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00:00:01
Did Elon Musk Deserve $55 Billion?
135 Plays10 months ago
- Mini-Topic: Disney
Link: https://esq.social/@jacobschumer/111852556415303391 - Main Topic: Elon Musk
Link: https://esq.social/@annmlipton/111855062479332113
The Bill Comes Due - Prof. Ann Lipton - Recommendations
Jake: https://infinitewealth.sega.com/
Jason: https://www.amazon.com/Green-Glove-Dryer-Gloves-Shoes/dp/B07HYDRYYL?th=1
Andrew: https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby
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Transcript
Podcast Routine and Humor
00:00:01
Speaker
You know, Andrew, you don't have to do the countdown for us. We get a countdown. You do software. Yeah. You could have told me that like now a year ago. It's been quite a while. But yeah, there's a flashing timer for us. I see you all. But you look like a hot shot Hollywood producer. So that's pretty cool.
00:00:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I like that part. That is half the reason I'm here. You both look at the screen very intently when I do it. So I think that it's doing something informative, but I guess it's just the numbers you're looking at. Well, as the kids would say, you've got great Riz when it comes to doing the countdown. Oh my god. I get a lot of gesturing, like a big over the top.
00:00:39
Speaker
Yeah, Riz. Riz, exactly. It's charisma. Charisma. It's je ne sais quoi. Yeah, you know. Yeah, moxie. Moxie, yeah. Young people need to invent their own. It's moxie, but with specific to... I...
00:01:02
Speaker
romantic prospectus. Oh, that makes it all much weirder, retroactively. Well, especially when it's coming from an 11-year-old to two other 11-year-olds. My kids have been busting me for using RizLions on mom, their mom, not my mom.
00:01:20
Speaker
Right. Yeah, because I would be on your good side if you were using on your. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not using Rizmanz. Yeah. Okay. Well, this is the theme music. Yeah. No, we don't know. I won't do it. Terrible, terrible marching band music. Yeah. That's our theme song, but we never play it.
00:01:39
Speaker
Yeah. It's just, it's sort of, it's, it's kept in a, held in a bands for when we really need it. It's bad. Yeah. Maybe, uh, maybe someday for some anniversary episode, we bring it back, uh, Supreme court barbecue.
00:01:52
Speaker
Yeah, probably not. It is looking better and better as we try to improve upon it. It stands as the best theme song we've had so far. Has there just been a huge setback in AI music generation? Is that what's going on here? The setback is all these people starting to charge money and us not wanting to pay $5. So I don't want to pay $5.
00:02:13
Speaker
I'm going to set my kid down with GarageBand on the iPad and let them come up with a theme song. We'll get five dollars. Yeah, exactly.
Introduction and Legal Backgrounds
00:02:20
Speaker
I would love that. I would pay five dollars for that theme song. That sounds great. Hey, Andrew, what are we doing here?
00:02:25
Speaker
Uh, here we're talking, this is a show, right? This is episode 31 of that show. This is, where's my notes? Uh, hi. So this is episode 31 for February 1st, 2024. That's today as we're recording. The show has three lawyer friends goofing around for their own enjoyment. Nothing we say should be con, construed or taken as legal advice. I'm one of the friends I'm Andrew Leahy. I'm a tax and technology attorney in New Jersey. And I'm also an adjunct professor of law at Drexel Klein. My condolences.
00:02:52
Speaker
I'm joined, thank you. I'm joined as always. My students right now are taking a midterm. I wonder if anybody could possibly be listening. I wouldn't think so. Do your students listen to you? Do you know? I don't think so. Maybe minimum competence, maybe. I wouldn't expect that. I think they get enough of me for like four hours a week. I think by the end of that you're done. Yeah, I mean, you know, if you're a gunner.
00:03:14
Speaker
If I was a gunner in law school, which I was a medium gunner, I wasn't a listen to my law professor's podcast gunner. But they were definitely listen to my law professor's podcast gunners in my school. Well, you went to a good school. I'm not saying Drexel's not a good school. I'm talking about my own experience when I was in law school. At Rutgers? At Rutgers, yeah, at a not good school. You're free to talk mess about your own school that is not the one where you're teaching right now. Correct.
00:03:42
Speaker
I can knock myself, not others. So I'm who is an employment lawyer. I counsel you not to talk trash about your current employer. Right. OK. I'm all done. So the employment lawyer that was just talking, that's Jason Ramesland. Hello. He's going to be getting me out of the mess I've got myself in one way or another. There's no thing about that. No. OK. You're your host. Sorry, buddy. Yes, I'm Jason. I sue people's bad bosses for fun and for profit. And it's great. I enjoy it. It's very satisfying work. You should get into it if you're interested.
00:04:11
Speaker
If you are, you can find me by listening to this podcast, which is Andrew's Bad Podcast. Andrew's Good Podcast is minimum competence. You should listen to that one too. That's the good one. I think this is a good one. That's the real one. That's the informative one. Yes. That's the good one because also half the time it's Gina, which is better. Better. Yeah, by sure. Absolutely. The better Professor Leahy, the better Attorney Leahy,
00:04:35
Speaker
Better in general. Yeah. Better half of all things. Yeah. The other person making fun of me is Jake. Yeah. Better company for sure. Yes. Yes. What do you do? You do something. I'm a land use construction, local government attorney in Florida, central Florida. Now you are an attorney. That's right. I am an attorney. Okay. Yeah, still. They haven't taken that away yet. Was this in doubt? No, I don't think so. Okay. If it was in doubt, Jason would be and have some business to take care of. Yeah.
00:05:04
Speaker
I'd be, I'd be searching for other local council. Uh, but, uh, no, Jake, you're my favorite little, you're my favorite local council. I don't want any other local council other than you ever in my entire career.
Legal Careers and Podcast Quality
00:05:15
Speaker
You're only allowed to sue in Indiana and Florida then, and Georgia, maybe. Yeah, in Georgia. I don't know. Maybe I'll get admitted to Illinois someday. Maybe. What's in Illinois? I know some people that are like... Bad bosses. Every once in a while, a friend is like, yeah, I'm taking the California bar. Yeah, I'm taking the New York bar. I'm like, God, my poor soul. People like flying to go take a test? Whoo. Yeah, for multiple days and studying on top of their day job.
00:05:43
Speaker
You know, the bright side is the California bar unlocks a lot of doors that the Indiana bar and Florida bar don't unlock for you. So that part's nice. I have been in the process of waving in, I just realized because I've forgotten about it, into New York for three years. I don't even know. It's still in process. It's just, you know, it takes forever. And it's completely opaque. You have no idea what's going on. There's no information. Just suddenly you get a thing. You completely forgot you even started doing this because whatever cockamamie idea you had was 18 months ago now. And so you're like, what's the New York bar? What with me? Oh, right.
00:06:13
Speaker
I paid like $500 to do this. Oh, okay. Yeah. What do you need now? Character and fitness things. Okay. It's a lot cheaper than it was to wave into Georgia. That was like 2000. Ooh, really? No, maybe. Maybe it was 1500. I don't know. Wow. Like 500 bucks in New York. That's like a cab fare, right? Yeah, that's true. You cannot wave into Florida.
00:06:34
Speaker
Right. Uh, it was a whole thing like down here when I first moved here where they proposed it. And, uh, the, the, there was a big, uh, blowback from people saying like, everybody's just going to move to Florida and practice because protectionism.
00:06:49
Speaker
Like estates and trust stuff, basically. Especially for a state where it famously has a ton of retirement communities. Everybody's just going to move here and keep practicing when they retire. I mean, basically, everybody from Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, they all kind of retire in Florida at various parts. I assume that they all go to the villages and end up becoming super MAGA folks, but I don't know. Yeah, I think that's the cycle. I haven't done a census lately.
