Episode 1333 Scott Adams： Bad Day for China, Gaetz Stuff, and More
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Summary
The dopamine hit of the day, the one that makes everything better, and the thing that makes it all possible: the simultaneous sip. It's a holiday weekend, and I've got to check the answer to a question I just asked.
Transcript
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Hey, everybody. Come on in. It's a holiday weekend, and I've got to check the answer
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to a question I just asked. We'll get to that in a minute. Yeah, I was almost 30 seconds
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late, and I know that's distressing for many of you, because when you're waiting for the
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simultaneous sip, any delay is just unconscionable, isn't it? Seems this light is making me look
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bad. Yeah, turns out it was just the light. Otherwise, I look great. Why do I look like
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I'm lit up like a light bulb? All right, well, let's get to it. You know, if you'd like to enjoy
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this better than, well, better than everybody else is enjoying anything right now, all you need is a
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cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stye, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind,
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filling with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of
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the dopamine hit of the day. The thing that makes everything better. Watch it. It's called
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the simultaneous sip, and here it comes. So I told you that because Periscope was shutting down and
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I was going to look at some other platforms, I checked out Rumble yesterday, and my understanding
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is they do not have live streaming yet, but they plan to have it. Is that true? Because I looked at
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their interface, both on mobile and browser, and did not see any feature which would allow me to
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live cast. So it won't happen on Rumble right away. I also tried that HAPS TV, H-A-P-P-S dot TV,
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and when I tried live streaming to Twitch and YouTube at the same time, just as a test,
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it didn't have the performance I needed at high quality. So I think there might be a performance
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issue if you go to high quality, and I don't want to step down the quality just to use that tool.
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So the current situation is there is no sufficient alternative to YouTube at the moment.
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The locals platform will have one at some point, and I'll let you know about that.
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All right, here's what's going on. I was wondering how bad the COVID situation is
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in terms of your real life. So forget about the statistics. How much of it is affecting,
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like the actual infections are affecting your real life? And so I asked a highly unscientific poll
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on Twitter, and 21% of you who answered my highly unscientific poll, 21% of you say you know
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somebody that has COVID right now. It's like right now, you know somebody who has COVID. And I asked
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that question because I don't know anybody who has it. And I haven't heard of anybody, even indirectly,
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you know, a real person. I haven't even heard of anybody in about a week. And I wondered if that
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meant anything. But so many people have responded and say they do know somebody, they have it themselves,
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their spouse has it. So there's a ton of people, a ton of people who know somebody who has it. But
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what's interesting is that 79% of the people who answered the poll said they don't even know
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anybody who had it in the last week. Don't even know anybody. And the ones who said they do know
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somebody in the last week, given the way people answer questions on Twitter, how many of them answered
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the right question? You can tell by the answers, that something like a third of the people who read
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the question, didn't understand the question and answered the wrong question. A lot of them answered
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that they had once had it, or they knew somebody who had it long ago, or somebody died with it. And that
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wasn't the question. So I'm thinking something, I'll bet the 21% is closer to 10%. So something like 10%
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of the respondents, again, highly unscientific, even know somebody who hasn't. But it's still plenty.
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So we still have a problem. There's an interesting thing developing that I feel sometimes when you
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have an understanding of persuasion, you can kind of see around corners a little bit. You know what's
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behind the corner before you look, just because you know how things work. And there's a thing
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happening that some major corporations are bluntering into that they do not see coming. But I think I
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see it clearly coming. And I'm going to describe it to you. And most of you have endured my lessons
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on persuasion. And I want to see if you see it too. And it goes like this. So we've got our Fortune 500
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companies, your Coca-Cola's and your Deltas, saying that Georgia is a bad state, and maybe they should
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not do business with Georgia, or they have some issues with Georgia, because of Georgia's changes
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to their voting rules, which put Georgia from the bottom, near the bottom of the list of election
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security, according to third parties who look at this stuff. So Georgia went from the least, one of
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the least secure voting systems, to finally up in, you know, the middle of the pack with these latest
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changes. But of course, that looks like Jim Crow racism to people on the left. And I have to be honest,
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it's both. It's both, isn't it? You know, the way we argue is that there's only one right side and the other
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side is completely wrong. Right? There's only one side that's right. And the other side completely wrong. There's
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nothing to their argument whatsoever. That's definitely not the case in this case. I think that it can be true at the
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same time that these election changes are racist, meaning that they have an outcome which
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disproportionately, you know, influences some group more than another. I think that's obvious, right?
