Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - No Concessions For Safety
Aired: 2020-08-11
Duration: 01:03:35


=== Government Overreach and Decay (10:57) ===

[00:00:00]  Fill her up.
[00:00:02]  You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
[00:00:07]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:00:09]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:00:11]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:00:14]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:00:20]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:25]  You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
[00:00:29]  Here's your host, Dave Smith.
[00:00:32]  Hey, what's up, everybody?
[00:00:33]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:00:37]  I am Dave Smith, the most consistent motherfucker you know, and he is the king of the caulks.
[00:00:43]  Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
[00:00:45]  Good to talk to you.
[00:00:45]  It's been a little while.
[00:00:47]  That's true.
[00:00:47]  How was vacation?
[00:00:49]  Vacation was very good.
[00:00:50]  Much needed.
[00:00:52]  Recharging of the batteries.
[00:00:54]  You know, it's a 2020 pandemic vacation that was slightly interrupted by a tropical storm, but it was great.
[00:01:03]  It was nice to spend time with the family.
[00:01:04]  Where do the Smiths vacation during pandemics?
[00:01:07]  Parts unknown.
[00:01:08]  Will not be disclosed.
[00:01:09]  All right.
[00:01:10]  But it was a nice little beach town.
[00:01:13]  And it's just, I was there with like my sister and my brother-in-law and their baby.
[00:01:18]  So it was a lot of just the babies hanging out together.
[00:01:21]  Why do you look so much higher?
[00:01:23]  I'm standing.
[00:01:23]  Last time.
[00:01:24]  I'm done with chairs.
[00:01:25]  Yeah.
[00:01:26]  Really?
[00:01:26]  Okay.
[00:01:27]  I was going to say, usually when I say Rob Bernstein looks high on the podcast, I'm referring to something else, but you actually look like you're coming out of the ceiling right now.
[00:01:35]  So you're standing.
[00:01:36]  Okay.
[00:01:36]  Yeah.
[00:01:37]  Now I'm sitting down.
[00:01:38]  I feel a little intimidated.
[00:01:39]  Like you're hovering over me.
[00:01:41]  I thought I could mountain bike.
[00:01:42]  I thought I could be one of those people.
[00:01:44]  And I fixed up an old bike and I've been hitting these trails, having a good old time, but my back thinks otherwise.
[00:01:49]  This is you just trying to deal with the fact that you live near a Domino's Pizza now.
[00:01:53]  I'm going to have to be standing and moving at all times, just running away from the thoughts of Domino's Pizza.
[00:02:00]  It's fresh scents coming up through the window 24-7.
[00:02:02]  It's not 24-7.
[00:02:04]  They shut down at some point.
[00:02:05]  I'm sure.
[00:02:06]  That would be actually pretty impressive if Domino's was like, you know what?
[00:02:09]  During this pandemic, we are not going to stop making crap.
[00:02:12]  They go late.
[00:02:13]  They go late.
[00:02:14]  A lot of towns, that's your only option after midnight.
[00:02:17]  I told you, my college town, that was your only option.
[00:02:19]  And I loved it.
[00:02:21]  And God bless them.
[00:02:22]  God bless the good men and women at Domino's, the essential workers at Domino's Pizza, which is not even a joke.
[00:02:29]  They are actually essential workers.
[00:02:31]  That's where we're at in 2020.
[00:02:33]  They're looking over everyone and they're like, Domino's, got to have that.
[00:02:37]  Can't let that shut down.
[00:02:39]  All right.
[00:02:39]  So how's your week been?
[00:02:42]  I think it was fine.
[00:02:43]  I didn't do much.
[00:02:44]  Editing some stuff, doing some run-your-mouths.
[00:02:46]  Just, you know, I stay indoors a lot.
[00:02:50]  No, well, you know, that's fairly normal today.
[00:02:52]  Right now, there's a hermits like you have become the new normal.
[00:02:56]  That's what everybody does now.
[00:02:58]  Stay indoors.
[00:02:59]  Really, not even just the new normal.
[00:03:00]  Really, you're a hero.
[00:03:02]  You're a fucking hero now.
[00:03:04]  So weird, man.
[00:03:05]  Maybe I'll start teaching classes how to better spend all your time indoors.
[00:03:10]  Yeah, it's such a strange thing, right?
[00:03:13]  There's so many strange things of this year.
[00:03:15]  And so, what's so weird, right, is that we on this show have been talking about for years now, what a crazy time we're living in in this country.
[00:03:26]  Now, after this year, you're like, holy shit.
[00:03:28]  It's like you really never appreciate like until it's over.
[00:03:31]  But we were in such a normal space compared to where we are now.
[00:03:36]  Everything's been flipped upside down.
[00:03:39]  All the values are so weird and strange.
[00:03:42]  You know, I was talking about on one of the podcasts I recorded, or maybe it was on my OnlyFans stream.
[00:03:48]  I can't remember, but it's like the thing that I'm, that's like overwhelming me right now that I can't stop thinking about, which is really strange, is just, and I guess to some degree, we'll find out in this election.
[00:04:03]  But don't you kind of feel like, shouldn't more normal people just be against all of this?
[00:04:13]  Like, who, who wants this?
[00:04:16]  Who looks around and sees, you know, crime rates skyrocketing in cities, violent mobs burning things down, businesses boarded up, businesses closed, people in masks, people like all, just all this shit, and doesn't go, I want to not live like this.
[00:04:34]  I'm not for this.
[00:04:36]  Like, just, I don't care if you lean left or you lean right or whatever job you have.
[00:04:41]  Just like, can't all normal people be together and saying this is bad?
[00:04:46]  If we just all listened and actually stayed indoor and wore our masks, it would go away.
[00:04:51]  We're just not listening good enough.
[00:04:53]  And they're not spending enough.
[00:04:54]  But it doesn't even seem right.
[00:04:56]  Well, right.
[00:04:56]  That's the real problem is that the government spending is just way too low.
[00:05:00]  Not enough money being printed, not enough money being spent.
[00:05:03]  But there's like what I, so even if you buy into all of that and you're like, well, I wish we had just locked down more so we could go back to normal, wouldn't the goal still be to go back to normal?
[00:05:14]  No, one of the things, so Bill de Blasio, and we'll talk a little bit more about him.
[00:05:17]  Normal was systemically racist, so we can't go back.
[00:05:20]  Right.
[00:05:21]  But who that my point is like, okay, I understand there's a little sliver of left-wing people who believe that.
[00:05:25]  But how did any normal people actually think this is better?
[00:05:29]  Like this is better than the way things used to be.
[00:05:32]  Closer to overhauling.
[00:05:33]  And that's what we need to do.
[00:05:35]  Yes, well, I guess my issue is that I don't think, or at least I didn't think, I don't even know anymore, but I didn't think that most normal people were revolutionary in that way.
[00:05:47]  I know that there's a sliver of left-wingers who are.
[00:05:50]  They're revolutionary as long as there's free health care and free rent coming every month.
[00:05:55]  Then they're revolutionary.
[00:05:56]  As long as government's going to cover the cost of not working.
[00:05:59]  Revolution.
[00:06:00]  Well, I think you might be onto something there.
[00:06:03]  But I saw Bill de Blasio talking about next summer keeping the same restaurant deal in New York City where you can do outdoor dining.
[00:06:16]  Basically, right now in New York City, you can't have restaurants can't be open inside, but you can sit if you have outside seating.
[00:06:24]  They can sit out there.
[00:06:25]  And he was like, we're going to continue this for next summer as well.
[00:06:28]  It's been such a big success.
[00:06:30]  And what I just can't, even of the Democrat types who kind of, you know, support the masks and the lockdowns and all that.
[00:06:39]  How are you so like, aren't you like, wait a minute, next summer, we're just conceding that for a whole nother year, things are going to be like this?
[00:06:51]  Like, can't we be a little bit optimistic?
[00:06:53]  I mean, the death rate is, the death numbers are coming way down.
