Physical vs Digital Assets: What Actually Holds Value? | with Maurice Shabazz

0:00 And listeners, I want you to think about this. Think of all the most expensive things, period. They're all physical. Think of all the luxury things in life you want. They're probably all physical. No one's over here going, I want this digital only thing that costs a quarter million dollars. I want this digital only thing that costs a million dollars, five million dollars, ten million dollars. The people who are thinking that, they're already super wealthy, super rich. But the everyday person, the person who I would say who's making less than a few million a year, all they want is physical.

0:41 Or if it's a service, it's gonna be a service that is gonna lead to something that's physical. Yes, everybody. This is Darren Harry, your gracious host of financial state of minds, and I'm joined by co-host Marie Shabazz.

1:22 And this is Financial State of Minds, just to remind you if you didn't hear me the first time, and this is the show where I help you get to that bag, manage that bag, and grow that bag as best as possible as we discuss financial literacy, business literacy, and anything, everything to do with the almighty power of the dollar. And you are now tuned in, tapped into KGPC 96.9 FM streaming right now on KGPC969.org and available on all streaming platforms of choice. So as we're moving on to episode 83, we have a co-host over here. Shabazz came up with the topic today. So Shabazz, he's kind of gonna lead the episode because I'm tired. This asset reflex is kicking my butt when I'm here doing my thing. And thank God my voice is not that jacked up.

2:04 So Shabazz, what are we talking about today? All right, we're gonna talk about physical real estate. Is physical real estate still king when it comes to building wealth versus digital real estate? Yeah, so you told me that topic literally an hour ago. Yes, listen, it was about an hour ago. So when I heard about the topic, I like it. How'd you come up with it, by the way? Um be honest with you, ChatGPT. I had a feeling it's good. Hey, I use Chat GPT all the time. So speaking of digital real estate, so I've been using Notebook LM, which is a Google product. And when I have my thoughts and ideas and stuff like that, I just jot them down on a notebook LM.

2:47 And side by side, AI will brainstorm on them thoughts and kind of expand on the thoughts and ideas that I basically input in there. Yeah, we were talking about that offline before. So is that available across personal and work Googles or just one or the other sides? A Gmail account, you just have to go to Google Workspace Labs, and basically you have to just basically agree to the terms and stuff like their privacy and all this other stuff. And once you do that, when you go to Google Sheets or you go to Google a notebook LM or PowerPoint or anything, or even a Google Docs, you'll see that AI is enabled on there to help you if you need it to help you write, or if you need it to help you create a spreadsheet or whatever it is, basically.

3:38 You have AI to assist you with that. Got you, got you. Okay, that's dope. So um when you kind of let me know that was a topic, I was instantly thinking, okay, basically, physical versus digital. The age-old, probably when we people have been talking about this at least the last my entire lifetime, 30, 35 plus years. Digital versus physical. Where is it at right now? Well, look, you came up with the topic, so let's start with you. What's your initial take on this? Well, physical real estate has always been the cornerstone of the American dream. You know, if you ever, I don't know so much about the new generation, but in my generation and generations before, it was like you get married, you have some kids, and you have a house, and what a picket wife missed.

4:25 That was the American dream. That was traditionally what it was. And I know my ancestors had believed in that, like my grandmother, my grandfather, the elders, they believed in that heavily. That real estate was king when it came to wealth. Like if you owned a piece of real estate, you actually were building wealth. They weren't too uh educated when it comes to insurance and stock and all these other different investments that you can make. But real estate was the one that everybody seemed to gravitate to when it came to building wealth. Now, today, as we fast forward to 2026, is it still the cornerstone of wealth?

5:06 And when I ask myself that question, I guess it really depends. Because with real estate, it's an up and down market too. But for the most part, if you look over the last 10, 20 years, it goes up over time more than anything, right? Versus going down. I mean, you'll have it'll fluctuate here and there, but over time it's going up, right? Yeah. So qu before you continue to clarify for the people, when you say real estate, you literally mean real estate, as in property. Property. Are you talking about okay, just just property? Okay. Yeah, physical real estate. Okay, physic, okay, physical property. Okay. Yeah, so yeah, and if you look at it, it actually goes up over time. And as you continue to make your mortgage payments and stuff like that, your equity goes up and you could pull out of it.

