Episode 1060 Scott Adams： My Idea for Fixing Everything by Forming a Socialist Country Within a Capitalist Country. Wwwwwhaaaat？？？
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of Out of the Box, Scott tries to explain why socialism can't work in the long-term, and why we should have two socialist systems in one country to try and fix all the problems in the country.
Transcript
00:00:00.560
Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum hey guess what yeah it's me it's not the
00:00:09.780
morning isn't that weird well some of you have been asking for some evening periscopes I don't
00:00:17.740
know if I'll do this often but I thought well you probably miss me right a little bit a little bit
00:00:25.180
and so I thought I would make a very special evening periscope in which I will tell you how
00:00:32.060
to fix absolutely everything everything in the country every problem I'm going to show you how
00:00:38.540
to fix the the risk of robots taking over our jobs I'll fix systemic racism I'm going to fix
00:00:46.000
the economy I'm going to fix retirement I'm going to fix the environment all of it really
00:00:55.780
and I see that there are roughly enough of you here for me to tell you how to do that now let
00:01:04.980
me give you the setup first here's the setup I don't believe that in the future the that capitalism
00:01:13.420
will work for everybody so that's the starting point in the future capitalism just won't work
00:01:22.160
for everybody now that's always been true right it's always been true that there are winners and
00:01:27.960
losers in capitalism but because what it takes to succeed in capitalism will be harder and harder
00:01:35.720
meaning if you don't have a stem degree you don't you don't have something special going on
00:01:41.960
it's going to be harder and harder to make it in capitalism it's going to be harder to get
00:01:47.440
yourself an education the cost of moving someplace and getting a place to live before you get started
00:01:54.320
it's very hard so the first assumption is that capitalism hasn't always worked for everybody
00:02:02.280
but that that situation will get worse and then as the robots come in well then it's really bad
00:02:09.120
because the people who are rich will own the robots and get richer the people whose only way to make
00:02:15.460
money was to work will be replaced by robots so the first assumption is there is no circumstance
00:02:23.160
in which capitalism just by itself without a tweak can work in the future because it'll just be an
00:02:31.060
increasing number of people for whom it doesn't work that's pretty much guaranteed
00:02:35.120
likewise here's another system that absolutely can't work socialism right a pure socialist system
00:02:46.680
uh something that maybe the marxists and black lives matter might like you know the leaders are are
00:02:53.500
trained marxists some of them so they might like a world where there's more equality you know people
00:03:00.820
are treated more fairly there's less or ideally no institutional racism so they'd like that kind of
00:03:07.240
a world but what's the one big problem with the world that socialists would prefer there's one really big
00:03:16.000
problem isn't it that they would be conquered by a capitalist country they would be conquered almost
00:03:23.960
immediately by i don't know china russia anybody wants to take a go at it mexico canada pretty much
00:03:31.300
anybody because if you're if you're just trying to make everything fair you're not really putting a lot
00:03:37.680
of money into the military and eventually you're just sort of a sitting duck so we've got two systems
00:03:44.420
on the table that i would i would say neither of them could possibly work in the long run capitalism will
00:03:51.260
fail because the robots will unemploy too many people and then it's only good for the few capitalists
00:03:57.560
socialism can't work because eventually the the average comes down you're not creating extra money
00:04:04.580
because you don't have the the same incentives as capitalism and then you can't fund a proper army
00:04:10.220
and you have other problems as well and so it collapses on itself so what do you do here is my suggestion
00:04:17.760
out of the box now if you're new to my periscopes let me um tell you that when i give you a wild ass idea
00:04:26.560
don't take it too seriously okay they're usually designed just to make you think differently maybe
00:04:33.920
think optimistically maybe give you some starting point where you say well you know scott your idea
00:04:40.380
was kind of crap but it made me think of my own idea that's pretty good and if it only does that
00:04:46.360
that's fine so what i'm trying to do is to shake the box here a little bit more than it has been shaken
00:04:53.380
and introduce this new idea are you ready two systems in one country you get to pick which one you want
00:05:03.280
and you can move back and forth now before you judge before you judge let me map it out for you so i'm
00:05:13.280
going to show it to you on the the whiteboard and walk you through it so that's that's the starting
00:05:18.080
premise why must we have a system that we know won't work or doesn't work for everybody if
00:05:25.600
potentially and i haven't sold you on this you have to wait for the the persuasion part
00:05:30.920
potentially why don't we just put two systems in the country and just run them parallel
00:05:38.000
right i'll give you the explanation but first let me say we already do it we already do it
00:05:44.960
look at all these senior citizens who are retired basically socialists right you know so senior
00:05:52.640
