Episode 2591 CWSA 09⧸08⧸24
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 17 minutes
Words per Minute
146.5905
Summary
In this episode, Scott Adams talks about some funny science, some funny news, and some funny politics, including RFK Jr.'s plan to fix our drug and food problem. Scott Adams is the host of the popular podcast, Coffee with Scott Adams, and he's also the author of Almost Everything and Still Win Big.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Human civilization. It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and aren't you glad you're here?
00:00:04.620
But we're going to take this up to levels that nobody can even understand with their tiny,
00:00:08.820
shiny human brains. And for that, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or
00:00:15.020
stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like
00:00:21.160
coffee. Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that
00:00:26.120
makes everything better. It's called The Simultaneous Sip, and it happens now. Go.
00:00:35.400
Ah, the Sunday version. So, so good. All right, we're going to talk about some funny science and
00:00:45.220
then some funny news stuff and then some funny politics, but we're going to talk a little bit
00:00:51.560
in detail about RFK Jr.'s policy plans for fixing our drug and food situation. He's got a big article
00:01:02.160
in the Wall Street Journal. I'll summarize that for you because it's really interesting. But first,
00:01:09.000
there's some science that says that there was a study done that says that women tend to give more
00:01:16.120
money to attractive men. So I assume this means in the business context. To which I say, well, you know
00:01:24.580
what I say, right? You could have saved a little time and money by just asking Scott, hey, Scott, we
00:01:33.380
were going to spend $100,000 on this study to find out if women tend to give more money to attractive
00:01:39.360
men. And I would say, ho, ho, for $10,000, I'll give you an answer. And they'll say, really? That
00:01:46.260
would save us $90,000. And I'd say, I know, I know. Here's your answer. Yes. Yes, they will. And if
00:01:55.280
you're wondering if they will do other things for attractive men, yes, yes, they will. Now I'm going
00:02:02.520
to give you a little extra. I know I didn't even promise this, but suppose, just suppose you turned it
00:02:08.380
around. And the question became, would men give more money to attractive women in every context? Yes. Yes,
00:02:19.600
they would. In every context. There, safety, $90,000. Here's another one. Science found out that
00:02:31.640
the higher your IQ, the less you drink alcohol. So the lower your IQ, the more likely you're going to
00:02:41.980
have problems with drinking too much. Huh. And they're trying to figure out the hypothesis for why.
00:02:50.600
And one hypothesis is, quote, one suggested explanation for the association between intelligence
00:02:57.920
and health, and health, is that cognitive skills enhance possibilities to make healthy lifestyles
00:03:03.500
choices. Now let me translate that from science into normal talk. It turns out that a science
00:03:14.720
studied to find out if smart people make better choices. You know what I'm going to say.
00:03:22.840
You could have saved a little money on this one too. Hey, Scott, we're thinking of doing a study. It's
00:03:31.480
going to cost a million dollars. And the study was going to look into, do people with high IQ make
00:03:39.320
better choices? And I would say, hold on, hold on. For merely $100,000, I can answer that. And they're
00:03:47.060
like, really? We would save $900,000 if you could do that. I go, watch me, watch me. People who are
00:03:56.300
smarter, hold on, listen to this, make smarter decisions across a whole range of domains, including
00:04:07.600
lifestyle choices. But there's a second explanation. Also, you could have asked me, if you were low IQ,
00:04:16.920
you might have some other things going on in your life, such as lower income, maybe things aren't
00:04:23.380
working out so well for you in general, which means that your happiness might be lower than
00:04:29.700
somebody who is finding out that their life is working out because they keep making smart choices.
00:04:35.440
And so if you're not happy, this brings into the conversation what I call my pleasure unit
00:04:42.420
hypothesis. The pleasure unit hypothesis. I wrote about this in 2013. And before that,
00:04:49.800
in my book, Hadfield, Almost Everything and Still Win Big. And it goes like this. Humans require a
00:04:56.900
certain amount of pleasure daily on average, or they will just kill themselves. They just can't live
00:05:03.880
without some amount of pleasure. You can't go through every day with everything being bad.
00:05:08.700
You just won't last. So if you don't have access to clean, healthy fun, you're going to go the other
00:05:18.940
way. And you're going to find, well, at least I can have a drink or do a drug. So you need some
00:05:24.720
pleasure. So does it make sense that people who have high IQs, and maybe the rest of their life is
00:05:31.340
working out too, because they made good choices. Do they have access to healthy pleasures? Yes.
00:05:38.680
Because they've worked out the details of their life. So they have access to good vacations and
00:05:43.260
stuff like that. So for two reasons, you would expect IQ and alcohol to be related. One is smart
00:05:51.800
people make smarter choices, and they know alcohol is poison. So they just try harder to stay away from it
00:05:56.660
and all of the things that are bad for them. And the other is, they don't need to get bad sources
00:06:03.060
of pleasure because they have more access to good sources of pleasure. Should have asked me.
00:06:09.380
Well, you know, I'm a nerd when it comes to new energy sources and whatnot. But the Oak Ridge
00:06:14.820
National Laboratory used a supercomputer, not AI. Apparently, you need a supercomputer more than you
00:06:22.580
need AI for this. To make a new kind of material that gives you a 21% advantage in power in ways that
00:06:30.980
are not well explained. But I just have to say this. Probably the most dynamic and exciting part of
00:06:39.380
science at the moment is materials. Just making material. Because if you can make a material that's
00:06:46.740
stronger and lighter, well, suddenly you saved like a ton of energy for making your airplanes.
00:06:52.420
If you can make materials that have certain qualities that you couldn't make before,
00:06:56.340
then suddenly you've got a battery that doesn't catch on fire and is much better than regular
00:07:00.980
batteries. But material science is never sexy because it's never the finished product.
00:07:07.940
Right? A car is sexy. A phone is sexy. But the materials that go into all the parts,
00:07:14.180
not so sexy. But wow, there's just amazing things happening. And I think AI plus supercomputing
00:07:20.740
are going to see more of these big breakthroughs of new materials. Anyway, that's some good news.
00:07:26.740
The Washington Post is getting mocked. Here are two headlines. One from before she was chosen to be the
00:07:37.300
candidate for president. And one after. See if you can determine any change in tone.
00:07:42.660
So before she was the candidate, she was just the vice president. The Washington Post had a headline.
00:07:50.100
Now these, I think, are more opinion pieces. But the headline was a Kamala Harris staff exodus
00:07:56.340
reignites questions about her leadership style and her future ambitions. Well, that's kind of negative.
00:08:01.940
Yeah. Staff exodus. Reigniting questions about her leadership style. Oh, yeah. Dumping on her.
00:08:09.460
But then after she gets nominated, here's the Washington Post again. Kamala Harris ran her office
00:08:16.180
like a prosecutor. Not everyone liked that. Huh. Suddenly, they've turned massive staff turnover
00:08:24.820
into a slightly positive thing. The first time they framed it, it sounded like she was an incompetent
00:08:32.020
leader and nobody wanted to work there. The second time they framed it, she was a demanding leader with
00:08:37.140
high standards and you'd better meet those standards or you're not going to last long in that high
00:08:41.460
performance atmosphere. Anybody notice a difference there at all? A little bit of difference of tone?
00:08:48.580
And then the Washington Post is also being mocked for, there was this visit the Harris made to a spice
00:08:56.260
store. I didn't even know there were spice stores, but apparently there's a spice store in Pennsylvania.
00:09:04.660
And she went into one and one of the Washington Post writers decided that the story to write that day
00:09:12.420
was which spices she bought. So somebody actually posted on X just a list of the spices she bought at the store.
