Episode 909 Scott Adams: Was Live
Date: 2020-04-13 | Duration: 1:01:02
Topics
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: My thoughts on documentary, Out of Shadows Should we ignore health concerns, go back to work? Whiteboard1: Coronavirus and the Economy Whiteboard2: Printing 3 Trillion Dollars Without Inflation LINK to whiteboard images: https://tinyurl.com/vu4x5h7
Rough Transcript
This is an auto-generated transcript and may contain errors.
Transcript
[0:12]
that is good swaddling right there well come on everybody it’s time for your evening climbed down from your perch of worry and start to feel good about the day and feel a little more optimistic and get ready to relax into a awesome night’s sleep it’s gonna be good well we have some controversial things we’ll talk about some interesting things will stimulate your mind but when it’s all done your brain will be exhausted you’ll be in a perfect condition to drift off to sleep boy wiII you be happy so I did a little poll on Twitter because I can and I asked people how many people think that that weird sickness they had in January because so many of us report something like that how many of us think we actually had coronavirus already Oh whiteboard is coming don’t worry and how
[1:15]
whiteboard is coming don’t worry and how many people do you think said that that they think they actually had the corona virus already and hundreds and hundreds of people who answered so I’m also one of the people who had a weird whatever was wrong with me in January was not like anything I’ve experienced before couldn’t walk upstairs short of breath on everything thought I was gonna die but I didn’t have a cough so you know maybe it wasn’t that so it turns out about 48% of the people answering the unscientific poll think they already had the corona virus now what does that do to your calculation about risk and your calculation about going back to work what does it mean if let’s say there’s something like 48% of the entire country thinks that because I don’t think there’s any reason that the people who follow me on Twitter are more
[2:16]
people who follow me on Twitter are more likely to think they had the coronavirus you know it’s not a scientific poll but if I had to guess i guess the half of the country everywhere you ask would say you know i did have some strange illness in january now why this is important is in order for the government to make a decision about when to go back to work and how the public has to be supportive if you’re calculating the odds of you know catastrophic hospitalizations or even your own odds or your odds is somebody in your family would get it from you those sorts of things it really really is gonna be influenced by whether you think you already have the antibodies right how could it not be and so I worry that that’s exactly the sort of thing which could be like a gigantic
[3:16]
of thing which could be like a gigantic influence in public opinion which would of course have a gigantic influence on what the government could do because the government can’t really do something that the public hates too much you need a little bit of support right so I wonder about that so it would be great to be able to figure out how many of us have actually had it in some statistically valid way so that you could get talked out of the odds that you’re one of the few people who had it because I don’t think 50 percent of the country had coronavirus in January I mean maybe maybe somebody said does Scott get the flu shot you know I used to but I haven’t the last two years because it feels like the the odds of it making a difference are so low that I can’t tell myself to walk across the
[4:18]
can’t tell myself to walk across the parking lot and get a shot I probably should you know if I were being super rational about it but the benefit in terms of mentally how much benefit I think I got I think they’re just guessing with these flu shots like you know they’re trying to guess which one is going to be the active one and it’s already too late by the time the shot is put together so I probably should but the benefit is shrunk to the point where I can’t motivate myself to do it so don’t take my advice on that that’s for sure alright I was asked to look in the video a documentary called out of shadows this might get me thrown off the internet we’ll find out now Mike Servette mentioned it on Twitter and that alerted me to it and somebody asked me my opinion on it so I thought all right I was doing a little drawing anyway needed something to listen to so I listened to it and it’s definitely
[5:18]
I listened to it and it’s definitely worth watching but I also say that things are worth watching what I don’t think they’re true all right so it’s definitely worth watching in the same way that I love all the ancient alien TV shows I don’t quite think those shows are necessarily spot-on what really happened but they’re really fun to watch because I’m always amazed that they can find so much evidence for you know any damn theory that they want so it doesn’t have to be true to be recommendable you can make your own mind up about how much is true anyway it’s all he would stuntman who said he sort of ended up going down this rabbit hole of discovery about what’s really running the world and how things really work and he had the yeah the following revelations if you can call it that now again you get to decide are these true revelations or is he over
[6:18]
true revelations or is he over interpreting or crazy or what but here here are the things he believes that he has plenty of evidence for number one that the CIA is and always has been influencing move and books of entertainment to brainwash the public for whatever reasons the CIA in the country you think would be good for the country or good for somebody so claim number one CIA influences popular culture on a routine basis for some effect true or false I would say obviously true that was that what even in questioned at the very least we all know that the military has always worked with Hollywood to make sure the military is you know portrayed in a good light and that’s clearly just propaganda for the country well I’m not saying it’s
[7:19]
the country well I’m not saying it’s evil I’m not saying it’s wrong but of course now you should also expect and and here’s my general statement about these things whenever you have a situation where it’s possible to do something and there are a lot of people involved so it’s not just one not making a decision but lots of people are involved it’s possible to do something and there’s a gigantic upside game potentially not necessarily but potentially a huge upside game and almost no risk what happens in all of those situations in all of those situations bad behavior happens every time so you don’t have to ask yourself huh I wonder if this is one of those rare times when there was something to gain something devious was easy to do it would almost certainly work the upside potential would be incalculable and the odds of being caught and punished are basically nothing you don’t really have
