Episode 1591 Scott Adams： Twitters New Rules and my Best and Worst of Year Picks
Episode Stats
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Summary
Mysteries of the day: Is there a pandemic going on in a state that just ignored the pandemic and everything was fine? Is that true? And if it is true, why is it happening in some places and not others? Plus, a new rule on what you can and can't do on social media.
Transcript
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Welcome to the best thing that's ever happened.
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Probably in your life and maybe in the whole wide world.
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It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, the best thing in the world.
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And if you'd like to take it up a notch before we get to the content that is king,
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and all you need for that is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or gels, a stein, a canteen,
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This is a low production outfit, so you've got to take what you can get.
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I keep hearing from people on Twitter that they live in a state
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in which they've just ignored the pandemic and everything was fine.
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And if it is true, why didn't I know it until now?
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I don't think it's true, but it might be true-ish.
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So the states which were suggested were Georgia, South Carolina.
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Florida is a special case because we all watched their transition from doing stuff
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But is it true that in Georgia or South Carolina, they just basically ignored the pandemic and
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Now, I'm not confused by, let's say, Wyoming or Montana or South Dakota, right?
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If South Dakota ignored the pandemic and everything was fine, I would say, well, that makes sense.
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But how in the world could Georgia, with its corpulent population, how in the world could they just
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sail through the pandemic without their hospitals getting crashed?
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Usually when I ask these questions, I've got some sense of an answer before I ask the question.
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Like, honest to God, I don't know if there are major states that just ignored the pandemic
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But remember what I said at the beginning of the pandemic is that you would never be able
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to tell which leaders made the right decisions, which is a wild, crazy prediction, isn't it?
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And I said that specifically, you wouldn't be able to compare any two countries.
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Every time you did one of those comparisons, you'd say, Sweden this and UK that.
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But every time somebody tries to copy somebody else's technique, they don't seem to get the
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So leadership and even, you know, what processes were used were way less predictive than they
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You know, the experts will still say that all that clearly worked and there's data to show
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And there's data to show that masks and distancing and restrictions all worked.
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But it worked in the sense of, you know, decreasing how bad things were.
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But if that's true, why isn't everybody doing the same thing?
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Like, you know, if we know exactly what worked and what didn't, why are some people just not
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If anybody can figure that out for me, let me know.
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So I was pointing to the new Twitter rules on what you can and cannot do.
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And I think that these rules are so interesting that I'm going to run through them because
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I think your hair will catch on fire with some of these.
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These are the new Twitter rules, new in November, I guess.
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Claims that specific groups or people or other demographically identifiable identity are
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more or less prone to be infected or to develop adverse symptoms on the basis of their membership
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Now, isn't that the official government opinion?
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the official government opinion that black Americans are
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Now, I won't get kicked off for saying that I'm not sure what the truth is.
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As long as you're clearly stating an opinion, you're safe.
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You can't just state something's true as a fact and then, you know, if it's wrong, according
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So I feel as though this, I don't even understand this rule because this is the official science,
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I have to add that isn't it so I wouldn't get banned, right?
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If I had said the official science says that black people have worse outcomes, if I were
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to say that, which I'm not because I don't want to get banned, I have to throw in some
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False information about widely accepted testing methodologies, such as that PCR tests are unable
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In the comments, how many of you believe that it's true that the PCR tests do not detect
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virus accurately or that they're detecting too much stuff or whatever?
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How many of you believe PCR tests are not accurate?
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In the comments, how many of you believe that it's true that they're not accurate?
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If you were to say that as a fact, you would be kicked off of Twitter.
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It's not like I'm the scientist who tested the PCR test.
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But my belief, which is different than many of yours, is that whatever you were reading
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that said that the PCR tests are bogus and behind a fake pandemic, I think that's just
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You could get kicked off Twitter for this, too.
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False or misleading information about preventative measures that one can take to avoid infection,
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If you said face masks cause hypoxia, Twitter would have a problem with that.
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By the way, this doesn't mean an automatic ban.
