Net neutrality has come to an end, which means that Armageddon is upon us. All the children will die, the seals will wither in the sun, and all of the terrible things will happen. Or maybe not. In this episode, I try and be as objective as possible about this, and lay out the argument in favor of one side, and the argument against the other side. I also talk about why I come down on the side that I came down on yesterday, and why I don't see a problem with the internet if there is an oligopoly or monopoly in any area of the internet because you can pass a premium service to other sites because you want to load faster than other sites, and then you pay so that you can have access to Netflix. This is all common sense! To get your no-cost, no-obligation kit, go to birchgold.co/joinnow and get a 16-page free kit revealing how you can protect your savings and move your IRA or 401k out of stocks and bonds and into a precious metals IRA. If you want an actual asset, we re good to go, go over there, check it out, ask all your questions, then when you feel secure to invest, then you know that they know that you re safe to own something that s not only gold and silver, but they know you ll be safe to hold it forever. Ben Shapiro - The Ben Shapiro Show Subscribe today using our podcast s promo code: "THEBENSPY" at checkout. Learn more about your ad discount code: and get 20% off your first month only when you buy a course discount when you receive $5 or a maximum of $25 or a course promo code, VIP VIP membership when you get a course starting starting starting at $24 or $24 and they get a discount of $39 or $48,99 and they receive $4,99 gets a discount offer, they also get a pop quiz and she gets $24,99, they get it all she gets a promo code? That s code: VIPREALIST WEEKEND AND A MONTH AND VIP WEEKEND PRICING WEEKEND RODE WEEKEND ENVIEW AND VIP PRICED WEEKEND GET VIP PRICKET AND A FOG DAY AND VIP RISE AND A VIP PRINGET AND MONTH PRODE AND A MISSION AND A CHECK AND A PRISTOR WEEKEND OFF WEEKEND?
00:00:23.000It's a Friday, so we're all in a good mood here around the office, and hence the Last Jedi reference.
00:00:28.000I've not seen it, so I can't spoil anything about Last Jedi, except I do know that Luke's mechanical hand from Return of the Jedi has now been replaced with a flipper, like a dolphin flipper.
00:00:53.000You'll have to choose between your two firstborn children as to which one will be sacrificed to AOL and which one will be sacrificed to Verizon.
00:01:00.000You will have to make these decisions.
00:01:02.000At least this is what we have learned in the last 24 hours after a set of regulations that really didn't end up doing much was just abolished by the FCC.
00:01:10.000We'll get to all of that, but first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Birch Gold.
00:01:14.000So right now, does it seem like there's a lot of uncertainty in the world?
00:01:17.000And one of the reasons it should feel like there's a lot of uncertainty in the world is because no one knows what the heck is going on any of the time, right?
00:01:23.000Whether we're talking foreign policy, whether we're talking natural disasters, or whether we're just talking the markets, where it seems like Bitcoin is riding the roller coaster.
00:01:52.000Contact Birchgold Group right now and you get a 16-page free kit revealing how gold and silver can protect your savings and how you can legally move your IRA or 401k out of stocks and bonds and into a precious metals IRA.
00:02:03.000To get your no-cost, no-obligation kit, go to birchgold.com slash ben.
00:02:28.000I did an interview with Ajit Pai, the head of the FCC, the guy who was most responsible for getting rid of net neutrality, and I think that his answers were relatively good.
00:02:35.000There are decent arguments on both sides for net neutrality.
00:02:38.000I'm going to try and be as objective as possible about this, and lay out the argument for one side, and then lay out the argument for the other side, and then tell you why I come down on the side that I come down.
00:03:11.000They compete with one another, and one of the things that they want to do is they want the ability to privilege certain content above other content when it comes to charging them.
00:03:19.000The reason for this is that, basically right now, Netflix, for example, takes up an enormous amount of bandwidth for whatever ISP it is working with, and that drives up the price for bandwidth for smaller providers.
00:03:30.000So it is quite possible that an ISP may launch that wants to charge Netflix more per byte of data, and therefore,
00:03:38.000Drive the price down for the other people who are using the internet, right?
00:03:42.000Or it's possible that the ISP may say to Netflix, listen, you want to load faster than other sites, you can pass a premium.
00:03:49.000I don't see a huge problem with any of this.
00:03:51.000The only problem with any of this is if there is a monopoly or an oligopoly.
00:03:54.000And here's the argument in favor of net neutrality.
00:03:56.000So let's say that you only have one internet service provider in your area.
00:03:59.000The reason that you probably only have one internet service provider in your area is because a lot of local government regulations make it difficult to build an ISP.
00:04:06.000In order to lay down broadband, you actually have to have government rights of way, and a lot of local governments will put conditions on the various companies that want to come in.
00:04:14.000So that creates a sort of oligopoly situation.
00:04:16.000The idea here is, let's say that there's Comcast, and Comcast owns Netflix.
00:04:20.000So let's just say they bought Netflix.
00:04:22.000And they want to help Netflix, but they want to hurt Hulu.
00:04:24.000So they slow down artificially the speed on Hulu, encouraging people to subscribe to Netflix instead of subscribing to Hulu.
