Foundation Nation
Foundation Nation
S4 - E5: A Deep Dive into Controversies: From Concerts to Wildfires
Prepare yourself for a rollercoaster of a ride as we plunge headfirst into the controversy surrounding the recent Taylor Swift concert. We promise you an insider's glimpse into Ticketmaster's dubious monopoly on ticket sales as we take off the gloves and expose their questionable tactics. Picture soaring ticket prices due to artificial scarcity, robots and algorithms playing the market, and the unexpected ripple effect of the coup in Russia. Get set for an eye-opening discussion that will make you rethink the next concert ticket you buy.
Hello and welcome to Foundation Nation. I'm your host, matthew Cote, along with Daniel. We're both high school educated, masters of nothing and gifted with a knowledge of wealth a lot. Today on the podcast, we're going to talk about some interesting recent goings on in our beautiful state and maybe even a few things going on in this amazing round thing we call home. Hello, welcome to Foundation Nation. I'm Matthew, your host, along with Daniel.
Speaker 3:Hello, I'm Daniel, your co-host.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of planes going by today, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:I guess everyone is going on vacation or something.
Speaker 1:Vacations should be over. They're getting out of the smoke. They're escaping from the smoke. Escape from the smoke. Well, today's actually looks finally a little bit better.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're finally probably trying to manage it, but it looks like the weather is also helping. Yeah, the wind, the wind and a little bit of rain.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, we had a couple days of rain.
Speaker 3:Yep, it kind of brought the smoke down a little bit. Yeah, that's good, that's helpful.
Speaker 1:So I was reading the newspaper and there was that Taylor Swift concert oh that was Mayhem. The second, did you go?
Speaker 3:No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no. I don't go to such events. It's too crowded.
Speaker 1:So I guess she came and had a concert and then a lot of people couldn't make it, so she said she'd do another one. She came back, did another one and it was just completely Mayhem. People were paying, you know, hundreds and hundreds of dollars for these tickets, all the way at the top, and then they and on top of that, the day of the concert, it was just really bad smoke, really bad you know air and hot. And it was. It was because I was down in Seattle and the wind was there was no wind, it was just dead. So it's like the worst environment, right, super hot, smoky and just no wind at all for relief. And so these people are sitting in the concert waiting for hours and hours to get in. They finally get in and they say someone or these robots or something, these AI things you know basically bought the ticket, bought one ticket and sold it twice and Ticketmaster had nothing to say about it. They didn't even know, they weren't aware.
Speaker 3:Now, ticketmaster is always aware of everything. They're just manipulating the market any way they want, because they are. I mean, you cannot buy any ticket to anywhere without Ticketmaster.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's going on? Do you know anything about Ticketmaster actually?
Speaker 3:They monopolized everything.
Speaker 1:They own it all.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, and they're getting paid for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And on top of it, we tried to get some tickets on a concert, on a jazz concert Big Bang Jazz Concert. There is no way to get around Ticketmaster. The only way is to go actually to the place where concert is going to be and buy tickets there.
Speaker 1:Oh, right, at the ticket booth.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right at the ticket booth, otherwise you have to pay Ticketmaster, like I think, like $15 to $20 on the top of every ticket. Geez, that's a whole bunch of baloney.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, they're just ripoffs.
Speaker 1:So if you're irritated with Ticketmaster, you just go to the venue early and buy tickets. Yep.
Speaker 3:But they're like oh, we allocated only 3% of all the tickets to sell through the booth. Everything else is online. Sorry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 3:Yep, yep. The ticket scheme is very well known. It's not only in Seattle or US, it's everywhere and there are ways to fight it. But they are not willing to, because it is business for everyone, especially for the person, for the artist. They take like 20% of all the tickets and they sell them themselves. Oh, really.
Speaker 1:Yep, oh, that's interesting. I mean, well, hopefully, legislation and enforcement, they can start reining in the wild wild west of ticketing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they need the class action lawsuit for this thing.
Speaker 1:There's a how do you fend off? So basically, ticketmaster has some kind of robotic bot system designed really well, kind of like a Netflix, right? Yep? Yeah, more or less the same idea, where they're just dominating it because they have some kind of massive algorithm or computer situation that's just dominating everything.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but what scammers are doing? They're using thousands of different computers to access and buy just one ticket, right? And then, like one or two or three or five or ten, they're buying just one, but from a different machine. Oh, okay, so they're creating virtual machines and each one buys just one ticket, but they're all doing it at the same time. Just yeah, all tickets are gone.
Speaker 1:Huh, yep, for what type of things Like music?
Speaker 3:It doesn't matter. If it is popular and they can get money on it, they sell them.
