War Drums for Venezuela and the Financialization of College Football

Summary

• Venezuela Conflict: Extended critique of U.S. boat strikes and regime-change rhetoric, with concerns over international law, escalation risks, and public apathy toward foreign policy.
• Fentanyl Reality Check: Detailed discussion that DEA data points to India/China supply chains and land border smuggling, not Venezuelan maritime routes, undermining the stated rationale for strikes.
• Escalation Risks: Warnings that a Libya/Syria-style model could create chaos, refugee surges toward the U.S., and opportunities for proxy warfare by rival powers.
• Economic Outlook: With official data delayed, ADP shows private job losses, manufacturing weakness, and tariffs cited as a drag on hiring and small businesses.
• Fiscal Strain: Record October outlays and a large monthly deficit highlight growing debt service costs ($104B in October), with no credible path to spending restraint.
• Policy Posture: Little expectation of tariff rollback or fiscal consolidation; political messaging likely to seek scapegoats rather than course correction.
• College Sports Financialization: Multiple examples of easy-money dynamics driving media consolidation, Disney/ESPN’s pivotal role in streaming sports, and securitization of ticket revenues.
• Downturn Sensitivity: Concerns that high prices and leveraged funding models could falter if attendance drops in a recession, exposing investors and athletic departments to revenue shortfalls.

Transcript

Welcome back to the Power Market podcast. I'm Ryan McMan, editor-inchief at the Mises Institute. And joining me today are two of our contributing editors. We've got th Bishop and we've got Connor O'Keefe. Both of whom have new articles this week at mises.org. And if you haven't been to mises.org lately, I highly recommend you check it out. That's mises.org. And if you want announcements on when new articles come out, be sure and click up at the top on subscribe and you can get either weekly or daily email updates as to when our site gets updated, which is really every day, but you'll then get a better uh sense of uh what's being carried on the site every day. And this week, we've got a wide variety of topics I think we can cover, but I I think the number one thing that we need to start on is the Venezuela situation. Now this is an interesting topic and you can cover it from a variety of different angles right there's a big domestic policy issue involved here because of the furer over furer furer the because of the controversy over the the killing of people on these drug boats. Now, people I generally like have been pointing out that this is uh totally in violation of international law because what we've got is a situation where the administration without providing any evidence just, hey, trust me. You wouldn't you wouldn't think I would lie to you, would you? The federal government is saying, "Oh, there's there's drugs on those boats." And not just any drugs, fentinyl, uh is what they're really trying to say. And even though fentinyl is doesn't really have a big connection to Venezuela, nonetheless, they're saying there's there's poison that they're trying to give your kids on these boats, so we have to bomb the boats. Okay. So, even if they establish that, what they're doing is still a war crime. When they bomb one of the boats, there are survivors and then they just kill the survivors. This this violates like every letter of the law, the Geneva Conventions you can think about. And also just the general spirit of the idea that incapacitated enemy combatants are to be arrested and imprisoned as prisoners of war, not just mowed down as the United States is doing in these cases. So Rand Paul has pointed out the horribleness of this as has judge Npalitano and others as well who have said look this is clear violation of international law obvious violation of US law but the qu does it matter I I think is the question now in your column this week uh Connor you pointed out that it's the usual situation with foreign policy and war the the left the Dems didn't care when their guy was doing it Right. Obama really paved the way for these sorts of extrajudicial killings, even of American citizens. Obama did that. He killed a teenage child who was an American citizen uh who in one of Obama's bombings. And you know, not there were no repercussions for that. Uh some rep some Republicans said, "Hey, maybe that's not a great idea." But of course, not many of them because the Republicans are always just waiting to get back in power so they can take advantage of these these new warfare powers that the Dems help establish every time that they're in the White House. So you point out though that yeah, some Dems are now talking about how this is an evil and bad thing, but okay, what difference does it make because they're going to change their minds as soon as the Dems get back in office is a is a good guess. Uh so this has larger implications then for the the administration's stated larger goal of regime change in Venezuela because the boat bombings and the killings, these are really just part of a a larger issue, right? They're they're they're bombing these boats saying, "Yeah, Venezuela is doing these horrible things because they're boats from Venezuela and now I need to change the regime entirely in Venezuela and bad things happen there. So, we need to replace the regime." It's the usual playbook for regime change. Bad things are happening in this foreign country, so now we have to go and have a war there and replace the regime. So, there's all sorts of moving parts here, but I think we can just start off with the question of will the boat bombings be even a relevant part to this at all, or is this just noise on the side that few Americans in the end are even going to care about? Uh, Connor, what do you think on that? >> Um, I think it is just going to end up being noise. And yeah, it's just pure politics like you were saying. It just happens to be that the Republican administration is doing it, so the Democrats are lining up and they're the ones saying that this is a war crime. And I my I wrote that column in response to a lot of right-wingers pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of a lot of these specific Democrats who were just silent about like for instance the drone strike that happened in Kabell, Afghanistan after the Abbey Gate explosion. There was just this this innocent family. There was an aid worker and his children that got um blown up, but it happened under Biden. for the Democrats were kind of um silent about it and then the Pentagon investigated itself and just determined that they were innocent. It was just this horrible thing. Um but because of party politics, you know, the Republicans maybe clamorred about it a little bit. I think the only people I saw really getting up in arms about it were on the right, but now things have flipped and um so it's just uh I mean I overall it's disgusting, but um I do at least appreciate that there are some people with voices calling this out as being bad. I think it would be worse um if it was just pure nihilism, pure everybody was uh completely okay with this. Um and even though they're completely hypocritical, like I say in the article, often times hypocrites are right half the time. And in this case, they're right about it. Like these are things that we should be um condemning. And I guess I tried to take a step back at the end of it because at the end of the day, like the problem here is that this whole escalation in the Caribbean just represents Trump doing the same thing as all the presidents that came before him when it comes to lying us into another war, pretending it's about the drugs. And we can kind of get into that angle of it later just to help some well-connected people around him. and you know uh in this case bombing people just because the administration says they're terrorists. This is something that kind of I guess it doesn't confuse me. I'm not surprised by but I'm disappointed by the fact that only a few years ago back in 2022 the right was going crazy because Biden's DOJ was labeling groups like Moms for Liberty as domestic terrorists. And then just they get a little bit of power. They get kind of this delusion that they run things now and will in the future. and now they're completely fine with the president just killing people because he claims they're terrorists. And I don't know, the the whole thing is very disappointing, but not very very uh surprising. And I think, but we'll see what direction this goes, if it will continue to escalate. I know there was talks of it um transitioning to land strikes. There's fear about this turning into a legit regime change war. Um it could go that way or it could kind of uh fade away. Um hopefully it will, but I think at the end of the day, like we're not really going to remember the boat strikes too much. They're we're in the middle of it right now, but uh it just it's not going to alone they're not alone going to lead or leave a lasting impact on American politics. >> Yeah, though this isn't going to lead to any sort of real legal implications. I mean, just think about the last 25 years, all these all the stuff since the invasion of Iraq and all that stuff. It never leads to anything. It's all in the end deemed legal and everyone's fine with it. