Michael Malice and James Smith critique state overreach, debating the Non-Aggression Principle while analyzing Governor Cuomo's dismissal of economic hardship as a Freudian slip revealing elite self-preservation. They argue that lockdowns causing mass unemployment constitute a form of death ignored by officials who lack market accountability mechanisms, normalizing dangerous conditions like odorless gas in homes. Ultimately, the discussion predicts future public fury over these decisions, suggesting that unprecedented government choices during crises prioritize control over human survival. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Government Overreach and Surveillance00:10:29
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Cash Digital Network.
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.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Cash Digital Network.
Steer your own.
James Smith.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Let this be.
You are welcome to the next hour of problems.
I am really running out of creative ways to intro these crossover shows, but it's the latest installment in the part of the welcome.
Of course, I'm joined by my dear, dear friend, Michael Malice, who I always enjoy talking to.
And all of the listeners seem to have really been enjoying these episodes as much as we have, which is great.
Except for the dicks.
Except for the anti-Semites.
Yeah, they have been, they've never enjoyed either of our shows.
But for some reason, they keep listening.
They keep listening.
They keep sending us money.
It's really, it's unbelievable.
Jesus, man.
The people who are furious at me about not doing a deep enough dive on the JQ for years.
When I did an episode with Gene Epstein about the Jewish question, and they're like, oh, yeah, of course, you're going to get two Jews to talk about the Jewish question.
You're like, I'm a Jew.
What do you want me to do here?
I can't not be a Jew talking about it.
It's the only way it can happen.
I asked one of them straight up one time.
I was like, okay, so with all this JQ stuff, what's your result?
Like, what's your prescription?
What rules or laws do you support because of this?
And he's like, listen, I'm not trying to kill Jews or anything.
I just think that Jews should not be allowed to be in finance or Hollywood and should not be allowed to be in the political sphere.
And I go, does the political sphere include political commentary?
And he goes, yeah.
I go, so you want me to take seriously an ideology that says I have to lose my job?
Why would I do that?
That you enjoy.
Yeah, really?
Like, which you watch.
You only know of me because I do this.
This reminds me of some of the time the commenters are like, oh my God, these ads are so annoying.
Let me assure you that if I have to choose between the ads, and I actually, I'm wearing, this is from Sheath.
They sent it to me.
I like their stuff and the underwear.
If I have to choose between the ads and you, this isn't Sophie's choice.
And this is Jewish, non-Jewish.
There are people who have companies who think our programs are worth supporting.
And they're like, here, here's cash.
Talk about our product, right?
And then you have people who take the product for free.
And instead of like silently consuming it, they're like, I'm just going to be annoying and complain, which is your right.
But again, this is not the customer's always right at all.
Oh, I hate the customer's always right is a very flawed sentiment anyway.
Customers are right.
Customers are women.
The customer is often female.
So right away, that seems to be a little bit more.
I think even more.
I think it's like 51% women.
So the majority of the time, the customers are wrong.
No, but there's always like, I've seen like so many times in businesses, particularly at comedy clubs with like drunk audience members.
You're like, sometimes the customer is very, very wrong.
Sometimes they should just be tossed out of the building.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Physical removal.
Yes, that's right.
But just communists and people who support democracy and, of course, the gays.
But that's it.
After that.
People who play music in public.
When you interviewed Hoppe and you asked him about physical removal and you asked him whether he meant literally like physically removed, like far away from someone, and he said, Yeah, that is what he was talking about.
Right.
So I remember thinking, maybe this whole thing has been completely misunderstood.
It wasn't misunderstood.
It's that we did on the troll board something I talked about in my book, and then you're right.
Like we were the ones who started these Hoppe memes and conflating the Hoppe and Pinochet stuff with physical removal.
So I know he does mean that they have to be physically separated, right?
But I know he also doesn't mean that they're going to like grab you by the back of the neck and be like, all right, here we go, buddy.
He's not that type of person.
Right.
Do you ever wonder?
I've gotten this question a lot.
This is like advanced anarchist philosophy stuff, but where people will say.
Is it rape if you pay the child after you have sex with it?
This is really what we want to get down to.
Yeah, this is real anarchism.
When you're selling a child, if you're selling it above market value, is that fraud and therefore a violation of the NAP?
Well, would you agree, right, that it is a violation of the NAP or it is aggression to like a call to violence?
Like if I were to say, I want you to go kill so-and-so, that would not be like freedom of speech.
That would be.
I mean, would you call the Declaration of Independence a violation of the NAP?
No.
No.
But it's kind of like, like, we're not recognizing your authority and we're going to do something about it.
But that is.
But to me, that gets to the difference between aggression and defense.
And you're saying, hey, you're not our rulers.
And if you come over here and try to rule me, I'm going to kill you.
That's a little bit different than saying, hey, I want this guy's stuff.
I'm going to go take that from him.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, so.
Oh, yeah, of course.
It's just an innocent person.
Yeah, of course.
That's a violation of the NAP.
Yeah.
Right.
So then what people will ask is, is somebody being a statist a violation of the non-aggression principle if essentially they're calling for the government to come violate people's protection.
Do you see what you just did?
You had to throw in that word essentially to kind of do the work, the lifting for you.
And it's kind of like, well, no, I mean, true anarchism means like, no, no, no.
See, that's kind of what we all do.
This like we slip in that word and then that word's doing the work.
And it's like, they're not essential.
Maybe essentially, if I am saying something that would have the consequence of you, you know, getting, if I say, hey, I recommend that you go to this restaurant and you get food poisoning as a consequence.
Well, I was essentially saying you should be poisoned.
I mean, it's a really tricky thing.
No, it is.
Yeah.
I agree.
I think it's tricky.
But in the same, if I, you know, if I hired a hitman to go kill someone and they go kill that person, I don't think I could hide behind like, hey, man, I didn't aggress against anybody.
They asked a question and gave someone money, you know, like.
Okay.
We could go full autism on this.
I'm having, I have to interview Ruben, his new book next week.
And one of the things he talks about is he believes us like harder drugs should not be legalized.
And it is true that essentially what he is saying is young people who sell heroin or use heroin should be raped or should be in prison where they're going to end up getting raped or at the very least live in terror.
But if you ask him, Dave, are you in favor?
I'm going to ask him of young people being in prison and raped, he would be like, oh my God, that's, I'm sure he would sincerely be horrified.
So, I think we forget, and maybe Rand forgets this a little bit too, is how easy it is for most of us as human beings to have ideas that are kind of removed from each other, even though they're effectively synonymous.
And we see this a lot of time in polling questions.
Like, they'll say, Oh, are you for Medicare for all?
Yeah, are you for socialized health care over my dead body?
And it's like, Yeah, so I mean, it's, it gets so I don't think a statist.
And the other thing is, I'm gonna go, I'll go full statist.
Much of what you and I would call statism isn't statism, statism in the sense of violating that, in the sense of in an anarchist society, right, or an anarchist, whatever, and you had like the governing, like a landlord association, and they said, Look, we've got this corona, everyone needs to stay inside.
Um, everyone would do it voluntarily.
I mean, the vast majority of people do it voluntarily.
