tax the rich. the free ride is over. [The Counter Hit #10]

Hello!

Welcome to the Counter Hit, where we

counter the hits of life that beat us

down with our own vibe.

I'm your host and resident vibe-zition

scare quotes, also known as

Sam, but you can call me...

Craig.

Today's show dives into life lessons and

hard-earned wins, Resident Evil, the

movie, not the video game, and much more.

Let's dive into our main topic today,

which is of wealth and taxes.

You know, that thing we all want.

Money, finances, riches

beyond our wildest dreams.

Rich and famous is a common phrase we

often hear people say.

Chances are, if you're watching this show

right now, you wish you

were a little bit richer.

And chances are, you might be thinking to

yourself, "Man, how do the ultra-wealthy

just keep somehow getting

wealthier every single year?"

(Gasp)

Is something nefarious at play?

Actually, kind of.

A little bit.

And it's not our fault, but it's

somebody's fault, and we should probably

do something about it.

Because at the counter-hit, we realize

that, even if we're not to blame, we

still have to take ownership and

responsibility for the

situation that we are in.

And today I want to give a breakdown,

kind of a sit-rep of how we got where we

are, why it feels like no matter what you

do, you're just not able to climb up to

the "top," why the top keeps rising and

rising and rising, and try to give us

some solidarity and some peace of mind

knowing what's ahead for the future in

our political elections and so forth and

what we can do about it.

But first, let's play an old clip that

we've heard from time to

time before here on this show.

is my first time at Davos, and I find it

quite a bewildering

experience, to be honest.

I mean, 1,500 private jets have flown in

here to hear Sir David Attenborough speak

about how we're wrecking the planet.

I hear people talking the language of

participation and justice

and equality and transparency.

But then, I mean, almost no one raises

the real issue of tax avoidance, right?

And of the rich just not

paying their fair share.

I mean, it feels like I'm at a

firefighters conference and no one's

allowed to speak about water, right?

There was only one panel, actually.

Well, we've had two.

You're the second of our panel.

There was only one panel.

Let's go there.

One panel hidden away in the media center

that was actually about tax avoidance.

I was one of the 15 participants.

So something needs to change here.

I mean, 10 years ago, the World Economic

Forum asked the question, "What must

industry do to prevent a

broad social backlash?"

The answer is very simple.

Just stop talking about philanthropy and

start talking about taxes.

Taxes, taxes.

We need to...

I mean, just two days ago, there was a

billionaire in here, what's his name?

Michael Dell.

And he asked the question, like, "Name me

one country where a top marginal tax rate

of 70% has actually worked."

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, I'm a historian.

The United States, that's

where it has actually worked.

In the 1950s, during Republican President

Eisenhower, you know, the war veteran,

the top marginal tax rate in the U.S. was

91% for people like Michael Dell.

You know, the top estate tax for people

like Michael Dell was more than 70%.

I mean, this is not rocket science.

I mean, we can talk for a very long time

about all these stupid

philanthropy schemes.

We can invite Bono once more.

Come on, we got to be

talking about taxes.

That's it.

Taxes, taxes, taxes.

All the rest is bullshit, in my opinion.

Taxes, taxes, taxes.

And the rest is bullshit

in this person's opinion.

Well, we've played that clip before, and

I think it's important

to discuss right now.

The issue of...

...wealth disparity.

And if you'll indulge with me for a

little bit, I'd like to do

what I can to help educate us on

what we're dealing with right now when it

comes to folks being a lot richer than we

are and what we can do about it and what

the ultra-rich do to

be as rich as they are.

And just so you know, I'm

not just talking up my butt.

I'm a leadership consultant by trade, and

I've had the luxury of

speaking with the ultra-wealthy.

I kind of have the inside

scuba what some of these folks do.

You might not like the answers, but it's

important that we discuss them, because I

think information is power here.

The more information we have, the more we

can actually do something about this.

So, let's break this down.

This is for education and

entertainment purposes only.

I'm not a financial advisor of any kind.

I'm just kind of unveiling the curtain

for those of us that want to understand a

bit more about why is it that folks like

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have all this

money and keep growing

and growing and growing.

And that whole concept of trickle

economics just isn't hitting our domes,

isn't hitting our pocketbooks, isn't

hitting our wallets, isn't hitting our

homes and our roofs and any kind of

capacity that makes sense.

And yet we keep falling for it all the

time over and over and over again.

Well, let's talk about

this for a little bit.

And let's first talk

about the fact that when

you are an ultra-wealthy person, you are

going to be using the

tax code to your benefit.

More specifically, you are going to go

out of your way to ensure that you learn

every single law, every single tax

avoidance trick that exists, and do

whatever you can to ensure that you're

paying the least amount of

taxes that you absolutely have to.

And this is for two reasons.

One, it's a common economic trope, a

common economic theory of decorum that

believes that it is your moral

responsibility to maximize on how much

money you gain and to prevent the local

government, in this case, we're talking

about the United States government, from

receiving your money via taxes.

And two, it's the oldest economic concept

in the world, which is

the concept of the fool.

The fool is the one that's holding the

bag, and the one that's not the fool is

the one that made off with the riches.

In every single economic system, there is

this concept of the fool.

So if you're the one paying taxes when

everyone else has found a way to avoid

paying taxes, you're the fool, and you

don't want to be the fool here, right?

So when it comes to the ultra-mega

wealthy and how they want to retain the

riches, they have done whatever they can

to hold on to the riches via looking at

the tax code very, very, very carefully.

But let's not get fooled.

This isn't super hyper complicated.

There's just a couple of hoops they all

jump through, and they're able to realize

significant gains here in

this particular prospect.

For instance, do you know that businesses

pay taxes on profit, not revenue?

Meanwhile, people like you and me, when

we make a wage, we pay taxes on all

income received, regardless of its

revenue or profit, et cetera.

Even if we lost money that year, any kind

of money that hits our pocketbook, we

have to pay taxes on that.

But if you're a business, if you're a

corporation, you pay taxes on the profit

you've earned, not revenue.

If you've somehow lost money, or that's

at least what your accounting

books look like when you've done this,

then you don't have to pay taxes on it.

You have to market it.

You have to document it, send it off to

your governmental entity.

But if you didn't make any money, then

you don't have to pay taxes on it.

This is important for us to understand as

we keep diving into

this particular topic.

Now, let's hold this idea as we discuss a

little bit more about

how we got to where we are.

And I think there's two very important

things to understand.

And again, we're talking about the U.S.

tax system and what

benefits the ultra wealthy.

The first thing we need to talk about is

this concept called Shareholders' Primacy

Theory, or Shareholders' Supremacy

Theory, which is a corporate theory that

kind of permeated during the 1970s after

an economist by Milton Friedman spoke

about the idea that every person's job,

and they work for a company, managers,

agents, etc., their entire goal is to

maximize on shareholder profits.

That's all you're

supposed to be doing.

That's your number one job.

Now, what does this mean?

Well, a shareholder is someone who owns a

piece of a company, and they own a piece

of a company based off of stock.

And stock is kind of a made-up thing, but

it's what the market believes a company

is worth, and you divide it into little

thousands of little slices, and you have

something that's called shares.

If I have five shares of a company and

you have ten shares of a company, you own

more of the company than I do, but we are

both shareholders of the company.

And so Milton Friedman, in his essay in

1970, spoke about the fact that it's

everyone's moral responsibility that

works for a company to maximize on

shareholder value, meaning every decision

you make, everything you have to do, you

have a moral obligation to ensure that

shareholders are getting their maximum

return for them having

invested in your company.

Prior to this, shareholders were seen as

investors of a company, and there was

more implied risk here.

What does implied risk mean?

Well, if I'm investing in a company and

something happens, a

catastrophe, the market goes down,

the ebb and flow of business just

happens, I'm expected to kind of ride the

tide of that, right?

I'm investing because I believe in your

company, I believe in

your business, ergo,

some years are going to be good, some

years aren't going to be good.

Overall, though, I'm going to get a

little bit of return on my

investment over the long haul,

and you as a business owner are going to

reinvest all your dividends and all your

profits and your revenue into the

company, into the businesses, build up

infrastructure and expand, and of course,

you know, pay your people even more money

as a thank you for all

the work that they're doing.

And I, as a shareholder who held on to

the most amount of risk, get a little bit

more of a turn on my on my

investment, but not much more.

This was great.

This was great in the

30s, 40s, 50s and 60s.

Problem is, by the time we hit the 70s

and 80s, there was reports that economic

growth was slowing down

and that scared people off.

So people like Milton Friedman argued

that every person should be out to focus

entirely on the shareholder and trying to

make sure they are happy at all costs.