00:09:21.700
Yeah. He was severely mocked by Glenn Greenwald and other people. Anyway, that's what Washington Post
00:09:28.820
writing looks like. An embarrassing profession. Anyway, more about that spice store. So there's a
00:09:35.860
viral clip where Kamala Harris is hugging some older white lady who's crying about, I think she's crying
00:09:44.420
in happiness because Harris is there or something. I don't know. But people are saying it was all staged
00:09:52.580
and the store was a famously anti-Trump store. So the store has put anti-Trump, you know,
00:10:01.700
marketing stuff. You know, don't, we don't even want you to shop here if you're a Trump supporter.
00:10:07.140
I mean, really dark stuff. And they got a lot of publicity, but I can't imagine it worked out for
00:10:15.460
them because it looks like the owner of it is some deranged looking leftist. And he's got those crazy
00:10:23.780
eyes and the one photo I saw, you know, the crazy eyes, the leftist eyes look like this. If you're only
00:10:29.940
listening to this again, you're missing a great impression of leftist eyes.
00:10:35.540
Hey, look at my smile that doesn't match my eyes. That's kind of creepy.
00:10:41.940
Yeah, you don't see that on the right. I'm not saying the people on the right are all,
00:10:46.420
you know, error free and they do all the right things. I'm just saying they don't have that specific
00:10:51.060
facial expression. There is a facial expression that you just don't see in conservatives for whatever
00:10:58.580
reason. I don't know. Anyway, the Wall Street Journal printed a story about AI and Elon Musk
00:11:10.820
took a few hours before the X platform outed it as fake. So it was a fake story. They got everything
00:11:18.580
wrong. Elon Musk weighed in and said, Nope, this is not true. Just completely wrong.
00:11:24.420
So you don't even need to hear the details because it was all wrong. And then the guy who posted it
00:11:32.420
said it was the fifth time that the Wall Street Journal has had an incorrect article just about
00:11:38.100
XAI. So that's your news. I love the fact that you can see in real time the,
00:11:46.100
the, um, the, uh, the, what's the name of the effect I'll remember in a minute. Um, the,
00:11:54.180
the Gelman amnesia effect, where if you know the truth, because the stories about you or some
00:12:00.500
expertise you have, you know, that the news is uniformly wrong. But if you think, if you don't
00:12:06.580
know anything about the story, you just read it and go, well, that's probably right. So imagine being
00:12:11.380
Elon Musk and reading stories about himself every day. How many of those stories about himself do
00:12:19.540
you think are accurate? 20% at best, probably 20%, maybe less.
00:12:29.940
Anyway, um, so Harris's latest hoax is the Affordable Care Act, uh, and that Trump wants to
00:12:38.180
get rid of the Affordable Care Act that you might call Obamacare. Now, what is the truth of that?
00:12:44.340
Is it true? Kamala Harris just said it, said Donald Trump intends to end the Affordable Care Act,
00:12:50.260
which would take us back to a time where insurance companies had the power
00:12:54.020
to deny people with preexisting conditions. What does Trump say about preexisting conditions?
00:13:01.860
He absolutely does not want that. He's not going to make it worse. His take on the Affordable Care Act
00:13:09.700
is that, yes, he does want to replace it with something better. And if he can't come up with
00:13:18.020
something better, he will not replace it. Now, that's actually saying nothing.
00:13:23.940
Am I wrong? Let me give you an example of some other things this would apply to.
00:13:34.020
I'm going to get rid of NASA, but only if I can come up with something better than NASA.
00:13:41.140
So are you getting rid of NASA? No, unless you could magically come up with something better.
00:13:48.020
I don't know. Or maybe outsourcing it all to Elon Musk might be better.
00:13:53.300
Now, it's a general statement that you're not going to change something unless you can figure
00:13:59.460
out how to make it better. That's all Trump is saying, that he thinks he can make it better. But
00:14:05.540
if he can, he won't change it. It's not really much to worry about. And he definitely doesn't want
00:14:12.900
you to not be able to get health care because of pre-existing conditions. I'm pretty sure he's
00:14:18.260
on board with the pre-existing conditions part. Now, so you've seen how bad the news is. And you've
00:14:25.860
seen that the politicians are lying to us about really easily checkable... I mean, you just had
00:14:31.220
to Google it. And you can see that it's not true that Trump just wants to get rid of it and go back to
00:14:36.340
where we were. No, that has never been part of his stated or even, I assume, nobody would think that
00:14:43.060
way because that would be sort of a dumb way to think. So if you know that the news we're seeing
00:14:49.220
is not true, and you know that the politicians are all lying, what does that tell you about our history?
00:14:56.340
Do you think our history was all accurate? You know, I've said a few times you should watch,
00:15:02.660
there's a show on Netflix called Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy Wars. It's the worst title for a show
00:15:10.420
you've ever heard, but ignore the title. It's really interesting because there's a real world events,
00:15:17.060
but you're going to see that the judicial system was 100% corrupt in those days. It's based on real
00:15:23.860
stories, by the way. You can see that politics and even the selection of the president, 100% corrupt,
00:15:30.980
100%, just everything's completely corrupt. Big business, 100% corrupt. And that's where we were
00:15:38.900
just in the 1800s, 100% corrupt in every system in the United States. Business, politics, the courts,
00:15:48.020
100% corrupt. 100% corrupt. And you think we grew out of it, right?
00:15:57.380
It's not likely. It's not likely that any of that changed. It's likely that it found out how to hide
00:16:04.340
better. It may have changed form, but no. Now, when I say the justice system is corrupt,
00:16:11.460
I don't mean the everyday cases. You know, I think if you rob a bank, probably the justice is roughly fair.
00:16:20.980
All right. Can we stop showing shortlist pictures of me in the comments? All right. That's sort of dickish
00:16:32.100
behavior. Yeah. During the show, it's bad form. So don't do that anymore, please. Anyway, what was I
00:16:44.260
talking about? Oh, so this brings me to the question of Churchill. So revisiting the fact that Tucker had
00:16:52.740
a historian on named Daryl Cooper, who said that, it's hard for me to paraphrase a long conversation,
00:17:02.340
but effectively that Churchill was more of a bad guy than a good guy when it came to World War II,
00:17:09.060
and may have been responsible for some bad outcomes that plague us still today. Now, is that true?
00:17:18.020
Do you think Churchill is the Churchill that you learned about in school? Or is Churchill closer to
00:17:24.180
what Daryl Cooper said? Or is neither of those true? And there's something that's sort of in the middle
00:17:30.420
that's true. I don't know. How would I know? How would any of us know?
00:17:35.620
If we can't tell what's true today, how in the world could we tell what was true then,
00:17:43.380
given we know that the news is fake, that politics is fake, business is fake? It's all fake.
00:17:52.020
So, but there's a second part to this story. Have you noticed that conservatives are sort of
00:18:02.100
getting on each other lately? You know, skip ahead.
00:18:07.860
Hey, Dave Richardson here. Between rallies and sell-offs, bulls and bears, markets move fast.
00:18:13.620
It can be hard to keep up. Join me on the download podcast as I chat with investment
00:18:18.420
experts from all around the world to help you make sense of what's happening in the markets
00:18:22.900
and the global economy. Go to the download on Spotify to get the latest episode and to subscribe.
00:18:29.460
So, I feel like there's all these little arguments that are happening
00:18:39.940
among Trump supporters and anti-Trumpers. And I wonder how much of this is natural.
