In this solo episode, Jason Hartman talks about shadow demand as a result of current lending requirements. He also adds other factors that cause pressure on housing demand and prices. Then, Jason tackles a new Florida law that aims at the big tech companies. He discusses Section 230 and Facebook’s annual revenue.
Announcer 0:02
Welcome to the creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You’re about to learn a new slant on investing some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world’s most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multimillionaire who’s actually been there and done it. He’s a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who’s owned properties in 11 states had hundreds of tenants and been involved in 1000s of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it on Now, here’s your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.
Jason Hartman 0:53
Welcome to Episode 1691 1691. Folks, millions of prospective homebuyers are stuck. No, they’re not stuck because of the usual problem that we’re going to talk about. Well, that we do talk about not that we’re going to talk about today so much, but we always have been talking about recently. They are stuck because they’re unemployed. And these millions of people might normally be homebuyers. And they might normally be move up renters. But they’re in this no man’s land, because unemployment has still not come back with all the money printing, with all the stimulus, with the Fed being the world’s largest investor buying up assets left and right. I mean, did you ever think the Fed would be the world’s biggest investor? Well, they are. At least I think they are maybe a sovereign wealth fund. I don’t know. I’m saying it’s the Fed. Tell me if I’m wrong. Go to Jason hartman.com slash ask? Because that’s just my opinion. Okay. So we’ve got the Fed propping up the market, they’ve made money free. In fact, they will pay you to borrow money. That’s pretty cool. If you’re a real estate investor, for sure. Right. But what about the supply demand equation? Now? We’ve talked on the show over the years, about different types of inflation, cost, push inflation, pull inflation. And usually you see the folks in government in power. And then now you see that focusing on the poor side of the equation, and they are creating a lot of inflation by pulling assets and items through the supply chain. What do I mean by that? Well, they’re giving people free money. And those people are thinking, hey, well out of my house, or how to buy something, maybe a new car, whatever, just let’s buy some stuff because the money is free. Right? The money is becoming worthless.
You know, my mother, I’ve told you this before. But when I was a kid, my conservative mother used to give me a hard time about spending too much money. And maybe that’s why I’m still somewhat conservative and frugal today, less so than before for sure. But she used to say, Jason, you spend money like it’s going out of style. Well, I got some revenge on mom, because money actually has been going out of style. No, I don’t mean, money is really going out of style. But it is certainly going down in value. Remember the two primary drivers of the value of anything, anything in the world? Whether it be that classic car, that gold bar, that loved one, whatever it is that house, that consumer item, scarcity and utility, scarcity and utility, the two biggest drivers of value, according to yours, truly, now, I didn’t read that anywhere. That’s just what I say. Those are the two big drivers Am I wrong? Jason Hartman comm slash ask I love to get your feedback and your criticisms. But it is difficult being so right on these predictions all the time. So thankfully, I guess I’ve been wrong on one huge one, and that is none other than interest rates. I thought they’d be much higher by now and they just keep going down the rabbit hole don’t pay. Well, this is illogical, it’s dysfunctional, it’s actually toxic. And it isn’t going to end well. Unless you are in the know and you know how to play The game they are setting us up for. And you’re already in the game and you see what’s happening. And if you own properties, you’re already benefiting from the game. But you just might want to double down if you can. And I know that some people who don’t know how to really value a property, because they don’t use the H, ci, the Hartman comparison index, and they don’t ask the important question that you have dubbed the Jason Hartman question, which is compared to what compared to what that is the most important question. And when you look at the price of real estate, with those tools, you think, Wow, it’s actually still pretty affordable, even though the price has gone up. But that’s the price in nominal dollars, not real dollars. And when you compare it to so many other things in the marketplace, you realize that it’s actually still pretty cheap. And then you take the second step, and you look at the monthly cost of ownership, and you think, wow, that’s actually really cheap. So the market is still booming, and the prices are still rising in nominal dollars, and to a much lesser extent, in real dollars, adjusted for inflation.