5:52 It's almost like it's almost like a line of credit that fluctuates. If you look at it that way. Yeah. I mean HELOC. Exactly. Yeah, ELOC, home equality line of credit. So then some people who are a lot more savvy when it comes to real estate, they have learned how to manage debt and leverage debt. Some people don't get to that point where they learn how to do that, but if you know how to leverage debt, then basically you could pretty much live tax-free for the most part if you learn how to leverage debt good enough. So real estate is more of a good debt. When you look at different kinds of debts that you can have, they say real estate debt is better than any kind of debt, from what I've understood and what I've studied.

6:39 Because everything else, pretty much the physical, and that's probably why China owns so much of the real estate in the United States. Because the land, and you're not even just the property, the land is also worth something, right? So without the physical property, I mean, land is worth something, right? Yeah. So right now it's turning into a renter's nation. I remember it was so backwards when I first got into real estate 20 years ago. Because back then in California, other places probably different, but in California, if you actually owned a house and you rented it out, it didn't even cover the mortgage. Like the amount of rent that you were getting did not cover the mortgage. You had to depend some extra money whether to actually make up the mortgage.

7:23 Now, where rent is at, it covers the mortgage, and you could actually put some in your pocket. So it's definitely flipped, and it's becoming a renter's nation. So it's like you actually want to get in on real estate and not get shut out of it. I'm not gonna go too far and I'm uh into the digital part. I'll let you go ahead and take over for that. But yeah, I just wanted to touch on the physical real estate. Yeah, so when you say is real estate the cornerstone of investing at this point, or has it moved on to digital? I'm gonna answer that in many, many different ways. So historically, yeah. Historically, it was real estate or it was physicalness that was the cornerstone of investing.

8:09 Uh for those who don't know, real estate became affordable for the average American around the 70s, I believe, is when the modern 30-year mortgage came out to be, essentially, is when it came out. So it's actually not super duper old concept. But around the 70s is when the 30-year mortgage came out. And that is where um, sorry, not the 70s, the 50s. I think it's the 50s after World War II. Because basically all the veterans are coming back, women were in the workforce, so the expansion stuff happened. I believe if I got my history correct, it was around the 50s. That's when the 30-year mortgage came out, and it was pretty much one individual's salary could buy a family home.

8:51 And that was pretty much the case all the way up until about 2008, and then a little housing crisis happened. But even after the crisis, that only lasted where it became a little bit more difficult. It was really only from 08, a little bit of 07, but mostly 08, all the way to about a 2011, 2012. And then we had another 13-year run basically until the pandemic, and even through the pandemic, if you could, the interest rates made it so that it was easy to get in and invest into housing, whether it's your primary residence or if it's investing. So that's a little background history of it. And that's why it was the cornerstone because um the interest rates and the pricing of the house were at places where most people, if they just worked a job, whether it was one individual back before I was alive and it became dual income, as long as you had a job that's decently paying, you can qualify to own a home.

9:46 And then after one generation, that home gets passed down to the children, and then that's how you start generational wealth. Easy peasy. So that's how it worked back then. But if I were to do it today, would I choose that today? Um, no. No, no, no, no, no. Definitely not for investing. Of course, if I want to live in a house, that's totally different. We're not talking about that. But as far as investing, I would not, I'll frame it like this: if I had a million dollars when I live in California, I am not buying property right away with a million dollars. I'm not doing that. I would put it in the stock market, and then at some point I would borrow against the stocks and then buy the real estate.

10:27 But I would put it in the stock market. If numbers always are debatable depending on your sourcing, but the numbers I look at, stock market has actually done better over real estate in the last 20 years. So stock market done better. If you own a business that is primarily a service or a digital service, you are making more money. I actually looked it up before we started. Top 10 companies or industries that have the highest profits right now. We know it's Amazon, it's Google, it's Meta, Nvidia, Apple, of course, you know, Coca-Cola, and then we're gonna get into the utility, so your oil.

