Blog
LatestArticlesVideos
Radio
LivePodcastSerialsStations
TV
Podcast
Fine Art
Real Estate
More
AboutCharityBooksSponsorsShopContact
SEARCH
Live Radio

©2024 MERCURY RADIO ARTS.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY POLICY

Live

Glenn's Show Prep

Mark Cuban lays out why net neutrality is so terrible

February 25, 2015
Wilson

Writer

Mark Cuban joined Glenn for a full hour on TheBlaze TV to discuss the impending decision on net neutrality. Cuban has been an outspoken opponent of net neutrality, and laid out the impact that the legislation could have on entrepreneurs.

Scroll down for a transcript of this segment - Watch the full video on demand now at TheBlaze TV

Glenn: Okay, so I want to start with net neutrality, because you are one of the more outspoken people on this, and you say that it’s going to destroy the Internet as we know it.

Mark: It’s hard to destroy the Internet, but at the same time, I think it’s going to create so much uncertainty that we won’t be able to progress as quickly as we have over the last 20 years.

Glenn: Do you see a Department of the Internet?

Mark: I think that’s what the potential for this rulemaking at the FCC could turn into. I mean, the FCC will have no problem being the Department of the Internet even though they’ll deny that moniker. You know, what it comes down to is that the net has worked. You know, I was writing up something today for somebody in Congress. They had asked me just for something little, and there’s really only two laws that matter for the Internet. One is Moore’s law that says technology is going to double in speed basically.

Glenn: Which it has.

Mark: Which it has, right? And the second is Metcalfe’s law, which says the more devices you add to a network, the more valuable the network becomes, which has been the foundation of the Internet itself and social networking. The more people connected, the more valuable it becomes, and now we’re getting to the Internet of things, the more devices you can connect. Those are the only two laws we need because those have spurred competition. We’re not in an industry where the technology has become stagnant and there’s no more enhancements, and so we need regulation to try to make things happen, right? We’re not there, and so as long as the technology is allowed to advance, we’re okay.

Glenn: Show me where the internet…even with porn…you know, there’s a lot of bad things on the Internet.

Mark: There’s a lot of bad things everywhere.

Glenn: There’s a lot of bad things everywhere. Show me where the Internet has failed. Show me where the problem is.

Mark: They can’t, right? So, if you start looking at the foundation of the net neutrality argument, step number one is well, we’re afraid that the big companies, the big ISPs, are going to prevent access to websites. Well, that’s never happened. There has never been a legal website that that happened.

Glenn: Can I tell you, do you know where that’s happening? That’s happening, and you know this because of your television venture, and I can tell you this because of my television venture. Where that happens is where there’s regulation. In satellite and cable television, you’re blocked, I’m blocked. I could go online and do whatever I want and let the system work it out, let the people decide.

Mark: On one hand, we try to get paid when we’re on satellite and cable. On the other hand, it’s just one for all, and it’s à la carte for the most part over the top.

Glenn: Correct.

Mark: But if you start introducing regulation, then that creates a lot of uncertainty, and the amount of uncertainty will grow not just because the FCC is involved, but because the FCC is involved, there will be all kinds of legal challenges as well, and who knows what direction that’ll take the Internet as well. And so, whether it’s the legal uncertainty, whether it’s the FCC, whether it’s the turnover in the FCC in the future, I mean, we don’t need it.

Glenn: So, tell me why people like Twitter. Tell me why people are coming out and saying we should do this.

Mark: I think the Zeitgeist right now of Silicon Valley, it’s a groupthink that says we need to find somebody to demonize, you know? And it’s always been that way, whether it was IBM way back in the day, then Microsoft. There was always somebody.

Glenn: I don’t buy into that because it doesn’t make sense. The people who are out in Silicon Valley know that the internet works. Why would they be saying…?

Mark: The way it’s presented out there is that we want to keep things the way they are, right? Which makes no sense to me, because the beauty of the Internet is it doesn’t stay the same.

Glenn: It always changes.

Mark: Yeah, it’s always evolving, but I guess if they’re trying to protect your business, if you want things to be the same, why wouldn’t Twitter support it, or why wouldn’t Facebook support it? But in reality, it just makes no sense.

Glenn: Can you make the other side’s case? Make the other side’s case.

Mark: Yeah, of course. You demonize big companies, you know, AT&T bad, Comcast bad, Time Warner bad. Do you like your cable company? Do you like your cable service? Nobody likes their cable service, right?

