Dave Smith and Michael Malice dissect government overreach, debating whether governors should sacrifice paychecks during shutdowns while critiquing Obama's legacy for high drug prices and foreign interventions. They challenge narratives on COVID-19, citing Columbia Presbyterian data suggesting herd immunity exists among pregnant women and arguing deaths stem from underlying conditions like diabetes rather than race. Smith mocks Biden's sniffing habits and predicts corporate media will soon blame Trump for protecting only the wealthy, concluding that respectful inquiry beats aggression in persuasion, much like Ayn Rand's "better mousetrap" concept demands for ideas to succeed. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Fighting Cynicism and State Control00:02:46
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
Hello, hello.
What's going on?
I am Dave Smith, and let this be your problem for the next hour.
I will be your problem for the next hour.
I'm still thinking about how to intro these part of the welcome podcasts that we're doing.
Of course, this saga is continuing.
I have my good friend, very talented writer, broadcaster, and just overall extraordinary human being, Michael Malis, back with us.
How are you, buddy?
I'm doing super well.
Having a lot of fun.
Yesterday, it's really funny how one of the things I'm fighting against even more than the state is cynicism.
And it's really important, I think, in these times to not get into, and this isn't synonymous with cynicism, like this pessimistic mentality.
We're all screwed, blah, blah, blah, and everything's horrible.
Yeah, things are going to suck for a while, but you can make them suck less.
You have a little bit of control.
So I had this real bleeding heart, not even a bleeding heart moment.
I have this collection of shaving soaps.
I went down.
It's this fucking rabbit hole and it's a lot of fun, whatever.
And I was on one of the forums and this dude is like, he's 58.
He's like, my wife just got laid off.
I'm scared.
So I'm selling off some of my shaving soaps, right?
And I got this like really rare one that came.
It's one of those, there's two types of rare.
There's rare and like it's really collectible.
And it's rare because like some shitty minor artisan made it and no one wanted at the time and no one knows how.
But like I wanted it because it's called Yeti Snot.
So I got the Yeti Snot from him and he's like, well, what about this one?
And he's like trying to sell me his like used soaps for like $3.
And it's just, it's like, it's also like stuff you could get very easily.
And he sent me, he's like, oh, you, where are you from, like, New York?
And he sent me this picture of him and his wife here.
They were here for like a Billy Joel concert and she just got laid off.
You know, he's 58.
I don't know how old she is.
And I'm like, you know what?
Like, if you're like, and obviously I could be reading a lot into this picture, but I'm like, you're middle-aged, your wife got laid off.
It's scary, you know, and anytime, especially now, I'm like, you know what?
I'm going to be that guy.
I'm going to do something nice for no fucking reason.
So I went on Twitter and I'm like, all right, I'm going to toss this guy $200 for no reason.
I don't want him selling his soaps.
Joe Biden's Optimistic Perspective00:12:11
I like my soaps.
I'll cover the first hundred.
You guys chip in another 100 and we'll do it.
And like five minutes, people chipped in.
I sent it to him.
And I was glad.
And I was glad.
And of course, it's like for him, it's like, what the, you know, he's like, this is pretty emotional.
Like, what the hell?
It's only 200 bucks, but it's still like, it's, it's, I think when you see something like that happen, the value is other people realize, okay, this world's not fucked forever.
Like there's still a place where sometimes random nice things happen.
And what's amazing is there were still people who felt the need to be like actually and like insinuate themselves.
One was like, you look like you're going to afford $200.
Why are you asking us for money?
And the other one was, this morning, he's like, why are you bragging about charity?
Because I had posted the proof that I actually send him the money instead of me just pocketing it.
And I'm like, wow.
It's, it's a lot of people are very committed to their perspective, as am I. Fortunately, my perspective is a much more optimistic one, which I think is much more useful.
I'm not some Pollyanna, obviously.
I'm quite aware of the darkness of the human condition as my work has demonstrated, but I don't think that that's the norm, even if it's common.
And I think knowing a little bit more about the darkness of the human condition and knowing about periods in history where there was, you know, true darkness or regions in the world, I'm thinking about your work in North Korea where there is like true darkness, I think can also give you an appreciation for what we have.
And even if it feels like that the COVID-19 thing is really, really bad, it's like, you know, compare to what?
Then, and that's the only way you ever get a gauge of anything.
And if you compare it to a lot of other times in human history and a lot of other countries, you know, right now, there is a lot to be thankful for.
And I do, I, you know, I've always thought that that's helpful.
Sometimes it's even when you're in a moment of feeling bad about things, you don't, you don't particularly want to think about this, but I felt that if you force yourself to, it can be really beneficial.
But think about, you know, what you have to be thankful for, what you have to be grateful for, how much worse a lot of people have it than you, and how much worse people have had it throughout human history than we do.
And there is something, sometimes you have to really aggressively remind yourself to keep things in perspective.
And not that that's perfect, but I've found it to be helpful.
I think a lot of times people tend to not allow themselves to feel their own suffering or pain.
Like, especially like with the, I mean, I know the word abuse is used very loosely, right?
But a lot of times people are like, well, I wasn't beaten and raped as a kid, so I wasn't abused, or I didn't have it that bad.
It's like, you're entitled to your pain.
You're entitled to be like, yeah, this sucked.
And it sucked that I was a kid.
You don't have to have been tossed down the stairs every day and have your arm broken by drunk dad to have that be the case.
So the other thing, but with that, it's, I think I'm going to put on my total lefty hat.