So back to the no man’s land, the people who are in the abyss of would be homebuyers, would be move up, renters would be moved out of the parents house, millennials, right, all of these people, they represent a shadow demand. So let’s put this together with the push pull inflation model, okay. And if we think about it, we look at all the folks in government and at the Fed, and other central banks around the world and other governments. And they are wanting to increase the pole. So they give everybody free money, they run out and buy stuff, and they pull stuff through the system. And that creates inflation. But with the housing perspective, and maybe with some other things that we don’t have time to talk about today, but definitely with housing, we have this terrible housing shortage. And people are complaining about it left and right. But what are the idiots in government do all they’re doing is increasing demand. And they’re not focusing on the supply side, they should be doing the push, and they should be pushing the supply up. But they don’t know what they’re doing. Imagine that they don’t know what they’re doing. Someone said to me today when I was bouncing around, well, one of our listeners, Jason, hi, Jason, another Jason, not me. Another one. He said that don’t give the government too much credit. And I agree, you know, don’t give the government too much credit. But the problem is, they got so much power, and so much influence that, even if you don’t give them too much credit, their actions still have just wide ranging effects that are like the air we breathe. You know, I remember someone saying to me years ago, I don’t choose my dates based on politics. Now. This was years ago. Now everybody chooses their dates based on politics, right? Or you just can’t talk. I mean, think about it. How can someone say that they’re not political, or that politics don’t matter? That’s infrastructure. It’s the context of life. By the way, tangent alert. I’m on a pretty big tangent right now. But I’ll swing back, because the thing I want to talk to you about more is right in front of me. And then we got a whole nother thing.
Oh, and, folks, I have some wonderful news for you. It’s coming up. stay till the end. Because this is wonderful news. You don’t even have to stay to the end. Just a few more minutes. And I’m gonna, I’m going to drop a huge piece of wonderful news on you. I hope you’re ready, because it is. I’m so happy. I can’t even tell you how happy I am. I am happy as a clam about this wonderful news. So they are not supplying enough properties. So we have an obvious housing shortage. And what do we do? The prices go up? Well, guess what else? Now we’ve got a problem with this abyss of potential buyers await back to the dating on politics, context and content. So everything in our life is the content. And the environment in which we live is the context. The air we breathe. The political landscape is the context. It just affects everything. How can anybody say they’re not political? That’s just crazy. Now, maybe you don’t like to talk about politics, or whatever, but it affects, like almost everything. It’s just everywhere. It’s like the air reveal. environment, it is the environment, if you’re concerned about the environment, then be concerned about politics because politics is the environment. And I don’t mean like the trees, although that too. I mean everything, the price of things, the cost of things, the availability of housing, the regulatory environment that just affects everything that you don’t even realize how much it affects you. It’s just everywhere. And we’re going to get to some wonderful news about this in a moment. So hang on, it’s coming. It’s coming. So let’s talk about the lenders that are offering mortgages. And let’s talk about their reaction to what is going on. So we have this high unemployment rate. And let me just read you a part of an article by Brent Chandler. Okay, this is a recent article says, there are still millions of unemployed Americans. And when employment is uncertain, so is income. uncertain borrower income means risk for lenders and investors. Now, for when he’s referring to investors, he means the bondholders, the investors that are backing the mortgages, okay. That’s what he means by that. But also maybe investors who are like us, like landlords, as well, I guess, but mostly he’s talking about the investors that are backing the loans, right, the mortgage backed securities and so forth. spells risk for lenders and investors who tend to respond by tightening their underwriting guidelines. This seems sensible, but it also has unintended consequences. The credit box has tightened to the point where the average FICO score for all loan types is north of 750. According to ice mortgage technology.