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And it's not because that doesn't necessarily mean that that's the intention, although you have to
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worry about that. But the outcome of any big change almost always has some racial disproportionate
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outcome. Anything you do with taxes is racially disproportionate. Everything, really. Anything
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big that affects the country has uneven outcomes racially, no matter what your intention is. You
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can have the best intention. It's just going to work out that way. And mostly that has to do with
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differences in economic situations and education levels and stuff like that. But here's what's
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developing. If we accept the proposition that a big corporation can make it their business, what a
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government is doing? Oh, the government is doing this bad thing. Therefore, we as a responsible corporation
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cannot be involved with whatever this bad thing is the government is doing. They've now created that as
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their situation. So now a thing that didn't exist in our heads a year ago is very much in your head
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right now, isn't it? A year ago, if you said to me, I think big corporations will start discontinuing
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business in some states in the United States based on not liking their laws or that one of the states is a
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little too racist according to them. If you told me that a year ago, I would say that's not going to
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happen because corporations just want to make money. They just want to make money. That's both the bad
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thing about them and the good thing about them. You wouldn't want to change that necessarily, right?
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So and because part of making money is you have to satisfy the public. So they can't just make money
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and screw the public. They have a, you know, people are watching. So here's what they accidentally walked
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into. And I'm going to credit Marco Rubio for seeing this and taking advantage of it. So Marco Rubio
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watches Delta dumping on Georgia and says, well, not just Delta, but Coca-Cola, I think, but talking about
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how do you do business in China when China is putting the Uyghurs in prison camps and you don't
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have any problem with that. I think Coca-Cola would be the bigger offender here. But think how clever
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that was from Marco Rubio. This is the most clever thing I've seen him do as a politician.
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And if you don't see it, it looks like it's just one of these hypocrisy plays, right? You know,
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hey, you did something bad. And then the other team says, well, you did something bad too. Or,
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you know, so your first impression is, it's just a normal hypocrisy claim, which have no effect on
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anything. But there's something way bigger happening, like really big. And it goes like this.
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These corporations are making it acceptable to not do business where the government is over the line.
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They're going to have to pull out of China. And it's their own damn fault. Because if these companies
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continue to press the point that it would be immoral and therefore bad for their company, bad for the
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world, to do business with a corrupt government, they're saying that's Georgia. Not corrupt, but
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racist, I guess. They're going to have to decouple. They're going to have to. And they did this to
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themselves. If they had just stayed non-political, if the Fortune 500 had said, look, we're not in the
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business of politics. You handle the politics. We're just in the free market. We're taking money
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from anybody who wants to give us money. We're not looking at their, you know, we're not looking at
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anybody's high school report card to find out if they can buy a Diet Coke. We don't care if you went to
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jail once. You can still buy a Diet Coke, right? That's not our business. We're just about selling
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stuff. If they'd stayed there, they'd be fine. But they didn't stay there. They created a situation
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where they've created, they've put upon themselves the expectation that they can't do business with
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any entity that's a government entity that's too evil. They have to decouple now. But it's better
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than that. It's better. I'm only halfway done. So not only do they screw themselves because they're
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going to have to lose their China business, I think the pressure is going to be too great. It's going
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to build. But here's the other part. You know, we keep talking about reparations. What's the big
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problem? And you didn't connect these two topics, but watch me connect them. What's the biggest problem
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with reparations? Let's say somebody suggested, hey, let's do slavery reparations. And they make a
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good moral argument for it. Number one, is there a good moral argument for slavery reparations?