citizens are already a whole different system they're not capitalists not per se right they may
00:06:00.500
have saved up some money for their retirement but they're not working and they may be getting more
00:06:05.100
from the government than they're putting in so we already have two systems it just happens to be
00:06:10.680
for senior citizens but we also have a separate system for children don't we children don't have
00:06:18.040
the same laws they don't have the same rules they have a whole different system involved you have to go
00:06:23.820
to school it's not really your choice completely different system children are not working they're not
00:06:30.340
really capitalists it's a whole different system and does it ruin capitalism it doesn't it doesn't
00:06:37.820
they they seem to coexist so here is my framing for two systems in the united states again if you're
00:06:48.080
just joining me don't take it too literal just take it as some brainstorming that might make you think
00:06:53.720
a little differently that's why you should get out of it and now you want me to call these
00:06:58.140
capitalism and socialism but i'm not going to do it the reason i'm not going to use your labels is
00:07:05.320
that they come with too much baggage so i'm just going to say that there might be some people in
00:07:10.500
the country who would want a society that really maximizes equality of outcomes so just equality is
00:07:17.760
what they want and another part of the country that is more concerned with defense notice i didn't say
00:07:24.060
economics it's because economics and national defense or even private defense are really the same thing
00:07:31.620
you need money to fund an army you need money to be secure in every way that people need to be secure
00:07:39.720
so making money and capitalism is really a defense kind of an idea with extras
00:07:48.540
so imagine if you will that we carve down some space in the united states and on the other side
00:07:56.220
of the board i'm going to show you that idea oh there's there's a good part coming so if you bail
00:08:01.700
out before i get to the good part you're not going to know that this is a good idea all right so i hate
00:08:07.420
to tell you you got away for the good part so just imagine that you have some carve out some space within
00:08:13.500
the united states and you just say uh you can live the way you want to live and you can even make up
00:08:18.740
your own constitution or laws and you do not have to fund the military you're just not part of the
00:08:26.320
military thing we'll do that the people who want to work because the people who would move to this land
00:08:32.400
were not probably the you know the scientists the engineers because they're probably going to say you
00:08:39.220
know i got this engineering degree and i can do pretty good over in the regular country so i think
00:08:47.240
i'll just stay there so you'd have equality world which of course would be you know multi everything
00:08:53.100
multi-ethnic multi-religion multi-everything and of course both both worlds would be multi-ethnic
00:09:00.720
multi-everything so this isn't about black lives matter i'm not saying hey you make a place where all the
00:09:06.300
black people go if you heard that you're hearing the wrong thing so both of these worlds are
00:09:11.200
completely multi-posed situations they'll just handle it differently over in defense world there's
00:09:17.740
capitalism and you've got to be ambitious they're going to be paying for the national defense they
00:09:22.080
like their police they're very consumerish and acquisition oriented and they probably have
00:09:28.520
traditional families now you may say to yourself wait scott why why do you have the traditional
00:09:34.380
families only on one side with these money-making capitalists but you don't have it on the equality
00:09:40.940
side they could have why can't they have strong families because everybody knows a strong nuclear
00:09:46.700
family is a big plus statistically speaking it seems to be the the main variable of keeping you out of jail
00:09:54.080
but did you know that a traditional family works best if you got money traditional families work
00:10:03.600
really well for people making a lot of cash because you can get your your help you can have you know
00:10:09.720
two family incomes and a nanny you've got all kinds of resources so the rich people don't have to have
00:10:17.420
traditional families it wouldn't be a law it would just turn out that way that they would prefer to
00:10:23.820
self-organize around traditional families not required no requirement whatsoever it would just work out
00:10:30.740
that way the equality people would be uh they'd have to be self-sustaining did you like that part
00:10:39.040
the other part of the country at least after some startup phase would not be funding anything that's
00:10:47.400
happening over in equality land so that they would for financial and tax reasons they would just be
00:10:53.640
separate is that entirely possible i don't know but we're going to brainstorm through this just in case
00:10:59.860
so this place would be self-sustaining and it would mostly center around low skilled work which i will
00:11:06.780
tell you what that will be as my big surprise when i turn over the board uh it would be focused on a
00:11:14.320
very low cost of living but high design when i say high design i mean this is there any reason that a
00:11:22.660
low cost uh homes organized and i'll say a neighborhood is there any reason it couldn't be beautiful
00:11:28.680
no there's actually no reason there's no economic reason there's no nothing you could make
