76 – Countercultural by Choice

As America’s flirtation with socialism continues, Peter and Sonny discuss how, in other Latin American countries, things keep getting better with the application of common sense. Rents in Buenos Aires fell after rent control was abolished. Elections in Costa Rica were resolved in just a few hours. “Somehow we have become the banana republic”.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to the Obvious Podcast. This is episode number 76. My name is Sonny Macon. I'm the CEO of ABC Florida East Coast. And I'm Peter Daiga, president and CEO at ABC Florida East Coast. You are listening andor watching the Obvious Podcast, where all opinions expressed are our own, unless we say otherwise. Love the show. We ask you to subscribe on any major podcast platform or watch us in action on YouTube, follow the Obvious Podcast on Instagram, X, True Social, and now TikTok. All the links you need are in the show notes. And you can reach out to us at any time at the Obvious at abclorida.com. And if you're enjoying the ride, we ask you to help others find us by leaving a review wherever you listen. So happy Friday, Sonny from Costa Rica. Happy Friday beer. And uh happy St. Valentine's Day for that's one of my pet peeves, by the way. It's St. Valentine's Day. Okay, it's not just Valentine's Day. So he was a Christian saint, right? That's right. So and Christmas does not end on Christmas Day. But we can talk about that. So, or whatever you want to call them. Yeah, we can talk about that. That's right. So in December. Any of that. We hope that you've got great think clans, whatever they are. Yes. So and don't forget, and you know, for the men in our audience, don't forget. We're just this is a public service reminder. And please, whatever you do, do not buy teddy bears and chocolates from the guys standing at the intersection. Like go to a real store because women pick up on that stuff really quickly. So and I'm sounds like experience, Sonny. Personal experience. Because that Russell Stower turned out not to be Russell Stower. So what are we talking about today, Sonny? Happy Friday, everybody. So yeah. So you know what I'm really curious about is you know, America's America's American left's flirtation with socialism continues, right? You see that obviously Manhattan in New York City, you know, Mamdani is all over the place. Uh apparently, if you remember the snowstorm from a few weeks ago, my friends in New York are telling me he did a terrible job with the plow and the and the road conditions and garbage is piling up and all sorts of things. So but actually it turns out running government is different from just talking about it. I'm talking about it. So the the flirtation of the left, and then I know you're in Costa Rica, and you you just went through an election in Costa Rica, and Costa Rica has now gone to the right. You and I have had many conversations about um the gentleman with the crazy hair out of Argentina who um I read this interesting article, Wall Street Journal. Melee? Melee. Yeah. Melee. Thank you. Love him. Yeah. Um Love His Hair. Uh I read this interesting article in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago. Uh housing costs in Buenos Aires have have plummeted because he got rid of rent controls. And what getting rid of rent control did, the supply of available rentals in Buenos Aires um at least doubled, if not tripled, right? And the increase in supply brought down prices. So hold it, Sonny. He actually got rid of the controls and the prices actually came down. Correct. Shocking, isn't it? It is shocking. Well, because people before who didn't want to put their stuff on because they were told what price they could get, now, even though the price might be lower, they feel better about it and more people are willing to do it. So it's isn't it amazing how you can on one part part of the in the southern hemisphere in the same uh uh you know parallel, you know. Um you remember the controversy a few weeks ago when the lady And you go up to New York and he's doing the exact opposite. So I mean it's unbelievable. Do you remember the woman he's hired for uh I forget her title, something to do with like rent coordinator? And she was talking about how white people should get used to not owning homes, and some minorities should used to get, you know, just asinine talk. And this lady has some high-level position in in Mamdani's administration. Uh yeah, so this this gets to kind of the things that I was going into this uh podcast taping, you know, that I wanted to talk about because I was last night reflecting, you know, with family and uh a while back when uh very recently I was in Costa Rica. Right. Coincidentally on their election day, their national election day. And um first off, it's very I want to be, I want to say I'm very apprehensive about talking about another country's politics, right? Because I'm not one of them. You know, I don't know it other than my uh very superficial observations, right? Wait, I'll you know I'm surprised, I'm surprised. They don't let you vote even though you're just an illegal alien visiting. Well, that