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Now, your mileage might vary, but I'm going to say yes. That if you look at our precedents,
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we do have a pretty long precedence of saying, okay, the government did this to this group.
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Let's say the Japanese Americans who were put in internment camps, right? So we do have precedent.
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So it fits the precedent. And it fits a moral, I would say it fits a moral view of the world.
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But what's the big problem? The big problem is who are you going to, where is the money going to come
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from? Are you going to tax me? Because, you know, my family, if you trace them back to New England,
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you'd find they were anti-slavery. So why am I paying more when my family didn't own any slaves
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and we tried to end it? Here I'm taking credit for, you know, John Adams president and everything,
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kind of my extended family. So that's the problem, right? So the big problem is who pays. You can't
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take somebody who's just an individual who was completely innocent of anything that had to do
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with slavery, and their entire family was and they didn't get anything, etc. Now you could argue all
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white people benefited by slavery. And I get that argument. That's an argument. It's in the mix.
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It's true, right? It passes the sniff test. But it's not really convincing, right? You still can't get
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people like me to say that it's my responsibility to pay for somebody else's problem, because it just
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doesn't feel like it. But the corporations just opened up the possibility that corporations would be
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the source of that reparations. Because these corporations do care about racial equality.
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Before, I thought it wasn't any of their business. They were just selling things. And it was the
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government's business to make things fair and keep things equal. And the corporations would simply
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follow the rules. That's all they had to do. But now the corporations have gone beyond following
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the rules or the laws as they're set out. And they're trying to change the laws. They're trying to
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proactively change something in Georgia, for example. Once a corporation becomes active, then they become
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part of the solution potentially, because they're active in it. So you think, hey, I hadn't thought about
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this before, but do you know who can't complain about paying taxes for reparations? Corporations.
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The only entity in the United States who has enough money and can't complain if they get taxed
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specifically just them, not individuals, just a corporate tax. Now, I'm not saying this is a good
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idea or a bad idea, right? That's a separate argument. We'll talk about whether it's good or bad.
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I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about who has the money and would they be in a position
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where they've created a trap for themselves. If corporations really, really care about racial
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equality and somebody says, how are we going to pay for reparations? Will those corporations say,
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we don't think there should be any? Good luck. The corporations are going to have to agree
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that reparations are morally worth doing. Because that's the position they've taken sort of,
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you know, in a general sense. I don't think they can avoid it. Do you think Coca-Cola could come out
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and say, yeah, you know, we went hard against Georgia for, you know, what we think are these Jim
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Crow rules? But this reparations, no, we're not going to pay it. We don't think we should pay that.
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Do you think they could do that? They can't. So here's the situation. I think corporations have
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signed themselves up to pay reparations because you could never get individuals to do it.
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You'll never get, you know, the average white person to pay reparations for something they feel
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as if they had nothing to do with it. But you could get corporations to do it.
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Viva Frey had a fun tweet today. So, you know, Aaron Rupar from Vox, he was pointing out that
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Fox News has ignored the Matt Gaetz story for 48 hours.
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At the same time, CNN has ignored the latest Governor Cuomo findings for one full week.
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Remember when I told you, don't start thinking that CNN is the only one who does fake news.
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A better filter on the world is that whichever news organization doesn't have their person in
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the presidency, they tend to get a little bit off the leash, right? So CNN didn't have a president
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when Trump was president. They were, you know, extra bad. They didn't cure themselves when Biden
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became president, but they were extra bad under Trump. Everybody would agree with that, I think.
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But now Fox, I think Fox is a little extra bad because they don't have their person in the
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presidency. Just as you'd expect, it went exactly the way you'd expect.
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Somebody says, no, Gaetz was on Tucker, but was that more than 48 hours ago?
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Do the timing. All right. So I don't, but to your point, I can't verify that either of these facts
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are true, that either CNN ignored Cuomo or that Fox ignored Gaetz for that amount of time,
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but we're having that conversation. And I think you can see that, you know, being news organizations
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is a thing of the past. Let me skip to something else I was going to talk about in the same topic.
