James Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dismantle democratic socialism, labeling the pursuit of enforced equality as a "fixed pie fallacy" that stifles wealth creation. They critique the misleading concept of "equality of opportunity," arguing true freedom requires removing government barriers rather than adjusting for natural disparities like intelligence or parental wealth. The discussion pivots to political news, alleging Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr. misled the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding Russia, potentially facing felony charges two months before an election. Ultimately, the hosts suggest this timing aims to equalize investigations against Trump's allies while questioning the viability of using China as a scapegoat amidst ongoing domestic unrest. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Late Night Stand-Up Struggles00:02:10
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash 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 more of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Cheers your host.
James Smith.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
It's me, the most consistent motherfucker you know.
It's him, the king of the caulks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
What's up, my brother?
All right, doing pretty good.
I did some stand-up this weekend.
Whoa, stand-up?
Oh, that's 2019.
It was, oh, man, it's good to be doing some work.
I'm rusty.
Some of the new stuff was just funny in my head, which is always fun to discover.
That's a really beautiful thing as a stand-up comic because you think of things in your head and then you try them out in front of an audience.
And sometimes every stand-up has had this moment many times, but when you find out that something that was funny in your head isn't funny to an audience, oftentimes when you'll put it out there and you figure that out, you also realize that it's not funny in your head.
Like it comes out of your mouth and the audience gives it nothing and you go, oh yeah, that's that's not funny.
You guys are right.
You know what?
You guys make an excellent point.
No, why would we laugh at this?
Oh, well, good for you, buddy.
It's still fun to go do it, I'm sure.
I haven't done stand-up in the longest period in the last 15 years.
Hey, if you want to see me do stand-up, my comedy special is up for free on my YouTube channel, Libertas, my 2017 special.
Back when I was a stand-up, you can go check that out if you'd like.
But yeah, I'm excited to get back into it in the next few months.
Hopefully we can resume our plans of touring around the country.
Laughing at Bad Jokes00:03:27
Part of what I'm out of training for also is just the late night shit.
I drove back, which I've done a million times.
I'm a good late night driver.
I got in at 4:30 in the morning.
Pretty typical for a Saturday night, late night gig.
Dude, I was dead on Sunday.
I mean, literally dead.
I'm out of practice on the late nights.
Yeah, it's training.
You got to train your body to abuse it.
Yeah, that's important.
Well, you'll get back.
You'll get back in the swing of things.
I'm confident with you.
Although we'll see, man, I don't know what the fucking next year of the country is going to be, but I feel like they're setting us up.
I feel like we're being conditioned for another round of like COVID hysteria.
Well, I'll tell you one thing that really concerns me, because at one point they were talking about, was it bubonic plague and squirrels in Denver, something along those lines?
But I think to some extent, this is going to be the new normal where the news stations have found out that they get really good ratings with disease hysteria.
So I don't think that this is going to be the end of disease hysteria.
I think that, you know, I think any opportunity they have to go, oh, is this another COVID?
That's going to be our lives for the next 20 years.
Yeah.
Well, if you think about the fact that this was already kind of true, right?
Like they would already use disease hysteria with, you know, things like whatever it was, like mad cow disease or swine flu or Ebola or any of this stuff.
But think about how much more susceptible to that people are going to be going forward.
And it's one of the things I've been wondering since the beginning of this COVID stuff.
Like even if COVID were to go away, you know, whatever, or we find a vaccine or it just, we reach herd immunity or it just doesn't mutate in a devastating fashion.
And that's just no longer a concern.
You know, the deaths are very low numbers.
So let's just say COVID is solved.
What would it be like the next time there's something on the level of what Ebola was?
How would we react to that now?
Now that the precedent has been set that lockdowns, masks, all these things can be used, closing schools, closing sports, governors just taking over and telling you what you can and can't do.
And we can just send checks.
No problem.
Right.
Right.
But, you know, from like a governor's point of view, there's some crazy precedents that have been set during this whole COVID craziness.
So what if there's just another thing that's not that big of a deal that we would normally, people would be a little concerned about, but we all go about our lives.