Glenn: But does anybody really like what government does?

Mark: Well, that’s the tradeoff, but at the end of the day, if there is a utility, and now the Internet has become a utility, so the argument is well, if the Internet’s a utility, it should be regulated.

Glenn: Define utility.

Mark: Utility is something, is a service, a product that is ubiquitous in need. Everybody needs it. Everybody who has a home of some sort needs electricity. We’ve decided that. Everybody needs water. We’ve decided that those are utilities. The Internet and providing data is a utility, and I’m fine with it being called a utility, but unlike those where the product is what the product is, right? Electricity, which drives everything, hasn’t really changed all that much. The grids have changed some. The security needs have changed, but how you receive electricity and how you plug in, when was the last time it changed, you know? Same with water, when was the last time it changed? There is no change there, and so regulating the need, and they also have finite resources that they’re consuming. We can always create more bandwidth. There’s 100 ways to create more bandwidth, whether it’s fiber, whether it’s copper.

Glenn: I read somewhere in England they just finished an experiment, and now they believe they can increase the speed where you can download 18 movies in one second through light.

Mark: Yeah, that’s nothing. That’s peer-to-peer, right? That’s line of sight, right, for fiber, and then there’s the thing called P-wire or P-ware where it’s a reutilization of cell towers where they can increase just using traditional-type cell towers the way their networked together an increase wireless speeds by 1,000 times.

Glenn: Even this idea that somebody could choke down Netflix, which, by the way, was resolved and not resolved to get back to the way it was. It actually worked out better for Netflix.

Mark: Well, it was even worse than that, right? Netflix went cheap, right? Look, and let me just be clear, I’m a big shareholder in Netflix, and I’m a big proponent of Netflix stock, and to me it’s not a conflict to say I’m against net neutrality and for Netflix, because Netflix doesn’t need net neutrality. They wanted to find a CDN, a content distributor, and they went the cheapest way, which was Cogent, and that created their problem with Comcast, which they worked out, like you said. That’s what businesses do, they have conflict, they work them out.

Glenn: Right.

Mark: You don’t need to legislate a business conflict.

Glenn: So, that worked out, plus we have Moore’s law that demonstrates, I mean—

Mark: It’s going to keep on getting better.

Glenn: It’s going to keep getting better and better and better, and there’s nothing that says the future to me anything better than the Telecommunications Act of 1933.

Mark: Yeah, or ’96, right? They’re there, and I’ll give you another reference point in terms of the uncertainty of FCC chairmen. I forget the guy’s name, but I was reading something that Tom Wheeler, the current chairman, wrote about when he first came in about his vision, right, and what he saw, and he talked about the networks of the past, correctly. He talked about the telegraph. He even talked about railroads connecting the company, and then he started talking about and referencing wireless to a certain extent, and what he said was if the FCC hadn’t aggregated the spectrum, we wouldn’t be where we are with wireless, and he was right, but what he also said was the FCC chairman at the time called wireless frivolous. So, all that spectrum was there to their credit, but it took 15 years to do anything with it and put us behind.

Glenn: Look at what happened when we broke down Ma Bell. Everybody fought and said you can’t stop that regulation, that’s going to be bad for the phone system, you can run your truck over a phone, which you could at the time because they owned the phones, and that’s the only thing that was good about it. It was dependable and indestructible, but there was no leap of technology.

Mark: Okay, let me contribute a little fun fact, right? This building, right, there was a company called Printronix that was the first tenant in this building at the communication studio here who was the company that sued that broke up Ma Bell.

Glenn: Oh, you’re kidding me?

Mark: Nope, that’s the honest-to-God truth.

Glenn: Man, I love that.

Mark: Because I ended up buying that company for my first company, MicroSolutions and taken a part of it, so there’s a little fun fact.

Glenn: So, it broke up. As soon as we got regulation out, look what happened to phones.

Mark: I don’t want to pretend that I’m an expert in the ’33 law, even the ’96, even though I’ve talked to commissioners for the last 15 years about it. To me, the foundation is you don’t know how politics—look at current chairman Wheeler’s approach, right? He had one approach to net neutrality which was very light, you know, don’t really need to do a whole lot, we don’t need to pass anything. Then all of a sudden Verizon sues and wins, so that opened the door, but he didn’t change his position. Then President Obama comes in and says here’s my position on net neutrality, and now all of a sudden Commissioner Wheeler changes his position and says it’s because these 4 million comments came in, the point being not that he doesn’t have the right to change his mind, not that the president doesn’t have the right to say something. That process is going to be repeated with the next chairman and president and then the next chairman and president and then the next chairman and president, because the Internet is going to continue to evolve to some extent. We don’t need that uncertainty.