These laws, it's not like people in their houses are like, I'd be going outside but for the law.
We see the poll numbers.
The poll numbers who are like, I want, I'm going to follow these orders is through the roof.
It's not like people are being, you know, forced to stay inside under like a point of begun.
They're happy to do it.
They're like, tell us what to do.
Well, some are.
I mean, the majority, as you indicated by the polls.
Yeah.
Yes, yeah.
But that doesn't mean the others aren't kind of being forced in because there certainly is some percentage of the population that would go outside.
Some of them are violent.
When we say, like, oh, people who like taxes, like a lot of people sincerely believe that the government has the right to tell you what your tax rate should be.
And that if you don't pay that, and if, and I don't know that if there was no penalty, like, because we always say, well, stop paying your taxes and see what happens to you.
But a lot of them, without those cops, would still pay those taxes.
That's what it's kind of hard for, I think, for a lot of anarchists to wrap their heads around.
They think this is the right thing to do.
Yeah, no, well, that's true.
There certainly are a lot of people who fall into that category.
Although my guess is that if you remove the penalties for not paying taxes, substantially less people would.
No, because what would end up happening, I think, is a lot of corporations would do the withholding thing because they're being good corporate citizens.
And then you would have to ask to not have your money withheld.
And then there would be a huge consequence for your work.
I mean, there's all sorts of mechanisms.
There's so many mechanisms for quote-unquote persuasion/slash coercion in the loose sense of the word that these places have.
Like eBay, you know, like if you and I have a dispute and I've had this happen, I mailed it and the customer's like, no, this is wrong.
And eBay just took my money and gave it to them.
Walking Through Times Square at Night00:03:43
Like, what am I supposed to do?
I mean, that is clearly a private arbitration.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, that's that's true.
Absolutely.
All right, switching gears a little bit.
I was, I was back in New York City yesterday.
I went back home with my wife to grab some stuff, including my sweet ass Mises hoodie, which I'm in now.
You want to talk about Autistic?
This is real.
I was like, I need my Mises hoodie.
What size sweatshirt do you want?
Blue puzzle piece, please.
Yes.
So anyway, I'm feeling much more comfortable now.
Things are back in order in my life.
But we went in and I was like, we got to like drive through New York City.
We got to like see everything right now.
And we drove through Times Square and Rockefeller Center, like that whole area in Midtown and all up the Upper West Side and all around.
And holy shit, was it eerie?
It was so eerie, man.
To go through Times Square and there's not a soul.
I mean, I shouldn't say not a soul.
There's a homeless person here or there.
There's some cops that are out, but there is nobody walking around Times Square.
And then to go through Rockefeller Center and to see the building closed and nobody on the streets, boarded up stores all over the place.
Man, it was really, really eerie.
It was something out of like a movie.
And, you know, anyway, go ahead.
No, right before we got on, I'm going to start working on my next book imminently.
And it's going to be about Camus and his role in day-to-day life.
And one of his big books is the novel The Plague.
And it's, it's, you know, he's not, he doesn't regard himself.
He doesn't identify as an existentialist.
He's lumped in with the existentialists.
Not there's that many of them anyway.
And even though me and actually other people have it, like the book came out like in, I think, the late 40s, early 50s.
It was at the time very clearly a metaphor for the Nazi occupation.
Although, like stupid me, like, you didn't pick up on that 50 years later.
And I'll take full responsibility because you're not thinking about it in contemporary terms.
But the premise is you have this town and this plague just comes in and just wrecks everything.
And then it leaves.
And, you know, it speaks to themes of like helplessness and like, you know, how temporary these horrible things can be and your powerlessness and all these other themes.
I did not like the book at all because I thought, okay, from that plot summary, I get the point.
Like these are things that we all have to think about.
But one of the, you know, we're working on a cover mock-up right now.
I haven't started writing it, but I'm like, okay, I can play on this plague motif by going to Times Square and taking some photos.
And like, what better way to have like a metaphor of a plague, which we're going through, where you have like 12 monkeys.
That's what they did, right?
Like you have these deserted, the lights are still working, the big, huge things, and there's no souls.
Like, it's like, one, I love, love, love on an emotional level, urban decay.
And I think there's something, and I hate using this word in this context because it sounds pompous, but that's my brand.
Like, there's something like transgressive about walking in city streets at night because you're like not supposed to be there because it's so busy during the day.
And at night, it's so diversive, deserted.
It's like you're doing something against the norm.
But now it's like, it's like that all the time.
It's not really transgressive.
It's just like disturbing.
What's it like by you in Brooklyn, like on the streets?
Have you like been out a bunch?
Like, what's it like these days?
The Ridge Wallet Revolution00:03:40
I, on Wednesday, is my refeed day where I have my kind of extra carbs.
So every Wednesday, I've been going to the Baskin Robbins in Park Slope, which is open, getting my two scoops of ice cream.
Last Wednesday, I walked there.
It was like kind of like 30 blocks.
Yesterday, I didn't walk.
It's it's bad.
It's bad.
I'm not sure.
Is the Baskin Robbins on 7th?
That's on 7th Avenue?
4th Avenue and 9th Street.
Okay.
And over there?
Is it empty?
It was totally empty.
I was like crossing the street in the middle and like the car, there was like a car.
I'm like, that'd be really funny if I'm like the one person.
Not that there was any danger, but it was like half a block away and they were slow.
But that'd be pretty ironic if I'm like the one guy during a pandemic who gets like killed by a car.
Like the odds of that would be really, really fucking fucking shitty.
So yeah, it's kind of like, but there's like, it's like my friend was supposed to get married on the 11th.
I was supposed to be the witness at their city hall ceremony two days prior and that didn't happen.
I got him a really cool present and the girlfriend and the fiancé, which I'm going to give to them.
But they're upstate, you know, they fled the city.
So, but I'm getting, I got to tell you, I have adjusted to this like very, very well.
I'm thriving a bit because I am having a lot of, I don't fun is the completely wrong word, positive reinforcement by how many people out there that I am talking to and like getting them into the mindset because I'm a recluse anyway.
I'm home 23 hours a day.
So getting them adjusted to this and having them not feel alone.
I've been doing a lot more of these live streams.
And I'm doing a thing now on Saturday where I'm going to, I figured out how to stream where I'm watching a movie at the same time.
So we're going to watch, I'm going to watch with the audience like Rand on Donahue and like run my mouth the whole time, like Mystery Science Theater.
That's like, okay, this is the kind of thing my audience would enjoy at any other time, but now it's Saturday night and we could all do together.
So like that kind of stuff.
And I'm going to do some of these with, like, I figured I had to do with another guest and have them just chat in.
So it'll be a hang.
All right.
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So I think the, I think I'm more engaged with my audience than you are.
Would you say that's true?
And why do you think, is it because you have a life and I don't?
Because you have like, have a family.
I'm just, you know, dialon and alone.
Yeah.
I mean, well, you do the live streams more in the super chats and things like that.
So there's something on that level that's engaging.
I mean, I was, you know, going out and doing live stand-up shows.
So I would kind of engage with my audience that way, but that's obviously been cut out.