[00:06:57]  Shouldn't we be hoping that we can go back to normal at least by a year from now?
[00:07:02]  I mean, I remember when Trump was talking about trying to reopen by Easter and people were like, no, I think that's too soon or whatever.
[00:07:10]  Like, okay.
[00:07:11]  But next summer, he's passing next Easter and going into next summer.
[00:07:17]  And I just can't believe, like, I can't believe that there isn't more of like a popular outcry from regular people who are just like, no, no, no, fuck that.
[00:07:29]  We're not doing this for another year.
[00:07:32]  And like, but I guess I've heard the same way about the Black Lives Matter riots and shit like that.
[00:07:37]  Like, what the fuck?
[00:07:38]  This is just based.
[00:07:39]  This isn't like what your political ideology is.
[00:07:41]  It's just like, are you a normal, regular person?
[00:07:43]  Do you want to live like this?
[00:07:45]  Do you think this is better?
[00:07:46]  How could you?
[00:07:48]  The de Blasio comment, I mean, I didn't actually see that comment, and he's extremely stupid and unlikable, but he might have just been saying that they're going to allow restaurants the permits to remain in their outdoor spaces, which actually is super annoying because it probably took up, I don't know, you'd have to do the math, but it must have taken up 15% of the available parking in New York City.
[00:08:11]  So it's actually extremely annoying.
[00:08:13]  Yeah, I mean, I guess it doesn't matter when no one in New York City needs to go to work.
[00:08:19]  But yeah, I mean, it just seems more and more obvious to me that the only answer here is to open the economy back up and that anything else is like, it's like suicide.
[00:08:37]  It's like self-inflicted wounds that we're not going to be able to recover from.
[00:08:41]  And, you know, it really is just disgusting to watch the thought process of people who are like, oh, well, we'll just run up the debt.
[00:08:54]  We'll just run up the deficit.
[00:08:56]  And we'll just, oh, good, Trump wrote an executive order to extend unemployment benefits.
[00:09:00]  The Republicans are cheering it.
[00:09:02]  It's sickening.
[00:09:03]  It really is like if you fell on hard times and you were like, well, I'm just going to borrow against my children.
[00:09:14]  I'm just going to rack up debt for them.
[00:09:16]  And that'll get us through this.
[00:09:18]  It's like, no, man, if you're on hard times, you got to feel those hard times.
[00:09:22]  Now, it's a major problem.
[00:09:24]  It's a really major problem because what the government ends up doing, and this is true in normal times, but it's more exaggerated right now, is that they destroy the natural incentives that would help people calculate risk in a situation like this.
[00:09:41]  So it's fine if people don't want to work because they're scared of a virus, but then you don't get paid.
[00:09:52]  That's how that works.
[00:09:54]  If you don't work, you don't get paid.
[00:09:56]  Now, of course, this gets complicated when the government's forcing people to not work, and that's the problem.
[00:10:02]  But there has to be some type of consequence for not working.
[00:10:06]  I mean, like, this is how wealth is produced.
[00:10:09]  This is how wealth is created by people working.
[00:10:12]  And if you don't want to work, then that wealth doesn't get created.
[00:10:15]  That's like a law of nature.
[00:10:16]  It's not, it's like, you know, if you were on a desert island and you're like, okay, I'm hungry.
[00:10:21]  Let's go pick fruit.
[00:10:23]  And you were like, well, I don't feel like picking fruit.
[00:10:24]  It's like, okay, but then you don't eat.
[00:10:27]  I mean, that's like literally the law of nature.
[00:10:29]  But then the government comes in and goes, oh, we'll just cut everybody these checks, which in effect is the same thing as just running up a tab on your child's debt, which is like morally outrageous.
[00:10:41]  And so people kind of feel this like, you know, I mean, hey, I don't have to work and I get this money.
[00:10:49]  Yeah, let's all be really safe for this virus.
[00:10:51]  But you wonder if people actually had to feel the pain of their decision to not work.

=== The Broken Risk-Reward Ratio (12:30) ===

[00:10:58]  Maybe that would nudge some people in the right direction.
[00:11:00]  Then maybe you start going, okay, look, I'm going to wear a mask and try to socially distance, but I got to go back to work.
[00:11:06]  You know, at least some type of compromise.
[00:11:08]  Like, okay, I'll try to be safe, but I don't want to sacrifice having any money.
[00:11:13]  I don't know.
[00:11:15]  As you saw so much demand for people needing to return to work, you'd probably see more innovation of ways to get around this virus, which might even include, like, if let's just say government didn't exist in the picture at all, and us as a humanity was dealing with this virus.
[00:11:30]  I would venture to guess, and I will concede that people would probably die in this process, but drugs that would be preventing this would be coming to market a lot quicker.
[00:11:42]  And yes, there would be casualties of the early experimentations and the people who are willing to be paid in order to kind of take the risk of, which is like any career.
[00:11:52]  You know, sometimes you throw your risk on the line and you get a paid A, and sometimes there are bad consequences.
[00:11:57]  And by the way, I'm not speaking to the morality of that.
[00:11:59]  I'm just saying that that is one exit, like, or the innovation that might exist just if you needed to go to work of the way your office might restructure it, the investment they might make in new equipment that actually makes it like a more purified environment.
[00:12:12]  So it's hard for us to kind of know what innovation might have taken place if government didn't exist and everyone just needed to kind of go about their lives and continue to work.
[00:12:21]  Yeah.
[00:12:21]  Hey, guys, I want to take a quick second and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Status Schmo, a novel by Burt Walker.
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[00:13:36]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:13:38]  Well, one of the major problems is that we're so fucking pussified as a nation that even if you start speaking like that, then it just gets like demagogued and it's like, oh my God, you don't even care that people might die and you're so heartless.
[00:13:52]  And nobody can just be like, I don't know, like a tough adult man about this situation.
[00:13:59]  And just be like, yeah, some people are going to die, but some people are going to die if we shut down as well.
[00:14:04]  And there is going to be some sacrifice required, but we can't destroy civilization because we're scared of some people being hurt.
[00:14:12]  I'll tell you a crazy one.
[00:14:14]  In Israel, I think it was a an anti-cholesteral drug.
[00:14:18]  They were finding out.
[00:14:19]  You got to fact-check me on this, but I think it was an anticholesteral drug.
[00:14:22]  They found out that the same thing that's blocking the cholesterol is blocking the ability of the virus, like reproducing your fat cells, something along those lines.
[00:14:29]  They also have seen that hydroxychlorine does quite a bit.
[00:14:32]  And then on top of that, they discovered that steroids, just general steroid use as it kind of boosts your immune system.
[00:14:39]  I bet if like you were just in those are none of those like alone can create any dangers for your system.
[00:14:45]  I think some of these just common basically like immunity boosters to just be healthy as hell if we were doing them in the short term.
[00:14:51]  Like if you really had to show up to work and there was cheap fucking steroids and hydroxychlorine, that might mitigate most of our risk down to nothing.
[00:14:59]  But like you were saying, we're not really sure, like the whole risk-reward ratio has been fucking thrown off because people don't feel the urgency of kind of showing up to work because there is some built-in safety net structure here.
[00:15:10]  Yeah.
[00:15:10]  And, you know, it does, you know, it's like, um, I was thinking about just how, and obviously this is not like just a positive.
[00:15:16]  There are negative aspects to this as well.
[00:15:18]  But like you think about like my grandfather's generation, the generation before them.
[00:15:24]  I mean, they fought in two world wars and it was fairly easy.
[00:15:28]  And this is terrible, but it was fairly easy to propagandize them into it.
[00:15:32]  It was just like, well, there's this threat.
[00:15:34]  These people want to take over the world and we're going to go fight it.
[00:15:37]  And oh yeah, a whole bunch of you guys are going to die.
[00:15:40]  But that's life.
[00:15:41]  So let's go and do, and people are just like willing to do that.