00:07:17
Speaker
I think it's about right though. Yeah. I think, or I mean, it might be like, cause I'm imagining the people I know that are older here. Maybe if you hang out, if you stay in the Northeast, you're not Magga. So maybe that's the separation. It actually happens up here. You feel yourself starting to drift towards Magga. And so you get the white pants and the white shoes and the golf cart and you head down to Florida, you know, it's the sirens call of Florida. You start thinking like, that's like a great idea. I'm going to go there. It's not a great idea. It's never a great idea. No, I don't think so.
00:07:44
Speaker
Well Jake, you remain my favorite. You remain my favorite Florida local council. And speaking of Florida local council, we should quiz them about what's going on with Disney, because I don't understand at all.
00:07:54
Speaker
So, okay. So there was an update and the reedy Creek thing of which I am known. And unfortunately, so let's set the stage here a little bit because Jake was like, uh, interviewed on cable news networks. Uh, like that level of informed and informative about the whole reedy Creek process. When it started happening, when did that saga begin like a year and a half ago? Yeah, it was in April or may of 2022.
00:08:20
Speaker
Yeah, OK. I saw the role of you looking at a monitor really intently and typing like it was that like that kind of a second where they actually very handsome, too. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And typing away. It looked really like you were doing some research. You were getting to the bottom of what was going on down there in that region. I was on the TV. I want to say maybe 25 to 30 times.
00:08:42
Speaker
Uh, which was fun. It was fun while it lasted. Uh, I think I'm done. Uh, but like, as in, I don't want to do it anymore. Um, regardless of whether or not the story's over, you think you're done as is Disney's, uh, lawsuit. Right. Nope. Nice. This particular one. No, no, I don't. Well, I don't think so. Here's the fit. So this is the, this is the lawsuit. This is the big one. This is the big one saying you can't, um,
00:09:11
Speaker
you can't take over this district depriving us of our right to vote. And they sued Ron DeSantis, the state of Florida and the new district that got taken over and just like 10 second version, they used to have a special district that they ran as the landowners. And then that got replaced with governor appointees went from abnormally landowner controlled government to abnormally political controlled government.
00:09:37
Speaker
Um, and the question is, this is a state mount managing its own local governments. Um, like, can they sue over this, even though it's clearly first amount of retaliation because they were, this was in reaction to them talking about opposing the governor's schooling and, uh, bills. Um,
00:09:58
Speaker
And the
Disney's Legal Battles Overview
00:10:01
Speaker
issue, so they sued. The judge just dismissed the case, but the important thing is that like the dismissal is on a thing that like I called out, I'm sure I wasn't the only one called out that called out as the biggest problem for Disney's lawsuit, which is the 11th circuit has said that you cannot sue for retaliation for a legislative bill.
00:10:28
Speaker
unless you're singled out. If it's facially neutral, if it's facially valid, rather, if it's facially valid, then you can't sue for re-evaluation. And there's a limited exception for if it singles you out. And in this case, it singled out, it didn't single out Disney, and it named a whole bunch of Disney's properties, but also they aren't technically the only landowner in the district. There's like two or three other landowners that own property in there.
00:10:56
Speaker
uh so they named the disney's properties but it didn't name disney itself and so the district court said well that they didn't single you out so you're so this case goes away under our binding precedent and now the disney gets to take it to the 11th circuit and i said back in like
00:11:15
Speaker
Like a year ago, I was like, this is the biggest challenge. It's going to end up at the 11th Circuit. And that's because it's a because it's a like it's a pure question of law, really. So like the first judge that Disney got on this was exactly who they would want is Judge Walker, who is who has already ruled against Florida on retaliation issues regularly recently, I think at least once, maybe twice.
00:11:44
Speaker
And they got a different judge who was less, at least outwardly friendly, less friendly than Judge Walker, who everybody kind of knew what his position was on it because of those previous retaliation cases.
00:11:59
Speaker
But ultimately, it didn't really matter because this is a pure question of law. Can you sue? Is this bill facially neutral such that you can't sue? Or is there an exception that hasn't been found yet as to this prohibition on retaliation cases?
00:12:19
Speaker
for facially valid bills. What does it say? The district court judge is just completely handcuffed by this president, president, president, excuse me, doesn't have the ability to overrule what the 11th circuit has done. And so
00:12:36
Speaker
judge at the district court level, which is like the entry-level federal courts, has to rule consistently with the 11th Circuit precedent. And then it's up to Disney to decide, hey, we're going to challenge this up to the 11th Circuit and say, 11th Circuit, you got this wrong the last time you decided it, or you got it right, but it doesn't cover this circumstance, which I have opinions about that too.
00:13:02
Speaker
I think the decision was totally a valid reading of the 11th Circuit's case law, but also one thing that I discovered when I researched this over a year ago was that the 11th Circuit's case law is actually super vague about all this.
00:13:22
Speaker
Blanket declaration, facially valid bill, you cannot sue for retaliation. But it doesn't explain what facially valid means. Yeah, that was my question. I don't know what that means. And then it says that you can't single somebody out. What's singling somebody out also isn't really explained. So like if you're named, you're named. Also, what does that mean? How does that relate to facially valid? Because is that an equal protection thing?
00:13:48
Speaker
Right. Like what? Because it's not facially neutral, right? It's facially valid. That's the term of art. Yeah, I think I think that was something like that. OK. Right. Right. And because it's facially neutral, I think there's a lot of ways to get around that. Right. But facially valid is another thing because they didn't in the case where they found an exception because it because it because the person was singled out. They didn't make them go through an equal protection
00:14:19
Speaker
analysis in order to get to the part where it, no, again, it's not, we can move past this. Um, so it's all vague because this doesn't happen very often. Um, and it certainly hasn't happened like this. So I can imagine a situation where a district court looks at that and says, actually, this is singling out because you name their properties. There's a limited class here. There is
00:14:39
Speaker
only the class of property owners and the fact that they added one or two property owners who have as collateral, the fact that there's some collateral damage doesn't take away that it's prohibited retaliation.
00:14:52
Speaker
Well, in singling out, I mean, it strikes me that it shouldn't be the case that if you name, you know, five entities that, you know, technically you're not singling out anymore now, right? You're naming five entities that you're retaliating against. That should get you to skirt around the law where it's like, look, we actually did this for administrative convenience. We wanted to screw over five separate property holders. So we just threw them all into one bill. And now we actually, that worked out for us because that means we're not singling anyone out. It's not singling.
00:15:18
Speaker
Or they can screw over, or they named six. We wanted to screw over the five. And then we threw in an additional one because at least one property owner didn't, we didn't have this animus towards. So therefore we're not sending them out. And it's like, because you're too similar to these guys. We needed somebody in there to make this okay. One of these things is not like the other. Yeah. He's just there going like, why am I here?
00:15:45
Speaker
but the rule is like the thing is this hasn't happened very often there's a million ways what that they can either kick disney's claim out and just like pray that it never happens again because it's it's an obvious policy problem to say legislatures can do this can basically
00:16:02
Speaker
openly say, oh, you did this, you said this protected speech, we're going to retaliate against you and you cannot have a claim no matter what. We can out here confess to our unconstitutional intent and you can't do anything about it. Like, I don't think the 11th Circuit is going to be super comfortable with leaving it as undefined as it is. I think they're going to come out with some some some guidelines there that are more than what's there right now.
00:16:31
Speaker
Uh, and they'll be able to, they won't, it won't be that difficult to fit it into their existing framework by saying this is singling out because it's a defined class of property owners. Um, and they don't have to go further than that. Uh, so that's still my feeling on where it's going. It's gonna, I think that the 11 circuits is, I'm not, I, it's far from a done deal, but
00:16:54
Speaker
You know, that's my, that's my feeling on where the 11th circuit's going to go on it. It's going to be like, sorry, go ahead. Do you think everyone has lost interest in this? And basically they're all, uh, incentivized to have it sort of go away. Well, the governor certainly lost interest seemingly. I don't think he expected that he'd still be there to deal with this. Yeah. I'm sure I'm going to be busy. Yeah. He will.
