Matt (00:01.286)
Hi everybody and welcome to the Latter Day Lens. I am your host Matt with me as always as Shawn and we're so happy to welcome Levi back to the podcast. Welcome back Levi.

Levi Barnes (00:10.85)
Ooh, where else would I be? Yeah, yesterday was a good day skiing. I'm trying snowboarding. I have skied, but this is like my second time up snowboarding. It's kind of brutal. I'm a little bruised.

Shawn (00:13.802)
Yeah.

Matt (00:14.065)
Skiing in metal hood. That's what I heard. Then you go skiing

Shawn (00:24.19)
Hold on. Hold on. You're saying the coolest guy that I've ever known from the mission on doesn't snowboard. What? is, it waits to the age of 51 or whatever you are to try the cooler snow sport. What the heck?

Levi Barnes (00:33.145)
Well, I don't know who is that guy.

Levi Barnes (00:40.526)
Are you snowboarding, Shawn? What about you, Matt? you skiing or snowboarding?

Matt (00:43.77)
I've never been skiing or snowboarding in my life.

Shawn (00:46.076)
What? Yeah, I snowboard and Levi, let's just say you snowboard. Can we just say that?

Levi Barnes (00:52.032)
I do now, yeah.

Matt (00:52.305)
Done.

Shawn (00:53.352)
Yeah, there we go.

Matt (00:54.832)
Did you know this week I turned 50 years old and for my birthday, my wife is taking me, well, I'm gonna do a discovery flight. So I'm going up in a plane, I'm gonna fly around and then maybe I'll get my private pilot's license for a birthday present. Yeah, yeah, why not?

Shawn (01:08.298)
What? No. Cause when you get it for your birthday when you get to go meet a plane once they offer you a license.

Levi Barnes (01:12.078)
Well that would be awesome!

Matt (01:18.542)
No, no, no. Like I would, they take you up one time and then they say, Hey, would you like to buy like instruction stuff from us? And then I think you have to spend like 40, 50 hours in a plane to get your license. then over the next, I don't know, four or so months, I would become a pilot, a private pilot.

Shawn (01:35.166)
I don't think you're gonna do that.

Matt (01:37.082)
I haven't decided if I'm in it. I haven't been up in the plane yet, but I've always wanted to be in one of those small planes. And so he's going to let me take control of the plane all by myself. And I'm kind of excited. I've never done it before.

Shawn (01:42.42)
Levi Barnes (01:48.206)
How far would that let you fly? Like, can you fly to Boise? Can you fly to...

Matt (01:52.22)
You could fly cross country, for sure. Yeah, so you rent planes for, it depends on who you're renting from, but for sure. But you have to rent the plane by the hour, right? So it's like you could, if you fly to Portland, you gotta pay like $150 per hour that you're in Portland. But you guys, live, to fly to Yellowstone would take me maybe 20 minutes. To fly to Teton National Park.

Levi Barnes (01:59.916)
You fight at Portland?

Shawn (02:01.93)
Noooo

Shawn (02:07.53)
Leave out, leave out pay for it.

Levi Barnes (02:09.121)
Mm-hmm

Shawn (02:20.426)
Do they prorate the 150-hour? Yeah. OK, good.

Matt (02:24.078)
Yeah, well, no. I would take it for it's for however long you're in the air. You're like planes instead of keeping track of miles. They keep track of hours. So while you're using the plane, keeps track of the hours. So I could like fly around like national parks, taking videos and photos and all of that stuff like that'd be super fun.

Shawn (02:39.496)
Matt, sometimes on the podcast when we get talking about your hobbies, sometimes they're fun. Sometimes it's cool. I'm sure listeners are like, this is fascinating. Like when you talk about a cork TV.

Matt (02:50.46)
By the way, there's a really cool trial that's going to jury on Monday. That's pretty exciting. So you're saying Shawn that airplanes is more cool than court TV.

Levi Barnes (02:52.492)
You

Shawn (03:01.202)
I'll our listeners decide.

Matt (03:03.036)
But what do you you have no opinion Shawn? You just threw that out there like maybe one's more cool than the other.

Levi Barnes (03:03.694)
Hahaha

Shawn (03:11.402)
Airplane scares me to death. hate airplanes. They scare me. And so I don't want to talk about it. I don't like it. Don't like it. No, no, no, come to a concert with me once and then I'll consider that. Yeah, I've asked you to come to concerts with me our whole life and you're like, yeah.

Matt (03:15.29)
What?

Matt (03:18.734)
You should join me for my 50th birthday. I could take somebody up with me. You should come.

that's horrible. I said, I have Spotify, Shawn I don't need to go to a concert. But there's not like an app that's like the same as flying in a plane.

Shawn (03:34.57)
You

Levi comes to my city to go to concerts and you don't so Levi loves me more.

Levi Barnes (03:40.781)
Light simulator.

Matt (03:45.72)
Okay. I love that Levi thinks a flight simulator app is the same as going up in an airplane. I guess. I guess the same as Spotify is the same as a concert, right? There's some of the... All right. Somebody wrote in our mailbag this week, something that made me super, super happy. What they said was, wow, so much wisdom and truth. Loved it.

Levi Barnes (03:51.118)
That's the same, right?

You

Shawn (03:57.566)
Yeah

Shawn (04:09.96)
I don't know why that makes you happy. I'm pretty sure that was directed towards me.

Matt (04:15.814)
Well, I'm just happy that on this podcast there's so much wisdom and truth and we have a new listener that loves it and appreciates it. So thank you listener.

Shawn (04:17.537)
You

Shawn (04:22.974)
I do have to say that the two of you have brought me more wisdom and truth than probably anyone on the planet, that's... that's... truth.

Matt (04:30.278)
Well, Levi wasn't there last week when this person commented. That would be Porter. But that's okay. Levi should take the credit too, because...

Shawn (04:33.162)
Yeah.

Levi Barnes (04:37.12)
love Porter. thought Porter was fantastic. I'd to hear more. You have so many good guests who are... Porter's younger, right? Yeah, yeah. I love your young guests. Melanie and Porter, they're doing great work out there.

Matt (04:45.37)
Yeah, he's a college student.

Matt (04:52.56)
You know, today Melanie is presenting at a physics conference in Denver, Colorado. So yeah, those are things I don't understand when she talks about them. I'm like, I don't know, something about simulation particles. I don't know, something math, weird stuff.

Shawn (04:57.13)
Home, Eleni. Good job.

Shawn (05:07.391)
Levi knows.

Levi Barnes (05:07.456)
Is she, is it about simulation or experiment or do we know?

Matt (05:11.068)
Well, Levi, now I'm lost. I'm not exactly sure. I think maybe the word quantum was in there somewhere and possibly the word simulation, but I don't know. All right, let's talk about the first topic this week. Recently, right-wing billionaires have purchased media platforms and may be moving some of these legacy platforms to the right. Since the Ellesons purchased Paramount Plus and CBS, they've made some changes to the newsroom that we talked about previously. Jeff Bezos has recently moved

Shawn (05:17.812)
You

Levi Barnes (05:19.66)
Naturally.