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what is international law? I mean, it's it's it's it's it's a tool used by successful by victorious large states to adjudicate how to properly punish the political survivors of a vanquished country. And so, it's not going to apply to the United States. It's not it doesn't apply to Israel and and Gaza. It doesn't apply to Putin if he's successful in Ukraine, right? Like, and it's never used to actually adjudicate, you know, anything resembling, you know, obvious crime, you know, you these sort of these sort of events. It's all just a political tool of, you know, postw World War II foreign policy which which is, you know, crumbling in in many ways. And this is a a complete breakdown of norms, right? But again, this is the trend that we've been on. And I don't think the American public cares at all. I mean, you know, if the the difference between, oh, well, you know, they're running cocaine rather than fentanyl. I don't think that really moves the needle with many folks. Oh, well, you know, the the boats are going to go to a South American country and move upwards or whatever. Like, I I don't I, you know, I I don't think that's going to to move the needle. You're going to have people that make procedural arguments um kind of in the Ron Ran Paul mold that have been critical of a number of things that the Trump administration's done on that front and it's simply another front for those who have the underlying critiques for the Trump administration to make this point. It doesn't make any of this, you know, stuff good, right? That's not a defense of it. It's just the this cynical, you know, just real analysis of, you know, what this scandal means, you know, what these events mean, um if you will. And I I I think what's interesting I think what my assumption is what the administration is counting on is that active military hot engagement of these soft targets. It's a pressure campaign for you know not on Maduro himself necessarily but the people around Maduro, right? You know they they tried to play this game back first time around we had you know the the their their interim president right that Trump administration recognized and all that sort of stuff and they played like kind of the soft pressure game. Didn't really work. um they didn't work at all. Um now they're they're escalating that tension. So, okay, we're going to blow up these bombs with with very expensive missiles. Um you know, we're going to try, you know, are they going to continue on to military targets in Venezuela? Right? The goal is to get the military to believe that, you know, their survival is on the line with Big Bad Trump right now. They turn on the regime and boom, you've got a a nice soft little little foreign policy victory. And and I I do think I mean none of this to me is is particularly surprising, right? Like if you looked at the rhetoric of and and and it's to be fair like there is, you know, I think you you could argue that there is a change of perspective to a certain extent in foreign policy even if at the end of the day, right, military-industrial complex wins. There's still the military is still being used, right? But this is part of, you know, what has been sold as a pivoting away from the Middle East, from Europe towards China, which is, you know, used as a as a secondary justification, right? Oh, we can't have Chinese influence on the continent. You sort of neon neo Monroe doctrine sort of approach like, okay, we're we're going to focus on South America. We're going to focus on our own backyard, and that's going to change some of the the some some of a a particular type of critique when it came to, you know, middle Middle Middle East adventurism. Um, and you still get, you know, the the military-industrial complex still gets its its its gimmies. We're just going to shift the focus there. And all that shift of focus is is what's really important more than, you know, we shouldn't be doing this sort of stuff in the first place. And so I again, none of this is particularly surprising. Um, and again, I think at the end of the day, um, you know, I think if boots actually get on the ground, I think that changes. If American lives start getting lost in Venezuela, that, you know, it could hit a little bit differently. But I think for the most part, you know, Americans are going to shrug. And I I think even when it comes to the midterms and all of the the negative headwinds that the administration faces that Republicans face, I have a feeling this is not going to rank in the top 10 in terms of what average Americans view, you know, better for worse. >> Yeah. I've been around long enough. When I was young and idealistic, I thought, "Oh, well, the voters will wake up this time and they'll be outraged, right? These horrible violations of human dignity." They never are. Nobody ever cares. and you just move on to the next election cycle. Yeah, when it comes to foreign policy, it's just totally irrelevant. It's all happening far away. And the interesting thing is is it always proves that none of these conflicts have actually anything to do with the average lives of normal Americans, right? Venezuela is no threat to the United States. Uh they are not the reason that people are overdosing in West Virginia or wherever else it's happening. These are parts of a much larger more complex issue. The fact is the market is is providing a good that for which there is a high demand in the United States. And it's very unfortunate that there is so much demand for this sort of thing that people are willing to even buy street drugs that might be horribly poisoned. Um I don't think you can blame Venezuelans for that. And besides, you could vaporize the entirety of Venezuela and you're just going to get another shipment of horrible drugs the next day from somewhere else. That's just that's always the way it's been going back many decades in spite of all the US efforts during the 80s uh drug wars and all of that stuff. Always been delivering the drugs to the people who want it. And I always do find it kind of interesting that the so-called party of personal responsibility has has taken the position that drug use and drug abuse is the fault of the drug dealer and uh not the responsibility of the person who is using the drugs. Now they might say, "Oh, well they're selling this stuff to children on playgrounds." Well, that is a tiny portion of the problem. It's mostly adults that are are suffering from this problem. And if you're trying to blame some drug dealer in a village 8,000 miles away, that just strikes me as a as a little silly. Uh, now I might I guess one could ask them, well, are is drug crime the fault of the or is gun crime the fault of the gun dealer? Should we therefore go to the guy who sold the gun to the bank robber and say that uh you know clearly we need to to to destroy the gun dealers? I think your average conservative would say no. But magically personal responsibility does does not apply in this issue of drug overdoses. And so here we are trying to blame it on Venezuelans. And again not going to solve the problem. But this is just some of the rhetoric that surrounds the whole issue. That's of course the larger problem is that you know Democrats would would agree with that, right? they would go after the gun dealer. And that's the that's that's the issue is that, you know, we we've come to believe that political solutions, big big fancy, expensive federal solutions are the ways to solving these underlying social ills. And and I'm sure you most people, you know, none of this will shock a me institute audience by any means, but like this is precisely the the the the awful state of, you know, I mean, it's not just just an American problem. It's a broad broad civilizational problem where this is the element where politics is is is seen as the solution to these things across the board. Um and again it's it's the the you know what are the mechanisms what are the pressures to fundamentally change and reevaluate these sort of things and that's the problem is I I there's not something right now um again even even if if if you know there there's not a um uh again if you think about the the leading um challenges to the Trump administration within his own within the party right it's it's Ran Paul and and even the people that otherwise would