Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - Bonus - Pandemic Fireside Chat #5
Aired: 2020-04-14
Duration: 39:00


=== Government Overreach and Prison Problems (02:16) ===

[00:00:02]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:00:04]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:00:06]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:00:09]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:00:15]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:29]  All right, what's up, everybody?
[00:00:31]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem, a fireside chat bonus episode, checking in with the fire.
[00:00:40]  These are always fun.
[00:00:41]  I've got my full apocalypse hair going on.
[00:00:44]  Things are starting to get real over here.
[00:00:47]  How are you doing, buddy?
[00:00:48]  Good to see you.
[00:00:51]  I might have overpromised on this Wi-Fi.
[00:00:53]  That came in a little bit flaky, but I mean, hopefully we get through this.
[00:00:57]  Geez, they're really turning it off for the weekend.
[00:00:59]  There are too many people home.
[00:01:01]  Netflix and porn day, I guess.
[00:01:03]  Yeah, if we lose Wi-Fi as a country, I think you're going to see 100 million people commit suicide tomorrow.
[00:01:10]  This is the one thing keeping this country going.
[00:01:13]  So I hope this comes out all right.
[00:01:15]  Or maybe then we really find out the whole thing's a sham when everyone's like, I ain't even got Wi-Fi at home.
[00:01:20]  I'm going outside and then it's just over.
[00:01:22]  Yeah, that would be, you know, I'm kind of rooting for that.
[00:01:25]  Maybe.
[00:01:25]  Maybe that's the best case scenario.
[00:01:27]  I had a nice sandwich earlier today.
[00:01:29]  I had a nice chicken parm hero.
[00:01:32]  Ooh, beauty.
[00:01:33]  Homemade or you guys ordering that in?
[00:01:35]  Ordered.
[00:01:36]  First time I've ordered food.
[00:01:38]  And I was just like, you know, there's like this pizzeria around here that makes real good like Italian food in general.
[00:01:46]  And I just was like, you know, like these businesses are really taking a hit.
[00:01:49]  We got to help them out.
[00:01:50]  All right.
[00:01:50]  I just really wanted a chicken parm, but I did.
[00:01:52]  I tipped nice.
[00:01:53]  You got to tip nice in these in these crazy days.
[00:01:57]  And you're like, okay, stay away.
[00:02:00]  Chicken parm's aggressive for lunch.
[00:02:02]  I respect it.
[00:02:03]  Yeah, I'd be out for the day.
[00:02:04]  So I'm for you.
[00:02:05]  It wasn't the best choice to do before you have to do anything.
[00:02:08]  I mean, it's sitting in me like a brick in my stomach right now, but it's, oh, goddamn it.
[00:02:13]  It was delicious.
[00:02:15]  This is this thing starting to fucking wear on me.
[00:02:17]  I'm over this.

=== Ordering Food During Lockdowns (07:53) ===

[00:02:18]  I am over this whole, like, everything shut down, quarantine, bullshit.
[00:02:23]  I really, I want to go back to normal life.
[00:02:26]  I'm sure I sound like an asshole saying that because there's a lot of people who are like, have lost their job and shit in this.
[00:02:31]  Just letting you into my world a little bit.
[00:02:33]  This is fucking, goddamn.
[00:02:35]  How are you doing with the whole thing?
[00:02:37]  Are you like, are you getting stressed out at all?
[00:02:43]  Well, I was doing fine with this up until, you know, these Jewish holidays rolled around.
[00:02:48]  And now it just got real.
[00:02:50]  It's a lot of time to sit and reflect and, you know, not use electricity, not be able to work and really connect with the Lord.
[00:02:56]  And I haven't taken that opportunity a while.
[00:02:59]  It's a little bit like being new to the gym.
[00:03:00]  So at the moment, my mental muscles are just like, fuck this.
[00:03:05]  Yeah, no, I understand what you mean.
[00:03:07]  So you can't use electricity through Passover.
[00:03:09]  I'm really a bad Jew.
[00:03:10]  I didn't even know that.
[00:03:11]  Is that a thing?
[00:03:13]  Well, depends on how strict you want to go with these rules.
[00:03:16]  But on the uncertain days, it's a whole thing.
[00:03:20]  You know, I don't recommend it.
[00:03:21]  Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
[00:03:22]  Eating services.
[00:03:24]  Yeah, better ways to get through your quarantine.
[00:03:27]  Yeah, no, I agree.
[00:03:28]  What do you make of the fact that it's starting to seem to me, and keep in mind that I've, from the very beginning of this, been somebody who took the virus seriously.
[00:03:40]  You know, I think this was a very real thing and it's a nasty virus.
[00:03:44]  And there were a lot of people who had, you know, projections that this was going to get very, very bad.
[00:03:48]  And, you know, I was open to listening to them.
[00:03:51]  And I was getting a little bit of shit from people who were saying, oh, this is all made up or it's all overblown.
[00:03:56]  And I was kind of telling them to knock it off.
[00:03:58]  But I got to admit, I'm looking at a lot of the data now and just a lot of the situations on the ground.
[00:04:06]  And it is starting to seem, at least from what I'm seeing, like all the people who put those worst case projections up there, seems like they were way off.
[00:04:18]  And it seems like all of the projections that were used to justify this crazy shutdown of the entire, you know, all 50 states have a national, have a state of emergency declared.
[00:04:33]  It seems like all the stuff that was used to justify this was way overblown.