00:17:15
Speaker
The thing is, it's going to be at the 11th Circuit after he's out of office. Oh, what's his term? His term ends this year. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Oh, I'm sorry. Am I wrong? No, his term ends in 2026. I'm silly.
00:17:32
Speaker
But it still could be still going on. Absolutely. In the ordinary course of an appeal, I think a federal appeal time track is probably ordinarily in the range of about 10 months. Oh, really? I think so. But I don't know for sure. One of the things that seems really
00:17:56
Speaker
This is a policy problem that needs to be addressed by the court because this is bad policy to allow this naked retaliation against these entities for its viewpoint, discrimination and violation of the first amendment. And we already have a mechanism for handling something like this from a policy perspective where instead of just saying having a blanket statement that you can't sue, you have
00:18:20
Speaker
Uh, no right to pursue this claim when the statute is, uh, or the legislation is facially, what was it? Not neutral, uh, facially valid, whatever that means. Like, okay, let's just give it the treatment that we do with so many other things in law. And naturally my mind goes to employment law.
00:18:40
Speaker
where you make your prima facie case, you check all the boxes to make the elements of your case. And so you make this showing
Elon Musk's Influence on Tesla
00:18:50
Speaker
of facial validity.
00:18:53
Speaker
And then whatever that means, you define the elements of what makes something facially valid. And instead of just shutting the lawsuit down all the way, what that does is it gets you a rebuttable presumption of validity, of enforceability, of legality that it, you know, rebutably presume, we rebutably presume that this statute is valid and then the burden shifts.
00:19:16
Speaker
to the person who's complaining of this unlawful viewpoint discrimination to show why it is not facially valid or facially neutral or why it still encroaches on it. At least you don't give them carte blanche to say, you don't even get to challenge this at all because we were clever enough to not include your name specifically in the legislation.
00:19:45
Speaker
That's mighty weak, and I think probably the better policy position here is, sure, we don't want every single piece of legislation to be immediately challenged every time, even though it feels like they always are. But create this rebuttable presumption where then Disney can come back and say, yeah, but look, here's all of the evidence that actually what you're doing is unlawful viewpoint discrimination, even though the statute is facially valid.
00:20:11
Speaker
still kick this out, please, 11th Circuit Court. I hope that's what they do. There's a framework that's already built in. We do it in employment discrimination cases all the time under the McDonnell Douglas framework. The 11th Circuit is going to be mighty familiar with that, and so I think they ought to just pursue something like that.
00:20:27
Speaker
And to play the devil's advocate here, and I understand the court's concerns on this, you'll see all the writing about this issue is about how they don't want to get into the weeds on how legislators make bills and that they can't be too sure about the intent of the actual collective intent of a body of often 100 or more people.
00:20:51
Speaker
um and plus the governor and all that um and so there's separation of powers and federal federalism concerns like you don't want the courts to get involved in the legislature too much and get and force them to comply with discovery and also you have a federal court in this case theoretically
00:21:11
Speaker
I ordering a state to install a new government, which is something that's weird. I'm going to spit. Honestly, it's all, it's all vibes based. My feeling is it's all vibes based and these vibes, the vibes of doing that are off. And that was one, that was something that, uh, judge talked about.
00:21:34
Speaker
which is the state tried to get rid of it partially on the idea that Disney doesn't have a remedy because the court can't do anything, because it can't grant an injunction to install a new government. But the court said that it could grant an injunction to prevent the new board from exercising oversight over Disney.
00:21:54
Speaker
Um, so that's an interesting point. And that's another legal point. Uh, I am not, I am sure that Florida wants to get rid of this and Disney, they both kind of want it, want it to be over. Neither of them really have an interest in fighting over it a lot. If they can find a graceful way to put the, put everything down, I'm, I bet they will.
00:22:17
Speaker
uh but uh i mean obviously that's not happening right now um so we'll see there have been bills proposed in the legislature to put the old board back um or not to put the old board back to but to put disney in charge of it in some way or at least like make it make it different uh from what it is now and we'll see if those goes and go anywhere i'd be a little surprised but um
00:22:42
Speaker
at least the way that it was set up this way, which is like, it's just like random people proposing it, random legislators. But we'll see. I'm not a Florida legislature expert, so that's also a fun space. I like the idea of random people. I think random people chosen from the theme park, like just random ticket holders should be doing these decisions. What do you think? Yeah.
00:23:05
Speaker
Swipe your magic band for your vote on what should be done with the central Florida tourism website district. Like Mickey's taking a picture, he can just sort of whisper in somebody's ear and get some input. These are the people, these are the real stakeholders, right?
00:23:19
Speaker
Yeah, but the way that it that these bills were passed in the first place, which is like they kind of just like they came in with the presumption of getting passed and they pass as opposed to these, which are like being put up for, you know, debate. This makes me feel like it's not going to get done. But again, not a not a legislator, legislative expert.
00:23:41
Speaker
Not yet. No, I think you're going to be on last week tonight again. I have a sense this is going to all blow up again and you're going to get dragged. I would have to write again and I don't want to. I think somebody will make you. Maybe somebody on this podcast. Maybe. No, no. But I don't know. It seems to me that it's not going away anytime soon. And I think you still have more time. But it'll be boring from now until the 11th Circuit does anything. And then whoever loses there,
00:24:10
Speaker
I the next they're going to try to appeal to the Supreme Court, whoever it is. Sure, that loses. And then we'll have to wait for the petition for the real certiorari and to be decided. And then if that gets granted, then we have to wait for our argument. And so, you know,
00:24:27
Speaker
uh in the meantime and i'm sure that once like whoever if florida lost no never i was gonna say if florida lost there would be um uh a some kind of injunction keeping the current board in place uh but if they lose this disney still has to go back to and win their case so
00:24:49
Speaker
Um, hmm. Yeah, I gotcha. But central Florida tourism oversight district is not going anywhere anytime soon unless the legislature passes something. Yeah. Fun. Yeah. Okay. Well, speaking of other things that, uh, I don't know anything about, but I'm happy to, to, you know, throw comments towards apparently Elon Musk is down like, uh, $55 billion based on a decision from a Delaware, uh, uh, uh, judge.
00:25:15
Speaker
Yeah. Collect some donations for this poor man. Yeah. I didn't understand that at first. So these were options that he had. So he had the option to purchase shares of Tesla at a set price worth $55 billion. And apparently I read, I'd like to say friend of the pod, but I'm sure she's never listened, but she's a member of ESQ on social and Lipton's blog post on this.
00:25:40
Speaker
And so my understanding of a generally brilliant person. Yes. That's why I wanted to be friend. I want to say friend of the pod. I want to like steal valor or whatever. Friend in our hearts. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Hero of the pod. Her enhancery daily. Friend in our hearts. Yeah. So this is fully over, as most things we talk about, fully over my pay grade. But my understanding is that the concern is that he basically had control of the board that gave him this compensation package.
00:26:09
Speaker
Is that everybody else's understanding of this as well? It has been made to seem that way. We can talk about how it was made to seem that way. It sounds like it was basically a not exactly captive board, but not far from a captive board from Musk's perspective.
00:26:26
Speaker
Uh, and, uh, uh, of course, naturally he's in there saying, well, no, this wasn't a captive board, but there's pretty clearly, uh, video evidence from him doing an interview. I think maybe it was on 60 minutes with like Leslie stall. Maybe I'm remembering this incorrectly.
00:26:43
Speaker
where he was basically bragging to her that he had complete control of the board. He is the board, yes. And so like, not really going to be a very, yeah, not a very availing argument when you're on, you know, this reputable news program, television news program saying, yeah, I have these guys captive. Like, well, which one is it, Elon?