Glenn: So, are you for…because I heard you kind of backed down a bit when you were pushed and said well, would you be for Congress doing this?

Mark: We’re different, right? I don’t necessarily, and I said that because from what I’ve heard from what Congress is doing from the couple people looking at doing something, it was a very simple reconfirmation of what everybody already agrees on, that no website will be blocked, no legal website will be blocked, right, and just basic 1-2-3-type stuff that’s just like saying two plus two is four. That’s why. So, based off of what I’ve heard, I don’t have the problem. Now, if they go into all new territory, yeah, then that brings up a whole different set.

Glenn: I’ve been concerned that once you open the door, I mean, I was under the Telecommunications Act of 1933 when I first got into radio. I got into radio when I was 13 years old, and I had to take a test to be able to be on the air. I mean, it was nuts. We already have people in Congress, we have people in the administration questioning who’s a journalist, who’s not a journalist. Once you open this door, isn’t it possible and probable over time that they decide who gets to open up what websites, who gets to call themselves journalists?

Mark: Yeah, to a super extreme, yes, that’s always possible, right? I think at some point then, the people’s will will come in, and democracy takes over and capitalism takes over, and we go from maybe an open Internet to a closed Internet where people have access to something that’s not considered Internet.

Glenn: What does that mean?

Mark: Meaning that if I wanted to use wireless and create my own network, right, my own private network by dropping nodes all around Dallas, Texas and then connecting that to a whole ’nother network and then connecting that to another network and not connected to the Internet at all, I could, right? It’s expensive, but that cost will continue to drop.

Glenn: That would be like what cable did until they started to regulate cable.

Mark: Well, in some respects, yeah, but it would be a private network, and there’s lots of smaller corporate private networks that government doesn’t have access to, and you could open those up or create your own. So, if they took it too far, then I think there would be a marketplace reaction.

Glenn: So, what’s your biggest concern about this then?

Mark: The uncertainty.

Glenn: What does that do?

Mark: So, here’s some what I think are logical conclusions that aren’t too extreme, right?

Glenn: Do you dismiss the extreme that the government, I mean, you’re really outspoken on privacy. Look what the hell the NSA is doing that they told us they weren’t doing. Five years ago, wouldn’t you have said that would be extreme?

Mark: No, because I know.

Glenn: You knew five years ago? Ten years ago?

Mark: Yeah, ten years ago, maybe, right, because yeah, we weren’t already there. So, if you go to the technological base, right now one of the big concerns is video, right? Netflix is an example. Are people going to be able to get Netflix or video or streaming video or are the incumbents, the big bad guys, Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, going to slow it down because it’s competition to their content? Well, if you think about the technology of television because it’s pretty much all digital right now, this show, you’re taking a source with all the cameras, you’re going to go through an encoder, right, and you’re going to ship some to your cable and satellite partners, and you’re going to ship some to your Internet subscribers. It’s basically the same technology in both directions, right?

So, what net neutrality says is you can’t give an advantage to any one type of delivery, right? So, you can’t advantage your cable subscribers or satellite subscribers over your Internet subscribers. You’re a perfect test case, and so if net neutrality is taken to its logical extension and it’s against paid prioritization, then providing your bits to cable and satellite is the equivalent of paid prioritization, which means you should not be able to do that.

Glenn: Wait, because like Home Shopping Network, they pay to be on that channel.

Mark: They pay to have their bits delivered in a prioritized manner over the open Internet so that they don’t buffer, right? So again, if you think about your cable coming from big, bad, nasty cable provider, and it’s one pipe and it’s all digital, it’s all bits, they take a segment of that, and they allocate it for your TV channels. Those are, let’s just say six megabits per HD channel times however many channels. That’s a lot of bandwidth allocated to television versus just 10, 25, 50, 100, even a gigabit for Internet. It’s not inconceivable, and I would tell you that someone will sue and it will become likely that they will say you have to combine all that bandwidth together. So, if you’re getting 100 to make it easy six megabit channels of HD, that’s six gigabytes. That’s six gigabytes if you say you know what, you can’t just deliver all that for television, we want to open that up to the Internet so all the Glenn Becks and Blazes can deliver their over-the-top video in an equal manner, now all of a sudden you have 6.1 gigabits available in this example.