Matt (05:40.988)
toward a more interventionist ownership style at the Washington Post, citing the need to restore trust by appearing more neutral. Since Musk purchased Twitter in 2022, he has explicitly moved the platform toward the right. So here's the question. Is this a swing back to the middle? What does the middle mean anyways, if that's the side you wanna take? The middle of what exactly? And does a more ideologically balanced information space lead to the kind of peace

President Oaks wants us to pursue in politics.

Shawn (06:11.69)
I want to hear Levi's response to this first. I'm curious where this comes from and where you stand on Levi.

Matt (06:18.8)
I'll go first. Just kidding. Go ahead Levi. No, no, go ahead.

Levi Barnes (06:18.84)
Yeah, so, you wanna go first? I wrote this question. I mean, do have lots of questions about what we mean by the middle and we fetishize the middle. We're like, yeah, centrism is just the best. But the middle, mean, today's middle isn't the middle of the 1950s. American middle isn't European middle. There's all kinds of middle.

Shawn (06:20.286)
You wanna go first, Matt?

Levi Barnes (06:48.77)
What do we mean by the middle and why is it so important to us? You know, don't be centrist, be right. But correct, be correct. Be true to your values, right?

Shawn (06:56.522)
Right, like not left, right is what you're saying, Levi.

Matt (06:57.168)
You

Matt (07:01.884)
Be accurate.

Shawn (07:05.03)
No, I'm pretty sure Levi meant the opposite of left be right. I'm pretty sure you might be conservative.

Matt (07:08.924)
Well, so I don't think that any of these people are trying to move something towards the middle, right? I think that they're trying to, I think that if I think about each of these, the Washington Post, CBS, and Twitter, all three of those platforms, and perhaps the reason why they were for sale is because they are not the top of the game.

If I were to say, what's the best national newspaper, it's going to be the New York Times. They have the best staff, they have the best reporting. And I think that they strive to be maybe down the middle, but might maybe left leaning. the best social media platform was certainly not Twitter when Elon Musk purchased it. And I would say the same with CBS of the, the three mainstream news networks or television stations. They're easily third place all the time. And so what I think is the, these were for sale because they were struggling. Billionaires purchased them.

And I think the move to the right is not trying to move it more to the center, but it's to say Fox News is doing really well in the cable news space by attracting listeners on the right. Maybe we can do the same thing and grow our platforms by producing content that is explicitly right leaning content. So I don't think they're trying to move to the middle. I think they're trying to produce content that is more focused at a conservative audience to try to save their institutions.

Levi Barnes (08:32.504)
sleep.

So you think their primary concern is to make money?

Matt (08:37.948)
Shocking, but yeah for sure.

Levi Barnes (08:39.374)
Well, no, I very much disagree with that. don't think the the Ellison's are doing this because they think there's money and I think Elon bought Twitter because he likes because he thinks it's profitable

Matt (08:43.086)
I think Elon.

Matt (08:49.648)
No, think 100%. So we can argue about what Twitter's value was when Elon Musk purchased it, but I feel like he overpaid for Twitter. And I feel like it was something great that I loved and enjoyed going to, but it was not my only platform. There were other things I liked just as much, but for the right leaning audience, there was nothing like Twitter out there. Trump was trying with social media, with Truth Social, but I think that Elon Musk said I could take Twitter.

Levi Barnes (09:13.837)
So.

Matt (09:17.274)
and make it into that and make it better because I'm gonna include other kinds of content. And so I think that Elon Musk looked at Twitter and said, this can be the Fox News of the social media space. I think that CBS, I mean, I imagine the Ellison's bought CBS. Like first of all, who watches CBS News? It's old people. Like that audience leans to the right anyways. Like the people that I see watching CBS are all of the same people that watch Fox News. And so I think the Ellison's said, look,

If we buy CBS News, then we can get them to watch CSI, which every old person watches. We can get them to watch these other shows, all the old people watch. And then instead of them turning to Fox News at night, they'll just stay on our station as they watch CBS Evening News. So I don't see this as an explicitly political move. I think it's a profit motive for all of them. What do you say, Shawn?

Shawn (10:09.642)
I'm going to take Levi's original and just kind of riff on it a little bit. And I don't know if this disagrees with you, Levi, or if this agrees with you. But if you try and like look at the latter day lens on this, you would say, look, from the very beginning, the Adam and Eve story, the concept of a spectrum of rights and wrongs always existed, right? It's the central theme of mortality, this agency we have and this opposition in all things. So,

Well, couldn't we say based on that, that objectively there is a middle? Isn't there? Right? There's objectively a right and objectively a wrong.

Matt (10:42.46)
There is.

Matt (10:47.216)
And there's an objectively a fence sitter right on the like sometimes right sometimes wrong for sure. There's the lukewarm.

Shawn (10:53.318)
Well, the scriptures would call that lukewarm,

Matt (10:58.108)
Yeah.

Levi Barnes (10:59.128)
So the idea then, Shawn, is that there'd be too far to one side is wrong, and too far to the other side is wrong, and the middle, like the correct, the righteousness is in the middle. That's the idea.

Shawn (11:11.334)
No, no, no, no, because the scripture says, know thy works that they neither hot nor cold, but they're lukewarm. And if they're lukewarm, I'll spew thee out of my mouth. So this would suggest, which I thought was the direction you were going to take this topic, that the middle is no place at all. The middle is you're not taking a side. And it sounds like the Lord wants us to do our best to choose, use our agency, our God-like agency and choose something. Now, sometimes we're going to choose wrong and sometimes we're going to choose right. And maybe

The truth is that some of us are very wrong and some of us are very right and our belief systems lead us in that direction. But it's worse to be in the middle because like it says, if the wind blows this, when you look warm, the wind blows this way and you go this way and then it blows this way and you go that way and you're no opinion at all.

Matt (11:57.764)
I agree with Shawn. The middle is a bad place to be. I think the middle objectively exists. I think the middle is made up of people who don't care about politics, that are uninformed and have no interest in it. So like if we take Levi's world of physics, there are people that have positions on matters that they argue about in physics. I can't think of any off the top of my head. But if you were to ask me, hey, Matt, what do you think about this issue in physics? I would say I'm right in the middle.

and Shawn would probably say the same. I'm right in the middle. Both sides have great arguments and I'm in the middle and I kind of wish they would just start arguing and just settle in on something right here in the middle of it. So to me, middle is uninformed.

Levi Barnes (12:30.776)
you

Levi Barnes (12:38.584)
So Matt, is Schrodinger's cat alive or dead? You're in the middle. You're like both, man. Perfect. Perfectly right. Perfectly accurate.

Matt (12:42.332)
I'm in the middle on that. A little bit alive, a little bit dead. When his eyes are open, he looks more alive. When his eyes are closed, he looks more dead. Right. That's how it is in politics. People who are in the middle, nobody is legitimately in the middle. Everybody has positions. Some that are left leaning, some that are right leaning, and those who have no positions at all are the people that are uninformed. There's nobody that says, let's just find something in the middle, right? Like on almost every issue in politics.

Shawn (12:48.965)
Hahaha!

Levi Barnes (12:52.238)
You

Shawn (13:09.994)
So this comes down to then the counsel in scripture for us to be wise by learning discernment, right? How do we discern between the left, the right, the right, the wrong, so that we're not ignorant or agnostic all the time about everything, but instead, God wants us to use our agency, but the tools he gives us to discern, I mean, that's probably what the world lacks most, right?