[00:04:38]  And we're not seeing an overwhelming of the hospitals.
[00:04:43]  We're just not, it's not happening.
[00:04:45]  Even in New York, they've got beds available.
[00:04:49]  The whole thing of people dying in stairwells and shit like that just isn't happening.
[00:04:52]  The hundreds of thousands of deaths from this does not look like it's going to happen.
[00:04:56]  The IHME, you know, is now projecting 60,000 deaths or something, which is, you know, a bad flu season.
[00:05:04]  Now, just in case anyone's going to say, well, this is because of the, you know, the social distancing and the lockdowns and stuff, a lot of that was already taken into account when they were making their really terrible projections about how everything was going to be overwhelmed.
[00:05:18]  But I'm starting to look around now and say, doesn't really seem like any of that came true.
[00:05:24]  What do you think about that?
[00:05:27]  They might have got us, Davey Smith.
[00:05:28]  They really, they might have got us.
[00:05:30]  Listen, when this thing shakes out, it's going to become pretty clear that you probably, anyone over the age of 50 with health issues should have stayed home and the rest of us should have marched on with our lives.
[00:05:40]  And it's still one of these things.
[00:05:43]  Who the fuck knows?
[00:05:44]  Like, there's so many different angles on this.
[00:05:46]  Did they just lie to us that they could really take control of the entire economy?
[00:05:50]  Are forces trying to bottom the thing out to get Trump out?
[00:05:53]  It doesn't look like that.
[00:05:55]  But who knows what the fuck happened on this one?
[00:05:58]  But yes, it seems like they got us.
[00:06:00]  Well, even if they were wrong, it just seems like, oh, man, that, I mean, you know, there's this weird thing that's happened now.
[00:06:08]  And it's on both sides, but the more dominant one, which is the accepted opinion, is that, you know, this virus is the craziest thing ever.
[00:06:17]  And you're not allowed to compare this to the flu.
[00:06:21]  Like if you say that people are already have this emotional response where, you know, but if you're talking about 60,000 deaths, you're talking about a bad flu season.
[00:06:29]  I mean, that's about, that's, that's really what you're looking at there.
[00:06:33]  And it does seem really crazy to do all of this over a bad flu season.
[00:06:42]  You know?
[00:06:43]  Well, they're not going to admit fault.
[00:06:44]  They're just going to go, we saved lives and we did the right thing.
[00:06:47]  And it's lucky that everyone actually listened to us.
[00:06:50]  But it would be interesting if at some point we get the honest review of did they take the absolute worst projections and make terrible decisions around them.
[00:06:59]  Yeah, it's like, and a lot of the people, whether it's Fauci or Trump or Nancy Pelosi or any of them, what basically at first, they were like, this is nothing.
[00:07:10]  You know, this is nothing you have to worry about.
[00:07:12]  Don't even don't even stress about it.
[00:07:14]  Then they were like, everybody's going to die and the medical system's going to be overwhelmed and we have to shut everything down.
[00:07:20]  And now it's kind of like, okay, well, obviously you were wrong on both of those counts.
[00:07:26]  You were wrong to say it was nothing because it's clearly not nothing.
[00:07:30]  But you also seem to be wrong to have shut everything down.
[00:07:34]  And now you get this dynamic where they've kind of dug in.
[00:07:38]  And you have to, once you've put 30 million people out of work, you can't go, oops, my bad.
[00:07:44]  And have corpses to start piling up.
[00:07:47]  Well, look, I mean, if you look at the number of deaths in New York City as compared to like last year at this time or so, there's no question there's more people are dying.
[00:07:55]  And I think it seems reasonable to say that the virus is the major driving factor of that.
[00:08:01]  I mean, there might be some other things.
[00:08:03]  I think that there probably are a decent number of people who would go to the hospital who aren't going to the hospital right now for other unrelated illnesses because they're scared of getting the COVID.
[00:08:19]  So, you know, someone who thinks they're having a heart attack, maybe would go to the hospital, but doesn't now and ends up dying in his home or something like that.
[00:08:26]  Like it's, you know, it's possible that that, but I think that the virus is probably, you know, like a lot of people are dying from this virus.
[00:08:34]  But it's just, it's not what they were telling us it was going to be.
[00:08:39]  And it's possible that they, you know, I don't, you know, I try to operate under the assumption that spectacular claims require spectacular evidence.
[00:08:49]  So you want to, you know, it's quite possible that they just got their models wrong and they just, you know, they thought it was going to be worse than it is.
[00:08:56]  But it seems like it's just hard to have a conversation in the middle anywhere and go, okay, this virus is bad, but how bad is it really?
[00:09:07]  And who's benefiting from continuing to drum up the hysteria and not just like say like, okay, let's have a balanced conversation about the costs versus benefits, which is what we've been trying to do from the beginning of this thing.
[00:09:21]  And the truth is that it looks like we hit the apex in New York.
[00:09:25]  Hospitalizations have been down for a few days now.
[00:09:28]  And that's, you know, now the thing that's really frustrating is that I'll turn on the news and they're still drumming it up.
[00:09:35]  Like the week after the IHME took their projections down to 60,000.
[00:09:42]  They had it up at over 200,000 at one point.
[00:09:45]  It's down to now at 60,000 with no new precautions.
[00:09:48]  This was with everything, all the lockdowns and social distancing being accounted for in those projections.
[00:09:53]  And they're down.
[00:09:54]  And then hospitalizations in New York are down, but the nightly news still comes up and it's like 200,000 deaths, a shocking number that nobody can wrap their head around.