was one of my observations. It's uh it's amazing, you know. Actually, they, you know, yeah. So anyway, let me get to that in a minute. So, but the overall connection of we've become, and and it's almost insulting to use this term, but we we've become the banana republic. Yeah, the United States. I mean, you got you've got mayors of some of the largest cities in the world that are doing this backward stuff of rent control, thinking it's actually gonna help when it's gonna do nothing but make the price of housing even more expensive and less affordable or reachable, you know, by the average working New York, uh New York, yeah, uh what do you call someone from New York? So in any event, it's amazing. Whereas in other parts of the world, you know, in in Latin and South America, they're actually doing the opposite thing, right? They seem to be trending towards uh a different direction, which is amazing. And um, you're right, the um actually the government uh in Costa Rica, I've I've learned a lot and it's been fascinating. Uh so they have every four years, uh, they elect their president and their entire what they call their assembly, which is their, they have a unicameral, not a bicameral uh legislative body, so one body of 57 people. Okay, it's a country of six million, I think, or so. So it's you know it's roughly the size of South Florida. So, but they have a legislative body of 57, and they elect all 57 of them and the president every four years. Okay. And um multiple, multiple parties, especially in the last 10 or 20 years, the number of parties had grown. It used to be much more dominated by, you know, two two predominant ones. Um, but the the president in the last four years was a right of center person, and one of my observations is it's uh amazing how little really differs from country to country, from language to language. Um, I think in the last day of campaigning, the current president, which if I get it right, are not allowed to run for consecutive terms. Okay. So that same party, somebody else is running, that president could come back after that and run again, but they can't run for consecutive terms. Um, you know, you have the current president kind of running on behalf of his party, but somebody else is, you know, who you're who you're electing or voting. And they caught him in the last day or two was being insulted by somebody in the crowd, and he did, you know, silly little, you know, like, haha, but you know, so do you. You can give me the middle finger, but blah, blah, blah. And of course, the media, it it just reminded me of the US and how they treat Trump. You know, when he can push back a little bit because somebody's insulting him, and all they want to focus on is his because the all the talk was how unpresidential it was for him to stick his tongue out and do the, you know, that's all they wanted to talk about. They didn't want to talk about the insults that were being poured at him. So in any of that, um, the results last night were pretty resounding. Um they have multiple people running, and if you one individual candidate does not receive 40%, they have to have a runoff. Um, and you know, I think a lot of the talk going into this was whether there'd be a runoff or not. Because when you have, I don't know, six or seven or eight different parties, it can be difficult, you know, to actually um get that 40%. But the uh incumbent party got actually 40, 49%, almost an outright majority, when you have, you know, again, five or six other people running. So it was a pretty resounding victory for the current right of center government, which was being attacked for all the same things that you see in the United States and in countries all over the world. It's the same, doesn't matter what language or where, it's almost the same, right? You got people trying to Americanize the issues here. You know, you got a lot of Central and South American countries who, on social issues, for example, are very conservative, they're very Christian, and they're very family-oriented. But, you know, you got American interests who are trying to push whatever those issues are, you know, and they don't go over too well for the most part. Um, so, but uh more more amazing to me last night was um the makeup of the assembly, their Congress, was was like you see in a lot of European parliaments, uh, no single outright majority, right? Because you have so many parties and you got to build coalitions to get shovel and yeah, it's uh coalition governments, which is kind of what they've been operating under. Last night, this government got an outright majority in the Asali. So it's really gonna change, I think, how they legislate here, which is uh pretty amazing. So I think they got 30 the 30 of the 57. Is the media the same as the like leftists, and so they're constantly attacking the right, center, right, politics? Absolutely. Oh, yeah, it's pretty much the same. Pretty much the same. In fact, one of my family members was showing that the day after the current president, who was elected four years ago, was elected, his first interview with the media, he I mean, he brought