Glenn: And you have to fracture it to everything.

Mark: Yeah, and it’s just open Internet. Now all of a sudden your traditional television, so if I’m getting Blaze on my big bad cable provider, it might start buffering, and I probably need new equipment in my home that maybe the government is going to force you to buy, but it gets worse, right? So, now if all video delivered could be perceived as television, right, because it’s all in the same pipe…bits are bits. No matter what anybody says in government, no matter what any technologically savvy person says, bits are bits. They don’t care if it’s text, data, or video, whatever it is, it’s just a bit, and you have your pipe that’s allocated in different ways through a lot of different mechanisms, but net neutrality at its base says all that data should be delivered together, and no one should have priority. So, if there’s no priority for television and it’s just part of the open Internet and delivery, your traditional television watching the evening news, it’s over, right? Either (a) you’re going to have to get new equipment in order to make it all be part of one pipe.

Glenn: I’m actually for this in concept. I hate the way it’s being done, but it would force you actually, wouldn’t it force the cable companies to allow me to do everything à la carte? There’s no reason I have 500 channels. I don’t want to pay for 500 channels.

Mark: Yes, you do. You may not want 500, but you want it in bundles. Otherwise—

Glenn: The money.

Mark: Yeah, it gets very expensive, and look at the music industry, right? So, when everything is à la carte, the expense doesn’t come in creating the content, right? The expense comes in marketing the content. So, we could take a phone and you and I can sing Sinatra, and maybe it’s just the best song ever, but in order for it to get heard, we have to compete with everybody. And when you’re in an open market like that and it’s à la carte, sure, a couple songs sneak through and become hits, but the big four music labels still control 70%. I saw something in Billboard that it was a higher percentage of record sales or music sales today than it was in 1998 because the cost to stand out is so much more expensive.

Glenn: Right, but doesn’t Comcast, Universal, NBC already control, I mean, the big four already control most of the content?

Mark: Well, yes and no, right, because I would tell you that Netflix subsidizes all that content now, and without Netflix, that same content isn’t being created and there’s a unique dependency on Netflix. You look at the turnover, you know, I’m on a show that keeps on growing, Shark Tank, right, because it’s a great show.

Mark: On ABC, yeah, and they put us on Friday nights because they thought we were going to die because it used to be Friday nights was the day to go, the point being that it’s hard to know which content is going to stand out and rise to the top. But let’s keep on going on the conclusion. So, if everything is funneled through the open Internet, and let’s just say it’s à la carte, right? Now, all of a sudden you see a different set of rules potentially being applied. I guarantee you that the FCC met the same organization that fought for eight years over Janet Jackson and her wardrobe malfunction, eight years to enforce that. There’s going to be somebody that comes along and says you know what, we need decency standards applied to all the content on the Internet because now that is coming through the same pipe, and it’s open to everybody. We need education requirements. Remember Bill Clinton said you had to have a certain amount of educational content?

Glenn: You have the Fairness Doctrine again.

Mark: In a lot of respects, yes, applied to the Internet, so this goes into the law of unexpected consequences or unintended consequences that you don’t know what’s going to happen when all of these things change. You know, you talk about Twitter, you would think companies like Twitter and Facebook have thought through the technological aspects of it. I don’t think they have, and so all of a sudden if there is no such thing as a prioritized bit, then all of that digital television going through the same pipe, all those voters who like to get FOX News or MSNBC, they’re going to freak out because you’re going to have to go to their website to get it or you’re going to have to have a special box that identifies the channels and brings it to you.

The government is WAGING WAR against these 3 basic needs

NICHOLAS KAMM / Contributor | Getty Images

The government has launched a full-on assault against our basic needs, and people are starting to take notice.

As long-time followers of Glenn are probably aware, our right to food, water, and power is under siege. The government no longer cares about our general welfare. Instead, our money lines the pockets of our politicians, funds overseas wars, or goes towards some woke-ESG-climate-Great Reset bullcrap. And when they do care, it's not in a way that benefits the American people.