[00:10:05]  Here's a picture of a nurse crying as well.
[00:10:07]  It's like, oh, you guys are really just keeping this hysteria going.

=== Small Business Struggles and Bailouts (09:20) ===

[00:10:12]  And this seems crazy.
[00:10:13]  We have good news, but I guess that doesn't drive ratings or something.
[00:10:18]  Yeah, even amidst, I guess, the now better news, there still aren't great projections for, hey, we're reopening the economy or, hey, you want to hear a crazy one also?
[00:10:28]  For all this hoopla about the ventilators, they're finding out that the ventilators, like 80% of the time, when they got to put someone on a ventilator, the ventilator doesn't help.
[00:10:37]  It actually stresses people's lungs.
[00:10:39]  And for all that, that was like the biggest thing in this whole thing was there aren't enough ventilators.
[00:10:43]  And it could be that, well, the ventilators aren't going to do anything anyways.
[00:10:48]  So, yeah.
[00:10:49]  Yeah, I know.
[00:10:49]  I was reading about that, that it's actually turning out that the majority of the cases, the ventilators aren't helping.
[00:10:55]  And man, isn't that another thing to throw into the fucking mix?
[00:10:59]  And it's just, you know, it's crazy.
[00:11:02]  And then it also, the other thing that's going on now is that they are, the consensus seems to be, of course, that we need another stimulus bill.
[00:11:13]  And this was, they were talking about this for a while, but they actually proposed one in the Senate the other day.
[00:11:17]  It didn't go through.
[00:11:19]  I think the Democrats said it wasn't big enough or something like that.
[00:11:22]  But the idea of this, the payment protection plan, which was, I don't know if you read about this, but this was in the $2 trillion stimulus bill.
[00:11:35]  It's basically a plan where they will small businesses can take out loans.
[00:11:43]  There's a certain amount of money allocated for loans to small businesses.
[00:11:46]  And if they don't fire anyone and don't cut their pay, then they're eligible to get either part or all of those loans forgiven.
[00:11:55]  Okay.
[00:11:56]  So that's the plan.
[00:11:58]  And then, of course, they realize right away that there's way more businesses applying for these loans than they have allocated money for these loans.
[00:12:05]  So they're like, oh, we need another 250 billion.
[00:12:07]  But actually, the 250 billion probably isn't going to be enough either.
[00:12:10]  So now they're talking 500 billion.
[00:12:12]  And it's just like, this is all it really is.
[00:12:16]  funny to see a lot of these people.
[00:12:19]  You know, Ron Paul used to always say, you know, that his differences with other, you know, congressmen were it's philosophical.
[00:12:29]  Like they don't have the same philosophical worldview that I have.
[00:12:32]  And I'd always kind of be like, he's letting them off the hook a little easy.
[00:12:34]  Like I think they're just corrupt and evil.
[00:12:37]  But I really am starting to think now it's like, oh, no, there really is this philosophy problem where I think so many of these people just don't didn't really think that it would be that devastating to the economy to halt production for a month.
[00:12:54]  Like, oh, yeah, you know, but there's enough wealth that if we just move it around, if we just have some government spending, we can just loan those businesses the money and then that's fine.
[00:13:03]  And then we'll forgive the loans and that's no problem.
[00:13:05]  And I think people are starting to realize like, oh, shit, this actually really is going to destroy millions of businesses.
[00:13:13]  So that part's very real.
[00:13:16]  Yeah, I mean, also on the money stimulus side, you know, when they put together those loans, they didn't tell banks how the like it's firstly, it's unclear what extent those loans will just be forgiven, which is hilarious to hand businesses money and go, hey, we're not sure if this is a grant or if it's a loan.
[00:13:34]  And then, well, okay, what's the interest payments going to look like on this?
[00:13:37]  Oh, we didn't work out that detail.
[00:13:38]  It might be compounding.
[00:13:40]  It might just be forgiven.
[00:13:41]  You know, we got to see how fucked up the world is in two months.
[00:13:44]  Yeah, I saw, I think it was Bank of America, I believe, that was complaining where they were like, so we've already had like something like 20% of the total money that was allocated for these loans.
[00:13:56]  People have been, you know, like filing for these loans.
[00:13:59]  And they go, and we haven't even gotten the details from the federal government.
[00:14:03]  We don't even know what we're, what we're loaning out right now.
[00:14:06]  Like they don't know any of this shit.
[00:14:08]  It's such a cluster fuck.
[00:14:09]  And this is what happens.
[00:14:10]  I mean, this is central planning 101.
[00:14:12]  Like this, this shit just does not work.
[00:14:15]  But I also just think it's like there's obviously those are like the logistical problems with it.
[00:14:21]  But it's also like the deeper philosophical problem, which is that the idea that you can borrow and spend your way out of a real halt in production.
[00:14:30]  So if you have some business that now they're underwater because they haven't been able to open their doors for the last say three weeks or whatever, then you go, okay, well, you need money.
[00:14:42]  We'll loan you a bunch of money.
[00:14:44]  Okay.
[00:14:44]  Well, the obvious problem with that is that, well, then they have to pay those loans back with interest, right?
[00:14:49]  So where does that money come from?
[00:14:50]  They were underwater already.
[00:14:52]  So now they open up business again and they kind of like, okay, but now they have to make all that extra money.
[00:14:57]  Where's all that extra revenue coming from?