The fact that we're all going through this coronavirus does make it easier for people to be like, this sucks.
And to be able to tell other people, yeah, I'm really scared.
I'm like losing my job.
And instead of sounding whining or weak, people be like, yeah, they will feel for you.
And they won't roll their eyes.
They won't give you shitty advice like, oh, have you tried setting out responses?
They're like, yeah, dude, this sucks.
I got you.
And this is one case where like equality, I think, is actually very, very helpful psychologically to people.
Yeah, there are values of equality.
I mean, I wouldn't consider it an absolute value as some on the left do, but at times it can be helpful.
And certainly there is a psychological component of inequality and equality.
One of the things I was, I tweeted the other day that I think all the governors who have shut down their states shouldn't get paid while the shutdowns are going on.
And just, no, I was just saying that.
No, this is just.
All right, no, let me finish off.
Moderate libertarian Dave Smith.
We have the ANCAP position for what to do with governors.
The modern position is just don't pay them.
There you go.
That's right.
Well, listen, it's a compromise position, which is what I'm known for.
Between the helicopter and the other, we got just a little bit.
Let's have a nice moderate position.
But I do think just something just to think about for people who obviously we're not going to abolish the state tomorrow.
But if you're telling tens of millions of people that they can't go to work, you're forcing them not to go to work.
Shouldn't you also have to sacrifice something?
Shouldn't some money be sacrificed?
I mean, I'd like to see a little bit of equality in that sense.
I'd like to see, you know, it's funny because really the anarchist position is not completely removed from a belief in equality.
The idea is that the state is this organization that acts above everybody else and that they should kind of be held to the same standards that any other group in society would be.
So I would like, I really do just find it.
And I guess this is a theme that's been going on for a long, it's really been apparent for years in America now, but it's like where you'll have all these people in Hollywood who will say, you know, they have armed security, but they're against the right to bear arms.
They live in fenced communities, but they're against building a wall.
And I see a lot of this with people who, you know, government employees right now who are still collecting a paycheck, being like, hey, you got to make this sacrifice.
You got to not collect your paycheck.
And right.
And it's like, well, how about you feel a little bit of this if you want to advocate it for others?
I think it's.
When's the last time a government employee had job insecurity?
This is what's amazing.
Holy shit.
I was watching the Obama video where he endorsed Biden yesterday on Nightshade.
I wanted to get into that with you.
I'm just going to say one sentence and we can get this will be a perfect segue.
And I watched the clip and it starts out really solid because he starts out about our approach to coronavirus and he gives this pep talk, which I thought he nailed it.
And I'm like, this is great.
And he's got very good delivery when he's trying to be like leaderly and being like, let's be calm.
Like, this is a situation, blah, blah, blah.
And it's like, okay, this guy absolutely nails it.
But then he starts talking about Biden.
And there's this one sentence which was really convoluted.
And I had to go back and listen to it.
He goes, when Joe Biden, I talks, when Joe talks to a man who lost his job at a factory, he speaks with the feeling of someone who knows what it's like to have gone home and told his family he got fired.
And I'm like, okay, let me debrief that.
And then I'm like, Joe Biden was elected to the Senate when he was 29.
The last time he got fired was when Trump became president at age 75.
So this man, I do think it's, I would bet money, gun to head, that Joe Biden actually does care when people get fired.
I don't doubt that for a second.
I don't think that takes much.
And I do think he vaguely cares about poor people and people who are like struggling to make ends meet.
But don't tell me that Joe Biden, who was elected in 72, knows what it's like to be like, oh man, I'm living paycheck to paycheck.
It's unbelievable.
And of course, none of the people, and that's one of the things that's just, it's almost impossible for them to not be in a bubble.
But what you have is the entire political class and the entire corporate press talking about what it's like for people who have job insecurity.
And none of them know what this is like.
I mean, like, or very, very few.
And so it is, there's a guaranteed disconnect.
I thought one of the funniest things, I don't have the exact quote, but he said something about how if elected, Joe Biden will put all the best people around him.
That was Trump's line.
No, no, no, but that, no, but Obama had a line in the endorsement about how Biden would surround himself with competent people, which I just thought was such a funny thing to say.
Like there was a real subtext to that.
Like you're like, well, look, they're all not going to be senile, right?
Like there'll be some, there'll be some people there with functioning brains around him, I'm sure.
I tweeted this out.
I had a friend who worked in a news organization and she had people working under her.
And one of the girls had a real hygiene problem.
And people complained and her boss had to sit her down.
And it was like excruciating for him because it's like the most awkward conversation ever.
And I just realized someone, one of Joe Biden's nurses, had to sit him down and be like, Joe, you've got to stop sniffing people in public.
But that conversation was had.
Oh, I mean, I think people in his campaign had to have it.
And listen, this is what I said about Joe Biden, okay?
Forget how weird you think it is.
Forget it, the word.
You could just end it there, but forget how weird you think it is that he sniffs kids and women.
Okay.
The fact is that it became a scandal.
There were all of these montages put out of him sniffing all of these kids and all of these women.
And somebody spoke to Joe Biden about this.
Somebody on his campaign had to be like, sir, we've gotten some data in and we're really going to need you to stop sniffing kids.
And he refuses to stop.
That's the part that I find the most alarming that Biden was just like, no, I'm sorry.
Like, I'll take my chances.
But if I can't sniff kids, what's this all about?
Like, what am I even running for if I can't sniff kids?
Malarkey detected.
Oh, man, this is just a lot of fun.
But so now it's all come together.
It's all official.
All the endorsements have come for Biden.