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And you also can't say that face masks cause bacteria, bacterial, or bacterial pneumonia.
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And you cannot say that masks don't reduce transmission.
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You can say it, I guess, as an opinion, but not as a fact.
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You can't make false or misleading information, or you can't tweet it, suggesting that unapproved treatments can be curative.
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So you can't tweet that ivermectin can be curative.
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Does that mean you can't tweet that it's possible?
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Or that you can't tweet that it's a fact that it works?
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Now, the lack of clarity in here, of course, is alarming, because humans will be involved making judgments, and God knows how good those judgments will be.
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But you can't say that vitamin D would take care of everything, I guess.
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So, yeah, I know some of you are not on Twitter, but the point is that this is a major communication platform, and here's something else you can't say on Twitter.
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The vaccines will cause you to be sick, comma, spread the virus, comma, or would be more harmful than getting COVID-19.
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You're not allowed to say that the vaccination is more harmful than getting COVID.
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In every case, do you think that this is a safe thing to say for everybody in every situation?
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That just a blanket statement, that in every case, the shot is safer than the coronavirus itself.
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I don't know how much of a problem that one is.
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So here's the ambiguity in the sentence that people, I think, are misinterpreting.
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It says, the vaccines will cause you to spread the virus.
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So you can't say the vaccines will cause you to spread the virus.
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But I think you can say that people who are vaccinated can spread the virus, right?
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But I think that's been misinterpreted as saying you can't say that people with vaccinations spread the virus.
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I think you can still say that, because that's the official thing.
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But it's not the vaccines that are causing the spread.
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You can't tweet any claims that vaccines will alter genetic code.
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Yeah, I think this one seems like a little bit of a problem.
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Because I think it depends on what you mean by altered.
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And aren't there lots of things that damage DNA?
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False or misleading claims that people who have received the vaccine can spread or shed the virus.
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This is literally the official government opinion you can't say on Twitter.
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Well, you can't make on Twitter false or misleading claims that people who have received the vaccine can spread or shed the virus to unvaccinated people.
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Well, I'm not on Twitter now, so I guess that doesn't count.
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Either the guideline is written poorly, or I don't know how to read suddenly, or you're not allowed to say what the government says is true as a fact.
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I mean, there's just something wrong here, right?
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You can't make strong or misleading assertions of fact.
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All right, here are some things you are allowed to do.
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So Twitter specifically says they're not going to give you trouble for this.
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So you're allowed to say, you know, my cousin got the vaccination and X happened to my cousin.
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What would be the most misleading kind of information that you could ever have?
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What would be the single most misleading information you could ever have on the pandemic?
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Now, even though it's true, it's so misleading because people think the anecdote, you know, represents the whole.
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So it turns out that the least valuable data, first-person accounts, are allowed.
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Now, I think they should be allowed, you know, free speech, blah, blah, blah.
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I mean, if something's true when you talk about it, that's got to be allowed, I guess.
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You're also allowed to have public debate about, you know, the advancement and things changing and blah, blah, blah.
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So I guess everybody's concern is that the rules have enough ambiguity that they could be used to ban anybody for anything if they were talking about, you know, the pandemic.
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So I saw, I think, at least two people tweeting things that should have gotten them a warning or a ban just this morning.
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These are people who just tweeted at me specifically with totally bannable content already.
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I mean, I assume they're not going to be too tough on enforcement here.
00:16:10.700
So here's the bullshit of the day that John Heilman, who works for MSNBC, I think.
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He's concerned that there are 30 million people, this is a quote, 30 million people right now who are ready to take up arms, quote, to restore Donald Trump in office.
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I believe that's based on some kind of survey about the number of people who thought that, you know, under certain circumstances,
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they might have to take up arms to reclaim the country or take it over or something.
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Now, I don't doubt that somewhere there is such a statistic in which people on the right are warning of an armed insurrection under certain conditions.
00:17:14.420
But, of course, they would be defining what those certain situation is, right?