[00:15:00]  There seems to be no indication that a restaurant, for say, is going to be making extra revenue once they reopen.
[00:15:06]  They're probably going to be making less revenue because people are going to be freaked out to go to restaurants for a little while.
[00:15:11]  So my guess is their revenue is going to be down.
[00:15:13]  So where are they paying this?
[00:15:14]  And then the other issue is that we forgive the loans.
[00:15:18]  It's like, oh, okay, but don't act like that's free.
[00:15:21]  That money had to come from somewhere.
[00:15:23]  So then basically the taxpayer, so the taxpayer who's already burdened with all the corporate bailouts, already burdens themselves without being able to work, now has to pay for all of this shit when they didn't work for a month.
[00:15:36]  It just, none of this makes sense.
[00:15:38]  And this is why I say I think part of it is this philosophical divide where people tend to think, and it's kind of like someone like Bernie Sanders, who will advocate for a $15 minimum wage.
[00:15:49]  And maybe everybody in Congress isn't with him there, but they're all pretty much on board with a minimum wage.
[00:15:55]  And it's kind of like they have this idea that the business owner always has plenty of money.
[00:16:02]  I mean, the business owner is the guy.
[00:16:04]  That's the rich guy.
[00:16:06]  I remember one time when Bernie Sanders was grilled by a small business owner.
[00:16:12]  And do you remember this woman?
[00:16:13]  I think we talked about it on the show.
[00:16:14]  It was this woman, and she was like, she was like, she was like, look, I have like 53 employees and I wanted to open another location.
[00:16:24]  But if I do that, then I'm over 55.
[00:16:27]  And then I have to pay for Obamacare for everybody, which kills my profit margins.
[00:16:30]  So I'm just not opening this other store.
[00:16:34]  And basically, I would be creating all these other jobs.
[00:16:36]  Just a clear example of where Obamacare is killing jobs.
[00:16:39]  And Bernie Sanders responds by going, look, I don't know how much money you make, but I think that millionaires and billionaires should provide healthcare.
[00:16:47]  And she goes, I'm not a millionaire or a billionaire.
[00:16:50]  Like, but that's kind of the idea.
[00:16:52]  It's like, well, if you got 55 employees, you're probably fucking a billionaire.
[00:16:56]  So who the hell cares?
[00:16:57]  You got all the resources in the world.
[00:16:59]  And I think a lot of Americans might get a lesson in this and realize how many small business owners and even mid-sized business owners are barely getting by, have razor-thin profit margins, you know, and like can't afford to shut their doors for a few weeks.
[00:17:15]  And that, you know, anyway, so it's all this bailout stuff.
[00:17:18]  It's just like voodoo economics.
[00:17:20]  And it's what are we?
[00:17:21]  I think we're like, we're doubling our debt as a country in two months, basically.
[00:17:26]  We're going from deficit for sure.
[00:17:29]  Yeah.
[00:17:30]  I mean, it's insane.
[00:17:31]  And they're just kind of playing it off like, yeah, we got the power to do this.
[00:17:35]  It's no big deal.
[00:17:36]  Yeah.
[00:17:37]  And like, if this was such a good idea, if there wasn't like a huge cost to all of this, this is what I'm good at, right?
[00:17:44]  The old reducto ad absurdum.
[00:17:46]  It's like, if there wasn't such a huge cost to this, why wouldn't we just do this under normal times?
[00:17:51]  I mean, like, why, why not just even if the businesses weren't shut down, let's just really give a jolt to the economy and lend all these small businesses money and run up that deficit.
[00:18:00]  Like, let's do it, right?
[00:18:01]  Like, so, so obviously, doesn't there have to be some major cost to all of this?
[00:18:06]  Um, and just no one wants to think about that now, but that's real.
[00:18:11]  Summer, summer vacation, baby.
[00:18:13]  Every summer, we take the full two months off.
[00:18:16]  The government just cuts us all checks and no big deal.
[00:18:19]  Boost the economy.
[00:18:20]  Everyone gets to vacation.
[00:18:21]  Then they go into the work year more relaxed.
[00:18:23]  Yeah, really.
[00:18:24]  And they don't have to be scared to death through their whole vacation.
[00:18:26]  They could just like relax, have a good time.
[00:18:29]  I saw, here was one of the, I mean, I'm sure there's going to be a million players and little scams amongst this, you know, the whole stimulus package.
[00:18:38]  One of the really good ones is BlackRock.
[00:18:40]  So at first, BlackRock was like processing all of the, I forgot exactly what it was a processing was like all the loans that the government's making to someone, maybe the other banks, whatever the hell it is.
[00:18:49]  And they capped their profits at like $6 million and basically went, listen, BlackRock makes, you know, billions of dollars a year.
[00:18:56]  They're really not making any money off of this.
[00:18:58]  If anything, they're doing us the favor.
[00:19:00]  But now it comes out that government is, they're taking all like these high yields, like they're basically backstopping all these high yield bonds.
[00:19:08]  They're going to start buying them.
[00:19:09]  And high yield, that's just the marketing term for these, you know, for junk bonds.
[00:19:14]  It's in other words, the high-risk bonds are also high yields.
[00:19:17]  Now, what's crazy about the government, you know, basically entering that bond market and saying, hey, we're going to support this is that, you know, you buy your government treasuries and you get nothing for them because they're guaranteed by the government.
[00:19:28]  And now you got these high interest things that are also basically being backed by the government.