00:18:47.700
It looks natural. I mean, it looks organic, like things just happened to pop up and people disagreed on
00:18:54.100
them. But it's kind of weird that right before the election, there's this huge multi-battle thing
00:19:02.660
going on where a bunch of conservatives all found reasons to be mad at each other.
00:19:08.260
Kind of weird. I don't know what's going on there. But this one struck me especially.
00:19:14.100
So, Seth Dillon of the Babylon Bee, founder or CEO or both, I don't know, of the Babylon Bee,
00:19:25.700
got into it with Tucker Carlson. I think he made some comments on X and then Tucker Carlson
00:19:33.300
must have contacted him by text and they had some exchange and then they both talked about it.
00:19:40.260
So, Tucker's version of what happened suggested that Seth texted him, but the wording is a little
00:19:48.180
ambiguous. I'm not sure he said that. He just said that he texted. But Seth objects because he wants,
00:19:56.900
I guess he wants you to know that Tucker texted him first, but then there was some back and forth.
00:20:01.380
So, when Tucker says that Seth texted him, I don't think he was necessarily implying that he texted
00:20:09.540
him first, just that what they talked about was in text form. So, but let's see. So, so first,
00:20:20.500
Seth fact-checked him on that. And he said the text to express outrage about the Daryl Cooper guy,
00:20:29.700
because the Daryl Cooper guy was, some are saying, a little too favorable to Hitler.
00:20:38.580
I'll just say that other people say that so you can leave my opinions out of this for now.
00:20:42.820
And then there's some disagreement between Tucker's version of Seth Dillon's opinion and
00:20:52.420
Seth's own opinion of his opinion. Now, typically, I like to look at people's own opinion of their
00:20:58.100
opinion, not other people's explanation of their opinion to figure out what is true.
00:21:03.380
So, the question is whether he expressed outrage or did he mock him? So, Seth is saying he mocked
00:21:15.700
Tucker. Tucker's saying he expressed outrage. And then some other words that were interesting
00:21:20.820
is that Seth said he thought it was pretty wild. So, this is Seth explaining his own approach. He said,
00:21:29.620
it was pretty wild. I explained that to see a Hitler apologist platformed and praised effusively by
00:21:35.540
Tucker Carlson. And Tucker said in reply, platformed? You mean spoke to? I said, yeah,
00:21:44.420
you spoke to him on your platform to purposely amplify his voice. And that has understandably
00:21:49.540
raised some eyebrows. And then that gets into the question of censorship. So, does it seem to you that
00:21:59.220
Seth Dillon was applying some citizen to citizen censorship? You know, not legally, of course,
00:22:07.940
but putting pressure on people to stop doing that? Because I feel like that might have been Tucker's
00:22:15.700
feeling. Because when he said platformed, you mean spoke to? So, here's the question. Although nobody's
00:22:24.180
saying that he's saying that Tucker doesn't have free speech, and he can platform anybody wants,
00:22:28.900
and he can amplify anybody wants. Because he is the number one podcaster in the world.
00:22:37.860
So, I guess he gets some rights to do things within the law.
00:22:41.300
But I think I see the, yeah, it's easy to see both sides of this, isn't it? On one hand, I'm 100% in
00:22:55.380
favor of Tucker Carlson putting offensive, non-standard people on the air to hear what they have to say.
00:23:03.380
I'm equally happy when the people who don't like that say publicly, here's why I don't like it and
00:23:10.980
why. So, I appreciate Seth Dillon weighing in so we can see his, how he feels about it, and probably
00:23:17.620
not too different from how a lot of people feel about it. So, to me, this is all good. This is the
00:23:25.060
free speech I like. I like it where Tucker Carlson puts on somebody that other people say, oh my god,
00:23:32.020
why are you amplifying and platforming this? But we hear that too. As long as I can hear the
00:23:38.580
platforming and the amplifying, but I can also hear Seth Dillon and others say, hey, I'm not sure
00:23:45.620
that amplifying this particular point of view is good because we don't think it's accurate or whatever
00:23:52.260
our problem is with it. So, on one hand, you can say to yourself, hey, here's some unhealthy
00:23:59.860
conservative to conservative disagreement. And then I would disagree and say, no, you're just
00:24:06.980
seeing the healthiest thing that could ever happen in a republic. Somebody put a voice on that is deeply
00:24:12.340
disturbing. And somebody said, that's deeply disturbing. And then I got to hear both.
00:24:18.740
I got to hear the opinion and I got to hear the opinion about the opinion. I'm done. Good job,
00:24:24.500
both of you. So, I'm going to give a compliment to both of them. This is the fight I want to see.
00:24:30.740
I want to see you fighting over the question of, you know, whether it was good to platform them,
00:24:38.500
but not the question of whether it's a right. And it wasn't questioned. So, Dillon did,
00:24:43.780
Seth Dillon did not question whether he had the right to do it or it made sense to do it or anything.
00:24:50.020
He just made sure you saw the other opinion. Good for him. So, I hope it doesn't cause any long-term
00:24:59.700
anything. It's a good, healthy sign. You may have heard this story. So, Jack Posobiec has a new book.
00:25:10.820
Joshua Lyssek is part of that, part of the book writing process there and getting it independently
00:25:18.340
published. And so, the first day it's going to be available, it shows up on Amazon with a porn,
00:25:26.180
a porn title instead of the actual picture of the book. So, it's an accident. So, accidentally,
00:25:35.220
the book that would probably have a, I assume, by the way, it's called… Let me give you the title
00:25:45.620
of the book. It's called Bulletproof. And it's the first book about the assassination attempt on Trump.
00:25:53.460
Now, given that the assassination attempt happened really recently, the first big book that gives you
00:26:00.900
a point of view on this that's presumably a positive one for Trump is going to make some news. It's going
00:26:09.940
to make some waves. And it hits. And I don't know if you know how book publishing works, but since
00:26:16.420
everybody's trying to make a bestseller list, if your first few days of publication get botched,
00:26:22.820
you're not going to make the bestseller list. If the first week, like you get a lot of good
00:26:30.580
positive attention, well, then maybe you hit the bottom of the list, and then when you get on the
00:26:35.540
list, it becomes self-fulfilling. So, the entire game of book publishing is sort of a first-week game.
00:26:42.900
Every now and then, there's a book that has been around for a while and people discover, but it's very rare.
00:26:54.660
This is probably only available on Amazon, but I'm not sure. And Amazon just took them completely
00:27:00.580
out of the game by having a mistake on the cover. Now, is that an accident?
00:27:09.220
Have you ever heard of this happening, ever? That somebody put on a conservative
00:27:14.260
leaning book and it got a porn cover on the first week, accidentally? I've never heard of it.
00:27:22.020
So, you really have to ask yourself, did that happen by chance?
00:27:26.740
Did it? You know, the only way you could know for sure
00:27:31.380
is if somebody else had, let's say, another independently published book
00:27:36.100
that was positive for Trump that also got some kind of a glitch. So, if that happened at the same
00:27:44.820
time, you'd say to yourself, huh, that's two of them right before the election, huh?
00:27:50.180
My book, Win Bigly, is about to be republished with a second edition and an update. Do you know why
00:28:00.260
Yes. There's a glitch in the system. Can't figure out what's wrong with it yet. We're trying to figure out why.
00:28:11.780
Yeah. Two for two. Two for two. Now, to be fair, the process of independent publishing
00:28:24.260
is fraught with natural errors. So, it's not the first time I've been through the cycle because I,
00:28:30.500
you know, Joshua and I did a few other books already. So, it is an error prone, just amazingly error prone,
00:28:38.500
almost every step. We were hitting some kind of a problem that we'd never seen before and weren't
00:28:46.020
sure who to talk to to even fix it. It's like one problem after another, the same weird nature. Well,
00:28:52.100
we've never seen this before and we're not even sure how to fix it or maybe we'll fix it in a week.