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It's not like they're going to do it because they don't like the design of the flag.
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You know, it's not like 30 million people are going to storm the Capitol with their weapons because they don't like, you know, trans policy or something.
00:17:36.240
So the idea that these 30 million people are, like, on the edge of being activated because they don't like the election or something, nothing could be further from the truth.
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And here's what I think the left doesn't understand about the right.
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And I want to see if you can fact check me on this because this is an opinion.
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But I want to see if you have the same impression.
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People on the right talk about taking up arms against the government like people on the left talk about getting tattoos.
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It's just sort of this continuous warning against our own government, wouldn't you say?
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If this were to happen, it's a good thing we have the Second Amendment.
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It's just sort of a general warning so that it's always in the atmosphere.
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Because you don't want anybody to forget that there are 30 million or whatever armed Americans who are willing to try to protect, and they're probably in their way of thinking, protect the country.
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Of course there are 30 million people who would take up arms in the right situation.
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Yeah, in the right situation, would 30 million Americans take up arms?
00:19:07.520
In the right situation, let's say a land attack against the United States, yeah, you'd have 100 million Americans with a gun in their hand in 24 hours.
00:19:16.760
So, I think the left, of course the right gives them this opportunity by the way they use rhetoric, but I think you really have to understand it's just the way the right talks.
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Those of you who spend most of your time or are identified with the right, it's just the way they talk.
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And now it's turned into this 30 million people with weapons trying to take over the country.
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Like, if you were to make a list of all the things that are possible, that would just be dead last.
00:20:03.540
But I would say that if your last name is Heilman, it's safer to be associated with the left.
00:20:14.740
Because they're not going to make Hitler jokes about you so much.
00:20:20.400
There's a story about Mark Meadows, and he had a PowerPoint that he, apparently he touched it.
00:20:26.560
He didn't make it, but he sent it to some people.
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It's this long PowerPoint presentation around, this was around the January 5th, and it had some ideas for stalling the certification of the vote and, you know, getting Pence to do this or that that's unconstitutional.
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Now, Mark Meadows says, somebody gave it to me and I showed it to some other people, but, you know, it wasn't anything I was taking seriously.
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It's not like he had considered the plan or anything.
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Well, I don't know if he considered the plan, but the fact that it was on a PowerPoint had nothing to do with Mark Meadows.
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So that, you know, the fake news is blowing that into some kind of a Mark Meadows PowerPoint about overthrowing the government,
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when in fact he's just a guy who saw a PowerPoint.
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January 5th was the day that this was happening, ahead of the January 6th protests.
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Number one, best brainwashing play of the year.
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The best brainwashing play of the year is, I tweeted this, that one of the best applications of mass brainwashing in modern times, actually,
00:21:57.380
is the idea that the January 6th protesters wanted something other than a fair and transparent election result.
00:22:04.520
The fact that some gigantic percentage of the country has been brainwashed to believe that that was an insurrection,
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as opposed to protecting the existing system, which is exactly what they asked for,
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let us protect the existing system by making damn sure that this election was not rigged,
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because it kind of looks like it might have been.
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That is so far from the way this is being presented as some kind of insurrection.
00:22:37.040
But if you're just going to look at the effectiveness of the brainwashing, it was really good.
00:22:45.580
So the brainwashing play of the year is that January 6th was an insurrection.
00:22:50.040
Biggest hypocrites of the year, the teachers' unions, for promoting a critical race theory
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as if the teachers' unions themselves were not the main cause of systemic racism.
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The beauty of this hypocrisy is almost breathtaking.
00:23:13.280
The teachers' unions being the cause of systemic racism in the sense that they are the reason
00:23:19.960
that there's not enough competition in schools, and they're the reason that you can't get a good education
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if you're black and in a bad part of the country.
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So they are the embodiment of systemic racism, but they would have you believe that they're teaching it
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It just doesn't mention themselves as one of the topics.
00:24:00.640
Now, I don't know what the other possibilities would be if we're just looking at the year, 2021.
