Episode 2103 Scott Adams: Title 42 Ends, eVerify Debate, RFK Jr., HCQ And CIA Killing Kennedy, More
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 16 minutes
Words per Minute
143.70944
Summary
Join me for the unparalleled pleasure of the day: a cup of coffee, a quick rant about the border crisis, and a question about what happens if you get stopped at the border by the cartels and get no refund.
Transcript
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of civilization.
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It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and aren't you glad you made it?
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Those of you watching this live are having the experience of your life.
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Those of you watching it recorded, well, you wish you were here when it was live.
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If you'd like to take it up to a level that nobody could ever even imagine was possible,
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all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tanker, a chalice, a stein, a canteen jug or flask,
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Fill it with your favorite liquid I like, coffee.
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the doping at the end of the day,
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It's called a simultaneous sip, and it ends with a big, ah, don't forget that part.
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All right, well, I continue to be amused by the best entertainment on the Internet,
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which is when Twitter's community notes slap somebody down.
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I don't think it's happened to me yet that I'm aware of.
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But apparently, Randy Weingarten, who's the head of the biggest teachers union,
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she's now on her sixth community notes correction.
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I believe she's claiming, let's say, that she put more energy into opening schools than the critics say is correct.
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So it's a question of whether she was working hard to open schools or was she working hard to keep them closed for the benefit of the teachers.
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So she's got a story that she's trying to sell that she was really trying to do the right thing for everybody.
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If you got fact-checked by community notes six times, would you keep tweeting?
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I think it would be time to stop tweeting after that six time.
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That's that COVID-related rule that allowed some degree of border controls.
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Now there are many, many, many, many potential immigrants waiting to come over.
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And I guess Texas is sending reinforcements to the border and federal government, Biden, sending reinforcements to the border to handle all these people.
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Are those reinforcements there to turn people back?
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Because they're all going to have legal claims, right?
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Aren't they all going to come in and say, I'm not an illegal immigrant.
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So in theory, all those reinforcements are not there to stop people from coming, are they?
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Or are they there just to more efficiently process them as they come in?
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They might be guiding them from illegal crossings to the legal crossings or something.
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This gives you an idea of what weird things enter my head.
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So we know that it's mostly the coyotes, meaning the cartels, are behind all this human trafficking.
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So for every huge group of immigrants trying to come across, there's some cartel person who's in charge.
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If you get stopped at the border, does the cartel offer a rebate?
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Or do they say, all right, we promised we'd get you across the border and you've already paid us.
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And they stopped you at this one border crossing, but we'll just take you at another one because you've paid.
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See, most of you are reflexively saying that there's no refunds.
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I'm not sure, because the cartels are such a business at this point that you actually wonder if they've started adopting any normal business principles.
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Would you not be more likely to pay the cartels if you knew that they would try a second time if you got caught or they'd refund your money?
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So it might be from a purely business perspective, they might get more business if they look like they're a good firm to work with.
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Oh, yeah, we'll give you a rebate if it doesn't work, and we'll try it two or three times.
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It probably doesn't cost them that much to try a second time.
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I'm just wondering, if you assume that they're not acting like a regular business, you're probably right.
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But they might actually be running it like a regular business.
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They might actually have rebates and, like, discounts.
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If it works in every other business context, why wouldn't it work in this one?
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I guess the only reason it wouldn't work is if you knew these people were all going to pay a large amount of money and try no matter what.
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If people were going to come no matter what, and they were going to pay massive amounts, well, then they don't have to offer any deals.
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But maybe they get more if they offer a good deal.
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And by that, I mean he did something that seems obvious, but only after he does it.
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And then you say to yourself, well, why didn't everybody do that?
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So DeSantis, of course, is trying to do things in Florida that would have some national-looking impact so that it helps him in Florida, but also helps him if he runs for office, which people think he will.
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I'm still not convinced he's going to announce.
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I think he's waiting until the last minute to make sure.
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And it probably just depends on Trump's legal problems and poll numbers, I'm guessing.
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So what DeSantis did in Florida is there's some new legislation here preventing Chinese citizens from owning stuff in Florida except small properties.
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And they can't have it near military facilities and, let's see.
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So there's a few other things he's going to prevent China from doing in Florida.
