 Good day, May 40 here. I've got a shocking insight for you. Sometimes people act in their self-interest, right? Sometimes when people interact with you or try to get you to do things or try to sell you things, they're not acting in your interest. Often they're acting in their interest. Isn't that shocking? Unbelievable. And sometimes when people say why they want you to buy something or to do something, the rhetoric that they're offering you, it's not the real reason they want you to buy something or to do something. Isn't this shocking? Do you know that there are politicians who sometimes act in their self-interest rather than the national interest? Unbelievable. Oh my god. Yes, it's shocking. You know, it's entirely possible that a significant reason that we invaded Afghanistan in 2001 was so that George W. Bush could get re-elected, right? Maybe it was just in part to provide an emotional catharsis for the American people after we got hit on 9-11. Well, we're gonna hit them. Do internet pundits acting their self-interest? Yes! Do you think I'm gonna go on here and say things that are radically against my self-interest? Do you think I'm gonna go on here and say things that are gonna get me in trouble with the people with whom I spend most of my spare time? Orthodox Jews? No! I'm not gonna do it. All right, I'm gonna limit the things that I say on here to those things that work for the rest of my life. Do you think I'm going to blow up the rest of my life so that I can just, you know, say something really sharp or funny or edgy or painful truth? Do you think I'm gonna share like painful true opinions on here that are gonna, you know, cause me financial harm? No! I'm not gonna do it. So, yeah, it's not always clear, but people generally speaking are motivated by their self-interest. So, it's entirely possible that George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to get re-elected. It's entirely possible that George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 because he thought it was a political winner. Now, if you join the US military, you're gonna get sent overseas and you may well lose your life in part or in large part because politicians are trying to get re-elected or trying to sound tough or maybe just politicians just trying to get laid by sounding tough on TV. So, remember the Cuban Missile Crisis? You know what was driving the Cuban Missile Crisis? John F. Kennedy was facing mid-term elections and the Democrats were perceived as weak on defense so the Democratic Party's political interests were on the line and so he precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis. He acted much tougher than he needed to for his own partisan political reasons. He put America's survival at stake to try to further his political interests. Like, he got us into this Cuban Missile Crisis so that Democrats could win more seats in the mid-term elections. America faced the possibility of nuclear obliteration because its leader wanted to ensure that his political party did better in the mid-term elections and there's no alternative to that. You can never get away from that, right? There's no alternative to having leaders and leaders will always be at least in part affected by self-interest. So, everyone that you're meeting is, you know, heavily driven by self-interest. So, the average person is about 95% selfish. So, I tell my sponsors, try to be just 90% selfish. So, you should expect other people on average to be 95% selfish and if you can aspire to perhaps just going through life at a 90% selfishness level, you're a saint, you're a sotic, you're a truly righteous man, you're an ascendant spiritual master. Now, go for just 90% selfish. Try to live your life 90% selfish. So, recognize when you join the US military, you may be sent to risk your life and to die for a politician's self-interest, right? So, don't be so naive. Like when people are trying to get you to do things, they're driven by their self-interest. Nations invade other nations for often individual self-interest of leaders. Often the individual self-interest of leaders is very different from the national self-interest. So, we have to always ask, like, what are the incentives here? What are the incentives that the president faces? What's the incentives that the various politicians face? What are the incentives various bureaucrats face? What are the incentives that the pundits face? Right? And just expect that people are going to be 95% selfish. So, when you interact with people, have that understanding and when you sign up for a job, right? Expect that your boss is going to be 95% self-interested. Your boss is not going to put himself at risk or enjoy less efficient work just because he likes you, generally speaking, right? People employ people out of self-interest. And at the same time, your boss is not going to be terribly concerned about your well-being. Like, I'm thinking about one acquaintance of mine. He hired someone away from, you know, what would have turned out to be a multi-million dollar payout at some ascended tech firm. And so, he hired someone away for a piddling salary. And this guy, if he'd instead taken the offer at Uber or Facebook or something like that, he would have made millions and millions and millions of dollars. Instead, you know, he got a far inferior rate of return. You can't expect an employer to look out for your best interests. You can't expect your friends necessarily to look out for your best interests. You can't expect your rabbi, your priest, your minister, even your father and mother. And you certainly can't expect politicians. So, when you join the U.S. military, it's like, oh, I'm just doing this to, you know, pay my way through college. Well, some politician's self-interest may send you to die in some hellhole in Africa, right? And there's no way out of this. There's no way out of frequently divergent conflicts of interest between what's in the political leaders, self-interest, and what's in the nation's self-interest. What's in your boss's self-interest, what's in your self-interest. So, frequently, politicians do things that are in their self-interest in the interests of their career that are really bad for you, really bad for the country. And if you sign up for the U.S. military, yeah, you may well be sent to die on the other side of the world in some hellish place for reasons that have nothing to do with America's self-interest. So, you may be a patriot enjoying the U.S. military for patriotic reasons. That doesn't mean you're not going to die in some hellhole for stupid, idiotic, selfish reasons by some politician who wants to get re-elected. And so, he's going to put your life at risk doing something pointless.