00:28:58.500
You know, just all of this impossible to fix stuff. So, let me just say this. It's called Bulletproof.
00:29:08.820
It's Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lysak. You can order it now. I'm pretty sure they won't send you the porn
00:29:16.180
book. I think they'll send you the real one. And if you'd like to see a Trump-related book
00:29:22.580
that maybe there was a little bit of shenanigans going on, but we don't know for sure.
00:29:27.700
If you'd like to make sure that those shenanigans, if they happen, but we can't be sure,
00:29:32.740
make no difference at all. You might want to pick that one up.
00:29:38.740
Ontario, the wait is over. The gold standard of online casinos has arrived. Golden Nugget Online
00:29:46.020
Casino is live, bringing Vegas-style excitement and a world-class gaming experience right to your
00:29:51.540
fingertips. Whether you're a seasoned player or just starting, signing up is fast and simple.
00:29:56.980
And in just a few clicks, you can have access to our exclusive library of the best slots and top-tier
00:30:02.180
table games. Make the most of your downtime with unbeatable promotions and jackpots that can turn
00:30:07.380
any mundane moment into a golden opportunity at Golden Nugget Online Casino. Take a spin on the
00:30:13.460
slots, challenge yourself at the tables, or join a live dealer game to feel the thrill of real-time
00:30:18.580
action, all from the comfort of your own devices. Why settle for less when you can go for the gold
00:30:23.860
at Golden Nugget Online Casino? Gambling problem? Call Connex Ontario, 1-866-531-2600. 19 and over,
00:30:32.580
physically present in Ontario. Eligibility restrictions apply. See goldennuggetcasino.com
00:30:39.380
Joe Fried. I hope that's the way he pronounces it. It's spelled like fried. And the American
00:30:49.060
thinker is talking about Pennsylvania and the election. And lots of smart people say whoever
00:30:54.420
wins Pennsylvania is going to be the next president. So this was a big one. Here are a
00:30:58.420
few things you might not know about Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania does not require ID when voting by mail.
00:31:05.060
It does not require ID when voting by mail. But that's not a big problem, right? Because
00:31:12.740
you could always check the signatures. Oh, wait. In Pennsylvania, they don't check these signatures
00:31:27.140
Huh. So they don't have requirement for ID, and they don't have requirement for signature matching.
00:31:47.300
I don't see that we have a system that can produce a winner.
00:31:50.580
Do you? All right. We did have a system that can produce a winner, but it was predicated on
00:32:02.340
the public thinking that the system was probably pretty solid. And if there were any problems,
00:32:11.300
we could kind of quickly notice them and correct them to the courts if we needed to.
00:32:16.580
That's what I thought. I thought the system was mostly solid. And if there was any problem, we'd
00:32:24.340
probably spot it, correct it eventually. Now, what do you think? Now that we've spent a few years
00:32:31.700
looking into, you know, what 2020 was and wasn't and learning about the different processes,
00:32:38.820
is it obvious to you that the system is designed for the purpose of hiding cheating, not for the
00:32:45.060
purpose of having a fair election? To me, it's really super screamingly obvious that it's designed
00:32:52.580
to hide who won, just in case you need to hide it.
00:32:59.460
This is the way you design it if you were trying to hide the result, not if you were trying to be
00:33:03.700
transparent and make it easily auditable. You wouldn't do it this way. And then you've heard
00:33:09.300
you've heard all the other state rules that clearly are designed to obscure the result. They're so
00:33:18.180
obviously, clearly, screamingly obviously designed to obscure who won. So do you think we're going to
00:33:25.940
have a result where America says, oh, that looks good to me? Yeah, a few little complaints. We'll
00:33:32.260
look into those. But basically, we'll just certify it. I don't think there's a chance.
00:33:38.740
Because it doesn't matter who won. If Trump won, the other side is going to say, Russia
00:33:45.460
gamed the system. If Trump doesn't win, half the country is going to say, well, you did it again.
00:33:54.100
And there's going to be all these stories about precincts that were irregular.
00:34:01.060
So I don't see any possibility with our current setup. Because you know, I always say design is
00:34:07.140
destiny. Our current design, if you add on top of it, the knowledge that now everybody knows all
00:34:14.180
the holes in the system, that wasn't the case in 2020. In 2020, our design held barely. Because
00:34:22.340
somebody did get certified. And somebody did serve on a term. Almost. Right? So I'd say that system
00:34:32.260
worked, but it was really close to not working. But now we've added the knowledge of all the ways that
00:34:38.420
they're obviously trying to hide the result, not reveal the result. Now nobody could trust it.
00:34:44.340
Because everything that the Republicans uncovered, you know, to further their own point of view,
00:34:51.380
is also known by Democrats now. Because the Democrats would also say, but wait a minute,
00:34:56.900
we just lost this election, and you just told us all the ways that elections can be cheated.
00:35:02.900
How do we know you didn't cheat? And the answer is, you don't. You wouldn't know either way.
00:35:09.940
So no, there isn't any chance we could get a result. And we're all we're all blindly just walking toward
00:35:15.700
it. Like that's okay. I think there's a lot of hope, the wishful thinking involved at this point.
00:35:23.380
There isn't really any chance of electing a president that the country agrees was legally elected.
00:35:30.980
That has been removed by the current design of the system. The system is designed to guarantee
00:35:38.900
we don't have a president after the election, at least not one that people agree on.
00:35:42.980
So I don't think that there's going to be a civil war. And the reason is, I'll tell you again. It's
00:35:51.780
funny that this isn't obvious to everybody. Who would you shoot? There's nobody to shoot.
00:35:59.220
Even if you thought there was one precinct that cheated, you wouldn't even really be able to find out
00:36:06.020
who did what, when. Every time you thought you could find somebody to be mad at, like a revolution,
00:36:15.780
we're going to bring some violence and fix everything. Violence against whom? Your neighbor?
00:36:22.740
Your neighbor's fine. They just voted for somebody else. You're not going to kill your neighbor for
00:36:26.900
voting differently than you voted. There's nobody to take it out on. The reason that January 6th was
00:36:33.860
such a weak and ineffective thing is that the best thing they could think of doing was trespassing.
00:36:41.060
If you steal this election again, we're going to trespass again. No, it's worse than that.
00:36:48.020
There might be graffiti involved. We're going to trespass and we're going to move a lectern.
00:36:54.580
We're going to move that lectern and we're going to graffiti. That'll teach you. We'll reverse
00:37:00.500
everything. No, there's nothing to do. There's no lever to pull. There's no button to push.
00:37:06.820
There's nobody to shoot. So when I say I recommend no violence, it's because there's no purpose.
00:37:14.660
We have to figure out some other way because there's nobody to shoot. And there won't be.
00:37:21.620
So leave your guns at home. There's nobody to shoot.
00:37:28.580
So here's a good example of how our two movies on one screen is working. So Kyle Griffin did a post
00:37:36.980
on X that people are reading completely opposite ways. So I'm just going to tell you what his post
00:37:43.780
was. And then I want to see if you do you say this is a pro-Trump post or is it an anti-Trump post?
00:37:53.060
That's the fun. I'll just read it the way it's written. Then you tell me is this pro-Trump or anti?
00:37:58.340
OK, and it's being interpreted both ways by conservatives. All right. So Kyle Griffin posts this.
00:38:05.060
It's just four sentences. Mike Pence isn't voting for Trump. Mitt Romney isn't voting for Trump.