00:04:52.000You don't need to basically mandate that all traffic be treated the same or be charged the same because, again, maybe you want to charge Netflix more because it's taking up more bandwidth.
00:05:01.000Maybe you want to charge the pornography company that's taking up an enormous amount of bandwidth on your computer more.
00:05:05.000Maybe you want to do all of those things.
00:05:07.000So, everybody who is in favor of net neutrality says, well, the ISPs shouldn't be allowed to do that.
00:05:12.000When you buy an internet uplink, then you should basically get all the pages at the same rate and for a given price.
00:05:18.000But the truth is that you're actually redistributing costs, right?
00:05:20.000Let's say that my grandmother doesn't use Netflix.
00:05:23.000Well, her internet price, the price that Comcast is charging for her, is actually going to be higher than it normally would be if, for example, they could divide out Netflix and have you pay a subscription fee for a faster internet service that gets Netflix faster.
00:05:47.000One is that oligopoly means that the government has to come in and regulate the ISPs so that they don't strangle Netflix or YouTube or any other outlet that they want to strangle.
00:05:56.000And people against net neutrality say, well, if you actually want to foster competition in the ISP space, if you want a proper distribution of cost, then you actually need to let competition take over.
00:06:05.000Now, in order for competition to take over, it's not enough for the federal government just to get rid of net neutrality.
00:06:09.000The federal government also needs to encourage all of these companies to start investing in local areas, and local governments need to start encouraging all of these ISPs to invest in building new broadband networks.
00:06:22.000The reason I come down against net neutrality is because I don't think that the answer to oligopoly is more oligopoly.
00:06:29.000Once you enshrine the idea and create barriers to entry, that every piece of data has to be treated the same, then what is the comparative advantage of a small startup company as opposed to Comcast?
00:07:14.000And it's very interesting to me that a lot of the same people who are deeply concerned with big corporations like Comcast strangling various companies they don't like are seemingly unconcerned about Facebook or YouTube or Twitter strangling political positions they don't like.
00:07:29.000Twitter routinely knocks people offline for things that Twitter doesn't like.
00:07:33.000Well, demonetize videos they don't like.
00:07:34.000Our friends at places like Louder With Crowder and Dave Rubin, they've been demonetized.
00:07:38.000Prager University has been demonetized by YouTube.
00:07:40.000I don't see the same people who are complaining about net neutrality complaining that YouTube is not treating all content the same.
00:07:46.000They're all in favor of all content being treated the same when it comes to their favorite outlets.
00:07:52.000But when it comes to their favorite political views, they have nothing to say.
00:10:48.000You might pay a little bit more if you use Netflix a lot, and you pay a little bit less if you don't use Netflix a lot, which seems fair to me, frankly.
00:10:55.000If you don't understand how this works, think about bundled cable.
00:10:57.000Basically, net neutrality is bundled cable.
00:10:59.000You have to pay one price for everything.
00:11:01.000And if you get rid of net neutrality, even according to the worst-case scenario people,
00:11:06.000The idea here would be they get to pick and choose which ISP to use based on the services that it provides.
00:11:12.000And number one, I don't think that's actually going to happen, but even if it did happen, I'm not sure that it's the end of the world.
00:11:30.000Bernie Sanders, I'm not sure, knows what a computer is.
00:11:32.000But here is Bernie Sanders, the socialist, talking about why net neutrality matters, despite the fact that the internet is the greatest and freest and most open market in the history of mankind.
00:11:51.000It will give huge advantages to big corporations over small businesses, big media companies over smaller media outlets.
00:11:59.000We've got to do everything we can to defeat this thing in the courts and defeat it legislatively.
00:12:05.000Okay, so now they're talking about going to the courts.
00:12:06.000First of all, Democrats can't go to the courts, okay?
00:12:08.000Administrative decisions like this are not appealable.
00:12:10.000If Bernie Sanders wants net neutrality, he can damn well push for it in Congress, which, by the way, is where it should have been pushed for in the first place.
00:12:18.000Regulating the internet, like the DWP under Title II, regulating it like a telephone company under Title II makes no sense legally.
00:12:27.000If you want to do this, do it through Congress.
00:12:29.000In a second, I'm going to explain, I'm going to let, really, Ajit Pai, the head of the FCC, explain why it is that net neutrality is a bad idea.
00:12:37.000But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at FilterBuy.com.
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00:14:19.000If there's only one internet service provider in your area, then shouldn't net neutrality be a thing, right?
00:14:24.000Shouldn't we force that oligopoly to treat all internet traffic the same so it can't strangle off Hulu, or Netflix, or YouTube, or whichever app it wants to in favor of its own content?
00:14:36.000Number one, I agree that we need more competition and that's why over the last 11 months that I've been in office as the chairman of the FCC, we've undertaken a number of initiatives to promote a lot more competition.
00:14:46.000Getting more wireless spectrum out there for wireless carriers to use.
00:14:49.000Making it easier for smaller fiber providers to enter the marketplace.
00:14:52.000Getting the next generation of satellite companies into the marketplace to provide an alternative to the terrestrial folks.
00:14:57.000So we're promoting more competition that way.
