Episode 1361 Scott Adams： Socialism on Trial, Trickle Down Economics, Alternate Headlines, and Monsters Under the Bed
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 10 minutes
Words per Minute
147.41618
Summary
In this episode of Coffee with Scott Adams, the host talks about fake news, socialism, and whether or not capitalism and socialism are better than each other in the eyes of the public, and how to answer the question, "Is socialism better than capitalism?"
Transcript
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Hey everybody, come on in. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams, the absolute best part of your
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whole day, and there's no doubt about it. And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or
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chalice, a stein, a canteen, a jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite
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liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of
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the day that makes everything better. And it's happening all over the world at the same time.
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It's called the Simultaneous Sip and it happens now. Go. Stop it, Daniel. Stop it. Troublemaker.
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All right. Let's talk about all the news. Most of it is fake.
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Who would have known I could make an entire job out of just pointing out how fake the news is
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every single day? Wouldn't you think that there would be days at a time when I would try to talk
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about fake news and I would look at the news and I'd be like, darn, there's no fake news today to
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talk about. But no, we never have to worry about that. We never have to worry about that. There's
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always fake news. Here's at the top of the list. Did you hear the poll that's found that 85% of the
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viewers of Biden's joint session address liked it? 85% liked his address. Wow. That's pretty high,
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isn't it? Totally real news there, isn't it? Well, of course, they only polled, not only, but almost
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overwhelmingly, they polled Democrats who wanted to watch a Biden speech. What type of result do you get
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if you do a poll of mostly Democrats who liked Biden enough to watch his speech? I feel like 85% is just
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about what you'd expect out of that number. So it meant absolutely nothing because they just
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polled the people who said exactly what you'd think they would say.
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Rasmussen has some poll results, just came out, that by more than a three-to-one margin,
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voters say capitalism is better than socialism. I have questions. Wait a minute. Are you telling me
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that in the year 2021 that in the United States, it's only three to one? Don't you feel like that
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should have been a little higher as in 20 to one or 100 to one? Are there really that many people who
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said, huh, capitalism versus socialism, capitalism versus socialism? Yeah, socialism. But apparently,
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yes. How can you explain this? Well, I have a potential explanation. It goes like this.
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There's nobody in the world who has the same definition of what socialism means.
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People just have different definitions. If people use the same definition, I feel like you'd have a lot
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more agreement. But as long as people think socialism is everything from lots of it to a little bit of it,
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then people just answer whatever political direction they think their answer ought to be.
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But if you ask me, is socialism better than capitalism, I would say, I don't know what you're
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talking about. Because they're always paired. Is there any place in the world, any country,
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in which there is capitalism, but there's not also socialism? I can't think of one. Maybe I can.
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Saudi Arabia? Maybe? Because I'm trying to think of a situation where they don't have taxes.
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Because if you pay taxes, you're a socialist country. Right?
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Is anybody going to disagree with this statement? That if you have a capitalist system,
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but you also pay taxes, that you're functionally, you're a socialist country? Yeah. It's just a
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definition. We don't like to think of it that way. But it's sort of a definition. You take taxes from
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some people. You use it for the betterment of the whole. Socialism. How about public school?
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Socialism. Roads. Pretty much everything. Now somebody's saying, that's dumb. So you're going
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to see what I call the word thinkers pouring in. Once you see this distinction in the way that people
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think, you can't unsee it. So I'm going to ruin your brains here for a minute. There is a big hunk of
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the public who believes that words and the definition of words are a complete replacement
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for logic and reason and facts. Now that sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? And you think to yourself,
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there's nobody like that. Everybody knows the difference between a logical argument
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and something where you're just arguing about what a word means. There's nobody who can't tell the
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difference. Yeah, there is. Watch the comments. You're going to see all the people get really mad
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when I say, well, for all practical purposes, paying taxes is socialism. And those people,
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no, no, the word, the word hurts me. Oh, I'm out. I'm out. I'll never listen to you again.
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Because you used a word in a way that I didn't like. So the word thinkers usually are the first
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ones to bail out of any conversation that looks at cost benefit or nuance or anything else.
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Word thinkers, first out. But I would say that everything from social security, even though we
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pay into it, blah, blah, blah, we don't pay enough to cover it. We have socialism all over the place
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in our system. Here's a better way to ask the question. You ready for this? Here's your payoff.
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And by the way, if the Rasmussen folks are listening, I don't know if there's a way to
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make a polling question out of this, but I'd love to see it. Instead of saying, what's the better system,
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socialism or capitalism? And then you just get into word thinking and what words mean. Instead,
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ask this, which gets away from the whole, what words mean problem. All right. Here would be my
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poll question to the public. What is a better system? One that focuses on human motivation
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or one that focuses on equitable outcomes? That's the question. Because, you know, the socialism just
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means too many things to too many different people. But if you said, what's a better system?
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One that focuses on human motivation or one that tries to focus on an equitable outcome?
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How do you think people would answer that? Well, I asked that question in my highly unscientific
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Twitter poll. As you might imagine, 98% of the people said you want a system that focuses on human
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motivation. Let me go further. Name a system that doesn't take into account human motivation
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and still works. I don't think you can. I mean, it'd be fun to see if somebody could. There must be,
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you know, maybe there's some special case or something. But I don't think there's any history,
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any situation, any example in which somebody designed a system that works against human motivation,
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and it worked out fine. I can't think of one. So that's the way I'd ask the question. Now,
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let's say you were a capitalist or a Republican. Let's say you're a conservative and you wanted to
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warn people away from the risks of socialism. How would you do that? Would you go on social media
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and say, socialism is bad? Useless. Because the person you're talking to doesn't even know what
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you're talking about. So when you say, socialism is bad, the other person hears, what's wrong with
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public education? You're not even on the same conversation. So social media is useless for
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changing anybody's mind about socialism. You'll just be caught up in the definition of things.