00:24:11.140
But I think that the whole Jussie Smollett thing has got to be the winner.
00:24:19.000
And that, of course, was racist against white people, white conservatives.
00:24:31.720
I just saw the most disturbing meme I've ever seen in my life.
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The people on Locals know what I'm talking about.
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But just be glad you didn't see that one over there on YouTube.
00:24:45.980
Anyway, the political play of the year is the Texas abortion tweaks, allowing private citizens to sue the doctors, I guess.
00:24:56.660
And I would say that in terms of just cleverness, that was the play of the year.
00:25:02.160
But it was so clever that it looks like Gavin Newsom is going to use a similar concept to put more constrictions on assault rifles and ghost gun makers.
00:25:11.780
So, it's like a brand new play that I guess hadn't been used.
00:25:56.460
Well, I was trying to focus this on more American stuff.
00:25:59.700
But I'm going to say the biggest crime of the year is whoever was behind limiting the rapid testing.
00:26:09.580
We don't know who it was or even if there was a person behind it.
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But all indications are that there's some gigantic crime involved because incompetence wouldn't really explain it.
00:26:20.500
So, there has to be some kind of criminal activity behind that.
00:26:23.240
So, I think that's the biggest crime of the year based on the death count.
00:26:27.680
Because even the Uyghurs are not being killed at this, at the rate of the pandemic.
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And I think that having rapid testing early makes less difference now.
00:26:38.320
But if we had it early, probably would have taken a big bite out of things.
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I'm not going to say him, but that would have been a good answer.
00:27:04.400
Yeah, I appreciate it if you say me, but that's not what I'm looking for.
00:27:22.700
For convincing, I think, Congress to be pro-nuclear.
00:27:28.980
And I think he's the primary reason that this is happening.
00:27:33.020
So, that's one of the biggest, most important things that's ever happened.
00:27:36.880
And essentially, the form of persuasion was reframing things more accurately.
00:27:46.900
He just teaches them that they have some older ideas, that they're not updated.
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So, essentially, by convincing all of Congress at this point, I think, most of it,
00:27:59.540
convincing them that what they used to think about nuclear power is a little outdated.
00:28:04.420
And if they were simply current, they would have a different opinion.
00:28:13.700
You know, the climate change fear certainly helped.
00:28:16.820
But I think it was Schellenberger who did that.
00:28:18.660
And now he's focusing on San Francisco and bad management there.
00:28:22.840
And specifically, the thing we call the homeless problem, which is really a drug problem.
00:28:28.660
Because the reason that they're homeless is they like to do drugs.
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And they can't do it if they check into some kind of managed facility.
00:28:36.740
So, once Schellenberger is done persuading people that they're not up to date on the information about this topic,
00:28:46.160
and then he brings them up to date, which is what he's doing with his books and, you know, continuous communication on this,
00:28:57.200
And it looks to me like he may have solved, or he's on the way to, I don't want to say single-handedly, because lots of people help,
00:29:05.220
but being the most important character, solving two of the biggest problems in the country.
00:29:10.680
And it might happen, you might get all of that done in like a five-year period.
00:29:21.580
Who is politically the worst politician of the year?
00:29:52.780
You know, Trump is sort of a omnipresent character.
00:30:00.820
Yeah, Manchin's a special case, because he just accidentally got all that power by being flexible.
00:30:07.200
But I think DeSantis wins hands down for just politicking.
00:30:11.100
Now, that's different from effectiveness and whether you like his policies.
00:30:20.160
I would say DeSantis had one of the best years of any politician ever that I can think of.
00:30:30.440
Can you think of any politician who ever had a better year just as being a politician?
00:30:36.700
How about the most transparent bullshit of the year?
00:30:44.960
I don't know if this is the biggest one of the year, but it's the one I saw today.
00:30:50.880
So this is a little hyperbole for me, but the most transparent bullshit of the year.
00:30:55.000
I remember Boris Johnson talking about the Omicron just, I think, yesterday.