This is important to understand because

now we're going to dive into the 1980s

where our President Ronald

Reagan comes in the foray.

You see, President Reagan

had a particular agenda.

He had a particular thing in mind, which

was this this thing that we're dealing

with right now in terms

of our economic stagnation.

And the only way that we're going to

solve this and the only way that we're

going to solve it is if we cut back on

taxes on the ultra wealthy

and cut back on regulation.

If we do those things, if the wealthy

don't have to pay as much in taxes, well,

then clearly, obviously, they're going to

be able to produce more.

And if they produce more and there's less

regulation and less things they have to

answer for, then

everyone gets to win from this.

And again, the phrase trickle down

economics was born as a result of this.

But let's examine what trickle down

economics means and what this is allowed.

So, for instance, as I said, businesses

only have to pay tax

on profit, not revenue.

Did you know that if they buy a mega

yacht, a boat, a plane, a third or fourth

or a fifth home, if they buy a private

island, if they even buy a sports team,

if they even invest in what we call super

PACs, which are big, giant entities that

lobby for politicians to get an office,

if they do all of that under the guise of

it being a business expense, they don't

have to pay taxes on that stuff.

They don't have to pay tax on any kind of

luxury good of any kind, especially if

those things are helping funnel and fuel

some of their economic gains.

That's right.

They don't pay taxes on it.

that there should be a 20 percent luxury

tax on luxury goods as a result of this,

because again, they're able to not just

buy these things, but buy them tax free

because it's all part of the business

that they're kind of fronting and working

towards and kind of propagating towards.

But that's not all.

You see, in addition to that, business

owners have because they have large

amounts of money and large amounts of

stock in different businesses, they have

investments and those investments are

subject to what we call capital gains.

Now, capital gains is when you sell an

asset for more than you paid for.

So if I buy something, an investment for

hundred dollars in a couple of months,

it's now worth one

hundred twenty dollars.

If I sell that, I make

twenty dollars on that investment.

It's twenty dollars on

top of the one hundred.

Income received via capital gains is only

taxed at 20 percent.

Doesn't matter what it is.

It's basically a flat 20 percent.

This is important because the highest

earning individual wage worker has a

total tax rate of 37 percent.

And many of us, it's

upwards of 40 and 50 percent.

Right.

So let's put this into perspective.

Luxury goods don't get taxed at all.

When I sell a stock that I make money off

of, my tax is minimal,

if not anything else.

It's 20 percent, which is going to be

less than the highest other tax that we

have, which is 37

percent for the high earners.

So basically what I'll do is I will start

selling my my stock to offset my capital

gains in order for me to keep paying

myself money at a much lower wage than

someone who works hard for their amount

of money and get taxed 37 percent.

Is it starting to make

sense now how crazy this is?

So the question is worth asking is what

if we raise taxes for capital gains to

the same level as wages?

Because as many economists argue, a

dollar is a dollar is

a dollar is a dollar.

It doesn't matter if you're waiting

tables, if you're betting on markets

if you're selling appreciating assets, it

should all be the same.

Right.

Capital gains are only taxed when they

are sold or cashed out, not when they,

quote unquote, sit inside of a stock or a

business continuing to appreciate.

And again, this is important because in

the 1970s, right around the time of

Milton Friedman was arguing, hey,

shareholder supremacy,

gains tax was 35 percent.

Personal and investment taxes climbed to

up to 70 percent during this time.

So the ultra wealthy were getting taxed

quite a bit, but that

all changed with Reagan.

Reagan again with his argument to cut

taxes on the wealthy and cut back on

regulation again because growth

economically was slowing down.

And Reagan argued along with his his team

of people that thought the same way that

he did that if we just cut all this back,

the economy will boom.

So in 1986, a tax reform bill was passed

that brought the previous existing rates

down for the mega rich.

But the boom didn't really happen, not

for people like you and me.

And just to put even more extra sour

sauce on this, did you know that CEOs

sometimes aren't

really paid a real salary?

That's right.

Big executives that work for a company

are incentivized not to take a salary

because that would, of course, require

that they get a tax

rate that is pretty high.

Instead, they're

offered shares in a company.

And again, they don't pay capital gains

taxes on shares that you

own and you don't sell.

So you can keep appreciating shares over

time, over time, over time

and not pay any taxes for it.

But then how do they get paid?

How do they pay for things?

Oh, that's easy because what they do is

they go to the banks and they go to the

banks to say, hey, look, I have a net

worth of X amount of money.

Let's say a billion dollars.

Can I get a loan for

million dollars just to

pay for some of my expenses?

And the bank is going to go, absolutely,

of course, you're

worth a billion dollars.

We know you're absolutely worth it and

just gives them the loan.

And so they now have cash they get to use

that's not being taxed.

And yes, there might be an interest rate

on that particular loan, but they can go

ahead and just pay that off.

And that interest rate

they're paying off is far less

monetary kind of fines than what their

tax rate would have been.

Are we getting it yet?

How crazy this system is.

Oh, and here's the best part.

Let's say you are an ultra wealthy person

with millions, billions

of dollars and you die.

Pass away.

So sad.

So sad.

If you have any heirs of your business or

if you have any heirs in your family,

all the stocks and investments that you

own that again is not being taxed gets

transferred over to your heirs.

Now, here's an interesting thing.

Transferring of wealth from one person to

another in almost all cases.

Well, you get taxed for that, right?

No, of course not in this system, you

see, because in this system, the way they

work it out is well.

You're getting it

transferred over to your heirs.

So I'm acquiring the wealth.

And because at the time in which the

person passed away, I'm getting it

transferred to me, let's

say it's a billion dollars.

Well, the portfolio is

worth a billion dollars.

And so it hasn't fluctuated at all.

So it's a zero percent profit and a zero

percent capital gain.

So you don't pay any capital gains tax on

that one billion dollar portfolio that

you have now just absorbed and acquired.

And it resets again.

This is called dynastic wealth.

It's where wealth goes from generation to

generation to

generation, a dynasty, if you will.

And again, when things reset, you're not

really paying taxes on it.

According to Forbes magazine, one third

of the two thousand seven hundred eighty

one billionaires in two thousand twenty

four just a few years ago

inherited their vast wealth.

One third of that number.

That's just under one thousand

individuals, nine hundred and twenty

seven people inherited their wealth,

their billions of

wealth as a result of this.

So

what economists often argue is that there

should be we should be able to tax

capital gains at the same rate as wages.

We should tax larger loans that the

wealthy take out against

their net worth from the banks.

So that should get taxed as well.

And capital gains should be taxed

annually, regardless of whether or not

you've realized those gains or not, just

like everyone else on this planet has to

realize within their own capital gains.

OK, so that's what we propose, but it

hasn't happened yet.

So what can the schlub like you and I do

to help move this along?

Well, we have to realize this is the

problem that we're facing and vote on the

legislation or the state legislation and

the state representatives to

vote in our favor for this.

And we're going to get to

that in just a little bit.

Let's keep this in mind.

Obviously, tax, tax, tax need to tax this

stuff, not allow the ultra rich to kind

of get away with all these different

cheat codes that we have.

But it doesn't end there.

You see, because then

we have a corporate tax.

If you have a company

categorized as a corporation of some

kind, the corporation tax has actually

shrunk over the years.

It used to be a pretty sizable amount,

but now it's only at about 21 percent.

Once again, if we compare this to our

high individual income earners who their

lowest tax rate is 37 percent.

So a corporation just literally gets

taxed less than a high income earner.

This at home because here at zero dot

media, which is the company that myself

and Daniel Pratly own, we had an

opportunity to classify our LLC, limited

liability company, not as a partnership,

but rather as a corporation.

Now, that wouldn't have made sense for

the size of our company and the fact that

it's just the two of us and earlier it

was the three of us.

But if we went through all that red tape

to make ourselves a corporation, whenever

more money came through to our buckets,

we could literally claim that 21 percent

corporate tax rate, the lowest tax rate

you can possibly have.

I'm proud to say that

we did not go for that.

We are just a partnership.

And so we both get taxed per what our

legislation or what our state locality

taxes for any of our income

that we have here at zero dot

taken even further.

I used to work in finance.

Work is a loose term.

I used to day trade when I

was getting into day trading.

There were two camps of thought.

One camp, which was a very large group of

people and very outspoken, believed in

Milton Friedman's ideology.

And not only that believed in Reagan's

ideology that is within my interest, my

moral obligation to ensure that I'm

walking away with as

much money as possible.

And if there is some kind of loophole I

can capitalize on to prevent me from

paying taxes or minimizing them, it is my

responsibility to take that loophole.