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But I guess this would apply to some other countries such as Cuba and North Korea.
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Basically, Florida doesn't want foreign influence in their education system or ownership of too much of their property.
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But they don't want, basically, they just don't want this foreign influence in their state.
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Because when you describe it, it just sounds like an obvious thing to do.
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Here's an issue which I cannot come up with an opinion on yet.
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So, Thomas Massey is tweeting against the E-Verify idea, which the E-Verify would be a digital way for all immigrants to be in a system.
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And if they're not in the system, they can't get jobs.
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And the idea is that if people can't get jobs, they'll self-deport because they're coming here for jobs.
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Now, let's go through just and also part of E-Verify sort of unrelated but related is that the U.S. is looking toward maybe a fully digital currency.
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So, if you had a digital currency, so every transaction could be tracked, and you had E-Verify, which eventually will apply to Americans as well as immigrants, one assumes,
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then the government would have complete control that by pushing a button or two, they could just turn off your access to civilization,
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Now, Thomas Massey quite reasonably warns us that giving the government any new powers is dangerous,
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and these specific new powers are probably extra dangerous because they're going to be watching everything you do,
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But, if you don't do it, it'll be far, far harder to know if anybody's working in the U.S. illegally because it's easier to get, you know, fake paper documents.
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I guess it would be harder for the, to get the fake digital documents.
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So, and I saw one story that says that Florida already has problems at construction sites because they already have E-Verify.
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And it's already having an effect that employers can't get employees?
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And construction companies are sort of shutting down because they can't even operate?
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In California, if everyone who was here illegally suddenly needed E-Verify to even work,
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that would be the end of, I don't know, 30% of all businesses in California.
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Some, I would guess that 30% of all small businesses in California would instantly shut if we had E-Verify.
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We have a very mature illegal system where it's somewhat easy for people to get fake documents.
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And under the current system, if you present fake documents to your employer, the employer is off the hook.
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The employer doesn't have any obligation if they've seen documents.
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Because they're not supposed to be experts on fake documents.
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They're just supposed to ask for them, confirm that they got them, you know, document that they got the documents.
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And my assumption is that you would have to have somebody in E-Verify in order to have them as an employee.
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Because otherwise there would be no point to it.
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Do you think this is a slippery slope that will be bad for all of us?
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So you could argue about it all day long, but it won't make any difference.
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He said, Thomas Massey said, Representative Massey said,
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I hear people say E-Verify will be so effective at denying employment to illegals that millions of them will self-deport.
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For E-Verify to work that well would require biometric proof of identity for every American and a cashless society.
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He says, is this what you want for your children?
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So the argument would be, you know, it's not just about the undocumented immigrants.
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It's also about, it's going to be all of us putting our biometric information in there.
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So our fingerprints and our face prints and all that stuff.
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Well, let me give you the best counter argument I can.
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So my first part of the opinion is it's unstoppable.
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So therefore the argument is almost irrelevant.
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There's no way we're going to be using pieces of paper to pay people in 100 years.
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Does anybody think we're going to be paying people with pieces of paper in 100 years?
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Does anybody think that biometric identification won't be the standard in 100 years?
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So that's the first part of my argument is you can't stop something with this much utility.
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The problem is that it's just too useful for the government, but people will find benefit too.
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Have you already reached the point where writing a check feels like you traveled back in time and you're churning your own butter?
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The last time somebody asked you for a cash payment with like dollar bills that was some, you know, large-ish amount beyond, you know, beyond $40, didn't it feel just like ridiculous?
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You've got PayPal, you've got, you know, Google Pay.
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Paying anybody a small amount of money with money feels like I just went back in time or something.
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So let me explain my own situation, and this will give you some insight.
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Would you agree that I don't have the option of hiding my identity in any practical way?
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If I walked in someplace without my wallet, I could just say, Google me, right?
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I'm 100% easily identifiable with anybody who has a phone.
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So in an inefficient way, I've already been living an e-verify life, which is my biometrics,
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literally the way I look, has already been identifying me for decades.
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And I can't go anywhere without anybody who has a phone being able to look at me and just check.
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Now, if you had a facial identification app, even easier.
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So you're saying, but Scott, that's individuals.