Matt (13:36.656)
Well, well, and so I think I've said this before, like, I think what Heavenly Father wants us to do in politics is to advocate for our positions strongly. And he wants us to do it strongly and peacefully in an informed way, but be willing to look for compromise with the other side. President Oaks would say moderation. To me, moderation isn't the same as the middle. Moderation is to say, you have this strong view, I have this strong view. There must be something where we can come together.

and find a better solution. So in my opinion, that's what President Oaks is telling us to do. Strongly advocate for your views, but be willing to moderate or compromise or talk to the other side so you can find the best solution to the problem.

Levi Barnes (14:22.798)
I love that point that the middle isn't about, yeah, the middle isn't about being wishy washy. The middle is about saying, look, I have a strong opinion, but I'm willing, you know, for the sake of maintaining a country or a community, I'm willing to compromise on some things. I love it.

Matt (14:38.938)
Okay, Shawn gets the points though, because he used scripture to tell us that the middle means lukewarm and that God spews us out of his mouth when we're lukewarm. That was good. Shawn, that was not a backhanded compliment. That was a specific, like I went through this training of how to give a compliment. I feel like I did all of the steps on that one. was.

Shawn (14:52.362)
Yeah, I believe you. You did it?

That was, yes, I felt, I did feel that was sincere, thank you. Now when I was saying it, you're laughing at me. When I was telling you my answer, your face was laughing at me. That was the opposite of a, that was a backhanded response.

Matt (15:03.344)
Did you know? Yeah.

Matt (15:12.26)
I just, I'm just not really good at interpersonal relationships. That's all additional.

Shawn (15:15.248)
Hahaha

Levi Barnes (15:15.528)
it Matt. Shawn I feel like that was sincere I think you should take that for what it was I think Matt was serious yeah.

Shawn (15:19.368)
I did too. I did too. Thank you, Matt. Appreciate that.

Matt (15:22.16)
Yeah. Okay. Levi, are you giving Shawn the points?

Levi Barnes (15:27.314)
Well, I'm sorry, I'm giving Matt the points because I do really love this distinction between a compromise and a wishy-washy lukewarm position. I love that.

Shawn (15:37.844)
Yeah. I will give President Oaks the points because that was his points and not Matt's. No, I'm just kidding. You can have it, Matt.

Matt (15:38.031)
Okay, thanks Levi.

jeez. I meant I will give the gospel according to Luke the points.

Levi Barnes (15:43.256)
Ho-ho!

Shawn (15:48.298)
Points to Matt, points to Matt.

Levi Barnes (15:50.446)
You

Matt (15:52.772)
Okay, ever since this story came out, I've just been excited to talk about it. And then Levi was going to be the guest and I was like, I've got to talk about this with Levi. So all of you MAGA listeners, it's going to like burn your ears and make you like get all upset inside to hear this, but this is like such a fun idea. Okay. This month, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced legislation that would impose a 5 % annual wealth tax on the roughly 1000 Americans whose net worth exceeds one

Shawn (16:00.212)
Hahaha

Matt (16:21.948)
Among other things, the money from this tax will help poor Americans pay for healthcare. Nearly half of Americans who earn less than $48,000 per year have had to cut back on utilities, skip a meal, drive less, or borrow money to pay for healthcare or medicine. The United States is the richest country in the history of mankind. Is Bernie Sanders doing the morally correct thing to tax the uber wealthy, only the people whose wealth is above a billion dollars, to make sure that hardworking Americans

have access to basic healthcare.

Shawn (16:54.766)
So to you two, do you look at this old man Bernie Sanders and do you go, that's Robin Hood. That is my hero, that is Robin Hood. Do you both look at him that way?

Matt (17:03.834)
I look at him and I say, that is a true follower of Jesus Christ. Yeah. Jesus said, Jesus said, yeah.

Shawn (17:06.898)
What? No you don't.

Levi Barnes (17:09.208)
I think he's a very moral person. He's very honest, yeah.

Shawn (17:12.562)
What is wrong with, can I counter that first before we answer the topic? There's no way his motive is altruistic. There's no way his motive is altruistic. You look at the way he lives his life, he's a lifelong, well not a lifelong, but he's been a politician forever. Dude, to me this approach is pandering for votes, it's demeaning, and it's out of pure jealousy, which is ironic because the man is a millionaire, the man is very wealthy.

Matt (17:39.708)
But Bernie Sanders doesn't need any votes. Bernie Sanders doesn't need anybody's votes. Bernie Sanders has his seat for as long as he wants to have his seat. He's not even a Democrat, by the way. He's an independent. He doesn't need, he doesn't need, yeah, he's like you, Shawn, where he's like, I don't need either of those stupid parties, those manmade or-

Levi Barnes (17:40.056)
He said, what are you very wealthy?

Shawn (17:47.466)
He wants... What do mean?

Levi Barnes (17:51.288)
He's an independent.

Shawn (17:53.054)
really? He's independent so he could have run. No, he is just doing it so he could run. The Democrat Party wouldn't give him the nomination. He was just doing it so could run for president.

Matt (18:04.09)
No, he's been he's always been independent. He's never been when he ran for president, he ran as a Democrat. And that actually hurt him. The fact that he's not a loyal Democrat when he was running for president. He actually beat Hillary Clinton in that election. He got more votes than she did.

Shawn (18:17.098)
Well, I'm going to go with Ayn Rand and suggest that his altruist signaling is not actually altruistic.

Matt (18:24.912)
Come on.

Levi Barnes (18:25.542)
He's a terrible grifter if he's a grifter. Like the man, you know, yeah, he has $2 million. He's gonna retire with $2 million. Now, to some people that's a lot of money, but I mean, that's like his houses. Shawn, you have $2 million. Your house is worth $2 million. Now, sure it is.

Shawn (18:42.41)
It's not. But I'm also a count, but I'm also a capitalist and I'm like, it. OK. Yeah. OK.

Matt (18:44.188)
Okay, enough about Bernie Sanders. Now you have to answer the question, question Shawn or Levi. I don't care who goes first. I'll just say from the latter day lens perspective, Jesus says that we should make sure that there are no poor among us. Jesus says that we should make sure that poor people are taken care of.

Shawn (19:07.05)
So are you suggesting that he leaves it open-ended with how we take care of our poor people? Because I don't think he does. Because I think what you're suggesting is therefore we should all decide on how to do it. For example, we should take from some people to give to the others. I don't think so, Matt. I think that the scriptures teach us that mankind has to learn how to choose to be charitable. We have to learn how to give freely and to faithfully follow Christ. This solution

is none of that that doesn't change people's hearts it doesn't change people's mind and it won't solve anything plus uh-huh

Matt (19:41.692)
Well, what about this, Shawn? People should choose to not kill each other. People should choose to not steal from each other, right? But if they choose the wrong, then as a society, we punish them for not learning the lesson they should have learned. And so people who kill, we throw them in jail. People who steal, we punish them. If there are a thousand Americans whose net worth is so great that they're not giving back to society, they're welcome to choose voluntarily to give that money to the poor.