00:30:59.680
And he said that one person has died with Omicron.
00:31:25.880
Now, he throws that in there as if we're not going to notice the with part, all right?
00:31:32.480
That wasn't even the part I was going to go to, right?
00:31:41.800
I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but this is pretty close.
00:31:44.240
We should ignore the mildness of the Omicron, meaning the fact that it's not killing anybody
00:31:51.920
that we know of, and that I'll tell you later that there's not any case of a bad outcome.
00:32:01.100
This is another tweet I saw today, that there's no case of any bad outcome from Omicron, not
00:32:06.860
even a hospitalization, much less a death, not even a bad hospitalization.
00:32:16.500
That's as of some information that got tweeted around today.
00:32:20.040
You can see that on my Twitter feed if you want to see the source.
00:32:34.620
We should ignore the mildness of the Omicron and focus on its pace of infection.
00:32:45.280
No, the mildness is why we should be happy about the pace of infection.
00:32:50.960
I want more infection, not less, if it's true that it's super mild.
00:32:59.040
So you can see that he's trying to keep people panicked so that he can control them in terms
00:33:08.880
But here's what he should have said if he was being even a little bit honest.
00:33:13.800
You know, we might find some surprises from this Omicron that's more dangerous than we
00:33:19.140
At the moment, it looks like it's going to get us out of the pandemic.
00:33:22.060
But don't relax yet, because I'd give it a good two weeks before we feel confident about
00:33:29.780
When the Omicron reaches 75% as new infections, then we probably need to rethink our entire
00:33:43.120
Not, we should ignore the mildness and focus on its pace of infection.
00:33:53.720
Can you give us the mild respect of not lying so obviously to our fucking faces?
00:34:01.820
A little bit of respect, please, Boris Johnson.
00:34:05.720
You know, the Brits, I always think the Brits are sort of leading us all in politeness in
00:34:15.180
But seriously, a little bit of respect, please.
00:34:24.900
Forget the fact that it's, you know, closer to a lie than an actual honest statement.
00:34:36.140
And I don't think we can let that, you can't let that pass without mention.
00:34:39.700
Lying to us cleverly, even, you know, if it's for our own good or whatever.
00:34:46.520
Maybe, you know, I'll look at that a little bit differently.
00:34:56.320
Here's the most shocking story, but not really, of the year.
00:35:07.200
It had to be shocking, and at the same time, you knew it was going to happen.
00:35:16.140
The Pfizer asked for 75 years to produce data concerning the Pfizer and bio, blah, blah, blah, vaccine.
00:35:34.960
you could argue that that was the biggest revealed hoax of the year.
00:35:41.580
Probably the biggest hoax of the last five years.
00:35:45.680
But it's the biggest revealed hoax of the year.
00:35:49.240
How about the biggest mass murderer of the year?
00:36:07.760
Because you've got the coronavirus, you could argue, you know,
00:36:11.920
whether that should be on the list or not under Xi.
00:36:17.540
The fentanyl is all you need to know about the biggest mass murder.
00:36:23.160
whatever they're doing with the dissonance and taking their organs out and selling them.
00:36:29.360
and President Xi, biggest mass murderer of the year.
00:36:32.720
But a special mention to whoever stopped the rapid testing in America,
00:36:44.020
But I'd say whoever was the stopper of the rapid tests,
00:37:26.420
And, you know, so does Richard Branson, Sir Richard Branson.
00:37:32.420
But I think Elon Musk set the standard for this.
00:37:36.880
And I've got to tell you that it was the one time this year that I just got tingles.
00:37:43.180
Like, that just made me feel good about everything.
00:37:48.620
And, of course, Elon Musk is Times Person of the Year.
00:37:59.400
But, you know, it's the beginning of a long process of what we hope to be good news.
00:38:14.360
That's third on my list is Omicron is the best news of the year.
00:38:32.500
The CO2 emissions from humans have been flat for 10 years.
00:38:40.160
But also advancements in fusion and the turnaround in opinions on nuclear energy.