I'll let you decide if

that's the right call or not.

There was a smaller but very firm group

of people that believed that said, no,

actually, I'm going to pay taxes because

what happens for the day trading is you

get paid capital gains on any income you

make within the year.

some people would do is they would find

ways in which that income would only be

realized a year later or a different

account or move it somewhere else.

So that way you wouldn't

have to pay those taxes.

Myself and a few other day traders who

felt differently said, nope, if I make

money today, I should get taxed on the

money I make today per the capital gains

tax that I'm in right now, the short term

income tax, the short

term gains tax for sure.

And

I firmly believe as far as long as I'm

going to be living on this planet, and I

think Daniel believes the same way, I'm

not here to cheat any system.

And in fact, I want to make sure that if

there's any astronomical amount of money

that we make, whether it's at zero dot,

whether it's myself individually, I want

to be taxed on it because when it gets

taxed, it helps realize programs that

helps the entire community that we're in

and helps all here on Team Human.

Yet that's what we're talking about.

The ultra wealthy typically are

categorized as narcissistic and believe

that it's their moral

right to not be taxed at all.

They believe that if you are getting

taxed the full amount,

you're just a schlub.

You're just stupid.

You just don't know any better.

And obviously, I'm better because I made

more money and I'm not

getting taxed for it, unlike you.

That's their mentality here.

So it's things like blocking taxes,

finding ways to have your income be

floated into an international place.

It's not the United States where the

income tax or any kind of tax there is

basically zero percent.

I'm talking Cayman Islands, for instance,

if I have a company, a headquarters or a

base of operations that's in the Cayman

Islands, even if it's just a small shack

of an office, if I can claim it, that's

one of my headquarters.

And that's where my

income is coming from.

I could argue that, hey, guess what?

It's your percent income tax because I

have a company that's

in the Cayman Islands.

What if there was a

corporate minimum tax?

What if no matter where you were located

in the world, you got taxed?

You get taxed a minimum amount of money.

It didn't matter where you were.

A dollar is a dollar is a dollar, right?

If you're in the Cayman Islands, if

you're in Ireland, if you're in Japan, if

you're in the United States, if you're a

company that made money, you

get taxed a minimum amount.

All this stuff is possible, by the way.

It's just that we've had legislation or

de-legislation to take all this back.

That de-regulation piece that Ronald

Reagan was such a big fan of that has

allowed the Uber wealthy

to be even more wealthy.

Oh, here's one more crazy thing that the

Uber wealthy do when it

comes to their companies.

Stock buybacks.

Remember shares in stocks from before?

So what ends up happening is your company

is worth a certain amount of money based

on the market value.

This is all made up nonsense, but this is

what supply and demand dictates.

Your stock is worth a certain amount.

And your company is a lot of a certain

amount of stock based on that net worth.

And you can split it up in dividend and

so forth and distribute it to people who

want to buy on the open market or maybe

on the private markets, et cetera.

There's a way to

inflate your stock price.

It's called a stock buyback.

If I'm owner of my company or I'm

representative of the company or I'm a

shareholder of the company, I can buy the

stocks that have been distributed to

other shareholders and

take it away from them.

So that way it's

within the company itself.

And that reduces the

supply of stocks that there are.

And that inflates the price of the stock.

Buying stock of your own company feeding

into itself, the

snake eating its own tail.

That sounds super illegal, isn't it?

It has to be.

Except it's not.

It's perfectly legal and

a lot of companies do it.

They artificially inflate market value by

doing stock buybacks.

In earlier episodes of our podcast, I've

talked about Nvidia and my concerns about

their overinflated stock price.

And I strongly suspect this is happening,

although unconfirmed.

I don't know that for certain.

It's just my opinion.

So

what can we do all about this?

What are we talking about this for?

What's the purpose of discussing

something as depressing as this?

The thing about the counter hit is we

want to make sure we give ourselves the

tools necessary to punch back

in whatever way makes sense.

And I want to do this quick little

history lesson of what

the ultra wealthy are doing so we can

keep ourselves honest when those

opportunities come our way to change

legislation that can be within all of our

favor, not just a very select few people.

The United States, California is going to

put something on their ballot.

It's called Proposition 40,

also known as the billionaire tax

on the state ballot on November 3rd of

their local election.

You're going to be able to vote on

whether you believe there should be a one

time tax to the uber wealthy, a.k.a.

The billionaires, people that are have a

total net worth of a

billion dollars or more.

There are there is going to be some kind

of committee or some kind of process due

process to figure out who falls in this

category, because, as you know, the ultra

wealthy do all these sneaky things to

hide their wealth in

investments, in homes, in

estate.

So they're going to do a myriad of

different things to find out

who falls in that category.

And there have been a lot of naysayers,

typically other billionaires, who've been

paying lobbyists and trying to

de-incentivize this

from getting on the ballot.

But now it is on the ballot and

California is going to

be able to vote on this.

And it's going to be an interesting

experiment, because depending on how this

goes, if it votes this

particular way, we'll see whether

that income that comes from the

billionaire tax, if it's successfully

voted upon, if it changes anything there

for the state of California and whether

other states follow suit.

I think this is a short term band-aid.

I don't think it's the full term

solution, but I think letting people

realize how much money is being withheld

from them from other what I would call

bad faith actors is really important.

Like I said,

these ultra wealthy people, they're

literally stealing money from us from out

within our noses, but we just we're just

not paying attention to it.

And instead, we are sold a narrative

that, you know what?

Let's not hate the billionaires.

Let's not eat the rich.

That's nasty because we want to be the

land of opportunity here in

the United States of America.

We want everyone to have access to the

same riches and the same

infrastructure everyone else does.

If I want to be a billionaire, I just

have to work hard enough.

But you just heard me.

Billionaires don't necessarily work

harder than other people.

They make more money

doing less because they've

weaponized a tax code in

their particular favor.

And I'm arguing that within everyone's

best interest, including billionaires, by

the way, to regulate this tax code a bit.

Because we see that when we go back to

the 50s, 60s and 70s, when the tax rates

were a lot higher, a few things happened.

Like, for instance,

if you're going to get

nickel and dime by your government via

taxes, then what else are you going to be

doing with your money?

If I'm a business owner.

Well, if I really don't want to be taxed

on this, I've got to

spend my money somehow.

So what am I going to do?

I'm going to invest my money into my

business, into infrastructure, into

expansion, into worker salaries.

And

in that way, I'm kind of avoiding taxes,

but it's helping everyone out.

Workers get a better livable wage.

Expansion means there's more jobs.

There's more economic prosperity.

And if more people are making more money,

like more people, not just a select few,

then we'll get to buy more stuff.

We buy more stuff than it

helps everyone out all around.

So.

It's common to feel helpless in the

system, and it's common to feel like

we live in a political system and you

can't talk about

certain things or whatever.

But I argue that generally 99 percent of

our problems are coming from an economic

disparity that is easily solvable.

Now, I've been speaking mostly about the

United States American tax code system.

I'm not an expert enough to know how

other regions of the world work, but a

lot of our billionaires

come from good old America.

So I have to argue that we could be taken

down a couple of notches and making that

better for everyone.

I speak about this again from a personal

perspective, because recently myself and

Daniel had to navigate some tax waters

because of the fact of how our LLC works

and how he's from Europe.

And I'm from the Americas and how that

works in the tax for tax code.

And there's a lot of different ways you

can interpret the tax codes that way.

It's with quote

unquote within your favor.

And I chose and I know Daniel chose not

to do it that way, to do it the fair and

balanced way, to be real, to be honest

with our taxes and making sure we are

paying our fair share.

And we will always do that.

I will always pay fair share on taxes.

I think all of us should.

And all of us probably do.

It's just a very select few people that

have gotten away with

not having to do it.

Now, we say there should be no

billionaires on this planet.

This is where this logic comes from,

because it seems to

reason that there shouldn't be

billionaires in a world where there's so

much economic disparity.

Now, if we're all millionaires and

there's a couple of us that are

billionaires, sure, why

not inflation be damned?

Who cares?

But that's simply not true.

We have impoverished people.

We have people struggling with homes.

We have people struggling with food.

We have people

struggling with health care.

There's struggle all across the globe.

So to argue to people that you just got

to work harder is nonsense,

not when all this is solvable.

The rich need to be taxed.

We need more regulation on taxation.

We need to ensure that we're not overly

inflating stock prices to make our net

worth look better than it is.

We need to make sure that banks aren't

giving free money away and all that has

to be taxed in some way.