But yeah, maybe it's just, I mean, having a kid is very time consuming.
Yeah, yeah.
So I mean, I've been like, I've been getting four digits now in the live stream.
So there are people who want that kind of thing.
And I think, you know, you and I both like, look, you are so, look, we're going to sit here like blowing each other and that's fine, but I am going to do it right now.
I mean, the fact that your job is to provide laughter to people is really pretty awesome.
And I think a lot of comedians like, I don't think chefs take it for granted as much that like this food I'm producing is giving people joy.
Like that's why they get into cooking.
But like laughter is really a big deal.
And I love this kind of urban holier than thou, like, oh, you know, laughter, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, fuck you.
I mean, you know, Joan Rivers was very big on this.
Like in her documentary, like she just flipped her shit when some she had made a joke about someone being blind or something and someone got up like I'm blind.
She's like, my mother was blind.
Like she's like, fuck you.
She goes, when you make someone laugh, you give them vacation from like these horrors.
So like, who the fuck do you think you are?
So yeah, I think a little laughter does us all good, as vapid as that sounds.
No, I mean, I obviously, you know, agree with that.
I can't tell you.
I mean, I've gotten some like emails and then just people that I've met like out on the road who have told me like what Legion of Skanks has done for them.
And it's really easy to look at Legion of Skanks and go, okay, this is just the most retarded juvenile thing.
And it is.
I'll be the first to admit, like it is.
No pretense to the contrary.
Yes.
It's just, you know, like people, like, it's basically us playing the aristocrats in podcast form.
You know, like that's what we do.
Like, let's just say the most fucked up things we can say, make the dumbest jokes, but see how funny we can make them.
But I mean, I had this one guy who I just always remember, and I've got a lot of stories like this, but this guy always stands out, who I met in Chicago at the Laugh Factory and who came up to me.
And basically, he had just lost his father and his father was like dying for the last year.
It's just like a really tough year.
He goes, this was like the hardest year of my life.
And he goes, and every Monday, or it might have been Wednesdays at the time, every Monday goes, I would just throw Legion of Skanks on and just die laughing.
And then he goes, I can't tell you how much I needed that to just get through.
You know, like, something to take your mind off of all the shit you're going through and just laugh and let it out and laughing at horrible things at tragic things.
And I do, I, I mean, that made me feel really good.
I'm going to, I'm going to make you laugh along these lines.
Okay.
So this is, this happened to me over the weekend.
And I was like, holy crap.
So as some of your listeners probably know, last time when I was on Rogan, one of the things I made it a point to talk about is over Thanksgiving, my friend Matt, I was the second person he came out to.
He had been the victim of childhood sexual abuse.
And I'm like, what I was very angered about is the realization that we don't have this space in our culture for people who have been the victims to tell their friends and not have their friends bug out or think that they're like weird or gross or just not know what to say.
And I'm like, it's not right that this person who's dealt with something really fucking horrible has to sit there and bite their tongue because you don't know what to do about it.
Right.
And it really is like, I'm not one of these lefties, like, it's all on all of us, but it really is.
Like, I, my friends need to know that, and I think all of us want to be that person where if their friend is going through anything, they can sit you down and you will be of use.
But in this case, we don't know what being of use would be.
So I talked about that on Rogan.
He kept trying to steer back to the predators.
And I kind of, it's kind of hard to steer that ship.
But I was, my point is, there's not a disagreement about these predators.
We all know these are just evil people.
I don't even mean people who are like watching child porter at home.
I mean people who are actually engaging physically with kids.
I think even that's a very big divide.
And what happens is I have my Facebook, my Twitter settings.
I have my inbox.
I have open DMs, but I have it as like a roach motel, right?
So if you DM me and I don't follow you, it goes into like a separate folder.
So I will never see it, but you'll think I've seen it.
And then that gets the annoying people to shut up.
I was went to a message someone who I had a question on Twitter.
I'm like, whoever has the best answer, I'll get a free copy of my book.
And when I went to DM him, that second folder populated with all these messages that never had appeared there to begin with.
So I could look at that second folder if I wanted to.
So there was like a third folder that was invisible to me.
And I'm like, what the fuck?
It turns out if you have a setting on your Twitter that says Open DMs quality filter, it filters them out.
So you can't see them even if you really want to.
And I went back and looked and there was like a year and a half of people DMing me and it was shit like thanks for speaking out on Rogan.
It meant a lot.
I'm the victim of childhood sexual abuse.
They were ignored.
I didn't see it.
And I had told people on Rogan, DM me.
I didn't see it.
The girl who stood me up for the second day of Skank Fest, she apologized for ghosting me.
Didn't see it.
Hey, Michael, my girlfriend is dying of cancer.
And we listen to your welcome every week and it makes us laugh.
Thanks so much for your hard work.
December, didn't see it.
Two years ago, someone's like, hey, I know you're a big Twin Peaks fan.
My brother's working on the show at the online store.
Do you want any free shit?
Nope.
Didn't see it.
I'm like, what?
I'm like, this is so fucked up.
But yeah, so I had to go through it.
And I reached out to all the people after Rogan.
And I'm like, oh my God, I'm so fucking sorry.
But, you know, and they all had positive responses.
The girlfriend's still with us.
You know, these other people have gone to therapy.
And I'm like, oh, you didn't need to bother me at all with your whiny problems.
Give me a break.
I've got enough on my plate.
You know, I was very critical of lots of aspects of the Me Too movement, whatever you want to call it, when it came out.
And, you know, the, you know, like due process being thrown out, false accusations not being recognized as a possibility.
You know, there were lots of things to criticize.
I remember watching this documentary on, I don't know if you saw, I can't remember whether it was Netflix or it was something, one of the big things, it might have been Amazon or something like that, but on the Olympic gymnastics doctor who was molesting all of those kids.
It is, it was the most disturbing documentary I think I've ever seen in my life.
And I've watched a lot of very disturbing documentaries, but this was a guy who was preying on children for decades and being protected by all the people around him.
And it was just horrible.
And at the end, he ends up getting convicted.
He goes on trial and the judge lets all of his victims speak at his trial.
And it's this really powerful moment where they all come forward.
And a whole lot of them are like, you know, young, very, very young.
Like this happened to them when they were like 14.
Now they're like maybe 19, 20, something like that.
And they all came out and were telling their stories.
And I remember thinking, like, man, there was something really positive and powerful about the Me Too moment.
Like that really, because what it did was it created this environment where instead of, and let's just, I don't mean to, you know, downplay it when I say these words, but it made it cool.
It made it, you know, a 20-year-old.
There was an incentive.
Yes, exactly.
A social incentive, a social currency system where you don't feel like, oh my God, this is so embarrassing and so shameful for me to have this story.
It's like, no, it's cool to tell your story.
It's cool to come out and say, hey, this happened to me.
I'm standing up.
You're going to be viewed as strong.
And, you know, just positive kind of reinforcement.
And so I thought, man, you know, for all of the things that I complained about about Me Too, this outweighs any of them.
The fact that all these young women who were abused as children felt comfortable and strong enough.
And it's very clearly was related to the Me Too movement because they had tried to do this 10 years ago to the guy, and not enough women were willing to come forward.