11:10 Those are all your um your top ten companies right now. Some of them only f sell physical, but most of them at this point, they sell both. They sell physical and they sell digital products. But if you do even more research and learn that the bulk of the money is coming from digital. So I would go with digital now. One way I would answer the topic is if I were to start a business now, or if I were to start today in 2026, absolutely digital. I'm going digital 100%. You're gonna make more money that way with less initial investment. It's gonna be digital. Now, to your point about real estate being the cornerstone, that is still absolutely the case for you said it earlier, if you don't want to pay taxes.

11:57 If you don't want to pay taxes, you do two things. Get yourself some real estate or get yourself a nonprofit. If you don't want to pay taxes, you do two things. Get yourself some real estate or get yourself a nonprofit. Preferably a nonprofit that is breaking border, i.e., real estate again. To my understanding, you have more tax advantages owning real estate than anything else. Like nothing else. Not a business, not having kids, not anything. Anything. It's real estate. Real estate will give you the most tax advantages. That's why if we look at rich people, it doesn't matter the level of wealth.

12:39 They can have$10 million net worth,$50 million net worth, quarter million dollar net worth, billionaire, trillionaire, whatever. Whether they're companies or individuals, but especially if they're individuals, if you notice, they all have real estate. Real estate could look like the business, a physical brick and mortar, or real estate could be, like you said earlier, just straight up property, houses, apartments, whatever. Rich people have real estate because it's a great way to reduce your income because you can write off basically everything, and that's how you get around legally, you get around a lot of these taxes. So, me, because I have experience in both, I was a landlord for 10 years, and now I own a crap ton of investments in the stock market, they both have their pros and cons.

13:28 Ultimately, you should have both. But the way I would definitely say it is if we're starting today in 2026 and I'm just an everyday person, I'm going digital right now. Lesser to invest, lesser startup costs, higher profit margins, and then eventually after I do well in that, then I'm gonna go buy some property because I don't care what people say. Yeah, crypto is taking a hit right now, but overall still up a ridiculous amount over the last 10, 15 years. But gold and silver and houses, they're always gonna be valuable. They may not be having the sexy 500% ROIs over the last 10 years or gold doing 60% last year.

14:13 It may not be sexy and crazy like that, but are you gonna be okay? You're gonna be comfortable if you own a house or two and you rent that out. Yeah, absolutely. Even if it's just breaking even. I actually know somebody where they rent out their property, it breaks even. But it helps them out on the taxes, like I said earlier. So it's a great debate. You can't go wrong with either. But like I said again, if you if I'm starting in 2026, I'm building a digital business, selling digital service and products, um, and eventually making my way to real estate. But yeah, if you look at the list, top 10 companies, not one of them. McDonald's actually wasn't in the top 10 highest profiting companies when I looked it up.

14:55 I was actually surprised. McDonald's was not there. McDonald's is a real estate company. It's a real estate company. Well, it's interesting. So if you look it up, it's categorized as fast food restaurant industry, but we know their business model is basically real estate. But that's my initial take is you can't go wrong with real estate. It has a historical precedence to this and it's not going away. I don't care what people say. And to your point, and I'll finish it up, there's a reason why, following up on our last episode, everybody's becoming a renter. And if you own property, unless you're just literally underwater, unless you have literally negative equity, you're winning right now.

15:38 It doesn't matter if you're in California or it doesn't matter if you're in Montana. You're winning right now if you own some property right now. So you can't go wrong with either. You can't go wrong with either right now. I agree. I totally agree. There were some good points that you had when it comes to the taxes. I think that I mean, don't get me wrong. Digital real estate is highly profitable. It's highly profitable. It has nowhere near the same tax rates as real estate. Nowhere near. So I guess that's a downside to it. Can I make more with digital real estate than I would with real estate? Probably the speed of it would be faster.

16:20 I would definitely say that. The speed of funds would definitely be faster with digital real estate. However, it's kind of crazy because I don't know exactly where because I see people that have digital real estate in the metaverse. And it's like this whole cyber world where if you actually like if anybody actually has experienced the metaverse and actually, let's say you you could be playing a game on the metaverse, right? And you could be riding down the street, and you could be on a highway, and then you see on the top of the hill or the top of the mountain, they have a billboard. And let's say you have a store in the metaverse.