00:38:45.620
I think the nuclear and the fusion stories, even though fusion is not commercialized yet, we know it can be now.
00:38:56.380
Now, this may be the flying car of all flying cars and it never gets commercialized.
00:39:01.480
But I think the right people are telling us it's an engineering problem now as opposed to an invention problem.
00:39:07.400
So I think we're, I think we can say with confidence at this point that fusion will be here.
00:39:20.780
Now, I'm an optimist, so I could be wrong about that.
00:39:24.320
What is the best disappeared story of the year?
00:39:30.640
A story that should have been, yeah, a lot of candidates, right?
00:39:47.740
Russia collusion disappeared from half of the coverage.
00:39:51.840
So you've got, yeah, you've got Ghislaine, you've got the Rittenhouse, the fact that he shot white people instead of black people.
00:40:04.640
But I think the Waukesha one is the most blatant.
00:40:17.020
What is the biggest analytical mistake of the year?
00:40:20.060
Biggest analytical mistake of the year, not by any one person, but by people.
00:40:40.140
Global warming, no, that's not really of this year.
00:40:46.460
I'm going to say comparing countries during the pandemic.
00:40:50.060
I think the biggest analytical mistake is to think that you can compare two countries and know something.
00:40:57.980
Now, at the beginning of this live stream, I said, can we compare those other states?
00:41:06.940
Because at least states within the United States, it's a little easier to find a comparable.
00:41:12.460
Like you could find something that's a little bit like Georgia, such as South Carolina.
00:41:17.260
You could find something that's a little bit like Montana, such as South Dakota, perhaps.
00:41:23.840
But, you know, if you're comparing a European country or America to Sweden, there are just too many different variables involved there.
00:41:32.620
So I would say that comparing any countries and thinking that that told you something was the biggest analytical mistake of the year.
00:41:49.900
Yeah, but I'm not sure that's an analytical mistake.
00:41:53.080
I think that's a government is the wrong tool for the job mistake.
00:41:57.800
You know, let me return to a point I used to say a lot.
00:42:01.600
The government is the wrong tool for deciding when to get back to normal.
00:42:06.400
A government is a good tool for, let's say, defending the country.
00:42:12.340
You know, you want somebody in charge of the military, a centralized, professional group.
00:42:20.020
But what they're not good at is deciding which citizens will live and die.
00:42:27.680
Because you can't get re-elected if you decide that some citizens are just going to die.
00:42:31.860
But that's what we have to do to get back to normal.
00:42:36.400
So it's not a government kind of thing they can do unless they're a dictator.
00:42:42.280
If you're a dictator, you can just say, oh, it's time.
00:42:46.820
But if you're a democracy and you've got to get re-elected, you can't say, all right, we're going to throw old people under the bus.
00:42:58.240
A lot of old people will die because of the extra risk of this.
00:43:01.860
But, you know, we're just going to make this reasonable decision.
00:43:13.960
Not anything in a democratic republic kind of situation.
00:43:20.080
What happens if you're the one who kills all the old people?
00:43:23.100
What happened to Andrew Cuomo for letting the, you know, the nursing homes be unprotected?
00:43:31.340
So the problem is that the government just can't make the decision.
00:43:34.700
And I will tell you over and over again, at least in the United States, and, you know, this would be different in Australia, apparently.
00:43:42.260
But in the United States, the people will decide when it's over.
00:43:47.080
And the fact that it's not over means that the people have not decided.
00:43:50.000
Now, the people are somewhat brainwashed by their leaders, so we have to work through that.
00:43:59.200
The government's only power on the pandemic is to brainwash you, which they're doing pretty well.
00:44:09.520
You just have to get enough of you, meaning the public, on the same side at the same time.
00:44:17.960
So the slippery slope here is that the public will regain full control, if it needs to, to take that control away from the government.
00:44:34.200
Facebook is being sued by John Stossel for, I guess they said, they did a fact check on some of his climate change information,
00:44:43.200
and they said it was false and misleading, and so they, I don't know what they did.
