What if Tom were the President, Tom's Political Compass, Essential Reads for Combating the New World Order | Weekly Recap
Tom Bilyeu plays a presidential simulator, implementing policies focused on budget cuts, housing deregulation, and economic growth while analyzing public reactions. He then recommends five essential books for navigating political and economic turbulence, and takes a political compass test, landing as slightly right-of-center and strongly libertarian.
Summary
The episode opens with Tom Bilyeu playing an AI-powered presidential simulator, declaring his core platform: balancing the federal budget through spending cuts and growing the economy. His initial policy announcement receives broadly positive reactions, particularly from business-oriented constituencies, though progressive archetypes like 'College Chloe' and 'Brooklyn Jamal' express opposition.
In subsequent months, Tom pushes more ambitious reforms: raising the retirement age to 69 over 15 years, cutting federal funding to states without balanced budgets, deregulating housing markets, eliminating rent control, and creating manufacturing incentives. Most of these policies are blocked in Congress — passing the House but dying in the Senate via filibuster — illustrating Tom's frustration with political gridlock.
A simulated mass shooting crisis at a Detroit factory prompts Tom to argue the root cause is economic despair rather than gun access. He refuses to propose gun control measures, instead advocating for a cause-and-effect investigation into mental health, SSRIs, and economic stress. This generates the predictable partisan media split the simulator depicts.
Tom's highest-approval policies are those centered on political accountability: tying congressional reelection eligibility to balanced budgets, banning insider trading by Congress, and establishing term limits. These achieve near-universal green ratings across political archetypes, including 'Brooklyn Jamal.' He also scores strongly on sanctioning China following a simulated state-sponsored cyberattack. His proposal to phase out the Federal Reserve, however, tanks across all demographics.
The episode then shifts to Tom recommending five books for navigating the current political moment: Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang, Red Famine by Anne Applebaum, and The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom by James Burnham. Tom explains that before reading these books, he held a Pollyanna worldview — believing prosperity was natural and the world generally moved toward good outcomes. After reading them, he concluded that elite groups always seek to control information and limit people's frames of reference, and that communist and socialist systems inevitably require brutal force to implement equal outcomes. He argues these books are essential now because Western societies are being forced to re-answer the question of which economic system best serves humanity.
Finally, Tom takes the Political Compass test live, answering questions on economics, social policy, and governance. He lands as strongly libertarian (far from authoritarian) and only slightly right-of-center economically. He reflects that this result feels accurate and uses it to argue that people should resist tribalism, seek self-knowledge, and try to find common ground with those in adjacent quadrants rather than treating political differences as cause for contempt.
Key Insights
- Tom argues that the policies with the broadest public support are those centered on political accountability — such as tying congressional reelection to balanced budgets and banning insider trading — suggesting accountability is a more unifying political value than any specific economic policy.
- Tom claims that regulatory capture always ends up serving corporations rather than individuals, and that the proliferation of regulations in recent decades has not improved economic outcomes but instead choked business growth and hurt the tax base.
- Tom argues that housing deregulation, citing Houston as a model, leads to flat rent and home prices, which he considers the desired outcome — contrasting it with heavily regulated markets where housing becomes unaffordable for anyone who didn't already buy in.
- Tom contends that mass shootings are more likely symptoms of economic despair and mental health crises than gun availability, and that removing guns without addressing root causes will simply shift the method of violence, as he claims is being demonstrated in Europe.
- Tom argues that reading The Gulag Archipelago, Mao: The Unknown Story, and Red Famine is essential because Western society is forgetting the historical choice between capitalism and communism, and people who haven't read these books cannot appreciate the scale of brutality required to impose equal outcomes by force.
- Tom claims that elite groups intentionally work to keep people's frames of reference small in order to maintain control, and that tracking cause-and-effect rather than accepting inherited narratives is the primary tool for resisting manipulation.
- Tom argues that The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom is critical for the current moment because social media is making the mechanics of political power hyper-visible, and without a framework for understanding how power actually works, people will be 'deranged' by what they see and susceptible to conspiracy theories.
- Tom's Political Compass result places him as strongly libertarian and only slightly right-of-center economically, which he says reflects his core belief in personal responsibility and free markets while rejecting authoritarianism from any direction — he notes democratic socialists score as 'ultra authoritarian' on the same scale.
Topics
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