17:03 Let's say you have a clothing store, and you say, a lot of people play that game. I want to see how much it would cost, how much would they charge me to have my clothing line on that billboard? Since so many people play the game, they're gonna see that, and then they will go to my store because basically they have it in the metaverse where you could walk into a store and actually have a shopping experience in the metaverse. And you could buy that shirt or that hoodie or those shoes, and basically you can actually have the physical product. You buy it and you have a shit, but it's like having a shopping experience and in the cyber world, right? Right. So digital real estate is gonna get crazy over the years.

17:46 So it's I I don't like I said, I don't know exactly what way I've seen people say they sold some they sold some property in the metaverse, and it was like for, man, thousands and thousands of dollars. So I'm just like, well, if that's the case, I know it doesn't come with the tax breaks, it's physical real estate. It's getting a little crazy. Yeah, I remember having these conversations initially a few years ago, and all like you said earlier, you there's gonna be the metaverse, and you, you know, people are gonna have digital avatars of themselves, and it's gonna be that, it's gonna be that mix-in. It's gonna be like you said earlier, you're gonna be able to walk around the metaverse, and you might literally see a meta version of McDonald's that's actually being ran by actual McDonald's or uh Joe Smo's barbecue place is there, and it's actually being ran by Joe Smo.

18:36 And Joe Smo has to, and McDonald's has to pay for that real estate with digital currency, I'm not crypto or something like that. So I remember having these conversations on Clubhouse when I was on it actively back in 2021, for those who remember Clubhouse. Um, but it's still around, isn't it? Yeah, it's still around. It's just not, you know, it exploded in 2020, 2021, and then you know, it never had the same uh fall-in or membership, but it's still doing its thing, not knocking it. But my take is this could be the future, but definitely I don't believe it's gonna happen in any of our lifetimes. One thing I always tell people is that people don't like change, especially, and people don't like change, number one, they don't like change.

19:24 Number two, and I'm gonna get into this a little bit later. People like physicalness. People inherently value things that are physical and are tangible more than things that are not. All these companies, I said it earlier, well, Darren, you said the top ten companies are basically all selling digital products or services. You're right, they are. There's more money to be made there. But, listeners, I want you to think about this. Think of all the most expensive things, period. They're all physical. Think of all the luxury things in life you want. They're probably all physical.

20:04 No one's over here going, I want this digital only thing that costs a quarter million dollars. I want this digital only thing that costs a million dollars, five million dollars, ten million dollars. The people who want are thinking that, they're already super wealthy, super rich. But the everyday person, the person who I would say who's making less than a few million a year, all they want is physical. They want physical. Or if it's something or if it's a service, it's gonna be a service that is gonna lead to something that's physical. So going back to the American dream, you're right.

20:45 There was one thing you missed other than the uh the wife kids and the white picket fence. You want to send your kids to college, right? You want to make sure that your kids have a legacy that's left behind. When we think about stuff like that, we're thinking physical. So it's inherently, we as humans, at least right now, we are valuing physical. And that's how I am. I just value physical. So even though, to your point earlier, there's digital companies, there's all these companies again selling digital products, whether it's entertainment, whether it's streaming, whatever, we all want real estate, right? It would just be cool for people to just have real estate.

21:26 When we're all thinking, oh, we have 10, 20 millionaires, and we're all having these fun conversations, we're thinking we're gonna buy houses, we're thinking we're gonna buy the fanciest, most luxury cars, we're getting boats, we're getting jewelry, we want physical items. We want physical items. That's just what we want. So it's inherently more valuable. That's just how people see it. Now, what's curious, and you kind of said it at the top, you don't know about these newer generations. Well, I'm the generation right after you, and I really look at the Gen Z and especially Gen Alpha. What we're seeing is that specific. Specifically with Ken Alpha, they don't want to own property.