He got the Bernie endorsement.
He got the Elizabeth Warren endorsement.
He got the big one, the Obama endorsement.
Did Hillary endorse you?
I don't think so.
I don't think, at least I haven't heard anything about that, but that's just, that's just a matter of time, I'd imagine.
But it is, it's kind of strange.
It's hard to not think that Obama endorsing Joe Biden now, even for the average blue-pilled, you know, Democratic voter, wouldn't you have to think that it says something that he waited until there was nobody else running in the race to say he endorsed him.
I mean, he is endorsing him over Trump, obviously.
That's who Obama would support.
But he didn't even, when it was a one-on-one with him and Bernie, didn't even come out and endorse him.
And he never actually chose him over Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris or Mayor Pete or anything like that.
And for the guy who served with you, to me, it just felt like that endorsement loses a lot of value when Obama didn't actually pick you over anybody else.
Yeah, I think the value of Obama would obviously be him campaigning for Biden.
Yeah.
If anything, there's a lot of, you and I have no idea what went on behind the scenes at all.
There's a lot of scenarios.
It could be that he saw the weak poll numbers for Biden and he's like, I'm not going to tarnish my brand.
He's not going to, maybe that would give Bernie a chance to even more run against the establishment.
Like, look, you know, I'm really the outsider.
The entire establishment's against me with Obama, blah, blah.
It could be he doesn't want to burn his bridge like you're saying with Ward and Klobuchar and all these other people.
Biden said, oh, he doesn't want to endorse me because he said I had to earn it.
I don't buy that either.
I'm sure he would love that endorsement desperately, as would any politician, you know, even many Republicans, I'm sure, in certain areas would like that endorsement.
So I don't think, I think, here's the kind of thing, though.
I think this is the kind of thing we're going to find out in 2021.
Because a lot of times after the campaigns are said or done, that some people talk off the record.
And you know, Obama thought about it.
And there were meetings and there were polls.
And it's like him and Michelle went back and forth.
So there had to have been a reason this happened.
And very interesting to see what that reason is.
Trading Crypto Tax-Free in an IRA00:03:25
Yeah, I agree.
And I think that one more possibility, which I had speculated about earlier in the campaign, is that I also think it might be Obama protecting his own legacy.
It was very unclear how this whole thing was going to shake out.
And if Obama had come out and endorsed like Kamala Harris and then she falls apart in the polls, well, now Obama's endorsement doesn't mean anything.
And he kind of exposes himself.
And now he doesn't get to kind of have this power as the last Democratic president to be like, you will get my endorsement now and I will campaign for you.
The weird thing is that Obama never was particularly good at getting other people elected.
He was very, very good at getting himself elected.
Obama is a unique figure.
He's an incredibly talented public speaker, maybe the best I've ever seen.
I mean, there's something about his ability.
His presentation is like second to none.
But people very much like him, but that doesn't translate all the time.
And he did not do great for the Democrats in general.
And he certainly didn't get Hillary Clinton elected.
And at the end of his eight years, the Democratic Party was basically virtually destroyed.
I mean, they had control of nothing.
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Yeah, one of the, you know, one of the big arguments you have with this demographics is destiny crowd is like you're never going to have, you know, Republicans, blah, blah, blah, because minorities are going to vote Democrat, which is true to a point.
But the Republicans had a bigger majority in the House than they had since the 20s under Obama.
The Libertarian Case for Islam00:06:00
So, I mean, there is something to be said for that.
But yeah, I mean, he, he, Obama, I think people, Thad Russell always talks about how white Obama is.
And he is very much a function of this people, New Yorker magazine, Ivy League, bougie, urban, not urban in the code word, urban in the literal sense of city, Whole Foods, shopper, stuff white people like person.
And because he was a blank slate, and this is useful for politicians, most politicians who get elected, it's much easier when you don't have a track record.
George W. Bush, he didn't really have a track record, you know, to get elected.
Gore did.
Clinton had much more of one, and that was kind of an issue for him.
So this is something that Jimmy Cart is a great example.
Like, you know, in 76, what happens is when someone's a blank slate, then the corporate press can present this person and you could project yourself onto him and be like, oh, he likes the show.
It's like when you're young and you think that a chick likes the same music as you do.
So you think you're going to be able to date her and then you get older like this is the stupidest thing on earth.
And it's like, oh, Obama, you know, uses this, watches the same shows I do.
He watches Broad City.
He must be like me.
And in a certain sense, he is like you because you're both completely programmed by the cathedral and have no real original thoughts of your own.
So that's not even that far afield.
But yeah, after a while, people got to know him.
And it's like, this guy isn't some kind of weird once-in-a-lifetime aberration.
I mean, maybe he is in the sense that he's a mulatto, but other than that, he didn't govern particularly in some way outside the Overton window.
Oh, no, not at all.
No, I think you're right.
I think he fulfilled this desire of the left half of America.
And really, you know, it's like the thing in like college campuses, how they claim they love diversity and multiculturalism.
But really, what they love is different shades of uniformity.
I mean, what they love is different shades of the exact same culture.
They're not actually interested in different cultures.
They want like a brown version of their same white culture.
There's nobody in an Ivy League school who's like, we want to like go around to, you know, Oakland or East New York or the south side of Chicago or, you know, the worst parts of Baltimore.
And we really want to absorb that culture.
And we want to, they don't want that.
They want someone with brown skin who will have their culture that they already like and spout all of their same views.
It makes them feel better about not being racist.