And now they were.
And I wonder like how you, you know, what you can do to really create an environment that where people who were abused as children feel, you know, I know I'm using lefty terms here, but feel empowered to tell their story because that really is something you want.
First of all, I think it's sad that we tend to, because of it, I'm generally informable in favor of Americans, the kind of self-segregation ideologically, but to allow this to be regarded as a lefty term, kids getting abused is not a political issue in my view.
I don't think there's any Republican, like, you know, I could think Trump's the devil, or I could think Trump is the badass bull in a china shop.
You find this out, you're horrified.
I think, and it would got to be like 99.99% of people, right?
Like once, if it's on a one-on-one situation, it's just absolute horror.
Maybe the lefty Democrat side wants to hug the kid.
Maybe the dad Republican side wants to kill the perpetrator.
But in every situation, it's just like, okay, this is, but and then you have the people who are like hand-waving it away.
That also goes both ways.
You have the male feminists who are like, well, I can't be doing horrible things to women.
I'm a feminist.
So by definition.
And then you have the people on the right, oh, stop your complaining.
You just want attention, bitch.
So, again, you're going to have it.
It is, it's, it's to reduce it to politics.
Reducing everything to politics is a lefty thing.
And that's what's kind of insane.
This has nothing to do.
It's a kid.
My God.
The thing that I was really happy about is the next week, or maybe two weeks after, there was like a world-class kickboxing champion.
And because he saw that episode that I was on, he came out as being this kind of victim of childhood sexual abuse.
I think it's so much different when it's males because it's especially more difficult to come out and it's more difficult to deal with because this is not, if I mean, straight males, this is not a sexuality that you don't, you know, it's like you're violated on a very primal level.
It's horrifying.
So I think it's, and the thing, this actually, I'll tell you this.
One of the guys who messaged me, you know, he like a total stud.
His wife is a model.
He's like, if you look at his Instagram, that's how he messaged me.
It was just like, I barely checked those, but that day I was making sure to check like a total baller lifestyle and not in a douchebag way, but like someone who has fun with his bros.
And he's like, you're the first person I'm telling.
I have a great life, but I think about this every single day.
And I said to him, and I'm telling this to people right now, I go, listen, if any of your buddies said, like if Lewis or Big J or anyone sat you down and said this, you wouldn't be like, ha ha ha.
You would be like, I think of you the same.
I adore you.
You're like one of the greatest people I've ever met.
Blah, blah, blah.
And then things make a lot more sense now, to be honest.
Yeah, right, right.
But that's like, you're, you have to let your guys know that that's how they would react.
And I go, this is what you do.
And then you put, yes, hashtag me too, so that they know they could still make these jokes with you.
You're still the same person you were yesterday.
Yeah.
Because this happened 20 years ago.
For them, it's happening now to register it.
For you, it's been decades.
But you can get the, and I think this has gotten easier and easier since I've been talking about it.
This is something I'm not going to fucking drop, like the North Korea stuff, because there's no dispute here.
Breaking the Silence on BlueChew00:06:49
There's no dispute that people who have gone through this need more sympathy and empathy and need to feel safe.
Like if I told you or you told me, you told me about your dad having mental illness, right?
I wasn't like, oh, awkward or think like, shit, how do I talk to Dave?
I'm like, damn, that sucks.
And I felt for you.
And I'm like, if I had a magic wand, I wish I would have changed.
But the conversation didn't skip a beat.
I didn't perceive you in a different way.
But with this, and I think part of it is also, and this is correct, as soon as someone brings up children and sexuality, right away we want to run screaming because this is not something we want any part of, like to have that Venn diagram.
So we need to be all more understanding.
I think not that we aren't, but I think, you know, as more and more people come out and more and more people understand, okay, what do you need me to say?
You know, how do I make you feel safe?
I think it's going to, A, lead to a lot more healing.
And B, lead to a lot more of these people getting busted.
Because I'm sure, like my buddy Matt, and he, I asked him, he said, use my name, please.
It's like, if you know someone who's gone through and gone through this, you don't feel as much like a freak.
And then you're also not going to feel like a freak coming out because and accusing that person.
Because the worst scenario, like maybe 15 years ago, now everyone doesn't know how to talk to you.
And that guy gets away with it again.
So that is like the worst of all worlds.
And as is the case in these situations, can potentially, you know, hurt some other kid because usually these people are not one-time offenders.
I mean, if you're, if you've crossed a line to the point where you are going to hurt children, you're, you're not like reeling it in after you did it once.
You're going to continue if you have the opportunity.
Certainly.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
One of the things you mentioned there that I think is important was the dynamic of men feeling comfortable to come out and tell these stories, particularly straight men.
And I do think in general in our society, there's no like support for men.
You know, there's none of these like support groups for men.
There isn't a culture of like what men go through.
I was joking around the other day with my wife about, you know, how many things we've seen about the disproportionate impact on African Americans of COVID.
But the thing that nobody will ever say is that it's disproportionately affecting men, which is very true.
And I didn't know that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's how that's how much no one cares.
The death, I checked these numbers.
This might have been a week ago, so they could be updated, but there was like 71% of the deaths in Italy were men.
Like disproportionately affecting men.
Yeah, but nobody seems to like be, you know, like, oh my God, we need to worry about the male community or we need to worry about, you know, what's happening here to our men who are being dead, because there's just, that's not the way society thinks.
And I think very much for not only cultural reasons, but for biological reasons.
The male disposability has always existed.
Men are inherently, from a Darwinian perspective, more disposable than women are.
If you have a desert island with 50 men and one woman, you're screwed in terms of surviving for the future.
First off, every single male is going to fight over that one woman.
She's going to get pregnant in nine-month intervals and quite possibly die and the baby dies and then society is over.
If you have 50 women and one man, very happy man, you're going to be fine.
You will repopulate the earth.
So female life is inherently more valuable genetically than male life is.
And this is part of the reason why men go off and die at war and people don't really, you know, worry about it as much as if they're, you know, these culture it's like, oh my God, we have to protect our women.
But that is something that, you know, in today's day and age doesn't isn't really necessary.
And I remember back during the height of the Me Too movement when I was on a SE Cup show, and I would, I tried to bring up a few times in the conversation prison.
I was like, I mean, if we're going to talk about rape culture and all this stuff, I mean, let's talk about prison.
There's a real problem here, and nobody cared.
It's a punchline.
Yeah, it really is a punchline.
It's something that you can watch Law and Order and they'll use to threaten a guy.
You know, like they're grilling them and they'll just be like, you better admit it.
Guys like you don't do too well in prison.
And it's just like, yep, that's the good guy in the show just telling you, like, hey, we'll send you to a rape dungeon, man.
So you better talk up.
And that's fine.
No problem.
But if it's like pretty Hollywood girls being, you know, whatever, propositioned or abused, perhaps, then all of a sudden it's sexy and interesting and everyone wants to care about it.
But there really is no, you really can't work up a cultural givea shit over men being abused.
I got to tell you something else.
Like, first of all, I think this speaks very strongly to why you have the rise of people like Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, all these other types.