22:06 They want to own property. Gen Z wants to, but they kind of gave up. Kind of like how millennials are. Millennials are at a point where we're really, really want to, but we're starting to give up because it's just we're in our mid-30s, we're in our 40s, and a lot of us don't have houses. And I don't know a single millennial. I can't think of a single millennial who owns a house and they're single. They're by themselves. All the millennials I know who own property, couples. Or they sold it. Or they sold it. Right. Because they had to usually. Or they didn't want to deal with it. But yeah, Gen Z starting to give up. And Alpha, they just they have no interest. They have no interest. So you have kids should bass just like I do. What have you noticed from the younger generations when it comes to what they want between digital and physical?

22:50 Have you noticed a shift? I mean, it's definitely a shift. They want physical things, for sure. Like you said, they definitely want physical products, right? However, digital has become a big part of that. And the amount of funds that they spend on these things and all these different subscription models. I looked on my son's phone and I looked at his subscriptions on his iPhone. And it was, I'm like, man, you got more subscriptions than me. And so it's become to where it's part of a lifestyle now. I think the lifestyle for the younger generation is not to own a house.

23:33 There, I I don't even think that's the mindset. Like, hey, I want to own a house or I want to own property. It's more like, hey, I just want to live in a nice apartment and I just want to play my video games, pit on my Oculus, and just zone out in the cyber world. And it seems that's kind of the energy, you know. It's like, hey, I want to be on my YouTube channel. And it's a lot of it is digital. Social media, you look at all these different things, and social media is moving so much towards digital. The only platform that's not really just on this whole digital wave that I could say right now, but I'm pretty sure they're moving towards it, is TikTok.

24:19 TikTok has focused so much on selling physical products to where they're saying that TikTok shop is giving Amazon a run for their money right now. Because there's so many people are selling so many products through TikTok shop. Not Facebook, not any other platform, TikTok Shop. Yeah. Yeah. So when I look at that, I'm just like, wow, they really have changed the game on how people buy products. Like, and it's crazy. I gotta give it to TikTok. Now I gotta give them some credit. They have changed the game on a lot of things.

25:00 They made Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube and all these other platforms change their whole algorithm. Right? When TikTok came around, it was like, yeah, people would go on Facebook and Instagram, and we will watch reels and stuff like that. But TikTok had mastered people just binge watching. Yeah, the short form. Yeah, short form videos. And Facebook, and they were like, we got to get rid of this platform. It's it's taking people away from our platform, and then you could grow a TikTok account way faster, light years faster than you could a Facebook page or an Instagram account.

25:41 It was just you look up on TikTok, people will have hundreds and thousands of followers, even millions. Yeah. And people say it just moves faster. And speed is a thing. You know what I'm saying? It's definitely speed is a huge factor. The time factor is so prevalent when it comes to these things. People take speed over anything. Anything that's faster, people are going to go to it. Absolutely. Absolutely. And just a reminder listeners, you're listening to Darren Harvey, Maurice Shabazz over here at Financial State of Minds on KGBC 96.9 FM. I hear what you're saying, definitely going back to Gen Alpha, Gen Z, but particularly Alpha not wanting physical things anymore.

26:25 When I noticed, and unfortunately I have to give my generation all the credit, millennials, we started this trim trend of valuing experiences. So I have a friend who he works at Google, he makes good money, and he is my age, he's actually a year older than me, and he doesn't own anything, even though he absolutely has the income and the finances to own because he just wants to travel. That's all he does. He literally, he literally travels monthly. Between work and personal pleasure, it's monthly. And he's in a different country or state monthly. And what I'm seeing is that's what the younger generations are really adopting.

27:10 They're valuing the experiences over the physical property or products. And um, they're really valuing social media and just I guess you can say basically social clout. They want to be popular. Like they want to be popular. Now the scale may be different for every Gen Z or Alpha person, but they want to be popular. They want to be seen, they want to be heard. That's important to them. Whether it's them being a streamer, whether it's them being a content creator on YouTube or whatever, that's just the lanes they they're that they're looking at right now. But I do think there is some, again, disadvantages to digital only.