We need to create a funneling system

where the mega rich are forced either to

pay their taxes to their government or

reinvest into the companies that they

serve and get rid of all these tax sheets

and these blocks are the same.

Now, this is all my opinion.

This is all just

education slash entertainment.

But you can validate

everything that I've said.

You go and look it up,

research it on your own.

I have the fortune of being able to speak

with a lot of these ultra mega wealthy

people and I can give

you my personal opinion.

There's a few of them that truly believe

that it's their moral responsibility to

be doing it this way.

They don't think they're doing anything,

quote unquote, nefarious.

They think it's just their lot in life

and that's what they're fortunate to get.

And there's a couple of them that do know

that they are unfathomably

rich and they shouldn't be.

And I wish there was more of those folks,

but there are a few of them.

So

once again, what we can do

is keep this in top of mind

in your local elections, the

ones you're allowed to vote in.

If any issues come up on your ballot that

are related to this, do your due

diligence, do your research

Vote for or against it, whatever it does,

whatever it can do to

help tax the rich a bit more.

so that way the regulation is fair across

the board because right now it is

absolutely not fair right now.

Billionaires are spending lots of money

to prevent some of these items from

getting on the ballot,

from preventing certain

local representatives from being on the

ballot or being in office because

They would vote against

deregulation and for regulation.

There's a lot of money being spent here,

but that is just a splash in the pond

compared to the amount of money they are

more than likely owed to the local and

state governments and us as the American

people and the global

people on the world as a whole.

So

at the counter hit, we don't believe in

bearing our heads in sand.

We believe in keeping ourselves honest

and apprised of these issues.

So I wanted to kind of do a quick little

hyper secret lesson on the ultra wealthy

so we can keep ourselves

honest and look out for

Ways in which we can help

improve the lives of everyone.

And again, don't let issues get

politicized for you.

Good versus bad.

Don't fall for moral

strong man arguments.

It's really a matter of the ultra wealthy

getting a demonstrable amount of extra

wealth on top of their already massive

amounts of wealth for no reason.

And we want to stop that

in whatever way we can.

And you can play a part in that.

(Upbeat Music)

All right, folks, all

right, all right, all right.

Let's talk about something else.

We've talked a little bit about some

depressing things when it comes to people

being ultra rich and we are not that.

That's not fair.

We can do better than that.

Can't we?

Probably.

Let's talk about some good stuff, some

weird stuff, some esoteric stuff.

Let's start our

conversation talking about

Resident Evil.

That's right, Resident

Evil, but not the video game.

That's right, the movie.

There's a movie.

Wait, there's been plenty of

movies, haven't there, Ben?

That's right, there have been plenty of

movies about the Resident Evil franchise.

But this one, the one that just came out,

a couple weeks ago, is

a little bit different.

up to speed, for those of you that are

following along, Resident Evil is a video

game series by Capcom, originally

directed by a team of developers led by

Shinji Mikami, and it's become a wildly

successful franchise in

video gaming entertainment.

Resident Evil 1 especially was known for

kind of bringing Capcom out of almost

bankruptcy when it first came out in 1995

or six, one of those years.

And then later on, kind of got a

resurgence of renewal when they started

doing the remake series where they'd

remake all the Resident Evils.

Meanwhile, making brand new ones in

tandem with them with Resident Evil 7 and

8 slash village, the remakes of Resident

Evil 2, 3 and 4, Code

Veranda is on the way.

Basically, Resident Evil

is big money right now.

And Resident Evil is a survival horror

video game franchise.

The basic premise is you are in a place

and you need to get out of it and your

tools and resources to get out of this

place are pretty limited.

Oh, by the way, there's probably zombies

out to get you, maybe evil dead kind of

crows pecking at you,

maybe lizard type things.

Basically, there's a biohazard weapon out

there that's been

weaponized against the human race.

And you're just a bystander just trying

to survive, trying to get out of it.

Now, the games have a overarching

narrative, they have overarching themes.

I'm a really big fan of the games

themselves, but something that I've been

kind of totally blind to

has been the movie franchise.

The movie franchise directed and kind of

produced and kind of

mainlined by Paul W.S.

Anderson, starting with Resident Evil in

2002, then Resident Evil Apocalypse,

Resident Evil Extinction, Resident Evil

Afterlife, Resident Evil Retribution,

Resident Evil, the final

chapter, it goes on and on and on.

I've only seen one of these movies, which

was the very first one.

And let's just say I'm

not the biggest fan of it.

Resident Evil, the

movie franchise by Paul W.S.

Anderson has its fans and

they are mega, mega fans.

And the movies, despite the fact them not

being my cup of tea, they've gone on to

be a six movie series and they've been

financially lucrative for its publisher,

which is Sony as well as Metropolitan

Film Export and Constantine Film Group.

Okay,

so that was a six film series.

Then they did a little bit of a reboot

called Resident Evil Welcome to Raccoon

City, a movie I did not watch.

I heard it wasn't great.

Maybe it is good.

Tell me in the comments

below if you think it was good.

It was directed by Johannes Roberts and

written by Johannes Roberts.

And apparently is a loose adaptation of

the first two Resident Evil games

that takes place in 1998

or 1996 in Raccoon City.

And the first two Resident Evil games are

probably the most prolific, involving

Chris Redfield and

Jill Valentine, Leon S.

Kennedy and Claire Redfield,

Chris's sister, sorry.

And it apparently didn't do super well.

It kind of flopped.

And so as a result, it looked like Sony

and other parties were

looking to reboot the series again.

Enter the chat,

the movie of topic that we're talking

about, which is the

latest movie in the series.

It's the second reboot and it's simply

just called Resident Evil.

And it's directed and written by none

other than Zack Craiger.

If you knew Zack Craiger, he probably got

his notoriety from Whitest Kids You Know

and starred in sitcoms like Friends of

Benefits, Guys with Kids and Wrecked.

But recently he's been known for his

horror tenure, working on films such as

Barbarian, Weapons and now

this movie, Resident Evil.

I got to see it literally yesterday,

which would be two days at

the time of this posting.

And I'm gonna save my overall thoughts

for the film for a later

discussion with my lovely wife,

where we'll talk about

it on our second channel.

And to know more

about our second channel,

you have to know about our Patreon.

That's right, we have a Patreon called

www.patreon.com slash zero dot media.

That's where we offer first looks into

all of our counter hit episodes,

additional content and touch points with

our lovely Patreon family, as well as

giving you access to a

private Discord server.

And on top of all that, we have a super

secret show that I'm working right now

with my wife on that will be unveiled

when it's finished or done or ready.

But in the meantime, you get first look

access into those episodes.

We actually just launched a private

secret episode the day before yesterday,

maybe two days ago, it was on Sunday.

So come check us out there if you'd like.

So I'm gonna save my

overall thoughts for the movie

until that point and

talk about that in general.

But I did wanna talk a little briefly as

a video game nerd, as a Resident Evil

aficionado, I can give a recommendation

to watch this film, Resident Evil.

And I wanna talk a little bit about

video game adaptations

and whether it's in the best interest to

make the video game adaptation loyal to

the quote unquote source material or just

to make a good goddamn story, movie,

book, whatever and be within

the universe of the adaptation.

There've been a lot of video game

adaptations over the years, horrible ones

like the "Super Mario Brothers" movie

from the 90s, mid ones like "The Prince

of Persia Sands of Time."

I guess if you count the "Super Mario"

CG movies that have come out lately, that

might be in contention for

being pretty good adaptations.

"Street Fighter,"

multiple movies on that front and a new

one's coming out in about a week or two.

Video game adaptations have

always been kind of sticky.

They've been kind of tricky to do because

video games are not movies.

I don't know if you know

this, but they're not movies.

They're just not.

And so because they're not movies, the

conventions that work for a video game

don't always work for

a movie and vice versa.

And I think we get into trouble when we

try to conform a

specific framework or a paradigm

from one format to another.

I'm a big believer in remixes.

Like I love taking source material and

remixing it for the format.

I think that's a lot of fun.

That being said, people might get really

sticky if you are not loyal enough to the

quote unquote source material.

And some people will only watch the

adaptation because they're expecting one

thing and they might get something else.

This film, "Resident Evil,"

is its own thing.

It does take place in the

universe of "Resident Evil."

There are a couple of differences.

For instance, the "Raccoon City" threat,

pandemic, virus, whatever you wanna call

it, took place in 1998.

This film takes place in present time, so

our time right now, so cell phones exist,

internet exists, modern

cars and technology exists.

That's all part of the schism here.

And the story does not

follow a main character.

It follows a character brand new, just

Zach Craig's own universe.

And I gotta be honest,

as a "Resident Evil" fan,

I loved this movie.