They can tell you and sincerely believe that the difference between them and someone who's Muslim is, oh, I celebrate Christmas, which I half-ass do.
It's not like I believe in Jesus.
They celebrate Ramadan, so it's just a different day and different presence, but it's all basically the same.
They sincerely believe this because their faith is progressivism.
And these are just different hobby variants on the faith, which are completely secondary in terms of the values and voting and how you'd like to see America happen.
And one of my favorite tweets of all time is from Uber Feminist, who's like a good troll on Twitter and provocateur.
And there was an article from, I think, libertarianism.org, which was really amazing because they had the libertarian case for the draft, the libertarian case for like the income tax.
I mean, like all these crazy positions.
And when I pitched them like 10 years ago, the libertarian case for Alexander Hamilton, like, oh, I don't know we could do that.
I'm like, it's easier for you to make the draft than a libertarian argument for the guy who wrote the federalist.
You know what I mean?
Okay, sure.
And it's just, it's that.
And so, and there was like the libertarian case for Islam.
And Uber feminists tweeted out, not only is the Quran compatible with libertarianism, no, no, not only is Islam compatible with libertarianism, the Quran is the best book Ayn Rand ever wrote.
So I mean, they have, people have this tendency of this kind of, you can see how the thinking works is I like X, I like Y. They're basically the same, you know, and it's just like they're in, yeah, in a very broad sense, the fountain head and the Quran are both books.
So if you want to go to that level, but people tend to hand wave away so much of what doesn't validate, especially when you have a fundamentalist faith like that, like progressivism, what doesn't validate the perspective.
That's right.
And there's something about the, you know, I don't exactly know how to describe it psychologically, but there is a tremendous release or relief that they get out of saying that or demonstrating how much they love Islam or some other culture.
And look how much I don't.
That's funny.
Right, exactly.
See how I don't judge them.
And I don't think, because the most evil thing you can be is racist.
And I am demonstrating that I am not that.
That is like the orthodoxy.
If there was, you know, if they had a 10 commandments, the number one would be thou shall not be racist.
No, that's what they declare.
You can't be racist.
You just have to talk about how you're not racist.
Sure.
If you start talking about it, by definition, you can't be.
And a good example of this is a lot of these male feminists who are really called out in like Me Too for doing not ambiguous things, like genuinely shitty things, right?
And I know, and you and I, maybe I travel media circles a bit more than you historically.
A lot of these guys are really just not good people, right?
That anyone would recognize.
And I think I can't analyze their minds, but it's from their reactions, it seems to be that they genuinely believe I'm a hardcore feminist.
By definition, I can't be doing these horrible, sexist things that are offensive to women.
It's just being misinterpreted.
And it's like, no, no, no, it's perfectly possible.
And in fact, frankly, you could easily make the argument, I don't know if I am, that it's more likely because people tend to allow themselves, if you have a conscience, people tend to allow themselves to do shittier things if they are convinced they're doing it because they're good people or for the right reasons.
Yeah.
Misinterpreting Mao and Obamacare00:06:32
And so because of that whole dynamic, Obama had a really unique effect on Democratic voters.
It was everything like the fact that he's the first black president and he was incredibly charismatic and charming on top of that.
And that you get to support the first black president.
You get to publicly show everybody that you are enthusiastic about the first black president.
Was like, well, that is an opportunity of a lifetime.
And this played on their emotional connection to Obama.
And I think the disconnect comes in that, truthfully speaking, the Obama administration was a failure by every single progressive metric that you could have.
Well, Obamacare was a huge success for them, don't you think?
Well, okay, you could say Obamacare was a success.
The problem is that as Bernie Sanders will point out all the time, he goes, you know, we pay the highest price for prescription drugs.
There's 38 million people who are uninsured.
The pharmaceutical and the insurance companies are making higher profits than ever.
And really, what is all of that?
That's Obamacare.
The same way that they'll go, like that Bernie Sanders will say, not only are your premiums so high, but then you have copays and deductibles and blah, blah, blah, blah.
That's Obamacare.
So it really, Obamacare really wasn't, look, in the same sense that I think a lot of times libertarians get it on our side a lot more.
So when they'll say, like, oh, Paul Ryan and Ronald Reagan and all these small government libertarian Republicans, and people like me will be like, what are you crazy?
These aren't libertarians.
This is so obviously, these are big government corporatists.
In the same sense, Obamacare wasn't socialism or progressivism.
It was corporatism.
It was a big deal between the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies, and the state to all expand their power and get wealthier and kind of screw over the average person.
But if you just look at, like, say, if you care about as a goal, um, income inequality, then the Obama administration was a terrible time for you.
If you care about Wall Street accountability, it was the worst time really in American history.
If you care about war versus peace, it was the worst time in American history.
Well, worst?
Well, let me take that back.
It was the most money spent on militarism.
It was probably the longest wars in American history and the long, you know, the most amount of new wars started.
Not the worst in terms of sheer death and destruction through war.
But by a reasonable progressive metric, I mean, this was a failure.
But you just can't, it doesn't matter.
It didn't matter if he continued so many of Bush's policies.
Because I've got an interview I'm going to be doing in a couple of weeks, and I want to make sure you're more solid in this than I am.
Is it true that in the last 20 years, the U.S. government is more responsible for foreign deaths than any other country?
I can't think of who number two would be.
I mean, I think we're certainly in the millions.
So let's just run through that real quick.
I mean, yeah, in the last, how many years did you say?
Last 30 years?
20?
So in the 21st century.
Yeah, there's, I think it's no question.
I think there's no question about it.