27:53 Yes, it's I always tell people when I'm consulting business-wise, if you're gonna open up a business, please make it a digital business that sells digital products. Or because it's lower startup, higher profit margins, because you can sell one thing endlessly. That's the beauty about owning a digital business. But alluding to what I said earlier, the number one things everything wanted in life, if it was not an issue, it's all physical. It's all physical. So I am kind of worried that the younger generations is not valuing that because ultimately it doesn't matter what 80, 90% of the population thinks.

28:35 It really matters what the top 10 or really the top 1% think because they dictate everything else. So my thing is this these younger generations and even millennials like me, we may have a certain preference, we have a certain thing, and that's cool, but value is not only dictated by the everyday person, but it's really set by the 1%. The 1% is Lamborghini or Ferrari. I just seen Ferraris, the company Ferrari, they beat profit and they beat revenue. Even though everybody's struggling and everything, and that's one thing that I learned is the super rich and the super luxury, they still buy it regardless of recession.

29:18 Regardless of how the 99% are doing, they're still buying that. And if you notice what they're buying, again, it's physical. That's why you see all these super rich people buying art, physical art. Yeah, we had the little NFT boom, stuff like that, and that's it's still doing its thing, but it that bubble definitely burst it. But when rich people are trying to spend their money, they're trying to spend their money on physical things. It's not digital. It is not digital. So it ultimately, like, if I had to pick one, and just far as preference, personal preference, it would be physical. But if I'm advising people on what to do right now, everyday person, I would advise them to go the digital route.

30:00 That's where the growth is. That is definitely where the growth is digital. It's it's not so much physical, it is digital. But you have any more takes around digital versus physical or digital versus real estate at this point? Yeah, yeah, I do. I just I sit back and when I think about it, I think one of the things is that people, and even especially the younger generation, older generation too, I believe one thing that they overlook when it comes to the digital side is that you have less control. Yeah. So true. If anything was ever to happen, and let's say the internet just went out, it's gonna be people that ain't gonna know what to do with themselves.

30:41 Right? Because they have wrapped their whole world in this whole around this whole digital cyber world. And that's the scary part that I don't think people even think about that. Like, if I'm so invested into this digital world and I have very little physical, if something was to happen, you're hit. You got people who can't even, they're solely reliant on technology. Like, some people don't even know their mother's phone number by heart, right? They make it to where not even only that, it's your digital footprint is everywhere.

31:21 Like you ping your thumbprint in the phone, you pick your face in the phone, you got your eyes in there. And now you can't even do anything unless you actually have your digital footprint to verify it's you, right? So when we look at all these things, it's quite scary because if anything was ever to happen, and I look at when TikTok was down for a couple days, people were freaking out. People were going crazy, like what's going on? It reminded me that people were so reliant on this. Like, this is their life. If they couldn't get on TikTok that day, I don't know what I'm gonna do with myself. And I just really think the things that are tangible, the things that you can physically touch, the things that you can physically see and grab and have that physical thing or whatever it is, there's nothing that can replace that that's digital.

32:18 That's the thing. Digital could be here today, gone tomorrow. What's digital now might be cool today, but then it's something that's better that's gonna be digital that's gonna come out tomorrow. Right. And I just think that whereas even down to the spending is so critical because now as we move further into this digital world now, and if you ask me personally, do you would you prefer digital currency or would you pull prefer physical currency? I probably nine times out of ten will tell you physically. Because physical currency, and the reason why is because I don't want everything that I spend my dollar on to be traced.

33:00 I don't want everything that I spend to be traced. I I don't I may not want everybody to know what kind of deordering I use. I may not want everybody to know what kind of soap I'm using. And it's just the idea is like if they have all this data, now they can control it. Now they can put stuff in it, they can do things to it and stuff like that, and see how people react to this and see how people react to that. Right. And it's just so much information and it's so much control. And I just think that people don't think about that downside to it to where you really don't have, you're losing a huge amount of privacy. Yeah, and we talked about this in our previous episode, the one right before this, but to expand upon it, when you have the convenience of digital, let's take a your movie or or TV show that you like.