00:38:12.180
Paul Ryan isn't voting for Trump. Dick Cheney isn't voting for Trump. All right. So those are four
00:38:20.980
prominent Republicans not voting for Trump. Is that pro-Trump or anti-Trump?
00:38:28.740
Well, if there's one thing I can teach you, it's that communication doesn't make any sense unless you
00:38:36.900
understand the communicator, the person who said it. If you don't know who said it,
00:38:43.300
then sometimes you can't tell what is sarcasm and what is honest. And if you didn't know that Kyle is
00:38:54.260
pro-Trump as far as everything I've ever seen from him, you might think that he's mocking Trump by
00:39:00.660
saying all these Republicans are against him. If you knew that he would have the opinion, I'm sure.
00:39:07.380
I mean, I'm not a I'm not a mind reader. So I guess I should couch this as my very strong opinion of what
00:39:14.900
Kyle was up to. I think he was showing that the the four least respected Republicans
00:39:22.660
from a MAGA perspective, they would be four of the least respected Republicans
00:39:27.140
are against them. And that's a positive thing. That you would be worried if these four were in
00:39:33.940
favor of Trump. That that would be a red flag for MAGA people. But people were not quite sure if this
00:39:42.820
was pro-Trump or anti-Trump. It is pro-Trump. I feel confident in that opinion.
00:39:49.140
George Bush, George W. Bush said he won't endorse a candidate in 2024. So he didn't go as far as
00:39:58.900
saying he's going to vote for he's going to vote for a Democrat. That was probably the right play. But
00:40:05.220
once again, all five of these Republicans appear to be the big war Republicans. If the big war Republicans
00:40:13.860
don't like Trump, I like Trump better. Vivek Ramaswamy was predicting that, quote,
00:40:22.420
very strange things will happen if if Trump has a good debate and Kamala Harris
00:40:29.460
melts down like some people think she might. And as he says, Vivek says they've already sued and
00:40:37.060
prosecuted him, tried to kick him off the ballot and swap down his opponent.
00:40:41.060
Now, Vivek is smart, so he doesn't say they tried to kill him. It's good to leave that one out,
00:40:49.140
because we don't have a connection, direct connection. But you know, I know all of you
00:40:53.460
are thinking it, aren't you? You're thinking, I don't think it's a total coincidence that a
00:40:58.420
bullet hit the president's ear, or future president, past president. And Vivek says all of it could be a
00:41:07.700
preview of what's to come. I 100% agree. I would imagine the Democrats have a plan A, B, C, and D.
00:41:17.620
If plan A, well, plan A was Biden, I guess, so that didn't work out. Plan B is Kamala Harris.
00:41:26.100
Plan B also includes, you know, trying every hoax and every technique, legal and otherwise,
00:41:33.140
to get rid of Trump. If none of those things work, what exactly is plan D? If A, B, and C didn't work
00:41:42.180
out at all, and we see that they seem to be in an existential crisis, as in they think that they'll
00:41:47.940
all go to jail or be killed or be out of work or something, if Trump comes into office, what would
00:41:54.020
they be willing to do, having done all of those things already, you know, the lawfare, etc.? I don't
00:42:00.660
know, but I'm totally on Vivek's point of view here, which is, if you think they don't have any plans,
00:42:10.660
I think you're totally wrong. I think that assassination plans are actually discussed.
00:42:18.260
Now, not necessarily at the top, you know, I'm not saying that Nancy Pelosi has ever had a,
00:42:23.780
you know, a quiet conversation about, you know, we could, we could maybe set up an assassination.
00:42:29.460
I don't think that's happened. Or at least I prefer to think that that's not likely. But you can't tell
00:42:37.220
me that there's nobody within the entire security state of the United States who hasn't had a serious
00:42:43.540
conversation about that. Nobody? I think somebody has. I don't know who. Again, not at the top,
00:42:51.860
probably. But I got to think that bad people talk about bad things. So it wouldn't surprise me.
00:42:58.900
So yes, buckle up. Whatever happens is going to be interesting.
00:43:03.380
Trust and safety is becoming a key driver of customer experience, influencing how users engage,
00:43:09.860
how safe they feel, and ultimately, how likely they are to return. Because I don't know about you,
00:43:15.460
but if I've had too many bad experiences on a platform, I'm definitely not rushing back for more.
00:43:21.060
This is the intersection we're here to explore today.
00:43:24.260
Tap to keep listening to how trust and safety redefined CX for brands like TikTok, Trustpilot,
00:43:32.740
Well, Trump put out his statement, which I could not be happier about, telling people that when he
00:43:39.940
wins, he's going to go hard on any cheaters in the election. And I would like to just read his
00:43:46.020
statement. All right. So Donald Trump says, cease and desist. I, together with many attorneys and legal
00:43:52.340
scholars, am watching the sanctity of the 2024 presidential election very closely, because I know
00:43:58.420
better than most the rampant cheating and skullduggery that has taken place in the 2020 election.
00:44:05.460
It was a disgrace to our nation. So he goes, therefore, the 2024 election, where votes have
00:44:11.300
just started to be cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny. And then he says, when I win,
00:44:18.340
in all caps, those people that cheated, in all caps, will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,
00:44:24.820
which will include long-term prison sentences, so that this depravity of justice does not happen again.
00:44:34.100
And more stuff about, beware that this legal exposure extends to lawyers, political operatives,
00:44:42.020
donors, illegal voters, and corrupt election officials. So he's making sure everybody knows
00:44:48.260
that if they break the law, the law is coming for them. And they'll be sought and caught and prosecuted
00:44:57.140
at levels unfortunately never seen before in our country. Now, some of you might remember that I
00:45:04.820
suggested it would be a real good idea for the Trump campaign to let the world know that if he gets elected,
00:45:12.500
the election cheaters are going to be in more danger than any election cheater has ever been in before.
00:45:22.420
Now, on top of that, I want to see the whistleblower rewards get punched a little harder,
00:45:30.660
so that Democrats at least have heard the story that they could be in a lot of trouble if they cheat.
00:45:36.340
Now, the funny part is that Gavin Newsom reposted this with trying to do the dictator thing. Oh,
00:45:45.620
this is what a dictator would say. You know, I think he said this shows that Trump plans to lose,
00:45:53.140
you know, then claim it was the cheating, I guess. But all Trump needs is for people to know that he said
00:46:00.660
this. So his win is every time it gets reposted. So if all the Democrats repost it, and say,
00:46:09.940
oh, this is a bad thing he's saying, then all the Democrats watch those posts, hear that they could
00:46:15.940
be in a lot of trouble if they cheat. So the more people complain about this, the better it is,
00:46:21.700
because more people will hear that there's an extra risk of cheating this time. And I'd like to see more
00:46:26.420
attention on the whistleblower awards, so that you know that not only will these prison sentences
00:46:32.740
be extreme, but somebody's going to get paid for turning you in.
00:46:39.700
All right. On top of that, Trump promised that once in office, he would do an executive order
00:46:48.740
to stop any federal employees from colluding to limit free speech. So this would be keeping
00:46:56.420
them from talking to the press or social media to try to change the reporting. And he would fire
00:47:03.460
anybody who was involved with it in the past who was part of the bureaucracy. I like that.
00:47:10.580
NBC News is reporting that people are starting to turn to Trump on the fentanyl question,
00:47:16.580
meaning they think Trump would be a little more of a hard ass on fentanyl.
00:47:21.060
And so people who have been around any fentanyl tragedies, as I have, this would be the
00:47:29.540
month that my stepson died of a fentanyl overdose in 2018.