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So how would you do it? Let's say you wanted to be a high-level persuader and you wanted to
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persuade people, but you know you can't do it directly. You can't just argue with them. They'll
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never change their mind. Nothing you say in public is going to make any difference, right? So what do you
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do? Here's what I would do if I were trying to be the master manipulator here. I would create a
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one-minute video about socialism and focus on just that human motivation element and say,
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whenever you create a system where the human motivation is right, you get good results. But
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put it in a little one-minute package that can educate people really quickly. So it'd have to be
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interesting, visual, probably have to have good production values, maybe something funny, but
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not necessarily. Something that everybody could get just the one-minute description of what the problem
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is. Now, let me tell you, let me show you how bad this is. I'm seeing in the comments somebody
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saying, we'll just show them Venezuela. Done. Right? Worst persuasion ever. Try it on me. Try it on me.
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See if you can convince me. I mean, I already, I'm already a capitalist. But let's see if you could
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convince me with that argument. Scott, we don't want to become like Venezuela. To which I say,
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the problem with Venezuela was how they picked their politicians, meaning that they had a dictator.
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The problem with Venezuela was a dictator. And then everything else you say about Venezuela
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is just yak, yak, yak, because you're done. Venezuela had a dictator. Everything that comes after that,
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you don't even need to debate it. You're kind of done. Dictator equals bad shit. So anybody who says,
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we don't want to become like Venezuela, you should be talking about how we pick our leaders. We're not
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going to slide into their economic policies, you know, like nationalizing companies and stuff. I don't
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see that coming. So that's a terrible argument because Venezuela is too different on the political
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element to compare them in any way on an economic argument. It's, it's, it's just apples and oranges.
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They voted for their dictator. Somebody says, sure they did. Allegedly. Maybe they did.
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It doesn't matter how they get there, how they got there. They got there. So yeah, one minute video
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showing that there's no such thing as a system that can survive without human motivation calculated in.
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That would be one thing. All right. CNN, I think it was CNN in an opinion piece yesterday, maybe
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talked about how Joe Biden was different than Trump in terms of the lying and fact checking.
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Now, apparently even the left, CNN specifically, is in fact calling out Biden for a number of things
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he says, which are not accurate. So I'll give him that, right? It would have been sort of hard for
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them to just never fact check Biden. You know, I don't think they could have gotten away with
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just not fact checking him. And indeed they found, you know, a bunch of things he said that were not
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correct. Now, given that the reason he ran for office, one of the biggest ones was that Donald Trump was a
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big old liar. It's kind of weird that he's also getting fact checked and lots of stuff he says
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is not true. But as CNN points out, he does seem to have one pattern, which they would consider an
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improvement over Trump, which is that when he gets fact checked, he typically backs off the fact,
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which would have been a lie, not a fact. Now, would you say that's true? First of all,
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have you observed that? Have you observed that he's made claims that didn't pass the fact checking,
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but then fairly quickly, maybe not the same day or something, but fairly quickly modified off that
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claim? And I'm looking at your comments to see if you've noticed this. I would say I have,
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but only by reading the reporting. I haven't noticed it directly, but I've noticed that the
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reporting seems to say it. I've seen it in a few different places. All right. Most of you are
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saying, no, no, no, hell no, hell no, no, no, no, no. All right. Let me ask you this. When was the last
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time Biden used the fine people hoax? Because remember, he used it every single time he talked
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in the campaign. Every time. How many times has he used it lately? None. All right. Can you think
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of a time that he used the fine people hoax lately? It went from his main theme to doesn't exist
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anymore. Do you know why? Well, it got fact checked. Yeah, it got fact checked. Now, not by CNN,
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because they can't fact check it because they're part of the lie, but it got fact checked by enough
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places that it must've been embarrassing after some point. What about the Trump said, drink bleach?
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You don't see Biden saying that. He may have said it at some point, but I don't think he says it
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anymore. So there might actually be something to this. I hear what you're saying that you don't,
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you don't believe he's backing off his lies, but keep an eye on it. Just, just clear your history
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cash and just say, all right, starting now, let's see if he does back off anything that gets fact
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checked. We'll see. But I think we did some good work making him back off of the fine people hoax
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and the bleach hoax. And when I say we, I mean, literally we, you know, people who followed me
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and amplify it, et cetera. All right. CBS News reports about a new paper by David Hope of the
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London School of Economics and Julian Lindbergh of King's College, London. And they said the
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following. They examined 18 developed countries from Australia to the United States. They looked
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at a 50 year period from 1965 to 2015. And they were trying to figure out if tax cuts were good
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or bad, right? You know, did you come out ahead because you cut taxes, especially on the rich?
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And they looked at the Reagan tax cuts, et cetera, and the other countries as well. And here's what
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they found. They found that the per capita gross domestic product and unemployment rates were nearly
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identical after five years in countries that slashed taxes on the rich and those that didn't.
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So what do you make of that? This says that the GDP was no better whether you cut taxes on the rich
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or not. And also unemployment was no better. So here's how this was reported. If it's no advantage
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to cut taxes on, to cut taxes on the rich, then maybe you shouldn't do it because you didn't get
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any GDP benefit and you got no, I'm sorry, opposite. I'm speaking upside down right now. So the study
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would suggest, and I'll use the word suggest, that cutting taxes on the rich does nothing good
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because it doesn't help your GDP, doesn't help employment.
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Is there something wrong with this? Do you see it? Do you see something wrong with this?