Wow. You know, it used to be that if you had a score of 720 or above you were pretty awesome. I mean, that was just pretty incredible. Right? You were in the elite class. But now 750. I mean, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to tell you, yours truly does not have that high credit score. Okay. And I pay attention to this stuff. Well, sometimes I pay more attention to all of you than myself. Which, you know, that shoe maker and the kids with no shoes problem, right? That’s admittedly an issue from time to time. But you know, at least I know about it, right? I’m aware of it. I’m not above 750. Last time I checked, I had like, I don’t know, 737 on one, and I don’t remember the thing, you know, you’ve got the three bureaus, and you’ve got to look at them all. And then the question is, remember, I’ve talked about this before, which FIFO model, they talk about this generically, like they say FICO score, but there are many different FICO scoring models. And then there are three credit reporting agencies, and they all have different scores for you because they count different things. So it’s complicated, right? It’s complicated, but they’re using the mortgage FICO score, right? So when they generically say this stuff, you never know, are they talking about FIFO, three FIFO, 5508, or something else, which FICO scoring model are they using because your FIFO number will be different in all the three bureaus, and it will be different depending on which scoring model is being used. Some scoring models are used by mortgage companies, others used by car dealerships, others use for consumer credit and credit cards. It’s all different. It’s complicated, right? But check this out. And we know of several lenders whose credit overlays require applicants to have closer to a 780 FICO score. Meanwhile, the average us FICO score is 711 711. The discrepancy between these figures tells us that average prospective borrowers, including the majority of black and Hispanic households, are being squeezed out of the credit box and missing out on the lowest mortgage rates in history. Well, next time, folks that you hear some fake hypocrite virtue signaling person, some big CEO, mostly liar, hypocrite, whether it be Tim Cook at Apple or jamie diamond at Chase, you know, talk about how they’re helping minorities.
Just look at what really happens. They say a lot of stuff, but they’re almost always just given lip service to it. And in fact, that’s what it says. Article. He didn’t even read this far yet. That’s a disconcerting notion for anyone who’s serious about paying more than lip service. To the mission of helping Americans achieve the dream of homeownership. Moreover, it’s bad business, when lenders curate their pipelines to the point where they’re only writing loans for the, quote, best borrowers unquote, they can expect to see a razor thin profit margin and high borrower turnover. After all, someone with a credit score of 780 can get a loan anywhere, anytime, which is exactly what they’re apt to do every time rates move a quarter of a percent. So those borrowers with the great scores tend to be this loyal borrowers, right. That’s one of the points being made. And, folks, this is the thing FIFO scoring is really old. And it’s really out of date. Remember, I’ve talked to you on prior episodes, about these new scoring systems, they take about 1000 data points, and they found them to be really quite accurate at assessing whether that borrower will repay. So we need a new system, we really do. The system we have is, like so many other systems we have, it’s just not ideal. I don’t want to say it’s broken, it’s not totally broken, but it’s certainly could be a lot better. So let’s tie it in. Jason, you got to tie it in for everybody. Okay. What’s it mean to investors? Well, it means quite a few things. Number one, it means that if these buyers to shadow demand, if they were to enter the housing market, they would really push up prices even more, because that’s more of the demand pool on a limited supply, meaning prices, prices are going to skyrocket, even more than they already have, once you turn that demand loops, right. But again, it’s kind of in the Abyss right now, because they can’t go out and buy. Also, it does mean potential for some people to move out of the renter market. So now I would normally say that that would cause downward pressure on rents. But right now, and for the foreseeable future, the supply demand equation is so massively imbalanced, that it won’t even matter, you wouldn’t even notice. If these millions of people got out of the renter pool or got out of their parents house and bought a home, you’d see home prices rise, but you probably would see, you know, zero softening to the rental market, because the demand is just so out of balance with the supply. It has possibly never been this way, you know, in certainly in my lifetime now, I guess maybe came back from World War Two, there was quite an imbalance. And America got to work doing construction, and built tons of baby boomer houses.