[00:15:44]  Now, that is, it's a good thing that it's not that easy to propagandize people into wars that we shouldn't be a part of, although we're still able to do that fairly effectively.
[00:15:54]  But there's no ability in our population, at least broadly speaking, to accept that it's like, yeah, okay, well, look, there's going to be some people are going to die from this, but that is going to be better, preferable to the alternative where also people are going to die.
[00:16:11]  And there's like, I mean, it's really going to become apparent if it isn't already how much this cost.
[00:16:18]  And it's going to be staggering.
[00:16:20]  That universe, it's not even that hard to kind of see in your mind's eye of the politicians getting up every day and going, guys, I know it's tough out there, but we got to keep working.
[00:16:30]  Like, I know that some of you guys are getting sick and you're going through trouble, but we got to keep working.
[00:16:34]  We can't afford to do otherwise.
[00:16:36]  Like, they could be taking that approach where they're motivating everybody, like, hey, we still got to show up and you got to be careful.
[00:16:42]  But at the end of the day, this is America.
[00:16:44]  We're moving forward.
[00:16:44]  You got to work.
[00:16:45]  But I mean, like, that reality is not that hard in your mind's eye to like see how that could exist or why that would be almost the more rational approach.
[00:16:54]  Yeah.
[00:16:54]  Yeah.
[00:16:54]  And again, like we were saying before, the problem is that there's, you don't have the incentives that would be nudging people in that direction.
[00:17:02]  And the other, you know, it's like it's, it's the economic incentives and then it's also just like the cultural perversions.
[00:17:07]  Like all of these things are really, you know, damaging.
[00:17:11]  But the fact that, you know, there are so many, like what is considered heroic and what is considered cowardly are all flipped upside down and have been from the beginning of the of the pandemic.
[00:17:26]  Like we're supposed to.
[00:17:27]  Watching Netflix, heroic.
[00:17:28]  Shut up to a factory job.
[00:17:30]  You're fucking killing people.
[00:17:32]  Right.
[00:17:32]  So if you're willing to like risk this because you want to provide right, that's it.
[00:17:36]  You're literally like that hairdresser in Texas is, you know, chastised and accused of being selfish for wanting to keep her store open and keep her people employed and put food on the table for her family.
[00:17:50]  If you're willing to take risks to go work hard to support your family, that's evil.
[00:17:56]  But if you're willing to sit back like an OCD hypochondriac and do nothing except collect welfare, that's noble.
[00:18:04]  Man, there is something really fucking upside down about that value system.
[00:18:11]  And then on top of that, I also just fucking, I don't know.
[00:18:15]  You know, I don't, the way that like medical workers became heroes was disturbing to me.
[00:18:23]  I mean, certainly it was tough.
[00:18:24]  It was a tough job and good for them.
[00:18:26]  But it's kind of like that's, you know, that's the job you chose.
[00:18:30]  It's, it's a tough job.
[00:18:32]  And you got it.
[00:18:32]  Yeah, it turns out you got to care for sick people.
[00:18:35]  That is the job, you know?
[00:18:36]  And there's like these doctors who are now all of a sudden made to be heroes who, you know, it's like you make 500K a year and you go into this job where it's like caring for sick people.
[00:18:47]  And now it actually is caring for sick people with a little bit of risk attached to it.
[00:18:52]  Okay, like good for you for doing the job, but that's the job.
[00:18:56]  I just don't get why I'm supposed to kind of like worship you as if there's something like, yeah, that's it.
[00:19:03]  You're expected to do that.
[00:19:04]  And then what's really disturbing is how many people who are supposed to be heroes, according at least to like certain orthodoxies, you know, like public school teachers, they're supposed to be the fucking heroes.
[00:19:19]  And look at all of them like flipping out.
[00:19:21]  Like they are quite happy.
[00:19:23]  And they will, by the way, mark my words, they will end up closing down again next year.
[00:19:27]  They're not going to open.
[00:19:28]  First off, I can tell when they come out with these expectations that are intentionally unrealistic expectations.
[00:19:37]  You know, like, I don't know if you've seen any of the guidelines that they've put out for like that for what school is supposed to be like in the fall.
[00:19:44]  All kids should have their nose removed so that they cannot be sneezing on other people.
[00:19:47]  I mean, it's basically as realistic of an expectation as that.
[00:19:51]  It's the idea is that every student who I believe it's four years old and up has to wear a mask all day long, which I don't know how many four-year-olds you've ever had in your life, but the idea of keeping a mask on them for more than 10 seconds, they have to socially distance from their friends.
[00:20:10]  Okay, what think about four, five, six, seven-year-olds trying to get them to keep a mask on and socially distance.
[00:20:17]  They're only going to be going into school a couple days, half full classes, all this other.
[00:20:21]  I mean, this is all just absurd.
[00:20:23]  And by the way, and on top of that, it won't happen because our country doesn't have the stomach for any.
[00:20:29]  If we opened up, let's say, I mean, I don't know what the total number of school children in the country is, but what it was probably like 40 million or something like that.
[00:20:37]  Like, I don't know.
[00:20:38]  I'm really just guessing.
[00:20:40]  But let's say, just for the sake of argument, 40 million students, and there were like three cases where a student gave, you know, COVID to his teacher or something like that.
[00:20:49]  Or if there's a couple deaths or something like that, they'll close the whole thing down.
[00:20:53]  So it's going to get closed down again in the fall.
[00:20:56]  School isn't going to open.
[00:20:57]  And then you start to, you know, like, obviously, this might be one of the bright spots of the pandemic.
[00:21:03]  I'm not against government schools closing down, but just the idea that in these people's worldview, these schools are super important.
[00:21:12]  And you're a teacher who's, you know, you're an educator.
[00:21:16]  We're supposed to look up to you.
[00:21:17]  Like this is, you know, like everyone on the Democrat side and most of the Republican side just worships teachers, like these great people.
[00:21:23]  But you're, because of a tiny little risk of a virus with a 99% survival rate higher than that, okay?
[00:21:30]  You're going to just shut down what you view as these kids' education.
[00:21:36]  You just will not educate these kids.
[00:21:38]  You're going to fucking, you know, they'll lose their social experience.
[00:21:41]  Like you don't, you know, you don't get another first grade.
[00:21:46]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:21:47]  Like you don't, it's not like the same thing as like, oh, okay, you graduated college.
[00:21:51]  You want to go to grad school.
[00:21:52]  Well, you'll take a year off and then go to grad school next year.
[00:21:55]  You're basically the same situation.
[00:21:56]  You know, that's not the same thing when you interrupt a kid's routine like that.
[00:22:00]  It's also going to be devastating to the economy that people have to scramble to figure out what to do with their kids.
[00:22:08]  Again, I'm not, there are positives to all of this.
[00:22:11]  I'm just saying from the perspective of worshiping these teachers, it's like, and then you realize like, oh, but you won't take a very, very small risk to do what your supposedly noble job is.
[00:22:22]  That's pretty revealing.
[00:22:24]  Yeah, also, if they really cared and believed in their schooling structure, I'll give you the fix.
[00:22:29]  You do month-long semesters where like maybe you do a topic at a time, you take over these colleges and you actually house the kids.
[00:22:37]  But here's the thing: no one would actually trust government enough to do that.
[00:22:41]  And everyone knows that the education system is not that good that you feel like it's that important to send your kid to school.
[00:22:47]  So that reveals how much people really believe in our education.
[00:22:50]  Yeah.
[00:22:51]  The other thing that's just infuriating to me on the topic of what we were talking about before, and believe me, I'm a little conflicted about this because I don't really want to give any advice that would get the schools back open.
[00:23:02]  I'm actually fine with this.
[00:23:03]  I think this is one of the few areas where there might be a real silver lining in this whole shit show.
[00:23:09]  But the idea that there's all these teachers and the teachers union is like completely happy with, and they will be, believe me, completely happy with just shutting down school again, but that all the teachers are still going to get paid.