And they want to try to, you know, people like the New York Times want to try to reduce them to some kind of alt-right or right-wing figureheads.
Joe Rogan's not right-wing.
They are speaking to a population that has been, you know, for better or worse, well, for worse, obviously, but for what I meant, for whatever reason, has been put in kind of a secondary position and don't feel that they're being perceived and spoken to.
Mislabeling Joe Rogan's Audience00:15:00
And one of the things that I have happened to me in the last six months is that there has been like an increasing number of individual young men who I've spoken to who have told me, and this really did a number on me, that I'm the first person that, you know, how like our fans think we're friends with them?
And this is something I've been having an issue with because a lot of times people don't respect boundaries and I'm very introverted and I'm very kind of whatever.
And as part of this, my upbringing where my boundaries were never respected.
But so many of these young men are telling me that I'm the first person who thinks like them.
And for the first time in their life, they don't feel completely isolated and crazy.
And for me, it's just like, holy shit, like that's.
And, but the thing is now, I started to, I talked to this one person, they're very young.
And I'm like, oh my God, it got me to thinking.
I remember that my 24 to 27 feeling this absolute cosmic level sense of alienation that I'm a completely, completely mentally isolated.
And yeah, I had friends and I'd hang out with them, but in certain ways, that made it worse because there was like a fundamental wall between what I could and couldn't communicate with them.
So to realize that me and you, people like Tom, I think, but Tom's a lot more hands off and he's also a dad.
Not that you're not a dad, but you know, more like a dad fan.
He's got, he's got five.
No, but I mean, he's like a, he's as a dad or persona.
Yes, more than you or not.
You do, certainly.
To be that guy for these people is something like, okay, I am realizing what a big deal that is because I didn't have that.
And it was really like crawling on glass for years.
And I haven't thought about it for a long time, how difficult it was on a fundamental emotional level and how much it screwed up my quality of life for a very long time in a very deep way.
So yeah, like the fact that, you know, even if it's just four people who I could be the guy who's like, nope, it's not you, it's everybody else.
Because at that age, you don't have that perspective.
So to be like, no, no, trust me, you're going to be a successful autistic freak like myself and Dave Smith.
It's like they can let out a breath.
All right, let's switch gears a little bit because I wanted to talk about this video clip that somebody sent me on Twitter that really I found just appalling.
And as you know, Michael, I have been over the last few weeks, really becoming more and more convinced that the response to the virus has been worse than the virus.
And I think that's going to become clearer and clearer to people that we're going to look back at this and be like, holy shit, what the hell did we just do?
You know what?
Let's assume it's 100% true.
That's still going to be a big gamble that it's become clearer and clearer.
Yes.
No, but no, I agree with you, but I'm taking that into account when I say those words.
So I'm talking on the level of the Iraq war, it has had before even, you know, like Hawks would admit, yeah, there's no way we can justify that happened.
I just think that we're going to be looking at, I mean, if some of these governors who want to keep this shutdown going another month, if we're going to do that, we're going to be looking at probably 50 million plus people who have lost their jobs.
This is going to sell a shrug.
Yes, yes.
This is exactly.
So wait a minute, how come we're not in the valley?
Was that no jandar is calling me in my office?
Well, so anyway, this is, you know, there's starting to be some pushback against this.
There's been protests around the country.
And I've been thinking for a while now that it's really unbelievable how much politicians do not seem unaffected by the damage, the devastation that they're causing.
And so there was this quote at, or there was this moment at one of Andrew Cuomo, the hero governor right now, at one of his daily press conferences.
And this guy sent it to me.
I couldn't believe that he actually said this.
So I wanted to play this video and we can both kind of, we can stop in the middle and kind of, I was curious to get your reaction.
But so let's play this video.
I don't know if you can hear, but there are protesters outside right now honking their horns and raising signs.
We did speak to a few of them before we came in.
And these are regular people who are not getting a paycheck.
Some of them are not getting their unemployment check.
And they're saying that they don't have time to wait for all of this testing and they need to get back to work in order to feed their families.
Their savings is running out.
They don't have another week.
They're not getting answers.
So their point is the cure can't be worse than the illness itself.
What is your response to them?
The illness is death.
What is worse than death?
What if somebody commits suicide because they can't pay their bills?
Yeah, but the illnesses may be my death as opposed to your death.
You said they said the cure is worse than the illness.
The illness is death.
How can the cure be worse than the illness if the illness is potential death?
But what if the what if the economy failing is equals death because of mental illness, the people, the people stuck at home.
No, it doesn't.
It doesn't equal death.
Economic hardship.
Not death.
Emotional stress from being locked in a house.
Very bad.
Not death.
Domestic violence on the increase.
Very bad.
Not death.
And not death of someone else.
See, that's what we have to factor into this equation.
Yeah, it's your life.
Do whatever you want.
But you're now responsible for my life.
You have a responsibility to me.
All right.
So let's pause it right there because I already found this to just, I thought it was infuriating and very revealing a lot of things.
So the exact opposite reaction.
No, okay, go ahead.
Okay.
First of all, I think it's like the most oversimplified nonsense to sit here.
Again, it's what I was saying before.
It's impossible for these people to have a cost-benefit analysis.
It's no, the illness is death, and nothing can be worse than death because illness is death.
And it's like, well, I mean, we don't actually know exactly what the mortality rate of this virus is.
That Stanford study that I was talking about the other day, they put it at around 0.1%.
Now, maybe they're off.
Maybe that's not what it is, and it's actually higher than that.
But it's not as simple as the illness is death.
Some people will die from that.
But the point that this reporter was making, which she starts with, is that what if some people die from the economy being shut down?
What if tens of millions of people going out of work?
What if that is death?
And I think what he said, even though he didn't mean it to be as literal as what he said, but when he says, well, this could be my death, what about me?
And I think that there really is some truth to the fact that this, the virus, is something that can affect the elite.
It's not something that's contained to the working class and the poor.
And so if you're talking about their suffering versus risking something that could come take out the ruling class, well, then that's something that we can't risk.
Now, I know he didn't mean that to be literal, but it seemed like a Freudian slip to me.
And no, I'm sorry.
You to just say, oh, yeah, well, you're free to go out if you want to, but it could be someone else's death.
Well, people are not free to go out and go to work if they want to.
They're being shut down by the government.
And it seems to me that there is no serious consideration of what that means for, you know, you can sit there and be like, well, nothing's worse than the illness.
Tell that to somebody who's got three kids and just lost their work, their job.
You're telling me you compare that to a situation of grandma dying.
It's not so clear.
What is the better or worst answer?
These are tough, tough questions.
And I just, I found that dismissive and infuriating.
So it's interesting.
I think this is the first time.
I love it when, because we agree on so much and we see things the same way.
We need to take a second.
Something going on with your audio settings and you're pitched way down.
My mic, that happened again.
Okay, let me let me take the mic out and put it back in.
Okay.
Yeah.
And then you can just get back to your response.
I'll cut this.
Yeah.
One, two, I'm going to pause.
Yeah, you sound, you sound good.
You're good now.
Okay.
So it's interesting because you and I see things so similarly.
And, you know, we can kind of argue over the little details, but we're going to be coming from the same premises and the same conclusion almost inevitably.