It was great.

I thought it exactly

what it was supposed to do.

It gave me something new, and the DNA of

"Resident Evil" was absolutely here.

And I would love to see

more things like this.

But there's arguments that are saying

that this is not truly a "Resident Evil"

movie, that if you don't have the main

characters like Chris Redfield and Leon

Kennedy and Jill Valentine, it's not a

"Resident Evil" movie.

If you don't mention big,

bad evil guys like Wesker,

it's not a "Resident Evil" movie.

I disagree.

I think as long as you have a film that

is like the feeling of what the games

provide to you, which by the way, that's

hard to replicate, that's

hard to kind of emulate.

I think if you have that, I think you can

be successful with it.

And I also put my hands up and say, I

kind of don't care if it's a "Resident

Evil" movie as long as it's a good movie.

And I can say with my full recommendation

that "Resident Evil" by Zach Cracker in

2026 is a good movie.

But it'll be interesting to see how

"Resident Evil" super

fans really take to it.

Again, I consider myself a "Resident

Evil" super fan, but I'm not

a fan of the movies per se.

I'm not a fan of some of the video games

or kind of not always great.

I think generally when "Resident Evil"

falters, it's when it focuses too much on

quote unquote, "lore" and less on the

existential threat of being stuck in a

place and trying to find a way out.

I mean, that's what "Resident Evil" was

about, "Resident Evil."

That's the American bastardized term for,

or bastardized localized

name for the franchise.

In Japan, it's just called biohazard.

Overall, I thought it was pretty good.

And I would recommend everyone go see it

if you're a horror fan.

Keep in mind, it is not a

super hyper scary horror movie.

There's a lot of humor in it.

It's

not a comedy,

but Zachary Craiger comes

from a comedic background.

So he knows exactly how to

pull on that tension meter.

He knows when to push the tension and

give you a good jump scare.

He knows when to pull it

back and give you humor.

The balance was always in

this really nice sweet spot.

And the more I think about

the film, the more I think that

the character that you follow along in

this story, which I'm not even gonna tell

you the character's name, just watch it.

And that person's journey is kind of

perfect and it can be

its own standalone thing.

It can also be a

beginning of something else.

What am I talking about?

Once again, come join our Patreon at

patreon.com slash zero.media to check out

our other channel we're working on right

now, where I will discuss it in more

detail with my wife.

Spoilers and all, but my own spoiler

review is it's very good.

Go watch it.

Experience new things and embrace when

someone takes a creative risk.

Zach Craiger could have done a beat for

beat character by character, lore by

lore, remake of one of

the Resident Evil stories.

I made a lot of money from the gamer

goblins, instead he chose to take his own

experience of Resident Evil, which I

would argue because of what I saw in the

film, I think he's a real super fan.

I think he gets what Resident Evil is all

about and created a own unique story that

happens kind of in parallel to everything

else we had seen and

heard up until that point.

I think we need more of that.

I think the world is

ready for more of that.

So thank you, Zach Craiger.

Thank you for everything

that worked on that particular

project, the screenplay,

the music, the acting,

all really well done.

I came away really surprised.

Good stuff.

Thank you.

(Keyboard Clicking)

(Upbeat Music) (Keyboard Clicking)

All right, folks,

we've talked about wealth,

Resident Evil,

and other things.

But for now, let's turn our discussion

to a good old friend, Reddit.

That's right, folks.

As is tradition at this point, we look at

Reddit posts of what people are talking

about when it comes to life, leadership,

and just trying to make sense of the

world and offer our

unsolicited candid advice.

For those who don't know, I'm a

leadership consultant.

I'm an executive coach.

I give people all kinds of advice.

I'm a little paid to do that.

And today we're doing it for free for

strangers on the internet.

If you have questions that you'd like

facilitated and worked

upon here in this fashion,

out at thecounterhit.com,

www.thecounterhit.com.

Drop a line, drop a

comment, question there.

We'll be happy to answer

them here on the show live.

Or come once again, check out our Patreon

at www.patreon.com slash zero.media.

And so...

For today, we have here in Reddit, it's

opening up right now, the very first

comment from two hours ago.

This person asks,

"Do the hard

conversations ever get easier?

Do you need to take a deep breath and

mentally prepare yourself prior to a hard

conversation or a less

than desirable personality?"

Ooh.

I'm sitting here preparing for a hard

conversation with another manager,

writing out my script and practicing.

Is this normal?

This person asks.

And folks,

it's absolutely normal.

Mapping out your conversations ahead of

time is actually a really good thing.

Knowing what are the talking points you

wanna discuss, making sure you don't lose

sight of those things, especially if it's

a difficult conversation, emotions are

gonna run pretty

high, generally speaking.

And when they run

high, guess what happens?

We lose our topic, we lose our train of

thought, and suddenly the conversation's

over and we forgot to bring up that one

critical big piece that

we wanted to bring up.

So that's all perfectly normal.

I think there's another question you're

asking though, which is

not just am I scripting it out and

practicing, is there a way to do this

that's more effective than not?

Because in the language here, writing out

my script and practicing.

This is where I say, yes, you should map

out your conversation.

What's the structure?

What are you looking to accomplish?

The consultant steps in me.

It shouldn't be scripted.

What does that mean?

How am I endorsing that you practice a

conversation ahead of time and have

something mapped out,

but don't have a script?

I'll tell you exactly why.

If you're writing out a script, it means

you have specific

talking points you want to say,

and in a good conversation, if you're the

one doing most of the talking, it's not a

conversation anymore.

It's not.

When you're the one doing all the talking

with another person in the room, it's not

a conversation, it's a one-way path.

And that one-way path has a technical

name, and that name is

an email.

That's right, we call it an email.

That's what that is,

an email.

And you don't want to have your

conversations feel like emails.

You ever attended a meeting and the

meeting leader did all the talking and

you left later and said,

that should have been an email?

You don't want that.

So you do want to map out your

conversation, but not

script it out instead.

You might want to script out how you want

to open the conversation.

Afterwards though,

if you want to have a successful, tough

conversation, you want to start mapping

out what are the

questions you want to ask.

That way you can get the other person to

start conversing with you.

Exploratory conversations, exploratory

questions, thought-provoking questions.

If there's something you want to

communicate, I can tell it to you, but

it'll be way more effective if I get you

to literally say the

words that I want you to say.

So using what or how questions.

And starting the conversation easy by

asking, what's your read

of the situation right now?

What, if anything, would you change?

What do you think are the biggest pain

points that we're facing right now?

And then pivot when you can to asking for

their thoughts and ideas.

If you had all the keys to the kingdom,

what would you change and how?

If you had infinite amount of money and

budget, what would you do here?

What's your recommendations

on how to solve this problem?

Focus on questions.

This even includes for hard disciplinary

conversations as well, like, what do you

think we should be doing differently to

give ourselves a better outcome?

Stuff like that.

So yes, tough conversations.

You got to map them out.

And the best communicators in the world,

map out every

conversation or the tough ones.

And it's in this format.

They spend a lot of time on how you're

gonna open the conversation as in,

what do you wanna talk about?

What are the

guardrails of our discussion?

Meaning I don't want it

to go this way or that way.

And what do you hope to accomplish?

And then what are my questions?

So we can facilitate some kind of

discussion, some kind of shared learning

all across the board.

Every person does this.

Let's see what everyone else says.

First comment here, it's not easy to

follow, but a piece of advice I got about

hard conversations is this, you are not

responsible for their

reaction only yours.

Yep, good, excellent, yep.

Control your reaction.

You can't facilitate

how they're gonna react.

That being said though,

this is sometimes wrong.

I'm gonna play devil's advocate.

Okay, you're not responsible for their

reaction, but if you're using

inflammatory language to get them to have

a illicit, a certain reaction, you're

kind of being a dick.

Don't do that.

Again, coming back to framing up your

conversation and knowing

what questions you wanna ask.

Someone says, I don't know.

They still feel the same way they did

when I was newer to my career, but I do

it often enough I

might be more numb to it.

No one enjoys them, that is for sure.

I don't know what that's in response to.

Okay, and someone responds, now the prep

never really goes away.

Eventually you just

get faster at it though.

Yes, you get faster at it.

Like your brain knows the script already,

so you're just fine tuning instead of

writing from scratch.

Yep, that's true, absolutely.

Clarity is kindness,

this one person says.

I don't think hard conversations ever get

easy exactly, but the more you work on

clarity and sincerity and approach with

curiosity and a genuine desire to get the

best outcome, the easier they will be.

Love that comment.

Believe that, absolutely.