it right up on his phone, which told me he had it. You know, he had it, he had it on his phone, you know, and he was like, look at this first interview. And the media was asking the president, are you gonna apologize to the press because you were rude to them? Right? I mean, it's the same stuff. But you know what I really wanted to talk about, Sami, was the the observations I made because I was here during the actual election, went with several family members who voted, uh, and it's amazing. You know what? Single-day voting in this country. There's no week before, week after, there's no mail-in, there's no absentee. I asked, what if you're a uh disabled? What if you're an elderly person? You get somebody to help you, you get them to the polls. Yeah. There's plenty of help. You know, there's plenty of groups and parties and whatnot, but single-day voting. You got one day from six to six. Wow. Guess what? They require a voter ID. Guess what? Only citizens can vote. Wow. Um, I mean, all the things we're fighting for, and and I I did a Facebook post that really the U.S. has become the banana republic, and the banana republics actually have more election integrity than the United States does. And that's that's a friggin' sad. Yeah. Really friggin' sad. Is the election on a weekday or a weekend? Well, it happened to be on a Sunday this year, but I from what I understand, it's always it's always the first Sunday in February, I think. So yeah, it is always on the Sunday, I think. Because they know everybody's off, so they want you to go make it easy. Well, yeah, and you know, I've watched the news last night, and I spent uh my family members and I was having a conversation. They spent, you know, I don't know, 60, 70% of the time before the election results were in talking about um uh turnout. You know, which again, we talk a lot about my whole lifetime in the U.S. And I don't know if I've ever said to you, that's one of my pet peeves. Yeah, it's like I it bores me to death. I could care less about turnout. If you don't care about informing yourself, don't turn out. Right? We don't want you. Exactly. You know, the the the fact that there's somehow this sacrosanct idea of 100% turnout is no, yeah, no. If you don't care, don't go, don't turn out. We don't need uninformed people making these decisions. We need the most informed people making these decisions. And, you know, you can't really force people to inform themselves. So, you know, I don't, I've just never, to me, that's never been, in fact, I think it's driven. And the real reason we talk about it a lot is it's because why we allow absentee voting and why we allow, you know, mail-in voting. And some people are talking about electronic voting now, god forbid, because they're always pushing, we got to have higher participation. So, any of that, same conversation in the media here. Um, but the fact that you have to have an ID, you have to be a citizen, it's the same day voting. They they they beat our participation rate by 50%. They had about 70, 75% turnout. Wow. Because the experts would tell you the way they do it is too difficult. And they only give you a single day to do it, and there's no absentees and there's no whatever, but somehow they do it. They beat the US participation with all the ways we make it easy, you know. So in any event, you know, the slide towards socialism, to your to your point, your conversation, it's a cancer. It's a cancer everywhere, it's a cancer everywhere in the world. I mean, and and the natural inclination, right, of government is to grow. Yep. I mean, our founders knew that. Yep. Our founders tried setting up a system to try to restrict that, to try to keep it from getting out of control. You know, so yeah, it never shrinks. And when you do try to shrink it, it fights back in a in a way that is just mind-blowing, right? It never and it never shrinks on its own. Like nobody ever says, well, you know, and I have I've had this pet peeve with with nonprofits for a long time. Um Marcha dimes, right? Marcha dimes was founded to cure polio. And when polio got cured, marcha dimes is just saying, okay, we're done. Let's wrap it up and go do something else. They just change their focus. Oh no, we're just here to help, you know, healthy babies or whatever. Because nobody wants to put themselves out of business, right? So uh nonprofits have a a especially like social nonprofits, they have an incentive to never really solve the problem. It is just to raise enough money so they can pay themselves and keep the problem going, right? So I think governments are the same way. They really aren't there to fix anything. I mean, they're there to just sort of band-aid the problem, keep money coming in. And what really shocked me, I think, with Trump's second term, was just the reaction to try to shrink government, right? Like I remember watching the uh the um job numbers under under Biden, and it was always government jobs that were growing at a faster pace than public sector, private sector. And nobody made a nobody kind of pointed it out to you unless you were like some sort of uh economic nerd looking at the