Well, now every governor's got kind of the precedent, the authority there to just be like, well, I'm deciding you can't do X, Y, and Z. I'm deciding we can't.
You know, it's really, it's an interesting question to me.
Like, how will we handle these things going forward that in the past would just be, you know, a story on the news.
And as you kind of indicated, there's certainly a lot of incentives, like the one you pointed to, just for the news media.
Now, there's going to be way more incentives for them to play this up because, yeah, that's going to be good.
That's going to be good ratings.
Yeah.
And without us being doctors, it's impossible for me to know the risk of squirrels in Denver with bubonic plague.
It's very easy to get me nervous about squirrels.
They get real close to you.
They look cute.
Yeah, they look cute.
They got those sharp claws.
They're fucking, they eat your vegetables in your garden.
That's more of a personal thing that just happened.
Leftism and Podcast Incentives00:03:21
Anyway, you got a garden?
Oh, yeah, bro.
I'm fucking doing it.
Prepper style.
What are you growing?
Not really.
Oh, I'm not growing anything.
My wife's growing everything.
But, you know, I don't know, peppers and cucumbers and blueberries and all types of shit.
For as domesticated as you've become, I cannot see you working a garden for the life of you.
Oh, no, no, no.
Yeah, no.
But I'll eat it once it's grown.
It's very delicious.
But yeah, no, I'm not domesticated on that level.
But I'm working.
I'm getting there.
I'm, you know, I want to be where Owen Benjamin is in the next 10 years.
That's my, that's my life goal, Owen Benjamin.
So I was thinking a bit about leftism recently.
I went on Ben Burgess's new podcast, which is called Give Them an Argentina.
How would you do that to yourself?
Well, I listen, I had a great time.
Actually, I like Ben very much.
He's a real good guy.
And obviously, he's a democratic socialist, and we disagree on a whole bunch of stuff.
But he's very good on the war.
He's very good on the drug war and things like that.
And we talked a bit about it on his show.
And I, you know, but I was thinking a bit about the real issue with the socialist economic worldview.
And I know some of this to some degree is stuff that everybody listening to this already knows.
But there was one particular angle that I wanted to mention that I was thinking about talking about a few weeks ago on the podcast, and then there was just other stuff in the news.
So we didn't get to it.
But really, when you come away from it from the conversation, right?
Like the first thing that's just so obvious in my mind is that the whole problem with the democratic socialist view, I mean, don't get me wrong, there's a bunch of problems with like the authoritarianism of the state and all that stuff.
But the real underlying issue is that equality is bullshit.
And that pretty much sums it all up.
Like you guys are just, you're striving after this thing, equality, and equality is bullshit.
And you, there's no re like, it's just, it's not real.
It's made up in your head.
And there, you wouldn't want it to be real.
If it was real, it would be like some type of nightmarish situation.
And I was only on the show for about 30 minutes and we talked about some stuff we agree on.
So it wasn't like what we had, you know, when he was on our show where we had like a longer form, you know, debate discussion.
But I started getting a little bit into it with things with him where, you know, I was like, well, you know, because he mentioned just inequality being bad, you know, like it, which is easy in that crowd, if you inequality, if you talk about inequality, it's a given that that's a bad thing.
And I started saying things like, you know, well, you know, if you have a new podcast, if this podcast takes off, you're going to have an unequal, you know, influence and you'll have unequal amount of success and you don't want that.
And, you know, he was like, hey, I don't want to redistribute podcast listeners and stuff.
Morning Oral Care Routine00:02:36
So, and why not?
Well, you know, because I guess from his point of view, he would be like, no, whatever, that's fine, but wealth is the, is the issue or whatever, you know?
But then, of course, you realize that you're like, well, I mean, you're going to make money from your podcast if it gets huge.
So then, you know, and I'm sure he would say that he'd want a state to then redistribute the wealth that, you know, comes in from his podcast or whatever.