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Well, I'm also using a system for travel called the CLEAR system.
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You go to the airport and you just show it your face and your eyeballs, and that's your identification.
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Do you think the government could get access to it if it wanted?
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With my phone, when I turn on my apps, usually I'm using facial recognition.
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Probably that's still stored somewhere, because the old phones use my fingerprint.
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So I'm a person whose identity has been public for years, and I can't really hide.
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And the money that I spend has already moved from a fair amount of it was cash,
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actual dollar bills at one point in my life, paying people who were doing work, whatever.
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I can't remember the last time I reached into my wallet and took out a piece of paper.
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I don't pay with anything with a piece of paper.
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So the only reason I have any pieces of paper is for very just random stuff.
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Now, some of you are not where I am, so I'm not saying that my situation applies to you.
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I already live in a world where I have no privacy, and my biometrics are already recorded in a variety of ways,
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What problems have I encountered because of that?
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Now, it doesn't mean that you wouldn't have a problem,
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and it doesn't mean that I won't have one someday,
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and it doesn't mean it wouldn't be worse if everybody were in my situation, right?
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So you can do a whole population, not just one person.
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But how about the idea that if everybody's in this digital currency and e-verify,
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that the government could just push a button and turn off your money?
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You realize that I got canceled globally, right?
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I got canceled globally, you know, the Dilbert comic,
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We already have a way to cancel people completely, right?
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Now, I only got canceled from things I wanted to cancel me from.
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They didn't need to take me out of all civilization
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If the government had turned off all of my ability to make money
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or interact with the world, what would I have done in response?
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So the government, I don't think the government is going to want to create criminals.
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So even though the government could, you know, tweak your money,
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turn it off, turn it on, control your employment,
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I don't think they want to because it doesn't help them to create new criminals
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if your only option is to rob somebody for money.
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If the government ever made it so the only way I could make money
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is by robbing people, I would rob people in a heartbeat.
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But I might also try to foment a revolution against the government.
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I'd probably be forming a militia to attack the government.
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they would have created a super enemy that they wouldn't want.
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I don't think the government's going to want to turn people's money off completely,
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with the rare exceptions of perhaps like a, let's say, a criminal who's on the run.
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It might be a good way to catch a criminal on the run.
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But they're not going to want to do it to people who just have an option of working.
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the government wants you to make money and pay taxes.
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So I don't know that they're ever going to want to turn it off.
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So I'm going to agree with Thomas Massey that the risk is real and unknown.
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And you should be very cautious about going into any situation where the risk is real,
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However, the counter-argument is there's nothing to stop it.
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There's no way in 100 years you're going to be paying for things
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with pieces of paper you carried in your pocket.
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And likewise, your biometrics are all getting into the system in a variety of ways.
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You know, we're probably one week away from AI being able to identify you every time.
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because I'm a public figure with a large body of writing,
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It could check my answers against all the ways I've ever answered questions
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because it has a large body of my work to pull from.
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There's no way I could artificially choose words
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over an extended, let's say, a 10-minute conversation
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Like, even if I tried to pretend, it would be obvious I was pretending.
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where the whole identification thing doesn't even matter.
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You know, because AI will just know who you are and where you are,
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So I'm going to say that I'm less afraid of this than Thomas Massey,
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because to be an opinion, I think I'd need to get closer to
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we should do it or we should not do it or we should delay it.
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Now, here's what I tweeted back to Representative Massey,
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because he actually tells the truth and he's smart.
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I said that his argument needs a story to be persuasive,
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you don't want to use just a conceptual argument,
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such as, do you want your children to grow up in this world?
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and then I'm imagining that my child is always easily identified.
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Does it scare me that my child, if they're stolen from me,
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that my child will always be easily identified,
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where I'm paying everything with digital currency?
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and get pieces of paper to carry around in my pocket?
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and if it doesn't come into my body physically,
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already allows you to turn off anybody's money.
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So your argument is actually supporting my case
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Our national debt is basically financial fentanyl.
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And Vivek says the real declaration of independence
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So that's a very visual declaration of independence.
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Because you've been trained with all those images.
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I retweeted his request for campaign donations.
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So one story is that he's still saying in public
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that was collected that all points in the same direction.
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I'm saying that the attorney general believed they did.