love to to fork, you know, to to put a knife in Trump's back. The the Democrats aren't going to go out there on a limb for this, right? This is all a big game for for all of those that have true political power in DC. >> I think what I've been uh once again, not surprised, but has just been really notable to me, though, is just how removed this whole narrative is from reality. Like, I remember when um Trump was kind coming back into office, they were really floating this whole idea of using the military against the drug cartels. And I really took them at their word that they literally meant they were going to try to prevent drug trafficking with the you with special forces and drones. But I what I wasn't expecting is that that was just basically a complete cover for going after Maduro. I wrote an article a while ago looking at this specific issue and I went deep into it. I read the entire like 80 pages of um Trump's DEA's 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment or whatever it's called and there's not a single mention of Venezuelan boats or boats off the coast of Venezuela because they know specifically how fentanyl is getting into the country. It's not like it's this mystery and they they're hiding it. It's just that, you know, you you throw enough um you know, enough traffickers in, most of them are going to get through. spec specifically um it's chemicals coming from India and China mainly a lot of them actually get shipped into the US and then smuggled out back to Mexico sometimes through Canada and then they're driven over the border by like young men specifically because fentanyl is so potent that you don't need to like load up a huge truck you can meet a lot of demand with a very small supply and it's a lot easier to hide you know a small supply a small stash of something in a completely legal vehicle that is crossing the border legally than it is to hide somebody trying or a whole group trying to sneak over the border. So, that's what they've been doing. And of course, like the drug cartels, uh they write in some attrition. So, a fair number of them get caught, but most don't because you can't strip search every single person driving over the border every single day. And that is how the fentanel is getting in. That that is not uh a mystery. The DEA knows that. That's all they were really focusing on in this threat assessment. The uh maritime routes are super limited. And specifically when it comes to the Caribbean, um those are drug smuggling routes, but uh based on all the research that I was reading, everything that I could find, there are specific routes to get cocaine from Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia to Europe. They're European smuggling routes. They specifically use these boats to kind of island hop until they can find an airport that's not, you know, without a lot of restrictions or a lot of times it's uh shipping containers or they'll kind of hide them on these big uh ships and then get them into European ports. And that's what these if if to the extent that these are drug boats, that is what they are. They're probably cocaine going to Europe. And so like the whole idea that this is going to solve the opiate crisis like like they're framing all this as if if they can just get rid of Maduro then we're going to stop having all these overdoses. And if they got rid of Maduro there would not be even the slightest dent in the fentinol crisis here. And it's just like it's so obvious if you look one step below the surface on any of this. And yet the war propaganda is just it's working just as designed which is just difficult to see. I think especially yeah I I I share your general pessimism Ryan that like I don't think the voters are just going to wake up here but what's disappointing to see is all the people especially on the right that were just talking about how oh yeah we were totally lied into war in Iraq. They were just sounding great on all these issues completely falling on their face when it comes to the this the current storm of war propaganda that we're in. I think the only thing that maybe uh prevents me from totally blackpilling on this is I think the numbers of people who support any sort of regime change are much smaller than they were in previous cycles. So for example, the number of people who were behind the um invasion of Iraq back in 2003 was huge. I mean just the swelling of based on nothing, right? based on a lie, based on the weapons of mass destruction lie, ba, in spite of the fact that Iraq clearly was no threat to anybody, and in spite of the fact that although every intelligent and educated person knew that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, the country was absolutely brimming with millions of absolute idiots who believed that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 and who pushed for the invasion on that basis. So I think the numbers were smaller now, but it's remarkable how you see the exact same rhetoric now than you saw at the time. And it's all about self-styled conservatives. People who call themselves conservatives, people who very well may have said, "Oh, we relied into war before, but now suddenly are in favor." And what really got me all worked up earlier today was uh there was a post by Cat Tim. she's some sort of like I don't know Fox and Friends person or something like that. And she just had a post she was she was just like legitimately asking like so if you're in support of military intervention uh are would you be willing to go or send your children to fight in the war? Always a fair question. Um I don't even think it's really a gotcha question. I think if you can't answer that question the affirmative you shouldn't be supporting any sort of regime change. And of course, so that is in reaction to a post by Lindsey Graham who's not even satisfied with murdering people in the Caribbean. He's saying without a cred, quote, without a credible threat to of the use of military force, nothing changes in Venezuela. And then he goes on to say, right, regime change is absolutely essential. Oh, and he's real mad at the Pope because the Pope said, uh, you know, I would think twice about war in Venezuela. He goes off on some tangent about the Holy Father. Um, that's what he calls him. Um, which is kind of it's kind of weird to me when non-atholics refer to the Holy Father, but uh, just say the Pope. But anyway, maybe he's trying to win over Catholics to his latest war idea. I don't know. But he gets real unreasonably angry uh, at the Pope over this. And so then Tim comes back. She's like, you know, are do are you willing to put your money where your mouth is on this? And the the whole thread under the article is just the sort of stuff the garbage you would read in 2003 about the Iraq war. Uh the stuff people would say about the president back then. And here's a perfectly representative sample. I have one this is this is from an account called Navy Mom which is I mean just lethal doses of jingoism right there. But uh she says assuming it's not a guy in India I don't know. So, Navy mom says, "I have one sailor and one going to Air Force Basic next week. They are adults and choose to serve. You should thank them for their service and not undermine the commander in chief." Trump would not send the military if it wasn't necessary. I mean, how do you deal with that level of civility and just that willingness to believe whatever the government says must be true? I I mean this is I as long as America has millions of these people, there's really no hope on foreign policy and and I mean just the whole way she thinks of the the country in terms of the commander-in-chief. Okay, the Constitution gang does not say the president is the commanderin-chief of America. He is the commander-in-chief of the army and the navy. He's not my commander-in-chief. He's not your commander-in-chief. He's not the commanderin-chief. But they like to use that phraseiology because they worship these politicians as long as it's their guy. And so that's that's the level of sort of mental just complete shutdown that we're dealing with from a lot of people who support this. And I I don't there's just not much that can be done. >> Well, to your point though, I think that there's a big difference between um active enthusiastic cheering on and passive apathy. And I I think that when it comes to like again I I think it's easy to kind of dismiss okay well you know you're sending a missile at a drug boat whatever if if you actually got to the point where there's boots on the ground I think that changes right like I I I don't think that there is a significant enough you I think for for even if if you view Maduro as you know you know socialist you you evil dictator of of Venezuela which understandably so um you I don't I think it's very difficult to connect that to you know America's