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Here's another way to say the same thing, and I'm not going to change any facts. I'll just use the
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facts as they report them. There's no reason to take money from the rich because it doesn't help
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anybody. Right? According to their study, if you take money from the rich in terms of cutting their
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taxes, or I'm sorry, increasing their taxes, if you increase the taxes on the rich, the rich will have
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less money, but the GDP will not be improved nor will employment. I believe that their study shows the
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opposite of what they wanted to show, that there was no benefit of taking money from people who
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had earned it. Legally, under the rules of capitalism, for whatever reason, some people
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get lucky, some people inherit, but it showed there was no benefit for taking their money. And in a free
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country, allegedly, why are you taking money from the rich, if it doesn't make any difference?
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Now, it does, I would say that this does, if the data is accurate, you always wonder about that.
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But if the analysis is good and the data is accurate, it does argue against, it argues against
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trickle-down economics working. Meaning it doesn't say that the GDP went up if you cut your taxes.
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But it did let people keep more of the money they earned, and didn't make any difference. That's
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better. It's better to let people keep their money. Now, let's see. And it says the incomes of the rich
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grew much faster where the rates were lower. So the rich got richer. But here's the other thing that
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this analysis, I'm pretty sure left out, which is the differences in tax shelters and write-offs and
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all that. When taxes were highest in the United States, were rich people paying the most? Or were
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they using the most tax shelters and really not paying much at all? I don't know if you can look
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at tax rates and say you've got some kind of apples to apples. Because if the tax rates are this,
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but all the rules of how you hide stuff and avoid taxes are completely different from one to the
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other, that's an apple and an orange. You can't compare them. So I don't think there's anything
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useful in this economic analysis, except that it didn't find any big difference when you steal the
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money from the people who earned it. So why do it? The other thing I think I worry about is that
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cause and effect might be backwards. Because when are the situations in which you can raise taxes on
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the rich? When is the time you can raise taxes on anyone? When the economy is good, right? So is it the
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tax change that causes the economy? Or is it that the economy is good, and this is a good time to pay
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down some debt? So you raise some taxes. Hey, economy is looking good, sort of the Bill Clinton
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situation. Clinton could raise taxes because the economy was good. The economy caused the tax change.
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It wasn't the tax change that caused the economy. So I don't think this economic analysis has any value
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whatsoever. Just none. But it's in the news. People are going to make all kinds of assumptions
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about it. Let's do some alternate headlines. I'll tell you how the news was reported, and then I'll tell
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you another way you could have reported the news with the same facts. So I won't be adding or subtracting
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facts. I'll just be describing it differently. And you're the judge. If the original headline or my
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headline is more accurate, all right, here's something from the Hollywood Reporter. This is in a tweet.
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But the tweet described the situation this way. It said a group of 467 purported former participants
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on the show, this is Jeopardy! is the show, wrote an open letter on Medium accusing the game show's
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producers of failing to catch what they allege is a white power hand gesture. Now, I'm not going to do
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an impression of it, because then somebody takes a screenshot, blah, blah, blah. But suffice to say
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that his thumb and forefinger were together, and his three remaining fingers on one hand
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were exposed. All right, so that's what he was doing. So he was definitely making an intentional gesture.
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So nobody is questioning that. It's just, what was the gesture? His claim, because he was horrified,
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so the person who made the claim, no, he wasn't making the OK sign. That's the automatic thing you
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think. But he wasn't doing it because you didn't see the O. So normally the O part, see, I'm not going
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to do it with my hand. Let's use these scissors. Let's say this part of the scissor was where your
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thumb and your index finger would cause a little O, like the OK. That wasn't there, because his hand
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was like this. All right, so the audience, and who he was presenting it to, couldn't see the OK part of
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the OK. All you could see is that three of his fingers were below it. All right. Now he says it
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was the third time he won, and each of the other times he won, he did a gesture. He did one gesture
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for one when he won once, a gesture for two when he won the second time, and a gesture for three when
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he won the third time. But wait a minute, why did he have to do it that way? How do people typically
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say three like that? All right? This is the way you say three, but he didn't do that. So why did he
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do that weird other thing where these two fingers are together, but the other three are giving the
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number? Have you ever seen that before? In baseball. In baseball they do that. So if you're a baseball
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catcher and you're indicating a call to the pitcher, you do that signal. It's one of the ways you
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indicate three, but baseball players tend to do it. Now that doesn't mean that's why he did it. I have
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no idea what's in his mind. But as far as I know, there's nothing on social media, nothing his friends
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are saying, nothing he said, that would even come close to making him a white supremacist, which is the
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accusation, right? Nothing in his background, any suggestion that there's anything like that,
00:24:18.200
right? So pretty unlikely it was true. So that's the headline that all these people are accusing him
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of making a alleged white power hand gesture. Let's see, let's see the alternate summary.
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Could have been the same tweet. In other words, it could have been the same facts. Here's how I would
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have written it. Man holds up three fingers to indicate three victories in a row. Mass hysteria
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ensues. Is that an inaccurate statement of what happened? He held up three fingers and people lost
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their ship. That's a fair statement based on what we can observe, right? There's no indication he has
00:24:58.500
any connection with any racist anything. So the only thing we know is he held up three fingers and there
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was a bunch of mass hysteria that happened. How is that not accurate? Same story. All right,
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here's another one. You remember the NXIVM so-called cult that wasn't really a cult, but people calling
00:25:19.940
it that. The New York Times once wrote this headline. And, you know, so this is a while ago, but the
00:25:27.620
headline was, inside a secretive group where women are branded. So you know the story that there was
00:25:34.860
some small group of people who got a brand, you know, a little, little brand that had the,
00:25:43.100
the leader's name, initials, you know, sort of embedded in it, et cetera. So that was the story.
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Now, is this accurate? Inside a secretive group where women are branded? Well, I would say that's
00:25:57.160
accurate statement. It was a semi-secretive group. That's true. And that women were branded.
