Year Of The Opposite - Travis Stoliker's Substack Podcast Year Of The Opposite

The National Association of Realtors agreed to pay $418 million to settle an antitrust suit that showed that they colluded to inflate commissions, block competition, inflate US housing prices, and harm consumers.  The $418 million might seem like a lot, but it’s less that a half percent (.5%) of the $100 billion of real estate commissions that consumers pay every single year!  
So why did they settle? Because if they didn’t settle they could have faced a fine close to $6 Billion!  They settled, gave up their right to appeal, and they probably got off cheap.  
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But, it’s still progress.  
At issue was a few key points that seem to be clearly anti competitive.  
For some background, when you buy a house in the USA, in general there is a 6% real estate commission that is typically shared between the agent representing the buyer and the agent representing the seller.  
The entire commission is actually paid by the seller of the house.  So if you are selling a house for $1,000,000, $60,000 of your money is split between each realty company.
It’s worth noting that this 6% real estate commission is one of the highest in the world.  Most countries it’s around 1-3%! We have been getting screwed and since this fee is fully paid by the seller of the house, it has been artificially inflating the price of houses.  
Think about it like this.  If you know you know your house is worth $1,000,000 and that’s how much you need in your pocket to leave your house, the sale price needs to be about $1,063,000 for you to be able to pay out the real estate commissions and still end up with $1,000,000.  There is no free lunch.  That means you will need to inflate the price of the house to $1,063,000.
How did America end up with this system?  When you go to list your house, the realtors have a few way of controlling the entire process.   It always seemed like illegal collusion to me, and it looks like the courts agreed.  
First is, the realtors themselves were basically required to be a part of the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), the system that lists all the houses for sale.  
When an agent listed a house, the rules would require the realtor publish the commission that the buyers agent would get right on the MLS. 
And when you went to list your house, the realtor would make you sign a contract that you agree to pay the 6% fee and split it with the buyers agent.  
There were some ways around this, but it made it WAY harder to sell your house.  
I want to tell you a real story of exactly how it worked.  
I have sold 2 houses without using a realtor and I have purchased 1 home without a realtor.  
In recent years some services sprung up to offer a way for you to sell a house and have it listed in the MLS by paying a flat fee of between $100 and $500.  It is way less expensive than the $25,000 commission for the average home sale in America.  
So why didn’t everyone do this like I did?  Because real estate agents HATED IT and they essentially wouldn’t work with you.  I experienced this myself first hand.
Realtors will frequently claim that this never happened and that they would never put their commissions over the needs of their clients.  I know for a fact this was a lie.  
When we were selling our house in East Lansing I met with 4 different realtors to list the house.  Only one would negotiate on the commission rate and it was only a slight decrease.  
All of them gave me their suggested listing price.  
I ended up opting to list it myself on a self serve MLS platform and I decided to market and advertise the property myself.  I took all the pictures and videos and I paid money to advertise it myself.  
Our house was listed in the MLS, Zillow, Realtor.com, Facebook, etc.  Just like it would be if it was listed by a traditional agent.  
Within a day or two, we showed the