In fact, that’s when suburbia was created. We’ve talked about that. We talked about Levittown many times on the show and all of that good stuff. Okay. Let’s get to some other news. Now. I moved to Florida about three years ago. And I have recommended to all of you that if you live in a high tax, business, unfriendly state, like my old state, the Socialist Republic of California, or maybe you live in New York, or one of these places, maybe it’s Oregon, which by the way, several counties in Oregon want to leave Oregon, and you know, move over to Idaho. They want to be governed by a better state and a better governor. Wherever you go. It doesn’t have to be Florida. But make a plan for yourself over the next few years to just get yourself out of these overcrowded, overtaxed landlord unfriendly business unfriendly, over regulated states that will really just make your life better. And that’s what we’re here to do on this show. We’re here to make your life better. Now, there is a big new, additional reason that you will want to consider this. And I think it’ll be a trend that it will spread around the country to other places. But it started right here in my new home state for the last three years. The great State of Florida, with the greatest governor in the universe, Rhonda Santas. I want to play for you a press conference that he had on Monday. That is history making game changing, and it could give you hundreds of 1000s of dollars. I’m not kidding. Let’s listen in.
‘Audio Clip’ 19:55
Oh la it’s great to be in Miami, Florida. International University. I want to thank President Rosenberg. I want to thank everybody here today. We’ve got a great group of folks assembled here. I’ve got a legislative All Star team behind me here. We have senators Manny Diaz and Ray Rodriguez is Ileana here. Senator Ileana Garcia great. We have Ileana. We also have representatives in golia lupus, Fernandez bar keen Rizzo, Bousada Cabrera, Fabricio, Busch, Barrera, and Representative Danny Perez. So I want to thank them for all their hard work this session not only on this bill that will sign today
‘Audio Clip’ 20:42
but on so many other things that that we’ve been able to accomplish. I think we we set the standard my first year, and somehow exceeded the second and now we’ve even exceeded it this third year again. And so when you look at law and order, when you look at teacher bonuses, when you look at school choice, all these things were able to do, these guys really drove the train on that. I’d also like to thank a few other folks who are here from today. Dario, Fernandez, Cuban American, were you at your here? Okay. Alberto perros Venezuelan American is here. Felix Rodriguez, Cuban American icon, where’s Felix? Okay, good. Carlos Diaz rosio, and also James O’Keefe from Project Veritas.
‘Audio Clip’ 21:47
We’re here today to sign into law legislation that we work very hard on, these legislators work very hard on. And really Florida is the Trailblazer yet again on another issue that’s really important to not just millions of Floridians, but really 10s of millions of Americans. When the founding fathers established our country and crafted the Constitution, they were very concerned with threats to Liberty, primarily emanating from government power, and they believe concentrations of power, inevitably would lead to people’s liberties being curtailed. So they designed a constitution that had separation of powers, checks and balances. And it was designed to create a government that could do the things that you needed a government to do, but did it in a way that was as safe as possible and had as many different checks along the way and balances, so that you didn’t have an accumulation of power in one part of the government. And I think that they were very smart about that. And obviously, we’ve seen other societies that have not had those protections, the results have inevitably been disastrous. We are now though in a situation where we have things that I think were probably unforeseen by the founding fathers. Whereas they established the first amendment to protect people’s freedom of speech, religion and association from government overreach, we now have a situation in which some of these massive, massive companies in Silicon Valley are exerting a power over our population that really has no precedent in American history. And I would suggest the monopolies today, these big tech monopolies are exerting way more influence over our society than the monopolies of the early, earliest 20th century, which led to antitrust and a lot of trust busting.