numbers. You didn't even know that. And so here comes Trump's numbers. The growth of government has slowed down. So government jobs are not a driver of employment in the US anymore, statistically speaking. And they'll never point that out to you. Whatever growth you're seeing, it is primarily uh private sector, right? The media never does that, which is you know, reason number 9,008, why such hatred for the media and contempt for the media. Yeah. And it's a great point, you know, because um even if the calculation, you know, had nothing to do with just trying to shrink government for the sake of shrinking government. Yeah. You saw what happened when actually you would you would just look at the fraud part. Just look at the fraud part and try to do away with the fraud, and you get pushback even there. Can't even do that. Can't even do that. And this is not by the way, this is not a right-left thing. I think both parties, you know, pox on both their houses, they are so guilty of I mean, George Bush, you know, I mean, my gosh, the way he grew government is unbelievable. So and I have done other podcasts on that, you know. I mean, the difference is between what the having two people that just want to talk about it and they're happy knowing wink wink, yeah, we're gonna talk about it. We're gonna tell the voters that, you know, we we hate fraud and we want to try to do away with it, minimize it, you know, shrink government, maybe even. But then when you have somebody that actually does it, oh whole all all whatever breaks loose, right? Yeah, exactly. And you know, if you know, I'm I did a deep dive in the whole USA thing and I was flowergasted by what I read and what I saw. And it the first thought I had was, how come nobody ever, no other president, forget Republican Democrat, how come nobody ever talked about this? Nobody ever brought this to the attention. I mean, when Republicans were in power, nothing changed for USAID, but money kept flowing in, the money grew, the amount of money flowing in grew, right? And so when um when this uh controversy started about USAID, one of the first people who put a statement out trying to protect that money was George Bush. Uh, the obviously not the dad, because the dad's a dad, but the other one. And talking about how that money is important for AIDS or or whatever, right? Like, and it's just so insane to me how neither party really ever does anything to shrink government. And they just they plow money in because again, when it's not your money, you have no incentive to be efficient. Government literally has no incentive to be efficient. In fact, it's the opposite. If they don't spend all the money they get, their budget gets cut. So they're like, oh shit, I don't want to have my budget cut. Let me spend all the money. So it doesn't matter what I spend it on. I let me just spend it so I get more money next year. I mean, uh the whole incentive structure in government is so backwards. And it doesn't matter what party's in power. It's just, it's, it's a flawed backward system. And until somebody takes an axe to it, the way the guy in Argentina did it. And I mean, even I mean, um, Elon Musk tried to do something about it. They got him running out to the hills and thinking, forget it. I don't want to have anything to do with this. They were destroying his dealerships, lighting his cars on fire. Yeah, what about you know the daycare fraud? Yeah. Um, you know, and again, etc. Quickly that went off the news, right? They forgot about the daycare fraud. Let's just talk about ice in Minnesota. And nobody's even talking about it. We're literally, you know, uh wheelbarrels of cash were being run out of the airport. Uh anyway, it's unbelievable. Now we're starting to scratch the surface about um, I forget what the issue is out in LA. It's not daycare fraud, but it's a different kind of programming. I forget which. Yeah. Um hospice care. They're having a huge issue with hospice care. And they're like, you know, it's like the and there's um one of the cabinet ministers, I don't remember, I can't think if it was I think it might have been uh Dr. Oz talking about how, you know, this is all owned by the Russian Mafia and the Albanian Mafia, you know, in LA. They control, you know. Oh, I got I got an LA story I need to share with you, our audience. You're talking about voter ID. I have a I have a good friend of mine who lives in Los Angeles, has two businesses in the city, lives in the city, and I remember the last election uh we were talking about in Florida, you know, you have to show your ID to vote. He literally told us in Los Angeles, and I don't know if this is a Los Angeles thing or a California thing, but in Los Angeles, if a poll work worker asks you for your ID, that's illegal. And that poll worker can get in trouble for asking you for your ID. So I'm like, so you know, and this was on a on a group chat, and there's a bunch of us from Florida on the group chat. We were just like stunned. So you can just walk up to a poll worker, give whatever name you want to give, give whatever address you want to give, and if it's in the roles, you can go.