We have been since the fall of the Soviet Union, I think we have been the greatest force for evil in the world.
Now, not to say that there aren't some good things about America, but if we're talking about the evil things, which is mostly the empire, the warfare machine, yeah, what's done more damage than that?
And it's a weird thing where, you know, it depends, I guess, on how exactly you measure the dead.
Because if you're just going by how many people American troops have killed, the number may not be quite as crazy as some of these other, you know, brutal regimes.
But if you talk about, you know, the amount of people that are going to die in Yemen when this whole thing is over.
No, but hold on.
Let me rewind because what I mean is these brutal regimes are killing their own citizens.
I'm talking about in terms of a country killing foreigners.
Are we number one?
Yes.
No question.
Right.
Who wants to be able to do it?
No question.
No question.
It's us.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No question.
Maybe Ukraine, I'm sure, had a lot, but I'm sure it's nothing close to Iraq or Afghanistan.
No, no.
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine?
I'm just trying to think of any international conflicts in the last 20 years.
It's got, I mean, the numbers have got to be tiny compared to a prolonged war.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And the truth is that what we've gone in and well, what do you consider it when we just side with the jihadists on the ground, give CIA air support and overthrow Gaddafi, and then the whole country falls apart.
And now there's just, you know, who knows how many people have died there since.
Now, is that that?
That's the point I was making.
Is that a direct U.S. government killed these people?
Maybe not, but certainly there's no other way to look at it than the United States federal government is responsible for all of those people who died.
I mean, if you, it's like kind of if you set a building on fire and then walk away and go, I didn't kill anybody.
The fire killed all these people.
It's like, well, you know, you're kind of responsible for this.
So yeah, I think that's a slam dunk that we're responsible for more foreign deaths than any other country.
Of course, you know, if you were talking like in the 20th century with like democide and things like that, you've got some pretty, pretty large numbers put in contention there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, no, not.
I mean, just in terms, well, just in terms of pure numbers, I don't think anyone will ever catch Mao.
I mean, Mao Seitong, China has a lot of people.
If you want to start killing people in China, you can put up some really huge numbers.
And then, of course, like, you know, as you know better than me, you know, I mean, what the what, you know, the Kims have done to their own people in North Korea is close to Stalin or Hitler or no, they just don't, they simply don't have the population.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, again, if they did, he probably would have numbers in that range.
But yeah, but even Hitler and Stalin have nothing to Mao.
Mao's numbers are like remarkable.
Mao's, I think the estimates, like the gap in the estimate is bigger than what Stalin 40 to 60.
No One Will Catch Mao00:02:52
Yeah.
It's like there's 20 million in there.
There's like two Adolf Hitlers in there.
Yeah, yeah.
And you're guessing.
But yeah, that's pretty wild stuff.
So I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the COVID stuff that's been going on, like the new information that's coming out, because it is this weird thing with a novel virus like this, where really you start to realize pretty quickly that nobody's an expert.
Like nobody's truly an expert in this thing.
And I'm trying as much as I can to like read the new information that's coming out.
But I've seen some really strange new developments.
And I got to say, I'm really starting to Air on the side of these shutdowns have to end, that these shutdowns have to end soon, and we got to let people get back to work and go back to life as normal.
Can I say something?
You know, right now, you know how brainstorming sessions work.
You just throw out everything, and like no matter how crazy it is, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
But this is a scenario where there's no bad ideas, just throw the thing out.
You know, that in some country or some state, someone is making the case of what if we just get everyone sick, everyone dies who's going to die in a short period, and then the band-aids ripped off.
Someone is running that scenario, yeah, somewhere on earth right now.
Well, I mean, at a certain point, you have to start running that scenario because shutting down, the costs of shutting down are starting to become really, really apparent.
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Discreet Online Medical Prescriptions00:16:09
All right, let's get back in the show.
There's one, you know, like we've talked about before, the models, the worst models, haven't come true.
And it looks like they're not going to.
There's not going to be hundreds of thousands of people dying from this virus.
It does not look like our medical system is going to be overwhelmed.
Even in New York, they haven't had a shortage of beds.
It looks like actually a lot of the measures to increase the number of hospital beds seem like they were unnecessary.
Now, that's not to say that, you know, it's a weird thing where people go like, oh, how come if all these scientists like they jump to this thing where it's like, okay, so if the models were wrong, then it must be a conspiracy, like a giant conspiracy, which is not, you know, a reasonable I was completely off about coronavirus.
I did not think this is going to be a big deal.
And I made a, I offered a bet to Carol Markowitz from New York Post.
I said, do you want to bet that by the end of the year, more people have been dead because of cops in America than because of coronavirus?
And I was way off.
And it was amazing because last night on Twitter, someone threw that in my face.
And they're like, see, you knew this was coming, but you chose to troll and make it about cops.
I'm like, I'm so glad that you're confident.
I was wrong.
And I'm going to be wrong a lot.
And I've been wrong in the past.
And I'm going to be wrong again.
And some of the mistakes are going to be doozies, just statistically.
And because I'm not that smart as an omniscient person.
But I love the idea that like you fucking knew it was going to be like this proof.
You chose to make it about the cops.
And I'm like, okay, that's that.
Thank you for that.
Well, listen, I will say, you said by the end of the year, and sure, Corona's gotten off to a big start, but these cops they do seem to be trying to catch up.
So, give the cops a chance.
It's not over till it's over.
That's why we play the game.
You know what I mean?
So, she didn't take the bet.
Oh, oh, okay, good.