00:26:07.420
But don't you assume they were branded beyond, outside their, their, their willingness to do it?
00:26:14.740
Doesn't it sound like they were victims? That's what it sounds like, right? Here's another alternate
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headline. And, uh, I believe the, this is all true. So it's just a, another way to look at it. It's all
00:26:28.540
true. So first of all, these brands have a name. I don't know if you've heard it, but it's called
00:26:33.660
scarification. Have you heard of it? So giving yourself a little brand or scars with a cauterizing
00:26:42.060
pen. So there's actually tools to do this. It's a thing. So it's a growing trend where you'll get
00:26:48.600
like a little bit of scar instead of a tattoo, right? Now, how many of you knew that? How many
00:26:55.680
were you, how many of you were aware that this thing called scarification already existed? It's a,
00:27:03.620
it's a growing trend with professionals who use professional equipment. Now, did you know
00:27:09.580
that prior to this so-called branding that the people who participated, did you know that they
00:27:16.860
called in an expert on scarification to learn how to do it safely and voluntarily? Did you know that?
00:27:26.000
Did you know that they got expert advice? So it'd be safe and that nobody did it unless they wanted
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to. Did you know that the, uh, well, look, so here's the alternate headline is scarification,
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the new tattoo. We report on a group of friends who are part of this growing trend.
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That could have been the headline, right? Is scarification, the new tattoo, because that puts
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it in context, that it's a thing. Most of the public doesn't know it's a thing. So if you just heard
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if somebody got branded and you didn't know that there's a name for it, it's, it's a safe growing
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in popularity, you know, thing, uh, then, uh, you would think of it differently. And it was a group
00:28:14.540
of friends who decided among themselves to put these brands on each other. Now, have you also heard that,
00:28:24.980
uh, it was a sex cult for Keith, uh, Rainier, Raineri, Keith Raineri? You heard it was a sex cult,
00:28:34.460
right? Did you know that the people having sex with him were already having sex with him before any of
00:28:41.700
this happened? And that the people who are already having sex with him, who all knew about each other,
00:28:47.540
it was completely open. Do you know that they were the core of the people who recruited the other
00:28:53.140
people, but there was never any requirement of any kind of sex or anything? That was never even part
00:28:58.760
of it. So when it's reported, it's that this, you know, they'll call it a cult and they'll say that
00:29:06.620
a bunch of women in the cult were having sex with the leader. Is that true? Yes. It's also true
00:29:15.740
that they were having sex with him voluntarily before any of the group was even formed and that
00:29:22.420
they were part of forming the group. So now, of course, I'm also dealing with information that,
00:29:29.020
you know, comes from the group. I wasn't there. So you have to factor in, you know,
00:29:33.360
whether there's any context, I don't know, but look at the way this stuff gets reported.
00:29:39.140
When you see that the headlines are so disconnected from anything that actually happened. And by the
00:29:46.100
way, just because I know this will get taken out of context, I'm not defending anything that anybody
00:29:52.780
did. I don't know what Keith Ranieri did or did not do with anybody or whether he did or did not
00:30:00.460
break any laws. I do know that everything about the prosecution was sketchy. I do know that there's a
00:30:07.740
lot of sketchiness about how he got prosecuted, but that's independent of whether he broke any
00:30:12.820
laws. I wouldn't know. So I have no personal knowledge of any of that. So I don't defend
00:30:17.400
anything I don't know it about. By the way, the Dilbert NFT is up to, the bidding is up to $12,600
00:30:23.860
with one day left. I imagine most of the bidding will be the last day because there's not much reason
00:30:30.780
to do it before the last day. So this is the day. This is the last day. So if anybody was thinking of
00:30:36.500
that, and by the way, I don't know why anybody buys collectible anything, but if you wanted this one,
00:30:42.860
it's available. The disturbing story about Rudy Giuliani being raided at his New York apartment,
00:30:52.380
I guess, by federal agents who had a warrant for all of his electronic devices. They're trying to
00:30:57.620
figure out, apparently, if he had some kind of foreign agent, unregistered help he was giving to
00:31:05.780
Ukraine to lobby the United States on their behalf. But apparently, at least Giuliani says he's never done
00:31:12.340
anything like that. And he had also offered all of this stuff without being asked for it.
00:31:19.260
Everything that they took, he had already offered to give them. Now, that's his version. So I don't know
00:31:25.220
if that really means everything. But the weird part of the story is, I heard this on Tucker Carlson's show,
00:31:31.420
is that Rudy Giuliani says he tried to give them Hunter Biden's hard drives because that was covered in the
00:31:38.400
warrant. The warrant said, get all of his electronic devices. Some of his electronic devices had Hunter Biden's
00:31:46.960
information on it. And he was trying to give it to him. Please, take this. Your warrant says it's for you.
00:31:55.080
Here. And they wouldn't take it. What's that tell you? What's that tell you? Well, it tells you that there
00:32:02.880
must have been some kind of agenda. Now, everything about this is disturbing. But keep in mind, we also
00:32:11.400
don't know exactly what their motivation was, the federal, the people who served the warrant.