Someone says, I think that's normal,

especially if you care about keeping the

working relationship intact.

Yes, writing it out can help.

Though I treat it as a few anchor points

rather than a script.

Yes, exactly, good point there, my buddy.

Don't overly script it out.

What happened, why it matters, and what

you want to agree on next.

Yes, try to find the easy wins.

Like what are the things we agree upon?

Great call out.

And leave space for their side.

It gets easier to start these

conversations, even if

the nerves don't vanish.

Yes, okay.

Let me talk about that.

Pre-show jitters,

anxiety, nerves, never goes away.

Even when you're really good at it.

I'm a public speaker.

I get in front of crowds and talk to

people all the time.

Fun fact though,

I still get pre-show

jitters, happens all the time.

The difference between me and maybe you

who might be, oh my gosh,

how do you even do that?

Is I know what those feelings are.

I know how to manage them.

I know what those triggers manifest from,

and I know what to do

instead of those behaviors.

It's in the same way that you manifest an

outline of what you want to say in the

conversation instead of what your heart

and your anxiety and what your raw

emotions might be feeling.

So great call out there.

Absolutely agree.

Anything else here?

Let's see.

It never gets easier, always prepare.

It may not be a script.

Be humble, listen and watch.

And listen as much as you want to talk.

A win-win is usually the

best outcome, absolutely.

Someone says, I used to mentally prepare

for their reactions, but after a while I

saw that people usually know what the

conversation's about when they get called

in by me, and the

actual convo is formality.

That's a specific type of conversation.

Then when a person acted surprised, it

irked me because a serious talk of me

usually means other managers have tried

to address the issues already and failed.

You just have to reframe your mentality

on the entire situation.

You didn't prompt this, they did.

Okay, so this is assuming this is a

disciplinary conversation, and I'm

assuming based on this person's demeanor,

they are higher up the chain.

So yeah, if you're brought into a meeting

to me, if I'm the higher up in the chain,

you should know that you've had a lot of

people talk to you already.

And now the book ends with me, right?

So that's making some assumptions there,

but I agree with that.

All right, good stuff.

Last comment, reminds me of a passage I

read in a detective novel years ago.

Big tough detective was kicked in a quote

unquote delicate spot.

His opponent, a woman, is shocked when he

rallies and beats her.

She asks how, and he says, he has been

kicked there before and it hurts, but it

doesn't do any lasting damage.

And if he didn't

rally, she might kill him.

Okay, that's an interesting

anecdote, this person saying.

Those conversations are always

uncomfortable, but it will always be

easier in the sense you know it won't

kill you, and the situation would be

worse if you hadn't didn't do it.

Okay, overall message, don't hate it.

It's a fine message, like it.

Interesting visual there.

All right, so there you go.

Yes, always map out your conversations,

especially if they

are tough ones for sure.

Mm.

Okay, here's one posted three days ago.

It's a discussion, seems like a little

bit of a shared learning here.

Title is being a manager

helped me in my personal life.

Interesting.

What else we got to say here?

I never really expected this, but

becoming a manager changed me more

outside of work than inside.

Okay, first I became much more calm.

When you manage a team, you can't react

to everything immediately.

If someone is making a mistake, shouting

or being stressed help anybody.

Yeah, so I learned to take

a breath before I answer.

Now I do the same at home

and it works really well.

I have questions on whether you were

doing that at home and it's fine.

Happy for you, bully for you.

They continue.

I also learned to listen better.

Before I was often

listening just to reply.

Yeah, I'm like waiting for my

turn to say something, right?

Now I try to understand what the person

really wanted to say and

the real problem behind it.

My partner noticed

the difference quickly.

Yeah, good for you.

Excellent, excellent, excellent.

Compromise was a big one too.

In a team, not everyone can

be happy with every decision.

So you need to find something that works

for most of the people.

At home, it's the same.

I don't need to quote, win, end quote,

every discussion anymore.

Yeah,

life's a lot easier

when you don't have to win.

Another thing is pedagogy.

Explaining things simply with patience

without making the

other person feel stupid.

It's useful at work, but

also with family and friends.

And finally, time management.

When you have a team, a lot of meetings

and priorities, you can't procrastinate

or you lose control very fast.

So I got better at planning, deciding

what is important and

just starting the task.

I procrastinate much less now, even for

boring stuff at home

like paperwork or DIY.

Of course, I'm not perfect and I still

have bad days, but I really feel I'm a

better partner today

than before I was a manager.

Do you have the same experience?

Did the management skills help you

outside of work too?

124 upvotes.

Yeah, I love this because

it's really common.

It's really common for people that rise

up in this role, whether they wanted to

or not, to learn new skills that help

them in their personal life.

It doesn't happen every time, but it

happens quite a bit, which is very cool.

I know for me it did.

For me, when I was kind of thrown into

leadership, being a director of folks,

I had to watch how I behaved.

I had to be calmer.

I had to be more proactive on things.

And that did trickle into my family life

and it helped quite a bit.

It can absolutely happen.

One bit of warning though.

For me, in my significant other, my

partner and my spouse,

she's wise to the fact that I might be

doing what we call

leadership stuff around her.

And

let's just say we don't

put up with that nonsense.

She can tell when I have the quote

unquote leadership mask on, I start doing

the leadership thing around her.

So I wouldn't do that stuff.

Still learning the vestiges of listening

better, being a better

listener, empathizing more,

having more patience, explaining things

in a way that makes sense for everyone.

Absolutely, yeah, it'll help you.

I love this person's comment, the OP.

A lot of people are commenting on this.

Some are saying, "It feels like people

don't talk about this

side of management enough."

The patience thing is huge.

I used to snap at small

stuff and now I just don't.

It's weird, but good weird.

Listening part hit home too.

My whole life I was just

waiting for my turn to talk.

I'm learning that took

forever, but it's worth it.

Bravo, bravo, bravo.

I will say I run into a couple of

managers who've been

managers for a really long time

and they still haven't learned patience.

And they're still incredibly impatient

and micromanaged constantly.

So I don't think this is a universality,

but if you're early in your career and

you're identifying

this, that's fantastic.

Someone says, "I know

exactly how you feel.

Being a leadership position has not only

made me a better manager,

but a leader and a person.

Keep learning, man, grow every day."

This feels good.

You know, Reddit's weird sometimes and it

gets funky, but this is a feel-good

thread, I like this.

Someone says, "When you work on your

leadership trades, they become a part of

your character trade.

So being a better leader

makes you a better person."

It's a little bit of an absolutionist

take, but hey, I like it, it feels good.

Agree with all the things, adding this,

learning to trust my gut.

Uh-oh.

Uh-oh.

Hold on.

Trust my gut.

I haven't read the rest of it yet.

But

trusting your gut can

be incredibly dangerous.

I'm curious what this

person's about to say.

Let's find out.

I used to overthink my intuitions about

people and situations, but as a manager,

I'm frequently faced with tough choices

where there isn't a clear answer, okay?

I learned from experience that if

something doesn't feel right, I'm

probably right in feeling that way.

Not disregard important input, of course,

but getting a lot of experience in making

quick judgment calls means I'm a lot more

confident in making them.

Okay.

They didn't say what I

thought they were gonna say.

Sometimes we use judgment or our gut as

an excuse to discriminate against people

or do things subjectively,

and that can get us in trouble.

Hard data is always better than that.

That being said, this person's

perspective seems to be more about

ambiguous decisions, and if something

isn't quite feeling right, hesitating and

exploring for more, and that's something

I do encourage and do.

Okay, so good on you.

False alarm on my end.

I got worried for absolutely nothing.

A couple more comments. 100%, it made me

more confident and comfortable initiating

conversation with people I didn't know or

just meeting for the first

time in social situations.

I didn't even expect that to happen, but

it just did, and I'm so

grateful for it, to be honest.

I would say my general personality made

me a good leader, and then being in

leadership made my personal life easier.

Mm, good stuff.

Yeah, I like that.

This one says, "A core belief of mine, we

can only lead the way we live.

Our decisions are made based on our

values, not always the things we say we

value or even what we would like to

value, but on what we really value."

When we learn how to lead people and lead

by positive values, that will inevitably

change how we interact personally.

Yeah, and everyone's

just kind of agreeing on it.

Mm, mm, good stuff.

That's a feel-good thread.

I don't get that too often.

Bully on you, yes.

Leadership is good for all, absolutely.

All right, transitioning

now to the Reddit LifeThread.

Some good stuff here.

This commenter from three hours ago says,

"I love meeting people who are clearly

enjoying their time on earth."

Nice.

There's something refreshing about being

around people who

genuinely seem to like being alive.