=== Corporate Welfare and High Yield Bonds (02:41) ===

[00:19:32]  So you completely just distorted all price discovery in the entire bond market.
[00:19:36]  And guess who's one of the biggest players in this whole high-yield bond thing and the repackaging and the selling to pension funds?
[00:19:44]  None other than BlackRock.
[00:19:45]  They got their fucking bailout.
[00:19:47]  And by the way, there's going to be a million of these stories.
[00:19:49]  That's just the first one.
[00:19:51]  Yeah.
[00:19:51]  Yeah.
[00:19:51]  No, this is, and this happens all the time.
[00:19:54]  I mean, it's like, you know, the big, was the company that became the big story, that Solyndra under Obama in that era of bailouts.
[00:20:01]  Or it's, oh, it just turns out that there's this bullshit company that had politically connected people in it and they got handouts.
[00:20:07]  And now that we're really entering the age of the bailout, we're going to start reading about a bunch of these different stories.
[00:20:13]  One of the things that I think has been an interesting development is that I've seen more people on the left starting to realize what just happened.
[00:20:26]  And so, you know, they like they were very desperate.
[00:20:28]  Like Congress has to do something to bail out the people.
[00:20:30]  They have to help people out.
[00:20:32]  And then they got their bill through.
[00:20:33]  And now they're starting to go like, hey, wait, what?
[00:20:36]  Wait, so you're telling me this was the biggest heist in American history, that this was the biggest, you know, corporate, you know, welfare package that we've ever had?
[00:20:46]  And they're starting to kind of turn against that.
[00:20:48]  And I thought that this might just be something that, you know, like the left, the lefties I follow on Twitter were saying, which is not exactly a random sample.
[00:21:00]  I follow the good lefties in general.
[00:21:03]  But then I saw AOC even put out a thing about this blasting the corporate welfare that she just voted for.
[00:21:10]  And it's just, there's a funny dynamic where now people are trying to distance themselves from it on both sides.
[00:21:16]  So you see AOC being like, you know, they like they held us hostage and made us vote for the corporate welfare.
[00:21:22]  And then I saw on Twitter Charlie Kirk.
[00:21:24]  I actually responded to this one because I couldn't help myself.
[00:21:26]  But Charlie Kirk, of course, God just infuriates me.
[00:21:29]  Just such a Republican, like yes man.
[00:21:32]  But he was talking and he goes, he goes, the Democrats just snuck in X, Y, and Z and starts listing all the pork that the Democrats snuck in.
[00:21:40]  You know, the Democrats snuck in 25 million for the Kennedy Center and this for blah, blah, blah, and this for green energy and this for that.
[00:21:47]  And like I tweeted back at him and I was like, it's those bastard Democrats.
[00:21:50]  They forced the Republicans to vote unanimously in the Senate for it.
[00:21:54]  And they forced the great President Trump to sign it into law.
[00:21:58]  It's just how either party can blame the other party for something they both came together to do and no one except for fucking Thomas Massey.
[00:22:07]  Rand Paul was home with the COVID at the time, but Thomas Massey is like the one guy.
[00:22:11]  A few other people in the house voted against it.

=== Political Maneuvering and Forced Votes (03:24) ===

[00:22:13]  But like, it's like, yeah, you guys, sorry.
[00:22:16]  None of you guys can walk away from this.
[00:22:18]  You just gave these big corporations the biggest handouts in the history of the world.
[00:22:24]  You got to own that.
[00:22:25]  Like, I'm sorry.
[00:22:26]  You can't just say you were pressured into it.
[00:22:28]  That's not enough.
[00:22:29]  Yeah.
[00:22:30]  I think the two things that are really going to be what we have to look at after this is one, what's the timeline for this next bubble?
[00:22:39]  So like we've been saying that they keep kind of creating these bubbles and they're going to burst and at some point there's an end date.
[00:22:44]  So it looks like it looks like we're getting an extension on a test here where they just created another 10-year bubble.
[00:22:49]  Maybe this thing goes another 10 years.
[00:22:51]  But I mean, are we saying certifiably this is not sustainable and that there's no way that they can do this another time?
[00:22:58]  In which case, we really got to start making some fucking preparations.
[00:23:01]  That's one.
[00:23:02]  Two is if this fucking virus thing turns out to be the best sham ever, fucking hoax, they got us all to self-contain ourselves within our own homes off some fucking bogus projections and CNN, everything else has been a practice run.
[00:23:16]  Man, are they good at acting and pretending like there's hysteria with Cuomo pretending like he's at home looking completely fine saying, yeah, but you wouldn't believe what this looks like at night when it's night, it's night terror.
[00:23:26]  Sure.
[00:23:26]  I look amazingly sexy right now, but just two hours ago, I was really sick.
[00:23:30]  Like, what are we going to do to change, I guess, human rationality of how we spread information, digest it, start making decisions around risk versus reward?
[00:23:40]  Like, not that any of this is going to happen, but as humanity, we really got to reevaluate, like, dude, how do we deal with these things?
[00:23:48]  Well, yeah, I agree.
[00:23:49]  And how is it that just it really only took a few weeks to shut down America?
[00:23:59]  And that, and it's not even the fact, it's not even saying that this virus was a hoax, but you just go, if it was, look how easy it would have been for them to just take every ounce of liberty that we have.
[00:24:11]  There is something about it that just makes you, you know, feel like Patrick Henry must be rolling in his grave or something.
[00:24:18]  Like these people who, these men who fought and died for liberty throughout the history of this country.