From cracking down on meat production to blocking affordable power, this is how the government is attacking your basic needs:

Food

Fiona Goodall / Stringer | Getty Images

Glenn had Rep. Thomas Massie on his show where he sounded the alarm about the attack on our food. The government has been waging war against our food since the thirties when Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. They started by setting strict limits on how many crops a farmer could grow in a season and punishing anyone who grew more—even if it was intended for personal use, not for sale on the market. This sort of autocratic behavior has continued into the modern day and has only gotten more draconian. Today, not only are you forced to buy meat that a USDA-approved facility has processed, but the elites want meat in general off the menu. Cow farts are too dangerous to the environment, so the WEF wants you to eat climate-friendly alternatives—like bugs.

Water

ALESSANDRO RAMPAZZO / Contributor | Getty Images

As Glenn discussed during a recent Glenn TV special, the government has been encroaching on our water for years. It all started when Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972, which gave the government the ability to regulate large bodies of water. As the name suggests, the act was primarily intended to keep large waterways clear of pollution, but over time it has allowed the feds to assume more and more control over the country's water supply. Most recently, the Biden administration attempted to expand the reach of the Clean Water Act to include even more water and was only stopped by the Supreme Court.

Electricity

David McNew / Staff | Getty Images

Dependable, affordable electricity has been a staple of American life for decades, but that might all be coming to an end. Glenn has discussed recent actions taken by Biden, like orders to halt new oil and gas production and efforts to switch to less efficient sources of power, like wind or solar, the price of electricity is only going to go up. This, alongside his efforts to limit air conditioning and ban gas stoves, it almost seems Biden is attempting to send us back to the Stone Age.

4 signs that PROVE Americans are hitting rock bottom

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

As we approach the presidential election in November, many Americans are facing dire economic straits.

Glenn has shown time and time again that Bidenomics is a sham, and more Americans than ever are suffering as a result. Still, Biden and his cronies continue to insist that the economy is booming despite the mounting evidence to the contrary. But who is Biden fooling? Since the beginning of the year, gas has gone up an average of 40 cents a gallon nationwide, with some states seeing as much as a 60-cent per gallon increase. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Foreclosures and bankruptcies are on the rise, evictions are surging, and America is experiencing a record amount of homelessness. We can't survive another Biden term.

Americans across the country are hitting rock bottom, and here are four stats that PROVE it:

Evictions

John Moore / Staff | Getty Images

Across the country, people are being evicted from their homes and apartments. Between 2021 and 2023, evictions increased by 78.6 percent. With inflation driving up prices and employers struggling to raise wages to compensate, rent is taking up an increasingly larger percentage of people's paychecks. Many Americans are having to choose between buying groceries and paying rent.

Foreclosures

Justin Sullivan / Staff | Getty Images

Renters aren't the only ones struggling to make their monthly payments, foreclosures are on the rise. This February saw a 5 percent increase in foreclosures from last year and a 10 percent increase from January. More and more Americans are losing their homes and businesses.

Bankruptcies

Chris Hondros / Staff | Getty Images

High interest rates and inflation have driven bankruptcies through the roof. Total filings have risen 13 percent and business bankruptcies rose 30 percent in 2023. It's getting harder and harder for businesses to stay afloat, and with California's new law requiring most restaurants to pay all employees a minimum of $20 an hour, you can expect that number to keep climbing.

Homelessness

FREDERIC J. BROWN / Contributor | Getty Images

The result of all of these issues is that it is getting harder and harder for Americans to afford the basic necessities. January of 2023 saw a record-breaking 650,000+ homeless Americans, a 12 percent jump from the previous year. More Americans have hit rock bottom than ever before.

Stop blaming Gen Z for the problems WE created

Editor's note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

I want to talk to Generation Z. I’ve seen some clips of you complaining about your 9-to-5 jobs on social media and how life is really hard right now. To be honest, my first reaction was, “Suck it up, buttercup. This is what life is really like.” In a sense, that’s true. But in another sense, I think you’re getting a bad rap. You are facing unique problems that my generation didn’t face — problems that my generation had a hand in creating.

But I also think you don’t understand the cause of these problems.

I would hate to be in your position. When I was your age, we didn’t have to deal with any of the challenges you’re facing. In one sense, your life has been tough. At the same time, compared to previous generations, your life has been very easy. Everybody was rushing to save you, to protect you. You were coddled, which makes your life harder now.