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You often hear me quoting Rasmussen polls. If you follow my live stream, I'm often telling you the
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Rasmussen results. And if I tweet about anything from Rasmussen, do you know what happens? You know,
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if I talk to my audience, you go, okay, Rasmussen poll, good information there, Scott. But if I tweet it
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and it goes to the general public, left and right, what happens when I tweet a Rasmussen poll?
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The left, universally, will say, Rasmussen poll. Rasmussen poll. Rasmussen poll. Really?
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Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And it happens every time, right? Like every time you mention a Rasmussen poll,
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some Democrat will say, ha, ha, ha, ha. But today there's a survey that came out showing the polling
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accuracy on the presidential race in 2020. Rasmussen is in the top, right? Not at the top, but it's in the
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top cluster. So Rasmussen, one of the best pollsters in 2020 for the presidential election. Now ask
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yourself, what type of polling entities were at the bottom in terms of accuracy? Who, what, what news
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entities, just guess, just top of your head. What do you think would be near the bottom? Well, I'll give
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you a few examples. Quinnipiac. Quinnipiac's right at the bottom. I feel as though I've seen a lot of
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reporting on Quinnipiac, mostly from CNN. Right? But also second from the bottom is the CNN slash SSRS poll.
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So CNN second from the bottom. So the people who are ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha about the Rasmussen poll,
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their poll, their preferred CNN poll, right at the bottom. Also at the bottom, ABC News slash Washington
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Post. I like that they combine together to do a poll that nobody trusts. And then also in the bottom is a
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Siena College, New York Times combo. So at least according to this one study,
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Rasmussen's doing great and the fake news create their own polls to create their own fake news.
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So the news business is no longer happy just looking at what, what is happening in the world
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and then, you know, doing the fake version of what's happening in the world. Your news industries
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literally, literally have created entirely new entities to generate fake news in the form of polls that are
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inaccurate. This is real. Nothing I just said right there is, is an exaggeration.
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New York Times, ABC, Washington Post, and CNN have all put money and resources into creating
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separate entities or funding them, right? Separate entities whose apparent function is to create fake
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news in the form of bad polls. That's real. That's freaking real. And we're watching it right in front of us.
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All right. I continue to be fascinated by the Matt Gaetz story. Fascinated, almost as fascinated by what
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isn't happening than what is happening. Yeah, there's a weirdness to it that just permeates the
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whole story. I'll just give you a few things. Number one, I've never seen more smoke for less fire in any
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story since Russia collusion. Have you ever seen more smoke that turned into not quite a fire?
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Let me give you an example. Here are the things that Matt Gaetz is accused of.
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So this other guy, Greenberg, there's apparently more credible evidence against this guy.
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But Gaetz is really accused of, so far, I'll get to other things, right? But so far,
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one of the biggest criticisms against him is he knows a guy who did bad things. Now, if we punished
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all the people in government who had spent time with somebody who did bad things, like really bad
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things, really bad things, I'm talking about really, really bad things, who would be left, right?
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We don't, you know, I don't recommend that anybody hangs out with bad people, but you really
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couldn't use that as any kind of a standard, and it's not a crime, but it's smoke, right?
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There's also evidence, we don't know how credible, that there's a video
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camera showing Matt Gaetz and this other guy, Greenberg, who had, he worked for the tax collector
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entity or something. But anyway, there was a, apparently they were in an office, Greenberg's
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office, and there was a pile of, it looked like, I think it was fake IDs that were in
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just a box or something. And allegedly, Greenberg and Gaetz were looking through the fake IDs.