00:27:04
Speaker
One of the directors is his brother, right? I mean, based on what I read. So it seems pretty clear to his former divorce attorney. It's like full of people that were that basically he made them super rich. Yeah, it doesn't seem to me to be like really much of a debate. I mean, these people are on this board that don't have resumes that would suggest they'd be on the board of a huge automobile manufacturing company outside of me and Elan or buddies.
00:27:32
Speaker
Yeah. Here's the transcript from the 60 Minutes interview with Leslie Stahl. Did you handpick her talking about the independent director, Denholm? Denholm, yes.
00:27:47
Speaker
stall the impression was you put she was put in to kind of watch over you musk yeah i mean that's not realistic i mean i'm the largest uh i'm it's not realistic in the sense that i am the largest shareholder in the company i can just call for a shareholder vote and get anything done that i want um so you know who any refer to himself as the techno king
00:28:09
Speaker
Also, not great. That was his title. One of the directors started crying, thinking about how important Musk was to the company. But when explaining their process for it, for negotiation, they said there wasn't really an adversarial process. It was more vibes-based.
00:28:31
Speaker
What they didn't say vibes base exactly, but they said there was no adversarial process. They also said that the option tranches like the 12 step up on step targets were designed to give Elon Musk dopamine hits. And if they weren't big enough, then he wouldn't get enough dopamine. And apparently there was internal documentation that suggested those thresholds had already been met or were projected to be met.
00:28:57
Speaker
Very like the stretch goals were not stretch goals at all. I mean, it was like a QVC thing where they were faking the number of people calling in and ordering the This is all fake nice reference. Well done. I like that one Yeah, it's I mean, it seems pretty cut and dry to me when I first heard it when I first heard the news come out I figured this is gonna get appealed and and it's gonna be he's gonna get his 55 billion dollars because people who get 55 billion dollars Always win
00:29:24
Speaker
Right. Nobody's going to take that away. But looking at it, it sure seems like he's I mean, if it's so fact based, that's the thing like so. Yeah. So you got it. And the fact finder was the Chancery, the very well respected chief judge of the Chancery court. Right. And also the it's interesting, the the burden of proof here is that he like.
00:29:54
Speaker
they have the burden of proving fairness. That is Elon Musk had the burden of proving fairness in this case. And then the fairness, once it was proven that,
00:30:07
Speaker
Once there was an issue that the board was under his control, then that kills him. He failed to prove that, but he could have gotten rid of that by showing that the majority of the minority shareholders approved it with an adequate disclosure.
00:30:27
Speaker
Right. And the disclosure had to be fully adequate, and the judge found that it wasn't for a number of reasons. But apparently, if he had too much sway, that wouldn't have saved him anyway, because it doesn't really matter what the shareholders say.
00:30:42
Speaker
Speaking hypothetically, just as from a policy perspective, you can imagine a scenario where there's a CEO that has potentially not a lot of... I'm thinking almost like the Microsoft and OpenAI sort of the soft influence that doesn't need to necessarily be formalized in organizational charts or something, right?
00:31:00
Speaker
Elon Musk, pretend for a second that it is true that he is Tesla. And like the only reason anyone buys a Tesla is because he's great. It doesn't really matter the extent to which he actually owns shares in the company. If he threatens to leave.
00:31:13
Speaker
that could be the end of the company. So he can have sway over the other shareholders in such a way that even if they do ratify something he does or they all agree or whatever, it seems from what I was reading, I only read excerpts of the decision, that still might mean that that would be a controlled board basically and controlled shareholders and thus not
00:31:34
Speaker
save him from this outcome. Excuse not reading the whole opinion because it was two hundred and some. Yeah. So like you're you're off the hook for the reading for class. Small. No, I wasn't. I read Chance Lee Daley and and Lipton blog.
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah. I ordered the textbook, but it didn't get here yet. I'm so sorry. He's the CEO and that comes with all these fiduciary duties. Can shareholders be so in favor of a CEO that he's allowed to break his fiduciary duties? Probably not under Delaware law.
00:32:12
Speaker
is my guess, and not under the way that their corporation is set up. Maybe you should take Tesla private in order to get let him do all this stuff, because there's no, you know, he doesn't have to worry about what that with x.
00:32:29
Speaker
so uh well i saw a tweet that he said that i think he's thinking about taking tesla it's a couple years ago but i think i don't know if he's still working on that funding confirmed right i think he has the money he's just oh my god well it's every everything this man says so obviously the second this happened he said we're having a shareholder vote to move to texas and right it's just like
00:32:51
Speaker
Bro, you're you're violating your you're just like, dude, but you're putting yourself in court. You're going to be in court on that statement now. Even if you never do it, you're going to get sued. You're going to spend all your time getting deposed, man. You'd be a great topic for for Trump. I guess he can't. I don't think he's he wasn't born in the United States. Right. Yeah. If he could, he'd be great because they're a perfect match. Right. Just continue like like saying things in court that will lead to another. Yeah. It's just unbelievable foot in mouth ability.
00:33:21
Speaker
No matter how rich you are, if you do something personally, you're going to have to show up to a deposition. Also, I don't understand how he thinks that, and maybe it's just like a tantrum that's happening here. That seems like the most likely explanation of it, but why on earth would he think that transferring the state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas is going to solve this immediate problem?
00:33:45
Speaker
no, Delaware had jurisdiction over this problem when you did it. And so like, there's no, there's no, uh, rewinding this transaction. Like it is being unwound according to the chancery court. But he wants the board to give him a new package, which is worth $150 billion because they're all on his side. And he doesn't want this chancery rule about how, how it works.
00:34:10
Speaker
His whole posture is that it's just the court getting in the way of what the company and shareholders and the board and he, they're all in agreement. I'm not holding sway over anybody. This is what they want to do. They know I am the company. They know I've made this company what it is. And they want to pay me this. And this is the Delaware court getting involved and meddling in family affairs or something.
00:34:33
Speaker
See, all of my people on Twitter, X, they agree with me. They voted for me. They're going to go to Texas. There's this overwhelming proportion of people on Twitter who have said, yeah, let's reincorporate in Texas. Right. That's fine. Well, who's left on Twitter, X anymore, but your neo-Nazi buddies and your fans?
00:34:57
Speaker
So, like, yeah, maybe you move it to Texas and you sort of redo the whole transaction, although it's been a few years, I think, since the whole thing happened. I mean, it's made its way through the Chancellery Court, so it's been a few years. So, you redo it again. And, you know, I understand that he's pretty pissed at this one particular Delaware judge and the Chancellery Court in general.
00:35:22
Speaker
I don't think Texas is going to be a whole heck of a lot softer on this sort of thing. Most states look to Delaware courts anyway when it comes to interpreting matters of or like ruling on matters of corporate governance because Delaware is like the state that is the go-to for that.
00:35:39
Speaker
Yeah and they're the state and because of that they have a lot of case law and that's something even worse might happen. You're gonna have a jury trial on your compensation package.
00:35:54
Speaker
Um, to that point in Delaware, a shout out to Ann Lipton. She pointed out that also between this and the, the, as we often forget, but the compelled purchase of Twitter, uh, Delaware has cost him $90 billion, which is just hilarious. I mean, if we, if we assume that Twitter has a $0 valuation, which I think is not super far off. Um, yeah, I don't know if it was, is that what she was doing? Was she assuming $0? I think she was just taking 44 billion and you know,
00:36:21
Speaker
Oh, OK. Gotcha. All right. The other funny thing I thought was a great point she made is the idea that once you have successfully made the argument that the board is under control of Musk, right? And so now the court is looking at the compensation package and trying to decide if it's fair, if it's reasonable, if it's whatever. The idea that they needed to compensate him at that level in order to prevent him from being distracted and going off on these other projects.
00:36:46
Speaker
Clearly failed. First of all, yeah, that is clearly failed. And the extent to which that is what has enabled, I'm pretty sure Ann Lipton made this point. So I'm just stealing a point sheet. That is what enabled him to have these other side projects, because he's leveraging these options and holdings in Tesla to go purchase Twitter and, you know, fund SpaceX. And what was the other thing? The solar company? What is it? Solar City?