unknown 20:00

Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:01

That's require a lot of them allow same-day registration. You don't even have to be on the rolls, just show up. They allow automatic some, I think some uh states are doing automatic registration when you get your driver's license. I don't know if California does it, but it's a that you don't even have to like tell them you want to register, you just get registered when you get your license or you renew your license. It's insane. And to your point, this is about growing a voter base that currently doesn't exist because one half of the can the political party in this country knows that they will never have the vote of this this uh subsection of the American population. So they're trying to grow it somewhere else. Right. You know, there's a few minutes back, Sonny. You were talking about, I think we were talking more about the impact on the economy, you know, right? Growing, shrinking government, the uh, you know, we were talking about Argentina and the stronger rental market and brought down prices. And um and I don't know if it was your intention or not, but again, I like uh, you know, uh where we can, I'm trying to tie whatever it is we talk about, because for a lot of people it's a difficult nexus to ABC and our mission.

unknown 21:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

You know, and the point is our industry and our members can't succeed unless they have a vibrant economy, a vibrant free market, of a vibrant um environment where they're actually making decisions and being awarded things based on merit. You know, and these things are not uh the natural order of the universe is atrophy and away from these things and big government growing and and and and pressures against these things, unless you have an organization like ABC, you know, who's gonna fight these things. And to your earlier point about uh, I'm not in particular fear of us, quite frankly, ever achieving our goal because there's constant pressure against the merit meritocracy and free markets. Yep. You know, which is what which again that That that's at the apex of who ABC is and what who we are and what we stand for, and why these conversations are relevant. Yeah. You know, because they all feed into having a system, you know, that reflects those values. And without them, our industry and our members are not gonna uh thrive. So this is the last point I want to make because I know we're running out of time. You just made a uh point about the natural order is to atrophy, right? I and I think what ABC functions as, ABC is the only organization that I'm aware of that is deliberately and strategically trying to be countercultural. Because we have to be countercultural because the the culture's natural inclination is to atrophy. It's just it's to eat itself and to destroy itself. So if you don't fight that, and if you literally aren't assault uh on the on the earth, it will be um it'll be devastation. It'll be devastation, and it'll be devastation where everything, every value, every principle that has made this country great will go away because that is the national implementation. And now you can kind of say what's because of the education system, whatever the cause might be, but that's really where we are. And it's a global perspective. You know, American political consultants go all over the world. You know, if you don't know that, if you don't know that Democrat and Republican consultants are all over the world, they're feeding this stuff to governments all over the world and have been for a long, long time. This is not a new idea, right? The idea is to export not American values, but the their side's values globally. And that's what USA has done effectively. Effectively. And so Yeah, I have a that's great, great point, Sonny. I don't know if I've said it to you before. I probably have. I have a great saying of when is um imperialism acceptable to the left. Right. It's when it's American cultural imperialism and it's cultural imperialism, exactly. Right? To your point. It's okay to go to these other countries and push, by the way, which we did for years, do certain things, or you're not going to have money. Yep. And by the way, it's always usually left-leaning you know, interests. I mean, it'd be one thing is that it was we and we've talked about this in podcasts in the past. You know, I think Trump got a lot of criticism for actually engaging in some of these Central and South American elections. Yep. And oh, you know, when when when when our side does it, it's it's awful. It's you know, now the UN and the left can do it when abortion policy or family planning policy, who knows what they're, you know, uh, you know, the reasons for these are yeah, they're pushing it all over. It's perfectly yeah, it's perfectly fine. But when we do it, and it's like, and I think I said in the previous podcast, what do you expect? Yeah, you know, the president basically said, Look, we give you assistance and aid. And if you're gonna elect a communist dictator or a dictator of some sort, you're not gonna get it. Yeah. Thank God we have a president that's willing to make that position. Leadership matters, right? Leadership matters. So in any event, um, yeah, the only time imperialism, you know, which the left loves to rail against, is acceptable is when it's cultural imperialism. They love that at the UN and pushing our pushing their values on. Those kings, those kings are okay, right? Those kings are okay. Exactly. Those kings are okay. So anyway. All right, Mr. Producer's losing his mind because we are over time and we need to wrap this up. Uh, thank you so much for listening, for joining us. We look forward to bringing you a new episode next Friday. And for comments, send us an email at theobious at adceflorida.com. Until next Friday.