[00:23:21]  Well, that's why they're infuriating about that.
[00:23:24]  That's why they want to pretend like school is going to be reopening.
[00:23:26]  So it's going to be a last second decision that we don't.

=== Investing in Gold and Crypto (02:03) ===

[00:23:29]  And so we didn't make it.
[00:23:32]  Yeah, we didn't make any accommodations for these people.
[00:23:34]  All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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=== Luring Wealthy Residents Back (11:29) ===

[00:25:33]  Just as a thought experiment, not even saying I'd like to see this happen again because I don't want to see government schools reopen ever.
[00:25:40]  But imagine if the teachers were like, okay, but you don't get paid.
[00:25:47]  You don't get a salary.
[00:25:48]  You can say this is too risky and you're not going to go in and you're, you know, whatever, but you don't get any money.
[00:25:53]  No salary for you next year.
[00:25:55]  How many of those teachers would then be down to go back in and teach?
[00:25:59]  My guess is a lot, a lot, like a huge percentage of them.
[00:26:03]  And that also is, you know, kind of revealing in the sense that it's like, oh, okay.
[00:26:08]  So it's like, yeah, you're all about educating children and you put the children first and all of that, unless there's a risk to you.
[00:26:14]  But then if your money's threatened, oh, I bet you'd kind of reconsider all of this pretty quickly.
[00:26:19]  Again, this is just a thought experiment.
[00:26:21]  I mean, we haven't actually run this experiment, but I'm pretty convinced that that would be the reality of the situation.
[00:26:30]  So another shitty disturbing news.
[00:26:35]  Did you hear about how the checkpoints in New York City that they've set up?
[00:26:43]  It's a little, I guess.
[00:26:45]  But are those functioning?
[00:26:47]  I went into the city Sunday night.
[00:26:49]  I did Comedy Fight Club.
[00:26:50]  I went over multiple bridges and didn't see any checkpoints.
[00:26:53]  I don't know if that was just a news story or something that well, supposedly, I think supposedly today was the first day.
[00:27:00]  Also, they're probably only pulling you over if you got the out-of-state licenses.
[00:27:04]  You know, again, I don't actually know how they're going to do it.
[00:27:07]  The logistics of it seem to be fucking impossible.
[00:27:11]  There's, oh man, Tucker Carlson was fucking, it was the other day.
[00:27:15]  Actually, without any information on this whatsoever, logistics, not that bad.
[00:27:19]  If you look at it this way, they monitor every single highway and every single tow booth looks at every single license plate.
[00:27:26]  It's not that hard even before the George Washington Bridge CUS coming through Jersey with an out-of-state license plate to have them all flagged within a computer system.
[00:27:34]  Like that's not, that's actually not a difficult task.
[00:27:36]  Well, yeah, until you get into the part that they want to actually stop the cars and give you a 10-minute spiel about how you're supposed to quarantine for two weeks and then they have to inform you of all this.
[00:27:48]  So, if they're actually going to be stopping cars at any point in time, you know, it's actually scarier than that because if I were this is the way I would do it, if I was them, I would say anyone out of state needs to be pulling off the highway here to register with us.
[00:28:02]  And then you would let them know.
[00:28:03]  And by the way, we have every single license plate coming through here.
[00:28:06]  So, those that don't comply with the voluntary checkpoint will be getting X fine letter in the mail or X court summons in the mail.
[00:28:14]  So, it's pretty creepy.
[00:28:16]  There's a very easy way to create voluntary compliance with their checkpoints because they have perfect data on everybody crossing every road.
[00:28:26]  There's no manual tolls anymore anywhere around New York City.
[00:28:29]  If you don't have EasyPass, you're going through a thing that's taking a picture of your license plate.
[00:28:33]  So, unless you want to take the risk of a fake license plate on your car, yeah, no, that's listen.
[00:28:38]  It's all of this is pretty creepy, but I don't think that is the way they're going to be running it.
[00:28:42]  And the other thing that they're doing is hire me if you guys want to be tyrants and you want to do it efficiently.
[00:28:48]  I'm available for hire.
[00:28:49]  You're a bunch of fucking dummies.
[00:28:51]  Well, the other thing is that they're going to be going into at least what they're saying is they're going to be going into Penn Station and Port Authority and stuff and stopping people on trains and buses that are coming in from the 40 states or whatever that are.
[00:29:07]  Cuomo weighed in on this yet because usually de Blasio says stupid shit and then Cuomo just goes, Hey, listen, fucking dummy.
[00:29:13]  I don't know.
[00:29:14]  I don't know.
[00:29:15]  I only heard de Blasio talking about it, but Cuomo certainly, I not that I've seen, hasn't said anything like slapping it down.
[00:29:22]  And from what I've seen, it's going into effect.
[00:29:24]  The crazy thing, Tucker Carlson was joking around this about this the other night, which is really funny.
[00:29:28]  But it's like, if you've seen, if you've been in New York City at all by the Penn Station area, it is really, it's hard to explain how much this shit has fallen apart.
[00:29:40]  It's like, it is homeless people like you've never seen before.
[00:29:45]  Like, just it's, it's starting to look like San Francisco, Los Angeles level of like, like, not quite tent city level, but I mean, more than I've ever seen.
[00:29:55]  I've grown up in the city my whole life that more than I've ever seen homeless people in the city.
[00:29:59]  And it's like, I've heard a lot of stories.
[00:30:01]  I haven't actually like taken a train in Penn Station or been inside it, but I've heard a lot from people who have.
[00:30:06]  It's a fucking shit show down there.
[00:30:08]  And now you got fucking agents of the state coming in to Penn Station.
[00:30:13]  And it's like people are like, oh, great.
[00:30:14]  Are you here to like clean up the feces on the ground?
[00:30:17]  Are you here to like, okay, that guy's masturbating and that guy's smoking crack?
[00:30:21]  Can you help us out with that?
[00:30:22]  And they're like, oh, no, no, no, no.
[00:30:23]  We're here to harass law-abiding citizens for traveling, for traveling within the United States of America.
[00:30:30]  Meanwhile, Cuomo's begging rich New Yorkers come back to New York City because they need the tax dollars.
[00:30:35]  They're going to be begging these same people that aren't traveling to New York City right now.
[00:30:38]  Can you just send us some donations?
[00:30:40]  We've wasted, you know, all of the money from the richest city on the planet due to bad Tax policy, but can someone help us out?
[00:30:48]  Please, people move back here and tourists, send us your money.
[00:30:51]  It's really something because, you know, as I know, a lot of people and myself included who have left.
[00:30:58]  And it's, you know, the deal in New York City was always kind of like, at least for the last 25 years, it's been like, well, look, it's overpriced.
[00:31:11]  And you're, you know, people literally in New York City pay, you know, a million dollars for a two-bedroom apartment.
[00:31:18]  Like, that's not crazy.
[00:31:20]  There's, if you live in a good neighborhood, that's about what a two-bedroom apartment is going to go for, like, right around a million dollars.
[00:31:26]  Which is, you know, to if you think about outside of New York City, where if you, if you spent half of that, you have like a beautiful house in most parts of the world.
[00:31:35]  In some parts of the country, if you spent half a million dollars, you could have like a house.
[00:31:41]  You could have all this?
[00:31:42]  Yeah, look at that.
[00:31:43]  All of that.
[00:31:44]  But in New York City, it's like, okay, it's going to be outrageously expensive.
[00:31:48]  You know, it's, it, it's, you know, it's kind of dirty and there's like homeless people around and shit.
[00:31:53]  But you know what?
[00:31:54]  The crime is going down.
[00:31:56]  It's, it's been the safest big city in the, in the country for the last, you know, couple decades.
[00:32:02]  There's more restaurants and live performances and museums and culture and like all this shit than you can get anywhere else in the world.
[00:32:12]  It's just, it's, it's a hotbed of everything.
[00:32:15]  And all the industry is here, whether you're in finance or fucking, you know, whatever else it would be.