00:44:49.040
I don't know if they banned it or labeled it, whatever they did.
00:44:54.760
Because he claims that the facts about climate change that he presented were true.
00:44:59.180
And, you know, there's enough science behind them that they're pro-science.
00:45:11.180
That their fact checks are mere statements of opinion rather than factual assertions.
00:45:16.480
So if Facebook's opinion is different than your actual facts, you're in trouble.
00:45:32.200
They're saying that their fact checking is, quote, from their lawyers, mere statements of opinion rather than factual assertions.
00:45:39.540
So if their mere statement of opinion disagrees with your actual science, as apparently was the case with John Stossel,
00:45:48.400
that their mere opinion disagreed with his actual science, that John Stossel's the one who has to pay for that.
00:45:56.600
Pay in the sense of having his content, you know, gated.
00:46:01.860
So, from a legal perspective, I think this was the only way they could go, right?
00:46:11.380
You know, in terms of a legal strategy, they kind of had to do this, didn't they?
00:46:15.560
Because how could they defend that they're the keeper of facts?
00:46:33.900
Now, I said in a tweet, and people were confused by it, so I'll explain it.
00:46:39.120
That Republicans are attracted to self-correcting systems where Democrats are drawn to self-destructive systems.
00:46:47.880
And that doesn't make sense until you hear some examples.
00:46:57.520
If there's a problem in the economy, a shortage of something, the free market will eventually fix it by attracting other people to provide the product.
00:47:09.360
So Republicans vary in favor of a self-correcting system called free markets.
00:47:19.980
The Constitution is a self-correcting system, is it not?
00:47:25.740
Because it says, oh, when there's a problem, here's the process to fix it.
00:47:33.060
But it's clearly spelled out in the Constitution that the systems are self-correcting.
00:47:42.740
It gives you the exact details of how these systems will be self-correcting and self-balancing and all that.
00:47:53.080
I would say religion is weirdly a self-correcting system, too.
00:47:57.280
Because you could be sinning like crazy, get to your deathbed and accept Jesus, and you're all good.
00:48:09.680
Now compare that to systems favored by Democrats, like critical race theory.
00:48:17.500
Critical race theory is a self-destructive system.
00:48:22.940
Because if you teach that people are victims of other people in their country,
00:48:27.520
it's pretty predictable that it's going to rip apart the fabric of America.
00:48:36.300
It doesn't have any self-correcting elements to it.
00:48:40.160
It is devoid of any element that could be self-correcting.
00:48:43.780
It's a one-way trip, someplace you don't want to go.
00:48:50.920
Not the kind where we pay taxes so that other people can have health care in some level.
00:48:57.340
But if you want full socialism, as many would like it,
00:49:04.740
And human motivation is the key to the self-correcting part.
00:49:08.640
If you ignore human motivation, you don't have any kind of a system that can self-correct.
00:49:13.720
It just goes where it goes, which is in the toilet.
00:49:21.840
Now, no matter what you think of reparations, is it going to make anything better?
00:49:26.360
Even if you think it's called for, even if you think it's fair, even if you can make a perfectly
00:49:33.780
good argument for it, it kind of just begs for more reparations, doesn't it?
00:49:41.240
I don't think there's any self-correcting element built into it.
00:49:46.660
Because the moment you said, yeah, let's do some reparations for people who are no longer alive.
00:49:51.780
Now, this is different, by the way, than reparations for a Japanese internment,
00:49:58.640
The people who got the Japanese internment reparations were still alive.
00:50:03.760
These people were in the frickin' camps, right?
00:50:07.740
I knew quite a few people who were actually literally in those camps.
00:50:12.280
Because I had a relationship with a Japanese-American woman for years.
00:50:19.480
So I actually was in a long-term relationship with somebody whose older brother was in the camps.
00:50:26.040
The Japanese internment camp, because he was much older.
00:50:31.320
My lifetime, you know, I was in a room full of people a number of times, you know, at holiday events.