national self-interest interest in the way that you they're able to connect like Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda and like oh you know you're going to have a mushroom cloud in New York City right like I don't I don't anyone expect a mushroom cloud from Venezuela right even to to a certain extent you know kind of what they were able to play with the Iran earlier this year um if if you actually got boots on the ground I I I don't think you'd have the same level you again even like the Iran situation okay throw three missiles people shrug you put boots on the ground and things get things things get a little bit different there and so I think right now it's it's difficult to to view this out of any Netherlands and just kind of passive apathy. You may be a little ah yeah we got it got when it comes to the drug boat thing. But I got I don't think that there there is anywhere near you're not going to have a a hit country song right about you know next Christmas and uh you know capital of Venezuela right in Caracus right like >> yeah I I don't think they're they even want a boots on the ground and I don't think you can really get a boots on the ground war unless you have a 9/11 type attack to get everybody uh frenzied up. I think they want basically the Libya model, the the Syria model. >> Yeah. Which kind of leads >> into the total destruction of a country followed by slavery and al-Qaeda >> and a huge wave of refugees north too. >> That's a whole other side of this. Like it's pretty well understood that the terror wars were a huge catalyst for the uh mass migration into Europe. And it's like why why are the America first MAGA Trump supporters the ones trying to like kickstart this south of our border? It's crazy. Yeah. If you go in and you uh decapitate the regime there cause chaos which the US since um well I mean the last 30 years maybe 35. Every of course regime change operation has resulted in economic chaos, political chaos. Um, look at Iraq. Endless years of car bombing that followed, the ending of the Saddam regime, a civil war, the destruction of the Christian community there in Iraq. In fact, the Bush administration's done more to destroy ancient Christian churches. By that, I mean both the physical churches and the communities that live there than anybody else. There used to be millions in the Middle East and now mostly gone thanks to Bush policy uh of just basically causing chaos in the region. The destruction of Libya which has led to hotbed and safe havens for al-Qaeda. Uh we could look at of course uh Syria, the US cheered on uh regime change there for years. And now who's in charge? ISIS and al-Qaeda terrorists are now in charge. And Trump invites them to have coffee with him in the White House. So everywhere there's a regime change, it ends up in terrorists being in charge, the impoverishment of the population, economic chaos, the destruction of the good guys in all of those cases. And now they want to do it in Venezuela. And as you just pointed out, causes major refugee situations. And I can tell you that if uh they do that in Venezuela, you're going to get millions of refugees. and they ain't going to Sweden. They're going to straight north. They're going to go to the United States. And when you have that many people standing on the border trying to knock down that walls, a even if uh he tried, Trump would have major problems preventing ongoing major refugee uh entrance into the country. And B, Trump ain't going to be president forever, friends. He's going to be leaving. And if the economy is bad when he leaves, he will leave as one of the most unpopular, hated presidents ever. Uh if the economy is headed where I think it's headed, and he will be replaced then by someone who will love to open the border and let in millions of Venezuelan refugees. And that's what you're courting by pushing a regime change operation in Venezuela. But I guess if the commander-in-chief says it's a good idea, it must be. And so that's just what we're left with right now. That's why I think why there's been so much of the the campaign to kind of set up, you know, they're trying to sell an easy button, right? Okay, we pushed the button, Maduro's gone. You know, we've got parallel political institutions already. We just gave the Nobel Prize to, you know, political opposition there. Um, you know, we don't have to worry about al-Qaeda and Venezuela because it's, you know, it's it's it's not an Islamic country. We understand this country, you know, this culture better. The economy is already uh in terrible shape because of socialism, right? So, we're going to come in and and, you know, there's going to be more bread in and, you know, in Caracus, things like that. And again, it's it's a it's it's a narrative that's been set for for many times to try to, you know, undercut um you know, these concerns that you if you oh well, it's it's not Iraq. It's it's it's Venezuela. It's it's a totally different situation. And and and you know, there there's there's there are some different things, but again, like that that that threat, right? Again, that immigration surge is a very very different dynamic when when you're dealing with our hemisphere than you do with with the Middle East. And so, it's it's going to be very interesting to see exactly how that uh >> Yeah, immigration is primarily a problem of numbers, right? Obviously, 10,000 immigrants per year, no matter how different a culture they were from, would mean nothing. It would not be a problem for anybody. A million, that's something else. And if it's a million from the Horn of Africa, that's one thing. And I agree. Yeah, if you have Latin Americans coming in who are Christians and already have a sense of uh Western ways of doing things, that's another matter. But when we're talking about millions of people and the destruction of a a large country on the other side of the Caribbean, that's it doesn't matter how similar. Heck, they could be speaking English. They could all be native English speakers and you'd have a major problem on your hands with those sorts of numbers. So, it uh something nobody's talking about as far as I can tell except, you know, right, in our circles, uh the issue of refugees. But it doesn't matter. You got Lindsey Graham saying, "Hey, time to take action." or your kids going to die from a fentanyl overdose. And the the chain of logic is so non-existent, so totally nothing there in terms of getting from the current situation to what they propose will be fixed by regime change down there, especially given the record of regime change for the US over the last 30 years is just there's no there. Well, and the other thing too is now I think kind of going back to a little bit of of Conor's point is that, you know, kind of the threat of using special forces on like the Mexican border and things like that, like you know, I think it would be a mistake to to assume this would be kind of a one-off >> in South America, right? Like, you know, I I think that, you know, if if you if this proves to be, you know, let's let's say it's successful, right? Like let's let's say Maduro does fall without American military involvement directly on the ground, right? A boots on the ground sort of dynamic, then okay, what's going to be the next country down there? And so you you know this this I think would very much set up a domino situation using again the same exact sort of logic right we've got all these narco states down there we gota now again things get really interesting once you get to our direct neighbor to to the south you see how US Mexican relations go from that but but again I think that's an additional thing to look forward going there is that let's let's say the best case scenario going on in Venezuela this is not going to be a one and done sort of thing and the question is what comes next and again what does how does China respond to this as well like you start bringing in you know additional international actors and the the opportunity to create trip lines there that creates very very interesting dynamics there. So this is not just simply something even confined to the Venezuelan question really if you look at if you take this logic to its next natural conclusion. >> Yeah, I wrote a whole article u back when I thought they were just going to go for the the Mexican cartels about how that would just be a terrible idea and that was a point that I made was that you're just handing Russia and China an opportunity to give Washington a taste of their own medicine by funding a proxy war on our border. And like that that alone is a terrible reason. But you have on top like especially with the cartels right on the border like they would probably fight back and they are nasty fighters and they've kind of had a policy in recent years of not targeting US officials. They've certainly been brutal