Yeah, so in that case, who's the stupider person near her?
Yeah, really.
You offered her a golden opportunity right there.
Even for cops, this would be a tough one to correct at this point.
Well, you know, the thing about models, um, and this is true whether it was with the coronavirus or climate change or overpopulation or a lot of these things, it's not, there are really, really smart people who come up with these models.
The problem with models is that what you're doing is predicting the future, and that's a really tough uh business.
Do you know predicting the future?
Do you know the term gigo?
The economic term, garbage in, garbage out, or it's also and it's the same thing here.
It's like, yeah, people have this belief.
And if you look at it from the geocentric model of the universe, and this is something the Austrian economic school is opposed to, where people have this belief, if I'm doing a lot of math, therefore there must be truth.
Because it's kind of like if I'm working hard, that means I'm producing value.
Listen, if you bang your head against the wall, you're working really hard, you're not producing any value.
So, the idea is like, look, we're calculating how the stars move, and now they're epicycles, and blah, blah, blah.
And the entire basis was wrong phrenology, measuring your skull, you know, and the measurements.
So, people tend to have this mystical belief that if there's a lot of numbers involved, that therefore there must be some truth in there.
The other opposite of that is people have this really, and these are people who aren't that bright, dumb perspective.
That, well, the data is obviously says this: data is never obvious.
You always have to analyze it.
And just because something is predictive does not mean it's predicted for the reasons you thought.
So, that is a real big mistake people tend to have.
Yes, but then there's also like this dynamic, it's almost like a smart people's version of Dunning-Kruger, where because they're smart, they feel smarter than they are.
Yeah, like it's this, it's this thing where, well, Dunning-Kruger, I thought, was people think, well, Dunning-Kruger was people who aren't very smart feeling like they're a lot smarter.
Oh, that works, okay, fine.
So, I guess it is, well, there, there's my version of it.
Um, but uh, but it's this thing where you know, you're if you're like one of these very smart, smart, you know, scientists and you understand the data better than just about anyone else does, it's very easy for you to go, look, I understand this better.
I'm the one who will tell you how everything's going to play out.
But the problem with predicting the future is, and this is why very few people are good at it, and it's very impressive when anyone does it accurately, is that there are just near infinite variables that affect how the future is going to work.
And it's very hard for anyone, no matter how brilliant they are, to see how everything is going to play out.
Now, look, you think about it like this: right now, the project, the projections are about 60,000 deaths from the coronavirus in America in America.
Yes, we're at about 20 or something like that.
Now, that think about that would be a really nasty flu season.
And we don't go through all these drastic measures every flu season.
We don't start social distancing and locking ourselves in our homes and shutting down the economy.
And we're still going to end up with something in that ballpark, quite possibly.
So, it's not that this isn't a real virus or a nasty virus, it's just that all of the models that were used to justify this type of government response seem to be failing.
And new information is coming out that is not exactly what we thought, or at least we're starting to get.
So, here was one thing that caught my eye: Presbyterian Columbia Hospital, their maternity ward, what they've been, they've been testing pregnant women who come in.
Okay, so they've been testing pregnant women who, if you come in, you qualify to get tested to make sure you don't have it and to know if you have it before you deliver a baby there.
So of the pregnant women they tested, a few thousand of them got tested, about 15% had it.
Now, keep in mind that pregnant women are not a random sample.
Pregnant women go to the hospital a lot more often than regular people go to the hospital.
And the hospital is kind of a hotbed for catching it.
So this number might be a little bit inflated.
It's possible, but still 15% of them had it, which is an interesting number because we really, one of the big questions here is what percentage of the population has this?
And we really don't know because we don't know.
You know, we just, we have no way.
We haven't been able to test in big numbers, random samples.
But this was something like the closest we've gotten to that.
And it was 15% had it.
Of those 15%, close to 90% were asymptomatic.
Wow.
Okay.
Now that is a really, again, this is not a random sample.
These are pregnant women.
Pregnant women tend to be younger and in reasonably good health.
If you've gotten to the point where you're about to deliver a baby, you are at least healthy enough to carry a baby to term.
So, and you're reasonably young.
I mean, you're not going to be, well, I don't know, 43 or something like that is probably the oldest you're going to get delivering a baby.
Maybe, I don't know, maybe a couple years older than that, but you're not getting any 80-year-olds in there delivering babies.
But those two numbers were really interesting.
And if you go, if you were like, wow, imagine it was anything close to 90% are asymptomatic.
Then the truth is this has been going around at least January, February, and March.
We were just walking around with nothing.
I wonder what percentage of the population has already worked up herd immunity.
I mean, there's probably areas of the country that have herd immunity already.
And that's just something to think about.
Who the hell knows?
Yeah, a fan of mine who lent me her weights.
God bless you, Phoebe.
She's like, oh, I had, I think I had it.
Like she had it in January.
And like a lot of people, again, it's hard to distinguish between this and the flu only in retrospect.
But yeah, like I think a lot more people had it than they realized because they wouldn't, they're young.
They wouldn't have died from it.
And other than this loss of sense and of smell and taste, which is not universal, it would be impossible for you to distinguish between I have Corona and I have, it's my fucking flu.
Very difficult.
And if you're asymptomatic, impossible, impossible to distinguish or to know whether you had it.
And if it turns out to be a vast majority are asymptomatic, which could be the case.
Again, this is not this one Columbia Presbyterian, you know, like that's not proving anything, but it raises the possibility.
And that's, that's just very interesting.