Today I am going to complain and I feel gross about it because my life is amazing and no one wants to hear someone complain. But I want to share this story because I think it shows a side of humanity that people don’t talk about.
TLDR: Here’s the short version…
* I believe in active citizenship, so I joined the School Board.
* I had a silly idea to donate $3,000 to any staff or teacher at the school district.
* To make it a democratic process, I allowed anyone to nominate a staff member and vote for a winner online. Then I’d select the winner from the top ten.
* A few people got pissed! Calls to other board members, calls to the admin staff, outrage online… the whole nine yards.
* Now I need to decide if I should just cancel the whole thing, I want your input!
* And now I’m also considering resigning from the schoolboard. It just doesn’t seem worth it.
* And THIS is why people don’t serve.
As many of you know, I strongly believe that the duty of a citizen means more than simply voting. It means actually serving and participating in our democracy.
As a part of that philosophy, I decided to join the Haslett school board in October 2023. I was appointed so I didn’t have to go through the whole election process.
It has been an incredibly rewarding and educational process, but it also has been an incredibly high time commitment.
I’ve missed putting Lane to bed and reading him a book, which is one of my favorite activities, several nights. I’m missing an event with my wife tonight and a whole trip next week. But I am still honored to be able to serve.
A few months back, I received an email from the school staff asking me for my clothing sizes because they needed to order me a gown for Haslett Graduation.
I don’t know why I never thought of it, but I didn’t know that I would be on the stage with the graduates celebrating them. At my own graduation I remember looking up at the podium in admiration of those people all dressed up on the stage. It is very surprising to think that I am going to be one of those people on the stage.
This got me thinking about graduation a lot. A couple of Sundays ago, I was on a 10-mile run around Haslett and had the idea to give away some money to graduates of Haslett Schools. I thought about maybe giving some kind of scholarship to reward students considering a path toward entrepreneurship.
But after a lot of consideration and talking with my wife, we decided that there are lots of scholarships for students, which is awesome! But there aren’t a lot of scholarships or direct monetary awards for the dedicated staff members of the school district.
So I got home from that run and, after talking with my wife, I wrote a post on May 5, 2024, that basically said I was going to give $3,000 away to any staff member of Haslett Public Schools.
I thought a way to make it more democratic and get more people involved would be to let anyone in the community or the staff member themselves nominate any staff member and share a story about how that staff member impacted their life in a positive way and why they should receive the award.
Then I had the idea of making it as fair as possible by allowing anyone in the Haslett community to vote for the award by commenting or liking the comment that nominated a particular person.
I felt like this was the way to get the community involved and make it as democratic as possible.
My wife would select the top 10 nominees that got the most votes, and then I would select a winner. Then I would give the individual staff member $3000 directly from myself. I felt this was the most fair because I wasn’t the only one just picking the person that would receive the gift.
I clearly stated in the post that this had nothing to do with my position on the school board and this wasn’t a part of the school district.
I have taken all of the board trainings, and I am a certified board member. From my reading of the rules and my understanding, this wasn’

My friend posted a short video from the amazing Jon Stewart. I love Stewart and I think he’s a national treasure. But on this particular issue, I think he has it exactly backwards. Here is the video:
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I would suggest, this isn’t a problem of corporations. Definitely not ALL corporations.
Let me explain, last week I closed a business that I founded called Open Install Alliance. I tried it, I lost some money, and it failed. I had to pay $890 to the government last week just for the privilege of closing the company (Dissolution).
This cost no one else anything. So point 1 is just clearly wrong. When a corporation closes, we don’t get to socialize the losses. It’s not corporations that do this. Not, ALL, corporations socialize their losses.
What Mr Stewart is referring to is NOT a problem of capitalism or corporations. It is a problem of too much regulatory control by government.
He says that it is “big corporations” that privatize their losses, yes, that’s right in some cases and it’s gross.
But how do corporations do this? By lobbying the massive government to do things that enrich the politicians themselves, the individual corporation, and in most cases at the expense of the common taxpayer.
It’s wrong. It should be stopped.
But I would suggest that the data is clear, it’s not the Corporation’s that are the problem. It is the bigness of government that is the problem. It is the fact that government has its tentacles into every single area of our lives.
To test this is rather easy, if you were to remove the government from the equation and let’s say GM (a company I so love) was faced with another 2008 financial crisis, what would happen?
GM would have been forced out of business, or sold to another competitor at a discount. It was only the fact that they were able to influence Government that they were able to socialize their losses.
Without government, GM does not have the power of coercion to force all Americans to pay for their mistakes or socialize their losses as Stewart points out.
What Stewart advocates for is expanding government more. This is precisely the wrong direction.
If instead we reduced government, became more capitalistic, we would have a more dynamic and vibrant economy.
But it would be messier!
It inherently means that companies would go out of business more frequently, it would mean that people and corporations alike would be forced to confront the difficult circumstances that their own choices produced.
BUT ultimately, it would be better for everyone and it would make us all richer.
You can see this if you look at America at its founding vs America today. How long did it take the build the Empire State Building? How long does it take to fix a road today? It took about 7 years to build the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. How long would it take today?
We have made well intentioned tradeoffs over the years that we didn’t know would create these outcomes. But now we must be forced to reckon with the reality in which we now live.
Now let me say it more clearly: Government is important. But it must be limited to the things it does well and are necessities.
Examples:
* Government Necessity: Providing Justice.
* Not a necessity: Limiting what lightbulb you’re allowed to buy.
* Government Necessity: Resolving Bankruptcy.
* Not Necessity: Giving money to a company to prevent its bankruptcy.
Side note: I think it’s funny how Stewart says “wealthy people” without acknowledging that he is one…
God bless America. God bless Jon Stewart. I just think he has this one a little bit wrong.