Speaker 3:They just sweep it. For example, if you want to buy a ticket for a movie, it is readily available, unless it is just first like three, four days of like a premiere. Right, yeah, it just came out. Then you may not be able to get tickets right at the last date, but still two weeks in advance you can probably get some. Yeah, yeah. So anything that is like really, really popular and you involve like not hundreds of people but tens of thousands, then you're oh, there is like a couple of million bucks right there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:From one concert.
Speaker 1:Hopefully they don't start getting into like airplane tickets and stuff.
Speaker 3:Well, airlines, they are struggling right now. They cannot afford making it happen. Yeah, on the other hand, what I heard in Russia when that pre-Goshen coup was right, that same day, lots of progressive people decided to leave country. Can you imagine? Let me calculate the ratio, so it's a hundred or one 200,000. It was. The tickets were, I would say, like up to 10 to $50,000 for one ticket to Dubai, jesus Christ, yep, and they cost like 200 bucks or something. So people were paying a lot of money to get the hell out of there. To get the hell out of there, yep, Wow, I mean, that was ridiculous. I mean, within like hours, all tickets were sold.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like completely sold out and crazy pricing, and they also.
Speaker 3:Yep, yep, and in two days, all of them, once it was all over. It was all over like in one or two days or whatever. Uh, many of them started to call back to social media. Oh, I'm broke. I used all of my money just to get out. You get the hell out of here. No, I couldn't buy it.
Speaker 1:Well, walking around in Dubai for three days.
Speaker 3:Yep, and there was no money or nothing. Yeah, what should I do? Give me some money, or yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, now, that guy, the guy that tried to do that, now, apparently he's either dead because Putin killed him or he faked his death. That's that, those are my two options, you know.
Speaker 3:There are only two options. Yeah, because it was basically blown out of the sky.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, why? Whether with a rocket or with explosive on a plane, yeah, one or the other, one or the other. However, it is either he's dead or he's alive, and we will never see him again. So in either situation, you will not be able to come to any sort of conclusion. So let's, let's call it that he's dead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I might as well be. Yeah, he's not going to be working anymore.
Speaker 2:Foundation Nation is sponsored by Seattle's tiny housescom. Schedule your free tour today to explore the leaf, seattle's most unique tiny house.
Speaker 1:The, the smoke around here has been making me crazy and I was like I was kind of I was thinking about you know? Well, I was mostly just thinking about you know the crews and stuff and making sure everybody's working in a healthy way, you know, and stuff like that. But then and then I started thinking, well, where the hell is this smoke coming from? You know? I didn't even know. It seemed like everybody in the whole planet knew where the smoke was coming from, but me, and so I was. I was reading about it call comes from Canada.
Speaker 3:Yep, canada, canada fires have been going for years, but there is a let's call it a conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1:Oh really, I haven't heard, yep.
Speaker 3:What is it? Few few years back, we had a big fires in in Siberia, russia, right? So what they were? They were cover up for a whole bunch of wood that was cut down and sold to China. If you can see it from space, how much wood was cut? Wow, yep, and I think there are some theories that Canadians did the same thing. They illegally cut some wood and now they're covering it up with fires.
Speaker 1:Damn. I never even thought of that. Some of a bitch Canadian bastards.
Speaker 3:They are very progressive country, yeah, very progressive, yeah, in many ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, they got a king or something, don't they? Or what do?
Speaker 3:they, they have, they have a whole bunch of stuff and they're debating in the parliament Is very weird. Yeah, they cannot address the person. They have to address them in a sort person. That is like weird. I mean, you cannot really say you. You got to look the other way and argue with them, you can see or whatever, their organization whatever, but you cannot address them directly, directly.
Speaker 1:It's just funny.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Every time I'm watching it, it's like what the hell is going on. What's going on?
Speaker 1:The, the, the. I remember watching. Have you ever seen how they in like parliament or whatever in England? How they do it? They kind of sit in this little room and it's all these benches and stuff Really small room for the whole country and they sit around and there's a table in the middle and they're all arguing and and there it seems. I have no idea how it works, but it seems like on one side of the table is one group and on another side of the table is another group and they're kind of arguing back and forth and every once in a while somebody says something and then all the people that are sitting around they go hey, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I'm like what the heck is?
Speaker 1:this is some kind of voodoo s***.
Speaker 3:Anyway. Well, this is how they entertain themselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, let's, let's. It's got a little miniature, it's like miniature football in there, uh-huh, and it looks like someone.