The other thing that seems to really be now that like some more data is really coming in is that in terms of the deaths, this is the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of the people who die from COVID-19 had underlying medical issues.
It seems that it's basically like, you know, how in the 90s, it was kind of like AIDS is everybody's problem.
And they try to make it out like it's only gay people and heroin addicts who need to worry about AIDS.
But you, Mr. Straight White Male, you need to worry about AIDS.
And then the lefty thing.
I remember when I was in college, and this is one of my red pill moments.
And we had different, I took a semester at American University and every day there was a different speaker from a different organization.
And there was one from like a homeless advocacy organization.
And she said, and this is a line that I think everyone has heard at some point in their lives.
She said, anyone can become homeless at any time.
And I looked and no one in the class thought this woman is a brazenly lying propagandist from polite society, maybe we're catapult.
They're all like, oh, okay, yeah.
Or they shook their heads.
And I'm like, can you, how are you sitting here hearing her say this with this?
How am I someone who's a millionaire?
If I were a millionaire, which I'm not, how could I become homeless?
Like literally even scenario.
If my house burns down, I'm not considered homeless.
I could go to a hotel.
What if I have two houses?
How do I become homeless under those circumstances, even in your worst hypothetical?
And it's just because they're so big, the left, on not having any kind of behavior having negative consequences because people think that you deserve this.
And in fact, this was amazing.
This just happened here where the surgeon general was talking to specifically, first of all, you had AOC like two weeks ago being like, oh, this is disproportionately affecting black and brown communities.
And I'm like, oh, I remember for two weeks when you guys pretend to care about anti-Asian racism because I think the Asians are getting it pretty bad from this fucking COVID-19, but let's forget about that.
So they get the Surgeon General in front of the cameras and he starts specifically talking to black and brown communities.
And he's like, look, do it for Yavuela.
Do it for your big mama and pop pop, you know, which is what he called his grandparents.
And this PBS jihadi gets up and she's just like, you know, what do you think about, he's like, and stop smoking, stop drinking.
And she goes, what are we going to say to people who are offended by your use of these terms?
And you're saying some behavior is like a problem.
And I'm like, wait, If some behavior wasn't a problem, why are we locked in our houses?
Yes.
Why are we, I mean, brazenly, the claim that like any behavior is going to have negative consequences is a heresy to them.
And you sat there and you're like, and this is why it was so important.
And understandably so, to be fair, because there was a section of the population who thought, fine, I won't, I'm a dude.
I won't fuck a dude.
I won't get AIDS.
That's their fucking problem.
And that is an issue because that really localized it and killed a lot of people.
Well, right.
And it sounds nicer, you know, and it feels nicer.
And you don't want to be mean.
And the other, and the other, you know, dealing with reality could lead to meanness.
So we have to avoid that.
But your homeless example was such a good one because the truth is like, look, man, it's not even just bad fortune.
There's obviously a mental illness capacity to anybody in a first world country in 2020 who ends up homeless, dirty on the street.
There was a lot that went into that.
That can't just happen to anybody.
I mean, think about someone like you, right?
Like, it's not even just whatever the, your, whatever money you have in the bank or whatever career history you have, just from your friendships, you could never be homeless.
Like, I would never let you be homeless.
Tom Woods would never let you be homeless.
Like, that just won't happen.
You'd come stay with us until you got back on your feet before that would ever happen.
And same with me and same with most people.
Like, if you just have, if you're just connected to other people in a reasonable way and you add some value.
Right.
You got kicked out of your house by your wife or your ex-wife, you got fired, blah, blah, blah.
Right.
I'm not letting you go in the streets.
Right, exactly.
I mean, you'd have like, there would just be people who would rally around you.
So of course it's not that.
But it does seem to look like, and, you know, I would always rather err on the side of treating people like adults and let's learn what the truth is.
And it's like, well, no, truthfully speaking, if your concern is dying from COVID, it looks like the people who are at risk are people who have serious underlying health conditions.
And they just define these like pretty specifically.
It's only like so many things that they were like, okay, it's like diabetes, hypertension, lung disease, kidney disease.
Like there's only like a few different things.
And it's like the vast, vast, vast majority of people who die are in that category.
The truth is with COVID, just let's be honest about it.
If you are... COVID truth.
Let's be honest.
Dick Cheney brought down the COVID.
But if you are a young, healthy person, you're not going to die from COVID.
It's just statistically not going to happen.
Not impossible, but statistically irrelevant.
That being said, you can spread it.
You can spread it around and you want to make sure you don't give it to somebody who does have an underlying health issue.
But it's looking more and more like the likelihood is that not only are you not going to die of the COVID, there's a very large chance you're not even going to show symptoms.
And if you do, it'll be a nasty virus, but you'll be fine.
The real concern now starts to be that people with underlying health conditions.
And by the way, this is what the data seems to be pointing to.
Not even just the old.
It's people with underlying health conditions, which happen to disproportionately be the case for old people.
But old people without underlying health issues don't seem to be dying from this.
So it's just interesting as more and more information comes out, but it starts to seem to me like we're going to have to transition into some type of opening up of the economy and protecting the people who have underlying health conditions.
It can't be everybody shutting down their lives.
It has to be the people who are sick.
We're about a month away.
You just made me realize something.
We're about a month away.
We're about a month away from the corporate press yelling at Trump, literally Hitler, for not having concentration gifts.
We always, you know what, we should have known.
This was always the logical conclusion.
This was always where we were going.
This is it.
Just click, they're going to be like, how you're shutting down the economy for the sake of 1% of 2% of the population.