So I think it's really fun when we are looking at the same data and having different responses.
This is how I looked at what I just saw.
I think when you are a governor or let's, or even just like a CEO of a company, right?
Let's take it out of the whole status thing to take that whole angle out of it, which on some level is whatever.
You, these people, and I'm not saying, well, you know how when someone's like, oh, boohoo, you're too rich.
It's like, I'm going to give them a little bit of sympathy.
They're in a really tough position because they can't win.
Because he knows, I don't think Governor Cuomo's a dumb man.
When de Blasio was saying we're going to quarantine New Yorkers, he shot that down with the quickness.
So he is aware on some level of cost-benefit analysis.
But I think when you're in that position, your brain has to tell yourself you're making the right choice.
Because when you're second guessing between mass unemployment and mass death, you don't really have the psychological space to be like, gee, I don't know.
Because everyone around you is saying the economy, like there was that joke with Harry Truman, give me a one-handed economist.
Well, on the one hand, 80% chance that 50,000 people will die.
On the other hand, there's a 40% chance that 3 million will be out of work.
What's it going to be?
And it's just like, I don't know.
I'm just a fucking asshole got elected because of my dad.
But the thing is, I have to know.
I can't quit.
And I'm in this office because I'm a power hungry, whatever.
And it's not an easy, I don't think, I don't think either of us.
Hold on, just finish.
So when he's saying that, I think I took that.
And again, I could be totally talking out of my ass.
And if I heard someone else saying this, I could be like, oh, typical Democrat.
But I think this is something where he had to tell himself, I'm making the tough choices.
And when she's like, what do you want me to tell those people?
What he's really saying is, I don't know what to tell them.
You're fucking right.
So I got to fucking sit here and be certain.
And I'm like, this is clearly the right choice.
Because if I'm saying, yeah, you know, maybe I should be open up earlier, that's not really helping the situation.
So what, yeah, okay, I get what you're saying.
I think that even when you said to take it out of the statist context, this is something that happens with power, whether that be state power or other power.
I mean, I remember just a stupid example, but I remember in the late 90s, or I guess it was the early 2000s, when the Knicks signed Alan Houston for like $100 million.
So they paid Alan Houston more than Kobe Bryant was making at the time.
Like they signed him like he was the best player in the league and he was a good player, but he wasn't anywhere near that level.
And then they would just keep justifying it.
Like, why?
Oh, you guys, Alan Houston was the man.
Because if they didn't, then they'd be telling you, oh, we made the biggest mistake in the history of this organization.
And that's not really an option.
So you got to just kind of keep justifying it.
So it happens all over the place.
The issue is that in the government, you have way more power.
So if there's a problem with power, there's way more of it in the government.
And it also does not have the cleansing mechanism that the market has.
So if a business makes a really bad decision, they go out of business.
They're gone.
The government doesn't go out of business, at least not yet, hopefully, one day.
But the government doesn't go out of business.
So they make a bad decision.
There's just no cleansing mechanism because their customers are forced to pay.
So they're not, you know, they're not going anywhere.
But yeah, I mean, I think you're right to some degree.
What it is is that you cannot acknowledge, let alone admit, the possibility that you did something that was worse than this virus.
Because what position are you in then?
You can't change your mind.
Your whole everything about you is derived from the fact that you did the right thing here.
And if you didn't, oh my God, it's, you know, I think I might have been talking about this with you one time when I watched this video of an abortionist, an abortion doctor, who had been an abortion doctor for 30 years.
And she was arguing that there's absolutely nothing immoral.
There's no moral question about getting an abortion.
It's like, well, you better believe that.
Right.
Because if you don't, you're like Hitler, you know, like a worse Hitler.
You're just exclusively a baby murderer.
And you actually did it.
So no, we all know the joke.
So, but you know, but regardless of that, the fact is still that you're this person in this position of power and you're going to be telling people, you're going to be shutting down this line of date.
It's a lot easier for him to say, I'm sorry you lost your job because of me than I'm sorry you lost grandma because of me.
And it's the incentives that he's under that I think he's responding to.
And I don't think he's responding to them in a totally irrational way.
I don't think it's irrational either.
I do think it's evil.
I think it is wrong on a moral level to just shut down questions by saying, nope, death.
Death worse than that.
Let me get your take on this one.
Let me just say one thing.
I think he was being more pedantic in the sense of like, you know, when she's saying, like, they're saying this could be worse than disease.
Well, actually, the disease means you die.
So by definition, nothing could be worse.
I think that's what the, it's when people who are marginally smart try to sound smarter than they are to be like, there's, you know, like a lot of times you and I will talk about some, you know, anarchist perspective and people will be like, well, if you look at the data, obviously, it's like, it's never obvious.
Data is not obvious.
That's just something you're perceiving to be obvious.
So I think he's trying to make it, this is obviously death or not death and given those two choices.
And it's like, yeah, it would be a lot easier for everyone if this was a binary choice, right?
Yeah.
It's not.
That's what it's statistics and horror in either direction.
That I do agree with.
It is difficult.
And I think people on either side of the issue who are making it seem simple are just fooling themselves and making themselves feel better about what side of the issue they're on.
But they're not the ones who are forcing people out of work.
And this motherfucker is.
Now, I do, by the way, I suspected that it was possible that you were going to have a different perspective on this, and that's why I thought it would be interesting to play it together.
So, I want to play the end of the video.
Public Health Panic and Statistics00:15:41
Okay.
See what your perspective on this is.
So, let's play that.
You have a responsibility to me, right?
We started here saying it's not about me, it's about we.
Get your head about the around the we concept.
So, it's not all about you, it's about me too.
It's about we.
Also, I get the economic hardship.
Everybody gets it.
Everybody feels it.
Federal government is sending out a check for individuals, $600, an additional $1,200.
We are moving heaven and earth to get the unemployment payments going.
So, we get the economic anxiety.
The question is: how do you respond to it?
And do you respond to it in a way that jeopardizes public health and possibly causes more people to die?
And think about it as if it was your family that might get infected, right?
And that's what we're talking about.
And when you think about it as your family, you have a different perspective.
I'll tell you the truth.
It's not an abstract argument where they say, he says she says, he says she says.
I know that's how it works.
Well, the protesters say this, governor says this, protesters say this, governor says this.
Okay, think about it as your family might be in the mix.
Because when I see 484 New Yorkers die, I feel that it's like people in my family.
And nothing comes before the public health risk of somebody else's life.
And that's where we are.
But they're also saying if you can't afford to pay me unemployment or your system, you will be paid unemployment.
They can't wait for the money.
They're out of money.
Yeah, we're talking about a couple of days lag on the unemployment insurance, and they will get the check from the date of unemployment.
It does not cost them an extra penny.
Now, they can say, unemployment insurance isn't enough.
I get it.
Even with the $600 check and the $1,200 check, and the unemployment insurance benefit is not enough.
I understand the economic hardship.
We all feel it.
The question is, what do you do about it?
And do you put public health at risk?
And do you drive up the number of deaths for it?
Because you have no idea how to reopen now.
They're saying that is there a fundamental right to work if the government can't get me the money when I need it?