You’ve grown up with social media and the definition of narcissism: somebody gazing into the pond looking at themselves all the time. I don't mean this as an offense, and I am not just including you in this. We’ve become a culture of narcissists. It’s all about “me, me, me, me.”

If you end up thinking more collectivism is the solution, then you haven't done enough homework.

You’ve been in territory that my generation never had to enter. You’ve already navigated a landscape that we didn't have to, where nothing is true, and you can’t trust anybody. I wouldn’t trust anybody either if I were in your position. But I do know a few things to be true and a couple of things I can trust.

First, life is worth it. Life is tough, but it is worth it in the end.

Second, life is not about stuff. As a guy who is kind of a pack rat, I can tell you that none of that stuff will create happiness in your life. In fact, I think your generation has a better handle on happiness in some ways than anybody in mine. You’re starting to realize that pharmaceuticals may not be as good as natural solutions in a lot of situations, that the huge house may not be as satisfying as just having a smaller house, that living your life instead of having to work all the time may be a better way to live.

I want to talk to those of you who feel like it’s not worth even trying to go to work because you’ll never get anywhere. You work 40 hours a week or more, and you still can't afford a place to live. You’re still living with your parents. You can’t afford food. I think you're right to feel frustrated because the problems you're facing weren't always the case.

I blame a lot of the current problems we’re facing today on the hippies. That may be wrong, but I hate hippies. Hippies have been screwing things up since the 1960s. While on their socialist march, they have become everything that they said they were against: lying, greedy politicians. They just won’t let go of their power even though their time has passed.

These are the people who have come up with policies that make you feel like this is the way the world is. I hope I can convince you that it doesn’t have to be this way. This isn’t the way our country has always been. We don’t have to keep these people in power. Actions have consequences. Votes have consequences. These people allow crime, looters, squatters, riots, and somebody needs to pay for that.

You say you can’t afford health care. I understand. Since Obamacare passed, the cost of individual health insurance has doubled. You need to remember that politicians promised that if we passed this massive health care overhaul, it would mean a savings of $2,500 per family. You're in school. You must know that $2,500 savings is not the same as an 80% increase. Moreover, the cost of hospital stays is up 210%. I understand when you say you can't afford health care at these costs. Who could afford health care? Who could afford insurance?

The generation coming of age is right to feel frustrated.This mess — with high costs and a massive debt burden — was not of their making.

Iwant to talk to Generation Z. I’ve seen some clips of you complaining about your 9-to-5 jobs on social media and how life is really hard right now. To be honest, my first reaction was, “Suck it up, buttercup. This is what life is really like.” In a sense, that’s true. But in another sense, I think you’re getting a bad rap. You are facing unique problems that my generation didn’t face — problems that my generation had a hand in creating.

But I also think you don’t understand the cause of these problems.

If you end up thinking more collectivism is the solution, then you haven't done enough homework.

I would hate to be in your position. When I was your age, we didn’t have to deal with any of the challenges you’re facing. In one sense, your life has been tough. At the same time, compared to previous generations, your life has been very easy. Everybody was rushing to save you, to protect you. You were coddled, which makes your life harder now.

You’ve grown up with social media and the definition of narcissism: somebody gazing into the pond looking at themselves all the time. I don't mean this as an offense, and I am not just including you in this. We’ve become a culture of narcissists. It’s all about “me, me, me, me.”

You’ve been in territory that my generation never had to enter. You’ve already navigated a landscape that we didn't have to, where nothing is true, and you can’t trust anybody. I wouldn’t trust anybody either if I were in your position. But I do know a few things to be true and a couple of things I can trust.

First, life is worth it. ≈

Second, life is not about stuff. As a guy who is kind of a pack rat, I can tell you that none of that stuff will create happiness in your life. In fact, I think your generation has a better handle on happiness in some ways than anybody in mine. You’re starting to realize that pharmaceuticals may not be as good as natural solutions in a lot of situations, that the huge house may not be as satisfying as just having a smaller house, that living your life instead of having to work all the time may be a better way to live.

I want to talk to those of you who feel like it’s not worth even trying to go to work because you’ll never get anywhere. You work 40 hours a week or more, and you still can't afford a place to live. You’re still living with your parents. You can’t afford food. I think you're right to feel frustrated because the problems you're facing weren't always the case.