Jason Hartman 23:39
So as you’re hearing this, you know that I have said for many, many years, that these big tech companies need to be reined in. They’re way too powerful. And one, two, or all three of these things need to happen. Number one, they need to be busted up under antitrust laws, they are just out of control. They are abusing their power, and they’re too big. There’s no choice in the marketplace. So when a company gets that big, they effectively become a government. Do you know that Facebook, for example, and I don’t have the stats, but I did do a study on this before and I’ve said it on prior episodes. I believe the Facebook annual revenue is larger than the GDP of 174 countries. Don’t quote me on that. It might be a nother number, but it’s insane. It is absolutely insane. If you don’t think different rules apply to these giant multinational governments that don’t have to deal with borders or follow normal laws. You’re just not paying attention. Okay. So pay attention to the way you are being taken advantage. buy these companies. And listen, I love the companies, I use them. I use their technology, I think it’s all great. But there’s no choice in the marketplace. And they can do whatever the heck they want. And it’s just too dangerous. So number one, they need to be busted up under antitrust laws. Number two, they need to be regulated under common carrier laws. That’s what the governor mentions in this speech. And think about this. We have we’re on the phone, and we’re having a conversation. And we’re talking about vaccines, or election fraud, or whatever. If we’re talking about this stuff on the phone, and we’re both paying our phone bills, you and I, does the phone company have the right to cancel our phone service? Because they don’t like what we’re saying? Of course not. Because their utility, okay, now I’m talking about the old fashioned phone company here, this probably doesn’t apply to cell phone companies. But it’s just ridiculous. So antitrust laws, break them up. Number two, common carrier, they have to provide service to everybody equally, period, End of discussion. Number three, their algorithms need to be made public. So the world can see. So every computer geek in the world can look at the algorithm. And they can all tell us why certain things show up in our newsfeed. And certain things don’t. And it’s not a secret. And that needs to happen. Let me give you an example of this and how crazy this is. Things that appear to be true at one point in time. And then, you know, people come out and say, No, that’s not true. And then they’re labeled is wacko conspiracy theorist. Well, a lot of times, those conspiracy theories are actually conspiracy facts. Yeah. Conspiracy facts. Here’s an example. May 25. This year, right? Just the other day. Well, literally yesterday. Here is a news article in the mainstream media, entitled, media does U turn on Wu Han lab theory. The idea that COVID escaped from a Chinese laboratory is now very much in play. Oh, so last year, if Trump said that he was nuts, he was a conspiracy theorist. And anybody who said that was just crazy conspiracy theorist, racist, anti China, anti Chinese blah, blah, blah. But suddenly now, the according to a whole bunch of media outlets, and they list them all here, just, you know, tons New York Times Washington Post, I mean, Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal PolitiFact. Medium science, okay, the journal Science. They’re all saying now, this is a legitimate theory. But last year, oh, yeah. You’re just crazy if you believe that, right. So what is the truth? We don’t know. But this is why it needs to be an open discussion in the public square. And people should not be silenced. It is just too dangerous to go back to the era of the Nazis book burning Well, amazon.com d platforms, books from their platform, because they don’t want people to read them. And we’ve got all this crazy censorship going on. So those are the three solutions to the problem. And how do you make $100,000 every time you are taken advantage of? Well, if you’re a Florida resident, you’ve got protection. Thanks very much. And this is going to really put these companies in check. Hopefully, this trend will expand around the country, and they will finally be held accountable. These tech oligarchs, absolutely ridiculous. Okay, let’s get back. And I’ll have more comments in a moment. Let’s keep listening.