00:37:07
Speaker
Solar City. Yeah, didn't he? Tesla bought Solar City. I might be wrong about that That was that was a thing where like Tesla bought Solar City, but he had shares in Solar City And so is alleged self-dealing transaction or something like that. It might have been something like that. Yeah
00:37:23
Speaker
Anyway, my point is just that, or actually, and Lipton's point as I understood it, is that the idea of this preventing him from being distracted, there is a point at which you've compensated him so much and with his particular proclivities, you've enabled his distraction. Exactly. The court mentioned then you would have included an exclusivity provision in that pay package.
00:37:44
Speaker
Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But you didn't do that. Here's $50 billion. You can't go acquire Twitter. It's just funny. Add him to the pile of people who we're just seeing, thanks to social media, how many super rich people are just
00:38:06
Speaker
people getting treated with kid gloves because they can't handle reality. And it's like the entire board was throughout all of the company's interests because they were worried about like about pissing them off or worried about like making him upset at all because like he wouldn't be able to handle normal governance.
00:38:28
Speaker
Uh, and he and they were I think they were right. Honestly, I think they were right. Yeah. Were they $55 billion? Right. I don't know. I like, honestly, I think that there's a good case that Elon Musk is worth, was worth $55 billion to, to, to Tesla, like generating $5 billion in, in value because he's, he was such a good height man. And he's like, he was an Ike late, like he,
00:38:55
Speaker
go back six years, seven years. He's like one of the most beloved people out there, like one of the most universally idolized people. I think you're right about that part because like there was that phase where he was at the helm of Tesla and SpaceX and Tesla was like actually making strides, cracking into, cracking finally.
00:39:17
Speaker
electric car market, and I don't think any of that was actually Elon that was doing it. But then he got a lot of hype, and people were starting to talk about him like, is this the real life Tony Stark? Yeah. When SpaceX, another company that's under his domination probably, was landing rockets standing straight up safely and reusably. OK, that was a pretty big watershed moment in space travel and aerospace engineering.
00:39:47
Speaker
And so like he's presided over in some way like yeah he was kind of a hero but fifty five billion dollar hero like i'm not sure about that.
00:39:57
Speaker
Yeah. Well, the other thing is, if you think about it, what he was given was an option to purchase shares at a set price at that time. So it wouldn't have been $55 billion then, right? Right. And it's also purchasing shares from the company. So it's like, yeah, OK. I understand money's money, and it's fungible. But it's a little bit like, if we're worth that much, then sure, you can have some of that.
00:40:17
Speaker
Well, you could have predicted it was worth 55 billion at the time because it only hit if you reach that share price, right? Or it only hit if you reach that target. So you know that these shares are going to be worth way more when it hits. Oh, the targets were share price. I'm not sure they were share price. I shouldn't rely on that. But even if they were revenue based, that means you know that the share is worth way more.
00:40:44
Speaker
Because if you're seeing all these increases in revenue, then you're going to see a tangential effect on the share price. And of course, if it was a share price base, then you would also know that. Right. But a dollar like being willing to give you a dollar based on some speculative potential future thing.
00:41:04
Speaker
on like an economic from an economic standpoint isn't really worth a dollar now right it's worth a dollar times the odds of that happening right so you can make that argument too where it's like yes they would know if all these things came to pass he would be getting 55 billion dollars but there's a lot of things that have to come to pass right so it's not
00:41:19
Speaker
$55 billion to them. But it also doesn't sound like this was shrouded in mystery. It sounded like there is a pretty predictable likelihood that it was going to come to pass. Well, the thing is, if you're opposed to a $55 million share pay package, then you don't have the $55 billion. Again, this is
00:41:46
Speaker
like more money than all but like 10 people total in the world, then you don't have the $55 billion option, right? Because
00:41:59
Speaker
It's worth less than 55 billion from the outset. Yeah, so you're right. It wasn't like a straight up 55 billion cash. But it still is an enormous amount of money. It was not agreeing to pay him $120,000 a year. It was putting up the possibility, which all these CEO contracts include some incentive stuff that makes it partially
00:42:20
Speaker
you know, partially potential money and all that. But it was putting up the possibility to have like 100 times the CEO pay of any other CEO ever. Which is insane. Like he is an insanely unique CEO in terms of his importance to the public image of the company.
00:42:44
Speaker
And at the time it was so like it was so positive. I can see the case for like, like, look, give him 10 percent of the company. Right. Which would be an insane value. It's like a Steve Jobs. But I can see the case. Yeah. Even more because like people knew computers. People knew Apple. People knew computers. He was the only game out there on electric cars.
00:43:09
Speaker
Oh, only one. I see your point. Yeah, you're right. But I mean, value to the company, there was a point there where Steve Jobs kind of became Apple, and Apple became Steve Jobs. And actually, you've got to check my bath on this. But I wondered to the extent to which Jobs dying and Musk's sort of ascension could kind of be roughly- They transferred. Well, I mean, the public consciousness- The techno worship, the techno king worship transferred from Steve Jobs to Elon. Yeah, he handed the- They're different people. Oh, yeah, definitely. Absolutely.
00:43:39
Speaker
I feel like the people that are into well, like y'all y'all are proving me wrong on this because you Jason you have a Tesla, right? Or you had a Tesla have have a Tesla. Andrew, do you have a Tesla? I do not have a Tesla. Okay, I was gonna say I feel like Tesla is more like more PC people.
00:43:57
Speaker
Would be not anymore. Not
Musk's Influence and Broader Implications
00:44:00
Speaker
anymore. Not anymore. Well, are you correct or not from Mac? What would be PC? Yes, as in Microsoft Windows and Linux.
00:44:17
Speaker
Yeah, I was like, what are you talking about? I'm talking about non-Mac, non-Apple people. I can see that. But because they're more like, they're more first mover, whereas like Apple is more, you know, we'll do it later, but we'll do it like super smooth. You know what I mean? I like how you super smooth took a shot at Apple there.
00:44:37
Speaker
towards the end there, you're taking a little bit of a shot there at the free company. Yeah, because they're late to everything. They're late. I see what you're saying. Whenever they do it, they're late, but when they do it, they do it super well. I think Tesla's initially took up the mantle from Prius for, I want to make clear that I care about the environment.
00:45:01
Speaker
That's not all. I'm not saying all Tesla drivers were old Prius drivers, but I think a lot of Prius drivers became Tesla drivers. Yeah. If that makes sense. Right. That's like enthusiastic about electric. And yeah. Yeah. And I want to make it clear that that's that's true. Right. Because like Prius.
00:45:18
Speaker
For a long time, there have been other hybrid options. But nothing like screams that it's absolutely a hybrid, quite like a Prius. Even the modern ones, even the new ones look like you could see it from a mile away, right? You're driving a hybrid. So I felt like Tesla initially had that, had a little bit of a luxury thing. Now, honestly, at least around here, they're so ubiquitous. I don't think you can make an argument that there is any one demographic that you could say has them. Most of the cars I see around are Teslas.
00:45:43
Speaker
Oh, really? Yeah, that's crazy. Like it's far and away. I see more Tesla's than any other car. I think that says a lot about the neighborhood that you're in. It's fair enough. Like there are a lot of Teslas around here. Like it's not it's not nearly that ubiquitous. I would say if I walked around my block, I would probably see one or two Teslas. I mean, they have a half million vehicles a year. It's a lot. You probably see, I want to say 10 F one fifties.
00:46:11
Speaker
Yeah. If you walk around the block in comparison. Yeah. Yeah. Pickup checks. Yeah. Look, Tesla wasn't the first. They didn't invent the electric car. And they were not even the first mover in terms of the recent adoption of it. Because I think maybe the Model S might have come out in 2012.