00:14:59.000Number two, ironically, these heavy-handed internet regulations imposed by the FCC in 2015
00:15:09.000It's already hard as it is for a lot of these smaller Internet service providers to build a business case for deploying Internet infrastructure, especially in rural and low-income urban areas.
00:15:17.000These regulations make it even harder.
00:15:19.000In the last week alone, I've spoken to small Internet service providers that nobody has ever heard of from Minnesota, Montana, who have said that these regulations make it harder to raise capital.
00:15:30.000And the statistic that Ajay Pai really cites here, and the one that makes the most sense, we can stop him there.
00:15:38.000Well, what makes the most sense, he's talked about this.
00:15:40.000He says that among our nation's 12 largest internet service providers, domestic broadband capital expenditures decreased by 5.6% or $3.6 billion between 2014 and 2016, the first two years of the Title II era.
00:15:52.000The point being that as soon as net neutrality hit,
00:15:54.000All of the ISPs basically assumed that all the competition was wiped out.
00:15:58.000The major ISPs assumed that there was no reason for them to spend anymore because new regulations would be coming down the pike, forcing them to spend.
00:16:04.000And so they stopped spending on broadband.
00:16:05.000They stopped doing upkeep on their broadband and making it faster and making it better.
00:16:09.000A free market makes competition better.
00:16:11.000He explained yesterday, as this thing was repealed, 3-2, he explained his net neutrality decision.
00:16:19.000I mean, he's been hit with an enormous number of death threats over this whole thing.
00:16:22.000Returning to the legal framework that governed the Internet from President Clinton's pronouncement in 1996 until 2015 is not going to destroy the Internet.
00:16:32.000It is not going to end the Internet as we know it.
00:16:37.000It is not going to stifle free expression online.
00:16:41.000If stating these propositions alone doesn't demonstrate their absurdity, our Internet experience before 2015 and our Internet experience tomorrow, once this order passes, will prove them so.
00:16:53.000Simply put, by returning to the light-touch Title I framework, we are helping consumers and promoting competition.
00:17:00.000Broadband providers will have stronger incentives to build networks, especially in unserved areas, and to upgrade networks to gigabit speeds and 5G.
00:17:09.000This means there will be more competition among broadband providers.
00:17:13.000It also means more ways that startups and tech giants alike can deliver applications and content to more users.
00:17:20.000In short, it is a freer and more open Internet.
00:17:24.000OK, so, you know, this is the case that he's making, people make the opposite case, but one thing that is clear is that it's not going to destroy the Internet.
00:17:29.000And so CNN's crazed headlines about this and the Democrats' crazed talk about this, it's a wild exaggeration.
00:17:35.000How a regulatory issue that had very little impact on how the Internet actually worked between 2015 and 2017, how that became a life-or-death scenario, just demonstrates the level of hysteria
00:17:44.000For people who really don't understand what the issue is, even on the most basic level.
00:18:01.000First of all, I feel like every time Jimmy Kimmel speaks politics now, he should be morally obligated to bring out his baby, to trot out his child, since he obviously makes emotional appeals on every... What he really should do, if he's not going to bring out his own kid to talk healthcare, what he really should do is he should bring out a poor homeless urchin, street urchin, who will no longer be able to access internet at the public library for purposes of pornography, and he should just drape his arm around him, and then he should say, this poor child will no longer have internet because of net neutrality.
00:18:29.000He basically did that last night just without the poor street urchin.
00:18:31.000Again, I don't know what qualifies Jimmy Kimmel to talk about these things.
00:18:34.000And I'm happy for Jimmy Kimmel to, you know, have a debate with somebody who knows about it.
00:18:39.000But Jimmy Kimmel doesn't want to do any of those things.
00:18:40.000He just wants to read Chuck Schumer agitprop.
00:19:44.000And here is Jimmy Kimmel talking on ABC's Airwaves, on what is basically an oligopoly, right?
00:19:49.000ABC was allowed to dominate the Airwaves because it was one of three networks for most of its history.
00:19:55.000And here he is talking about, oh, those corporations, they're going to be controlling everything, those big corporations, because you know who doesn't know anything about big corporations?
00:20:02.000And I love when he says that, like, Grandma and her crochet website, that's the one that's gonna pay the price for net neutrality being done away with.
00:20:10.000The whole point is that Netflix, Google, YouTube oppose it, not Grandma with her crochet website.
00:20:14.000No one cares about Grandma's crochet website.
00:20:16.000You'd think that Verizon's sitting around going, aha, now we got Grandma in the crosshairs, we're gonna make her pay up.
00:20:21.000I mean, she wants her crochet website up there?
00:20:27.000What he's saying doesn't even make any sense.
00:20:29.000And it neglects the fact that there are big corporations on both sides of this.
00:20:32.000Like, we're going to have a giant fight.
00:20:33.000Dave Burge, Iowa hawk, had a great tweet on this.
00:20:35.000He basically said, I never thought that the end of the world was going to come over the people who actually provide the content to social media arguing over who should benefit from their content provision.
00:20:44.000The ISPs or the companies like Facebook.
00:23:14.000It'll be the weeping of the evening, every single time.
00:23:18.000Okay, so, before I go any further, I'm going to talk about Russian investigation followed by President Trump making a comment this morning that was
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00:24:58.000There is more fallout from the Russian investigation today.