00:32:18.580
And it's not their job to tell us, because it's a, you know, it's a legal action. They shouldn't be
00:32:27.380
telling the public everything that they're doing, right? But we can't really trust them anymore,
00:32:32.200
if we ever could. So I don't think we're in that world where our intelligence agencies can do stuff like
00:32:39.160
this without a real good explanation to the public. So let me speak to our, you know,
00:32:46.920
law enforcement people in the Department of Justice. You have seriously degraded your credibility with
00:32:53.640
this. I mean, a lot. You know, everybody has their line. You know, maybe it was the Roger Stone raid
00:33:01.580
was your, where it crossed the line for you. They say, okay, I'm out. That's way too much showmanship
00:33:07.260
for whatever they were trying to accomplish. But until we hear more about this Rudy Giuliani case,
00:33:15.420
maybe there's something we don't know. I'm going to say that this has really taken the Department of
00:33:22.020
Justice's credibility down a whole other level to me. But we'll see. Maybe there's, maybe there's
00:33:30.180
something else we learned about that. So this tells you, this next story tells you a lot. You know,
00:33:36.740
you heard the Joe Rogan story, and he had, he had said that if a 21-year-old healthy person asked him,
00:33:43.800
should I take the vaccination, that he would say, maybe not. Now, how did that get reported by the
00:33:51.880
illegitimate media? That immediately got reported as that he's some kind of anti-vax person.
00:33:57.820
Not even close to true. He plans to get the vaccination, or already has. You know, he's happy
00:34:05.960
his parents got it. He has no objection to it. He does, however, have a cost-benefit opinion about
00:34:16.320
whether an individual would be better off in a special case. Special case is you're healthy and
00:34:22.780
you're 21. Now, the experts weigh in and say, you anti-vaxxer. The reason that the 21-year-old
00:34:32.000
should get vaccinated is that that's the group of people who are spreading it. So it's not about
00:34:37.920
the 21-year-old's own health. It's about the spread. To which I say, that wasn't the question.
00:34:45.540
The question was whether the 21-year-old should get a vaccination. The question wasn't whether the
00:34:52.700
21-year-old should do a solid thing for the rest of the public. And of course, Joe Rogan clarified
00:35:01.420
that. But in my opinion, that clarification was unnecessary, because that's what I heard the
00:35:07.760
first time. The first time I heard it, I did not hear him say that he was saying that the 21-year-old
00:35:15.480
should or should not protect other people. As he said, that's a separate question. It's a separate
00:35:22.660
question. The question is, is the 21-year-old making the right cost-benefit analysis for their own
00:35:28.980
situation? And I did not see the experts push back on that, except that there were some long-haul
00:35:35.960
problems. But how many of the long-haul problems happen to 21-year-olds? I don't know. Do you? Have
00:35:46.600
you seen any statistics that told you that a healthy, fit 21-year-old would also have lingering,
00:35:55.520
you know, the long-haul problems that some of the older people are getting? Again,
00:36:00.000
I think Joe Rogan made a perfectly reasonable statement that captured all of the nuance.
00:36:09.220
It captured all of the nuance. He understood that, you know, there's a spread question from the
00:36:14.880
people who don't get vaccinated. But that wasn't the question. He was talking about this one person's
00:36:20.500
cost-benefit analysis. So the fake news is trying desperately to turn this into a story.
00:36:27.160
But the real story should be Joe Rogan agrees completely with experts on the scientific part.
00:36:36.460
There's no difference between what he's saying in a cost-benefit way and what all the experts are
00:36:43.400
saying. There's no difference. But they try to make it into one by acting as though, you know,
00:36:50.040
he's talking about something that he isn't, which is, you know, blocking the spread to other people,
00:36:55.440
which is an important question. It just wasn't what he was talking about.
00:37:00.100
Are you as weirded out as I am by Biden saying, let's get out of Afghanistan,
00:37:10.880
Does that bother you? Because it's bothering me. Because I'm pretty sure if Trump had said,
00:37:17.820
as he did, let's get out of Afghanistan, it looked like the world was going to end and
00:37:22.520
all bad things were happening. And then Biden says it. I feel like people just said, all right,
00:37:29.180
okay. Yeah, now that you mentioned it, there's no reason to be there. Now, of course, the reason
00:37:35.180
would be, you know, we're seeing stories in the news that al-Qaeda is already, you know, going to
00:37:41.020
take over Afghanistan. And the Taliban is going to let them and whatever. Who do you think is planting
00:37:47.500
those stories? Do you think reporters are saying to themselves, hey, I've got an idea for a story.
00:37:54.240
I'll go research what's going to happen after we pull out? Maybe. But that's not exactly how the
00:38:00.960
world works. It is slightly more likely that whoever is planting these stories about al-Qaeda
00:38:08.060
taking over Afghanistan is somebody roughly associated with the military-industrial complex.
00:38:16.680
Probably. Right? Or somebody who has an interest in staying there or furthering warfare.
00:38:23.560
So, but Biden gets a pass. He just says we're getting out because there's no reason to be there.
00:38:29.480
And there's no metric we can measure to even know if anything's working. We don't have anything to
00:38:35.440
measure over there to say it was good or bad, better or worse. Apparently, it's hard to tell.
00:38:42.880
So, if you can't measure your progress, get the hell out. Here's a good general statement of truth.
00:38:52.540
It's like a management, I guess, it's just a given. Anybody who studies management. If you can't
00:39:01.580
measure that the things you're doing are affecting the things you want to change, if you don't have
00:39:08.260
any measurement, get the hell out of there. You don't want to be anywhere where you can't measure
00:39:14.880
that you did something that makes a difference. If your actions appear random, get out. You don't
00:39:23.460
need to be there. You only want to be where you know your actions have some kind of a, you know,
00:39:29.940
likely predictable outcome. And there's nothing like that in Afghanistan. There's just no way to
00:39:35.740
predict that anything we do makes any difference in the long run. So, get out. And I think in a way
00:39:42.480
that that's what Biden, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but I think he's basically saying that, that we can't
00:39:49.680
see any reason. So, get the hell out of there. I'll give Biden credit for that. And, of course,
00:39:56.140
Trump as well. He started that. So, Trump more than Biden, I think, in this case.