[00:32:22]  That's the state of America.
[00:32:23]  All the industry, finance or something else, I suppose.
[00:32:27]  The people doing things for the finance.
[00:32:29]  Yeah, right, exactly.
[00:32:31]  But so much of this stuff is here, right?
[00:32:33]  And that's kind of the deal.
[00:32:35]  And now the deal has changed where it's like, oh, okay.
[00:32:40]  Well, it's still crazy expensive.
[00:32:41]  You're still in a tiny apartment.
[00:32:45]  But the crime is going up and there's way more homeless people and it's depressing and everyone's in masks.
[00:32:51]  All the businesses are boarded up.
[00:32:53]  There's no live performances.
[00:32:55]  No one's really going to work, like all of this shit.
[00:32:58]  And you're like, okay, so put yourself in the shoes of these wealthy people who Cuomo's trying to lure back here.
[00:33:04]  They've got like a house in Connecticut that's, you know, whatever, a million dollar house in Connecticut and a million dollar tiny apartment in New York City.
[00:33:14]  Why would they not go up to their house?
[00:33:17]  Why would they stay here?
[00:33:19]  What is possibly luring them back?
[00:33:21]  Just the Cuomo will buy you a drink and you can pay us some of your money?
[00:33:25]  Like, what does this possibly mean?
[00:33:28]  And then on top of all of that, the school issue.
[00:33:31]  I mean, you might be tied there because you're like, well, my kid's in this school.
[00:33:34]  But now that's done too.
[00:33:36]  So there's like nothing holding you there anymore.
[00:33:39]  It's just, do you want to be in this shitty environment in this tiny apartment while you wonder how bad this skyrocketing crime is really going to get?
[00:33:49]  And that's, it's not shocking why people are bailing on that.
[00:33:53]  And of course, the other thing, the tragedy of it all is that the rich people are the ones leaving.
[00:33:59]  But believe me, that's not because the poor people don't want to.
[00:34:04]  It's not as if a whole bunch of poor and lower class people wouldn't want to leave.
[00:34:09]  They just don't have the means to do it.
[00:34:10]  So they're trapped.
[00:34:11]  They have to actually live through the ramifications of these disastrous policies.
[00:34:15]  It's hard.
[00:34:16]  It's also, when you look at the numbers, I can't quote them off the top of my head.
[00:34:20]  You got to look at it, but a substantial amount of New York City tax revenue is actually coming from a very small percentage of wealthy people.
[00:34:27]  And when you hear that, you think, oh, as opposed to demonizing these people, we really probably should accommodate them because that's, you know, without them, we're kind of fucked.
[00:34:36]  Like, why am I demonizing the people that are giving us all the money for everything?
[00:34:40]  Yes.
[00:34:41]  You think you'd really accommodate them?
[00:34:43]  Well, it is, it is something, right?
[00:34:45]  Like I've mentioned this in the past.
[00:34:47]  I think we've discussed this in the past, but just in general, the kind of like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren wing of the left Democrat economic belief system, or even like the Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama centrist wing.
[00:35:03]  I mean, they're always talking about how much, you know, billionaires should pay their fair share and millionaires should pay their fair share and everything.
[00:35:11]  And then it's like.
[00:35:12]  They also like demonize this same group of people.
[00:35:15]  And if this is the group of people that, by the way, already pay a disproportionate amount of money into the system, forget whether you think it's their fair share or not.
[00:35:24]  I'm just saying in terms of how much money they put in, right?
[00:35:27]  So like Donald Trump, they're still going after all his tax returns and shit like that.
[00:35:32]  The one year that they got from him, he paid something like $30 million in taxes.
[00:35:39]  That's more money than anybody you know has paid in taxes throughout their entire lifetime.
[00:35:45]  You know what I mean?
[00:35:46]  So like these people are putting in more money than anybody else.
[00:35:51]  And you think government is so important and these services are so important.
[00:35:55]  Wouldn't you at least be a little bit thankful to them?
[00:35:58]  Like instead of demonizing them, wouldn't you be like, hey, thank God we have these rich people because those are the ones who we need to like pay for all of this shit.
[00:36:07]  But then again, it goes to show you that they don't really believe that's their money.
[00:36:10]  That's more or less.
[00:36:11]  It's also, they kind of, I mean, I love the, I kind of love looking at the state migrations.
[00:36:17]  And I, as much as possible, I like the idea of state autonomy.
[00:36:22]  I hate, and I'm sure we're going to get to this later, what Nancy Pelosi is trying to do in getting the bailout for blue states.
[00:36:27]  And that's like the really the biggest argument in the newest stimulus package.
[00:36:33]  But anyways, they kind of overplay their leverage where they're like, you know, you're rich, so we're going to take blank from you.
[00:36:38]  Oh, wait, but you can't leave.
[00:36:39]  So it's like, well, then work with me, you know, because at the end of the day, you can create tax rates high enough that everyone does a Peter Schiff and goes to like, you know, Puerto Rico or, you know, everyone just tries to be in different countries.
[00:36:51]  It's the same thing they did to labor in this country.
[00:36:53]  They tried to pretend like they could force corporations to pay people a certain wage, but then they just said, all right, well, then I'll, you know, just have, I'll just hire the people in this other place.

=== Setting Dangerous Precedents (02:43) ===

[00:37:02]  It doesn't work.
[00:37:03]  Government cannot, you know, they're pretending like they can control things that they can't.
[00:37:06]  They actually have less leverage at the table than they do.
[00:37:09]  And they're actually hurting your common taxpayer or your common job seeker more than they're helping them.
[00:37:16]  Oh, yeah.
[00:37:17]  Well, yeah, no question about that.
[00:37:19]  I also just find like, obviously the other level of the checkpoint thing, which is probably the most important thing, is just that it's a really, it's a really creepy precedent to set.
[00:37:32]  And this is a precedent.
[00:37:33]  Like this is not like other things that have been done in the past.
[00:37:36]  I mean, it is very different to say, I mean, okay, I understand in an abstract moral sense, you can argue it's not very different.
[00:37:45]  But in a practical, tangible sense, it's very different to have, you know, customs or something like that when you're entering or leaving the country than it is to have people doing checkpoints when you're traveling between the states.
[00:38:00]  I mean, this was supposed to be, this is like one of the very basic arguments for why we are United States.
[00:38:07]  It's like, well, you can travel freely and do business freely.
[00:38:10]  This is like very, very, you know, foundational.
[00:38:14]  And to start setting up this system where you're just stopping people and checking their papers is, it's a dangerous precedent to set.
[00:38:24]  This can easily start being applied to other areas of life.
[00:38:28]  And, you know, you give the government the authority for something.
[00:38:31]  Don't think that it's impossible or even unlikely that they'll use that authority in ways that you don't like.
[00:38:38]  And one of the things that's really crazy is that It's like if we want to do like for like the open borders types, you would be outraged if we were doing this to foreigners coming in to the country.
[00:38:53]  All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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=== Global Waves of Violence (16:05) ===

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[00:40:09]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:40:11]  You know, the really fucking crazy thing, this is how much these people have no principles and only believe in power.
[00:40:17]  Is that when who is it?
[00:40:18]  Was it Rhode Island was doing it to New York?
[00:40:22]  And that shit did.
[00:40:23]  And de Blasio was outraged.
[00:40:25]  He said it was unconstitutional and he was going to sue them.
[00:40:28]  And it was crazy they could do this.
[00:40:30]  And now he's happy to turn around and start doing this to other states.
[00:40:33]  And he put 40 states on the list.
[00:40:35]  What he's doing is way crazier than what they did.
[00:40:38]  They did it while there was a much higher death rate in New York and New Jersey.
[00:40:42]  I hadn't thought of this, but how do you not have evidence-based reasoning?
[00:40:46]  At least if you said to me, Hey, I've tracked that the spike in New York City rates and we're having a blank problem and it's clearly from out of state.