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Now, let me ask you this. If you were alone with your friend in front of a big box of fake
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IDs, wouldn't you look through them? Is there anybody here, if nobody else is around, right,
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and there's a big box of fake IDs? Are you telling me you wouldn't take a handful and, like, see
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if you could tell if they're fake and see what kind of people are doing it and stuff? Just look at
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I couldn't keep my hands off them. Is that a crime? Is it a crime to, like, rifle through
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some fake IDs? Because there's no indication that they then operationalized it and stole
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them and used them. There's some indication that the Greenberg guy did, but there's no
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accusation against Gaetz that I'm aware of, right? We're just talking about what the public
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knows. What the public doesn't know is a whole other story. Now, I, for anybody who's new
00:24:56.860
to my live streams, it is not my job to defend anybody, and I'm not going to defend Matt Gaetz,
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right? He needs to do that himself. That's not my problem. I didn't create any problems.
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I didn't make his problem. I'm not going to solve his problem, right? But I do like to talk
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about all the sides of a story, so let's keep doing that. The other thing that we know is
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that there's some suggestion that, and I don't know how strong the evidence is, so we only
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know that there's an allegation that he may have had sex with his 17-year-old. Here's
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what we don't know. Did he know she was 17? That's not in evidence, right? Don't you think
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that's sort of important? Like, really close to the most important thing in the story is
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did Matt Gaetz know she was 17? Now, part of the story is that he met her through this website.
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If she was on the website, she almost certainly, you could fact check this, but she almost certainly
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had to lie about her age to be on the website. They're not going to let an underage person be
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on that website. So, right. So the point is, what is the legal jeopardy for someone who didn't know
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unless they turned out to be 17? So I just asked, I asked that question on Twitter just before I went
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live. That's why I was a little bit late. And I want to see if there's a lawyer who answers the
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question yet, so I'm just going to look at the responses. They just came in. All right. So I asked,
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can someone tell me the legal risk? And I disguised my question because I thought it'd be funny.
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Everybody will know what I'm really asking. The way I asked it was this, can someone tell me the legal
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risk to a member of Congress if, hypothetically, she had sex with a 17-year-old boy who had credibly
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lied about his age? All right. I'm looking at your comment, Dwayne, and thank you for that. All right.
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So, and then I asked, does not knowing that somebody is 17, does that make a difference to the law?
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Now, we all know that ignorance is no defense, but that's a different context. Ignorance of whether
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or not something is illegal is never a defense. But not even knowing that you're committing a crime,
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you know that something would be illegal, but you don't even know you're doing it.
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Is that a crime? If you don't even know you're doing it? And so I asked that question because
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that's what he's accused of. He's accused of, based on what we know now, right? Our current
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information is, if he had to guess, it's more likely he didn't know than he knew. More likely,
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right? It's not an evidence that he knew. So, let's see what people say.
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So, somebody here who looks like they know what they're saying says that a fake ID would be a
00:28:09.680
defense. Now, that doesn't mean he checked an ID, but what if he just asked and she said she's over
00:28:16.840
17, looked over 17, and he had no indication to believe that she wasn't?
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All right. It doesn't look like enough people or lawyers to actually answer this question.
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All right. So, if there's anybody on here who's a lawyer,
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somebody says it's still statutory rape. But let's ask a real-world question.
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If the subject involved turned down to be 13 or 14, then I'm with you. That's got to be just
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probably rape, because you would just assume that anybody would have known. But at 17,
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you know, are you really going to find a jury or a judge who says, oh, you totally should have known
00:29:00.700
that she was 17 and a half and not 18? Is that even a thing? Would anybody know?
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I tried to search it on Google, of course, but all that comes up is Matt Gaetz stories,
00:29:12.940
and it would have taken hours to find a real one. The local age of consent matters. That's true.
00:29:21.520
Oh, hold on. Here we go. Rachel Daly says, I'm a lawyer. Strict liability. Statutory rape. So you're
00:29:29.160
saying that there's strict liability. Now, I wonder if that has, I'm guessing, that that has to do with
00:29:36.620
the fact that a minor is involved. So you don't cut any corners when a minor is involved. But
00:29:42.560
to Rachel, who answered that question, thank you. What is the real-world way that's handled, though?