00:25:02.000That fallout comes in the form of President Trump and other Republicans now looking to basically curb the Mueller investigation on the back of revelations that people involved in the Mueller investigation have a political bias all their own, which, honestly, we sort of knew.
00:25:18.000And what you're seeing is that Trump's allies are now coming out of the woodwork and saying that Mueller needs to pause the probe, that Mueller needs to stop the probe.
00:25:27.000Mueller needs to go forward with the probe, and then when he comes up with nothing, or even if he comes up with something minor, we can all kick back and say, listen, guys, you came up with something minor after a year of investigation, and your team is corrupt.
00:25:39.000Clinton was able to do this very aptly, politically speaking, with Ken Starr, who did not run a corrupt investigation, and who did come up with actual perjury.
00:25:47.000Right, so I don't see the point in cutting off the investigation short, and yet you're seeing advocates for Trump basically say this, and it comes off as fear.
00:25:54.000To people who are in the middle, it comes off as fear that Mueller's going to find something, even if it really isn't, even if it's just that this investigation is fatally flawed.
00:26:01.000If something is fatally flawed, right, if you've already gutshot the investigation, there's no need to give the headshot.
00:26:07.000Now, I'm not calling for Mueller to be fired.
00:26:09.000But at the very least, he needs to put the brakes on this investigation, at least pause it for a bit.
00:26:12.000I agree with what Alan Dershowitz said on my radio show this morning.
00:26:34.000It's time for a respected, independent expert to come in and thoroughly examine the individuals conducting this probe and fire anyone inside who evinces even a hint of an appearance of a confidant.
00:26:48.000Okay, so this last call that she's making is the correct one.
00:26:50.000The last thing that Ingram is saying here is absolutely correct.
00:26:53.000Jim Jordan, friendly with Representative Jordan from the great state of Ohio, he went after Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General.
00:26:59.000He said, listen, is it time for a second special counsel to look into how Mueller is doing this investigation?
00:27:03.000I mean, what we're learning now is that half of his team was compromised.
00:27:32.000Think about what we've learned in the last several weeks.
00:27:35.000We first learned they paid for the dossier, then we learned about Peter Strzok, and last week we learned about Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie.
00:27:44.000What's it going to take to get a second special counsel to answer these questions and find out, was Peter Strzok really up to what I think he was?
00:27:52.000But that doesn't dismiss the fact that the country thinks we need a second special counsel.
00:27:56.00020 members of this committee, the Judiciary Committee with primary jurisdiction over the Justice Department thinks we need a second special counsel.
00:28:02.000All kinds of senators think we need a special counsel.
00:28:06.000What fact pattern do you have to have?
00:28:07.000What kind of text message do you have to see before you say, it's time for a second special counsel?
00:28:12.000OK, so this is, I think, a valuable call that's happening.
00:28:15.000I think it is worthwhile, and I think that the Republicans are doing the right thing.
00:28:19.000What I don't think is worthwhile is President Trump intervening himself.
00:28:22.000So he was asked today about whether he was going to pardon Michael Flynn.
00:28:24.000Michael Flynn, of course, the former national security adviser who has now pled guilty to lying to the FBI.
00:28:30.000As I've said before, I don't think that Michael Flynn apparently lied to the FBI about anything substantive, from what we know.
00:28:34.000It sounds like he lied about having called the Russian government while he was already in the transition team about an upcoming UN vote on Israel and settlements.
00:28:43.000I don't see anything there that is particularly noteworthy, and I'm not sure why Flynn lied to the FBI in the first place.
00:28:49.000Trump may very well want to pardon Flynn, but it's not smart for him to say so because it looks right now like Flynn is working with the FBI, and so Trump's statement here that he might pardon Flynn makes it look like he's trying to bribe Flynn not to talk to the FBI with a pardon offer.
00:29:01.000Would you consider a pardon for Michael Flynn?
00:29:03.000I don't want to talk about pardons for Michael Flynn yet.
00:29:18.000Okay, so that is not particularly smart by the president because now he's opened that can of worms.
00:29:21.000The White House tried to close that can of worms again today when Ty Cobb, not the great baseball player with the .367 lifetime average, Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer with the crazy mustache, that guy came out and he said that Trump really has no intention of pardoning Flynn.
00:29:34.000For the moment, that's the line that Trump needs to stick to so it doesn't look like he's obstructing, particularly when Vladimir Putin is doing his best to undermine Trump's credibility.
00:29:43.000This is one area where I think Trump really needs to be more careful.
00:29:46.000If Vladimir Putin is playing this game with Trump, he knows Trump's mentality is that Trump loves praise.
00:30:52.000So Putin's whole game here is not that he loves Trump or that he's trying to help the United States get through a difficult period in politics.
00:31:03.000His game is that he's trying to basically bribe Trump with praise, and Trump is susceptible to that.
00:31:09.000That Vladimir Putin, and he had a very nice call, and Putin told him that he was very happy that Trump's economy was doing so well.
00:31:14.000Like, Putin knows how to play this game.
00:31:16.000It's foolish of Trump to fall into that, and Trump should resist the urge, both on Flynn and on Putin.