00:40:01.580
All right. I owe you this private information. One of the pitfalls of being a public person,
00:40:11.780
such as myself, is that every now and then there's a private thing that happens in your life
00:40:16.580
that any reason to appeal to the greater good requires me to tell you this, which is I am going
00:40:26.060
to get vaccinated Monday. So, I have decided. Finally, I can get it close enough that I don't
00:40:33.320
have to wait five hours. So, only recently it became available somewhat easily. So, I'm going to get
00:40:39.540
vaccinated on Monday. And I owe you my reasons. Because it's a topic we talk about all the time,
00:40:46.520
right? I'm watching the comments. You haven't heard my reasons yet, have you?
00:40:53.500
Don't you think you should hear my reasons before you have such strong opinions?
00:40:58.020
How do you know you disagree with me until you've heard why?
00:41:08.980
All right. Let me give you my reasons. It goes like this. Number one, I'm in a category
00:41:17.340
with some comorbidities, right? So, I've got a little high blood pressure and, you know,
00:41:26.000
it's under control, but a little bit high. And I've got asthma, which I've had for many years.
00:41:36.360
Number two, at this point, it's obvious the vaccinations work. There's nobody who disagrees
00:41:42.960
with that, right? I don't think there's any question at this point. No reasonable person
00:41:48.200
could say that they don't decrease the number of deaths. Are you right? Does anybody disagree
00:41:55.200
with that so far that the vaccinations do, at least what they said they would do, decrease
00:42:01.960
the number of deaths? Okay. So, that's the first thing. Now, I didn't know that for sure
00:42:07.960
two months ago. Two months ago, if you said, are you sure these vaccinations even work? I would
00:42:17.080
have said, well, I'd like to wait a little bit longer just to be sure. Now, we're not talking
00:42:23.160
about the risks yet. So far, we're only talking about whether they, you know, they help against
00:42:28.120
the coronavirus. I think at this point, it's unambiguously true. There's no expert anywhere
00:42:34.100
in the world who says they don't work, as far as I know. Next, let's talk about my personal risk
00:42:41.540
risk versus social risk. All right. If I were looking at only for my personal risk, maybe I'd make a
00:42:50.580
different decision. I don't know. But I don't like the long haul risks. And most people just ignore that
00:42:58.640
when they talk about the risk of dying from COVID. I'm not as worried about dying because the risks are
00:43:05.320
so small. I'm definitely worried about a long haul problem. And I think I'm in the age group where
00:43:11.920
that's worth worrying about. I wouldn't worry about it at 21. But I do worry about it at this age.
00:43:17.420
All right. So, I've got a little bit of personal risk here of the COVID that's bigger than most people.
00:43:24.620
And I judge without having perfect information, because we're all making decisions with imperfect
00:43:30.520
information, right? There's a little bit of guessing going on. My feeling, and that's about as far as I
00:43:37.480
can go with it, is my hunch, my feeling, my common sense, if any of those are real things, is that my
00:43:45.440
risk would be similar and maybe a little bit better, you know, lower risk if I get the shot, right? Now,
00:43:54.380
I'm unlikely to get blood clots, because I'm male. So, there's that. But then the second part is the
00:44:03.640
social part. As a patriot, as a member of the American family, a member of the world, let's say, as a citizen
00:44:14.840
of the world, I'm sort of in that category where if I get sick with COVID, there's a little more chance
00:44:25.240
I'm going to give it to somebody. Because if you're older, you might get a worse case. If you get a worse
00:44:31.020
case, you're more of a spreader. Maybe you don't know it. So, as a patriotic, I'm not going to say
00:44:39.720
duty. I'll say a patriotic preference, as well as for the world, which is not patriotism per se.
00:44:48.780
I think that there are people who are in the category where they should take a risk
00:44:54.240
for the other people. And I'm in that group. Meaning, I've had a good run. I've had a good run.
00:45:02.280
If I die, it's going to happen sometime. If it happens now, I've had a good run. Honestly,
00:45:11.720
I really think that. And everything I do now is just bonus. If I get another good year out of my
00:45:17.380
life, hey, that's great. So, if I were just doing it for myself, I probably would. Because I think I
00:45:25.340
have a little bit better risk-reward getting the shot than not. And for the benefit of the public,
00:45:32.500
there's no doubt that people like me, especially public figures. So, if a public figure gets the
00:45:40.360
shot and I'm in the older person category, it probably reduces the risk for the rest of the
00:45:46.200
public, is good for the economy. Somebody says, aren't you a recluse? Well, I'm largely a recluse,
00:45:54.220
but other people are not. Meaning that people come in and out of my environment, even if I'm
00:46:01.560
relatively a recluse. Take a selfie and post it. I don't think I'll be doing that.
00:46:09.020
Yeah, and there's the other thing. If you would like to put your money where your mouth is,
00:46:16.540
for those of you who think I'm taking on the risk of death, I guess everything's a risk of death.
00:46:22.020
Probably I have higher risk of... Oh, here's a good question for you. Let me see if you can
00:46:32.640
calculate these risks without knowing the data. Do you think my risks of dying are greater from the
00:46:39.660
vaccination or from the drive to the vaccination site? Which is the higher risk of dying?
00:46:47.440
This is a legitimate question. No, no hyperbole. I actually don't know. I feel as if, and I don't
00:46:57.040
know if it could be calculated exactly, I feel as if the drive to the vaccination is more dangerous than
00:47:02.440
the vaccination. That's the point we're at, right? Because I don't, and I think you, maybe you could
00:47:09.120
calculate that if you said, all right, let's say my vaccination is five miles away. You can figure out
00:47:15.460
your risk of dying per mile. You could compare that to the risk of dying per millions of vaccinations.
00:47:22.700
Somebody should actually do that. By the way, that's actually a really good calculation.
00:47:28.460
If you want to convince people to get a vaccination, do that calculation.