00:46:36
Speaker
And the Model X may have come out in 2014. I'm not sure about that. I think Tesla was making the Roadster, which was like a super niche car around 2000. It was the Lotus Elise that they rebadged and put the electric stuff in and everything. Was that the Roadster? Yeah, and I think that was around 2008. And around 2011 or 2010, you have the Nissan Leaf, you have the Chevy Volt. And what Tesla did was made electric cars nice. Yeah, and cool.
00:47:04
Speaker
Right we're not like hippie vehicles yeah cool and cool cars for cool people yeah and a Nissan leaf has just a little it's basically a
00:47:15
Speaker
a jankety version of the bug or something like that. It was fine. People love from place to place. Yeah. I have a leaf. I like the leaf, but I agree. It's not a luxury car. It's like a Honda Civic with an electric engine. It's like a very utilitarian stripped down hatchback. And the older one was even weirder. And so like, yeah, OK, fine. I guess we're coming off the rails here a little bit of.
00:47:43
Speaker
Did Elon deserve $55 billion in a compensation package here? The answer is categorically no. You can keep the hero for, and this was before his super heel turn became very evident to the entire thinking world.
00:48:02
Speaker
You know, this was back when we were looking at, oh, hey, is he going to revolutionize space travel? We're going to have rockets that can relaunch. Think of how much money that's going to save. And before he turned into this, before he revealed himself to be this lunatic.
00:48:17
Speaker
And so like categorically, it has to be no, no person's work. No person's influence is worth $55 billion. And you know how I know the most influential person in the world is not going to make $55 billion this year. Taylor Swift is going to, I was going to say, I don't know where we're going. I think her influence is worth more than $55 billion. I don't think she's, she's not going to make it the amount of, she could
00:48:45
Speaker
I wonder how much money, how much brand improvement
00:48:50
Speaker
She gave, she gave the NFL for free. I saw somebody, I saw somebody quantify this the other day. I don't remember. I don't remember exactly how much it was. I think it was to the order of like 300 million or something like that. I bet that's an underestimate because like the amount of like advertising that the NFL doesn't have to do to to women, especially to people like the they're going to be they have now
00:49:17
Speaker
They have stylists making NFL clothing like for fun, which now they have cool looking NFL clothing, which they've never had all their NFL clothing has basically been various logos.
00:49:32
Speaker
And it's just it's just wild. And Taylor did this simply by by showing up. That's literally that's all she did. Here it is. According to MSN dot com. Let's see. This is the spun. I don't know. That doesn't seem very reliable, but I don't know. Maybe Andrew Gould is a brilliant reporter.
00:49:58
Speaker
According to Apex marketing group, Swift has, Swift has accumulated 331.5 million in equivalent brand value for the NFL and the Kansas city chiefs. And so that's, that's taken honestly marketing consulting group, but you know, yeah.
00:50:17
Speaker
but like imagine okay so now imagine Taylor didn't just show up and date somebody but actually put her energy into improving or like into the branding of various things like she's the only bill she's the only music billionaire
00:50:34
Speaker
musician billionaire that isn't didn't make their money from something else. Like riya like other musicians made it by going into stock like cosmetics or clothing or something like that. She doesn't do any of that.
00:50:47
Speaker
Um, and eventually this was in my 2024 predictions. I think she's going to do something like that this year and it's going to, it's going to be crazy. She, I think she will miss not only. So we were talking about whose influence is worth 55 billion. Right. Um,
00:51:07
Speaker
I'm not saying she's going to make 55 billion, but can she build a $55 billion business out of thin air? I think she can. I think the GDP of Taylor Swift is like more than all of the Scandinavian peninsula put together.
00:51:24
Speaker
They have too much oil for that, maybe. Yeah, Norway's got a lot of oil. They're part of the Scandinavian population, aren't they? Yes. All right. All right. I blurted that out and realized I should be more careful about this. So I take your point on the idea, Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, whoever, the idea that
00:51:42
Speaker
they're not worth $55 billion. I come around to that all the time. I completely agree. Nobody's worth that amount of money. But the place I fall down is the simple question of if somebody makes $55 billion for or makes $100 billion for a corporation or for other people, why do they not deserve a decent proportion of that? In other words, if Elon Musk, say he
00:52:06
Speaker
Nobody is nobody is worth fifty five billion dollars in terms of compensation. But if he generated fifty billion dollars for Tesla, what does he what does he deserve from that? So here's so you say we're assuming that he's the but for cause of this wealth. So let's say you substitute Elon Musk with a perfectly competent chief executive temper and his and his
00:52:36
Speaker
You substitute Elon Musk for somebody else. And because of his presence, you can prove the proximate and butful cause that he generated, let's say the company is $500 billion more valuable because he is there as opposed to everybody else.
00:52:53
Speaker
Yeah, in a pure capitalism, there is no government, there are no other policy considerations. I think, of course you pay him. If you know that ahead of time, shoot, he can negotiate for 250 billion. Why not? That's where I fall down. I think it comes around, this is getting outside of the scope of this podcast, obviously, but I think it comes down- Do you have a scope?
00:53:14
Speaker
You wind up making an argument against capitalism at a certain point. I mean, I first thought of it with, like, with baseball players. Somebody gets paid some, exorbitant some, but they sell more merchandise. They are, like, Shohei Ohtani or whatever, right? He's getting paid way too much. He's not. I'm not saying that. But, like, let's say he's getting paid way too much. If he brings in more than that amount of money for the Los Angeles Dodgers, why should it be in their pockets and not his?
00:53:34
Speaker
It becomes this like thing where you just keep tracing it further and further back. And so he's, you know, no one person should get paid that amount. Okay. But should all of these people who have even less to do with it get paid pretty close to that amount? No, they shouldn't either. Well, okay. How far back do we need to go? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ultimately, it's all the shareholders fault.
00:53:53
Speaker
We should all go after shareholders all the time. I'm joking because I don't even know how you even start. That's the thing. There are good arguments for why nobody should be allowed to be a billionaire. Absolutely. Because it's a policy problem that somebody can basically buy influence to that extent and buy their way out of problems.
00:54:22
Speaker
I think it's the aforementioned Ann Lipton who had an article that was titled Every Billionaire is a Policy Failure. I completely agree. I completely agree with that argument.
00:54:32
Speaker
But if you ignore that, because clearly our legal system isn't set up that way, then there's a good argument for Elon Musk being worth $55 billion over 12 years or whatever it is, or over a certain number of years. Right, if you can prove that he increased the value of Tesla, yeah, and so let's, for a second, tease out the but for thing, right? We can never have that level of certainty, like computer simulation level certainty. So to the degree we can have certainty in this reality,
00:55:02
Speaker
What if we had that certainty? So you say, well, yeah, it's really the engineers that did it or whatever. OK, take the aforementioned Steve Jobs. He comes back to Apple. Apple goes from being nearly going to be purchased by Dell to being one of the most successful companies in the world. It's hard not to make the argument that that person caused that to happen. Should he be paid a billion dollars? You come back to that argument that nobody's worth that.
00:55:23
Speaker
Right. But so then who is getting that money? Where is that money going? It should be compelled to go all the way down the line until literally a MacBook Pro is cheaper for the person who purchases it because that company should not be allowed to have that amount of money in its coffers. And the same thing here. Should Tesla not be allowed to have like so he shouldn't get 55 billion. It gets kicked back to Tesla. Right. Right. Where does that go? And that goes to well, at this point, well, because it was stock options, each share is worth a little more because it's less diluted. Right.
00:55:53
Speaker
So major shareholders maybe just made $10 billion. Yeah. And then minor shareholders made a good 20 bucks, something like that. So is that a problem? Do we have to trace that out? And like I said, you have to go all the way down the line and eventually you're having a command economy where you're saying, no, you can't sell a Tesla for more than $25,000 because it costs you 24 to make it. So that's it. Maybe we don't care. If your incentive of limiting CEO pay is
00:56:21
Speaker
or limiting pay slash wealth in general is to prevent the accumulation of wealth into a single individual to the point where it becomes a problem, then we don't care where the money goes otherwise. We don't care if it goes to the corporation or the shareholders. If the shareholders make more than a certain amount, then I don't know, maybe that's a policy problem. Yeah, you're just divvying out the problem. You're just taking the full pill of poison, cutting it up and giving it to the whole family. And it's like, OK, well, now you have everybody who's a little sick instead of a dead dad.