But if they choose not to, then we can choose to take it from them and take care of the poor ourselves. It's only a thousand people, Shawn. Out of 340 million, a thousand people haven't learned the basic lesson of help other people take care of them. And so we'll do it for them.

Shawn (20:25.31)
It's just, it's unjust. can't segment out people just because they are different and make different rules for them. Well, you're LDS, you're a minority, then we should make different rules for you. Or it doesn't make any sense. It's unjust. It doesn't matter. You guys always focus on money and you put such importance on money. And the scriptures say that the love of money is the root of all evil. It's not money. Money isn't the root of all evil. It's the love of it. And when you guys put so much emphasis on that

Levi Barnes (20:26.359)
No.

Shawn (20:51.476)
person over there is so much different, we should have different rules that are more unfair because they have money. That's an unjust thing. It's not right.

Levi Barnes (21:01.678)
Well, one thing I like about what Shawn has said is when you focus on, so I have a problem sometimes, Bernie, I love you, Bernie. I suppose I have a problem with this focus on billionaires because the thing about taxing billionaires is billionaires will not change their consumption patterns when you tax them. Nobody can spend a billion dollars ever. And so when you tax billionaires, they are gonna keep consuming at the same rate.

And so if you take money from billionaires and you give it to people who are going to immediately consume it, you're going to see a little bit of inflation from that. Because billionaires are going to keep consuming just as they always did, but somebody who makes under $48,000 is going to spend more. And so what's going to happen is you're going to...

Matt (21:43.612)
But he's not just giving people the money. He's gonna spend it on improving Medicare. He's gonna spend it on the social safety net. And the number doesn't come, the number 5%, the reason that we're taxing 5 % is because if you look at the average growth in wealth in the United States over, I don't know the period of time, most Americans wealth has grown at 1%.

Levi Barnes (21:49.464)
Sure. Sure.

Shawn (21:54.846)
That's giving people money.

Levi Barnes (21:57.006)
Well, spending the money, yeah.

Matt (22:12.006)
But for this particular group of people, their wealth has grown 5%. So their wealth is growing faster. Now, why is their wealth growing faster? Because the United States creates a land of opportunity for them. So we're just taxing that growth that they've had more than what other people have had. It's not because they're so smart or so wise or better than everyone else.

Shawn (22:16.734)
K Matt.

Shawn (22:34.177)
Okay, Matt. So today I had state conference. I sat in the foyer as I usually do instead of sitting in the thing listening to those people talk. And as I sat in my foyer, as I usually do, I interact with the saints. And there's this kid who I've known for a long time. He's 31. He's a kid. Now we got into this deep discussion about how he's struggling because he still works at a grocery store and he only makes $17 an hour.

Matt (22:41.254)
You're one of us.

Shawn (23:00.272)
His parents are both sick in their 60s, but they both are very sick. can't work. And he just feels trapped that he's stuck at home. all the situations, every, every detail of his life, I was just like, my goodness, that's hard. Like, how do you get out of that trap? And as we sat there talking, I was like, I could, I could just give him money. Like, what if I gave him enough money to do X, Y, and Z? And as we got talking further, as we do it, we do it.

As we got talking further, he doesn't want my money. He wants the ability to earn his own money. He wants the ability, this is what he said to me. He says he wants the ability to earn his own money, learn how to take care of his own parents, to own his own home someday, to learn how to find a spouse. That is the, so if we just, Matt, if we just take money from someone who has a lot of money and we give it to people who don't have a lot of money, you solve absolutely zero. We need, that's true.

Matt (23:44.271)
Okay.

Matt (23:54.18)
Not true, not true. If you take the money from these billionaires and you use it to pay for healthcare in the United States, then hardworking people will no longer have to declare bankruptcy because they can't afford their medical bills or they won't have to skip meals. It's not a question of can they work? Can they get ahead? It's a question of can they afford basic healthcare because the healthcare system in the United States is out of control. And so if I, there's a couple of ways to make it so it's not out of control. We could pass laws and we could limit the amount of money that they charge.

we could implement some kind of a national healthcare system, or we could tax the thousand billionaires in the United States. And guess what? They're not going anywhere because...

Shawn (24:23.402)
That's right.

Shawn (24:29.539)
Do you honestly, wait, you're saying the proposal is if we tax, if we do Bernie's plan, this is going to solve healthcare for the country? That's what you're saying?

Matt (24:38.14)
It will give those subsidies back to poor people so that they can pay for their health care.

Shawn (24:42.794)
to the point where people can all now afford healthcare and their lives are solved. I don't believe you.

Matt (24:48.284)
That's, mean, now you're saying you don't believe Bernie Sanders because that's what he promised me. And I love him because he always delivers on his promise.

Shawn (24:51.748)
correct. Yeah correct.

Levi Barnes (24:57.784)
Well, so my last thought about this is now I do think that we should instead of taxing billionaires, I mean, I believe in taxing millionaires to pay for health care for poor people also. But I think however you do it, paying for health care is a really, really great thing. It doesn't have any of the problems that we associate with welfare. It doesn't make people lazy. There's nobody sitting around and saying,

Why would I go to work when I get all the colonoscopies I want for free, right? Nobody says that. Nobody's like siphoning up healthcare as fast as they can. Healthcare is the thing that you go get when you're sick and you become more productive once you get it. So it's great. I love paying for healthcare.

Shawn (25:30.954)
Can I, but.

Shawn (25:36.554)
But to me, that's a different discussion, right? Because you guys aren't talking, we already tax the billionaires, we already tax the millionaires. The problem is our government does not give those monies to people who need them in the form of healthcare. We could, so I don't think your discussion is who should be taxed and how much. You really want to just talk about our government should be paying for healthcare, there should be universal healthcare. That's what you're talking about.

Matt (25:49.209)
Not enough.

Matt (26:06.972)
I do think that I do agree with that, but I also love the idea of paying for it by taxing billionaires on their 5 % annual the wealth tax. I think that's an awesome idea. I like where would they go right? Those thousand billionaires. If you say we're going to take 5 % of your wealth and we're going to use it to solve America's problems, they're not leaving America to go to China or they're not going to give up their residency here. We have the we are the land of.

Levi Barnes (26:09.24)
Me too.

Shawn (26:14.954)
Okay.

Shawn (26:22.76)
irrelevant.

Shawn (26:26.442)
It's irrelevant.

Matt (26:32.23)
We are the land of dreams, Shawn, and the fact that we're the land of dreams makes it so that we can tax all these billionaires and solve all of our problems if we want to. Three.

Shawn (26:40.468)
don't care how much money someone has, Matt. I don't care. There should be a just law for all of us. It doesn't matter how much money those people have. We shouldn't treat them any differently. They should be protected under the same rights that we all are protected under. It doesn't matter how much money they have. Stop making about money.

Matt (26:52.892)
So you're saying everybody's wealth should get taxed at 5 %?

Shawn (26:57.096)
No, we should have a fair tax system that is fair to everyone and doesn't point, you know, like.

Matt (27:02.99)
I love the idea of taxing everyone's wealth at 5 % because then all the poor people who have no wealth and they don't have to pay anything on that. I'm okay with that. Let's tax everybody's wealth at 5%.