Is there a fundamental work?
You want to go to work?
Go take the job as an essential worker.
Do it tomorrow.
Okay.
So now, to me, I thought that was an ultimate piece of shit move at the end.
To say, go take a job as an essential worker if you need all of a sudden learn to code is completely.
That's not a hate speech anymore.
It's not that way at all.
I think what he's saying, this is how I took it, is first of all, I think we also have to appreciate that when you have a situation like this and people turn toward the state for whatever reason for like reassurance, it is, I think, Trump saying the same things.
It's my job as the political figurehead to be the dad and the voice of reassurance telling you it's going to be okay.
So as soon as you have him being like, oh, maybe it's not going to be okay, that can really have some bad dominoes in terms of social unrest, in terms of people, you know, that's a scary road that he's aware of, that Trump's spoken about a lot of times.
Like, I can make this country go into a panic really easily.
You do not want that.
So I think when he is saying, like, shutting down these lines of inquiry, that's him trying to maintain this lie, which is a facade, but a lie that has some utility in being like, guys, we got it under control.
Because as soon as people think that the government does not have everything under control and they can't get a job, that's really psychologically scary.
So I think what we have to appreciate, I mean, all of us, is that a lot of things when you're dealing with an international crisis, a lot of it is mob psychology and gaming that, because it becomes a very different scenario from like you and I discussing like, oh, antitrust law and marginal tax rates and drug legalization and alcohol licensing.
When you have an entire population in a lifeboat, I think that changes the calculus enormously.
And these men and women's roles is very different.
Yeah, I mean, I understand the idea of not wanting to instill panic in people for sure.
But what we're talking about here are the merits of opening the economy and allowing people to work.
Now, I understand that he wants to defend his action here, but I don't know that hint at that saying I'm considering the possibility of letting people go back to work or something like that would really cause this mass panic.
First of all, I hate it drives me crazy.
And I won't lay this all at the feet of Andrew Cuomo because this is the entire not just.
Can I ask you one question before?
I absolutely do.
Do you think he's being worse than most of them or particularly different?
I thought the line about essential workers was particularly shitty.
I thought that was him saying, like, what do you want me to tell you?
Okay, I don't know what the fuck to tell you.
Let's move on.
That's how I took it.
Well, yeah, I guess so, but he's saying that to people whose lives have been destroyed.
I think he was saying it to that reporter to be like, look, we've gone back and forth.
What the fuck do you want me to tell you?
I have to shut it down.
I'm not going to have deaths in my hand.
You want to get a job, get a job.
There's nothing else I can tell you.
But he's not talking to the reporter.
The reporter has a job and a pay and a paycheck coming in.
He's talking about somebody who's lost their job and is, by the reporter's definition, desperate.
And he's saying, oh, go get a job as an essential worker as if somehow that's a viable option.
As if somebody who poured their heart and soul into a small business that they've run for the last decade can just go be a nurse.
Obviously, I care much more about this nurse or even a drug dealer than Governor Cuomo.
That we're not in disagreement.
But I'm not being pedantic.
Literally, what do you want him to say?
I think what would be reasonable to say in this situation is something along the lines of like, those people's struggles are legitimate and we need to work on opening as soon as possible.
Okay.
Yeah, that they could have a role.
That's fair.
That's fair.
You know, like that, that to me would be a much more decent thing to say.
Also, what I was saying before.
I agree with you.
I agree.
The point that I hate that just drives me crazy, especially, and this isn't just Cuomo, like you kind of indicated before.
This is all of them.
This is all of Hollywood, all of the politicians.
But someone like Cuomo, who comes from a made family, who is basically political royalty, is like a socialite who dated like some socialite and is living in, you know, has, I don't know what his net worth is, but you check it.
I'm sure it's a few million dollars at least.
Easy, yeah.
When he goes, we're all feeling the pain together.
We're all in this together.
And it's just like, no, you're fucking not.
No, you're not.
You're not in the same situation as a fucking couple who's got a few kids, who's like a waitress and a guy who manages a hotel.
And both just lost their jobs.
It's not the same.
Let me ask you this.
And I know the binary thinkers in the audience, which I'm trying to weed out, and I know you do too, are going to be triggered by this.
Who do you think has been under more stress in the last month?
Me and you or Governor Cuomo?
Probably Cuomo.
And I don't not saying that makes him a good person.
I'm not saying that I'm a status now.
I'm just saying it's, I don't think his job is easy.
I think that's not the thing.
No, I'm not saying, but when he's saying that like he's feeling the economic pain, he doesn't feel the economic pain.
That's absolutely true.
But he is feeling it in a macro sense, like, holy shit, if I'm allowing this state to go to hell and I'm responsible for it, even if the cost is the alternative is worse.
That's not something he's like, yeah, I don't care.
I'm sure he's like, fuck, this sucks that I have to pull this trigger.
Well, listen, I don't know.
I don't know what's in his heart or you don't think that the governor can.
I don't know.
Oh, sure.
I don't know.
I think there's a lot of sociopaths in government.
I don't know for whatever.
But I think sociopaths do want what's best for them.
And it's not good.
I'm just looking at it from the socialist perspective.
I'm not saying he actually cares.
I'm just saying he knows it's bad for him if I just watch the economy goes to shit.
Fair enough.
Let me just ask you a question in response to that.
Who do you think?
And you know, obviously there's a whole lot of Americans who have next to no savings.
Sure.
Next to none.
Who do you think has been stressed out more?
Governor Cuomo or someone who's got two or three kids who's just lost their job and has very little savings?
I'll make it even easier.
Someone who's just a bachelor who lost their job or has the shitty job.
Yeah, they have it much worse.
Not even a question.
Not even a question.
But I mean, I would not envy Governor Cuomo.
Yes, he picked his job and he spent a lot of money to get it and blah, blah, all that other stuff.
But I do not envy anyone who is in a leadership role during a worldwide crisis, even if it's just economic, for which they have very limited control and a lot of people looking at them for answers.
And one of the issues you and I are anarchists is it's impossible for any human being to be on top of economics and healthcare and environmentalism and this and that and fiat currency.
You can't, the human mind can't handle all this.
So to have it be public is really not a fun place to be.
No, I agree with you on that.
And I remember, you know, John Stossel did this like an experiment once.
Yeah, if we're going to talk about libertarian autism, let's really do it.
But I remember I thought this was really, a really good point that he made on his show back in the day.
And this is a John Stossel audience.
So I assume, you know, a libertarian leaning audience.
But he asked someone to say, he goes, I want you to pretend you're a state regulator and you're in charge of regulating and making sure things are safe.
And I have a proposal for you.
And he was like, his proposal is that I have a system where I can run odorless, colorless gas through people's homes.
And it is going to end up, you know, if it leaks, like there'll be no symptoms and you're just going to die and it can start fires and all of this stuff.
But I'm going to run it through the homes of like 100 million Americans and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And he goes this whole thing now.
Do you, would you allow that or not?
And even in Stossel's audience, they go, well, no, I can't allow that.
I mean, that's like too.
And he goes, yeah, but you see, we all have this.
It's just, it's a gas oven.