[00:40:54]  Maybe at least have an argument, but preemptively to go, hey, we're now controlling all access because of a theory.
[00:41:00]  You know what I mean?
[00:41:01]  It's like, I understand you want to restrict freedoms because we've gotten to a point where there's like a crazy amount of deaths and everybody's suffering.
[00:41:09]  And you go, hey, we got to fucking do something extreme here.
[00:41:12]  And then, even so, I might defend freedom in the name of, well, I don't like constricting freedom, but we are a hundred steps preemptively before that, which to me makes it even worse.
[00:41:23]  Yeah.
[00:41:24]  No, and somehow the argument has become that like New York did such a good job.
[00:41:29]  And so, yeah, they should be able to do whatever they want to.
[00:41:32]  That's one of the things that's really difficult.
[00:41:34]  Because they fucking made up numbers by shoving sick people into old age homes and then they stopped doing it and went, oh, look, I guess we don't need all these resources.
[00:41:41]  Yeah.
[00:41:41]  I really think that the more time goes on, the more people are going to realize that the Sweden, the model that Sweden followed, was the way to go.
[00:41:51]  You know, suddenly we don't hear all about these socialist countries and how great they are.
[00:41:55]  And that used to be all we ever heard from politicians is Sweden and Norway and how great their systems work.
[00:42:01]  How I heard that.
[00:42:02]  Yeah.
[00:42:02]  Yeah.
[00:42:03]  Well, now, because they're the most free market countries in the world now.
[00:42:06]  So, you know, Sweden, by the way, the worst element that they had of the COVID outbreak, the biggest problem they had, and if you look at it, it accounts for a huge portion, nearly 50% of the deaths they had were in nursing homes, which are, you know, have been problems everywhere.
[00:42:25]  That's not just Sweden.
[00:42:26]  But because the nursing homes are all taxpayer-funded, they have a very large percentage of their old people living in these nursing homes.
[00:42:33]  And so that was the socialism was the worst part about their Readiness or ability to deal with this virus.
[00:42:45]  But in general, Sweden, they didn't close down their economy.
[00:42:50]  They didn't sacrifice their economy.
[00:42:51]  They basically advised the government basically did nothing.
[00:42:55]  They essentially did what me or you would want a government to do if it exists in this situation.
[00:42:59]  They were like, hey, there's a nasty virus.
[00:43:01]  You should probably wear masks if you're in enclosed spaces.
[00:43:04]  You should probably social distance if you can.
[00:43:06]  That's our advice.
[00:43:07]  Businesses could decide.
[00:43:08]  They could say, you know, you need a mask to come in here.
[00:43:10]  You can't or not.
[00:43:13]  And they didn't put tens of millions of people out of work and they let it play itself out.
[00:43:17]  And people died about proportional to other countries their size, maybe a little bit higher.
[00:43:23]  But if you control for the nursing homes, it was basically around the same.
[00:43:29]  And they're having no noticeable second wave.
[00:43:31]  Now, interestingly, Italy is also having no noticeable second wave.
[00:43:37]  Italy, of course, handled the situation completely different.
[00:43:39]  They locked down the entire country.
[00:43:41]  But I think what it seems like the evidence is starting to suggest, and we'll have to, we need some more time to be sure of this.
[00:43:51]  But like New York, it played itself out in New York, even though we had the shutdown and all of that with pretty high death numbers for a while, and it's kind of teetered out.
[00:44:01]  And it doesn't really seem like it's coming back.
[00:44:03]  All the other places that didn't get it initially are now getting their wave of it.
[00:44:09]  It kind of seems like, you know, whether you're Italy or Sweden, you had to deal with the wave of this shit.
[00:44:15]  And then it seems like it's, you know, it like there are some signs that we're approaching herd immunity.
[00:44:22]  And that, you know, isn't really the worst thing.
[00:44:25]  And in fact, it's a great thing.
[00:44:26]  And all this talk about vaccines to me just seems to be like completely removed from reality.
[00:44:34]  Like, I mean, I don't know, maybe there'll be a vaccine sometime soon, but maybe we'll never find a vaccine for this.
[00:44:39]  People got to start thinking about that.
[00:44:40]  Like, let's say there's no vaccine for this, just like most viruses were not able to come up with a vaccine.
[00:44:46]  How do we get to be able to live somewhat of a normal life?
[00:44:51]  And I think, you know, this might just be something that's here with us in the future.
[00:44:55]  I think the numbers, you know, if they're tolerable, it's going to be one of those things.
[00:44:59]  Like, we don't shut down everything because there are other things that some people die from.
[00:45:03]  And there's lots of them.
[00:45:04]  Lots of them kill a lot more people than COVID, like obesity, you know, like other things.
[00:45:09]  I understand it's not contagious in the same way, but there's, you know, life has to be.
[00:45:14]  Fat fucks, and you want to overeat too.
[00:45:16]  It's not completely uncontagious.
[00:45:18]  Yeah, that's true.
[00:45:18]  That is true.
[00:45:19]  It is.
[00:45:20]  Yeah.
[00:45:20]  If you're around people who eat like shit, it is much harder to not eat like shit.
[00:45:23]  That's an excellent point, Robbie Bernstein.
[00:45:28]  All right.
[00:45:28]  What was the talk about this stimulus and Trump signing executive orders?
[00:45:34]  Yeah.
[00:45:34]  Yeah.
[00:45:35]  So what were your thoughts on that?
[00:45:37]  All right.
[00:45:37]  Well, off the bat, I mean, the executive order is a horror show, especially coming from a Republican.
[00:45:43]  It's bad news, especially for fucking stimulus.
[00:45:46]  So now what?
[00:45:47]  Because I don't think it's going to go through.
[00:45:50]  It's going to turn out, I don't think it's going to end up going through.
[00:45:52]  But if it does go through, that's a nightmare that, you know, someone can just come through with an executive order and start giving out free money.
[00:45:59]  That's bad news.
[00:46:00]  But what's really going on behind the scenes is Democrats are looking for a $3 trillion stimulus plan.
[00:46:06]  The Republicans are looking for a $1 trillion stimulus plan.
[00:46:09]  Now, if you take into account the fact that this is not the first coronavirus-related stimulus plan and it won't be the last, it's absurd to think that a trillion dollars isn't enough money.
[00:46:20]  Now, what's really going on is that you've got blue states that are failing because they're Democratic states.
[00:46:26]  They've overextended themselves.
[00:46:27]  They've had these unions.
[00:46:28]  They've given out good pension contracts.
[00:46:30]  If coronavirus never existed, states like Connecticut, Illinois, I don't know where New Jersey is on that release, but they were going under.
[00:46:37]  These states were a nightmare to begin with, and they don't want to be shown for the liberal policies and the fraudulent accounting and all these other things that were just lies because California, too, these states have lied their entire time about policies that were non-sustainable and the bill is starting to come due.
[00:46:53]  And the Democratic Party needs to bail out these states so that it is not shown, hey, look at what happens over time when we're able to have our policies.
[00:47:01]  And more and more people are going to leave these states as they can't provide resources, that they've got to tax heavily.
[00:47:06]  And like what you see in New York right now with rich people leaving because they want to keep more of their funds.
[00:47:11]  So just to bring it full circle, like if everyone's on the same page and they're going, hey, people are hurting right now.
[00:47:17]  And I don't agree with this, but they're saying Democrats and Republicans are on the same page.
[00:47:20]  People are hurting really bad.
[00:47:22]  We don't want them showing up to work.
[00:47:23]  We want to make sure that they have these unemployment benefits.
[00:47:25]  They're all on the same page on that.
[00:47:27]  The Democrats, though, are trying to use this as an opportunity to go, and we have to bail out the states, whereas the Republicans are going, absolutely not.
[00:47:34]  So that accounts for $1 trillion of the difference.
[00:47:37]  The next piece of the difference is like just on some of these programs where the Republicans want to give 200 billion, the Democrats want 300 billion.
