The Vigilant Fox 🦊

Venezuela promised free food, free housing, free electricity, free cars, free EVERYTHING.

Daniel Di Martino grew up there and watched how it ended.

DI MARTINO: “I lived in a country that tried democratic socialism. And not just democratic socialism, democratic socialism under the best conditions, the LARGEST OIL RESERVES IN THE WORLD.”

“Despite rising oil prices, a democratically elected government nationalized the largest companies, imposed price controls, expanded the welfare state to give free food, housing, electricity, water, cars, microwaves, fridges.”

Then the bill for all that “free” stuff came due.

DI MARTINO: “The price of this was not just our political liberty; it was our wealth. I had to carry packs of cash in my pocket that I can’t fit to buy an empanada, okay? That’s what hyperinflation looks like.”

“Why? Because even with the largest oil reserves in the world, they ran out of money; they just printed it.”

CONTEXT: Venezuela’s own central bank admitted inflation hit 130,060% in 2018. The IMF had projected 1,370,000%. The economy was cut almost in half, and by the end of 2024, nearly 8,000,000 Venezuelans had fled the country.

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A 24-year-old brat tells Caleb Hammer the rich should be taxed “to the max.”

He asks her what that means.

And when she answers, he can’t believe this person votes.

HAMMER: “You’ve never lived in the real world.”

GRACE: “I haven’t. I can admit that. But like, what if there was a world that we lived in and everybody had money and everybody was able to live comfortably?”

HAMMER: “That’s not the world we live in.”

GRACE: “Reality sucks. Capitalism is bad. I don’t like it.”

HAMMER: “Yeah, really easy for someone to say that grew up in a really nice house in one of the best school districts in Texas.”

“Who has the rent f*cking paid for. That is able to go to Europe on a whim with their sister.”

“You never got to actually see what happens when you put in the work and get benefits and actually have a little bit of responsibility and actually f*cking build something or do anything.”

GRACE: “But the people who you should be going after are the people in the top something percent that like hoard all the world’s wealth. Like go after those people. Those people need to be taxed to the f*cking max.”

HAMMER: “What does that even look like to you? You probably don’t even know what that looks like. What does that look like? How do you tax someone to the max?”

GRACE: “I’m not sure.”

HAMMER: “Oh! Interesting. This person’s voting.”

GRACE: “Yes, I am. And I already know who I’m voting for.”

HAMMER: “And you literally can’t describe a tax.”

What’s scary is her vote counts the same as yours.

CONTEXT: The top 1% of earners already pay 38.4% of all federal income taxes, according to the latest IRS data (tax year 2023). That’s $823,000,000,000.

The bottom half of taxpayers pay just 3.3%.

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Hasan Piker hits a wall when he tries to tell a man born in the Soviet Union that Americans are just as controlled as people under communism.

Konstantin Kisin shuts down the comparison and lays out the difference.

When he’s done, even Piker admits he’s right.

HASAN PIKER: “A lot of people think, well, as long as I can eat a Big Mac, you know, as long as I can watch TV, as long as I can consume porn [...] then, you know, things are probably fine.”

“It’s a different mechanism of control that makes you think that you are actually an active participant in this.”

Kisin isn’t buying it.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: “The difference between those countries is not that they can’t eat a Big Mac.”

“The difference is that if they criticize the government, in Russia today even, but of course in the Soviet Union previously, you’re going to get killed, right? In America, that’s not what happens, right? In America, you don’t get put in jail.”

HASAN PIKER: “We don’t know yet.”

That’s his whole defense: what MIGHT happen in America.

So Kisin makes it personal.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: “You in China or in the Soviet Union would be killed if you were critical of that regime.”

HASAN PIKER: “I would definitely be jailed, for sure.”

And there it is. Piker makes Kisin’s argument for him.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: “So that’s the difference between these countries and America. It’s not a Big Mac, it’s freedom.”

Only in a free country can you build a career telling people they aren’t free.

CONTEXT: Communist regimes don’t just jail their critics.

Under Stalin, the Soviet secret police executed 681,692 people in two years, by the regime’s own records. That’s more than 900 a day.

Under Mao, the Great Leap Forward killed at least 45 million people in four years, per historian Frank Dikötter.

Under Pol Pot, nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population was dead within four years.

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