[00:24:25]  And then we just, oh, oh, there's a virus.
[00:24:28]  Okay, take all of it.
[00:24:29]  You know, drag somebody off the bus for not wearing a mask.
[00:24:32]  Hey, got to do what you got to do.
[00:24:33]  And I'll just sit here and clap for the cops who do it.
[00:24:37]  And that they, you know, like, there's got to be something a little bit more to it.
[00:24:41]  And I'm sorry, that thing with the Cuomos with them, this is theater.
[00:24:44]  And I'm not saying he doesn't have the fucking coronavirus, although I've entertained the thought.
[00:24:49]  But this is all just, it's infuriating.
[00:24:52]  It's like, this is such bullshit.
[00:24:54]  The governor's talking to his brother and he's like, hey, you're a hero.
[00:24:58]  Stay strong.
[00:24:59]  And he's like, I'm shivering so bad.
[00:25:01]  I chipped my tooth.
[00:25:02]  Like, I'm going to need to see that chipped tooth there, Chris.
[00:25:06]  Can I get some actual evidence of this?
[00:25:08]  Because I'm sorry.
[00:25:09]  It's whether or not you're really sick or how bad it is, you are clearly capitalizing off of it.
[00:25:16]  And it's disgusting.
[00:25:20]  I bet, you know, not that I ever saw it, but you know, in, I think it was paranormal activity, they had like that green screen camera to show you all the crazy shit going on in those rooms at night.
[00:25:29]  I bet if you put that in Chris Cuomo's room at night where he's claiming he has night terrors, you just hear Rockaby Baby playing and that guy fast asleep snoring.

=== Voluntary Isolation vs. Draconian Rules (12:34) ===

[00:25:38]  Yeah.
[00:25:38]  I mean, it's like, I don't know.
[00:25:40]  The whole thing is just, it stinks.
[00:25:42]  It stinks of something.
[00:25:43]  And I don't know exactly what's going on, but I'm just, I'm really, I don't know.
[00:25:49]  I'm, I, I'm just, I, I, I'm very, uh, skeptical over the whole thing.
[00:25:54]  And then on top of that, even if it's all real, it's still just like, you're obviously like trying to exploit this for your own personal gain.
[00:26:03]  And it's, uh, it's, it's a, it's really just awful.
[00:26:07]  Um, so anyway, um, it, it, we'll see when this whole fucking thing ends.
[00:26:15]  Uh, it's gonna be like you said earlier, like no matter what, even if it's like weighed down and it turns out to not be a lot of deaths, they're gonna say, well, it's because we took all these steps and that's what allowed, you know, this to happen.
[00:26:28]  I want my World War II medal for sitting on my couch.
[00:26:30]  That's what they said.
[00:26:31]  You know, we're the second greatest generation ever just because we practiced being lazy before this happened and we self-contained.
[00:26:39]  It was the sacrifice that our generation was prepared to make to just not go to work and watch Netflix for a while.
[00:26:45]  That's that we have been training for that for a long time.
[00:26:49]  But I'm starting, you know, as I'm sure a lot of people, I'm sure you're, you know, you're wondering as well, a lot of us are also starting to realize that it seems like none of these governors have an exit plan.
[00:27:02]  You know, like none of them have a strategy for what we're going to do to get back to normal life and when that could be.
[00:27:08]  Of course, Trump floated out the idea of opening everything up back by Easter.
[00:27:14]  It is Easter Sunday as we're recording this.
[00:27:17]  Happy Easter to all the Christians from your favorite Christian.
[00:27:24]  But it's like, okay, now people are floating around May 1st.
[00:27:28]  They're floating around other ideas.
[00:27:30]  Then some people are saying other things.
[00:27:32]  You know, who knows?
[00:27:34]  We'll see what it's going to look like when we get back to it.
[00:27:37]  Bill de Blasio just canceled school for the whole year.
[00:27:42]  So the whole year of public school is off, which is, you know, one nice thing that's come out of this, a little bit less indoctrination this year.
[00:27:49]  But I really am like starting to wonder, like, when the fuck are they just going to let people get back to life?
[00:27:56]  I wish I knew.
[00:27:58]  You know, I wish I sat down.
[00:27:59]  I made these policy decisions, but who the, they got no plan.
[00:28:02]  At some point, they'll walk it back and maybe they'll be like, all right, everyone under 50.
[00:28:07]  And then, you know, when no one gets sick or anything, they'll be like, all right, I guess it's not here anymore.
[00:28:11]  They have no idea.
[00:28:11]  No one knows.
[00:28:12]  Yeah.
[00:28:13]  Yeah.
[00:28:13]  No, absolutely.
[00:28:14]  And I wonder, you know, what else is going to come out of all of this?
[00:28:19]  I think the longer we go through this lockdown, the scarier all the prospects are going to be, not just in terms of how much the economy has been devastated, but also just how much of this draconian, you know, it's been really disturbing to me.
[00:28:34]  I don't know if you've seen, I've seen a lot of these videos of the guy getting pulled off of the bus.
[00:28:39]  I saw one of a kid getting arrested for having a catch with his daughter.
[00:28:43]  And this stuff is like, this is getting really, really creepy.
[00:28:46]  I mean, this is something that you do not want to see normalized.
[00:28:50]  And that's, you know, at least I think there are, there does seem to be some pushback to it.
[00:28:56]  Like, I think people don't like seeing that shit, but we'll see.