00:31:21.000Like, just back off it, Mr. President, especially when you're doing some good things, because the President is doing some good things, okay?
00:31:27.000So, yesterday at the White House, the President did a ceremonial cutting of red tape, and it got made fun of on Twitter a lot, but
00:31:33.000Who cares about what gets, everything gets made fun of on Twitter.
00:31:35.000You know, President Trump had all of these papers stacked of apparently regulations.
00:31:41.000There were some questions about whether all of those pages actually had printed material on them.
00:31:45.000You remember that President Trump very early on in his presidency, I think it was maybe even before he took presidency, during his transition, he brought out a bunch of folders that he said were all of his Trump
00:31:56.000Contracts, and that he was going to basically hand those over to his son, and that he was going to disassociate.
00:32:02.000And then it turned out that half those folders were filled with empty paper.
00:32:04.000Well, I don't know if this paper was empty or not, but it is true that the president has cut a massive amount of regulation.
00:32:09.000So yesterday at the White House, he cut a literal red tape with a giant scissors, because this is the kind of schtick we do now in politics.
00:32:26.000And when we're finished, which won't be in too long a period of time, we will be less than where we were in 1960, and we will have a great regulatory climate.
00:33:33.000And not only that, the Fed is raising the rates again.
00:33:36.000So the Fed has been tightening up the monetary flow.
00:33:39.000Inflation is going to be brought under control, and the economy continues to be strong.
00:33:44.000Some of that is on President Obama and the Republican Congress before Trump, but obviously there's a lot of confidence in how the economy is working right now, and that is at least in large part due to President Trump.
00:34:28.000Okay, you should not make your own agenda toxic this way.
00:34:31.000And that's why it's very important that the president should be focusing in on his own accomplishments like a laser.
00:34:36.000He should be focusing in on the things he's doing like a laser.
00:34:38.000He should not be making himself more unpopular with foolish statements like the one that he made today about Mike Flynn.
00:34:43.000He should not be engaging on Twitter as much.
00:34:46.000Honest to God, if somebody unplugged the man's phone and it just, the battery ran down,
00:34:50.000Or if Comcast decided to cut off Twitter, but just for the White House, then his popularity ratings would jump rather dramatically.
00:34:59.000Because the fact is, the Democrats have nothing here, right?
00:35:00.000Nancy Pelosi was saying that the GOP — like, she's trying to make the case the GOP tax bill is a Pyrrhic victory, that it's going to end the Republicans.
00:35:07.000There has never been a tax reduction in history that has redounded to the negative effect of Republicans, ever.
00:35:49.000Democrats have been trying this for years.
00:35:50.000All the anti-tax cut rhetoric is a bunch of nonsense.
00:35:53.000And so that's why, if Trump's agenda were the main focus here, as opposed to whatever Trump says today, he'd be doing a lot better, and so would the conservative agenda.
00:36:00.000Because he's been a lot more conservative than I thought he would be as president.
00:36:06.000But I want to see all of that at the top of the page, not all of the other nonsense that seems to cloud our judgment.
00:36:11.000Okay, so I have a lot to get to today.
00:36:13.000We have the mailbag today, things I like, things I hate, still a lot on the docket here.
00:36:18.000But for all of that, you're going to have to go over and subscribe at dailywire.com.
00:36:20.000So for $9.99 a month, you can get a subscription to dailywire.com.
00:36:24.000When you do, you not only get my show live, you get the rest of Andrew Klaven's show live, you get the rest of Michael Knowles' show live, and you can be part of the mailbag.
00:36:54.000If you just want to listen later, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, Stitcher, any of the podcast apps we are available on.
00:36:59.000Plus, please subscribe over at YouTube to our channel because we have some new videos coming out.
00:37:03.000One we filmed yesterday is patently absurd, but you will definitely want to see it.
00:37:07.000I'm not going to give any clues because it would give away the joke, but suffice it to say, there will be images of me that I would rather not be on the internet.
00:37:14.000That will be available probably next week.
00:37:40.000The reason that I picked this is not only because it's fun, but this particular segment of Beethoven, if you don't hear snidely whiplash in here, like Beethoven is so modern that when you listen to his music, especially his late music, what you will hear is all of these film references that you never had thought about before, and you'll hear where they came from.
00:38:53.000He was mostly famous for improvisation.
00:38:54.000So everybody thinks of classical music as being very staid, and it's all written on the page, as opposed to jazz, which is improvisational.
00:39:10.000They would basically have improvisation offs.
00:39:12.000Like, they would actually have a couple of pianists in a room.
00:39:14.000One person would improvise, and the other person would have to do something cooler with improvisation.
00:39:18.000There's a famous story about Beethoven where he was in a bad mood one day, and somebody invited him to one of these parties and wanted him to play.
00:39:24.000And he was not into it, and he lost to some guy.
00:39:29.000And then the guy called for a rematch.
00:39:31.000And in the rematch, the guy who he was improvising against, that guy made a mistake.
00:39:36.000He took one of Beethoven's themes and started improvising off one of Beethoven's themes as a way to mock Beethoven.
00:39:40.000The guy had also premiered a new piece of his.