Not in a loud or

forced way, just present.

They laugh easily, they're curious,

notice small things, conversation with

them don't feel like work.

Meeting one truly alive person can reset

your sense of what life is meant to be.

Life may not be perfect for them, but

they figured out how to enjoy it anyway.

Mm,

all right, we're using

some weird language here.

I'm gonna choose to interpret it in the

best good faith way that I can, which is

people in life that,

when life hits them hard, they don't

appear to take it out on other people.

They don't appear to

take it as a knock on their life.

They keep on smiling,

they keep on trudging.

People that appear to be present and in

the moment with others,

yeah, that stuff's great.

Now, this OP does not ask the question,

but I'll do it anyway.

How do people become that?

How do we get to be the

people that just enjoy life?

Because it's not too

hard to go the other way.

It's not too hard to

look at your set of circumstances, be

like, "Woe is me," be upset by it, and be

chained to the circumstances around you.

Not just that, let your

mood be dictated by it.

In fact, it's not just

natural, it's probably expected.

I'm thinking about the individual, and

this individual is me, by the way,

sometimes, who's focusing on trying to

get ahead in life, ahead in work, ahead

in everything, and they always feel like

they're falling behind on things and

they're just keeping their head down and

just working and grinding

and working and grinding.

And when something happy happens around

them, they can't seem to appreciate it

because they're just so fixated on what's

happening for their life.

They got tunnel

vision, myopic vision, right?

Yeah, just like that.

It got tunnel vision.

What allows people to

enjoy their time on Earth?

Well, we've actually talked about it on

this podcast before a couple of times.

I had a colleague of

mine talk about it a bit.

I'm sad this colleague isn't with us, but

I think they'd be proud.

One of the easiest things to do to help

get you to this place of loving life

is what we call gratitude,

being grateful for what you have.

Now, that sounds easy on paper because

I'm just putting it out there.

It's a little more complex and nuanced.

First of all, to be grateful for all the

things that you have, like the desk that

you're sitting at, the roof over your

head, the family that loves you,

the stranger across the street that

smiles at you when you

walk across the block,

the neighbor that knows your name, you

might not know their

name, but they know yours.

Grateful for all the things you have, it

forces you not to compare

yourself to other people.

It forces you not to think you're behind.

It forces you not to look at other

people's lot in life and be upset,

envious, or even jealous.

But instead, just be grateful

that I have anything at all.

Being grateful

is a great level set.

It's a great way to kind of bring

yourself back to center.

And it starts making you enjoy the little

moments in life, even when

things aren't going well,

even when things are

kind of going kind of crazy.

That's one of the secrets there.

So I think that's what

this person is talking about.

There's a couple of

comments here in the chat.

Let's see what they say.

I agree 100% with this.

I liked reading this.

I'm laughing because like,

I don't know, I'm an old internet head,

but like we used to get mad when people

just would say, liked, that was good.

And it's like, did you

really add any value?

You wasted a lot of people's space

scrolling down, but

no, yes, they liked it.

They agree with it.

Great.

I have a few friends like this.

They're great to be with.

And always a feel good factor,

regardless of what's going on.

You should check out

Marty life is too short.

It's documented at Marty short, a truly

positive individual.

I too want to enjoy, but even Reddit

isn't letting me comment and post on

a few GC.

I don't know what that means.

That's how much of a

non-reditor I am, but okay.

These people carry a lot usually, not to

make this post sad because it sounds so

wholesome, but everyone

tells me this about me.

I encourage, motivate,

inspire, and bring the sun in a room.

I love my life, but I have suicidal

thoughts every other day.

Okay.

Suicidal warning.

I did not know this is where this

conversation is going.

Reddit alert,

suicidal trigger, apologies.

I just want to make others not feel the

pain that is felt in this world and show

them the little glimpses of magic around.

Maybe this is a way of

coping to keep myself around too.

Aw.

And someone responded.

Hey,

I don't know you

officially, but I care about you.

I cannot imagine a day without you.

You can talk to me anytime, okay?

Love to you.

I think that's important to discuss.

A lot of people who

not just focus on gratitude, but also try

to bring joy to other people,

somewhat forcibly sometimes,

that can be a form of masking.

You know, they're

struggling, they're upset.

And so I think on one side, we should be

grateful to those people because they

probably have a really hard lot in life

and are doing everything they

can to make the magic happen.

At the same time, I dream of a world

where those people don't

have to work as hard for that.

They get to see the joy that

they bring to other people.

And the only way we do that is if we're

grateful for our relationships and our

friendships and we tell people

that we're grateful for them.

They've said before on this podcast, to

text a random person, call a random

person, tell them you love them.

Just one person.

Do it right now.

If you're listening right now, make a

note right now to text or call someone.

Tell them you love them.

And no, I'm not saying, you know, the

people that in your life that you always

tell, you love them.

I mean,

someone you haven't talked to in a while

because it feels good to hear it.

And it makes being grateful and having

gratitude even easier.

So yeah,

big belief in that.

Sorry for the trigger warning folks.

If you are struggling

with suicidal thoughts,

please go to your resources

for that additional support.

You are worthy of being on this planet.

We love you.

right, we'll be keep the wholesome vibes

in our final Reddit post here.

Once again, looking at life.

Again, folks, I'm not a Redditor.

I'm just scrolling to see what

I'm seeing for the first time.

And we have a post here

from a couple of days ago.

It's a from a top one poster.

So I guess they post a

lot, good for them, I guess.

And the thread says, or the topic says,

does anyone else feel like adulthood is

just trying to recreate how alive you

felt when you were younger?

Midlife crisis, maybe?

Yeah.

Often when we're young, we feel like we

are, we have this regeneration energy.

If we take a page out of the Doctor Who

universe, we have all this vigor and

spice and we're growing and we're

adapting and we're getting more strong

and youthful and we have energy.

And then we slowly decline as per

the bell curves of life.

And yeah, for some people, it feels like

an aspiration to get there.

But let's see what this OP says.

Sometimes I feel like high school and

college give you this temporary glimpse

of what life could be.

And then adulthood takes it away.

Hmm, interesting.

When you're young, you're constantly

surrounded by people your age.

Your friends live minutes away.

There are clubs, sports, parties, random

late night conversations, trips,

traditions, crushes and

things happening all the time.

You're working towards something

alongside hundreds of other people going

through the same stage of life.

Yep.

There's this built-in sense

of belonging and possibility.

Okay, a couple assumptions here.

I know of people that live in

communities where there's like,

their graduating class is like 10 people.

So it's not always hundreds of people.

And it could be

sometimes thousands of people.

I knew my graduating class

was nearly a thousand people.

So, you know,

it's all different, but I get it.

Then you graduate and suddenly it's wake

up, commute, sit at some job you don't

care about for eight hours, commute home,

eat, scroll your phone, sleep, repeat.

Your friends scatter

across different cities.

Everyone becomes busy.

Seeing someone requires checking

calendars two weeks in advance.

You finally have adult money, but barely

enough time or energy to enjoy it.

Oof, I feel that one.

That feels like a real

sentiment right there.

And the weirdest part is that so much of

adulthood seems to become an attempt to

recreate little pieces of what came

naturally when you were younger.

We travel because we

want to feel alive again.

We join clubs and sport

leagues because we miss community.

We plan reunions because we

miss having everyone together.

We chase financial freedom because we

want control over our time again.

It almost feels like life shows you

belonging, freedom, friendship, and

excitement when you're young, just long

enough for you to understand how good

they feel and then spend adulthood making

you fight to get pieces of them back.

I know adulthood

doesn't have to be miserable.

I just hate how much harder you have to

work to build a life that

once seemed to happen naturally.

Hmm.

Good sentiment.

I feel that

depending on your, how

you grew up in the world.

Yeah, it can feel like you're chasing

to get back to something that

was taken from you for sure.

And there is a pain in

understanding that when you get older,

you kind of have to say goodbye to your

dreams that you had,

like really, like when you were young,

you had all these

possible forks in the road.

And then once you start picking a fork,

some of those forks disappear and you

can't go there anymore.

And there's kind of like an opportunity

loss and mourning you have over that

possibility isn't there for me anymore,

just because I'm going down this path and

I'm getting older in my years.

And then

there's all the time

spending to make a living.

And that sucks up energy.

And

if I want to hang out with a buddy of

mine, I can't just like

go to his house next door.

I've got to text him at a time, call him,

schedule in advance, make sure it's in a

lot of day we can do it, making sure we

don't have the kids and making sure, you

know, we don't have other things, other

obligations we have to face.

Yeah.

And you have money, but you don't have

the time to spend it.