00:47:34.780
Do the calculation. I want to know the actual risk of driving five miles compared to the risk of
00:47:42.020
somebody my age and demographic of getting the shot. Now, of course, if you're saying you can't
00:47:48.040
really know, yeah, I get that. But it feels like it's similar. It feels like it's in the same
00:47:55.020
neighborhood. All right. The other reasons I'm doing it is that we're seeing a number of businesses
00:48:01.920
are going to require it. Here's my prediction. If we look at what the experts are saying, they're
00:48:10.020
saying that even vaccinated people need to wear masks. And it looks like that would be the case
00:48:15.720
through maybe the end of the year. If you're only listening to the experts, it would feel like that,
00:48:21.620
right? That even when we're fully vaccinated or as close as we can get, you're still going to have
00:48:27.380
to wear a mask all year. Here's my prediction. No way. There's just no way. The public
00:48:36.680
will take some pushing. You can push the public quite a bit, but you got to have a reason.
00:48:45.160
As soon as the reason goes away, the public is going to turn on you like a motherfucker.
00:48:51.560
And we're getting closer and closer to that point, aren't we? Like you're hearing plenty of people
00:48:56.360
complaining and saying, why do I have to wear a mask if I got the vaccination? But wait till 80%
00:49:02.900
of the country is vaccinated and has to keep wearing a mask. Once you get about 80% vaccinated,
00:49:10.020
good luck, good luck telling the 80% they got to wear a mask. I don't think it's going to work.
00:49:18.340
If you tell me I have to wear a mask during a scary pandemic where there's nothing else I can do about
00:49:24.700
it. Yeah, I'll wear a mask. Even if I'm not positive, it works. Even if I'm not sure the cost
00:49:31.760
benefit's worth it, I'm going to take that guidance. If smart, well-meaning people tell me to do it,
00:49:37.540
I'll take that. But you get me vaccinated and you tell me that my risks are nil, my risk of spreading
00:49:45.920
it are nil, and I still got to wear a mask. I don't think that's going to fly. So whatever you think
00:49:53.000
about the official people telling you you're going to need a mask until the end of the year,
00:49:57.360
I don't see it. I think it's somewhere around mid-summer. By mid-summer, my guess, the mask
00:50:06.860
thing is just going to have to go away. Imagine, if you will, two restaurants. One is right next to
00:50:12.540
the other. One says, if you're vaccinated, come on in. No masks. The other one is being a little
00:50:18.980
cautious and they say, well, the experts still say masks are good, so maybe you should do it. Which
00:50:24.320
one do you go to? It's just, it's going to be easy. So I wouldn't worry about masks in the long
00:50:30.540
run. So I don't know what the hell is happening in India. There's certainly something we don't
00:50:37.700
exactly understand, but we have terrifying numbers that up to 30,000 people per day could be the death
00:50:46.940
rate pretty soon based on what they believe is the infection rate. 30,000 per day. So if you're
00:50:56.120
saying to yourself, gosh, I'm glad we helped out India a little bit, that's not enough. That's not
00:51:04.600
enough. If you want India, you being the United States, let's say, if the United States wants India
00:51:10.760
to be its ally for the next 100 years, we need to step up to this, right? Because allies don't let
00:51:20.340
allies lose 30,000 people a day, if there's anything you can do about it. Now, who knows, you know, what
00:51:26.520
you can do about it? Who knows how much we would be taking from Americans if we were to help them
00:51:33.060
more? But I got to say, the 30,000 people dying in India, you pretty much have to treat that like
00:51:40.420
it's happening in your backyard, if they're an ally, right? And even if they're not, right? A human,
00:51:47.380
just being human means you should care about it. But when you're talking about your most important
00:51:52.480
strategic ally, vis-a-vis, you know, China, your most important ally for the next 100 years,
00:51:59.260
we should just drop everything, not do anything that would hurt our domestic effort. But man,
00:52:07.000
we should do everything we can to help on this, for our strategic benefit, and for humanity, really.
00:52:18.480
Here's a Matt Gaetz update. It's a good thing we have Matt Gaetz, because otherwise there wouldn't
00:52:25.700
be any good news. Like, interesting news, not good news. So here's the latest on that. So apparently
00:52:31.400
this, the fellow Greenberg, who was part of this story, and, you know, was pals with Matt Gaetz.
00:52:39.980
So there's a story that there's some documents that have come up in which Greenberg had been
00:52:47.300
talking about some things and mentioned that there was a 17-year-old girl, according to Greenberg.
00:52:52.300
So we only have one person saying it. We still don't know that there's a real girl,
00:52:58.800
or she would be a woman by now. So we don't know that there's a real person, but we know one person's
00:53:05.260
talked about this real person, if it's real. And said that Greenberg had just learned that she was
00:53:12.680
not really 19, had been lying about her age, and she was 17. Now here's the question.
00:53:17.180
We now have a document that looks reasonably credible that would say with certainty that
00:53:25.800
Matt Gaetz did not know if it happened. He denies that anything like this happened. But if it happened,
00:53:33.280
the Greenberg documents would indicate that he didn't know that Greenberg's the one who told them,
00:53:38.560
and he was horrified. Now, does that make it not illegal if it happened, which Matt Gaetz says
00:53:46.220
unquestionably did not, right? So keep in mind, the person who knows for sure says it didn't happen
00:53:54.100
in any form, right? Not just that he didn't know, that just didn't happen. So keep that in mind,
00:54:02.080
because we just assume guilt when we hear stories like this. But if we know he didn't know, how
00:54:09.700
illegal would it be? So we'll talk about the exchange of money part separately, but just the
00:54:16.880
underage part. How illegal is it if you didn't know? Does anybody know? How many of you know the
00:54:25.420
answer to that? How illegal is it if you didn't know? And the person who is involved lied to you.