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First a confession… I’ve been predicting Full Self-Driving cars would be a reality “this year” for about a decade, so you might want to take my predictions with a grain of salt. 😂😂
However, I recently got my hands on Tesla’s Full Self Driving version 12, marking the first iteration that leverages machine learning and neural networks, akin to AI systems like ChatGPT. This new approach eschews traditional programming for a model where the system learns by observing the world’s best drivers (with consent) and emulates their driving styles. This is a huge advancement for many reasons.
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* By using end to end neural networks (Think AI), instead of software developers needing to code millions of lines of descriptive computer code, (A stop sign looks like this… This is what you do when you see a stop sign… ETC) with the new system, Tesla was able to throw away more than 300,000 lines of explicit C++ code. Now, quite literally, the computer is writing it’s own code!
* Because the system is now learning by watching and mimicking the best drivers, it drives much more smoothly. The drive feels more natural. More like a human is driving.
* Development is much faster now. Instead of software developers needing to explicitly program every line of code, the computer system is learning and coding by itself!
* The computer learns by observing, not being told what to do. For instance, in the past when the programming was all done by humans, a human would have to program into the system how to avoid potholes. But now since the system is just observing what great drivers do and mimicking their behavior, the system has taught itself how to identify potholes and what to do to avoid them. It’s not perfect yet. But it’s getting pretty good.
When we returned from our trip to North Carolina it was our first long car ride using Full Self Driving Version 12. With the old software, the system would drive us about 90% of the drive.
But this drive was MUCH better! The system handled everything from highways to parking lots seamlessly. The only manual tasks I had to perform were deciding on parking specifics, like whether we were stopping for a drive-thru or parking to go inside the restaurant.
Laken, who has been skeptical of the jerky nature of the Full Self Driving (Beta) we’ve had for four years, was impressed with the new system. The latest version drives smoothly, mirroring human-like driving precision. It’s quite the game-changer.
With 3 million Teslas already equipped with the necessary hardware out of the 6 million produced, the implications are enormous. As these cars and the 2 million new Teslas produced annually start performing autonomous Uber rides, a lot of cool things are going to happen:
* A significant number of lives will be saved.
* It will compel other car manufacturers to license Tesla’s software, especially after the recent adoption of the Tesla charging standard by most car manufacturers.
* Most cars, which currently sit idle and parked 95% of the time, represent a huge waste of resources. Now, those same cars could be out driving autonomously, performing Uber rides and generating income. For many Americans, a car is the second largest expense they have; this shift has the potential to turn it into a profit-making asset.
To say I’m excited is an understatement. With the flip of a switch, 3 million cars on the road today are going to turn into Robots on 4 wheels. It’s going to save a lot of lives since car accidents are the number one cause of death for young Americans. And it’s going to make transportation cleaner, safer, and cheaper.
Mark my words, I predict that we will look back and say that April 2024 was the date that Humans Invented Self Driving Transportation.
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A quick housekeeping update. You proba