00:39:42.000Beethoven went over to the cellist in the new piece, took the cellist's music, turned it upside down, and then improvised off the guy's music upside down.
00:39:51.000So that's how talented a musician Beethoven was.
00:39:55.000You can't say enough about the greatness of Beethoven's genius.
00:39:59.000Okay, time for a couple of things I hate and then we'll go mailbag.
00:40:06.000OK, so first thing that I hate, there's this video going around yesterday that's just insane.
00:40:11.000A lot of the northern European countries have gotten very into euthanasia.
00:40:15.000When I say that, I don't mean that they've legalized euthanasia.
00:40:18.000I mean that they have actually started advocating for euthanasia for people who are mentally handicapped.
00:40:22.000They've advocated for euthanasia for people who are depressed.
00:40:25.000They've relieved restrictions on euthanasia.
00:40:26.000This is doctor-assisted suicide, of course.
00:40:29.000And this video, if this doesn't scream Nazi to you, it's because you don't know enough about the Nazis.
00:40:33.000Here's a Dutch government official telling a Down Syndrome man that he's too expensive, how much he costs the state to be living, to be alive.
00:40:40.000Here is this video, it's pretty astonishing.
00:40:44.000It says 48,000 euro per year approximately.
00:40:53.000So Stuart costs us as a society 48,000 euros per year.
00:41:03.000That is a considerable amount, but is it a high one compared to normal persons?
00:41:10.000Well, you can calculate that by taking the big number, that 90 billion, and divide this amount by the number of citizens in the Netherlands.
00:41:18.000And there you're approximately 17 million, and that will give you approximately an amount of 5,000 euros per year per person.
00:41:25.000So you could say that short is almost 10 times as expensive than we are.
00:41:32.000Those expenses are indeed 10 times as high.
00:41:44.000One of the things the Nazis were saying is, there are a bunch of people in our society who are the undesirables and they cost the government too much money.
00:41:50.000They cost the government too much money for upkeep.
00:41:52.000And if there were only something we could do with them, if there were only something we could do with all these very expensive people, it costs a lot of money to keep them alive.
00:42:10.000Falling into this trap is the essence of evil.
00:42:12.000But this is also what socialism ends toward, right?
00:42:15.000When the government is quote-unquote paying people to live, and private charity withers, then it's only a matter of time before the government starts thinking of ways out of this particular conundrum.
00:42:28.000So Mark Stein, I thought, made a point that is worth noting with regard to sexual harassment.
00:42:32.000He's getting all sorts of flack for it.
00:42:34.000But this is a point that I've made, too.
00:42:36.000When we talk about sexual harassment and sexual assault, we need to be very specific about what it is that we are talking about, because vague standards actually hurt women.
00:42:42.000They not only hurt women by conflating sexual harassment with non-sexual harassment, or conflating mild sexual harassment, meaning a guy says something crude in the workplace, to rape.
00:42:54.000They give a reverse incentive for employers to actually hire women, in much the same way that the Americans with Disabilities Act, which forced business owners to build in ramps in their places of business if they hired a disabled person, caused a lot of business owners not to hire disabled people.
00:43:09.000There are actual statistics that bear that out.
00:43:11.000In the same way, this idea that sexual harassment is going to be vaguely defined and we're going to destroy the career of anybody who's ever accused of anything is going to encourage men to hire only other men, so that they're not accused of this sort of stuff.
00:43:21.000Mark Stein makes this point yesterday.
00:43:23.000Do I really want to be alone with a female employee now?
00:43:29.000Who knows how she's going to feel about it in 30 years time?
00:43:32.000I mean, I don't think that's necessarily in the interests of women in the workplace.
00:43:37.000I don't think it's in the interests of social relations.
00:43:40.000It's an insane moral panic that started with genuine rape, genuine violence, genuine power issues, and now just seems to have degenerated into one anonymous accusation
00:43:54.000Well, this is why we have to be very careful, and that's why we have to be very specific about what accusations we're going to hold to.
00:43:58.000You know, I've said this over and over and over.
00:44:05.000But we need to be very clear about what we're talking about and what kind of accusations we're going to take with the proper amount of severity.
00:44:11.000Otherwise, the actual effect will be people making the kinds of decisions you don't want them to make, saying, I'm not going to hire that woman because if I hire her,
00:44:18.000Then I'm afraid she's going to accuse me of sexual harassment at some point down the line.
00:44:25.000So, Caitlin says, Hi Ben, I read on your Fox News Power Player of the Week article that you initially wanted to double major in genetic science and music.
00:44:32.000What brought you to deciding on political science and then law school?
00:46:00.000It's boring, it may not be fun for you, but if your kid knows that you're willing to put in the time, then your kid assumes that you are willing also to do that only for things that are important.
00:46:08.000Plus, kids want to spend time with their parents, and if you're willing to spend time with your kid practicing, even if you are not, you know, even if you're not musically versed,
00:46:17.000Then your kid will take it a lot more seriously.
00:46:19.000You can't just tell a kid, go practice for half an hour.
00:46:21.000You actually need to sit there with the kid.
00:46:23.000And I think if you're willing to do that, then your kid will be more likely to practice.