00:54:36.120
Somebody says it's still tactically illegal. Is it? Well, the answer is it depends. Let's say,
00:54:45.080
for example, the woman, and this will be a hypothetical. This has nothing to do with Matt Gaetz. This will be
00:54:51.200
a hypothetical example. In a hypothetical example, let's say the underage 17-year-old had a fake ID.
00:54:59.460
If you saw a fake ID, but you're not some expert on ID, and it looked real to you,
00:55:06.060
you would be in the clear. Did you know that? Did you know that if you had really strong evidence
00:55:13.160
that she was of legal age, such as a fake ID that looked real to you, you'd be in the clear?
00:55:19.160
Now, I just read that this morning on some legal website. So if I'm wrong about that,
00:55:26.320
I'll expect the real lawyers to weigh in and get me. Now, if you're saying that's not true,
00:55:31.560
here's what might be the difference. If the female in question is under 14, there's no defense.
00:55:39.800
All right, let me say that again. If the female is actually under 14, there's no defense. No defense.
00:55:48.720
There's nothing you can say. You can't say you didn't know. Because if you're with somebody who's
00:55:55.040
even anywhere in the neighborhood of under 14, you've got some explaining to do, right? That you
00:56:00.300
didn't know. So I think we all agree that there has to be some age below which you just can't use any
00:56:07.760
I didn't know defense, right? Even if sometimes somebody goes to jail for that. You just sort of
00:56:13.300
have to have a standard for that. But at 17, simply being deceived is actually a complete legal defense.
00:56:21.780
It may be a difference by state. It might be a state difference, but I think probably it'd be similar.
00:56:26.600
So what would happen if what we find out is that the Greenberg document documents quite clearly,
00:56:36.060
if there is actually this person even exists, that Gates didn't know? So I would say,
00:56:43.520
is that the same as looking at an ID? I don't know. If you date somebody, do you ask to look at their ID?
00:56:54.140
I don't know. Did they go to, let's say, did they go to a restaurant and order drinks?
00:57:02.040
And again, none of this is an evidence. We have no reason to believe any of this happened.
00:57:06.200
But just hypothetically, suppose Matt Gates had gone on a date and the woman had bought a drink,
00:57:14.800
took out a fake ID. The server looked at it and said, all right, and served them. Would he be in the clear
00:57:21.600
if he observed a waiter looking at a fake ID and say, yeah, you're 21?
00:57:30.520
I don't know. That would be sketchy because I think she claimed she was 19,
00:57:34.420
so she still couldn't drink. So I guess that example wouldn't work in this case.
00:57:38.960
But this gets a little less clear than you think. Now, what about the question of exchange of money?
00:57:44.180
So apparently there is acknowledgement by all parties that money has been exchanged.
00:57:52.200
But was it money for sex? And where do you draw the line when it's money for sex?
00:57:58.520
Let me give you an example. Let's say a billionaire who has never had sex with you
00:58:04.020
invites you to take a private jet to France on a date.
00:58:09.420
And then you have sex. Did the billionaire pay for sex?
00:58:16.720
Because he just provided you a value of, let's say, $50,000.
00:58:21.800
Because the jet plus the high-end accommodations, whatever.
00:58:30.260
Well, if you live in the real world, you probably do.
00:58:37.900
Legally, no agreement of money for sex happened.
00:58:44.040
Suppose there's a millionaire who buys some diamond jewelry
00:58:56.400
No, there's no discussion of money for sex or diamonds for sex.
00:59:30.880
The problem here is that beyond a certain level of income,
00:59:41.680
So let me say this again so you don't miss this point.
00:59:54.460
and a rare case where somebody just didn't know you had money or something,
01:00:15.500
they certainly care about what he does for a living
01:00:17.420
and whether that whole package is attractive or not.
01:00:22.700
So, I'm not casting aspersions on the men or the women
01:00:29.840
These are all just free people making free decisions.
01:00:36.500
So, I feel as though the dividing line should be this.
01:00:48.140
that this Greenberg and Matt Gaetz were involved with,
01:00:51.760
suppose we found out that none of them were prostitutes.
01:00:57.160
Because there's no information that says they are, right?
01:01:02.240
that says that they were working in that capacity.
01:01:11.140
if the person who accepted the money for hotels
01:01:40.420
It's just you don't always talk about it that way.
01:01:44.960
New York Times has a story about this Arizona audit,
01:01:49.500
and I just love the fake news way they talk about it.
01:01:53.780
Here's an actual quote from a story in the New York Times.
01:01:57.400
It's almost unbelievable that this is even written down.
01:02:01.800
almost half a year after the election Donald Trump lost,
01:02:19.620
First of all, I'll tell you while I wait for your comments.
01:02:29.900
And a snipe hunt is a reference to a famous historical prank
01:02:36.040
in which you get somebody who's new or young or dumb,
01:02:39.920
and you convince them that there's this thing called a snipe,
01:02:49.380
So you try to get people to go hunting the snipe that doesn't exist.
01:02:54.180
So the New York Times refers to the audit as Republicans
01:03:11.220
Now, if the reporting came at the end of the audit,
01:03:15.060
and the whole audit had found nothing improper,
01:03:31.100
Somebody looking for something that they believe exists
01:03:36.800
But if you say it before the audit has any results,
01:03:47.940
How in the world do they know it's a snipe hunt?
01:04:09.900
But the New York Times would like you to believe
01:06:29.080
if you just looked at the sheer number of votes
01:06:48.600
and that would be enough to change the election.
01:06:55.980
that you wouldn't have to know much about anything
01:07:06.900
has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans,
01:07:32.580
is that Biden won by more votes than we thought.
01:07:37.720
There's nothing that would make that impossible.