I bet my friends $500 that I could make them happier in 7 days and 100% either got happier or stayed very happy. It was a huge success! In my opinion… However, one of my readers significantly disagreed with me.
I shared the readers previous comment in my last post titled “Challenge Results: All Participants Got Happy In 7 Days!”
That reader replied to the last post so I wanted to share it to see what you all think. I want to get outside opinions to see if maybe I’m off the mark on this one. I always like to check my thinking to make sure I’m not missing something. So I look forward to your feedback and input.
Below is their response to my last post. Please share your own feedback in the comments, email me, or in reply to this poll:
“Travis,
I’ve purposely waited a few days to comment after reading your most recent blog, just so I could rethink my prior comments, and your reaction to them.
I think it is wonderful that you have been successful overcoming your grief and depression.  I also think it is very kind of you to try to help total strangers do the same.  So, I am sorry if my words seemed harsh. In retrospect, they were.
Please know, that I didn’t take issue with your attempt to help others.  I merely thought that your offer to pay someone to try out your system of increasing happiness was misguided.
My issue was, and continues to be with your comments about the world being such a better place than when you grew up, because it clearly is not. Yes, advances in technology including space adventures have improved the world in many ways, but those same advances have made people crueler, and the world more dangerous.
The timing of your comments amidst horrific school shootings and increasingly dangerous world conflicts was what bothered me. I immediately wondered if the Michigan school shooting had happened in the Haslett school district where you are a member of the school board instead of Oxford, would you still have blogged about how much greater our world is today?
How would you have responded to the parents whose children’s lives were brutally taken from them?  Would you still have issued your be happy challenge to members of a community devastated by another horrific act of school gun violence, which incidentally, never happened when I was growing up?  
That’s what I meant by being tone deaf.  
I still think you mean well.
Take care”
Here is the readers original response to my offer:
“There’s a reason for that Travis, and it’s not the money. Are you really that tone deaf?
I read your comments a while ago about how much greater the world is today than in the past because of Elon Musk and his space ship right around the time that I read the horrific stories of the numerous women, young and old in Israel who were gang raped, passed from soldier to soldier, had their breasts cut off and tossed around like footballs, and only after all of that were brutally murdered.
Seriously?
Just yesterday, I watched the sentencing of the stupid kid from Oxford whose stupid and neglectful parents bought him a hand gun which he then used to execute four of his classmates, and traumatize an entire community.
This is the world we are leaving our children and grandchildren. It is NOT better. It is not better than the era when I went to school with my parents or myself not fearing if I would could home at the end of the day.
Your privilege is blinding you.”

I look forward to hearing from you. Am I off base?

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I wanted to give a short personal update: I've joined Scribe Media as VP of Marketing. I've been a fan of Scribe for a long time because they have published some of my favorite books including those from David Goggins & my good buddy Eric Jorgenson. If you read business books, I've probably given you a copy of The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant.
Scribe has been around for almost a decade and has produced 2,000 plus books. Hundreds of them have been Amazon best sellers and 23+ were New York Times & WSJ best sellers. They have published books from authors like: David Goggins, Tiffany Haddish, Dan Sullivan, Kevin Harrington, and Tucker Max (Founder).
After the founders of Scribe sold the company to a new owner a few years ago, sadly, the new owners mismanaged it and it went bankrupt.
But Scribe provides an important service to the world and has some of the most loyal & amazing employees I've ever met.
So we are rescuing it and our goal is to make it the largest book publisher in the world. Eric is now the CEO. Sieva & Xavier from Enduring Ventures are backing.
So how is Scribe different? With a traditional book publisher, they only publish books that they know are going to succeed, they give you a pretty small up front payment, you lose control of your book, and you only get paid a very small fraction of what the book sells for.
Scribe is totally different. Our authors retain all the rights and control to their book. We help them write it, publish it, print it, distribute it, market it - everything. And the author keeps full control. It's a completely different model.
What's really cool about Scribe is, if you already have a book written - awesome. We can edit, publish, and market it for you. But if you need us to help you write it, we can do that too.
We pair you with a award winning author, you commit to doing a 2 hour interview with us every week, and at the end you have a fully published book! Literally anyone with a story to tell and an expertise can be a published author. (Let me know if you want to publish a book!)
So why am I doing this? I was a little bored and was struggling to figure out what big task I wanted to take on next and I was venting to my best buddy Ryan James: He said "Just be patient, let it come to you, it always has." 3 days later my good buddy Eric Jorgenson let me know about what was going on at Scribe... Timing is everything!
I like to think of my life in Seasons... The season I'm in now is all about becoming a better writer, hence my Year Of The Opposite newsletter... Also, I've always gotten excited about learning new industries and businesses. I call myself "Industry Agnostic". I've done Media, Manufacturing, Sales, Software, Hospitality, and Data Centers. Business is my sport.
So now being able to learn the ins and outs of the publishing industry and helping to revive one of the most important publishing brands in the world. It was perfect timing.
FYI: I'll continue writing Year Of The Opposite every week, none of my other businesses are going away - I'm adding on, not replacing. I'll even have a cool announcement next week.
Stay tuned.
Thanks to YOU for caring enough to read this. I'm truly blessed.

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