I blame a lot of the current problems we’re facing today on the hippies. That may be wrong, but I hate hippies. Hippies have been screwing things up since the 1960s. While on their socialist march, they have become everything that they said they were against: lying, greedy politicians. ≈

These are the people who have come up with policies that make you feel like this is the way the world is. I hope I can convince you that it doesn’t have to be this way. This isn’t the way our country has always been. We don’t have to keep these people in power. Actions have consequences. Votes have consequences. These people allow crime, looters, squatters, riots, and somebody needs to pay for that.

If you end up thinking more collectivism is the solution, then you haven't done enough homework.

You say you can’t afford health care. I understand. Since Obamacare passed, the cost of individual health insurance has doubled. You need to remember that politicians promised that if we passed this massive health care overhaul, it would mean a savings of $2,500 per family. You're in school. You must know that $2,500 savings is not the same as an 80% increase. Moreover, the cost of hospital stays is up 210%. I understand when you say you can't afford health care at these costs. Who could afford health care? Who could afford insurance?

You are also starting your life with thousands of dollars in debt. Your parents didn't have that burden. People used to be able to work their way through college and graduate debt-free. Others were able to get jobs that quickly paid off their debt. You can't do that now. Once the government said that they were going to guarantee all student loans, university costs skyrocketed, and it hasn't stopped. You can thank the progressive President Lyndon B. Johnson for that.

The people who created this mess cannot fix it. But it can be fixed.

You are also starting your life with thousands of dollars in debt. Your parents didn't have that burden. People used to be able to work their way through college and graduate debt-free. Others were able to get jobs that quickly paid off their debt. You can't do that now. Once the government said that they were going to guarantee all student loans, university costs skyrocketed, and it hasn't stopped. You can thank the progressive President Lyndon B. Johnson for that.

Once the government said that they were going to guarantee everybody’s college tuition, universities found out that they could just charge more because the government would give you virtually any amount in your loan. And they have been charging more and more ever since. In 1965, the average college tuition was $450 a year. Adjusted to inflation, that's $4,000 a year. You're currently paying an average of $26,000 a year as opposed to the inflation-adjusted $4,000.

What happened? The answer is always the same: government regulations. Gas is up. Why? Government regulations. Can't afford a house? Well, that's due to several things. Many of them revolve around the fed and our national debt. But the simple answer is the same: government regulations.

Moreover, the U.S. government has run a staggering national debt. We have been concerned about it forever, but the people in power haven't been listening to your mom and dad and people like me. A lot of other people just thought, "Oh, well. We could get away with it. We're the United States of America, after all. Somehow or another, it will all work out."

People like me have been saying, "No. We can't pass this on to our children." You're now seeing what we have passed on. When you say that the adults are responsible for creating this world of problems, in some ways, you’re right. We were lied to, and as many people do, they want to believe the lie because it makes them feel better.

There are big lies being pushed in your generation as well. You're being told that a man is a woman and a woman is a man. At the same time, you’re being told that gender doesn't even exist at all. It makes us feel better to go along with the lie because we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

My generation believed the same kind of lie about our national debt. We were told that we could spend all this money on subsidized programs because it would provide you, our children, with a better life. Some people warned, "Wait, how will they pay this off? This will cost them." We didn't want to believe them. The lie sounded better, and it was easier to believe that than the truth. We never saw the consequences, and even if we did, they were always way out in the future. Nobody wanted to listen to the doomsday people saying, "No. It's going to come faster than you think."

And that time is right now. Our government now is printing $1 trillion every 100 days. That's never been done before. We have more debt than any country has ever had in the history of the world. But we’re not alone. Every country is doing this. They’re going into debt like we’ve never seen before, and we’re all about to pay for that. It’s going to make your life even harder.

There are Democrats and Republicans who still believe in spending all kinds of money and getting us involved in every global conflict. Then there are constitutional conservatives who believe that we should conserve the things that have worked and throw out the things that don’t and follow our Constitution and Bill of Rights. You haven't really learned about those most likely. But you should. All of our problems are caused by the government and the people who feel they can bypass the Constitution. That's what this election is really all about.

You might say, “I don’t really care. I don’t like either of the political parties.” I know a lot of people who don’t like either of them, but one is going to try to cut the size of this government and one is going to spend us into collapse.

The people who created this mess cannot fix it. But it can be fixed. You need to learn enough about the truth, about why this has happened to us, and about how our Constitution lasted longer than any other Constitution in the world. The average is 17 years. This thing has lasted hundreds of years. Why? How? And why is it falling apart today? That's what you should dedicate some of your time to figuring out today.