[00:28:59]  We'll see where it all goes.
[00:29:01]  Have you looked into the 5G conspiracy at all?
[00:29:05]  Very little.
[00:29:08]  What are your thoughts?
[00:29:08]  No, me neither.
[00:29:10]  Sometimes when like the wackier stuff comes out, it's just beyond what I can really dig into or certifiably say is true or not.
[00:29:17]  So I just, I haven't done that much research yet.
[00:29:20]  I'm just hoping somebody, I want to come across like the Sam Triplet or whoever's done all the research and can lay it out.
[00:29:25]  And then usually when someone's able to do that, I can just go, okay, that sounds like total horseshit or not.
[00:29:31]  Yeah.
[00:29:32]  Yeah.
[00:29:32]  I mean, like I said before, I'm not somebody who's opposed to believing in conspiracies and sometimes really evil and crazy conspiracies.
[00:29:42]  The thing that bothers me is just, it's what I said before, spectacular claims require spectacular evidence.
[00:29:48]  And a lot of times what I see in the conspiracy world is people jump on a sexy narrative that they like and then they just kind of will themselves to believe in it.
[00:30:02]  Did you hear anything about that QAnon thing that was going, that was big last month?
[00:30:07]  It was like this huge queue.
[00:30:09]  I don't know really that well, but it was this big like, you know, Twitter conspiracy that basically all of the elite pedophiles were about to be rounded up and we were going to see mass arrests of famous people on a date and they set a date when it was all going to go down.
[00:30:26]  The date was like three weeks ago or something like that.
[00:30:28]  I think nothing happened.
[00:30:29]  It's just, it was complete bullshit.
[00:30:31]  But people got way into it and like we're really believing it.
[00:30:34]  And it's like, hey, listen, if they're actually going to, if this whole evil plot's going to be exposed, okay, that's pretty spectacular.
[00:30:43]  Why do we believe that's going to happen?
[00:30:45]  Like what evidence is there to suggest that all these people are going to be arrested?
[00:30:50]  I want to hear from the kids that were diddled.
[00:30:53]  Sure, we all do.
[00:30:55]  But just saying, I just don't, I don't like to jump on board with these things and buy into them if there's not a good reason to.
[00:31:05]  It's just, I always, you know, say, you know, operate with caution.
[00:31:10]  I felt this way for a long time.
[00:31:12]  To clarify, it wasn't shots fired by me on Sam Triplet.
[00:31:15]  I think the guy's great.
[00:31:15]  I'm just saying, I don't want to have to do my homework on this.
[00:31:18]  So I'm hoping to come across someone who has done their homework.
[00:31:21]  Yes.
[00:31:21]  No, I got what you were saying.
[00:31:23]  Okay, good.
[00:31:24]  Love Sam.
[00:31:27]  But it's like I remember thinking about this stuff back in the 9-11 truther days, like where there would just be, you know, things that feel however you feel about 9-11.
[00:31:37]  I just remember seeing this behavior out of a lot of the 9-11 truthers, and it would be like, you know, just these things like whatever, like, you know, like jumping in these wild conspiracies about like who they shot a missile into the Pentagon.
[00:31:55]  It's just like, I, you know, guys, I have really no evidence of this.
[00:31:59]  I've heard that 5G will actually give everyone pedophilic urges.
[00:32:04]  And so that way they can hopefully normalize it so that when we start hearing about all the global elites and what they've been really been doing, it's like, we're all just touching kids.
[00:32:12]  Huh.
[00:32:12]  Now that, now that's a conspiracy we can all get behind.
[00:32:19]  All right.
[00:32:20]  What else?
[00:32:21]  Anything else on your mind that we should touch on?
[00:32:24]  I don't know, man.
[00:32:25]  I'm just, it's such a crazy thought to think we might have just gotten fooled on this one.
[00:32:30]  This has been a tough one.
[00:32:31]  Whatever.
[00:32:32]  I think we both kind of said, hey, this one's tough to call, which sucks because usually we're pretty good at kind of being the experts and calling bullshit right away.
[00:32:40]  But this has been a tricky one.
[00:32:42]  Well, my, you know, thought on it is that I, you know, I don't think that we, this was a hoax that they just fooled us with.
[00:32:53]  I really don't think that.
[00:32:56]  I think that this virus is real.
[00:32:58]  And there were a lot of experts who were very concerned about it.
[00:33:02]  However, I think that, you know, there does seem to be this tendency, even amongst really, really smart experts who all believed in, you know, say peak oil or, you know what I mean, the hole in the ozone layer and look at a lot of the climate change hysteria and all that stuff.
[00:33:21]  And I think that the experts sometimes, maybe it's a psychological thing, but they can get sucked into these kind of worst case scenario projections that are that don't take into account every single variable because none of them are smart enough.
[00:33:36]  None of us are smart enough to take into account every single variable.
[00:33:40]  So, you know, with the peak oil stuff, I mean, you know, you're looking at people who are making projections of how much oil there is versus how much is being consumed.
[00:33:50]  And oh, they didn't think there's this one guy over here who comes up with a whole new innovation where we can now get way more oil than we ever could before.
[00:33:57]  It's like, oh, okay, that changes everything about the projections.
[00:34:02]  The overpopulation stuff.
[00:34:05]  There's a whole bunch of them.
[00:34:06]  And I think there might be some psychological dynamic that people get sucked into where all the sudden, you know, like if you're some virologist or something like that, all of the sudden, you're the star of the show.