against um Mexican cops down there. But they could just change that and they have drones. Like they are not not MQ9 Reapers, but they they have a lot of firepower down there and they could do some real damage, especially those border towns. um there and it could get really really nasty and then yeah it's just like any any foreign government that wants to you know bring Washington down a peg and just start pouring some of their funds and weapons and it's just a horrible path that's not going to do anything to to solve the drug the drug problem on top of that >> and in essence is is the cartels would be the equivalent of al-Qaeda in the situation. >> Yeah. >> Right. That that would be what the what the kind of the militarized push back or force would be it'd be in that form. It would not be in the Islamic extremist form, but at the same time do some sort of damage. >> Yeah. It' be a state within a state, a competing coercive organization competing for control and trying to assert a monopoly, which in many places the cartels have achieved essentially a monopoly on uh the use of coercion within that area. they they tolerate the Mexican regime to to function to some extent in those areas, but never in a way that actually harms the regime in those regions of the country. Uh if you're paying attention to it, right, you know that it it's it's a patchwork, right? There are some regions of the country like Chihuahua that are basically cartel controlled. Mexico City, where the regime itself is very strong, you don't have to worry nearly as much about getting beheaded or something like that down in the the core of the Mexican state. But some parts of the country there's functionally the Mexican state can assert in no way a reg a a regime monopoly there. And so it would be a matter of simply expanding that if the US came in and uh functioned in such a way as to further weaken the quote unquote legitimate regime in Mexico City. So uh that that could end up very bad. >> It's also worth keeping in mind that these cartels have a heavy presence in the United States already. Like we kind of think of this as if they just throw the b the drugs like in bags over the border and they just get to people in cities, but no, they have extensive logistics networks. They they have a very heavy presence here anywhere anyway. So if they really wanted to start, you know, causing some chaos and committing terrorism, like they're already here. That's that's that would just be it's just so stupid. I just it gets me going because it's like it's just and like all the drug overdoses are going to continue. that they've been taking out drug kingpins and taking out their infrastructure for decades now. And as long as I think I looked it up, Americans pay hundred billion dollars a year for illicit drugs like this. So there is heavy demand as long as that demand remains. Somebody's going to find a way to do this. And it's just we're just escalating the same or Trump is talking about escalating the same approach that has been disastrous for the last 30 years or so at least um in a way that is going to just make everything so much worse. And I don't know and people are just getting right behind it. >> Yeah. the the Mexico situation kind of a Latin America rit small in the sense of fine you can get rid of one drug lord and then just another one pops up and but between getting rid of the one drug lord and then the new one replacing him is total chaos and a big surge in in violence and murder because then they just have to rearrange then the power structure so if you're going to do that you have to know what you're doing or have something in place to deal with it and the US wants to do that on even bigger scale because it claims claims that essentially Maduro is a drug lord, so let's get rid of him. Okay, what's going to happen afterward? Well, a new one will pop up then. I mean, we already know how it works, but they're claiming that's going to be something totally different. But that's how Lindsey Graham makes his living as he just starts new wars and who cares what happens. Obviously, it's not going to hurt him in his mansion wherever it is that he lives in his security detail. He'll be fine. And since he has no children or wife or anything, he couldn't care less about the future or the legacy of anybody else or anything. Uh Lindsey Graham is fine. Um so who can be surprised that this is the position he takes. Uh so I mean as as we've noted though, we know we can pretty much guess what Lindsey Graham's position is. He really does want war. He really does want uh a new regime there. Trump though, as we've kind of hinted in our discussion here, we actually don't know for sure kind of what his preferred course of action is going to be. He says things and they really mean nothing after a while. So I don't I don't know. So I guess we'll just have to to come back. >> Yeah, this is just as likely to come to to result in regime change as Trump having some sort of grand economic breakthrough with with Monuro. Like >> yeah, there's anything in the middle. >> Yeah, you could see them like shaking hands and hugging like six weeks from now. Who knows? >> Oh, this this guy, you know, like he's just uh you know, say what you will, but like you know, he just survives. >> Like he was saying about mom Donnie, right? I think we can expect expect great things from him now. Yeah, who knows? All right. Well, speaking of economic breakthroughs, let's move on to our next topic, which is the state of the US economy. Uh, which is does not seem to be having a breakthrough. Uh, at least a break maybe a breakthrough to the bad side where we're now now that thanks to the shutdown, we don't have the BLS jobs data again. And normally it would be due out this week. That's not happening. So, we actually have to wait until it looks like what, the 16th, it looks like, when the next report is going to come out. Yes, the employment situation report will be uh the November report, December 16th at 8:30 a.m. Uh so, you know, a week and a half late. This is going to be after the next Fed meeting. So, what are we doing talking about jobs now for November? Oh, we're looking at private data. We kind of joked about this. uh among ourselves the last FOMC meeting where they were the Fed was getting questions like so you tell us your data driven where's this data come from and they're like well you know we're going on indeed.com and trying to figure out how many jobs there are and we send an intern to the grocery store to check prices and I mean it's bas basically stuff on that level in terms of doing the data and that's where it looks like the Fed is still going to be with its next uh meeting which is going to be on the 9th and 10th. The FOMC will meet. It will not have the November 2025 data. Won't have CPI data which the next report for that is on the 18th. And so we'll see what the Fed does. But I can tell you what the most recent ADP report is. This is they put out private payrolls and they're saying that the private sector lost 32,000 jobs uh for November. So yet another month. I I think if you if you do the average over the last few months, you're looking at 4,000 loss per month uh over the last 3 months. So, it's it's an economy that's losing jobs and you wouldn't know anything about that from the administration though, which is still acting like we're in some sort of economic golden age. Um, so I I I really am curious to see how the situation turns out because we have so little aggregate data. Mostly what you're getting is bits and pieces. You're getting data about home prices which continue to slide. You're getting some data from the Fed about delinquencies, foreclosures, we're told by Bloomberg, is up 20%. And then they're like, well, it's up from a very small number. Yes, true. But I worked at the division of housing in 2006 and 2007 and we said the exact same thing back then. We had these huge increases in foreclosures. We actually brought it up to some of the banks and they're like oh well you know the numbers are still small and then 6 months later the numbers were much much bigger and they still hadn't changed their opinion about anything and they had no plan in place. So maybe maybe it is an important number. I guess we could it could be that the number will go back down, but given what we know from Austrian economic business cycle theory, what we know from uh just having lived through this a few times, are foreclosures going to suddenly disappear with uh so many delinquencies on credit cards, on uh auto loans? It seems unlikely at this point unless you start to see jobs come back, which they're not doing. Uh, so I do you see the administration though changing its tune on the economy or is it just going to keep saying that everything's great and hope that the future numbers somehow show that? Is there any sort of