Dairy Farmer Dwayne Faber Returns | Religious Freedom, Milk, Fighting Friends | Vance Crowe Podcast

About this episode

On the one-year anniversary of the podcast (Tim Hosler was Vance's first-ever guest), the two revisit municipal finance in the context of COVID-19's economic shock. Hosler argues that cities and their affiliated service organizations (transit authorities, utilities) face real bankruptcy risk as tax and ridership revenue collapses while debt service obligations remain fixed, citing Detroit's 2013 bankruptcy as the template: bondholders, pensioners, and citizens each absorb cuts when a city can no longer borrow its way out of a revenue shortfall. The conversation pivots to the $2 trillion CARES Act, with Hosler defending it as "ingeniously" balanced across direct consumer stimulus, expanded unemployment insurance, and payroll protection loans to businesses, keeping money flowing to landlords, lenders, and grocers so the broader economy doesn't seize up. Vance pushes back with an inflation-skeptic's instinct, and Hosler explains the inflation/deflation supply-demand mechanism, noting the U.S. hasn't meaningfully experienced sustained deflation and that the Fed tries to hold a narrow band around 2%. They debate whether repeated stimulus injections could work indefinitely (Hosler: no, it erodes creditor confidence over time) and riff on a hypothetical "Overton window" idea — Vance jokingly proposes ceding East St. Louis from Illinois to Missouri as a symbol of how crisis periods open space for previously unthinkable policy ideas. The discussion turns to venture capital: Hosler argues government should redirect some stimulus into venture-style startup financing rather than picking "winners" through grants (NIH, DOE, USDA precedents cited as flawed models), while Vance argues government is structurally bad at capital allocation compared to markets — a rare moment of the host and guest converging from different angles. They close on what's being overlooked: Hosler contends the original goal of lockdowns was to keep healthcare capacity ahead of healthcare demand, not to eliminate the virus, and that comparisons to seasonal flu mortality get lost amid rising fear-driven headlines. The episode ends with a lighter personal question (what are you buying now that you weren't in January — Hosler says "eggs," having lost his weekly brunch routine) and a promotional segment on Geniecast, the virtual-speaker company where Hosler now works as fractional CFO, including a colorful anecdote about founder Keith Alper virtually beaming Julian Assange into a live conference from the Ecuadorian embassy.

Key moments

• **[00:00:15]** Vance reveals Hosler was his very first podcast guest a year earlier, framing the episode as an anniversary reunion.
• **[00:23:52–00:27:03]** Extended Detroit bankruptcy case study explaining how a city's revenue shortfall cascades into cuts to bondholders, pensioners, and citizen services.
• **[00:29:48–00:31:22]** The "Overton window" riff — Vance's tongue-in-cheek proposal to transfer East St. Louis from Illinois to Missouri as a stand-in for crisis-enabled radical policy ideas.
• **[00:31:57–00:36:59]** Hosler's "swing for the fences" idea: redirect a portion of federal stimulus into government-backed venture capital rather than direct grants.
• **[00:39:17–00:42:28]** Hosler's argument that lockdown's true objective was preserving healthcare capacity relative to demand, not eliminating the virus — plus a comparison to annual flu deaths.
• **[00:47:19–00:50:28]** Promotional segment on Geniecast, including the Julian Assange/Ecuadorian embassy virtual-appearance origin story and a vision for holographic performers (Tony Bennett on a cruise ship).

Notable quotes

“The bond holders suffered because the city couldn't make debt service and the pensioners suffered because the city couldn't make pension fund contributions and the citizens suffered because the city couldn't provide services.”

“One of the things that I think happens as a result of a pandemic is that the Overton window, the frame of acceptable ideas in a society opens up.”

“Every year, about 40 to 60,000 people die in the United States of the flu... for some reason, we're not afraid of the flu, we are afraid of the coronavirus.”