00:11:36.380
inexpensive homes in a community really attractive so that you just enjoy being there the feng shui of
00:11:43.740
it the way it makes you feel there'd be enough green enough open space there's a whole bunch of stuff you
00:11:49.300
can just but you can fix just by orientation to the sun how do the roads work how far away is your
00:11:56.220
neighbor do you have a porch or at least a place to go outdoors is there a place to put the dog
00:12:01.880
how far do you have to go to work i mean all of those things are design questions they're not
00:12:07.260
spend extra money questions it's just where do you organize it so if you imagine it's a super low
00:12:13.960
cost of living place and let's say that they've got universal health care and free education
00:12:19.560
well how do they how do they pay for that well i'll show you they're all working so just like
00:12:25.820
in defense world they most of them if they want them they have jobs because you really can't have
00:12:32.100
a community where nobody does some work so there's got to be work it will just be low skilled and they'd
00:12:39.940
have free education and free universal health care let's think let's assume that they can figure out
00:12:45.960
how to afford that through the the work that they do because there would be trade so i'm going to
00:12:51.660
show you in a minute that although they might be their own little nation if you will within the
00:12:56.480
nation they would still have lots of people coming through they're still trading and still doing
00:13:01.800
taking money and you know etc they're selling goods etc so they're not just an island then because
00:13:10.020
they have free education and they have the other things that would give a kid a good start
00:13:15.080
they have a way to change over to the other world if they like so let's say a kid is born into this
00:13:23.680
equality world and the kid is super aggressive let's say not aggressive let's say ambitious
00:13:30.340
kid is super ambitious so you say and the kid says you know i've got a i've got the internet and i'm
00:13:38.100
seeing this world over here and it looks pretty good i don't know if i live here this isn't my
00:13:43.420
thing you know the rest of you guys you can stay here i'll visit but i'm really ambitious as long
00:13:49.740
as this kid has free education and they've figured out how to solve the you know the fatherless situation
00:13:55.500
and crime and all those other things which would be part of what they would solve so there's you
00:14:00.600
know low crime less gangs all those things so let's assume that they've figured out how to organize
00:14:06.040
in a way that's successful so this kid has a complete way to go there likewise let's say you're
00:14:12.960
you're a family you're a family member of a real successful family but you're the you know you're
00:14:20.080
the one who didn't quite do as well as your siblings you might want to say you know this whole working
00:14:28.260
hard and you know trying to compete against these geniuses and that's just not for me so you would have
00:14:35.220
the complete option to go to some place where you just feel more comfortable it's like yeah i don't
00:14:41.360
mind working but you know i don't like all the drama that i just want to you know do my work help my
00:14:46.800
community live in peace or maybe that you're an addict maybe you're an addict so an addict might want
00:14:55.400
to go where there's the best treatment friendliest situation i'm not sure which side that would be
00:15:00.920
but anyway you you'd have ability to move then you would have non-traditional family units
00:15:05.580
i didn't want to use the word tribe but it is the best word meaning that you wouldn't necessarily have
00:15:12.940
this little unit of mom dad and kids they would still exist but you'd have you know aunts and
00:15:19.280
friends and uncles and you know you'd never have to worry about health um you'd never have to worry
00:15:23.620
about child care because it would just be a big extended family essentially now they could organize
00:15:29.420
any way they want but this these are the broad strokes obviously the laws would have to be at
00:15:35.020
least a little bit compatible with the constitution of the united states because they couldn't have their
00:15:40.140
own supreme court now where would it be where would this hypothetical equality land be where would
00:15:53.380
it be here's my suggestion a network of bicycle paths around the country and you turn the country
00:16:02.560
the united states into a bicycle tourism mecca so that riding these trails are it's not just possible
00:16:11.020
to ride the trails it's really fun there's you know there's greenery there's something to see
00:16:16.820
there are places to stop all along the way there's campsites there are hotels there are places made for
00:16:22.720
bicycles there's a place to get a bite to eat and some water just all the way along the thing you've
00:16:28.620
got to do you've got to build these you've got to do the maintenance on them you've got a lot of work
00:16:33.760
from hotels to restaurants to bicycle repair bicycle rental bicycle you know pickup from the road when you
00:16:41.780
got a flat tire so a network of bicycle paths would create the necessity for an enormous amount of low
00:16:50.020
skilled labor an enormous amount and the beauty of this is if you wanted to go to let's say live along the path
00:16:58.200
it's being along the path that is where the equality society lives so you could go and live near one of these
00:17:06.360