[8:23]
basically nothing you don’t really have to ask you you don’t have to ask is there evidence you don’t even need evidence now in the the film he offers some evidence and talks about things that are unclassified and you know it is fairly convincing but I don’t think you needed any evidence because of course it’s being done and you can extend that of course we’re doing it to other countries do I need any evidence to know that the CIA is is attempting anyway to influence other countries by influencing their their media and their news well I have no evidence to suggest that’s true except it’s true because they can there’s a big upside they’re not there’s not really much penalty of getting caught I said as long as those as long as those factors are in place of course it’s happening and you should assume that other countries are also trying to
[9:23]
that other countries are also trying to influence our media our news etc so for a for a documentary that’s making shocking claims I found it fairly ordinary at least on that part so there’s a second part that’s even more fun and so I judge that true although maybe some of the examples here’s where I depart from the documentary I don’t think we can necessarily spot those cases we might think we can yeah you might look at a movie now I would say huh huh now that I know the CIA is doing it I can tell that that part of the movie was influenced by the CIA you can’t do that all right that’s not a thing if they’re doing it they’re probably clever enough that it’s not going to be heavy-handed or if it’s heavy-handed such as making the military look good then it’s probably exactly what you think it is but I don’t think you can necessarily spot those clever ways that
[10:24]
necessarily spot those clever ways that they’re they’re influencing the media sometimes it’s obvious when you actually let me let me back that up if you’re watching a movie it might not always be obvious even if you think it is if you’re watching the news well sometimes that’s a little bit obvious like when NBC does stuff you look at NBC and you think oh they should just change their initials to CIA because sometimes it’s just so obvious but you can be wrong about those two so I suppose I can be wrong about that all right the a big part of the claim is that there are in fact very large and active pedophile reigns at the highest rooms of power and Hollywood and in government and among rich people do I judge that to be true or false of course is true is anybody doubting that does anybody doubt
[11:27]
anybody doubting that does anybody doubt that there are powerful groups I don’t know if they’re all connected but you know there are clearly powerful groups within different countries different organizations clearly powerful pedophiles and Hollywood plenty of reporting on that now I don’t have to have meetings I don’t know how much they share yeah you have to assume that there’s some of that too so I’m going to say that the general claim that there are gigantic widespread semi-organized and sometimes very organized pedophile rings I would say is true now the second part of that claim is that the CIA may also be somehow associated with some of this because it allows them to get dirt on people that they could later influence now do you think that the CIA or let’s take any intelligence agency it doesn’t have to be the CIA could be any other country do you think that any intelligence agency would try to get
[12:31]
intelligence agency would try to get compromising sex-related or even illegal behavior activity of important people such that they can influence them later yes yes of course why it’s easy to do there’s a huge upside almost no penalty for getting caught and a lot of people are involved as I read HX every box so again you don’t need any evidence to know that that you don’t need evidence to know that there’s plenty of pedophilia going around at high I feel like you all agree with that right how organized it is and you know if you’re gonna throw in Hillary Clinton that I’ve got a problem with that like I don’t think there’s any evidence that Hillary Clinton’s in on it so you know you could extend it to the point of ridiculous but certainly there’s plenty of it going on and you should assume
[13:32]
of it going on and you should assume that every intelligence agency everywhere in every country is taking advantage of it wherever they can so certainly there would be some kind of you know overlap between those stuff there’s another the parts that I was I thought were interesting is that even though it was sort of taking the I hate to even use the word because I’m gonna get so I don’t want to get blocked on platforms so I’m gonna reverse a word okay if the second part of the word is gate and the first part of the word is a round flat food item that has sauce and cheese on it usually I don’t want to use the word because the the text the voice-to-text will pick it up and I’ll get kicked off at YouTube just for mentioning it so this is mentioned but interestingly even though it’s a
[14:32]
interestingly even though it’s a documentary promoting that these things exist it did not find any evidence that common Pizza was involved with anything so I thought well that’s yeah at least that’s fair it didn’t find any evidence that that that that one business was involved and in the indeed nobody else has either but it didn’t mention that there was a similar store like right on the block or across the street that had as its logo the International sign for pedophilia I don’t know if that’s true somebody’d have to fact-check that so I’m not sure I believe it just because it was in the documentary but and then here’s here’s the part that was really interesting you know all those emails that got hacked you know the stories about the references to that round flat food item and you know that that is allegedly and I guess there’s pretty good evidence for
[15:32]