[00:34:18]  Your issue is now the most important issue.
[00:34:21]  And everyone's looking at you as the most important expert.
[00:34:24]  And all of a sudden, you just became the most interesting guy at the dinner party.
[00:34:28]  You know what I mean?
[00:34:29]  Like you've really got some information everybody else wants, but only if it's really bad.
[00:34:34]  If it's not really bad, all that juice goes away and you just go back to your lab, nerd.
[00:34:38]  You know what I mean?
[00:34:39]  And I think maybe people get sucked into that.
[00:34:42]  I don't know.
[00:34:42]  I'm just kind of speculating.
[00:34:44]  Also, what a terrible cash 22 when you're finally having your moment and everyone thinks you're cool.
[00:34:48]  Everyone also has to stay home so you don't even get your dick sucked.
[00:34:52]  Yeah, it's a bad time.
[00:34:54]  But virologists probably should have thought that through.
[00:34:56]  I mean, that's the very nature of them having their moment.
[00:35:00]  But I just think that here's the problem with these kind of draconian government measures, right?
[00:35:06]  Is that so?
[00:35:07]  If you have, like, if you look at the market that's been responding, which has been happening the whole time, like I said, I think I told you, or I've definitely said on the show at one point, that the nursing home where my wife's grandfather is, who's very old, they wouldn't let any visitors in.
[00:35:25]  And this was before the government shut anything down and the government never told them they weren't allowed to, but they were just like, hey, this is like a real old population here.
[00:35:33]  We got a bunch of people in their 90s.
[00:35:35]  We cannot have this virus get in here.
[00:35:37]  It'll be a disaster.
[00:35:38]  So they just stop.
[00:35:39]  And it sucks.
[00:35:40]  Can't go see them, but that's, you know, it's the right thing to do.
[00:35:42]  And so they're taking precautions.
[00:35:45]  There were lots of supermarkets who started limiting the amount of toilet paper that people could buy.
[00:35:52]  And they were like, no, no, no, we're not going to let, you know, people just hoard up all the toilet paper.
[00:35:56]  Now, that's one of those, to me, that was a really interesting one because, and this happens a lot in market transactions where if you listen to some left-winger predict how the market can work, they often don't take into account the human element of it.
[00:36:12]  Because you would really think if you were just like working this out on a chalkboard or just kind of theoretically thinking about where incentives are, I mean, a supermarket's incentivized to let someone buy up all their shit, right?
[00:36:24]  I mean, hey, the first guy who comes in wants to buy your entire inventory.
[00:36:27]  Okay, great.
[00:36:28]  We just sold it.
[00:36:28]  Let's order some more and sell some more.
[00:36:30]  That's how we work.
[00:36:31]  They were not incentivized financially to say, no, no, no, to, you know, the other part of that that might not be true is like, if you know people are specifically looking for toilet paper, so you want them to come to your market and then buy other shit.
[00:36:47]  Well, but right.
[00:36:48]  Well, no, listen, obviously they were incentivized in some way to do this.
[00:36:52]  So my point is that you have to really think it through.
[00:36:56]  And then the fact is also that they are incentivized to also be decent about this and to provide for all of their customers, to keep all of their customers coming back.
[00:37:05]  You know what I mean?
[00:37:06]  So yeah, no, you're right.
[00:37:07]  There is some incentive for it.
[00:37:09]  I'm just saying it's easy.
[00:37:10]  It would be easy to miss theoretically.
[00:37:12]  Anyway, the point I was going, getting at with all this is that if you just left this on a voluntary basis and let people voluntarily self-isolate and really encourage people, which by the way, it doesn't seem, at least it seems to me like it's not that hard to scare people into wanting to not be in big crowds right now.
[00:37:29]  Like I don't think that would have been that difficult.
[00:37:32]  And you, and by the way, there's a lot of evidence to back this up.
[00:37:36]  A lot of the sporting events that canceled didn't cancel because the government told them to.
[00:37:40]  They canceled because people weren't going to be going to them.
[00:37:42]  A lot of Amtrak was still up and running for quite a while and they were canceling trains left and right just because they weren't selling tickets.
[00:37:48]  People didn't want to get on an Amtrak.
[00:37:50]  But when you don't do it through the government and you just do it voluntarily, even if they're wrong in the projections and it ends up not being so bad, it's very easy to adjust quickly.
[00:38:00]  Whereas what you get when the government comes in and does this by force is now they have to dig in and continue to justify it because they just put tens of millions of people out of work and they can't go, oops, we ruined your life for nothing.

=== Market Driven Cancellations Over Government Orders (00:47) ===

[00:38:12]  That won't come off very good.
[00:38:14]  And then you also get the, you know, sided, you know, the added benefit of watching cops tackle some guy on a beach for going for a jog.
[00:38:25]  And that ain't good.
[00:38:29]  All right.
[00:38:30]  I think that's a good fireside chat for today.
[00:38:33]  It's good to check in with you as always, sir.
[00:38:35]  Stay strong.
[00:38:35]  Don't burn yourself in that beautiful fire that you got behind you.
[00:38:40]  And we'll do another one of these this week at some point.
[00:38:43]  And yeah, and I got some fun some fun guests lined up.
[00:38:46]  So we'll have a nice episode with a nice week of episodes with some bonus content for all you loyal problem children out there.
[00:38:56]  Stay safe.
[00:38:57]  Stay healthy.
[00:38:58]  Talk to you soon.
[00:38:59]  Peace.