Everybody has this in their home already.
But the reason we have it is because it came around before the regulatory state.
So we all just accepted it before the regulatory state came around.
And what you have in this kind of, in a capitalist, in a state capitalist system is, you know, people get wealthier and wealthier and wealthier because of the markets and the state regulation grows and more and more and more because there's more for the parasite, the parasitic class to leech off of.
And you get to this point where nobody can make the decisions that we would normally make anymore.
So nobody can go, which we do all the time with things that were around before the regulation.
I mean, there are swimming pools and we don't ban them, even though people die from them every year.
But you could never propose the next swimming pool.
And so we're at a point where nobody, it's almost like the system is incapable of going, yeah, some people are going to die, but we're not going to take this drastic action to stop it.
Right, right.
And so, yeah.
So, again, it's, I also think what I don't, I'm not saying you did this, but what I don't like, which I'm seeing sometimes online, is this real expectation by people, both NPCs from both Democrats and Republicans and elsewhere, basically being like, why haven't you guys, you're the leaders.
Why haven't you solved this problem?
It's like, yeah, they can't.
There's, I mean, they could be Ayn Rand.
They could be Cuomo, anywhere in between.
They're not going to sit there and be like, well, case clazed.
So that expectation of like, well, you should know what to do is not, which is not what you're saying at all, but is inherently just completely removed from reality.
And a lot of some of these people are far more evil than others.
And some of them are just like power-hungry assholes who like power, like being a big shot.
And now they have to deal with this in their lap.
And it's not, it can't be fun for them.
And all I'm not saying, oh, poor, poo-boo-hoo, poor governor.
I'm just saying it's, he's not sleeping well at night being like, oh, everything's fine.
You know, like I agree with most of what you're just said, but the one part, and this is why I said, I don't know what's in his heart, is that I wonder in the same way that when, you know, there are a lot of these politicians who, you know, launch wars.
And I don't know necessarily that all of them are like, oh, this can't be easy to sleep at night.
Like now, I'm kind of speculating.
I don't know.
That's true.
I never got the impression that Dick Cheney or Lindsey Graham or John McCain had trouble sleeping at night.
I think it's very different.
I really never got that.
I think it's very different when it's Iraqis who are dying overseas and you think that the American dyings are like, if not good, but like, well, that's the cost you pay.
And, you know, they're going to be heroes and blah blah blah.
You ever hear listening to like Bill Clinton talk about Waco?
It didn't seem like he was losing any sleep over American.
Right.
But again, I think, I think that was like, oh, I made the tough choice and it's resolved.
This is ongoing.
So I think it'd be different if like every day his phone must be ringing off the hook.
He must be making decisions every five minutes.
He's not the fuck to make about.
So it's at the even just, it's like taking a test.
Like if you and I had to take a test in like a language you and I don't speak and it's everyone's going to see the answers and for some reason we're going to be judged for it.
It's like, there's, I can't answer this.
It's not going to be fun for us.
No, that's not saying that that's a fair person.
No, that's fair.
And it is an apples to orange comparison.
But I just think, or I think it's possible that a lot of these governors are, first of all, they're exercising an unbelievable amount of power, more power than they ever thought they would have when they got that.
More power than they really do have.
Oh, yes.
In a constitutional sense or something like that.
But I guess the law is really what's enforced at the end of the day.
So it turns out they have this power, but it's the power of a dictator.
I mean, no question about that.
They are by themselves deciding by fiat who can go outside, who can open their business, who's essential, who's not.
I think it's quite possible that a lot of them get off on that power.
There's a thrill about shutting down an entire city, an entire state.
You know why?
You could even see the psychology.
You have to be associated.
You'd be like, I'm the one who made this tough choice, which made people's lives get saved.
And you could easily be like, wow, that person must feel like they're awesome because they had the courage to tell businesses, no, you can't open because this is more important.
That's right.
You're the wise one and the powerful one who made the correct decision.
And then on top of that, you're on TV every single day on getting national exposure.
That is not something that most of these governors, even Cuomo, who's like kind of a big deal governor, he wasn't used to this level.
He's like one of the most famous politicians in America.
Now he's probably the Democrats' number one guy.
It's not that freaking demented Joe Biden.
So I'm just saying, I think it is quite possible that he is sleeping okay at night and he's actually getting something out of this.
Keynesian Stimulus and Lockdown Fury00:03:10
Again, I'm not saying that's the case.
I'm just saying I don't, I don't really know.
I think both can easily be true.
I think he could, you know, love it that he's like a big shot now and getting national exposure and be like, I'm the fucking hero here.
I'm making choice and Trump's fucking it up.
At the same time, he's like, yeah, this is this situation where it sucks.
Yeah.
All right.
Yeah.
Well, you're right.
It is quite possible that both of those are happening.
And I guess the big difference between the stuff with the war or even Waco or some of these other things is that I guess there is got to be a bit of a fear that they are going to be judged for this.
And it's so unprecedented that they really, even they don't know how this is going to, how this is going to end up shaking out.
I have a feeling.
I mean, I think this would actually be like the best case scenario to come out of this, but I do have a feeling that people are going to be furious over this lockdown as time goes on and on, because unlike there's no other way.
It has to be.
Yes.
You put anyone in a cage, a human being, an animal in a cage, it starts going crazy, even if it's wrong.
It should be in the case.
Yes.
And also the fact that there are going to be long-term effects of this shutdown to a degree that I think nobody, you know, I said this recently on some podcast.
It might have been mine or someone else's.
I don't remember.
But I was saying, you know, Ron Paul used to always say that the major differences between him and other politicians were philosophical.
And that that was the thing.
He's like, they really just don't get it.
Like they don't.
And I would think sometimes, like, no, I don't think that's true.
I think they do get it and they just have their own incentives and things like that.
But I've been thinking more and more that there really is some truth to that where they people are operating in like a Keynesian perspective where it's like, okay, this is a downturn.
Look, we got the Fed pumping in money.
We got unemployment pumping in money.
We're pumping in this stimulus.
That's fine.
We'll, we'll just give them more stimulus if that's what it needs.
And they just don't realize that bringing production to a standstill for months is going to devastate the economy for a decade.
This is going to be, this is going to be felt.
You don't just kick 40, 50 million people out of work and then like, okay, it's open again.
I think it's a lot easier when everyone else is doing the same thing.
So then you're not going to have any culpability.
Well, that's true because we are a species that compares things to other, to other, you know, but we also, as you pointed out in your North Korea book, that we don't just compare to how everyone else is doing right now.
We can also compare to how we used to be doing to how we're doing now.
And so that will still exist.
And anyway, I think there's going to be a lot of fury at the government.
And probably that will be a very, very good thing, at least one good thing that comes out of all of this.
All right.
That is our episode for today.
We'll keep this going and we'll have more episodes for the rest of the shutdown.
And then after that, me and Michael have agreed to never talk to each other again.
We've been forgetting it all out.
I'm Team Jay from now on.
There we go.
I'll be honest.
It's a winning team.
That's really.
You should have been there this whole time.
He's the best.
All right, buddy.
Well, I love you.
I always enjoy having these conversations with you.