00:56:49
Speaker
That's a bad metaphor, but it's got really weird. Just like saying that every billionaire is a policy problem, corporations having a lot of money, just the real problem is accumulation of power into single people. Money is the easiest way to
00:57:11
Speaker
is the easiest for quantifiable mechanism measurement of power. And that's the problem. And it's just like the more I think about it, this makes me get sad. It's like, oh, this is unsolvable.
00:57:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, because I think like one person having 50 billion dollars is a problem, but I don't know that 10 people having five billion is that much less of a problem. The thing is, like, it is sort of like once you hit, like, you know, yeah, if they're in cahoots, if they all have a common interest in, you know, keeping their money or whatever else. Like I like thinking about the
00:57:49
Speaker
You know somebody going to war against a like Elon Musk has more than enough money to pay 10 people
00:57:58
Speaker
10 people's salaries where their entire job is to fend off lawsuits for things that he says or you know Yeah, just follow them around if a super rich person wanted to go sexually harassing Employees, you know Elon Musk has enough money to pay them off constantly and that's the that's the remedy, right? Is right is you pay them? Even if they wait as well that way. Yeah, like like even if they win in the court like
00:58:25
Speaker
If you're rich enough, you just keep paying and you don't care. In the words of Eminem, you smile in the courtroom and buy you a new wardrobe. I mean, eventually get punitive damages, I guess, but those are harder and harder to come by.
00:58:41
Speaker
And at those rates, even punitive damages, what are we talking about? Even millions of dollars a year, you're never going to get that. Yeah. Even when Trump gets hit with an $86 million judgment or whatever, when you're making $50 billion, that's OK. So extrapolate that over the rest of his expected lifespan. And if he's just continually in court and continually facing $80 billion at the end of every 18-month trial or whatever, he still would have enough money to be the wealthiest person in the world. So it doesn't matter.
00:59:12
Speaker
We're not solving anything here today. The world is unsalable. You should all give up, audience, basically. Wow. I'm hoping it'll get better. That's what he means. Don't give up on the other part.
00:59:28
Speaker
Uh, anyway, so we can recommend, uh, we can anti, we can anti-recommend billionaires, uh, anti-recommend billionaires, recommend incorporating your, your company in Delaware.
00:59:43
Speaker
uh maybe I don't know unless you want to get paid a lot and not have to worry about stuff then my understanding is you should go to texas that's what I've heard recently is that's where you want to go I don't have any recommendations today do you do you fellas have I'll try to think of one while you you give recommendations
01:00:02
Speaker
I got a recommendation. It's not going to be as good as Jake's recommendation, because Jake is going to talk about a video game, and I'm going to like that way better. But we live in a cold climate now. We don't live in the south anymore. We live in the Midwest, kind of maybe central to northern part of the Midwest. And it gets cold here. It's been cold here.
01:00:20
Speaker
And when it gets cold outside, sometimes there's snow, sometimes there's ice, and sometimes your kids want to go out and play in it. Sometimes you want to go out and play in it. One of the worst problems that you have when you go out and
Product Recommendations and Gaming
01:00:30
Speaker
play in the snow is your stuff gets wet, including your gloves get wet. And so there is this amazing little device that you can buy that looks like, you know, those little goofy garden things that get advertised to you on Instagram or wherever where it's like,
01:00:46
Speaker
made out of PVC and you put a pile on up in your living room and you put plants in that PVC pile on. This is like that, but for gloves. And so you put it over your HVAC register in the floor and it blows the hot air from your HVAC system up through these little spindles, these little pokey sticks.
01:01:09
Speaker
with holes in them so that it blows the air, it blows the warm air through the gloves to warm them up and to dry them out. It's fantastic. It's like, uh, uh, I dunno, it's like taking them out of the dryer, but you don't have to mess with the dryer and you can leave it right by the, uh, right by the heat register, right by your sliding glass door that goes out to the backyard. It's perfect. It's great.
01:01:31
Speaker
If you have an idea, specific one to recommend, but I don't know, glove, warmie, over HVAC duct is probably a good start on Google or Amazon. Bing it. Bing it. Bing it. There you go. If you don't have forced air or air, or if you have an outlet nearby, I have a standalone one that you just plug in and it has boots on it as well. I agree. It's fantastic. This all sounds delightful.
01:01:54
Speaker
It's awesome. We don't get snow anymore, so it doesn't. We don't really use it, but it was great when we had snow before. It's not really a Florida problem. Climate change took it away. Well, not in Orlando. It's been cold recently. It's been getting down to like the mid 40s. Life is pain. Oh, that's fair. We got up to the 40s. The son had to put on a sweater when he went to school. And when I went outside in shorts, it was a little chilly. So, you know, we get cold down here.
01:02:21
Speaker
On the bright side, at least the rising sea level is not going to swallow up my entire state. Orlando, where I'm at, is going to be beachfront territory, so we're cool. Congratulations. But really, before that happens, we're just going to get slammed by 10 hurricanes a year.
01:02:40
Speaker
Um, yeah, I my recommendation So we we had thought we might talk about pal world, but we talked a lot about elon musk and stuff uh pal world next time I did play a lot of pal world which pal world is a game that looks a lot like pokemon Uh and therefore caused a lot of controversy Uh that it would just stole pokemon's thing because you build a team of five or six little cute animals that you catch in balls in the wild
01:03:11
Speaker
And so there's a lot of controversy around this game, but also it has sold 19 million copies Break a record for concurrent users on Steam it broke so it had over 2 million computer users on Steam I'm sorry They sold 12 million copies and 9 million people were playing it on Xbox 7 million people were playing on Xbox game pass where they didn't have to buy it and
01:03:34
Speaker
It had 2 million concurrent players on Steam, which is the most of any game that has never been free to play because it costs $27. The winner being PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.
01:03:50
Speaker
It is, it exploded in both terms of controversy and also popularity. Never seen an indie game sell this much, like at least out of the gate. I didn't even realize it was an indie game. I thought it was made, I thought it was like a, you know, relatively major. It's made by like 12 people.
01:04:05
Speaker
Um, it's crazy out of japan. Uh, and it's their communications show it they like are not we're not prepared for any of this Um, but I mean it's a good game. It doesn't play like pokemon at all It's more like a survival game where you like build a base and you can The oh the important thing about these these fake pokemon these pals, uh, you can get guns for them uh, you can have a a pokemon monkey with an ak-47
01:04:32
Speaker
They're not it takes a while to get the yeah, they're not that's not Pokemon. No But honestly the guns aren't the most important thing about it But anyway, I did have fun with that game, but it's early access right now. It's still pretty broken And there's a whole lot of other things to talk about that game My actual recommendation is like a dragon infinite wealth, which is another video game Which is out of the yakuza series
01:04:59
Speaker
made by Sega, which y'all may have heard of Sega before, but it is another Japanese game where it's kind of an open world game. They've made like 12 of these and it's an organized crime based story. But the thing about it, do y'all know about it at all?
01:05:25
Speaker
I know about Yakuza. Is it like Hitman, Grand Theft Auto type stuff? Kind of. But it's not nearly as free form as a Grand Theft Auto. You walk around a map. You're not stealing cars. You're only walking. Well, you get a segue in this game.
01:05:44
Speaker
How do you commit crimes on a segue? Sold. And you go into stores and you can buy food and it's like turn-based fighting. But the thing that's... It's kind of like a...