Shawn (27:06.175)
Yeah.

There you go. Okay, done. We solved it. Okay, we solved it. Look.

Levi Barnes (27:13.452)
No, I like progressive taxation. The richer you are, the higher percentage you should pay. It's easy. It makes the world better.

Shawn (27:18.388)
Yeah.

Matt (27:20.762)
Well, then I'm gonna give Levi the points for that because when Shawn says that the church is about equality and the gospel is about treating everybody the same, I feel like that's what Levi was describing. Progressive, well no, wait, nevermind. But I still.

Levi Barnes (27:33.484)
Yeah, no, but no, but seriously, like we just say, okay, so, you know, everybody needs whatever $50,000 to live. And now you guys have got 10 times that you're making 10 times that then I'm like, okay, let's, let's, you know, bring you guys, let's take some from here so that the people on the bottom can live a better life and have that $50,000 minimum or whatever.

Matt (27:45.296)
Okay.

Shawn (27:46.57)
Yeah, you can't... You can't... You're not changing... You're

Matt (27:48.976)
when he says it that way.

Shawn (27:53.416)
You're not changing the hearts or the abilities of anyone in that. You're forcing charity and you're forcing wealth. You can't do that. People have to, we all, I have to, if I just stuck at home and lived off my mom and dad, I would never learn how to earn. I would never learn how to overcome obstacles. I would never learn how to get myself out of my holes.

Levi Barnes (28:13.026)
But that's not what healthcare does. Healthcare does, nobody stays home and doesn't go to work because they can have healthcare for free.

Shawn (28:19.976)
I know, Matt says we're talking about taxes, we're not talking about healthcare.

Matt (28:23.93)
Yeah, I want to talk about both of them. I want universal basic income. All the things that Shawn's complaining about. I want all of those things, except for I don't want Shawn to have to live with his parents. I want him to live in government housing, eating government cheese and government butter and all of that stuff.

Shawn (28:38.388)
Hey, you experienced that in Ukraine. How'd you like it?

Matt (28:40.988)
It was fine. didn't ever, you know, my entire mission, I never worried about paying the bills. entire, it was like the best. Okay, this topic's a little more, a little sadder, but I think it's important for us to talk about. So it's now clear that the US fired a missile that killed around 150 school girls in Iran.

Shawn (28:42.826)
you're a visitor. Communism worked for you. That's amazing.

Levi Barnes (28:47.118)
And look how happy he was.

Matt (29:05.852)
The World Health Organization reports that more than 1,300 Iranians have been killed since the bombing started. For context, during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7th of 2023, approximately 1,200 people were killed and 251 people were taken hostage. At the moment, U.S. and Israeli intelligence do not think that Iran's regime is likely to fall anytime soon. So here's the question.

Many Americans believed that Israel was justified in waging horrific war in Gaza because of what happened on October 7th, 2023. Since the U.S. and Israel have now done something equivalent to the Iranians, are they justified in waging horrific war against the United States?

Shawn (29:49.866)
I mean, that's an easy answer. Now, of course they're justified. Of course they are. Of course we attacked, if someone, anyone who attacks another person, that person is able or allowed to self-defense. So of course they're justified. Now it doesn't seem like they're gonna win and it seems like it will go badly for them just because the bigger, stronger, you know, government is gonna win. There's...

Matt (29:51.738)
You say no?

tell me more.

Shawn (30:17.364)
probably good and bad that'll come from it, right? If the Iranian people can become free from this or democratic, then that's good. If they earn more freedoms, right? Human rights, that would be good. If the evil dictatorship that murders his own people gets overthrown, that's good. But of course they have the right. They're justified in defending themselves, are they not?

Matt (30:37.808)
Let me ask you this, Shawn, do you think that, let's say that the best case scenario happens and Iran gets a democratically elected government and they have freedom. Do you think that the Iranians, having gained this freedom, will feel gratitude to the United States and be like, nevermind, I don't want to kill you anymore. I don't want to fight back. Right? Cause you just said how if you're attacked, you're justified in retaliating. Do think that those Iranians, democratically elected, will say, we don't want to retaliate anymore. We want peace with the U S.

Shawn (31:06.236)
No way, because we just talked about in the first topic how since Adam and Eve, there's a spectrum of opinions, right? That's what agency's about. So I think there will always be in Iran, people who would prefer to go back to theocracy, right? And would prefer the dictator that forces the religious principle. So no, I don't think so. I think, yes, I think a portion of them absolutely will be grateful as they are now. You can see them on the news, right? And there's also gonna be a portion that are gonna feel

wronged and retaliate. Yeah, it's going to be an ongoing conflict, don't you think?

Matt (31:40.048)
Yeah, I think once we killed 150 school kids at an elementary school, I think that that changed the calculus of this war forevermore. I think that the parents of those girls will never forgive us. And I think that there was an hatred that that's going to breed in Iran against the United States that will, at least for an entire generation, won't go away. No matter what good we might try to do, there are people there that will now hate us forever and will never side with us.

Shawn (32:07.86)
What do think, Levi?

Levi Barnes (32:08.078)
Do you think, that there's any path to reconciliation, to assuage that vitriol? Is there a way, is there something the United States could do, or Iran could do, or a Shawn could do to make that better?

Shawn (32:22.698)
Good question.

Matt (32:25.808)
Well, if you look at what Iran is saying right now, because Trump has said we want to have peace talks, we want to have a ceasefire. Iran has said that one of the conditions for a ceasefire is reparations for all of the deaths that have happened so far. So I think it's possible if the United States were to say, are so sorry for killing those girls, here is money we're going to give you and we're going to pay like the best we can, then I think that some Iranians would maybe like,

Try to forgive us for that. I cannot imagine a world in which the United States, like the people in the United States say, yeah, let's pay them money to make up for the people we killed.

Levi Barnes (33:03.832)
Yeah. I mean, the other thing that would need to happen, I was thinking about this, is if that were, who, my, if that were one of my kids, what would I need, right? And I probably would need for the United States to say, here's how it happened, and here's why it won't happen again, right? I need the United States to come and say, full transparency, these were the things that went wrong, bam, bam, bam, and that caused the death of your children.

And now we've made these changes so that that never happens again. And I love your idea of saying, you know, money's very small here, but what can we do to make up for it? What can we do to make it up to, you know, the children of Iran?

Shawn (33:47.092)
That's amazing. Wow, yes.

Matt (33:49.648)
Yeah, so I think the reason I wanted to talk about this is because this thing that we've done in Iran is it's repeated over and over again in the history of the world, right? When Hamas goes in and does what they did in Israel, Israel says, we are justified now. And they killed tens of thousands of people in, Palestinians, right? They killed at least a thousand children in Palestine. They're doing the same thing now in Lebanon. And this cycle of like,

Like I agree with Shawn that they're justified in wanting to go to war against us. They're justified in never forgiving us ever again. They're justified in saying, we will never forgive you. We will never forget what you did to us. Of course they're justified in doing that, but that justification that people have repeats itself over and over and over again. And that's the cycle that leads to more war, to more violence, to never ending hatred. And so that's why I think it's important to bring in the latter day lens on this particular topic.