I guess there’s pretty good evidence for it there is a code word for people operating in this shadowy world and it’s been a while since I’ve seen the actual emails and so I was showing the actual sentences that that this word was used in and it’s laughingly obvious that they’re not really talking about the food now I guess there’s some chance that they were using this specific food item as a code word for some completely unrelated thing that’s possible but you could tell quite clearly from the sentence they weren’t talking about food because of the way it was used and it’s obvious it was not about food so it was a code for something and it’s well know that this code apparently exists in that shadowy particular underworld so I have to say that that was pretty compelling pretty compelling now what I always warn
[16:37]
pretty compelling now what I always warn against is with any documentary if you don’t see the counterpoint you can really be convinced by one side of any argument so with that caveat I’ve only seen their explanation maybe the next person would say no those are not even the right emails that’s from something else or they might say no you fool there was nothing across the street he made that part up so I don’t know what the counter-argument but if you were just to judge it by itself and he didn’t look for any other context pretty pretty convincing I got to say but it doesn’t mean it’s true all right then the other part there that for me was sort of a tell that it wasn’t all true was all the satanic stuff so there was quite a bit of tying tying that world into the satanic world and the whole satanic stuff honestly no no rang as probably true can’t rule it out
[17:38]
rang as probably true can’t rule it out don’t rule it out but it’s a little bit too on the nose like the McMartin preschool case which had similar allegations and turned out to be false anyway let’s see apparently the New York Times wrote this wrote up a piece in which they were trying to excuse Biden from the allegations against them for some me to stuff back to the 90s and they tweeted a part of the road article but then they had to go back and change the article but they left the tweet you know and the part that they got to get rid of is that are trying to excuse Biden and they said they said that they couldn’t find any evidence in his past after they did their research they couldn’t find any you know bad behavior quote beyond hugs kisses and touching that people were uncomfortable with now I’m thinking what do you mean they couldn’t find any bad behavior aside from hugs kisses and and touching
[18:41]
aside from hugs kisses and and touching that people found uncomfortable yeah and so it’s one of those self canceling sentences like wait a minute that is bad behavior if they were uncomfortable and he kept doing it or even if they were comfortable with it would still be bad behavior by by the standards of the day so I guess they would they have to go back and get rid of that sentence in the article but they had already tweeted and they kept a tweet up so that they were busted that and of course all the alert pundits said New York Times you’re not even pretending to do journalism anymore that that is not even that is not even trying to hide it they weren’t I mean it was purely just trying to defend Biden against exactly the same kind of accusations that Cavanaugh had and and making them just completely reverse their stand the whole media really really the reverse their stand and argue the point that they were just arguing the opposite of a year ago so they look like idiots
[19:41]
like idiots fun all right I gotta say by now I’m gonna do the controversial part first so that I don’t end on that I think you’ll appreciate that so I’ve been mowing the lawn on Twitter what I mean by mowing the lawn is that I say something that I know will get people all worked up and then I know who to block so I thought I was I was kicking up the Chinese trolls because I have a suspicion that you’ve heard the reporting that there’s massive Chinese interference already on social media so there are lots of Chinese BOTS pretending to be real people dealing with people now I assume I would be on their target list or at least of the top hundred right because I’m sure they got lots of targets but I’m probably the top hundred just because of the things I say and I’m near the top of the hating the
[20:44]
and I’m near the top of the hating the Chinese government so what do we assume that I probably on their radar one way or the other and so I thought well I’m gonna see if I can I can surface them by saying something that they would be more likely to respond to than normal people now I think this strategy failed completely it’s possible that some of the people I blocked they were you know Chinese agents but probably none because what I did was I accidentally kicked up all the people who have really bad arguments about freedom and they got really mad at me now all the people who who got blocked it’s not so much because they had a different opinion again I don’t block people for different opinions don’t do it I do block people if they say in public well I’m thinking incorrectly or even correctly they yeah the only person who should be telling the public what I’m thinking is me so if you do it I don’t
[21:45]
thinking is me so if you do it I don’t care what your intentions are I don’t want you in my world I don’t want anybody telling other people what I think because it’s almost never right so it just has a good you know it’s not even personal it’s not like I hate you for doing it it’s just I I prefer not to have any involvement with people who who think that that makes sense so here’s how I ratcheted this up and cause trouble I suggested that we’re a few things I suggested one is that there could be an app that you would voluntarily that’s a keyword voluntarily every day put into your particular of your temperature and you know if you have any symptoms and then that would be able to maybe you’ve not it wouldn’t work every time of course but it might pick up some hot spots where you wouldn’t get them otherwise now what were the two major comments to that and this will tell this is like the
[22:47]
that and this will tell this is like the story of my life because I I surface a lot of ideas and yeah I can’t tell you how many times this happens so in the comments the commenter will come in and say that will never work and they’ll give reasons why this will never work and the comment right below it will be oh it’s already being done here’s the name of the company and it’s always the one right after the one who says that can never work Scott you dreamer you crazy crazy guy next comment oh here’s a link to it they’ve been doing that for a year so it turns out I thought I knew that there was an app that came with a measuring measuring device a temperature device that were paired it was paired to the app but I mistakenly thought that that’s all I did I thought it was only temperature and my idea was to ask if you’d lost your sense of smell and do you have any other symptoms but I’ve been informed I think reliably that the temperature app also asks those questions so it would be fine for exactly what I said