00:29:51.340
I hear what you're saying, and I get that. I think society is better off if we treat it like it's
00:29:56.960
definitely a crime, even if you didn't know. Right? Because sometimes you have to treat something
00:30:03.440
like a crime, but then at the same time, you kind of let it go. There are those situations.
00:30:09.880
This might be one of them where you've got to say it's a crime, but when you're actually judging
00:30:14.620
the person who was involved, you say, eh, you know, we understand. All right. So those questions
00:30:24.760
are out there. But it's a weird situation because the things that Gaetz is accused of are all smoke.
00:30:33.440
So far, there's nothing he's accused of that's a specific thing that I would hold him responsible
00:30:41.160
for. Now, that's not to say they don't exist. Right? We'll probably find out a lot more. So
00:30:46.620
again, I'm not defending him. I'm just pointing out it's all smoke. There's actually no flame
00:30:52.540
here yet that the public has seen. We've only seen smoke. Keep that in mind.
00:30:58.040
Apparently, this guy was a Capitol Hill attacker for this latest car attack in which a Capitol
00:31:05.560
Hill policeman was killed. He was apparently a fan of Louis Farrakhan. So that, of course,
00:31:14.180
matters in our highly racialized world. So he has Noah Green. So he was a Farrakhan follower,
00:31:21.820
for whatever that's worth. Just put it in your database.
00:31:29.380
A lot of people have asked me since the pandemic started, Scott, why don't you tweet Alex Berenson
00:31:37.280
stories? And why don't you interview him? And what do you think of Alex Berenson? And you've
00:31:43.660
probably watched me be somewhat avoiding that question a little bit. But I have talked about
00:31:50.180
the coronavirus skeptics in a general way. So he would be one of the most prominent skeptics
00:31:57.160
of the, let's say, scientific consensus. Now, he's not a scientist. He's an author, writer,
00:32:04.800
journalist type. But he's quite famous now for doubting a whole bunch of different elements
00:32:11.420
and data involved in the pandemic. Now, as I've said before, skeptics are national treasures. You
00:32:18.520
want all the skeptics you can get, right? Skeptics are good. And skeptics are good even if they turn
00:32:26.480
out to be wrong. Because if you don't have that tension, where somebody's doubting things, and
00:32:32.240
somebody has to really, really, really prove it, you don't have as good a system. So you want the
00:32:37.960
doubters. The Alex Berenson's are positive forces in the world, even if it turned out they weren't
00:32:44.340
right. I just think that's a fair thing to say. It's a good system to have conflict. But it has been
00:32:52.400
my feeling since the beginning that maybe his take on things was not the most productive. And there's an
00:33:03.420
article now by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic in which he goes through in some detail showing what
00:33:09.380
Berenson's said versus what we think we know to be true or what the scientists say to be true.
00:33:16.100
I would advise you to read it. I would say there are probably more skeptics who would agree with
00:33:22.020
Berenson's take on things on this broadcast than just about anywhere else in the world,
00:33:28.140
based on your comments. I know a lot of you are very compatible with the skeptical way of thinking,
00:33:34.620
which, by the way, I applaud. So if you think I'm making fun of you, nope. Nope. Being skeptical
00:33:42.780
about all of this stuff was exactly the right place to be. You might be wrong. You might be wrong.
00:33:49.240
But it was a good place to be. I think you could be quite reasonably... A reasonable citizen could have
00:33:57.180
been skeptical all the way through. And still. Even still. Anyway, but look at that. So I'd like
00:34:02.980
you to see both... You know, watch Berenson's arguments. Watch what this one writer, Derek Thompson
00:34:11.420
in The Atlantic, says about his claims, and then judge for yourself. But my general caution is always
00:34:18.700
be careful of the people who are branded as skeptics, because then they tend to overrun the skepticism a
00:34:26.660
little bit. Like, a little too much. So that's just built into the model, unfortunately.