Speaker 3:Someone just comes out and just kinda gives a speech.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and everybody is listening, listening, listening and they're like nah yeah yeah yeah, I forgot to ask, or I forgot are you into football or not?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, september 10th is the first game. Yep, I'm excited. I'm going to go to the Cincinnati game in Cincinnati because my kid stationed over there at the military base, so there's one game playing against the Cincinnati Bengals and the Seahawks, you know. So we're going to go to that one. And the? Um, what the heck was it? It was, uh, the. You know the. What is it? Joe Burroughs is the quarterback for the Cincinnati, this kid is. He's just hilarious to me how he thinks he's and how he's so shiny and sparky, wears cheetah outfits and stuff. You know.
Speaker 3:Well, there is a lot of controversy in how players in the football yeah dress and behave. I mean, some of them are just simply looking for fame in other ways than football. If they cannot get it in a way they are playing, they are getting it some other way, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, so all the fires are coming from right now the smoke we have is from Canada, right? Yep, yep, yep. So firefighters had an epic fight to save a community. It seems like you know we got like what are the fires? We have the yellow knife, we have fires around Kilawana, northwest Territories. It's just like fires everywhere.
Speaker 3:Yep and the yellow knife. They actually had to evacuate 20,000 people, so it's like a ghost town right now.
Speaker 1:That seems like a lot of people.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I mean, how can you relocate that many people and find a shelter for them?
Speaker 1:Where did they go? Did you hear?
Speaker 3:Well, some of them went to their relatives, but some persistent ones stayed to maintain the property or whatever.
Speaker 1:Water their roof.
Speaker 3:Yep, and some of them are actually helping firefighters to create these breaks in the forest to actually stop the fire, and it looks like they are succeeding because the yellow knife hasn't been affected by fire. Hmm.
Speaker 1:Let's see so 5700 fires, 53,000 square miles from one end of Canada to the other.
Speaker 3:That's probably the size of a pretty large country in Europe.
Speaker 1:That's a that's. Do you feel? Like you know, the fires are just out of control these days.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, they are, because some some people are claiming that because of a weather change, climate change it's got hotter and drier and everything. But it is a well-known fact that over 97% of fires are started by humans.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Basically, if everyone becomes more responsible, I would say we could cut down on fires drastically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that'd be nice. Yeah, I can see I could see where they'd actually at some point maybe make it illegal to go camping without a permit, so they can track people and find them if a fire starts in the area they go.
Speaker 3:One of the fires in Oregon started like this the guy, he was just a lone hiker, yeah, and he just could not live without a cup of coffee at the summit A cup of coffee. Yeah, yeah. So he brought his jet boil or whatever, and during his making of coffee, something caught on fire.
Speaker 1:He started a whole fire for a cup of coffee.
Speaker 3:Yep, just, he could not live without one, and he just started the fire.
Speaker 1:Well, you know I mean that sounds insignificant to, but to me in the morning I'd burn a whole mountain down for a cup of coffee.
Speaker 3:Well, if, if everything is bone dry and you know that there is a yeah, what are you doing? Extreme everything. Yeah, just you just follows a goddamn rules.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all their Fuck well in it. And you tell me that before you say listen, matthew, you can go camping, but you can't have a cup of coffee in the morning.
Speaker 3:I just wouldn't go camping, you see, there is a, there is a way. Yeah, makita, makita, makita made a coffee maker, battery powered coffee maker Yep.
Speaker 1:Hmm, okay, makita, yep, do you wait? You don't have it, do you?
Speaker 3:I don't, because it costs like 900 bucks 900 all. Jesus, no, no, no, no. Nine hundred dollars is their microwave.
Speaker 1:Oh, the Powered microwave.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's cool that one microwave itself without batteries is 990 something, dollars 928, and I think the my the coffee maker is like 400 bucks. Okay so, but you can have them without fire, right, you can heat your food at a job site anywhere, shit. But you see, you have to bring all these batteries and the microwave and the coffee maker. That thing weighs a ton probably.
Speaker 1:You know what that? You know what that sounds like to me, something that should go at the Matt V a Christmas party. I'm gonna look into that. That would be awesome, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but you cannot just Give away just a microwave or just a coffee maker. You have to add batteries and the battery, batteries and chargers because it will be pointless.
Speaker 1:Good luck finding this special battery.
Speaker 3:Yeah they're like 200 bucks a battery.
Speaker 1:Wow. Well, that's gonna be a good prize. We'll have to do push-up competition for that one. Most push-ups gets it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, I'm Matthew and this is Daniel and this is foundation nation. Thanks for tuning in and have a great day.
Speaker 3:Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2:Bye, bye Foundation nation is sponsored by Seattle's tiny houses. Calm, schedule your free tour today to explore the leaf, seattle's most unique tiny house.