00:47:38.100
So that's the thing, that even some Democrats are turning toward Trump because the fentanyl thing
00:47:44.340
goes right to the top of your list. If you lose somebody, if you lose somebody to a fentanyl
00:47:49.380
overdose, it will be your number one issue. And so it's the number one issue for an extra 70,000
00:47:58.420
families. So it's 70,000 times, maybe 10 people a piece are, you know, strongly affected by any one
00:48:07.700
death. More people are affected, but for any one death, there's 10 people who really have a bad time
00:48:13.540
with it, you know, on average. So you're talking about 700,000 people a year who have a direct,
00:48:21.780
emotional, hard, hard experience from somebody they know passing away. So that's potentially,
00:48:30.020
that's a lot of votes. And I don't, I don't know if that's being completely captured
00:48:35.060
in the polling. But my take is that it doesn't matter which candidate gets elected, because I
00:48:44.420
don't think, no, I don't think anybody's going to do anything on fentanyl. You know, maybe science will
00:48:49.780
find a way to make it less deadly. I've talked about a number of scientific things to like vaccinations
00:48:55.860
against it, etc. But you know, vaccinations would have its own risk. But I'm quite convinced that
00:49:07.220
some part of the American government has some kind of a deal with the cartels. So the cartels don't
00:49:13.060
need to change what they're doing, and we're not going to bomb them. So you can talk about it. But it
00:49:19.220
looks like maybe the CIA or somebody is going to stop it and say, you know, we kind of need the cartels
00:49:25.860
to control the governments in other countries. And that's more important than 70,000 people dying per
00:49:31.380
year, apparently. So I'm not saying it's more important. I'm saying that must be the argument,
00:49:38.100
that they need it more than they need to stop the fentanyl. And realistically, you could bomb everything
00:49:43.220
in the world and fentanyl would still get through. I mean, if you only need, you know, a bottle cap
00:49:49.220
the size of fentanyl to kill a city, nobody's going to stop that. It's just too small. You could put,
00:49:58.260
you know, even a tiny drone could carry enough fentanyl across the border.
00:50:05.620
There's just no way you can stop fentanyl. Now, I still prefer Trump on this issue,
00:50:11.060
because he's willing to kill people. And I think some people need to get killed.
00:50:17.220
Criminals, dealers. So on average, the bigger dealers, if you're a large dealer,
00:50:22.980
not just some street person, but if you're a large dealer of fentanyl, you've definitely killed people.
00:50:29.140
You are definitely a murderer. And if Trump and the Republicans can get through some,
00:50:35.540
we will kill you if you're in this business and we catch you, I'd be in favor of killing all of them.
00:50:40.980
Fentanyl. Now, is that my logical, well-reasoned opinion? Nope. That's my opinion of somebody who
00:50:49.300
lost the stepson to fentanyl. So I'm in favor, I'll even do it myself. If there's any way I could
00:50:57.540
volunteer to pull the lever to kill dealers who dealt fentanyl, I would volunteer in a heartbeat.
00:51:07.380
Just to watch the life drain out of their eyes, I would love to do it. I will kill all of them. In
00:51:12.980
fact, I'd never get tired of it. If you have a thousand people who need to be killed legally,
00:51:19.220
only legally, and somebody needs to push the button and look in their eyes as the life drains out of it,
00:51:24.820
I'll do that. I'll do that all day long. And I won't even require payment. I'll pull that lever
00:51:32.260
just as much as you want to watch them die. So I prefer Trump on that because I'd like to watch
00:51:37.860
some people die. It's not an opinion that I think you should have. I think you should live your life
00:51:43.620
without these thoughts in your head. But that's where I stand. All right.
00:51:51.860
Matt Walsh has that Am I a Racist movie. I think that's the title, right? The title is Am I a Racist?
00:51:57.780
I hope I got that right. I just saw a trailer for it. It looks good. It looks good. Matt Walsh,
00:52:04.740
even when I disagree with him, which happens now and then, he does good work. Can we all agree on
00:52:11.540
that? Can we agree? He does a good product. His monologues that he does are great. Even when I
00:52:18.660
disagree, I love listening to him. And the trailer for this looks interesting. So in it, he's having a
00:52:26.020
conversation with a woman who's complaining because her daughter always picks the white princesses in the
00:52:33.300
Disney movie. Now, the mother is white and the child is white, but she's trying to make sure her
00:52:39.060
child doesn't become a racist and just randomly prefer white people stuff. And then Matt Walsh is
00:52:46.500
talking to her and he's playing it straight. And he says that his daughter likes Princess Moana or Mona
00:52:55.300
from one of the movies I haven't watched in which I think there's a person of color Hawaiian, I guess,
00:53:01.220
maybe Hawaiian or some other island. And she's the star of that movie. And so Matt Walsh is saying,
00:53:08.100
but if my daughter picks this person of color and this other culture, and she wants to wear that
00:53:14.900
costume for Halloween, would that make her culturally appropriating the culture? And the racist woman is
00:53:25.860
like, hmm, yeah, good point. So if she only picks the white princesses, she is racist. But if she likes
00:53:34.020
the person of color so much that she would want to wear the same outfit, she would be appropriating
00:53:39.860
her culture. So really, there's two ways to be racist and no way to not be. That's not exactly true,
00:53:46.500
but it's funny. Here's an update on Brazil. Let's see. Brazil is trying to destroy an American company
00:53:55.620
and end free speech in the United States by taking out X. So naturally, as you'd expect,
00:54:03.140
the US ambassador to Brazil is very active and trying to... No, I'm just kidding. We haven't
00:54:10.580
heard from the ambassador to Brazil. Nope. Nope. Vacation this week? Maybe on vacation?
00:54:19.940
I don't see a lot coming out of there. Now, this is all from Mike Benz. Mike Benz is watching the
00:54:25.460
situation carefully. And he reminds us that every day we hear nothing from the United States
00:54:31.780
about Brazil banning X and going after Musk and after his assets every day is confirmation that
00:54:39.380
the United States is behind it. It sure looks like the United States is behind it.
00:54:46.100
Now, maybe the United States doesn't back every single thing that Brazil is doing,
00:54:51.380
but clearly they're not trying to stop it, which means that they're preferring
00:54:57.460
some benefit to Brazil over America. So definitely not America first, definitely not free speech.
00:55:05.380
So whoever is in charge of whatever is running this government are not in favor of protecting
00:55:11.780
America, not in favor of protecting American companies, and certainly not in favor of free
00:55:17.380
speech. And these things we can say for sure, because it wouldn't take much to put in a memo that says,
00:55:25.460
you know, you should stop fucking with American companies or some shit's coming your way.
00:55:30.740
That's just normal business. The most normal thing that the United States does is say,
00:55:37.460
you know, if you do it this way, we're going to be your friends. But if you do something this way,
00:55:42.740
suddenly it's going to be hard for you to find trading partners. It's the most basic thing we do. And
00:55:47.700
yet it's not being done. It's not being ignored. It's not being mentioned. It's not being anything.
00:55:52.900
So I would call this a confirmation that Brazil is working with the United States to destroy free
00:56:02.580
speech in the United States. I think you could just say it as a fact. You know, it feels like
00:56:09.060
speculation, but I don't know what the other explanation of our silence is. There's no other explanation.
00:56:15.540
Um, meanwhile, Michael Schellenberger has actually gone to Brazil to be part of, uh, you know, the
00:56:24.660
resistance against this move against X. Um, he does say that the odds of him being jailed
00:56:32.100
are unfortunately pretty high. Now he hasn't been jailed yet. And if he does, we're not going to be
00:56:39.460
happy Brazil. Uh, if you jail Michael Schellenberger, Brazil, you're going to have a fight on your hands.