[00:47:44]  But the big point of contention is that the Democrats are trying to use this as cover for bailing out Democratic states, which is absolutely flagrant.
[00:47:54]  There should be more outspokenness against it.
[00:47:56]  It's the worst thing that could ever possibly be horrible.
[00:47:59]  And now, and what they're trying to do is pretending like the Republicans are getting in the way of getting you this free money that we all agree on.
[00:48:06]  So what Trump has done, which is an interesting chess movie, is he's really letting people know: no, the Republicans, we're trying to get your money.
[00:48:12]  We'll even do it through executive order.
[00:48:14]  The Democrats are trying to sneak this other shit past you.
[00:48:18]  Right.
[00:48:18]  So it's, well, there's a lot there.
[00:48:21]  It's really interesting.
[00:48:23]  I mean, in a lot of ways, the lockdowns provide cover for an already economically unsustainable system.
[00:48:33]  Well, the banks got their bailout.
[00:48:34]  They were the first to get it.
[00:48:36]  They were headed off a fucking cliff and then they pretended, oh, Corona, like there was no financial problem, which is the greatest thing.
[00:48:43]  Like you're like, oh my God, a global pandemic.
[00:48:46]  Well, first things first, we need to give bankers a bunch of free money.
[00:48:50]  Like that's the only way to fight a virus.
[00:48:53]  But so there's definitely a lot of that.
[00:48:55]  And then, of course, the other thing, which I've been saying for a little while now, is that you cannot, in an election year, especially in a very important presidential election year, you can't separate what any of these political figures are doing from the election.
[00:49:11]  It's all related.
[00:49:12]  And so, obviously, I mean, the Trump thing, this is like naked politics and of the worst kind.
[00:49:18]  I mean, it's straight up vote buying.
[00:49:20]  Like, I mean, it's just like in an election year, three months before an election, when people are hurting, I'm going to send you money by executive order.
[00:49:29]  I said something horrible though.
[00:49:31]  The 400 to 600 thing was really stupid because he's left the Democrats open to go, hey, we're the ones that actually got you the full 600.
[00:49:39]  That was just a dumb blunder because the executive order is probably not going to go through.
[00:49:43]  And I get that he wanted to scrap other things, but he should have just matched the 600s to at least make it seem like, hey, I was going to, they weren't doing you any favors.
[00:49:50]  Well, I mean, it's horrible.
[00:49:51]  Well, what you're saying more essentially is that it's good.
[00:49:54]  It would be good politics to match the 600, even though it'd be horrible policy.
[00:49:58]  Yes.
[00:49:59]  I mean, it's like, it's obviously like outrageously horrible policy to pay people money that's actually like, in other words, for there to be no real sacrifice to staying home and not working.
[00:50:15]  You know, at least like you'd want to pay people something where they're kind of like, oh, I'd still really like to work because I'd be making more money or something like that.
[00:50:24]  But look, Trump's, I get what you're saying.
[00:50:26]  It'd be better politics to give more money.
[00:50:28]  If you're trying to buy votes, buy them for more money.
[00:50:31]  You'll get more votes.
[00:50:33]  But I do get the feeling.
[00:50:35]  Excuse me.
[00:50:37]  But I do get the feeling that quite possibly what the Democrats want to do or what they wanted to do was just to try to propose things that they know the Republicans won't go for.
[00:50:52]  So there ends up being no other relief plan that comes out.
[00:50:56]  And I know that Democrats aren't usually big on not spending money, but I really do think right now.
[00:51:04]  That Democrats just want the country to be in as bad shape as possible for the next three months and blame Trump.
[00:51:10]  That chicken game sometimes does and doesn't work.
[00:51:14]  When Republicans were holding it off on like the fiscal cliff stuff, you know, people were upset with them.
[00:51:19]  So in this case, that's a bit of a gamble of whether or not mainstream America starts to see, oh, they're playing politics while I'm at home starving.
[00:51:27]  It's a gamble.
[00:51:27]  Sometimes it works where people just get so upset at this system.
[00:51:30]  They're like, oh, I'm fucked.
[00:51:32]  And so let's get rid of this president.
[00:51:34]  But sometimes they start to see like, oh, this side is really playing politics here and it's getting in the way of the fact that I'm at home hungry.
[00:51:41]  Yeah, it's certainly, it's certainly a gamble.
[00:51:43]  It's all about.
[00:51:44]  It's government chicken.
[00:51:45]  They just try and make us suffer and pretend like it's the other side, but you know, not sometimes people see through it.
[00:51:52]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:51:53]  Well, that is, that is the risk.
[00:51:55]  And but I do think that if you're, if you're making this calculation from the Democrats' point of view, if you come together with the Republicans and work out some deal that lessens the pain, you can't really claim that that's a victory.
[00:52:08]  But if everybody's in a lot of pain and the president is the head of the whole thing, you can kind of claim, well, look, he wouldn't even do anything.
[00:52:16]  And then you can say, of course, we wanted to help.
[00:52:18]  We're the Democrats.
[00:52:19]  We proposed this $3 trillion bill that probably had a whole bunch of shit in it, like, you know, probably like $10 million going to like Moe Nancy Pelosi's lawn or some shit like that.
[00:52:29]  And, you know, it's easy to put forward something that you know they're not going to want to vote for.
[00:52:33]  So again, kind of just speculating, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.
[00:52:38]  The, you know, it's just, I'm getting in a really perverse way excited for the for the next three months of this, like really the prime time of the presidential election.
[00:52:51]  There is, it's just, you couldn't have imagined how crazy things are right now.
[00:52:57]  By the way, the craziness in Seattle and Portland is still going on.
[00:53:01]  There's still these.
[00:53:01]  Now it's in Chicago too.
[00:53:03]  They're taking down that whole downtown district.
[00:53:06]  That's new to today.
[00:53:07]  So I didn't even get it.
[00:53:08]  Yeah.
[00:53:08]  Yeah.
[00:53:08]  I saw an article.
[00:53:09]  I saw a headline and didn't read the article about that, but I did see that.
[00:53:14]  You know, it's across the country, you're really seeing like a shakeup where there's just violent crime in cities throughout the nation are spiking.
[00:53:24]  These crazy mobs are still going around.
[00:53:27]  You know, it looks like out in Seattle, in Portland, they've almost moved away from the government buildings and are more just harassing citizens now because they realize that the feds won't come do anything about that.
[00:53:42]  I saw such a glorious piece of bullshit, which was they said that there's still violence, but there's been a noticeable drop in violence since the feds left and showcasing that so much of the violence was a reaction to their presence.
[00:53:56]  Oh, what a marvelous piece.
[00:53:58]  Like that was such a, they were so trying to stretch that spin.
[00:54:02]  Yeah, there's nothing, I just, I can't stand it.
[00:54:04]  And, you know, there's something about just the, and I think this is kind of like what separates people in a lot of ways of whether you're interested in the truth or not, is that even when, and this is something that turns me off when people in the Libertarian Party do this shit, even when it's something that suits your narrative, I just hate when people stretch this bullshit to like, you know what I mean?
[00:54:28]  Like, but don't get me wrong.
[00:54:29]  I've always been, I'm more comfortable blaming the government than I am blaming people, you know, like citizens.
[00:54:37]  That's always an easier, more comfortable, warm hug of confirmation bias for me.
[00:54:44]  But you have to deal with reality.
[00:54:46]  And it would drive me crazy when I'd hear libertarians, I still hear them saying things like, you know, they'll be like, well, these protests were peaceful until the cops started, you know, shooting tear gas into the crowds.
[00:55:01]  And you kind of be like, okay, whether or not you can be against the cops shooting tear gas into this crowd if the crowd seemed fairly peaceful or for something stupid, just like violating curfew.
[00:55:10]  Okay, I'm against the cops doing that.
[00:55:12]  That is wrong and it's violent and should be condemned.