[23:49]
would be fine for exactly what I said so it’ll never work say all the smart people on the internet followed by oh it already works there’s a company doing that you should get one I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me all right now here’s the other thing that got people worked up so people complained that I was trying to limit their freedom to you know the freedom to just go back to work even if there was some impact on other people they claimed they claimed that as their freedom now I don’t disagree with that by the way well we’ll get to my opinion here but I don’t disagree with that that would be exactly a description of freedom yeah freedom would be you can go to work even if there’s some negative effects but what I did find is that I thought I would help clarify people’s thinking about this freedom thing and that’s where things
[24:50]
freedom thing and that’s where things got bad and I said you should be thinking in terms of three levels of freedom the not having freedom is what we have now so right now we don’t have freedom because the government says stay home and it feels like there would be penalties if we disobey that so right now that’s no freedom but people mistakenly think that freedom would be the ability for anybody who wants you to go to work well anybody who doesn’t like that risk doesn’t have to they can go to work or they can stay home and then everybody has freedom to which I say no that is incorrect analysis that’s only half freedom if you want to get to actual freedom you have to let your neighbor kill you if he doesn’t want to take the risk of you going to work that’s freedom so you have to get rid of all all of the rules and all of the penalties for a bad action so if you’re
[25:50]
penalties for a bad action so if you’re keeping some penalties because of these actions will have a bad impact on other people such as you know wear your seatbelt it’ll keep the health care costs and insurance down for everybody so so I was just trying to be helpful in my provocative way by saying you’re not advocating for freedom you’re advocating for just another type of limited freedom and I’ll bet you that every person who said you can’t take my freedom away if I want to go to work it doesn’t matter even if as a bad effect on other people how many of the people with that argument do you think have driver’s licenses because what’s the driver’s license that’s the government telling you you can or cannot drive and the only route and the only way you can is if you’ve demonstrated to the government that there’s a good chance you can keep other people at least a little bit safe because you know how to drive and you’re wearing glasses and you’ve met the
[26:51]
wearing glasses and you’ve met the minimum requirements of a driver so we don’t live in a world in which we’re not continuously training off our privacy and our freedom to get benefits in fact the entire well this is an exaggeration but a big part of what the government does and why you have it is to make exactly those decisions of saying all right all right you really want this to work better but unfortunately the only way this is going to work better is if I take a little bit of this freedom away from you and and maybe this privacy - are you okay with that now sometimes we get asked and sometimes we don’t but the point is everything we see in government is this process of weighing the benefit of losing a little freedom with the positive that could come from that with full exposure and visibility we all know what we’re arguing about we all know that’s the trade-off so for those people who think that they
[27:53]
so for those people who think that they should have the freedom and by the way I still haven’t given you my opinion if you think you’ve heard my opinion you haven’t i’m simply describing the the field and so the people who say yes i should be able to go to work because i feel the risks are low to me and i also don’t think the risks are that high to other people relative to other risks so i think i should be allowed to go to work now here’s what might surprise you that’s a reasonable argument that’s completely reasonable that’s buddy who said all right I’m looking at all the pluses and minuses and I know that a lot of people would die under this plan but all things considered I think we’re better off this way at least the people who don’t die her better off then the people who know how loved ones died B Bueller better off so that’s a completely reasonable opinion and people I think people believe that I was fighting against that I would say I’m still evaluating so I haven’t come down
[28:56]
still evaluating so I haven’t come down on that or or the opposite I see it I feel like I’d need to know a lot more just just like the the crisis team needs to know here’s my question for those people who have that opinion what is your assumption about what happens to the healthcare system because you know I would like to have health care at the moment I don’t really have a health care system you know what I mean because I’ve got two operations that were scheduled there you know or one was going to be scheduled but do I have health care I pay for health care the reason I can’t have health care is because these people want to exercise their freedom to go to work in the future so hypothetically so if so let’s say the let’s say the government said well we’re at it we’re out of it you’re right just just operate responsibly you’re responsible people act like adults you know do what you can and so people go to
[29:57]
know do what you can and so people go to work because they think the arrests that risks are worth it to them and and to the damage of other people they go to work what do they think happens to the hospitals somebody says be s yeah that’s a block so I’m gonna blow call the people who are just not even willing to think about all the variables so at least let me finish all right somebody said the hospitals are empty that might be the least aware comment of the day let me explain for the billionth time I don’t I don’t know you could be watching the news and not be aware of this most of the hospitals are empty because they were getting rid it ready for the push and they cancelled all the people like me me when two operations upcoming and so they’re they’re intentionally empty so that they can be ready just in case so you should think of that as like insurance it’s not a mistake to get ready just in case it’s not a permanent