Because I know that there are members of our church that say Iran is the devil, Iran hates us, they hate everything we stand for, Iran killed their own people, and they deserve everything we're sending their way. And then there's also members of our church that would say like, we shouldn't be killing anybody at all because we're pacifists and we don't believe in war. But I think the latter day lens perspective on this particular topic is this. I think that in life, it is inevitable that we're gonna do something to harm somebody else.

where they're justified in doing something mean and retaliatory to us. And the latter-day lens perspective is, if you're out for justice, then you're never a true follower of Jesus Christ. Because in the end, we all go to Jesus for mercy, because we all know that none of us are truly saved through justice. And so the mercy we beg for from Jesus is what we're all relying on. And so he expects the same from us in return. For us to show mercy,

when there's no cause for mercy, for us to not claim justice when it's every right of ours to claim justice. I believe that's the latter day lens. In our own lives, we have to always seek to forgive and show mercy to people who don't deserve it. And if we go after justice, we're never gonna be the kind of people he wants us to be.

Shawn (36:05.098)
Well, you guys are both just preaching, both of you. To me, is like Levi, your sermon, which was amazing and moved me. There's evidence of that through scripture, right? Where actually there are times, Matt, where Moroni or the Nephites or even the Lamanites were justified, right? God supported them in defending their people and fighting to defend themselves. But the responses were of charity, right? I love that solution, Levi.

Levi Barnes (36:06.072)
Beautiful.

Shawn (36:34.218)
Go and make amends, go and serve them, go and try and build back or show them that we're just trying to have peace, we're trying to. But then on the other hand, Matt, there's lots of evidence that you're right, like lay down our swords, bury them in the ground. If you're gonna kill us, you're gonna kill us. We're gonna love you no matter what. So I don't think it's a black and white there. I think both of you preached sermons that like moved me and were powerful.

Matt (36:55.196)
It just makes me a little sad because we used to be more that way, Shawn. After World War II, we spent millions of our tax dollars trying to rebuild Europe. After the Iraq War, spent millions, yeah, that's right. We spent millions of dollars, billions of dollars trying to build Iraq. We spent billions of dollars trying to rebuild Afghanistan. It's like we recognized that we might go in and cause destruction, but that we had an obligation to

Levi Barnes (37:07.232)
And Japan.

Shawn (37:08.755)
and Japania.

Matt (37:23.43)
build something in its place. And I don't see that from America right now. And to me, that's the saddest part of it all.

Shawn (37:27.722)
I want to live, Levi, listening to you preach like that, I want to live in that America. I want to live where yes, we have strength and we're doing our best to do the right things, but when mistakes happen or even the result of the hard things, we come in and we help and fix and try to make amends. That's what I want to live in. Yeah.

Levi Barnes (37:46.762)
Well, you know, this shouldn't be this political a topic, but somebody who did this really well was Barack Obama, and they called him apologizer in chief and they mocked him for going in and trying to make amends to people. And it was so ugly to watch him politicize this when he was doing the right thing. He was doing the thing that Christian people should do. And they said, America doesn't apologize. And Mitt Romney writes his book about no apologies.

No, apologize when you're wrong.

Matt (38:18.332)
Well, and sometimes apologies don't fix things, right? Sometimes apologies aren't enough, but as a nation, even if we don't apologize, because I understand why people might hate apologies, even if we don't apologize, we can do our best to rebuild. Like we used to have charitable organizations that would go into other countries to rebuild the things that we destroyed. And Iraq did cost billions and billions of dollars, and Iraq is far from like the beacon of democracy in the world.

In fact, they just killed a woman who was a woman's rights activist in Iraq. Somebody shot her outside of her house. So it's not the perfect place, but at least like we used to try. Like the idea that we just go into Venezuela, bomb some people, kill some people, leave. Go into Iran, bomb some people, kill some people, leave. Go into maybe Cuba next, bomb some people, kill some people, leave. Like that's the kind of stuff that thugs do. That's not the kind of stuff that we should be shooting for as members of the church.

Shawn (39:10.142)
Yeah, I don't know that we can absolutely conclude that our current America isn't that way. We have to see, right? This war just started, both in Venezuela and in Iran. We have to see. Maybe they will come with some charity. Maybe they will come with rebuilding. We have to wait and see.

Matt (39:26.128)
Yeah. I'm hopeful that's not what I hear anybody. I don't hear anybody saying that right now, but yeah, you're right. I hope we do that. It's not what I saw us do in Venezuela by the way, right? We went in and we killed some people and then took their assets and said let's this is ours now. I hope you're right Shawn. I hope that that's the kind of America will be by the way we didn't do that in Afghanistan, right? We just I mean I guess we tried to but.

Levi Barnes (39:29.122)
So.

Matt (39:52.038)
We sure were quick to take all of our stuff out of Afghanistan as we were on our way out of Afghanistan. Like why don't we build and leave stuff for people when we go in there? I don't know. I know it's cause it's expensive and things but. All right, I'm gonna give points to Shawn and Levi. You both go.

Shawn (40:06.526)
You and Levi. No, you and Levi. Matt and Levi. That was a beautiful sermon you guys preached.

Matt (40:11.492)
Okay, thanks, John. All right, let's go to the big question. I'm a little bit ahead in Come Follow Me, so I'm in Deuteronomy. I just finished reading Deuteronomy. And my guess is, like, when Come Follow Me gets to Deuteronomy, the whole book will be like one week. Maybe they'll combine Leviticus and Deuteronomy into one, because there's some weird stuff in these books. But anyhow.

Levi Barnes (40:12.77)
Well done, man.

Shawn (40:32.052)
This is a topic that is passionate to our friend Levi. His hobby is to study usury.

Matt (40:35.643)
Yeah.

Matt (40:39.068)
That's right. So in Deuteronomy 23, 19 through 20, they're finishing up the law of Moses and they're reminded that usury, says, thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother, usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent upon usury. Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury, but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury, that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all that thou setest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.

For listeners who don't know, usury is interest. So basically, God is telling the children of Israel, feel free to lend money, but you can't charge interest. You can't take anything in return for the money that you lend to other people of the house of Israel. If they're a stranger, fine, go ahead and charge interest, but you can't do it to somebody in the house of Israel. So this is my question. Is it morally wrong to charge interest when lending money to other members of the church? What about lending money to family members?

Levi Barnes (41:21.102)
you

Matt (41:37.988)
and I'm just gonna start with, I say yeah, morally wrong. America First Credit Union, Zion's National Bank, First Security, whatever these banks were back in the day, sinful, horrible. Can't even follow the Bible.

Shawn (41:40.795)
come on. Really?

Shawn (41:54.714)
I'll disagree.

Levi Barnes (41:55.382)
So I didn't bring a scripture, but I did bring a quote from Elder C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity said, is one bit of advice given to us by the ancient heathen Greeks and by the Jews in the Old Testament and by the great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, which the modern economic system has completely disobeyed. All these people told us not to lend money at interest. And lending money at interest, what we call investment, is the basis of our whole system.

Shawn (42:01.402)
Levi Barnes (42:24.152)
I'm not an economist and simply do not know whether this investment system is responsible for the state we are in or not. This is where we want the Christian economist, but I should not have been honest if I had not told you that the three great civilizations had agreed, or so it seems at first sight, in condemning the very thing upon which we have based our whole life. So see us, Lewis.