[00:55:16]  But to say that that's why all the violence is at their feet when you literally just, I mean, if you have the internet and a pair of eyes, you can see these people looting businesses, screaming gleefully as they do it and running out with iPads and Jordans and all this shit.
[00:55:33]  I don't think this is a response to tear gas.
[00:55:37]  I don't think this is like because of that.
[00:55:39]  And no, I'm sorry.
[00:55:40]  These fucking Black Lives Matter Antifa types who are out in Seattle storming, they are bringing the confrontation to the government.

=== Rejecting the Lockdowns (07:44) ===

[00:55:51]  And we can still have a, you know, have an opinion on what we think the government response should be or what the government responsibility is.
[00:56:00]  But to just play this out like, oh, it was really the feds who went down there and incited violence is just, it's just complete bullshit.
[00:56:10]  I don't know.
[00:56:12]  Sometimes you can only stretch so far before you, you know.
[00:56:17]  No.
[00:56:17]  Anyway.
[00:56:19]  So yeah, we'll see what's going on with that.
[00:56:21]  I mean, my hope really is that more and more normal people will just start rejecting all of this shit and just kind of be like, look, we're not going to do this anymore.
[00:56:37]  You know, I was saying the other day, and it really just seems true to me, like the more, and I said this pretty early on, but the more that these protests and riots continue, just the more obvious it is to me that this is all about the lockdowns.
[00:56:53]  This is all, this has very, very little to do with George Floyd.
[00:56:57]  It has very, very little to do with systemic racism.
[00:57:00]  It has very little to do with any of this shit.
[00:57:03]  This is really just like, it turns out that I think a lot of the kind of stupid distractions that Americans have are useful.
[00:57:14]  And that if you take away, you know, the neighborhood bar and the ball game and your friend's house and your, you know, your job and like all these other things, and you leave people with like none of these distractions, none of these outlets,
[00:57:30]  and coop them up at home and scare them for three months, that there's a whole segment of the population that is not really bound by internal ethics that are quite happy to get out there and start causing some destruction.
[00:57:48]  And there's something about it where like it's in a weird sick way, it's almost something beautiful about the human condition where you're just kind of like, you cannot do this to people.
[00:57:59]  We're not designed to live this way.
[00:58:01]  And hopefully it's not the crazy people that end up, you know, hopefully like normal people can find some type of outlet where it's like, yeah, no, we're not going to do this.
[00:58:10]  We're not doing this for another year.
[00:58:11]  This will destroy everything.
[00:58:15]  So anyway, we'll see what happens.
[00:58:18]  We'll see what happens with that.
[00:58:20]  You know, I've talked to some people, like a few people just like in my family and like friends who are like outside of the world of comedy or politics or anything like that.
[00:58:30]  And I kind of understand where they're saying, even though it's there's something about it that feels so wrong.
[00:58:37]  But I know a bunch of them are just hoping Joe Biden wins just so the country goes back to normal.
[00:58:42]  Like they're just, it's just kind of like, well, I don't know if Trump wins, there's because this is one of the things that we have to deal with right now, right?
[00:58:50]  Is that like you'll see these tactics that the Democrats are using, and you're like, this is outrageous.
[00:58:56]  I mean, even like, this is just like, no, you can't, like, you can't just destroy the country because you don't like the results of an election.
[00:59:04]  But then you also just practically, in reality, go, what's going to happen if Trump wins?
[00:59:09]  What's going to happen if Trump gets re-elected?
[00:59:11]  Is there any way that there won't be riots?
[00:59:14]  Is there any way that there's not like this thing isn't just going to unravel more and more?
[00:59:18]  And then you kind of weigh that out against the good that Donald Trump does for winning.
[00:59:25]  And you're kind of like, okay, so we get this kind of entertaining show where this guy's clowning the media.
[00:59:34]  Is that really a fair trade-off?
[00:59:35]  Now, don't get me wrong.
[00:59:37]  I know people are going to jump on me for saying this.
[00:59:39]  And I understand it's like negotiating with terrorists.
[00:59:41]  You shouldn't get to win an election because you played by these shitty rules.
[00:59:45]  But I'm just saying it's worth thinking, just in reality, what's going to be, what is the benefit of Trump winning versus the negatives of Trump losing or versus the negatives of Trump winning.
[00:59:58]  I think you're going to see riots in the streets if Trump wins.
[01:00:01]  I'm okay with riots in the streets over more of this systemic racism thing becoming a part of law.
[01:00:09]  And as opposed to just coming from the media, actually coming from on top.
[01:00:14]  So, I mean, and then the other issue is as bad as the debt spending is, I don't know what Biden has planned for that.
[01:00:20]  But then you have the same issue where it's like, as we ramp up more and more government spending, if someone comes in to like unwind it, you're going to have increasingly bigger, bigger riots as people are dealing with things being taken away from them.
[01:00:33]  So I mean, I listen, I think the country's not heading anywhere good anytime fast.
[01:00:39]  I think George Carlin had a great line.
[01:00:41]  I saw him in an interview once, and he just talked about at this point, and this is already maybe 20, 30, 40 years ago, but he talked about at this point, the country has already made decisions.
[01:00:50]  We're just circling the drain.
[01:00:52]  So, you know, that's a terrifying and kind of insightful way to describe it.
[01:01:00]  I'll say there was, I was reading the other day a Hoppe, Hans Hermann Hoppe interview with Jeff Dice, was interviewing him.
[01:01:09]  And I don't know if it's, there's probably a recording somewhere, but I just, I read the transcript of it.
[01:01:14]  I think it's a recent one.
[01:01:15]  And Hoppe, who I just, you know, me and Malice just did a podcast on Hoppe, who's, you know, I think one of the most brilliant libertarian thinkers alive, if not the most.
[01:01:25]  And he was basically saying that at this point, you've basically got two options that are going to be kind of like the right wing response to the culture, wars, the debt, just this horrible situation.
[01:01:41]  And he was like, basically, and you almost see this where you'll see like, I don't really consider myself a right-winger, but a lot of other, a lot of left-wingers would.
[01:01:53]  And so just like anywhere, like against the left-wing, right, like you'd see this, like someone like us or someone like the reactionary right or the alt-right or something like that, you know?
[01:02:03]  And he goes, like, basically, what Hoppe was saying was like, the two options right now are basically going to be a fucking dictator and realized, centralized authority to fucking bring this thing back together by force, or it's going to be decentralization, secession, you know, like dissembling the whole thing.
[01:02:24]  And we are in the camp of the decentralization.
[01:02:29]  And that's kind of like the argument that we need to win.
[01:02:32]  Almost like within the anti-left-wing crowd, like the real fight is going to be that it's like we don't want to go in the direction of having some type of right-wing dictator who's going to like fucking want to take this whole thing over by force because that always results in like disaster for the people.
[01:02:51]  But the left, the left-wingers are going to be, you know, spinning on about this, you know, all this kind of insane, more and more creepingly commie shit.
[01:03:00]  But yeah.
[01:03:01]  So anyway, I guess we're circling the drain, but we'll keep podcasting with you while we go down this drain.
[01:03:08]  So anyway, that's our show for today.
[01:03:09]  We'll be back with a brand new episode soon.
[01:03:11]  Summer porch store.
[01:03:12]  Run your mouth, summer pork store.
[01:03:14]  Check it out.
[01:03:15]  Live dates.
[01:03:16]  I got Friday, August 21st, close to Baltimore.
[01:03:20]  I had a bunch of people email me.
[01:03:21]  I don't know if any of them are coming in.
[01:03:23]  I sent them the info and then they didn't respond, but who knows?
[01:03:25]  I hope they show up.
[01:03:26]  And then the 22nd, I'm out in Philadelphia.
[01:03:29]  Robbie the Fire on Twitter.
[01:03:31]  And then check out Run Your Mouth.
[01:03:32]  Fuck yeah, guys.
[01:03:33]  All right.
[01:03:34]  We'll see you soon.
[01:03:35]  Peace.