00:50:39.820
In a room full of people where most of the people in the room had been in Japanese internment camps in the United States.
00:50:53.600
But if you start doing it for ancient ills, no matter how bad those ills were,
00:51:06.720
So I would look at that, you know, every time you see a difference between the Democrats and the Republicans,
00:51:13.600
You consistently find it in the right-leaning systems.
00:51:25.140
How many of our national problems could have been solved by having rapid tests that were cheap early?
00:51:30.840
Now, some say it wouldn't have made any difference because Europe, you know,
00:51:34.520
Great Britain has rapid tests for free, as many as you want,
00:51:40.100
But I think it would have made a difference if we did it earlier, you know, right?
00:51:48.440
So I think the following problems were exacerbated by not having rapid tests.
00:51:59.100
That, you know, because of the shutdowns, we had to give, you know, direct payments to people, etc.
00:52:04.060
So if, it's a big if, but if the rapid tests had been available earlier,
00:52:14.940
Could we have, therefore, controlled our inflation better?
00:52:18.620
Therefore, would we have had the supply chain problems?
00:52:21.700
Probably yes, because it would still be in other places.
00:52:24.720
Would we have the same crime, pandemic, health care problems?
00:52:30.160
So I think the lack of that instant testing or the rapid testing
00:52:42.280
was a much more gigantic problem than just the fact that it would have been nice to have better testing.
00:52:49.640
I'm looking at a comment from Michael Myers here.
00:52:53.540
He says, pair the self-correcting framing with grievance filter framing.
00:52:57.640
So to, I guess that would be one way to say it,
00:53:07.620
Government creates backwards legislation to make it self-replicating.
00:53:11.860
Okay, that's a little bit too complicated for me,
00:53:21.720
All right, yeah, you know, the trouble with the grievance filter is,
00:53:32.980
If you want to say that the systems are better on the right than the left,
00:53:38.320
I wouldn't use that framing of calling it a grievance filter, even though it is.
00:53:42.780
Because as soon as you say that, that's sort of fighting words.
00:53:47.500
That's a little bit of a, you know, as soon as you label it a grievance filter,
00:53:52.100
you've sort of departed reason and you're into partisan talk.
00:54:02.300
by saying that some systems have a self-correcting element built in
00:54:17.580
You're not talking about it with hyperbole and, you know,
00:54:23.160
Just say one has self-correcting nature, one doesn't.
00:54:26.100
Why would you ever want a system without a self-correcting element?
00:54:39.520
The best meme of the year had to be, let's go, Brandon.
00:54:55.300
I think this was my best live stream of all time.
00:54:58.820
Maybe the best live stream anybody's ever done anywhere
00:55:03.020
Oh, I'm going to answer one more question for you, I think.
00:55:15.620
This is one of the best filters to have on reality.
00:55:18.780
If you understand how insurance drives business decisions,
00:55:22.580
as in if you do this, you can't get any insurance,
00:55:27.780
Insurance kind of drives a lot of the business processes.
00:55:31.520
And somebody asked this, why do you have to wear masks on planes
00:55:35.280
when there are so many other places like restaurants
00:55:43.700
I mean, I'm not hearing about a bunch of restaurants
00:55:50.600
and why a restaurant would be different than a plane.
00:55:52.960
If you take a 12-hour plane ride and you get COVID,
00:55:58.360
you're going to think it's because of the plane ride.
00:56:01.880
You're going to say, somebody on that plane gave me COVID.
00:56:05.520
and you might even be able to find out who had it.
00:56:11.680
and say, oh, it's the person sitting right behind you,
00:56:15.560
And, but you can't really do that in a restaurant, can you?
00:56:23.500
And you would be, it would be impossible to identify
00:56:32.020
So suing a restaurant would be next to impossible
00:56:34.860
because you wouldn't really be able to demonstrate
00:57:01.860
have decided that they have a very special case
00:57:53.960
Is there anybody with enough business experience
00:59:08.380
So I don't know if insurance is the full reason