[30:58]
ready just in case it’s not a permanent state it doesn’t tell you anything about where the virus is going it just tells you that at the moment they’re ready that’s all it tells you either should there’s no other information you should get for that but if you look at New York City and Italy and some other places I think we’re beyond arguing whether it would have an impact and impact on your health care so do other people have the freedom or should they have the freedom in this country to go to work if the probable impact let’s say that they just do it with no restrictions they just want full freedom I just want to go to work if the probable outcome of that is that healthcare is unavailable to me is that okay no it might be because remember almost everything we do has an impact on other people if I Drive my car I might kill you with my car so can I Drive a car well here’s here’s and this is the
[31:58]
car well here’s here’s and this is the thing that people argue here’s the thing we’ve Society has decided that the risk with cars is acceptable and we have a healthcare system that can handle that Society has decided that some people smoking cigarettes will not ideal is acceptable and our health care system is sized to handle that they’ve decided that you can do your extreme sports and our health care system is sized to handle that in fact you can drink your alcohol our health care system is sized to handle it so if you’re comparing going to work and knowing that you’re going to spread the virus and according to every expert would overload at least some of our metropolitan cities that’s not the same we’re not sized to handle it if we were sized to handle it your argument be far stronger somebody says New York City is not the USA but it would be according to all the
[32:59]
USA but it would be according to all the experts now I’m not going to overrule the experts I’m just going to saying I’m gonna say I don’t believe there’s anybody who has a viral adjust in their title who doesn’t think this would sweep through the country if if we didn’t mitigate can somebody fact check that is there anybody who’s an actual professional who’s in this biology field who has come out and said in public you could just not mitigate just don’t do anything and we’ll be fine or do they all think it will turn into some version of New York as some some rate yeah it just might not be overnight all right so fact check me on that but I feel like I’m pretty from there so there was so much loser think in my let me call out these specific loser I think so a lot of people are doing the one variable thinking they’re just thinking about my freedom freedom’s absolute my freedom and they’re forgiving about all the other variables like okay there’s a
[34:00]
other variables like okay there’s a reason to get a driver’s license it’s to protect the other people all right it’s not about one variable so one variable thinking the chapter in my book lose to think they also compare it to the wrong things I give you the example they’re comparing it to driving it’s a bad comparison because driving accidents don’t overwhelm our hospital systems they use the slippery slope argument that if you do this anything you do voluntarily well if it’s a good idea it’s going to become the law I’ve got a whole chapter on why this slippery slope doesn’t make sense now there are things that do progress and I would certainly admit that if he had a voluntary app that was so good that the government said you know it’s so good we’re just gonna make that mandatory of course that could happen but it would happen because it’s a good idea yeah it’s not a slippery slope to move in a direction of better ideas so you know I I agree that you could slip toward bad ideas as well
[35:02]
you could slip toward bad ideas as well but we generally don’t yeah we don’t we’ll slip there we make decision we go there willingly and then of course there’s a failure of imagination and a a mind-reading element where people kept accusing me of really having a sinister plan for a tyrannical dictatorship like that was my secret plan and that’s the reason I was suggesting some ideas is that it was all really to soften you up sort of like the CIA is doing and that they thought of softening you up for the totally and totalitarian takeover of all your rights of your and your privacy weirdly and maybe somebody can answer this for me weirdly something like 60 to 70 percent of all the people who complained in a specific way also had icons that were black and white designs yeah they were black and white now there are that many black and
[36:04]
white now there are that many black and white icons or right or what do you call it yeah the icon for your for your profile there aren’t that many that are black and white but why is that that about 70 percent of the people who were arguing for an absolute freedom no matter the cost why is it the seventy percent of them had black and white but different designs the black and white is that does that mean something is there is there some kind of belief system in which that that’s a style is it Q is it somebody said Q and they could be that because I was wondering if there’s oh your avatar yeah so people’s avatars were not even black and white people necessarily they were just designs so here’s why I’m asking if they’re Chinese agents if you are China what would be one of the most damaging things you could do to the United States I’ll answer the question the most
[37:06]
I’ll answer the question the most damaging thing you could do to the United States would get on social media pretend to be real people that argue that the most important thing and the only thing we should be looking at is our freedom to go back to work because that is going to base causes to rage with virus while China will lie and say ours is under control look we have zero again today so China would like to to pretend that they got everything under control with their system hey that Chinese Communist system look what we did yeah got that under control how you doing with your freedoms over there yeah how about your freedom did your constitution work out for you Oh a million people died oh so sorry can we ship you some defective masks and gowns would you be happy can I steal your IP can I send you some fentanyl so I’m not gonna say that all of the people who were coming at me today a lot of them they came in I was a wave they
[38:08]