paths and if let's say if you lived in florida let's say your family was there you might want to be nearby so you just you
00:17:13.840
know you'd be within driving distance but you would live in equality land and you would be sort of subject to that
00:17:20.240
lifestyle and culture now if you did this you would have an industry that would be
00:17:25.760
robot proof that's right it would be robot proof because robots wouldn't be as great for doing this kind of work and the
00:17:35.220
people in equality land could just say no robots no robots no robots we just decided that we won't have any robots in
00:17:43.320
equality land which is spread along these paths and
00:17:48.260
and they would not be along highways because you don't want your bicycling and your cars to be in the same place now obviously
00:18:01.880
depending on the season there would be different parts of the the bicycle paths that would be better in different
00:18:08.860
seasons who is policing the paths who's policing the paths would be the the citizens of equality bill they would
00:18:17.680
have lights they would have cameras they might have humans but the but you wouldn't be ever too far away from
00:18:23.860
something civilized uh and yes and a big part of this idea is a lot of you know i got an e-bike recently
00:18:33.540
so it's got a battery that assists you when you pedal now if you have not experienced the fun of
00:18:40.700
riding an electric bike that makes you feel like you're you have super strong legs because you always have to
00:18:46.340
pedal it it doesn't do anything by itself but the pedal assist you'll go up hills like they don't even exist
00:18:52.980
you know senior citizens can easily climb hills with these senior citizen meaning probably through
00:19:00.460
to your early 70s you could you could go up hills pretty easily um so that's the basic idea so if
00:19:08.520
you're just joining me i will recap the idea is to uh and again it's not a proposal it's just for
00:19:14.360
brainstorming reasons you don't have to love the idea but think in terms of letting the people who will
00:19:20.020
never be comfortable in the dog eat dog world of capitalism and free markets why not let them have
00:19:27.340
their own piece of the pie and they could build something from scratch that would not be racist
00:19:34.420
at all now what would be the alternative well the alternative is we either live in a country where
00:19:42.500
there's continuous tension about systemic racism or we say how about you show us how to do this right
00:19:49.800
how about you start in a fresh situation because you know if we're being honest most of the people
00:19:58.660
affected are people who don't have a lot of skills because they've got other problems right the people
00:20:05.620
have lots of skills probably doing okay it's sort of everybody who's below that lots of skill level
00:20:12.360
who's got the extra burden of racism without the benefit of at least i made some money
00:20:17.340
all right somebody says that's what homeless encampments are for
00:20:23.100
now the the idea here is not is not to simply put them in some kind of uh like a native american
00:20:31.520
reservation all right if you're thinking in terms of uh it's just like a native american reservation
00:20:36.920
did that work out no we're not talking about that i'm talking about a really well-designed society
00:20:43.380
from the ground up using the best knowledge we have and you don't even do the first you know you
00:20:50.040
don't even do the first town along the first bike path until you've got something that looks pretty good
00:20:56.960
right so you don't have to just say here's a bunch of land good luck native americans with your
00:21:02.380
with your land you can design it right so you know what you're getting into before you go live
00:21:08.800
all right now as you might imagine there are a billion ways this can go wrong we have to compare it
00:21:16.280
to the alternatives compare it to the alternatives the alternatives are we either fight forever about
00:21:24.280
socialism and systemic racism because it doesn't look like our current system can be tweaked
00:21:30.360
it just doesn't look like it can i was uh i was looking at an announcement from cornell i think it's
00:21:38.380
just came out and cornell was talking about all the things that they were doing to address systemic racism
00:21:44.880
it was just page after page of this class and this education and we'll fund this and do this and it just
00:21:53.520
looks like it will be too hard to retrofit something that's so mature you know the rest of the country
00:22:01.800
and i i would be perfectly okay if the country said you know what if you've got a better idea let's test
00:22:10.900
it let's test it we'll give you some space see how it goes uh what about borders in this case the
00:22:20.040
the uh that's a good question um i would say that one of the questions would be what to do with
00:22:26.500
immigration now because the equality uh land likes immigration likes a lot and so too does the defense
00:22:36.900
land but they would prefer you know the high-skilled workers more more so um you could say that you could
00:22:45.580
have unlimited immigration into into these areas as long as people are let's say tracked and maybe
00:22:52.940
they have to have a phone with a tracker on it so they're not they don't they don't just immediately
00:22:57.220
leave but it would be a great place to go so if you were an immigrant let's say this let's say you're
00:23:03.540
an immigrant and if you went with the approval i guess they wouldn't even need approval of the people
00:23:09.860
in equality land that you could just go there you just couldn't leave there because you you wouldn't