00:56:48.340
I don't know what that fight is going to look like, but you'd better cancel all your other plans.
00:56:53.540
Cause we're coming for you. Yeah. If you just take one of our Americans and put them in jail,
00:56:58.260
especially a productive one, like Michael Schellenberger. No, we're not going to be happy
00:57:03.380
about that. Just want you to know. Now we might have to wait for Trump to be president.
00:57:09.140
So, you know, worst case scenario, Schellenberger stays in jail for months until there's somebody
00:57:14.580
who can do something about it, but there will be something about it. So I just want to make
00:57:20.580
sure Brazil knows clearly the repercussions of messing with our citizen down there are going
00:57:29.300
to be pretty extreme. It's going to be really expensive, whatever it is, whatever it is.
00:57:37.860
Anyway, um, you know, that story about, uh, Tenet, the company that, uh, allegedly took some
00:57:45.220
secret Russian money and was, uh, funding some, uh, conservative podcasters like Tim Poole and, uh,
00:57:53.060
Dave Rubin and a few others. And, uh, do you think that that's, um, yet another inside job?
00:58:04.180
Because remember the, the Russia collusion hoax was driven by Hillary Clinton. It didn't come from
00:58:10.740
Russia. The lap, the 51 Intel people who lied about Hunter's laptop came again from presumably the
00:58:20.260
Democrat sources. It didn't come from Russia. So now we've got this, you know, mysterious Russian
00:58:27.540
money went into Tenet. Do you think that it was really Russian money that went into it? Or do you
00:58:33.540
think it was CIA or some intelligence group that put money into it? Well, why would they do that?
00:58:41.300
Why would they do that? Well, for this, they would do that so that they could smear the,
00:58:48.260
some of the strongest conservative voices, you know, the ones with big platforms, they could say,
00:58:54.980
well, are you listening to those, uh, Russian stooges? So they create a situation that for a
00:59:01.140
mere $10 million, they can create this fake funding from a fake Russian. And it will look like the people
00:59:10.180
who were part of that platform must be a little bit influenced by Russia. Now there's no evidence
00:59:17.540
that any of them even were aware, much less have any kind of impact on their editorial decisions,
00:59:23.780
which were not. There's no evidence, no accusation that any of them did anything wrong. But does it
00:59:31.700
work as a dirty trick? Yeah, it does. Because there's one more story that Democrats will not look into
00:59:38.420
too deeply. And they'll say to themselves, well, there it is again. It's yet another example of
00:59:44.500
where Trump supporters are working with Russia. I guess, I guess Trump and Putin just want to have,
00:59:51.380
like, a love affair. So it's a little too close to exactly what happened two times before.
00:59:59.380
That right before an election, there, or around an election, there's this, uh, Russian interference story.
01:00:06.420
That's a little bit too on the nose. I wouldn't say that, uh, it was CIA funded, but if Russia funded it,
01:00:16.260
there was no obvious reason for it because Russia apparently didn't change any of the behavior of
01:00:23.860
the people who were hired. Although they think maybe that the owner of the company, Lauren Chen,
01:00:29.460
may have modified her opinions, but I'm not even sure that's proven.
01:00:32.580
Uh, that's an allegation. So it would make more sense if it were an inside job because then it
01:00:40.420
would make more sense that nobody tried to influence Tim Pool and Dave Rubin.
01:00:45.380
Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters August 29th. From the director of
01:00:51.940
Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things comes The Roses, starring Academy Award winner
01:00:57.220
Olivia Colman, Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon,
01:01:02.500
and Allison Janney. A hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred,
01:01:08.260
proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses, only in theaters August 29th.
01:01:16.980
Um, RFK Jr. did a Wall Street Journal article that'd be behind the paywall wall for most of you.
01:01:25.380
So you wouldn't see it, but it's quite detailed. And I wanted, I wanted to share it with you.
01:01:31.780
This might be a little nerdy for some of you, but I want to make the larger case
01:01:36.740
that the reason Kennedy is special, and also Elon Musk, they have this in common. They're systems
01:01:44.980
thinkers. In other words, Elon looks at every system as a machine. This is my interpretation of
01:01:51.540
what anybody with his mind would be doing. And so he can see all the components and you know,
01:01:58.180
knows which parts need to be tweaked to, to fix things. Uh, RFK Jr. is the same kind of mind.
01:02:04.740
So when he says we need to have better food or, uh, safer drugs,
01:02:12.980
he's not just saying I have a goal. He has a specific recommendations.
01:02:25.300
Because I don't think they'll be covered too much. They're a little detailed.
01:02:30.100
But they all have the following, um, they all have the following quality.
01:02:33.620
Uh, they change the incentives. So our current systems have an incentive structure that just
01:02:40.980
guarantees bad behavior. And it wouldn't be hard to figure out where those incentives are and remove
01:02:47.940
them. So rather than just saying, oh, food should be healthy and, uh, drugs should be tested better.
01:02:56.420
And then nobody knows what to do. He gives very specific things
01:03:00.900
things to change the motivation of the people involved. And that, that should create the right
01:03:09.140
set of, uh, activities. So one is, uh, reform the prescription drug user free act. Um, so right now,
01:03:18.180
pharmaceutical companies pay, uh, for a new drug approval. Uh, every time they apply for new drug
01:03:25.140
people, um, about 75% of the budget goes to the FDA. So there's this gigantic expense to introduce
01:03:36.660
new drug. Most of it goes to the FDA, which makes a small drug firm, almost impossible to do any
01:03:43.700
business. So the first problem is that the, the big players have a big money advantage. So you take that
01:03:51.220
away. And now you have at least the possibility that you would have lower cost, better drug people
01:03:57.540
coming in who didn't have that much money to, to do this thing. That's a system. That's a change of
01:04:05.060
incentives. And that makes sense. Uh, he wants to prohibit members of the U S department of agricultural
01:04:12.180
dietary committee, advisory committee. God, these are long names. This is the United States
01:04:17.780
Department of Agriculture dietary guidelines, advisory committee, uh, wants them to not make
01:04:24.900
money from food or drug companies. Well, why would they make money from food and drug companies? Well,
01:04:30.820
it turns out that 95% of the panel had conflicts of interest. Oh my God. 95% of the panel had conflicts
01:04:41.060
of interest. In other words, they made money from people they were supposedly managing.
01:04:47.780
If you will, um, reviewing direct to consumer pharma ads in other countries, you can't advertise
01:04:56.180
direct to the consumer. And that's probably a good idea. That makes sense because then people get all
01:05:02.500
worked up on the drug commercials and go beat up their doctors to give them the drug. And that's not
01:05:06.820
the way you want to do medicine. You don't want the customer telling the doctor what to do.
01:05:12.260
Um, change federal regulations so that the, uh, NIH funds, uh, can't go to researchers with
01:05:22.020
conflicts of interest. Okay. So it's another conflict of interest thing. Uh, also make sure that we can
01:05:28.260
negotiate on drug costs. So today in Germany, Ozempic costs less than a 10th of what it does in the U S. Do you
01:05:35.940
know why? Why does Ozempic cost one 10th of what it costs the United States? Because Germany negotiated
01:05:44.100
the price. That's it. And we're not allowed to do that. It's a 10 to one advantage just because we
01:05:52.180
have the wrong law. We're not allowed to do it. So just change that. And then we can get lower costs.
01:05:58.980
Presumably the other countries would pay more because right now we're subsidizing other countries
01:06:04.740
massively by making sure the pharma companies can stay in business and then they can sell,
01:06:10.100
sell Germany. They're cheap Ozempic because it's just a little extra.