them they came in I was a wave they seemed to all come at once and they seemed to have very similar arguments those similar arguments are identical to what I would do if I were the Chinese government and I really wanted to mess with this country bad and you know they do because they’re doing it I mean it’s not like I’m guessing we’ve we’ve caught them doing it exactly the way I’m describing it so are these Americans who have six levels of loser think meaning their mind-reading failure of imagination slippery slopes are real comparing the wrong variables one variable thinking that’s a lot of bad thinking for one person right isn’t that a lot of thinking mistakes for one real person because my observation is that real people can have one or two sometimes three have you ever seen a real person have six simultaneous glaring obvious elements of loser think in one opinion I don’t know if these are
[39:11]
in one opinion I don’t know if these are real people folks so let me just say this if it turns out they’re all real people and they’re just you know Q followers or something I totally wouldn’t believe that so I’m not coming down on the opinion that these are definitely Chinese agents but their opinions are identical I’ll die on that hill I died on the hill that the worst thing that China could do is try to get us to ignore the health concerns of others and just go to work without any restrictions that would be their most clever plan if they’re not doing that they’re not as smart as we think because that’s what I do what would you do what would you do seriously what would you do right and they might even be playing both sides I mean they might have the trolls that are arguing we should stay you know locked up forever because that’s bad for the economy trolls that are arguing we should just go out and have a civil war or get our rights back because the
[40:13]
or get our rights back because the conflict is good too you know China wins both ways all right now let’s talk about something happier which is the economy and this is kind of fun so this is the thing I wanted to leave you with you know I’m gonna start weird have you ever noticed how similar a viruses to an idea in both cases an idea or a virus they’re there things that use humans as hosts they cause a physical change in you in other words in order to store an idea in your head it’s associated with a physical and chemical change in your brain if that physical and chemical change went away then so would the idea and likewise a virus you know becomes part of you it’s you know it was incorporated with you for at least for a while and then both of these can spread by contact now I’ll get to a point it’s really it’s really worth it you’re gonna love it so among our ideas and this is just some
[41:17]
so among our ideas and this is just some samples rights by no means complete are the ideas our Constitution is important capitalism entrepreneurship risk management science engineering and even optimism these these are all ideas that we hold as important and they’ve been developed over centuries and eons and these are the ideas that basically keep us working well now at the moment we are compatible with most of our ideas meaning that the human species which are the hosts work well with the ideas so if the ideas succeed well they can only do it because our physical bodies and brains you know we’re also reproducing and succeeding I think the best way to look at this is that it’s not humans against virus rather our ideas which you can almost think of as a separate entities that the ideas are in a war with the viruses and the humans are nothing but the battlefield we’re nothing but the
[42:18]
battlefield we’re nothing but the battlefield because humans are humans we think that were the were the players we think we’re the central characters bow or not we’re the canvas we’re not the painting we’re just the battlefield the raging battle is between the ideas which if you watch them they’re the ideas have almost automatically with the help of the the people as their hosts the ideas have immediately emerged hey here a bunch of ideas we’re fighting the virus then the idea started like combining and getting stronger and evolving did you see how much how many ideas sprung out of this crisis it was like an idea of volcano just so as soon as as soon as the the host was threatened the ideas sensed the threat because if the host dies the ideas die with it and so the ideas you know using the humans as their as their their base just sort of forming
[43:20]
as their their base just sort of forming and fomenting and just form this furious amount of energy and every part of our society or our life was reimagined so the ideas went into full battle mode full battle mode immediately and and it changed everything it just put their host on shut down the hosts are saying we want to go back to work and the ideas are saying not yet now these ideas collectively form the economy because it’s these ideas that cause us to be motivated we we work with arms and legs we buy things we trade things and then there’s a whole bunch of physical stuff you know the buildings the jobs the products the machines but those all start with ideas and the ideas motivate our bodies and then we build these things so the economy is mostly a bunch of ideas that’s the important part but keep in mind if you blew up all of this stuff let’s say there’s a world war
[44:22]
this stuff let’s say there’s a world war and a lot of stuff gets destroyed as long as the ideas are intact and we’re not dead we could probably figure out a way to get back to a good economy such as after World War 2 but what if it goes the other way what if we lost all of our ideas but we still had our products and our tools and our our buildings we’re all dead because it’s the ideas that matter these are the important things the the physical manifestations of them are also important but those can all be changed if you mess with this stuff everything breaks right so this stuff immediately just started super evolving when we’re done with this our ideas will have risen to a new level of being if you will it’s almost like they just went into rapid evolution and improved and merged and combined into this you know wondrous thing all right so here’s the first bit
[45:22]
thing all right so here’s the first bit of optimism you can’t kill this you’d have to kill all of us yeah if there’s three of us left over you know we’re gonna reassemble right because the idea is just need a host and and then they’ll build back your economy and everything so the first good news is the strongest part of the the war is in really good shape the ideas rose to the challenge and it looks like they’re gonna get it done but there will be some technical problems with the economy and I would just call out these three of course you could make a really long list of all the problems but primarily there’s going to be credit problems where people didn’t pay their bills and then loans can’t pay off their debts banks might be in trouble you’ve got a demand problem where yeah we got products but nobody has money to buy them where’s my demand and then of course food I think food will be solved because we’re a