You can complain about the way things are. I complain. Everybody complains. But don't wallow there. Learn what caused this. And if you end up thinking more collectivism is the solution, then you haven't done enough homework. They always end the same way, and that's exactly where we're headed right now. We can either repeat the dreadful past of nations that have tried it before us, or we can choose freedom, liberty, and prosperity. The ball is in our court.

Government's SECRET crackdown on preppers threatens YOUR right to grow food

Glenn recently had Representative Thomas Massie on his show to sound the alarm about an important yet often overlooked issue affecting what we eat. Whether you're trying to be prepared to weather a catastrophe or just trying to keep food on the table without resorting to eating bugs, it's more important now than ever to source local food. Unnoticed by most, our right to eat home-grown or locally-sourced foods is under attack. The government doesn't just want a say in what you eat; they want you vulnerable and dependent on their system, and they are massively overstepping their bounds to ensure your compliance with their goals.

How did the attack on your food begin?

Government overreach on food can be traced back to 1938 under the autocratic eye of FDR with the Supreme Court case "Wickard v. Filburn." The case was pretty straightforward, but the results were devastating. The case began with the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, which sought to control national food prices by placing limitations on how many crops farmers could grow in a season.

Filburn was one such farmer, who was allotted 11.1 acres of wheat to plant and harvest annually. Filburn planted and harvested 23 acres, arguing that the extra acres were not headed for the market, but were used for personal consumption. After being penalized for over-harvesting, he fought his case all the way up to the Supreme Court, arguing that Congress did not have the authority to regulate crops that never left his farm.

Unfortunately for Filburn (and the rest of us), the Supreme Court didn't agree. They ruled that the mere existence of that extra wheat—whether it left Filburn's farm or not—had an effect on the national value of wheat. Congress assumed the power to regulate just about anything that could be roped under the umbrella of "interstate commerce."

Under the precedent set by Wickard v. Filburn, Congress might bar you from growing tomatoes in your backyard, because it could affect national tomato prices. This was a major blow to our right to feed ourselves, and that right has been eroding ever since.

How is our right to feed ourselves under attack today?

Last June, the Virginia Department of Agriculture shut down Golden Valley Farms, a small Amish farm owned and operated by Samuel B. Fisher in Farmville, Virginia. Golden Valley Farms had started out selling dairy products, primarily, and processed some meat for personal consumption. However, by popular demand, Fisher began selling meat.

Fisher initially hauled his animals to a USDA processing plant, paid to have them processed, and then hauled them back. This process was time-consuming and costly, and Fisher's customers didn't want the meat processed by the plant. A survey done on Golden Valley Farms customers found that an overwhelming 92 percent preferred meat processed by Fisher. So naturally, Fisher began to process more and more meat for his customers.

Moreover, COVID shut down the USDA plant, which made it impossible for Fisher to process the animals by the USDA anyway, though the demand for meat was greater than ever. Fisher made the call to process 100 percent of his animals himself and didn't look back. That was until June when the Virginia Department of Agriculture caught wind of Fisher's operation and shut it down. The VDA seized all of Fisher's products, and he wasn't allowed to process, sell, or even eat his meat. Then they loaded it up in a truck and left it at the dump to rot.

Nobody ever got sick from eating meat from Golden Valley Farms. This was NOT about "health and safety." This was about control. The fact is that informed adults were not allowed to make a simple transaction without the government sticking its slimy fingers into Fisher's business and claiming it was somehow for "our benefit." But it's not for "our benefit." It's so they can regulate and control what we buy and what we eat, and they cannot stand it when we operate outside of their influence.

What comes next?

Where does this end? With so much of our ability to feed ourselves already eroded, is it too late? Is it going to get worse? Before long, will it be illegal to eat eggs from your chickens or pick vegetables from your garden without getting government clearance first? Fortunately, a solution is already in the works.

Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie recently told Glenn about a new constitutional amendment designed to limit government overreach regarding food production. The proposed amendment reads as follows:

And Congress shall make no law, regulating the production and distribution of food products, which do not move across state lines.

The amendment is still on the drawing board and has not been formally introduced to Congress yet. But this is where you come in. Call your representative and tell them to support Massie's amendment and take a stand for your right to provide sustenance for you and your family.