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Equality of Opportunity Debate00:12:26
So, you know, in thinking about this idea of equality, I mean, you do obviously, like every, like everyone knows, this is just kind of preaching to the choir for me to talk about this.
I wanted to get into a slightly different point about it.
Of course, the idea of equality is never going to arise without tremendous force and tremendous power being exerted, which is the whole point that you don't like.
Their problem is that inequality breeds disparate outcomes in terms of power dynamics.
But you're going to need a large power dynamic to enforce equality because, of course, many people are more talented, more hardworking, all of these different factors that are going to lead toward inequality.
But when you realize that equality is bullshit, one of the things that really drives me crazy, and I've talked about this before on the show, but I don't know that I've ever really gone in depth on it.
But I saw somebody recently on Twitter who was like an art, you know, on our team, more or less, like a free market type.
And they were saying the classic line that has become very, you know, just kind of one of those things that establishment, you know, pro-free market people say.
And he said, you know, I'm against equality of outcome.
I'm for equality of opportunity.
And this drives me crazy.
It drives me crazy when I hear this.
And I know a lot of people, like very, you know, popular people, some of whom I really like a lot, use this term.
I know Jordan Peterson has said this a bunch, that like equality of opportunity is okay.
Equality of outcome is the problem.
I believe Thomas Soule even has said this before.
I might be wrong about that, but I think he has.
And Milton Friedman used to say this a lot.
I know Ben Shapiro says this all the time.
And I hate, I hate this.
I think it's terrible.
I think equality of opportunity is as much bullshit as equality of outcome is.
Is there any, I guess, clarification?
Because if you were to say theoretically, if they were to say equality of opportunity in the eyes of government, then what that means is like, if that's what they mean, then what you're looking at is that theoretically in the eyes of government, like, you know, I guess your rights will be protected in a way where everyone can pursue whatever they're looking for without the caveat of a redistribution.
Because I think if you really pressed any of those people on it, like a Ben Shapiro, he wouldn't say, hey, the guy who was born rich should be giving up 50% of, or actually more than that.
He should be giving up 95% of his wealth so that he's got the same equality of opportunity as the poor person.
Well, right.
So this is what.
Kind of needs a distinction.
Yes.
Well, that's the problem, right?
So I was tweeting about this last week and I got a bunch of people, you know, presumably free market types who were arguing with me and kind of going down that road.
And they're saying, well, what we mean by equality of opportunity is that there shouldn't be any barriers in people's way or blah, blah, blah.
Or what we mean by equality of opportunity is that the government shouldn't interfere in people's lives.
And after a while, I was just like, well, if you're defending a phrase by saying that you don't mean at all what the phrase states, then maybe it's time to abandon that phrase.
Like maybe that's not, because that's not what equality of opportunity means.
I mean, like, as far as words have meaning, what that would mean is that everyone should have an equal opportunity as in the same opportunity.
And it's not just that it's inaccurate.
That's not the only thing that bothers me, although that does bother me.
I think, why not use precise language if we're going to argue for something?
But the real problem is that you're kind of conceding the whole thing.
Like, if once you say that equality of opportunity is a problem or is a goal, rather, well, then, okay, but that now you're just opening the door for them to say, okay, well, then we need to have, you know, a system that determines that everyone has an equal education, that everyone has equal health care, that everyone has equal access to whatever you name it.
And you've just opened the door with this vague goal, which isn't even really a goal, to justify an extreme amount of government intervention.
Now, okay, you can argue, right, that if the government were to enforce equality of opportunity, it would not be quite as bad as the government enforcing equality of outcome.
Well, it's really, really, really bad.
If you're going to get granular on equality of opportunity, though, in what way is the government's going to be making adjustments for the laws of nature?
Like as simple as Brian, our producer, he has enough hair for four people.
I don't even have enough hair for me.
Are we going to start taking some of his hair?
Well, that'll certainly affect your opportunities in life.
You got to cut off LeBron James' lower legs.
Why does he get to be a seven foot tall man when I'm only five, six?
Well, it's funny because I was arguing with people about intelligent people.
Are we going to like remove parts of their brain?