‘Audio Clip’ 29:16
And so we’re in a situation here, where these platforms have become our public square. Floridians and other Americans go on these platforms to be able to share ideas hack, you go back to the beginning of these platforms, they actually were very liberating, because you had corporate media, those legacy outlets that many Americans grew to ditch distrust, and rightfully so. They no longer had the monopoly on information, you could actually go around the legacy media share information on these platforms. And that was very, very positive for millions and millions of Americans. And actually, it was a little too positive and the powers that be didn’t like that. And so I think what We’ve seen in recent years is a shift away from internet platforms, social media platforms from really being liberating forces to now being enforcers of Orthodoxy. And so their primary mission or one of their major missions seems to be suppressing ideas that are either inconvenient to the narrative or that which they personally disagree with. And you think about some of the things that are in the news just most recently, the of the last however many decades, you know, some of the major issues that we’ve had to deal with I would say two of the major issues when people look back on this period will be the efficacy of Coronavirus lock downs, and the origin of the Coronavirus in Wuhan, China. Now we have information that this very well may have emanated from the Wu Han lab that it was it was a leak from the lab. But you remember when people last year were raising that as something that needed to be investigated. They were d platformed. For talking about the lab leak. They were censored for having said that and now even Fauci admits that this may be something that very well is the case, are they going to now censor Fauci and pull him down off social media? So this shows you because corporate media said it was a conspiracy theory at the outset, these big tech oligarchs responded to that pull down instead of having an honest debate about something that’s very, very important. Clearly, it’s going to affect our relationship with China. If this was something that leaked from a lab, and they immediately covered it up, we know they did cover up regardless, but certainly from that very beginning. It’s a crucial, crucial thing for the American people to know big tech. They wanted to shut down debate over that. You also go back to March, April of 2020. Anyone posting criticisms of lockdowns, those things were taken down, they were censored. But now we stand here and look at Florida, you know, we’re open and people flock here because they understand it’s better to live in freedom. The places that locked down and followed those policies that were basically advocated by Silicon Valley. They’ve had a lot of problems, high unemployment, high crime, higher per capita, COVID mortality, the list goes on and on. So these are major, major issues. And I would say those lockdowns have ruined millions of people’s lives all around this country, wouldn’t it have been good to have a full debate on that in our public square, but that was not what Silicon Valley wanted to do. So this is a big problem. And we need to get into the election interference that we see from Silicon Valley on major issues that deserve robust debate. Silicon Valley is an as acting as a council of sensors. They cancel people, when mobs come after somebody, they will pull them down, they shadow ban people which creates partisan echo chambers. And honestly, they are some of the major reasons why this country is divided for doing what they’re doing. And the worst part about this Silicon Valley thinks they know better than you. So their power up to this point has effectively been unchecked. And they have used this power in Silicon Valley to impose their orthodoxies and their ideologies on our public square. This is not how a free society should operate. They use secret algorithms and shadow banning to shape debates and control the flow of information. But yet they evade accountability by claiming they’re just neutral platforms, even as they amplify partisan agendas and censor dissent. So every day they act as the proverbial Big brother in 2021 looks an awful lot like the fictitious 1984. So it’s time to step up and ensure that we the people, especially our everyday Floridians, are guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley power grab with the reform we will sign in today will be the first state to hold big tech accountable so that everyday people who use their platform have an ability to fight.
‘Audio Clip’ 34:24
And the protection should not simply be something that is reserved for celebrities or for political office holders, it needs to apply to every day Floridians. And what this reform does, is recognize that social media platforms are as important for conveying public opinions. They’re effectively a common carrier in everyday society, and they really need to be viewed that way. They also hold a unique place in preserving free speech for all Floridians. And these platforms can harm Floridians when they unfairly censor ban and D platform them so this reform is gives every Floridian the power to fight back against big tech. Floridians who are deep platformed will be able to sue big tech companies for violating this law.
