?

It's like here's what's happening and you need to be aware, right. And if you can get it in the news, people care about it. Right. And I think that I, I think it's cool that people are trying to get it in the news. I think whether they're independent outlets, whether it's players via their social media, I think that's a really cool element that if there were legitimate human rights violations, we need to be made aware of that. And like you said, we need to fix it. And I think my final point would be if we do fix it with current like labor laws and building codes, like we'll have a World cup every like 20, 30 years though, because all the stadiums you have to build, regulations or not, I don't know, I'm just.

Like, just how do you efficient at how we run the whole thing. Well, that's right. Because can the stadium be reused? Can it be turned into retail space or privately developed, you turn it into a private development, the cost that will get halved. And I think, like, instead of us. Instead of us getting mad and angry about human rights violations, why not attack the people behind it? Which FIFA? The FIFA. And how the money. Like, we want to see all the money. Like, why are we not. Why are we not campaigning as the players for. We want open, transparent of where money is spent and who gets the money. And we want to see everything. That would solve everything. Yeah, because that's the problem. Like, the reason there's human rights violations, because we're trying to cut corners. Right, you're trying to cut corners. Trying to make more money.

Yeah.

So, like, if that stuff was transparent is why I'm a big fan of open book management.

Yeah.

I was going to say then, like, people can't. They don't. They don't have any ammunition if things are being done.

Right.

Yeah. FIFA, you need open book management.

And privatize things.

And privatize, definitely. Last thing I saw someone tweet, they said, if the US wins the World cup, does the rest of the world have to call it soccer?

Probably not, because I think that we're not like, the oldest use of it. Right.

I'm just saying I think it'd be funny because it's. FIFA is the Federation of International Football or something. Yeah. I don't know what it stands for off top of my head, but I know One of the Fs is football. It's not for soccer. So. But yeah, the world's game and the world is getting bigger as well. So I don't know if you saw. I don't know if you saw the UN's recent announcement. It was not about Qatar. It was about the fact that we have 8 billion people in the world.

Now, that's crazy. I think. Wait, were we. When was it 6?

Well, I have. When it was 7.

When was it 7?

It was 11 years ago.

Okay, so I remember that. I remember that.

So 11 years ago, seven. I think it was like in the 870s or 80s it was six.

Got it.

So a couple. Yeah, a couple of stats on that. Global population has quadrupled in less than a century. Yeah, the increase from 7 to 8 billion took only 11 years. But here's an interesting thing. And actually, you know, economists are basically thinking that population is going to slow, actually pretty rapidly. And I know that's Elon's big thing is he's always said, like, have as.

Many kids as you want.

He's like the biggest Risk to humanity is the lack of population. Like, that's his thing. Like, he's like, we need to have more kids. And then he names it like AE12X or something. But the New York Times article that I read said the United nations said that it is expected to be 15 years before we pass 9 billion. So we just went from 7 to 8 and 11 years. Think it's going to take 15, so four years longer and then to reach 10 billion, it probably won't happen until 2037, so that would be 22 years. So they're seeing a lag in terms of that growth. And then obviously, you know, big concerns with biodiversity with over consumption, the fact that we can't produce to keep up with, I guess, the amount of mouths to feed, if you will. So it's just really interesting, kind of seeing what certain economists are saying or about what they're expecting to happen and what they're predicting to happen. Clearly all the trends are showing that population growth is going to decline. But here's. Here's my question to you. Do you remember those, when you were like a kid watching tv, those Publisher Clearinghouse commercials do what Publishers Clearinghouse is?

Not really.

Yeah, see, I don't really know what it is either, man. I feel like if you asked every millennial, they wouldn't know what it is, but they would have seen a commercial.

I don't think I've seen a commercial.

I'll have to look it up. Maybe I'll just edit one in. Edit one in. But I remember as like a kid, you're like, at home, you have a sick day or whatever, and you're watching, like, daytime TV with your mom. And there's always. There's always these Publishers Clearinghouse videos where they, like, go to someone' property and they, like, give them, like, these massive checks, right? And they give balloons everything to surprise them, and they give them the check and they're like, you won this year's Publisher's Clearinghouse check. I don't know if it's a lottery. I don't know what it is. We need to do that for the 8 millionth baby. We need to.

We need to get a billion.

A billionth baby. We need to go. We need to get a. But, like one person for every country. So what is it? Like 206 people need to represent and go take this baby a check. Like a giant check from everyone. I think that'd be cool. Where do you think the thing is? There's Billy's baby.

There's many babies per Day born. Yeah.

Well, they said they know where the 8 billionth was born.

They do know.

I don't know how they.

That's not a chance in the world. Hey, the margin of error on that is so great.

I don't know. I believe it. What do you.

What do you think? What if you were the 8 mil, 8 billionth and first, would you. Would you think that they're accurate?

Yeah. No.

You would? I think they're off.

I want to recount. Dude, we're doing a recount. Let's go.

Yeah. So it was the eight billionth baby. What they're. What the experts are saying was born in the Dominican Republic.

They say about the experts in their polls. We got a recount.

Yeah. Plus or minus. Plus or minus. A little bit of degree for air. So I don't know. It's just, it's. It's wild. I guess population isn't something I think about a lot other than, you know, when Elon brings it up, but 8 billion people, it's just a lot of people, man.

Yeah, I remember seven. I remember where I was at when I saw seven Times Time magazine.

Yeah, I don't at all. But they do. They are expecting, though, India to be the highest populated country by the end of next year, 2023. So China is having lower birth rates and there's lots of politics behind that, but they're basically slowing their growth and India should surpass it. 70% of the 7 to 8 billion. This was a wild stat. 70% of the 8, 7 to 8 billion population leap was in like second, second and third world countries.

So that's the part that's worrisome is I think like the whole like, richer get richer, poor get poor is going to keep happening. It's just because there's more and more people going to be in those systems. So they won't be able to create social infrastructure.

Right.

And so they're living like, yeah, it won't get any better for them.

Yeah, just. I don't know, just interesting. But that's all I got, man.

That's not very depressing. Now.

I know.

I feel like you need a little pick me up. I know.

I need a little something. Sorry. But I think we did it. Eight billion people. Like, we should celebrate. We did it. Throw a little party. We did it. I didn't do my part.

I didn't either, dude. I would not be friends.

I didn't do my part. But hey, you know, here's hoping.

This has been the Mike Candies podcast. Now you have some ideas on how to take your business to the next level. And you like what you heard? We have tons of lectures, interviews, and more over at the Mike and his YouTube channel. That'll be right up your alley. That's all we have here today. We'll see you next time.