I resonate with all that.

For sure.

For sure.

There's a little bit of untruthiness

though, in the sentiment.

When you were young, you

didn't have that much control.

When you were young, if you had parents

anyway, you did whatever

your parents allowed you to do.

You didn't have money, unless your

parents bought you stuff.

You were still chained.

And when you were chained, you had a

protective barrier around you.

Then the protective barrier went away,

and so did the chain.

So this sentiment gets dangerously close

to coming across, like I want the

protective barrier, but not the chain.

And they co-wanted, they

come interlinked.

You'd need to have, if you want that

barrier, you're chained, you're locked.

There's not much you can do.

You have the freedom now, but now we're

not protecting you anymore.

The buffer, the buffer of sentiment.

Safety is gone.

So adulthood is getting rid of the

buffer, because you

now have the skill set

to wade the war of life.

And with that, you have some freedom,

but you're tired.

You're exhausted, and you

don't want to do it anymore.

I get that.

But never forget you have freedom.

And never forget that, even if you're

going one fork, and the one other forks

that you weren't going

on disappear, they fade.

You can always revisit and get those

forks to illuminate back again.

Time is not, time is linear, but like

every single second, every

day, you have infinite choices.

You get to decide what you want to do.

You're not locked in.

You're choosing to be locked in, and it's

probably within your best interest to be

locked in, but you don't have to be.

I get this sentiment.

I would challenge anyone though, that

goes down this rabbit hole too far, not

to give it too much credence, because

then this leads to despair, and it's also

not an overall healthy or even accurate

way of looking at the world.

But let's see what other folks are saying

about this, other

comments that we have here.

This is the best thing

I've read in a long time.

Well said, okay.

Good observation.

It's sad, man.

Kind of feels like a scam.

I don't understand how some people say

life only gets better as you get older.

Bullshit.

Enjoy while you're young.

It's the best days you'll ever have.

I disagree with that.

My life is getting better all the time,

way better than when I was young, but

that's a different viewpoint.

It can get better as you age, someone

responds back, "My life is a lot better

now compared to when I

was 15, 20 years of age."

Yes, I agree.

I have more control over my life

financially and can

pretty much do anything I want.

When you're young, you have youth on your

side, but living with

family can be a drag.

It certainly was for me.

I had someone say once that if we

had the amount of knowledge that we have

in our 40s and 50s, but when we were

young and our teens and 20s, we would be

quote unquote too powerful.

It would throw the

whole world off balanced.

And obviously that was a joke and made in

jest, but sometimes I believe it.

Sometimes like that makes sense.

There's a common sentiment or phrase

people say, which is

youth is wasted on the young.

Maybe that's not the truth.

Maybe you're supposed to be young and

stupid, and you're

supposed to be old and wise.

That's the way the world

equals itself out, maybe.

I don't know.

A couple more comments here.

The more money you have, the less time

you have to enjoy it.

Again, if you've been paying attention to

this episode, if you're the ultra mega

wealthy, you got plenty of time.

But again, I get the sentiment.

I gave up chasing money decades ago and

have lots of free

time to enjoy my hobbies.

I just live minimally and don't do things

that require lots of money.

Someone echoes that sentiment.

Other people saying, "I feel this.

Everything just takes more effort now."

Someone is commenting, "Ever since I

finished high school, I've always felt

that I can't really get excited for

things like I used to, and I hate it.

Back in high school, I could get really

excited and almost stressed out in a good

way for the next event.

And I was really looking forward to it,

but now I just can't.

The first day of school each year was

also a really magical experience that

nothing can ever replace.

But yeah, I hate that a lot of my friends

live in different cities now.

And even though they don't necessarily, I

always make an effort to go visit them,

even if I live far away.

And every time I enjoy seeing them and

hanging out more than

anything else, I do.

Each time I basically think about how to

recreate the sort of activities we did

back in high school.

And we usually do that, but

just doesn't feel the same.

As for me, it feels like

everyone has lower energy.

And as I said, less genuine excitement

and curiosity about stuff.

So it's sort of like before, but it feels

like something is missing.

I'm 23 years old male.

(Laughs)

Okay, you're talking like you're 40, but

you're still young, buddy.

And just find, quote, adulthood or

whatever expected of you to be as an

adult, boring, and whether you think it's

right or not just to try most things

except, and whether you think it's right

or not, just try to do most things except

my job as if I was still 17 to 18, as I

dislike the idea of

being a serious phony adult.

I know people always say it's fake

nostalgia or you should just focus on the

future, but I'd give anything to be able

to experience just one high school day

again, everything that came with it.

Man, good for you.

I did not have a great

high school experience.

I would never want to relive that.

Use the expression, phony adult.

making me think of JD Salinger's catcher

on the rye with Holden

Caulfield right there.

Crazy.

Yeah, interesting sentiment.

I don't 100% agree with it.

I resonate with the

feeling and I empathize with it,

but it's not real.

Our life is different.

And of course, if you don't like your

life experience, not to overly simplify

things because all of us have a hard lot

in life and we've got a lot of hard work

ahead of us, you can make changes.

You're never, you can do

something about it, I promise.

So

kudos to you,

OP.

I wish you the best.

I wish everyone the best.

I gently disagree with the notion that we

are life was better when we were young,

but the sentiment is true

and that's okay.

Team human baby.

(Upbeat Music)

Before we wrap up this

week's episode of the counter hit,

apologize to our good Patreon members.

We've had some Patreon folks make some

requests and we've been kind of leaving

them in the lurch, but no more.

One of our Patreon requests was to

discuss during our episodes one piece of

fighting game terminology for

everyone else to learn from.

And so with that, let's discuss the term

of the day as according to

glossary.infill.net.

This term is called teching, teching in

the world of fighting games.

What the heck is a tech?

So according to this particular

definition, most commonly

shorthand for a throw tech.

What is a throw tech?

What is a throw tech?

Well, in fighting games, you can hit

people, you can block or you can throw.

Sometimes you can do other things like do

supers and you can do

parries,

versions of special moves that are

fancier, but generally speaking, it's

that triangle of hit, block and throw.

And to throw tech or teching a throw is

either nullifying or softening the

impacts of a throw if you react in time.

In Smash Brothers, it sounds like it can

also be quick rising.

When you knock down, you can tech the

ground and Smash Brothers in particular,

when you hit the ground, it lets you

stand up in place or roll

either left or right immediately.

You can also be known for how you recover

in the air if you're in the

middle of a combo or something.

If all these definitions aren't enough,

the word tech is often used to talk about

cool new strategies developed for a

character like, "Did you see that new Ryu

tech posted to Twitter?"

In this sense, the word tech is kind of

shortened version of

technique or technology.

Confused at why so many fighting game

terms have been ambiguous meetings?

Confused at why so many fighting game

terms have ambiguous meetings?

You are not alone.

So tech means a lot of things like show

me the tech, show me the technology, the

technique of how to do this.

Tech can also be throw-tacking.

The most common version of this that I

see a lot of is when you're in an

exchange with a fighting game player,

you're fighting and they throw you, they

do something and you say, "I tech that."

Meaning you're calling out the player and

saying, "I literally

did the right inputs.

I should have teched that throw.

The game didn't let that happen."

It's kind of a

scrubby thing to say or do.

I don't recommend doing

it, it's what people do.

Yeah, so tech is kind of a term that is

used a lot in the fighting game world.

It's the fighting game

term of the day.

And I wouldn't worry

about what teching means.

Every game has a different

version of what teching means.

Every fighting game, every community that

you're in uses this

language a little bit differently.

Generally speaking, teching is when you

cancel out something or when you're

practicing a new

technique with something.

Pretty simple, pretty cut

and dry, don't sweat it.

And if it's confusing for you, ask a

friend in the game that you're playing

and they'll be happy to tell you what

teching means for your

particular game, no worries.

(Panting) (Upbeat Music)

All

right folks, so that has been our episode

of the Counter Hit this week.

I hope you've all had a good time.

I know I've had a great time.

We've talked about a lot of different

interesting things when it comes to life

and everything else in between.

I hope to see you next

week for the Counter Hit.

I'm your host and

Vibesition scare quotes.

You can check us out in all places where

podcasts are aired from Amazon to Apple,

Spotify, YouTube and

everything in between.

You can find us anywhere at

www.thecounterhit.com.

Also check out our Patreon if we haven't

said before already.

Join our lovely community

for a very, very cheap price.

You get to get access to all of this

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faster and access to even secret more

stuff that no one else has access to only

here at Zero Dot family.

It's been a pleasure.

And until next time,

stay on Team Human

and I'll see you.