Matt (42:43.622)
Wow, that's pretty good. Just for listeners to know, C.S. Lewis was not a member of our church or an apostle, but he is, what is he, a Christian philosopher?

Levi Barnes (42:49.23)
You

Yeah, something like that, yeah. He's a Christian of some kind, yeah.

Shawn (42:57.224)
Subscribe!

Levi Barnes (42:58.946)
He was, well, he was a convert, right? So he talks about this a lot, that he was, didn't used to be a Christian, was a real staunch atheist and partly through his relationship with J.R.R. Tolkien was converted to Christianity and wrote lots of great Christian books, worth reading. Screwtape letters, mere Christianity, good things.

Shawn (43:15.518)
Yeah, good man.

Matt (43:16.196)
I will say that that CS Lewis is wrong in terms of economics. Like, well, maybe he's right, but our entire financial system is based on usury and, the great wealth that the United States has experienced in the post-war era is largely because of usury, because of taking, like I, let's just say I have a thousand dollars and I need to, that I want to save, right? I could just put it under my pillow and save it that way, but where I could put it to use and

One way to put it to use is to lend it to somebody else who pays me, let's say 8 % interest on that thousand dollars. So my money is working for me and that person's able to take that thousand dollars and build capital. And like that's the foundation of our economic system. It's the foundation of the Western world for the last, I don't know, two, 300 years. Like if you say no usury, you really will, our economic system would collapse because it's just unfathomable to think.

Shawn (44:03.178)
You

Shawn (44:13.258)
Okay, case.

Matt (44:14.012)
that Shawn would give me $1,000 and get nothing in return because then he has no incentive ever to save $1,000 because that money can't possibly work for him. But it is also clear to me that in the Bible, God tells us not to do it.

Shawn (44:29.45)
Okay, so let me give it at least counter to your arguments. Yeah Okay, so Matt, what what would you say? Just take a guess? There's no number but take a guess what percentage of the of the Saints that have lived on this planet lived under the law of Moses like I don't know percentage of like Yeah, we've done it that lived under the law of Moses not

Matt (44:33.404)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (44:46.534)
Like in the history of mankind, the people that were God's people, what percent were... Well, it's going to be less than 1%, right? At their best, they were maybe a million people. Yeah.

Shawn (44:56.68)
Yeah. And the timeline that people lived under the law of Moses relative to the rest of, you know, the history of the planet. We don't know the age of the planet, but it's got to be small. Right? Okay. So we know that the law of Moses, which was lived by very few people with a, in a very, very limited time, had a very distinct and useful purpose. Right? These, the children of Israel were slaves for so many years and coming out of that,

Matt (45:09.498)
Yeah.

Shawn (45:25.898)
They needed these, like this law of Moses acted as a way to prepare them to help them to understand how to get back into a civil society, into a faithful society. I mean, were all of it.

Matt (45:36.678)
get rid of idolatry, get rid of all of the bad habits of Egypt, stop sleeping with animals and sisters and brothers and all of that sort of stuff that they were prepared from doing, stop eating snakes and pigs and all that other weird stuff that they're, yeah, they were commanded to stop doing all that nasty stuff.

Shawn (45:41.009)
All of it.

Shawn (45:46.878)
So why?

Shawn (45:55.146)
And so I assume that the law of Moses was for a special time, for a special people, for a special place. Right? And so this concept that you're bringing up, I think was dedicated to those people. I don't think you can look at scripture and go, see, all throughout scripture, God commanded us not to charge interest to people. No, just in a limited time, limited place under the law of Moses. think there's many, and there's many, then you can answer, there's many experiences or parables where someone

Matt (46:18.448)
That's interesting, Shawn.

Shawn (46:25.404)
owes someone else money and there is interest and sometimes they forgave them and sometimes they paid their debt, you know, what they owed and it was fine. It was okay.

Matt (46:35.802)
I definitely don't want to destroy your faith in the scriptures, Shawn, because I've been talking to you on this podcast for years and I love that you're always like canonized scripture, canonized scripture. And when we talk about government, you choose something in the doctrine and covenants, which was like this group of people got together in Kirtland, Ohio and they made a little thing about like what government ought to be, but it's canonized scripture. So we got to listen to canonized scripture. But when we go to canonized scripture from like 2000 years ago or even more, you're like,

Levi Barnes (46:53.966)
Thank

Shawn (47:03.53)
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Matt (47:04.316)
Well, that was just a very specific time and place.

Matt (47:16.508)
How in the world does he fulfill the- how does he fulfill the-

Shawn (47:33.322)
on my, on such a sandy foundation that maybe I do need to implement some more strict policies in order for me to grow to the next level.

Matt (47:40.965)
But Shawn, is there a principle here about why they're not allowed to charge usury to each other, but they can charge it to strangers?

Shawn (47:51.018)
My argument is that I don't think there is. I think that they are giving strict codes to overcome the results of hundreds of years of slavery and living in a non-civil society. So don't think there is a principle. don't. I think there are principles that say having free exchange with one another or as Matt likes to say, free intercourse one with another is all about the freedom can't take.

Matt (48:15.164)
There's nothing more law of Moses than that, Shawn.

Levi Barnes (48:20.014)
Ha ha!

Shawn (48:20.02)
Freedom can't exist, right? Freedom can't exist unless I get to set terms and you get to set terms and we can agree on that. There's nothing immoral for me to say, hey Matt, can I borrow money from you? It'll be a huge favor to me. I'm happy to give you something in return for that. There's nothing wrong with that.

Matt (48:35.612)
But you know what's interesting, and I don't want to get into the anti-Semitic tropes, but sometimes anti-Semitism is based on things that are like, because what I'm going to say will sound anti-Semitic, but it is true that for long periods of time, because the Jews were not able to have land, it was against the law for them to hold land. And so what the Jewish people would do is they were often the merchant class in society. So they would have money and they would lend that money for usury to like,

Shawn (48:42.772)
Good choice not to get into that.

Levi Barnes (48:46.158)
It's there. Yeah.

Matt (49:04.346)
kings and other wealthy people in Europe. And that's what made so many Europeans hate them so much because they were this merch when they were like, I hate the banks. I hate the people. was largely the Jewish people that had that money and were charging the interest. And so they were the victims of that ire from people. And so I wonder if there's like something to that, that like when you're the people charging interest to other people, then it makes them like resentful towards you or hateful towards you.

Shawn (49:32.67)
What about simple bartering, Matt? Let's say I have a car that I'm not using and Matt's like, you desperately need a car. Hey, Matt, I'll give you my car in exchange you will wash my house once a year, once a month, whatever.

Matt (49:46.524)
Well, that's just me paying you for the car. There's no problem with that, right? It's that if you want to charge me extra.

Shawn (49:49.738)
Well, hey, but no, no, you get to decide what the value is. If you decide that the, if I lend you $1,000 and in exchange you give me $1,200, that's just an exchange that we enter into. We can decide who values what. So how's that any different from a barter? We're just deciding what value we want to exchange with each other.