00:34:32.960
All right. Gordon Chang, who you know as being a vocal China critic, he reported... This is just
00:34:42.920
anecdotal report. He says, a friend tells me... On Twitter, he said this. A friend tells me that in
00:34:47.760
Florida, people have been returning to a chain store furniture and other goods after they opened
00:34:52.880
the boxes and saw the boxes and saw the products were made in China. And then he said, I salute
00:34:57.020
them. So I ask you this. And I asked this on Twitter as well. Have any of you returned an item
00:35:05.200
because it was made in China? Let's say in the last year, just in the last one year, has anybody
00:35:12.020
returned an item to a store after they learned it was made in China? Let's see in the comments.
00:35:16.900
And I did a little poll, and I don't believe... This is the sort of poll you shouldn't believe
00:35:24.480
at all. But my own poll on Twitter, 23% of the people said they have returned an item just because
00:35:31.920
they found out it was made in China. Now, my audience is not like the general public, so this
00:35:38.260
would be higher than the general public. But it's still a big number, right? 23% of the people who
00:35:43.940
answered have returned an item. You know, it doesn't have to be 100% before China is in big
00:35:50.880
trouble, right? What percent of Americans would have to stop buying Chinese products before China
00:35:57.620
has got a real problem? Well, it's not 80%. It's not 80%. It's probably 20%, right? So it doesn't take
00:36:07.980
that much to put China in a bad situation. But there's more. Oh, China's also being bad. Kyle Bass,
00:36:17.540
another China critic, says that China has installed more coal-burning power plants in 2020 than
00:36:25.800
continental Europe's entire installed capacity. Let me say that again. Just in 2020, China put into
00:36:36.600
production, brand new, more coal-burning power plants than the existing entirety of all of Europe's
00:36:45.020
installed existing capacity. Any questions? There's nothing else to say about that, right? Everything about
00:36:56.880
that is in that number. That's all you need to know. And Kyle Bass asks where Greta Thunberg is on
00:37:05.860
this, and that's a good question. But wait, it gets more fun. Today, it turns out, was a very bad day for
00:37:14.760
China. Very bad day. And it's because this was the day that somebody tweeted at me a website which
00:37:22.600
compiles products made in the United States so that you can avoid products made in China.
00:37:30.200
We may have a solution because you're not going to see it on Amazon, right? Amazon.com can't really
00:37:36.560
label its products made in China because if they did, they'd have a problem with their manufacturers
00:37:41.560
in China. They just couldn't do it. But a private entity can. I don't even know who's behind this.
00:37:46.920
But there exists now, and the website is called ChinaNever.com. So ChinaNever is one word, .com.
00:37:55.940
And then if you're looking for, let's say, some furniture, you can start there, and you can see
00:38:00.680
all the brands that are not made in China. And this is why it's a bad day for China, because I just learned
00:38:10.060
this thing exists. I might be pushing it a little bit. For those of you who are new, I did lose my
00:38:18.060
stepson to a fentanyl overdose in 2018. I blame China. And if I can destroy China's government,
00:38:26.480
not the people, people are fine. I'd like the Chinese people to thrive. But their government,
00:38:32.080
I don't like their government any more than they do. So expect China to have some trouble going
00:38:41.920
forward. That's what I say. Somebody says, most of the cheap furniture is now imported from Vietnam.
00:38:50.300
You know, I can't think of anything more than furniture that should be a U.S. industry. Try to think of
00:38:57.540
any industry that would be better for, let's say, the harder-to-employee segment of this country,
00:39:05.400
the ones who are all, they're fine for doing physical labor if you teach them how to do it.
00:39:10.500
Learning how to make furniture, how to reupholster, upholster, and stuff like that,
00:39:15.800
that feels like exactly the kind of industry we want to absorb the kind of workers who, you know,
00:39:22.240
are just perfectly situated for that. And what reason would we have not to be able to make it here?
00:39:30.400
I mean, we should be making furniture like crazy here.
00:39:35.520
Somebody says China is laundering their products through Vietnam, so it looks like made in Vietnam.
00:39:41.780
I'd need to know more about that, but I don't doubt there's some of that going on.
00:39:46.740
Somebody says it's too labor-intensive, and that's why you can't make furniture in this country.