[46:23]
food will be solved because we’re a compassionate country and we’re not gonna run out of supplies that’s that seems you know we’ll run out of maybe choices but we’re not gonna run out of food and if people rather than money to buy the food well as I said on my earlier periscope nobody in my neighborhood is gonna get hungry because if anybody needs a meal in my neighborhood I’ll just buy them a meal and if ten people need meals I’ll buy a ten people meals so I think you know the government and neighbors etc even if they don’t get their checks on time I think we’ll eat I would predict at least four people who are willing to leave they’re willing to talk to other people I worry this it might be some elderly you just don’t want to ask for help that that would be the saddest but for the most part there won’t be starvation there would be some special cases where just terrible tragedies happen but there’ll be special cases so the two big problems to get us
[47:24]
cases so the two big problems to get us back to work are demand and credit I would say that credit is solvable if the government of the United States is willing to back the banks and Bank the back to people is willing to change some rules baby force the credit companies to you know not report any defaults that happen during this period so you could imagine that with the full weight of the government working on it as long as the government of the United States exists with the biggest military in the world we got credit right so I think we have plenty of muscle to protect the banks and protect people who have credit problems I think we can work that out the demand problem won’t be completely fixed by giving people their money but it might help a little let’s talk about the interesting part yeah I’ll get to the interesting part
[48:25]
so this is the way it’s supposed to work right so the government’s gonna print money they’re not going to borrow this is very important distinction so the plan for this for these checks and for the rescuing the economy is to actually just magically just say okay we have more money now and the government just issues more money basically it’s not literally printed but you know what I mean so government issues more money they give it to the citizens I’ll call it universal basic income for two months from whatever it ends up being and they take that money and they stimulate the economy and they buy things from the stores and then the stores have profits they can pay taxes and it goes back in so that’s pretty good now but where does this two or three trillion dollars come from that’s the interesting question because how do you just say hey hey it’s three trillion dollars we just printed money and now we have three trillion dollars more so is that free so I asked
[49:28]
dollars more so is that free so I asked this question of actual economists so I did a tweet and said you know economists explain this to me is there any downside and if there’s no downside so I’m seeing people asking in the comments so it’s not going to be borrowing this time we do borrow and the national debt has grown that’s a separate problem this is not that this is actually just printing more money just because we can we control the printing presses the government issues the currency so I just issues more so three trillion issued more now what’s the first question you ask yourself wait we can do that if we can do that why haven’t we done that before and you can see in the comments the reasoning the reason is inflation so the reason that you don’t just print money is because then there’d be more money than there is stuff so where you used to have a hundred dollars floating around in the
[50:30]
a hundred dollars floating around in the universe this is oversimplified say where you used to have $1,000 and let’s say there was only one product in the world well the thousand dollars would buy you to that product but if you suddenly have two thousand dollars the person said they’d sell you the phone is going to think you know well bet they’d pay more than a thousand they have two thousand so I’ll just try to charge in two thousand see what happens and of course they pay it because it’s they’re still paying everything they have for the phone so I’m doing a bad job of explaining it but the point is if you just increase the money but not the number of products and services then you get inflation there’s one exception though there’s only one exception where you could just print three trillion dollars and it would just be free do you know what that one exception is this this is the one exception because the
[51:33]
this is the one exception because the demand is so low who could raise prices today now if you don’t let’s not count the emergency equipment than the price gouging that’s the very small part of the economy so not counting the price gouging who’s gonna raise the price of their their phone nobody I mean they might want to well how’d it how do they do that how was when you go back to work with your little you be I check you know and you go back to work and demand this low and nobody’s getting paid as much does the person who makes this battery pack did they raise the price and the you know while all the demands no no they can’t the only time the only time that you could potentially just print three to three trillion dollars is right now there’s no other time you could do it and it would be free now it is correct that if the economy just came raging back and it was a major success you would have too much money and they’re
[52:34]
would have too much money and they’re too soon because demand would come raging back but I don’t believe anybody thinks that that’s going to happen in the next two years so if you could take the the risk of inflation and push it off a few years until the economy comes up you probably wouldn’t even notice it by then so here’s the greater point which was explained to me by Joshua Gans who’s a working professional economist I go to him on Twitter for my economics questions we don’t always agree but his take on things always are rational it makes sense and are well informed and here’s how he explained it but I like this explanation it’s just an alternate way of looking at the same thing that putting money into the system just printing three trillion dollars would be bad if it caused an imbalance but if what it’s doing is bringing balance back to the system it could be there’s no way