‘Audio Clip’ 35:19
And courts may award up to $100,000 in damages for each proven claim. These protections aren’t just for elite. But for everyday people, millions of people who rely on social media to keep up with the news do business and stay connected with family and friends. Were the first state to hold these big tech companies to this standard of transparency and accountability. The law requires the platforms to publish detailed standards explaining how they decide which voices to censor, and they need to apply those standards consistently. That’s not what happens. You look they have these standards, always change it. And if you’re on one side seems to be any little foot foul, you’re gone. If you’re on the right side from their perspective, then you can get away with whatever you want. And so when big tank censors enforce their rules inconsistently to discriminate in favor of the dominant ideology in Silicon Valley, they will be held accountable in the state of Florida. And all Floridians treated unfairly by big tech platforms will have the right to sue companies to violate this law and win damages to reform safeguards the rights of every Floridian by requiring social media companies to be transparent about their content moderation practices, and give users proper notice of changes to those policies. I mean, there’s some people that get the platform even know what they’re getting to platform for that prevents big tech bureaucrats from quote moving the goalposts to censor viewpoints they don’t like but it’s not just individuals, the Attorney General under this law of Florida can bring action against tech companies that violate this law under Florida’s deceptive and unfair trade practices act. If social media platforms are found to have violated antitrust law, they will be restricted from contracting with any public entity. That anti trust violator blacklist imposes real consequences for big tech and for their bottom line. The law also prohibits big tech from deep platforming, political candidates for elected office in the state of Florida. The Florida Election Commission will pose fines of $250,000 per day on social media companies that the platform’s any candidate for statewide office, and additional penalties, lesser for local offices. Any Floridian can block any candidate they don’t want to hear from and that is a right to belong each citizen, you simply can avert your eyes or not subscribe to what they’re doing. But it’s not for big tech to be weighing in on these elections and picking the candidates that have the right to speak and those that should be silenced. They’re not.
‘Audio Clip’ 38:12
Now if there’s an old saying, I think it was Bill Buckley that said he would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phonebook than the Harvard faculty. Well, I would say if I had to pick one group of people to not be governed by it would be the bureaucrats and oligarchs in Silicon Valley, they are not the arbiters of truth. They are not accountable to the electorate. And what we’re doing now is informing his reform, empowering Floridians to hold these companies accountable and to give protections for people in terms of their daily lives. And if you think about some of the things that we’ve seen, when you had the parlor company get taken down, that was like one fell swoop from a bunch of different companies acting basically in concert, they took them off web hosting, they took their payment processing, they took all this stuff down. So just think about it, you run a small business, and you have all these different things that then impact how you do it. you advertise online, you have a payment processor, you have an email distribution, list all these things. And what if someone in Silicon Valley doesn’t like you, then they can work together and just wipe it off? You know, that’s people’s livelihoods that are at stake. Those are people’s businesses, and ultimately people’s jobs that are at stake. And so I think the implications are profound. And I think the protections we are providing today against big tech censorship will make a difference. And not only that we’re already seeing other states are now starting to follow suit. And so it’s not it starts in Florida, but it’s not going to end in Florida, and I think we’re gonna have a huge movement behind.
‘Audio Clip’ 39:58
So I want to thank the legend. Fletcher, I want to thank a lot of Floridians who who have spoken out in favor of making sure that individual Floridians are protected, that we’re protected against censorship, that people have the ability to weigh in on these important issues and what has now become a Digital Public Square. I’m going to let some of the legislators come up legislators who were involved in the bill will also hear from some of our our other speakers, and then we’ll we’ll move on and I’ll put the old john Hancock on the bill and it will become the law of this state. So first, I want to bring up our Senate, main senate sponsor from Southwest Florida Senator Ray Rodriguez.
‘Audio Clip’ 40:48
Good morning. The governor shared that we’re the first state to pass this legislation and hold big tech accountable. What he didn’t share with you is we weren’t the first state to introduce this legislation. This legislation has been introduced in multiple states. And big tech has put their lobbyists to work. And they’ve killed it in every other state. But one, that state passed the bill then went to the governor, and big tech put the pressure on the governor. And the governor vetoed the bill. But not in Florida, not today.
‘Audio Clip’ 41:32
We have a governor that has shown the will to fight when the cause is freedom. And for that Florida is blessed. Thank you, Governor. Thank
‘Audio Clip’ 41:39
you. And I’ll just say there’s two things to take away from this bill that I hope you leave with. The first is this in Florida. If these big tech monopolies want to do business, then they’re going to treat Floridians fairly. And the second is this. When it comes to freedom of speech, in this state, we will defend freedom of speech against digital bars, regardless of how big they are, or how powerful they are. Because speech is fundamental to our freedom. Thank you.
‘Audio Clip’ 42:28
Our main house sponsor from Hernando County, on the other coast of Florida blaze in golia.