33:49 Yeah, the convenience, great. You just log on to Netflix, click a button, internet's so fast now, the show loads within a second or two, bam, you're watching it. Convenience of that can't be beat at this point. However, the trade-off is you don't own that show. You don't own a copy of that show. You don't own a copy of that show. So if Netflix lose the license and they take it off, and that show decides, let's just say the show is Sons of Anarchy, whatever. Say it was on Netflix, Netflix doesn't want to pay the renewal on the license and now goes to HBO Max. Well, now you gotta pay for HBO Max if you don't pay for it, and now it's more expensive that way.

34:31 So you lose the control when you gain the convenience, you actually pay more money because let's be real, all these streaming services have hundreds, if not thousands, of TV shows and different forms of media content, but you're not watching what? Maybe a tenth of it, maybe, and you're paying a recurring fee instead of just buying all the copies of the shows you want and then you be done. You see what I'm saying? I'd be willing to bet listeners, feel free to comment. Add up all your subscriptions, let's focus on the video streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, whatever, and the music ones like Spotify, Apple Music.

35:12 I bet you people pay more money a month for the subscriptions than when compared to when it was back in the physical days, they were buying movies. I guarantee you, people are paying$200 a month for subscriptions and they weren't buying$200 worth of music and movies in one month. Right. So it's more expensive. So you're losing the control, like you said earlier. It's more expensive, and you don't even own it. So that goes back to the control. You can lose the rights. You could pay for it. Imagine paying for a show that you like to watch for five years and you can't watch it no more. They're not giving your money back. Netflix is not like, oh, we're gonna give a dividend because you watch Sunset Anarchy 500 times over the course of the last three years, we're gonna give you a dividend of$100.

36:01 Like, it doesn't work like that. You're paying for the access. That's all you're doing. You're paying for the access. You don't even own the copy no more. A lot of you said a lot of people are just fine with it. They accepted it, they're okay with it, whether they have a choice or not. And a lot of people don't even have a choice because that's the most affordable way. I just read a little article that HP is getting into renting out laptops. And back in the day, when a lot of these companies were renting out stuff, Blockbuster, anything where you can rent out a physical thing, there would be an option to once you've paid a certain amount of payments, you would just own it. Yeah. Right? I think that was the thing with Blockbuster. If you never return the cassette tape, you just keep it and they would just charge it to your account.

36:44 Exactly. Yeah. Well, companies said, Oh no, that means we stop making money. No, we don't want to do that. You could never own it. So HP just said, oh yeah, if you want the not HP, I can't think of it, it's a computer company, but they make gaming laptops. And what they said is, you want the most expensive, you want the best of the best when it comes to gaming laptop. Well, we know you can't afford it because RAM processes have shot up 300% plus percent, you know, five times 500%. Storage is going up. So we know you can't afford it. So if you want to be able to play the uh Grand Theft Auto 6 when it eventually comes to PC at the top specs possible, you can't buy that$2,000 laptop.

37:24 You can't buy that$3,000 laptop because the RAM piece is now$1,000 itself. You're gonna have to rent it from us. Oh, you how much you want to pay for a rent? Oh, we're only charge you$50, but$50 committed for three years. You'd have done paid more than what the laptop is worth, and you don't even own it. Exactly. And that's what's happening. It's that's what's happening, and that's kind of what a lot of people are afraid of. So that's one aspect. I want to go back and I'm gonna keep going. I want to go to the data. One thing that I'm afraid of with this digital era is you said it earlier, going back to control and data. What's happening is, and this is what I'm fearing, with AI in this digital era, the value of people's skills are actually gonna decrease because AI can do it.

38:17 So everybody's everyone's valuable in one way that everybody shares, and that's your data. That's how Google, Facebook, TikTok, all these companies have been making money. It's because you agree to share your data. You're when you talk to Alexa, that's your data. When you talk to Meta AI, that's your data. When you're Googling in with Kevin and I, that's your data. When you create a key mail, that's your data. You're giving your data away left and right, left and right, left and right. Well, that was okay because it was really valuable. And maybe you had certain skills that could up your value. Well, if AI can do the skills that you had that was earning you a 50-60K salary a year in California, your skills are not as valued no more.