Just round them up, put them in Poland, and everything will be fine.
We're three years away from Donald Trump.
Literally, Hitler won't even gas the Jews.
He's still trying to save the good ones.
What's wrong with this guy?
Medical research purposes.
Wait, so speaking of saving people, I made a, so you and I both get a lot of people tweeting at us and sending us messages and so on and so forth.
And a lot of our followers are on the spectrum, let's just say, you know, haha, but not really.
And one of the things that I think is important for people to understand is how to persuade people, right?
So it's like if you're, especially getting an agent, if you're trying to get a literary agent, there's lots of things that you can do in your pitch letter or email that will right away disqualify you.
Tweets from the Spectrum Community00:04:32
And it might be unfair, like having a type on a resume.
You could be an awesome person who just happened to have that type on your resume, but that resume is going to go in the trash.
Any filter has the problem with any filter in any situation, this is an issue with data and so forth, is you're going to filter out things you don't want to filter out and you're going to let in things you don't want to let in.
So a lot of times people try to get my attention about something.
And if they're needlessly like aggressive and antagonistic, I won't engage with them on principle because I don't want to validate bad behavior.
So they'll be like, oh, I can't believe you're not talking about X, Y, and Z. You call yourself an anarchist.
And I'm like, okay, I'm not interested in engaging with you in any situation.
And this happened with regard to this kid, Duncan Lemp, who was just killed recently by the police.
Someone came at me like, oh my God, I can't believe you're not talking about this.
I had no idea who he was.
Right away, the way they came at me, I'm like, I'm not interested in following up because you're an asshole.
And then someone came correct.
And I'm like, oh, shit, this is an example of the filter not working because this is something that I and you are very interested in.
This is completely up alley and something we're going to talk about.
So I'm going to do a live stream about it this weekend.
I'll put the date on malice.locals.com.
I know you're going to follow up after you've done your homework.
And I promised people I would talk about it.
And this is a story that's from our community.
I hate using that expression that I think bears more discussion and it bears lengthy, informed discussion, which I'm going to be giving this weekend.
Yeah, I'm happy to talk about it.
And I've, you know, I have had a lot of people who have asked me to talk about the situation with Duncan Lemp situation.
Man, that's a euphemism.
But, you know, it is like, to me, I feel like sometimes, I think we actually talked about this on an episode of one of our podcasts like way back in the day.
But sometimes there will be people who it's like, well, how come you're not dealing with this?
Or how come you're not talking about that issue?
And it's like, look, man, I talk about issues that number one, I have done a little bit of homework on.
And number two, that I think I have something to add on.
Like I think I have something that I don't hear other people saying.
So I think I should make this point or something I think will be really entertaining or good content or whatever it is.
Sometimes there'll just be a story where it's like, oh, I saw that.
It's terrible.
I read two articles about it.
And I probably have the same opinion that any other libertarian would have on it.
So what does it really do for me to add my two cents on this?
But I think, and I'm guessing it might be the same person who tweeted at you.
I have this one person.
It really is something about the, as you said, the art of persuasion or influence.
There's someone comes at me and they go, I've been trying everything I can to get Dave talking about this.
And he refuses.
And you're like, all right, first off, motherfucker, what do you mean you've been doing everything you can to get like, what do you, you don't have any effect on what I talk about ever.
I don't even, I don't even know you.
You got a negative effect.
Yes, really.
And then it makes you almost not want to talk about it.
Whereas if someone in the same sense were to approach you like, hey, man, have you checked this out?
I think you would really be interested in talking about it.
You go, okay, well, let me look into it.
I've been saying this for a while for all these libertarians and anarchists in general.
Got to figure this shit out.
Let's bring it back to my girl, Miss Rand.
She was on Donahue and we're talking about capitalism.
And she made the point that, oh, if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.
He's the example he used.
And she goes, that's right.
And it's not right.
Because although a lot of people who are like kind of ASPE or literal-minded want to wave away the importance of marketing and presentation, it is really, really, really important.
If things aren't presented, if people aren't given a space to learn about something in their own way, they're not going to be receptive to hearing about that mousetrap and that mousetrap.
There's lots of great inventions that go nowhere.
And there's lots of shitty inventions that go huge because they're marketed correctly in a certain way.
So this is something like, yeah, we're talking in this case about someone who's murdered.
So they're going to think, oh, I don't need to kind of address it in a certain way.
This is talking about a death.
It's like, you do, because the person you're talking to doesn't perceive this as a death.
They just perceive it as you're throwing a name at me of somebody and expecting me to, you know, do all this research when it's like, I don't know who this is.
And also, I think people tend to be myopic.
And they think if they on their level know everything about a subject, then us who have some sort of platform must know 10 times as much as they do.
And that's not how knowledge works.
The Crooked Lampshade Moment00:00:55
Yeah.
No, that's exactly right.
Yeah.
It's like, well, I've learned stuff from you before.
So teach me stuff about this.
Yeah.
Well, I, what?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I'm with you on that.
All right.
Well, we have, we're coming up to the end of our time here.
Michael, let me ask you, what was the absolute worst part of this last hour?
The fact that that lampshade's crooked.
Yeah, that was the lamp that I was using before I got this light that's in front of me now.
I don't know.
I'm very disorganized around here.
So I am sorry.
All right, man, we're going to keep this going.
Of course, it's always a lot of fun when me and Michael talk.
And I will say that I know you have too, Michael, and I've gotten a lot of really great feedback about these episodes, but I think I've enjoyed them more than anybody else has.