‘Audio Clip’ 42:41
First, I want to thank Governor desantis for his leadership on this but not just this issue, multiple issues. You know, when you look at the things that we’re doing in the state of Florida, Florida is leading whether it comes on whether it’s taking on big tech resiliency, parental or school choice, deregulating for businesses and just protect in every day’s everyday Floridians lives. This legislature and this governor is leading where other governors are shying away from these big obstacles. So governor, thank you for everything that you do.
‘Audio Clip’ 43:20
Regarding the bill, I, along with the legislators behind me and this great governor do not think that a handful of kids behind some desks in Silicon Valley, get to be the arbiter of what free speech is. And make no mistake about it. This is a consumer protection bill. Our Floridians are being hurt by these big tech oligarchs, these companies are huge, huge monopolies. And it is about time that somebody took them on, head on. Thank you, governor for your leadership on this issue. Okay.
Jason Hartman 44:01
So there you have it $100,000 per occurrence that you could sue the company for, and Vimeo and YouTube have delisted a whole bunch of my videos. So as a Florida resident, now, I can’t do it in the past, I’m sure. But I could file lawsuits against them to make them explain that to repost my video and all kinds of protections. This is wonderful news. It is apps think about I want you to think about something. Okay. Back in the early 90s, when the internet was a fledgling thing, and the government wanted to help these businesses. They gave him an exemption under the CDA, the communications decency act. That is a very wrongly named act by the way, but most of them are and under this section 230 They basically said to these companies look, Google, Facebook, Twitter, you are not required to police your content. But all the newspapers, LA Times, New York Times, any magazine, all of these old media outlets, you are required to police your content. So for example, if someone sends a letter to the editor, and the LA Times, or the New York Times, or whatever, and they publish that they are liable for its content, if it is false, if it’s fake news, although, you know, these publications publish fake news all the time, that’s a whole nother rabbit hole, but they’re liable for the content. If someone slander somebody or they slander somebody, or like I should say, libel them, because that’s the printed form, they’re liable for that there’s recourse against these companies, they can be sued for that and held accountable. Yet, somehow, these big disgusting tech companies, they got an exemption where they didn’t have to do that. And the exemption was based on this idea that as long as they didn’t create content, they weren’t considered a publisher, they were just a platform. But when you have 2 billion users, you don’t need to create any content, because all of your users will create the content. And all you have to do is filter the content. And you can say, no, we’re not going to show anybody this content, we’re going to ghost post it, or we’re just going to take it down and kodaly, the platform, the person, and we’re gonna show all of this content. Now, that is essentially publishing what you want to shape the beliefs of 2 billion people, if your Facebook I’m referring to, and Twitter, another huge audience, etc, etc, all of them, you can do it just by filtering. You don’t have to publish anything, yet. Some of these companies even do publish stuff. So it’s just not fair. And now it’s coming back into balance. So I am just very thankful for Rhonda Santas doing this. And I hope this spreads around the country. And look, you know, some people will say, well, these giant tech companies, they don’t have the the manpower to police the content, while they’ve written all the algorithms that can police the content, they don’t like to hear, you know, that isn’t left leaning content, they can somehow do that. So I’m sure they’ve got an algorithm that can police content correctly. And everybody should know how that operates. And it should be transparent, not opaque. And none of this should be considered a political statement. This is just a democratic statement. It’s the way free people and free society should operate. I mean, back to the Magna Carta, and then the Constitution of the United States. These documents that started to shift the narrative from government should have all the power to the people should have the power. And that’s exactly how this needs to go to. So thank you for listening. Tell me what you think. I’d love to hear from you. Jason Hartman comm slash ask, let me know what you think you have questions, comments, criticisms, whatever, we’d love to hear it. So thanks again for listening and Friday, we will be back talking all about real estate. Now that we got this out of the way that’s all you need to know but we’ll see if it spreads until we see you again in two days. Happy investing.
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