39:04 So your only value is gonna be data. It's gonna be data. So it is worrisome, and it's why, again, physical products is my preferred method. Like when you said earlier, 100% I'd rather have physical dollars. I'd rather have something that's always backed by something that is physical. I own a crap ton of money in stocks, it's backed by physical companies. So people, they need to think about all this. It's happening. And you know, and and I know this is not the most exciting thing to talk about. I'm pretty sure people are talking about how bad money was performance in the Super Bowl is right now. But in the meanwhile, bad bunny probably has a crap ton of money invested in real estate right now.

39:46 He has a crap ton of money invested in these tangible things that are making him money. He may have got his bag selling a digital service, a la a musician, but I guarantee you the way he's investing is all physical. It's all physical. So, yeah, it's an interesting world we're going in with AI and everything, digital versus physical. That's gonna be the topic for a while now. Yeah, I agree. One of the things, man, and I was having a conversation with somebody earlier this week about is that with this digital world, you look at a lot of people who make music, right? And like you were saying back in the day, you had to physically actually go and buy a tape or a cassette or a DVD, right?

40:33 Or a CD. And basically you actually had to buy the single or you bought the album, right? And now you have, especially independent artists, right? Now if somebody wants to go listen to your song on one of these streaming platforms, they're giving you less than a penny. And guess what? Some of the older artists are talking about Snoop Dogg being one of them. He's talking about taking all his stuff down off the streaming platform. Yeah, yeah, I've been hearing about that. There's other artists that are well-established artists that are talking about the same thing. Like, I'm gonna take my music off of these streaming platforms, and you want to get it, you're gonna have to go here and you're gonna have to pay for it, right?

41:18 But people artists should take a lot of the pages out of the some of the older artists that actually were selling trunks and I mean selling um cassettes out of their trunk and just fit selling physical, the physical albums, right? And they do have some platforms that you actually can put your music on, and basically I I've seen some new artists don't like LaRussell for one, he's definitely doing it. Yeah, you you come, hey, I'm on this platform. You want to you can't go get it from Spotify, you can't get it from Apple Music, you gotta come get it from over here. And I think he started out by saying, just give me whatever you want to give me, just listen to it.

41:59 You can give me a dollar. Yep. But it's more than what you're gonna, it's it's maybe way more than what you would get from Spotify. Yeah, even if you're getting a dollar. Absolutely. And that's the thing, man. Some of these things are more damaging. Whereas you're sitting up here and you're being creative and you're getting this creative piece of art, and you're just pretty much giving it away for anybody just to come and say, Oh, I like it, I'll check it out. And basically, you're getting pennies. Literally, pennies, yep. Right? So I just think that uh people shouldn't get so far and so heavily invested. I know it's easy. Yeah, you can pitch your stuff on the streaming platform, and basically everybody has access to it.

42:40 I understand the concept, I get it. But what happens is that I think a snoop said he had got a billion streams in one month. And he said for a billion streams, it only gave him like 40. 40,000. Yeah, 40,000. Yeah, you look at people like Michael Jackson, man, like I don't really think any artist is ever gonna sell more physical copies than Michael Jackson. Oh no, that yeah, yeah. Period. He's gonna hold that title forever. Right. But just think all those people had to physically go buy a copy, you know? And that's the thing that we gotta start thinking about. I know people who have started digital businesses and they're making a ton of money, and they that works for that model.

43:24 That's great. I just think for some models, people need to go back to the old school, you know what I'm saying? Because it's more beneficial. That's just mainly what I wanted to say about it. Everything that's digital ain't good. You know? Yeah. Yeah. And um, I hear you, and we can keep talking about this, but time's up. So we got to wrap it up. Thanks, Maurice, for jumping on the show as always and coming up with the topic. This was a good one. And yeah, I'm gonna wrap this up. We're already over the limit. This is Darren Harvey. This has been Financial State of Minds on KGPC 96.9, streaming on KGPC. 969.org available on all streaming platforms of choice.

44:04 This has been financial state of minds. But please, kids, and tweets, if you like this show, please follow us on financialstate of minds.com and all social media. All say financial state of mind follow FSM underscore org for nonprofits. And if you like this episode, watch it on YouTube.