01:06:16.580
All right. That's good idea. Um, stop allowing the beneficiaries of the supplemental nutrition
01:06:22.980
assistant program to use their food stamps by soda or processed foods to which I say that
01:06:28.900
was ever allowed. The government is funding people to buy food and beverages that are literally
01:06:35.860
unhealthy. Yeah. How about if you're on some kind of government assistance, the only thing those
01:06:43.300
dollars can go to are things that are healthy food. Yeah, I'm down for that. And by the way,
01:06:50.180
it makes me want to go on food stamps or something because then I could get only healthy food.
01:06:54.580
It would force me to do it. Although I'm, I eat pretty healthy now. Uh,
01:06:58.660
apparently there are a whole bunch of, uh, pesticides that are legal in the United States,
01:07:03.300
but illegal in Europe. And, uh, uh, Kennedy thinks we should get closer to the European model there.
01:07:12.020
And, uh, uh, I guess a glyphosate isn't currently banned in the EU. Uh, but some of the
01:07:21.540
members don't use it, I guess. All right. So what do you think of those ideas in concept?
01:07:32.500
In concept, could you ever disagree with people not having a conflict of interest?
01:07:39.220
I feel like that's just sort of obvious, right? The, uh, don't advertise drugs to consumers who don't,
01:07:46.660
you know, don't know what they're getting. That feels okay. So some of these feel pretty good.
01:07:53.700
I don't know if they're a full solution, but everything he says has a, you know, a common sense element to it.
01:08:05.300
All right. I got a question for you. Uh, this is a thinker.
01:08:08.260
So you're going to immediately laugh because you think it's a joke, but then I'm going to say, but is it, is it a joke?
01:08:19.780
Tell me why it wouldn't work. All right. Here's the joke. If Democrats think that raising taxes on rich people is good,
01:08:29.940
Because if you can't get everybody to pay more taxes, can't you at least get the rich Democrats to pay more taxes?
01:08:40.980
So now you laugh and you say, ah, that's pretty funny, you know, but, but we're one country.
01:08:46.100
You know, you have to have one set of rules for everybody.
01:08:52.420
No, I don't, I don't believe there's anything that requires us to have the same set of rules for everybody.
01:09:03.380
No, you can't be a hundred years old and have no legs and be drafted into the military.
01:09:14.820
No, pretty much your entire world decides who can and who can't for everything.
01:09:20.900
Right. So, no, we can bifurcate, we can divide, we can treat people differently.
01:09:29.300
But what's the reason that the handicapped people have handicapped parking?
01:09:41.620
But if you have a reason, the society is very open to treating people differently.
01:09:49.060
If Democrats think it's a better world when rich people pay taxes,
01:09:54.900
it's at least half as good or half as much better if at least the Democrats pay more taxes.
01:10:02.420
Now, you might say to me, but Scott, that's not going to be fair
01:10:06.100
because those taxes will go to benefit Republicans as well as Democrats.
01:10:13.380
Why couldn't you, for example, say we'll increase taxes on rich Democrats, but that money will only go to reparations?
01:10:30.180
Democrats think that reparations make sense and that rich people have enough money to pay it.
01:10:35.220
The people who want the reparations think that they should get them.
01:10:41.060
So then you would pair the people who want to pay it with the people who want to be paid it.
01:10:48.020
Now, you might say to me, but Scott, what about the problem of not all white people got some benefit from slavery?
01:10:56.740
To which I say, that's not a problem now because all the Democrats don't care about that.
01:11:01.380
You know, they just see that there's a difference in equity and outcome and they want to balance it.
01:11:07.860
But, but, but what about, no, there's no what abouts.
01:11:11.380
Once you've paired the ones who want to pay with the ones who want to get paid, it's just a question of the number.
01:11:25.220
Why is it that California can potentially consider reparations that would just be in California?
01:11:34.420
That's the, that's sort of somewhat arbitrarily saying, we're going to look at this group of people and tax them more than the people in the state next to us.
01:11:46.260
This is completely acceptable, normal, reproducible behavior that we treat groups differently.
01:11:51.960
So let's treat the Democrats who want higher taxes on the rich, give them exactly what they want, higher taxes on their own rich.
01:12:01.640
And then nobody else has to pay reparations either.
01:12:04.960
It just comes out of the higher taxes on the Democrats.
01:12:12.320
I literally described everybody getting what they want.
01:12:15.060
Now, if you're not sold yet, I'll get, let me give you a, um, sort of a mental, let's see, a mental experiment.
01:12:26.680
Let's say that tomorrow, uh, Putin said, if you're a Trump supporter, you can move to Russia and we'll give you all $10 million.
01:12:38.520
So all the conservatives just pack up and legally, legally, they just move right to Russia.
01:12:45.080
So now the United States is nothing but Democrats who want reparations and want to have higher taxes to pay them.
01:12:52.620
So they immediately change the law and then it's only Democrats left and they pay higher taxes and they pay reparations.
01:13:09.740
So if it works, if you take all the Republicans out of the country, why wouldn't it work if you just ignored them all?
01:13:19.940
Because every Republican would be okay with being ignored on that topic.
01:13:26.460
You're going to ignore me in terms of taxes, so I don't need to pay more taxes, but you're also going to ignore me about who's getting the benefit of those taxes that I'm not paying anyway.
01:13:45.940
So there might be other things like somebody said abortion.
01:13:51.960
This one's a real test to see if you have honest opinions that make sense or if you just have brainwashed-based opinions.
01:14:04.240
Suppose the country agreed that Democrats could have abortions on demand with no restrictions, but Republicans could not.
01:14:17.240
Then Democrats get what they want, which is to kill their own babies, and Republicans get what they want, which is in the Republican world, it's illegal, so it doesn't happen, and there are fewer Democrats because the Democrats are killing their own potential offspring.
01:14:36.780
Now, see, this is why this is a good test for your own thinking.
01:14:45.880
If you said to yourself, I'm fine with Democrats killing their own babies, then I submit to you that you don't care about abortion.
01:14:56.300
I submit to you that if you can hold that opinion, that it'd be okay for the people you don't like to kill their babies, as long as people who are like you are not doing it, then you don't have a problem with abortion.
01:15:13.060
If you're going to be honest, that's not a problem with abortion, because you would be opposed to it no matter who did it where, if you were opposed to abortion.
01:15:24.740
But as soon as I said, well, let the Democrats kill their own babies, as long as people like you are okay and don't have that option, the moment you say that's okay, you're revealing yourself that it's not really about abortion.
01:15:49.760
I think it's time to let everybody go back and enjoy their Sunday.
01:15:53.400
I'm going to say a few words to the fine subscribers on Locals.
01:16:00.200
For the rest of you, I think you know that if you went to Dilbert.com, you could pre-order the Dilbert calendar for 2025, made in America for the first time.
01:16:10.100
And get more than one, and the shipping costs will be far more reasonable then.
01:16:15.180
And I would also recommend, if you're subscribing to the Dilbert comic that's available on X by subscription, see my profile for the link, for the subscription link, and also on Locals, that today's Sunday Dilbert Reborn comic is one of the funniest I've ever read.
01:16:36.160
In my opinion, in my opinion, I looked at it again this morning to look at the final art, and I laughed out loud at my own comic.
01:16:45.640
Now, I don't often laugh out loud, like a full hearty laugh, but I did today, so I hope you enjoy it.
01:16:56.320
Rumble and YouTube and X, thanks for joining, and you'll be cut off in about 30 seconds.