Well, the crazy thing to me was like that the arguments that people were throwing at me were, and this is coming from people who are broadly speaking on our team who are arguing for the market.
And some of the arguments were like so bad.
It was stunning to me.
And even when I said at one point, I said, I was like, you know, equality of opportunity is bullshit.
And someone said, oh, that's interesting.
Like, what's the problem with equality of opportunity?
And I said, well, what's the problem with equality of outcome?
And they said, well, because the government would have to interfere in the lodge, you couldn't possibly have freedom with that.
I was like, yeah, that's the same, that's the same problem.
And so one guy said to me, to use your LeBron James point, this was what someone responded to me on Twitter, said that he said, equal opportunity is me getting to be on the court with LeBron James.
That doesn't mean that if LeBron James destroys me on the court, that's fine.
He just did better with it.
And I responded back with, you're never going to be on the court with LeBron James.
Do you feel that you're owed that opportunity?
You're not given that opportunity.
And no one's interested in reorganizing society so that you have the opportunity to be on the court with LeBron James.
Like, I don't know.
I mean, maybe somebody like there might be some really great basketball player out there who never got that opportunity.
Okay, whatever.
Also, let's be honest, you'd probably get injured.
It's probably not a great idea to be playing basketball with LeBron James.
But like, is everyone, should it be our goal that everyone receives an equal opportunity?
I mean, there's a lot of things that go into opportunity.
And of course, you know, it's the success of your parents is going to be a huge factor in the opportunities that you get.
Who your friends are is going to be a huge opportunity, a huge influence on the opportunities that you get, your intelligence, how hardworking you are, like a million different things.
And the idea that we should be for all of those being equal certainly doesn't seem, I mean, it seems to have all of the problems with equality of outcome.
And it seems like you're giving up the whole game by suggesting it.
So if you, in other words, like there's something really, if you're for equality of outcome or equity, there's something really perverse about that belief.
It sounds kind of nice, but when you actually put it into practice, it's like really anti-human and anti-everything that's good.
So if you are working hard to better your situation and you are actively pushing for inequality, you're trying to get yourself to a better place in life.
You're trying to not be equal.
You're trying to do better than equal.
So if you're for equality of outcome, then inherently you would have to think that was a bad thing to do.
You would have to be against someone.
trying to improve their situation in life, or at least against someone who's already, you know, in the middle, say, maybe you could argue that someone who's really, really poor trying to improve themselves is okay, because that'd be striving for equality or something.
But if you're just like an average person who's around in the middle, then you'd have to be against that person working hard.
But don't you see how awful that is?
I mean, who would be against someone trying to improve their situation?
But likewise, if...
You've just made being lazy the world's most noble activity.
You're creating opportunities for other people.
You're getting out of the way.
I'm bringing myself down.
Right, right.
Yeah.
Like if you're like, say, born into an upper middle class family and you have like loads of potential, like you're a really bright person and you have like all, but and you just sat on your ass and did nothing and didn't help society at all.
Look at the opportunities I created for others.
Yeah, I mean, this is like, but really when you take it to its logical conclusion, you realize how like perverse this belief system is.
Also, I think there's something to be said for a competition makes all of us better.
That's kind of the idea of going out and trying to be great is that we're all challenging each other in so many different ways.
And not just the competition.
That's one aspect of it for sure, but also just like inspiring other people and creating something that can maybe help other people.
I mean, it's like it's an unbelievable, unbelievably powerful thing for you to be the best version of yourself.
There's people around you, friends and family who will watch you being the best version of yourself and realize that they also can do a better job in that department.
It's like inspiring other people is a huge element in how human beings achieve.
I mean, almost everyone you know who's successful was inspired by someone else who's successful.
They're not inspired by people who are fucking sitting on their ass doing nothing.
And so, of course, you always want to encourage people to try to improve their own situation.
But likewise, if you believe in equality of opportunity, I mean, I'll say this.
I would think pretty much everybody who's a parent, their main motivator for trying to do better in life is for their children.