[53:34]
to the system it could be there’s no way to know free money we’re in the only the only situation that I didn’t even imagine that we could ever be here frankly yeah ok there’s no other situation that would leave all of our means of production perfectly in place except for a virus that’s it just a virus even if it was a you know EMT what does it UMP even if it was that it would destroy all the electronics you couldn’t just go back to work but the one and only situation where all of your assets and everything are still in place you just don’t have any demand is this this very exact specific situation you want here the best part so not only do we get to invent to three trillion dollars which by the way it’s not like you’re Salzer it solves our problem we have you know there’s a tough year ahead I don’t want to sugarcoat it I’m just
[54:36]
I don’t want to sugarcoat it I’m just telling you that the good news to help you balance and against the stuff that genuinely is stuff you need to worry about the good news is that it does look like we can print three trillion dollars just because we wanted to and it’s only because of this situation now what have I been telling you about Trump that makes him different from all other politicians what is it what is the saying I say all the time about him that he does the one thing that nobody else does and what is that somebody’s gonna say it in the comments but he finds free money yeah there is money on the ground he walks by the table and he says pile of money seriously nobody nobody you all see this right am I the only one who sees this giant pile of money I guess I am going once going twice anybody all right he takes the big pile of money and
[55:38]
right he takes the big pile of money and he does it time after time now usually it’s in the political sense you know you see says or does the thing that was easy I said this when he formed a space force you know some some President was going to form space Wars it was going to be him or the one after or the one after that whatever so it was free money because whoever whoever is the first one to do it is forever the one who formed space force so it was just an example of free money of course it was just smart to do that so we have it and and let me say as clearly as I can economics is complicated I have a degree in this stuff and I had to ask an actual economist to check my thinking now he added a lot of texture that that really helped my thinking but the basic the basic thing is that there can be a perfect situation in which you can just print three trillion dollars and it
[56:40]
print three trillion dollars and it might be this it might be this now you couldn’t do it again because once the economy is solid you lose that opportunity then then it’s just inflationary so here’s the good part you know people are talking about the infrastructure bill and you know did you really want to borrow another trillion dollars to do infrastructure guess what it might be free infrastructure might be free if you do it now because that would be part of the 3 trillion that’s free money because nobody can raise their prices well demand is so low so we might have gotten infrastructure for free now part of that infrastructure I would think and I’m sure we were thinking this way but there’ll be more emphasis on this we saw the importance of working at home and we saw we saw I have an important online schooling was and importantly we saw that there are a lot of people who
[57:41]
that there are a lot of people who didn’t have access to digital products so what good is online at school if you don’t have a computer and you don’t have Wi-Fi so certainly a big part of the infrastructure is going to be to get everybody the capability to of online education and then free college because if you can make your online education industry work which it doesn’t really work well now but it would be easy to do that if you can make it work then the president can say you know I don’t know if we could afford to send everybody to college for free but we can give you a government kick-ass certified college degree that you can work at on your leisure from home and it’ll be better than college because it’ll be made by the best teachers and producers and editors and writers instead of just you know filming a guy who knows how to teach a class so we might get infrastructure for free and might build
[58:41]
infrastructure for free and might build out the last of the digital miles that might make College free it might make you know regular school maybe modified some a little of both and I also think that healthcare is going to change forever because of this and maybe in a positive way you know I’ve told you before that if you have an entrepreneur in the room the best thing you can do with your environment is shake it just shake the box and then the entrepreneur looks in the box and goes oh I don’t see I think shake it again shake shake shake oh look at this these things just lined up I can make a business out of that and I talked about Trump does this all the time with politics if he doesn’t like the argument the way it is he’ll just introduce something that just shakes it all up and in the midst of chaos he’s always the the one-eyed King you know he’s he’s the one who attracts all the attention gets all that gets all the quotes so if he can create some chaos and shake the box he’s the king it
[59:42]
chaos and shake the box he’s the king it works over and over again likewise with healthcare I think health care got got a major shake-up it didn’t want and not for any productive purpose it was just like this major thing that happened and it got shaken and there are a lot of entrepreneurs in that space you know the people who are spinning up these new tests I mean that’s serious you know solid gold turbocharged entrepreneurship there are literally hundreds of companies that just sprung out of nowhere and suddenly are making tests and they’re making devices and apps and stuff like this so I would think that the one of the results of this is major changes in healthcare and the public will demand it the public will have a better sense of what works and what doesn’t boom so that’s all the good news I have for you it’s pretty good I will tell you also that there are some there’s some good pieces of news coming down the pike
[1:00:45]
good pieces of news coming down the pike some I know about that I’m pretty confident about so I think we will get back to work nobody’s going to starve and man is it going to be good after we get it back and run so that’s all for tonight have some good dreams and I’ll talk to you in the morning