00:23:15.980
have a free pass to go to equality land and then just leave there and go to the rest of the country
00:23:22.340
now how could you do that i don't know you know maybe there's some way to i i've suggested for a long
00:23:28.340
time the immigrant immigrants should have some kind of an immigrant phone that has special apps for
00:23:34.640
finding work but also for tracking them and for you know making sure that they're doing what they
00:23:40.680
need to do so uh there might be some way to allow immigration into the worlds where they want it
00:23:47.880
and control it more for the worlds where you know they're really just watching the dollars
00:23:53.220
uh so that's so that's the idea um it's good to see exactly one person who said this is great
00:24:04.980
uh i've got a feeling this wasn't the kind of idea that everybody would light up with
00:24:09.640
uh but if you if you have a bicycle it probably excited you somebody says once again seniors are not
00:24:18.200
socialists well you know what i meant all right no seniors aren't socialists but you know what i meant
00:24:24.600
they're for the most part they're not going to work they're receiving money it's not all the money
00:24:31.960
that they put in in most cases they're getting most seniors are getting more from the government than
00:24:37.520
they ever put in in social security so but again everybody's different there's no one thing you could say
00:24:43.920
about seniors that would be true oh okay a few more people are saying it's a good idea i'm actually
00:24:50.420
gonna uh watch some more of the comments because i have no idea oh some more people love it how about
00:24:57.360
that um and by the way you could also have you know your solar panels all the way you could have
00:25:04.360
your windmills i mean you could do a lot of cool stuff there
00:25:08.160
yes i do really like my bike i do i'm sorry if i sound like an e-bike commercial but if you've
00:25:17.080
experienced it you would immediately know you're seeing the future because those batteries are going
00:25:22.900
to get better and better and even senior citizens will be able to have a three-wheel trike
00:25:28.000
that they could go 100 miles i mean you could go 100 miles on flat ground well even with a little
00:25:34.300
bit of hills if you're 75 years old and you're willing to sit on a three-wheeled vehicle with a
00:25:40.660
good battery in it you'll just pedal yourself 100 miles and you'll be happy about it so imagine if you
00:25:47.940
could that going on vacation a family vacation how hard is it to go on a family vacation raise
00:25:54.800
you raise your hand if it's the worst freaking thing in the world why because nobody wants to do
00:26:00.120
the same stuff good luck getting all the members of your family to do any one thing that they all
00:26:05.540
like equally well and then what do the kids say the kids say yeah i'll go on that vacation with you
00:26:11.280
mom and dad uh i need to bring a friend and then it just becomes impossibly complicated to satisfy
00:26:20.080
everybody's needs and it's really expensive to go on any kind of vacation now imagine that your vacation
00:26:27.080
is hey kids uh we're going to drive and park next to the closest uh bike bath and we're just going to
00:26:34.840
bike and we're going to camp how expensive would it be to bike and camp it would probably be a really
00:26:42.900
good vacation would the kids like it yeah the kids can go ahead you don't even have to wait for
00:26:47.580
them the kids could be 10 miles ahead and playing at the campsite before mom and dad get there as long
00:26:54.080
as everything's safe so we could transform the country into a tourist destination we could fill
00:27:01.340
this thing with uh with people who come to love america because they see it up close and have a good
00:27:07.620
experience and uh somebody says your your ass won't let you ride that far i am sure that we can fix
00:27:17.020
bicycle seats i'm sure we can do that it hasn't been done yet but i feel like we could do it
00:27:24.060
um somebody says equality land sounds like it would take capitalism to make it work it would take
00:27:31.280
capitalism to get it going and it would also be um functionally capitalistic with whatever rules they
00:27:39.460
wanted because the people who were working there in the hotels and the food services would be getting
00:27:44.760
paid so they would just have to work out what that means do they pay taxes do they share it equally
00:27:51.500
and then everybody gets ubi let them work it out all right um somebody says are you an artist or
00:27:59.760
scientist uh you've got google scott you could just move to tucson with great biking and by the way
00:28:08.720
there's already uh plans for a national bike bicycle path so if you hear that somebody's already doing
00:28:15.980
this i'm aware of it uh i think maryland is already complete so you can ride a bicycle the entire length
00:28:23.500
of maryland on their bicycle path i don't know how much of it is on roads but some of it probably
00:28:29.580
um and their plans if they can get it funded is to connect the entire united states but i think
00:28:35.780
one bicycle path would be great but having a network of them so you could really see the country
00:28:43.420
would be amazing i mean how would you like to know that you could ride your e-bike to see a mount
00:28:49.420
rushmore kind of cool right and and somebody would pick you up if you get a flat tire you know everything's
00:28:56.260
organized and friendly all right that's all i got for you and i will talk to you in the morning