00:46:26.000Also, when you get to a certain level, it does become enjoyable.
00:46:28.000At the very beginning, it's kind of fun because it's something new.
00:46:31.000And then there's a plateau that gets hit where it becomes very difficult.
00:46:35.000And then when you get good enough, then it's a lot of fun again because you're skilled.
00:46:41.000Coming from the U.K., which has health care for all, but to my mind is struggling to pay for it, your arguments on health care supply interest me greatly.
00:46:46.000I like the American idea that the market is used to drive down costs, but at the same time, according to the Commonwealth Fund, the U.S.
00:46:51.000government spends way more on health care than most major countries.
00:46:54.000It has the lowest quality of care in terms of outcomes, equity, and access, whereas the U.K.
00:46:57.000has the highest, even though we're close to rationing the system is so expensive.
00:47:00.000What in your mind is the best system for countries with huge populations like the U.K.
00:47:04.000to solve the health care crisis, given they both spend too much, but socialized health care seems to produce better results?
00:47:09.000Well, it depends on the results that you are seeking.
00:47:10.000So, number one, socialized medicine has pretty good emergency care, but they have not great surgical care in the sense that you have to wait around in line for the rationing to actually take place.
00:47:20.000The five-year survival rate for cancer in the United States is significantly higher than it is in places like the UK, specifically because I can go and get the care that I need now instead of having to sit around and wait.
00:47:30.000Healthcare on demand is, you know, a market-driven healthcare system.
00:47:57.000You'd probably go home and wait for a week.
00:47:59.000There actually isn't perfect market transparency in the United States, and that causes a serious problem in terms of the meat between supply and demand in terms of medical care in the United States.
00:48:11.000Well, I mean, when you talk about access, basically, socialized medicine will always have the highest access because people can walk into a hospital and demand service, or to a doctor's office and demand service.
00:48:25.000They don't have the highest outcomes in terms of the rate at which those services are provided.
00:48:30.000And in terms of outcomes, again, it sort of depends on which outcomes you're looking at.
00:49:28.000I'd really have to study those more to determine how I would have come out, whether I really would have voted for the Democrat over the Republican in those races.
00:49:37.000I work with a bunch of liberals that hate God.
00:49:38.000One person in particular has zero respect for God, my belief in God, or just me as a human being in general.
00:49:42.000She'll ask zero questions about God and then mock my answer.
00:50:53.000Al Franken, people didn't know this information when they elected him, so now it's new information breaking, and that changes the calculation as to whether he should resign.
00:51:00.000All the allegations against Trump are old, people knew about it when they elected him, nothing new has been added to the pie, therefore it's difficult to say that, on the basis of nothing changing, he should now resign.
00:51:08.000That's like saying he should have quit during the election cycle, which, by the way, I believe I said, during the election cycle, in the middle of the P-word tape.
00:51:36.000I do think that remaining abstinent until marriage affects the success of relationships generally.
00:51:41.000Meaning that people who live together before marriage have a significantly higher divorce rate than people who don't live together before marriage.
00:51:46.000And usually once you're living with a certain level of intimacy, sexually, you end up living together before you're married.
00:51:52.000And that does not actually end up reflecting married life.
00:51:55.000Married life is not you living together with your boyfriend.
00:51:57.000Married life is you have kids, you have a joint bank account, you have responsibilities.
00:52:00.000Those are not always reflected in just you living with your boyfriend, even with the advent of single motherhood.
00:52:08.000The idea of born-again marriage, the virgins, the idea that you've had sex, but now with your new partner, you're gonna say no sex until marriage.
00:52:14.000I think that's a worthwhile thing because it's asking, just practically speaking, it's asking for a commitment before you decide to commit your body to somebody.
00:52:21.000And I think that that is a smart play.
00:53:53.000And the reason that I think that it's important for, I think it is sort of emasculating for men, maybe it's a cultural totem, but I think it's emasculating for men to give up their family name.
00:54:00.000The idea that a man is supposed to give up, you know, what he has grown up with in favor of the woman's family can be emasculating.
00:54:07.000If you don't find it emasculating, I don't see a problem with it.
00:54:10.000If you do find it emasculating, then I do see a problem with it.
00:54:36.000It's not something I had to expect, but it's something that I certainly appreciated.
00:54:40.000Okay, Joe says, what is the most infuriating debate tactic used against you and how do you combat it?
00:54:44.000Well, always the most infuriating debate tactic is when someone will dig something up ten years old, take it out of context, and then use it against you, and then refuse to hear the answer.
00:54:54.000And things that you said in 2007 may not be things that you agree with today.
00:54:58.000And things that you tweeted in 2012 may not be things that are even taken in context.
00:55:03.000So for me, for example, there's been a tweet that people have been using against me on Twitter for a long time with regard to Arabs and Israelis in which I said something to the effect of Israelis like to build and Arabs like to live in open sewage.
00:55:14.000The idea of that tweet was not that every Arab likes to live in open sewage, you morons.
00:55:18.000The idea of that tweet is that in the Israeli-Arab conflict, there is one side that likes to build things and one side that would prefer to spend its money on building terror tunnels in the Gaza Strip.
00:55:27.000Instead of actually caring for its people.