01:06:03
Speaker
a minigame collection almost on top of the main game because they've had these same minigames like you can go to the batting cages and play and get home runs. You can go and play darts. You can do a dating minigame where you try to get dates and there's a game around texting where you try to match up your answer to the other person's personality.
01:06:28
Speaker
There is a the the tone of this game is just wild. Like you have a pet crawfish, a pet crawfish named Nancy, and you help describe the most insane games every time you give a game review. It sounds like I took like whatever I took, I either need to take twice as much of or half of because I'm sorry, go on. Yeah, Nancy.
01:06:54
Speaker
This is an insane game. Alan Wake, for example, in this game are so insane in completely different ways. So you have a pet crawfish who tries to... There's a romance between that crawfish and a hermit crab. As you do. And that's one example. There are also UFOs.
01:07:16
Speaker
There's a UFO abduction of a cow and this is all next to an extremely self-serious organized crime story about like organized crime coming after a child because the child is important.
01:07:33
Speaker
And the juxtaposition of the two is just madness. And there are clips, there are so many clips and insane lines out of this that I'll have to show you guys. But it's a lot of stupid, fun. I don't know. I recommend it if you're looking for something different, if you've never played something like that. Unless you're taking acid, in which case, don't play this game. Definitely, yeah.
01:08:02
Speaker
I might have before the show. I've never done a drug in my life, but I think I did based on that description. I don't know what's in this tea. There's a game where you're like a DoorDash delivery person. But when you're making the deliveries, you get points if you do flips while you're making the delivery on the bike. I think that's an actual DoorDash rule. Tony Hawk Pro Skater DoorDash.
01:08:25
Speaker
There's a fake Pokemon Snap, where instead of Pokemon, you're taking pictures of so-called perverts, which are people wearing opera masks and songs and just dancing out in the street. Right. When I hear the word pervert, that's what I imagine. Yeah, exactly. That makes perfect sense. Yeah. Xbox, PlayStation. Yeah, I think it's on everything. I'm playing it on PC.
01:08:54
Speaker
Um, very cool. Yeah. I'm playing this. Never. No, wait till you see this snap clone, man. Oh, I don't know if I can. Oh, there's an animal crossing clone in here too. Oh my goodness. Oh boy. Okay. My recommendations are very easy and quick and I'll let everybody go. Uh, uh, one month until, uh, not pitchers and catchers, but spring training baseball, right? Like February 24th and fifth, two weeks for pitchers and catchers for the Braves.
01:09:22
Speaker
Yeah, two weeks of pictures, but like actually like televised spring training games is like less than a month away at this point, like three weeks away. Sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. After you're done, I want to call an audible and something. Okay. The other one's very simple. The app Libby has gotten really good. You guys know about Libby? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really good.
01:09:41
Speaker
I set my daughter up with it on her iPad. She like checks out books and gets to read books on it. Libby's really cool. I forget about it every couple, like for a few years. And then I come back to it and go, it's unbelievable. It's all the Z books and audio books just available for free. Library. Good recommendation. Library. Yeah. Library has got modern and it's cool. Yeah. When did this happen? So sorry. Audible. You got it. Yeah. Audible. Uh, the baseball thing, uh, the A's move to Las Vegas is a freaking disaster. Have y'all been paying attention to this? Yeah. So John Fisher, like,
01:10:11
Speaker
So they had to have a stadium plan in place by i think it was like december or january fifteenth or something in order to keep getting revenue sharing. And even though they had less of a deal than oakland then they had an oakland and i'll be in the players unions like this is fine this is fine because you all said that you have renderings of the stadium.
01:10:33
Speaker
that has to be at the Tropicana hotel site under the bill. It has to be there under the Nevada legislature's bill that was passed for authorizing the spending of taxpayer money for this.
01:10:48
Speaker
Yeah, it has to be there. That bill specified the site that it has to be at. Because they created a special taxing district, didn't they? They created a special council, but then until they made a modification, it wasn't going to have to be at that site. But then they modified it so that it had to be at that site.
01:11:07
Speaker
Okay. So they had a press conference scheduled in like November to release these renderings. And then they canceled it because on the morning of two police officers were killed. And they were like, out of respect for that, we're canceling this.
01:11:28
Speaker
But actually, there's no renderings. And it's still it's like been two and a half months. They haven't rescheduled it. And there's now reporting saying that actually the people they hired to make the renderings say that it's not possible on that site because of the the small amount of space that they have. At least it's not possible to also build the resort, which is part of the deal for how they got the site and for what they were going to build.
01:11:57
Speaker
And so basically they have no site or they're going to have to do a totally different deal. And if they move their site, they have to go back to the legislature because they have to be done by 2028. And my understanding was like basically sometime in November was the latest that it was like even feasible that it could conceivably get done in time.
01:12:19
Speaker
By 2020, I think they could still theoretically do it, but they got to move. And in the meantime, we know that they're going to spend at least two seasons in a non-major league stadium unless they come crawling back to Oakland.
01:12:35
Speaker
Um, cause next year they're in the Oakland Coliseum or this year they're in the Oakland Coliseum. It's going to be the saddest season in the Oakland Coliseum. It's going to be so sad. Uh, poor, a lot of like saying goodbye style, like you might have pretty good turnout.
01:12:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that a lot of I can speak for the Oakland days fandom where we can say we're not doing a show up. We're done giving money to them. Right. Right. So there's a lot of there's no Sarah McLaughlin like listless leasing. I will remember you. Right. No, there is the thing there is, but it's not going to be at the Coliseum.
01:13:14
Speaker
There's a there's an Oakland A's fan fest, which the A's were invited to attend and and decided not to. That's good. That's like being attended by like thousands of people, including a ton of former A's players that is all fan organized. That is going to be happening.
01:13:30
Speaker
Uh, but yeah, so after that, what a mess. Nobody knows where the A's are going to play. It might be Sacramento, um, which is a triple A stadium, uh,
Oakland Athletics' Relocation Challenges
01:13:40
Speaker
small, but they're going to have to worry about people chanting sell the team there. Um, and, or it might be in salt Lake city, but the thing is, none of this is, which is also a minor league stadium.
01:13:52
Speaker
So there's gonna they're just gonna have to play for a few years in a minor league stadium It is telling that no matter what they expect that they'll be able to fit the fans into a minor league stadium Like who's gonna come don't worry about it. We'll be yeah We do this in a little league field like it's just give me 40 acres of grass and we'll play a game We're not gonna have that many people turning out. I mean, I don't think they're worried about the same talent It's gonna be the same caliber of play as a minor league team. Anyway, so yeah Everybody telling everybody once they yeah
01:14:22
Speaker
When they were selling their team, their, you know, the spending public money on the A's, they were promising how they were going to be in the upper half of the payroll. It's like, that's never going to, that was never going to happen. Like, why would you ever believe?
01:14:36
Speaker
that John Fisher was going to be in the upper half of the payroll. He took over the A's in 2004. The A's were not in the upper half of the payroll and were slightly above average when it came to attendance.
01:14:53
Speaker
And it's only gotten worse on both ends since then. Since then, he just never invested in stars and attendance kept going down. And Las Vegas is a smaller market and it's going to depend less on the players on the field because he's going to be a tourist attractant. So why would he ever invest in players?
01:15:13
Speaker
Anyway, as a Braves fan, as a Braves fan, I thank him for being a very, very for selling you all our pictures. But yeah, I'm pretty sure we got Matt Olson. And what's the Sean, the catcher? What's his last name? Oh, gosh. I got nothing. Murphy is jumping to my mind. But yeah, yeah, yeah, Murphy. Is that right? That's it. That's him. Wow. Really? Yeah. So thanks. My brain does work. Yeah. Thanks from a Braves fan.
01:15:41
Speaker
Anyway, so now I'm, I'm all Oakland ballers, Oakland ballers for life. Then my minor league team in Oakland. Oh, I was going to say, I thought they were changing their names to the ballers. That's a terrible name for a major team. Yeah. Okay.