strategy? What they're going into midterms here in a little while, less than a year. So what what are they going to do with that? I I I it's going to be interesting to see who was used as a scapegoat, I think, at this point. Um there's some murmurss a couple weeks ago about some major administration changes perhaps including the chief of staff. Um that but but to me I think it's getting to the point where it's very difficult to sell a nothing is going on here picture as a whole. Again, there's been I think a decided tone shift. um not explicitly all the time in terms of direct administration rhetoric, but just in terms of the the broader uh intellectual influencer, you Twitter online discourse, right? Particularly since the midterm or the the off-year elections, right? That okay, this affordability issue is actually kind of really important. Things aren't going well there. Um and so I I think it'd be difficult to just blame Biden at this point. Um might have been a little easier if they had been leaning into that last year. Um so the question is what's going to be the scapegoat here? um you know they're really counting on you know some of the the changes with the big beautiful bill to to start ra you manifesting green shoots go be a little surprised at that point at this point um not so you know are they you know what are they able to point to as the reason here um and again in terms of because I don't think you're going to see a significant policy change at this point like the biggest policy change could be on the tariff front um perhaps imposed by the the courts but again like that's that that's going to help a little bit um uh you know it pick up small business as quickly. How quickly that even manifests itself in a way that's going to be politically potent is a different different question. Um, but yeah, this is a this is yeah, I I think we they have to figure out something rather than and I I expect there'd be something that they're going to go into besides, hey, you know, this is everything is great. You know, you can't you don't believe your lion eyes. >> Well, I certainly don't see any change in policy. I mean, look at fiscal policy. they're just going to spend more. Uh ADP uh blames to some extent uh the tariffs for causing the job losses and really providing a major drag on the economy. And that's become something of a litmus test. I think I think you can tell if someone has been a small business owner or is involved in small business depending on their position on tariffs. If they think tariffs are great and are going to make America great again, they must not have much experience when it comes to actually making things uh making a business profitable, uh creating a productive institution of any kind because they see increasing the price of production as a good thing, which makes no sense whatsoever. And ADP is saying, "Yeah, right. It's more expensive to run a business now thanks to uh tariffs and people are hiring less because of that and of course like Bessant and friends are freaking out about that and are promising that the golden age will continue and that any day now manufacturing jobs which have been declining relentlessly for the last 5 months are going to come roaring back any day. Still no no sign of that at all. And then you look at federal spending and that's that just continues to go through the roof. We finally have the first month for the new fiscal year. The fiscal year started on October 1st. We finally got the October data for that. We see that the deficit is the second largest ever. Even when adjusted for inflation, it's uh 284 billion. Even if they they were trying to explain this away, say, "Oh, well, we move forward some spending and stuff like this." Well, that's not going to change the two-month number then. If they just move some spending forward, it's not going to that that'll make next month look less, but it's not a fundamental change to the overall trend there, which is continued spending in a big way. And it's the same way with federal outlays. This was even again a a adjusted for inflation. Spending is the biggest it's ever been uh in October. And we were told that there was going to be a decline in spending thanks to the government shutdown. Uh they said that oh well it it decreased spending 5%. So apparently it wasn't enough to make spending below what it was during the COVID freak out when spending was so insane. And nope, we're now spending more than that. Oh, and here's the big one. Interest paid on the the debt. The debt continues to get so big so fast and interest rates heading slowly up. $104 billion spent on interest alone in October, the first month. That means it's on track to spend $1.2 trillion for the fiscal year if this keeps up. And that's what they did spend last year. Last fiscal year, $1.2 trillion just on debt service. That's a whole other Social Security administration. Basically, one in every $7 just for this month had to go to just paying the debts for past wars, for past social security, for all sorts of stuff that doesn't benefit any current actual wage earners who are paying huge amounts uh into the federal government through uh federal income tax and through payroll taxes. Uh they're getting nothing. They're just paying a whole ton of interest on that. No end in sight, no change to this policy whatsoever. So, uh, Connor, do you see any sort of policy that might actually change? Or are they just way too invested in the tariff thing? And I don't see how they could possibly justify any cuts to spending. What are they going to cut Social Security, Medicare? That's obviously not going to happen. So, I I don't know. Do you see any any like crack in the the concrete there that they might be able to do something good in? I don't I don't see anything. I think it all just comes down to how much longer they keep sticking their head in the sand with this. What I think you you may have mentioned it, but in that ADP um report, if I remember correctly, uh big businesses actually added jobs and it was small businesses that were um shedding jobs. Small businesses are the ones being disproportionately hurt. And I remember um Phil making a point that like there is such an opportunity for this kind of like populist America first movement that's actually grounded in good economics to really like run specifically on the interest of small American businesses. And when people think of small businesses, I a lot of times I think people picture like a shop downtown or something, but usually it's like these it's, you know, large entrepreneurs that are just not on CNBC, not the super giant Titan uh famous ones that are angling for political favors in DC. It's the people that are actually like producing the things that uh that Americans need. And what was frustrating is when all the tariff stuff was really happening back in April um and the stock market was tanking, that was the whole party line that the Trump administration took is that it was about putting Main Street over Wall Street. And like that is a good orientation. I I that's something that I I would support especially because Wall Street is usually what we you that's the term for the well-connected businesses that are just using government to rip us all off. And it would be good to actually start putting the interests of like those actual entrepreneurs that are not famous um ahead of those people. But of course that that was all being mobilized to sell tariffs which is the exact opposite of that. And we've seen that in the data in the months since that they are disproportionately hurting the small businesses that are making things in America but they're making things in America in part with things that are imported and that's what's getting tariffs. So those are the people getting harmed by this. And yeah, the administration can continue to um try to ignore it and kind of in the macro try to deny that the econom the economic pain everybody's feeling is um real, which of course the Democrats are over the moon about that. That's sort of the approach they've taken so far. Um and I don't see any sign that uh they're going to pivot anytime soon. Um but who knows? Everything like this uh changes fast. Well guys, it's December, so that means now we move on to the college football portion of the show. >> Absolutely. >> And uh Tho is gonna talk to us about his article that he co-authored with Bill Anderson this week. And you can >> national champion Bill Anderson. >> He went to Tennessee uh if I'm not mistaken. >> Yeah. But he he ran track. National champion athlete. Well, I I went to see you Boulder, so I'm not qualified to discuss uh sports in any capacity. Uh at least not college sports. And so, let's talk about your article, though, because it touches it looks at this connection makes a connection between monetary policy and bad things in college football. And