00:55:29.000And in fact, not only am I saying that now, I said that in 2012.
00:55:31.000There were four follow-up tweets, I believe, and all of them said exactly that.
00:55:35.000Doesn't matter, people take that tweet out of context and then they use that to say that I'm racist against Arabs, which is absurd.
00:55:40.000In that same tweet thread, I specifically say that there are Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs who are wonderful people, just not the ones who side with terror groups like Hamas.
00:55:48.000But, again, that's just an example of how people take things out of context and then use them against you, and that I find highly irritating.
00:55:54.000David says, do you feel everyone speaks too slowly?
00:56:13.000If somebody's a very slow speaker, then 3 is the proper speed.
00:56:17.000I hear that it's difficult to listen to my podcast on 2, or even 1.5.
00:56:20.000But for those who are willing to take the speed challenge, go for it.
00:56:25.000Michael says, Ben, I've been deeply inspired by your devotion to your religion and dedication to the nation.
00:56:28.000I'm a person raised Christian, but I rejected the church and have been living as an atheist for the last 15 years.
00:56:33.000As a veteran fighting PTSD, I found that your Bible talk was leading me to read the Torah, and I've been more optimistic than I have been in years.
00:56:38.000I want to know more about converting to Judaism, and what your advice would be for a person living in a deeply Christian community, Bible Belt coal country, with absolutely no Jewish community to turn to.
00:56:46.000Is there a place I can find mentorship, and what is the view of the Jewish community on conversion?
00:56:49.000So Jewish law generally actually discourages conversion because it's not the world's easiest life, right?
00:56:54.000Now, to convert, you have to convert orthodox from the orthodox point of view, and that means that you have to take upon yourself all the obligations.
00:57:00.000Not working on Sabbath, making sure that you eat kosher, right?
00:57:03.000You're supposed to commit to everything, because if you're gonna commit, commit, right?
00:57:07.000So we actually tell people, if somebody wants to convert, we actually turn them down three times.
00:57:11.000We're actually halachically, according to Jewish law, obligated to turn them down three times before we're allowed to say yes.
00:57:17.000As far as mentorship, I think there are a lot of rabbis who can be talked to who are really good on this.
00:57:23.000If you want to email me directly, I can probably refer you to some if this is something that you want to take seriously or find out more about.
00:57:28.000It's going to be very difficult for you to live as an observant Jew in an area where there are no other Jews because so many Jewish commitments are communal.
00:57:35.000It's about the nation of Israel and Judaism, not just the individual who has a relationship with God in the Torah.
00:57:40.000But I'd be happy to pass on some names for you.
00:58:04.000But I think the entire thing becomes a giant self-contradiction.
00:58:08.000So one of the big problems here is that if you are living in a determinist universe, even the question as to what policies the government should pursue assumes a certain level of free will on the part of government actors to actually change the policies.
00:58:21.000This is my big problem with Sam's take on free will.
00:58:24.000Once you say this, once you're living in a fully deterministic universe, then I'm going to do what I was going to do.
00:58:30.000The idea of me even getting up in the morning and going to do things, I was going to do that.
00:58:33.000So it's not like I make the choice to do that, or I make the choice to support certain policies.
00:58:37.000I was going to support those policies all along, and I had no choice in that process.
00:58:41.000The computer fries itself, in other words.
00:58:45.000All of human progress relies on the idea that we have a capacity to discover what's true about the universe, and that we have a capacity to make better policy that frees people.
00:58:52.000All of that is based on free will and the capacity for choice.
00:59:03.000You know, Sam, you talk a lot about changing the world and you talk a lot about using active verbs, making choices, but you don't believe in those choices.
00:59:11.000You talk a lot about moral values and what that value system should be.
00:59:14.000Making a value decision is a choice about hierarchy of values.
00:59:20.000You can't get from we are balls of meat wandering aimlessly through the universe with some capacity for self-perception with
00:59:26.000The idea that there is a moral system that makes certain things more worthwhile than others.
00:59:30.000You can't get from here is a cup to what should I do with this cup unless there was a creator of the cup who had in mind what the cup is for.
00:59:43.000Aristotle says, what makes a man good is that man was created for a certain purpose.
00:59:47.000Once you get rid of purpose, once you get rid of design, once you get rid of the idea of meaning, I don't know how you reconstruct anything that looks like a functional society.
00:59:55.000Ben says, hi Ben, I was reading an article you retweeted from National Review about how America's youth are lonelier, less independent, and less attached to community.
01:00:02.000I understand that much of this could be applied to me.
01:00:04.000How does someone who desperately wants to break this rather nihilist youth mentality go about doing it?
01:01:09.000Put the onus on the person to explain what level of income inequality is bad versus what level of income inequality is good.
01:01:15.000Second, it does not hurt you that Bill Gates is rich.
01:01:18.000Bill Gates being rich is actually good for you because it's Bill Gates' wealth that brought about all of these consensual transactions in which you take place.
01:01:25.000Every time you buy a loaf of bread from the grocer, you are making the grocer richer.
01:01:29.000Would you prefer not to be able to buy the loaf of bread?
01:01:31.000You've created more income inequality because you just spent money with the grocer.