00:39:51.580
Here's the thing. We can certainly compete if we use robots to make it, but if we wanted to employ
00:39:59.360
people, I believe that people could make furniture way faster than they're making it now.
00:40:09.620
All right, and then you also have to take away the shipping costs. It's pretty expensive to ship
00:40:14.440
furniture. Italy, too. Somebody says Italy, a lot of furniture, I guess.
00:40:21.580
All right. Yeah, North Carolina. I think North Carolina is the major furniture state in the United States.
00:40:37.760
$15 an hour? Yeah, depends on the minimum wage, whether that's economical or not.
00:40:44.020
All right, it's a weird weekend, and it's just getting weirder.
00:40:52.100
I would love to tell you how weird my life is right now, but you wouldn't even believe it.
00:40:56.440
You wouldn't even believe it. But we'll get into that later.
00:41:00.440
All right, I don't have much else to say today, because we've got sort of a slow news weekend.
00:41:21.900
Somebody says, the odds of China going full capitalist.
00:41:25.940
China, apparently China has the opinion that democracies can't last because we'll be fighting
00:41:33.180
with each other, whereas the dictatorships, or whatever they would call their own form of government,
00:41:39.200
will be the ones that prevail because you need a strong leader, as opposed to everybody fighting
00:41:49.220
And on the surface, on the surface, it does feel like he's got a point.
00:41:55.760
I've often said that the best form of government would be a benign dictatorship.
00:41:59.920
Somebody who has the power of a dictator, but they're empathetic and they're not using it to hurt anybody.
00:42:06.260
They're just making the best decisions they can.
00:42:08.940
Now, China doesn't fit into that because their dictatorship is building prison camps and social credit systems and everything wrong.
00:42:20.660
There's no question that they're growing quickly and their power is ascending.
00:42:25.660
But what would it take for our country to compete?
00:42:35.640
But part of what is happening is that citizens are taking control where the government can't.
00:42:42.620
You know, I gave you an example yesterday of a citizen, Michael Mina,
00:42:48.720
who had this idea about rapid testing being better than, you know, the expensive slow testing.
00:43:08.980
if a Michael Mina did not exist and was not doing such an amazing job of pushing that one item?
00:43:23.300
But that's the model that I think allows the United States to win.
00:43:31.080
When the pandemic happened, you know this example.
00:43:33.780
The pandemic happened, a number of people, including me,
00:43:39.060
were approached by some member of the government, you know, not the president,
00:43:44.220
but just somebody in the government was reaching out and saying,
00:43:51.020
Do you have any ideas of what we should do now?
00:43:54.280
Because there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done,
00:43:58.260
Because, you know, it's not the government's job to think up the ideas.
00:44:04.540
And so I had an idea, and I submitted it through my government contact.
00:44:14.460
It actually got to the chief of staff of the president, I think, in hours,
00:44:22.440
just a few hours later, I think, or maybe less.
00:44:26.080
It might have been within an hour, if I remember.
00:44:34.020
which was that doctors be allowed to practice telemedicine across state boundaries,
00:44:44.780
You probably couldn't get away with it in ordinary times.
00:44:49.940
the president of the United States is issuing an executive order,
00:44:54.000
and the entire online health care industry transformed.
00:44:59.700
Now anybody can be a doctor across state lines online.
00:45:11.480
who became like an active arm of the government, if you know what I mean.
00:45:16.040
So that was a case where I'm not an elected official,
00:45:22.260
Michael Mina is not an elected official, but he could do a thing.
00:45:26.760
Gordon Chang, Kyle Bass, they are not elected officials.
00:45:31.940
But if you watch them pushing the ball on China,
00:45:39.620
And, of course, I help boost their signal whenever I can.
00:46:00.840
your Gordon Changs and your Kyle Basses and such,
00:46:31.520
Because the citizens are taking on government functions,
00:46:38.720
let's take the case of this China Never website.
00:46:54.680
and it's only possible because of the internet, right?