the name of the article is the lane train and the rest of college football madness has been fueled by easy money. So, uh, though, make the case for how college football is made worse by easy money. >> Well, I'll spare you the details of the Lane Keiffen drama that was the catalyst for this because a multi-layered episode that ends with a coach leaving behind his golden retriever um in Miss. So, there's a lot of lot of things there, but not not nec I can't blame the Fed for Lane Keifin being a bad human being. Um, but but it is interesting though because um you know, and this kind of touches into some of the the broader themes, right, with the uh with the new right, right? It's it's about like oh well you know number goes up the decay of American values the decline of tradition the commodification of everything and like college football actually is a perfect ecosystem for this and there's even a little bit of anarco tyranny uh component as well um it would of course be a little bit simplistic to say this is all because of the Fed right there there's plenty of other changes I'll touch on just a little bit um but it is very much this byproduct of financialization because what you have right now is you've had a massive change in money being pumped into college sports. Now, this is not a direct spigot from, you know, from the Fed, right? You know, this is not uh the Federal Reserve is not buying uh college athletic assets, right? As some sort of uh a direct bailout or anything, but it overlaps with uh significant changes with American media consumption habits, the rise of streaming platforms and the like. Um but this low interest rate environment has helped subsidize um companies like Disney which shook out the significant new debt. their their debt to equity ratio spiked significantly while they were making all these acquisitions of sports properties in college football particularly SEC go Auburn Auburn has a new regime uh this this uh this week but particularly SEC and they were able to do so in part they were assisted by because of of low rates and so you you've seen as we'd expect a gradual consolidation uh from the television money to the first receivers of this money which are the power conferences the smaller schools are increasingly being crunched out, right? So, you very much have, you know, winners and losers from this dynamic. And what's what's particularly fascinating is that you have this increasing commodification of college athletics across the board where you have investment. You have venture capitalist firms um buying out uh future ticket revenue from college programs, right? Athletic, you know, amateur events, right? Um and giving them short-term payouts so that they can fund different operations. Now in terms of owning revenue from say you know buying tickets to the Auburn football game in the future you have colleges creating entire side companies entirely dealing with managing the revenue streams selling out shares and the like from these various selling out their NI their um uh their IP elements. Right. every single aspect of college football is being stripped and sold in order to finance these athletic departments. I mean, part of the big changes, of course, is of you there's having to pay athletes, right? There's now multi-million dollar athletes coming from from the college things. There's a demand for money there that can't even be met up with all the extra TV revenue and the like. And so it's just this very this this very fascinating dynamic where you have this massive rapid change in part being fueled directly by the financial environment that we're in that's stripping away a lot of the tradition and heritage of these programs that kind of made it great. Um and and you have an additional element where as these things escalate uh politicians are increasingly getting involved in college athletics. He had the governor of Louisiana, for example, calling out LSU and a bad contract they made with Brian Kelly when they canned him a couple months ago. And then they gave him $90 million contract to Lane Keifin. So like hypocrisy also continues in the politics of sports. Um you have members of Congress calling out just all the everything is going on. Um you have pushes for legislation, federal legislation managing these elements of sports. Um, and so you this entire sort of wild west environment is probably going to likely end up result in some sort of federal legislation coming in to manage this entire thing. And so this entire is it's a perfect sort of of ecosystem of everything that we worry about. And and to me like my my additional contribution to this is that kind of one of the inherent flaws or kind one of the inherent sins of what has created this entire new world order is the labor theory of value. because um a lot of this force when it comes to player payments regardless of one's opinion of it came from courts ruling against the amateur status argument that colleges had with college athletics and their arguments like oh that the athletes are being exploited because they're doing all the labor and they're not making any money from the value of the product. But of course like the actual value of the product is less the athletes but more the brands that are you know 100 plus years old right it's it's the consumer watching it right and so this entire notion that it was these athletes that were driving ultimately the single-handedly responsible for the revenue being made in these sports if you take the same exact athletes you put them on you know generic you know Madden create a team you know logos you know you get probably get a million people watching them right you have people watching Georgia football at you like 9 million strong every week regardless of the game because of the connection to the brand. And so ultimately all of this stems from the how in how how deep embedded when it comes to thinking about sports, the labor theory of value is that just that that that uh uh justified legal rulings that then had to be made up with the demand for new cash which is now being supplied by venture capitalist firms dealing with an industry increasingly consolidated because of low interest rates. And so just kind of the perk so much of that we complain about the modern economy captured in a very very nutshell of the intensity that is college football fandom. >> That is my selling point to you Ryan as someone who does not care about college football on why I think this is actually an interesting topic for uh for our audience. Well, you know what he gets me thinking of are all those scenes from that movie The Big Short where, right, they're out there. They're they're learning about all of these bizarre financial products that are being uh cos collateralized synthetic all of these terms that they're throwing out about are different and more advanced levels of essentially gambling. And I see similarities here, right, with, oh, we're like three or four degrees out from the actual sports competition, but we've got bets about bets about bets about the outcome of the game. And it's really quite remarkable. And it really is financialization, I think, is absolutely the right term for it. I I could just imagine like Steve Carell like like pining through the books like, "Oh my god, this this this this bond is is based off of future FSU ticket revenue for a program that didn't fire its coach after missing the bowl for two years. Sell it. Sell it now. >> Sell everything. It's a scam. >> Sell it all." >> Which of course would happen if you had any significant amount of deflation and any real crumbling of the monetary structure we've built. >> Well, that's the thing. It's like the entire economy, right, is it's like, okay, well, fans will not cut will not turn off ESPN or they will not get rid of ESPN. You know, we we we can we can increase the the the cost of ESPN 10 bucks every year, 20 bucks here because fans will not stop watching and and there there's a lot there's a my uh my my willingness to pay is actually quite high. U but when it comes to going to those events, right, going to going actually to the ticketed events, right, which is where a lot of this investment is going, fans are going to stop going. I I know a lot of fans that sold their tickets to FSU because they did massive stadium in grades also with you kind of very nicely priced bonds. Um and they've priced out the middle class and so like what's what's going to happen? And so you have a you have an economic downturn. This happened in 2008 you had you had fans stop attending sports. Ticket ticket ticket revenue started going way way down. Right? So like just not that far back ago in 2008 you saw a significant strain on the the the budgets of athletic departments um as when an economic downturn and now rather than it just simply being a university problem you have investment firms