Matt (50:15.952)
Well, I think where I'm going to come down on this is because Shawn, you've told us that it's the love of money that's the root of all evil. And I think that when somebody says I need money and you say I'll give it to you in exchange for more money from you, I'll give you this money, but I need this money and more money back. That would perhaps, you know how we say love is a verb. And if you really want to know how you love somebody, you start acting in a certain way that shows that you love them.

how would one behave if they loved money? Usury might be like the behavior that indicates love of money. That, cause I used to watch the shark tank and there's a guy on there. He calls himself Mr. Wonderful. And he'd be like, I have all of this money and I like my money to work for me. And so I want my money to go out and I want to know that it's going to come back to me again. And I want to know that it's going to bring little friends with it and come back to me again. And to me, I would listen to that and I would say, that sounds like the love of money.

Shawn (50:45.578)
at... Mag?

Shawn (50:51.818)
That's ridiculous.

Matt (51:11.132)
That man loves money. Here's some people that have this great business, this great idea. They're coming to him asking him for money. Why doesn't he just give it to them? No, because he loves his money so much he needs it to come back to him again someday. And he needs it to come back with interest so that he can have more and more money. Like maybe.

Shawn (51:26.122)
So you want to start a TV show called The Dolphin Tank where people come in and say, I've got this business idea, but I need money. And you're like, we're just going to give you the money with nothing in return. That's your idea.

Matt (51:29.883)
you

Matt (51:35.802)
Why not? Why don't, why don't billionaires just give their money to people like you need it here, take it. Or like you could say, I'll give you my money, but I want to buy interest. want to buy ownership in your company. Like this idea that I'll give you money, but you've got to give it back to me with something in return. Maybe that is wrong. Maybe we should say if you're going to give money, all you can ask for is ownership in something. You can't actually ask for money back.

Shawn (51:42.602)
my gosh.

Levi Barnes (51:49.997)
Yeah, that's

Levi Barnes (51:59.98)
Right, it would be the difference between debt equity and ownership equity, right? So when you have a business and you want to start a business, you can finance it with debt equity or you can sell pieces of your company. People would say, sell pieces of your company, don't do it with that. Yeah.

Shawn (52:01.204)
Go ahead Matt.

Shawn (52:15.85)
But I've made exchanges like that freely, both in both scenarios. I've had debt equity and it worked for me. I was grateful for someone lending me that money. I was happy to pay them back that money. And I've also done equity where I was able to say, me something or I'll give you something in return or I'll get something in return where I get some actual long-term equity. And I was happy to make that exchange. See, I think when you focus on money, you lose the idea that God has created us to be independent, accountable people. We can choose for ourselves, Matt.

Levi Barnes (52:20.59)
Yeah.

Totally.

Shawn (52:45.072)
what I want in exchange for what you give. We can choose for ourselves.

Matt (52:47.804)
I'm focused on money because the scripture is focused on money. I don't care about usury. I don't mind paying interest on the, but it seems to me like God doesn't like people paying interest. And I know from president Hinckley, God doesn't like people going into debt. And so if debt is illegal or debt's not illegal, you're welcome to go into debt and say, got to pay me that money back. Every seven years, there's going to be a Jubilee year and all of your debts are forgiven. Fine, go into debt. You can't charge interest, but then it's all going to be forgiven every seven years.

Like that was God's plan in the law of Moses. So like, if you do it that way, then maybe we don't have the same kind of debt problems that we have. And maybe people would learn to do things in a higher, holier way that doesn't like reflect this love of money kind of stuff that we have.

Levi Barnes (53:31.82)
Yeah, I know there's CS Lewis left out one person one group that did also didn't like interest and it was the Marxist right Marx's Like the central question Marx was talking about was he was saying what is this magic where you take? some money and you through this process you make more money and Marx is if well you if you had to summarize Marx in one sentence you'd say the only thing that makes money into more money is labor and So if you haven't put your labor in

then you've stolen someone else's labor. And you can believe that whether you, you you can think about whatever you want, but Marx was also somebody that said, we're creating real problems when we allow somebody to just turn their money into more money without working for it. And so I think Marx would say, debt equity is bad, ownership equity is what you want.

Matt (54:21.808)
What about lending money to your family, Shawn? Is it immoral to charge interest when you lend money to family or friends? I'm going to say yes, can't charge them interest because you're teaching them the same immoral principle. If you charge interest to your friends and family, then you're just making them like the Jewish people were with the Egyptians. You're like getting them caught into that nasty world, right? And Heavenly Father wants to bring us out of that space. He wants us to live. But if you fulfill a law, that doesn't mean the

Shawn (54:22.664)
interesting

Matt (54:50.108)
the principles in that law go away. It means you're teaching something higher than the law, right? He said to them, no longer say eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, but we say, what is it? Don't be angry or something like that? No, that's right. Yeah. Or in the law of Moses, it says just divorce them, but I'm saying, no, you shouldn't divorce people. Don't you think there's something similar to that with interest where he's like,

Shawn (55:03.626)
Turn the other cheek.

Levi Barnes (55:04.814)
Turn the issue again.

Shawn (55:13.586)
Okay, so you're saying that it's a higher law.

Matt (55:16.73)
Yes, and you don't get to go back.

Levi Barnes (55:18.282)
That's a great question. What's our higher law? If prohibiting usury was the old law, yeah, what would be the fulfilled version? Listeners, send it to us. Yeah. I love it. Yeah.

Matt (55:25.596)
There's a hire.

Yeah, let us know. Because Shawn's laughing at me right now. Because he doesn't agree with me about this. Shawn wants to just say it was fulfilled and so I don't have to follow that stuff. But I say if it's fulfilled, it means that you still have to do it. You still have to do the stuff that's been fulfilled. I can't go back.

Shawn (55:44.448)
yeah, you have to, yeah, Matt, every week do you go build an altar and put an animal on it and kill it and spread the blood? That was fulfilled! That was fulfilled! the sacrament, which is, you mean the old one that was fulfilled is no longer done. And instead, you shall offer unto me a broken hearted contrite spirit, which is our sacrament. So it's a different kind of offering for different people at a different time.

Levi Barnes (55:50.414)
Are you wearing mixed fabric clothing? Yeah.

Matt (55:50.448)
No, I take the sac, I take the sac, I take the sacrament.

Matt (56:06.788)
Okay, but that doesn't mean that like, he said don't do usury. Now what's the next thing, Shawn? If we don't do usury, then what do we do?

Levi Barnes (56:13.58)
Yeah, what's the fulfillment? What's the higher law related to that? That's a good question.

Matt (56:17.264)
He said, can't sleep with animals and sleep with my sister. There's a higher law to that.

Shawn (56:18.57)
Maybe Levi and Karl Marx solved it. Maybe it's equity as opposed to death.

Matt (56:27.194)
Whoa, Shawn. Hey, that's a capitalist salvation of this. man. The only podcast listeners that you will ever listen to that canonizes both CS Lewis and Karl Marx on the same topic. Hey guys, thanks for joining us. This was super fun. Listeners, we'll talk to you again next week.

Levi Barnes (56:32.184)
Did we just canonize Marx? What just happened? What happened?

Shawn (56:35.462)
And CS Lewis and CS Lewis.

Levi Barnes (56:47.605)
See you next week.