that they themselves are going to be exposed to this risk because they're buying out future revenue from this not expecting the possibility of a downturn and and so yes like that that you know that that the importance of that consumer element is is very much on play here. interesting microcosm basically for the whole economy. >> And that was a good obser observation too about okay, they'll still watch it on TV because that's true for me, right? I have an MLB.tv subscription. And one of the reasons though that I bought that was I'm like look, you're not going to go you're going to go to a maximum of one baseball game a year because it's just so expensive and not worth the trouble now. So, I'm like, well, I'll just watch, you know, 50 games at home with this pay service, which is basically the price well under the price of a day out at the ballpark of a single day out at the ballpark. So, I mean, yeah, I can see that would be the last thing standing, but all of that other stuff is already priced out of the middle class, unless that is just your committed hobby where that's just where you put all of your money. So what the reason that's made possible is right just put it on a credit card. Just do buy now pay later while you're at the game. Buy your bag of peanuts on buy now pay later. And it's really just amazing at how it just keeps the hamsters running on that wheel for all this stuff and what can result. Now if you if you are looking for a silver lining and there's there's one I've identified is that if you hate Hollywood this is a good thing because if more money is being pumped into sports it's less money that the same you know you know Disney can can pump into to to remaking uh you know a ladder return of Jafar next year right like so so if you hate Hollywood the fact that the again it's fascinating Disney ESPN is showing that like they it's it's their sports content is like the is is the biggest thing propelling their streaming devices right now and and so so coming. This is a a massive shift in the way that the kind of the the cultural investment, you know, however you want to entertainment industry, right? Um sports sports is king and that's tapping into to betting and like the the integrity elements and things like that. All of which is is a whole another topic, but it's just a very fascinating thing happening in real time that many good-hearted Americans, the best of America are are being uh dealt with the uh the anarco tyranny and financialization of modern college athletics. >> Well, sports in general is moderately familyfriendly, right? You can put on a game, watch the game, and you don't have to worry about what's going to happen on the screen very much. Even with the gambling element, you're right. It's probably less spiritually uh degrading wholesome >> than Yeah. Right. And and I can totally see that. >> Well, and it is interesting too, is like I mean, you know, you hear this all the time. I'm sure some of our listeners already think themselves, oh, bread and circuses, sports ball, yada yada yada. You see this even with like certain element of the new, right? But but to me like like sports is it it really it's part it creates there's an inter intergenerational story to like great fandom right like you grow up watching games with your father who grew up watching games with his father right like you have those and it's like there's there is an element there where again it's all frivolous and a sports ball you know whatever but like there there is I think an important cultural component to it that's not even touching into you know how it's another path for you know militant jingoism right like my the amount of hatred the amount of the amount of shot and freight I have watching my sports enemies in in misery um as was the case when I was watching Florida fans disappointed they did not get their their ticket on the lane train this year um is is is probably not the most Christian part of my uh my sports consumption but it's it's good makes you feel alive like it's better it's better than throwing it's better than shooting at Florida fans >> yeah like that that part of human nature is unavoidable and so it's just a healthy outlet that I much rather have that then and yeah I partake in that am a big especially moving down to Auburn, a big college football fan, but uh yeah, I so much rather all that kind of tribalism be centered into sports than going after Venezuela. >> Sure. Yeah, I'll take uh I'll take bread and circuses provided the circuses don't uh involve any actual human death uh over war any day, right? I think that would definitely be an improvement. And yet yes, even I right I didn't even bother watching the World Series this year because I didn't hate either of the teams enough. Um but last year I watched because the Yankees played and I hate the Yankees. So I was happy to watch the Dodgers beat the Yankees uh in the prior year. Uh but yeah, I mean I get it. It's it's a fun and you by the way how many times have we just on the side talked about the NA riots uh Connor? Right. We're talking uh what 7th century Constantinople people got really into this team and it and it bled over into politics and caused a riot that caused tens of thousands of deaths, >> right? >> Yeah. >> So yeah, you're you're uh you're you're gripping on to some sort of deepseated human thing with these sports competitions. >> It it's not like only Rome had sports. Like I think it's part of any healthy society. They just happened to be the biggest empire at the time. So they had the biggest most spectacular sports and we happen to be the big empire right now. But like even for small I think healthy communities there there has to be some kind of outlet for that and I think sports is kind of ideal. >> Well this may be one of the few times that we've ended this uh one of my podcasts at least. Anything associated with Ryan McMagen usually ends up on a downer note. But uh this uh I think with this light-hearted uh discussion we'll go ahead and wrap up this episode though. What do you got >> before we get out of here? If you if you've listened to this point, then you're obviously a fan. Uh it is a reminder that we are doing our yearendin fundraising drive. And best of all, if you donate $25 or more, you will get in your hands a physical copy of some great McMon content. Uh uh so I mean that that's Strategies for Liberty. Um is uh is it's fresh off the printer right now. This has never before been available to our audience. Um, and better still, uh, your donation will be doubled if you make it this week. You can find all about that at the front page of mises.org. And also a great time to become a member for 2026. If that is not your resolution for the new year, then make it now. Um, it's $100 a year, but you get a lot of great member benefits, including the beautiful Missian magazine, discounts at the bookstore, uh, events, and all sorts of great stuff. So, you can find all of that at mises.org. Yes, I wrote this booklet, but this is actually the first time I have seen the booklet. So, it looks great >> looking here at the site. Um, very nice. Yes. And this is a collection of essays that over the years we've uh just put out regarding the the topic of strategy and how to how to actually do something to to get liberty. >> Yeah. I I called it strategies for I mean the fight for liberty past, present, and future. >> Yes. >> About the strategy for liberty, but the fight for liberty past, present, and future. Well, and of course that's what we're doing all the time with mises.org. We're fighting the uh battle of ideas, which I know some people discount. Like it's that doesn't matter. But that's at the root of all of our problems is the fact that people have bad ideas. They don't like freedom. They they like war in many cases or they just don't care. And the only way you can get them to care is to convince them to care. And that's uh that's a lot of what we do. But these essays also kind of look at the practice side of things. Okay. How do we use our work in the battle of ideas in other areas of life as well? So that's really sort of I think the theme of of this booklet. So yeah, you'll get one in the mail if you if you give this year uh to the Mises Institute. So, thank you all of you out there who do listen, who do support the Mises Institute especially and uh thank you for uh listening to the Power Market podcast and we'll be back next uh week with I'm sure. So, hey, maybe we'll even have to come back to college uh sports. Who knows? >> Oh, if if Georgia wins the SV Championship game, I will guarantee you I'm going to work it into next week's episode. >> Oh, man. Okay. >> If not, I'm going to ignore it entirely. >> Then I'll work it in. I guess >> if there's a boom and bust, then it comes with sports fantas. We'll be back next week with more then. So, we'll see you then.