I'm sure that's not true for everybody, but I think it's true for the vast majority of people who have children.
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Fixed Pie Fallacy Explained00:13:07
If you believe in equality of opportunity, the same way, the same kind of perverse ethic that would be involved in believing in equality of outcome, if you believe in equality of opportunity, and let's say I'm working really hard to give my daughter all of the advantages in life, all of the opportunities, well, then you would also have to think that that's evil because I am working to give her not an equal opportunity to everybody else,
but better opportunities, more opportunities than everybody else has.
So if you believe that all opportunities should be equal, well, I'm fighting against that.
But don't you see what you're reduced to now?
You're now reduced to saying that somebody who's working hard to provide their child with a better life is doing something wrong.
When, in my opinion, it's like the noblest thing that a person can do.
So it just seems like it's a bad route to go down.
We don't, you know, we don't believe that all opportunities should be equal.
It also misses sight of, and I guess in my opinion, the way capitalism somewhat works is that sometimes you getting ahead doesn't mean that you've taken something from somebody else.
If you go out and you invent something or you invent a service, you create a company, you get paid for doing something, but it's not like you were just extractive.
The model that you're describing of the equal opportunity almost sounds that me trying to do better for my daughter means that some I'm taking something from somebody else, but that's not the way the world really works.
You trying to create the best framework for your daughter, by the way, that me might create a framework where all of your neighbors also kind of like get together and go, oh, I want a different school than what's currently here.
Now everybody has a better school.
Now, I don't know that that's the best example, but I'm just trying to say the framework of the world is not me trying to better myself or do something for me.
It means that I'm taking an opportunity from somebody else.
It could very likely be creating an environment where somebody else now has something that they didn't.
Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right.
And what you're getting at is the fixed pie fallacy, the idea that which really does underpin a lot of the leftist worldview.
And it's the idea that basically there's like a fixed amount of wealth.
And if you take more, so the fixed pie analogy would be like, if you think of like a pizza pie and, you know, there's a bunch of us there and there's this pizza pie.
Well, if you take three slices, there's three less slices in the pie, and there's not going to be enough for everyone else to have three slices.
Which, by the way, I mean, I've never thought of this until you just said the fixed pie, but that directly contradicts their general spending policy, which is there going to be economic growth in the future.
In other words, the prerequisite for the entire purpose of their spending is we're going to have economic growth.
You can't both think that there's a fixed pie and there will be economic growth.
Right.
So that's a very good point.
But so in reality, it's not that you're taking slices out of a pre-existing pie.
You might be making a new pie.
And so if you make a new pizza pie and take three slices, okay, you did really well for yourself, but there's also, there's just more pizza to go around now.
You know, there's just more.
And that's the reality of the situation is that wealth is not fixed.
Wealth is created.
And so you can create more.
And the fact that, like, right, like as you were indicating, like, if I work really hard and give my daughter a better shot in life, more opportunities in life, she might go out and do something really great that benefits everybody else.
And this is kind of the beauty of free markets is that the way that you succeed is by doing something that other people want to, you know, consume or purchase or whatever.
So, if you're by the very nature of a free market, if you're getting really rich in a free market, it's because you're providing goods or services to a lot of people who really want them.
And so, yes, I think the whole thing is just missing the point.
The goal is not, and the thing that I am still somewhat sympathetic to about that strand of leftists, like the economic leftists, who there are a lot of them who like their goals are somewhat noble in the sense that like they just go like, well, we want people to be doing better off and we want, we care about the people who don't have as much.
And we see a society where some have so much and some have so little.
And hey, what about that little guy?
Like, he needs more stuff.
We want him to have better medical care and education and all of these things.
But if you really get down to it, right, the issue is not the inequality.
Like, it doesn't, you know, if Bezos made twice as much money, but that may, but the guy who, you know, the little guy also made some more money, maybe not twice as much, but just made more, or his standard of living just improved, that would be good.
And it doesn't matter that there'd be more inequality.
What you care about is helping the little guy.
And I think that's a noble goal.
But then the question becomes like, oh, yeah, okay.
Well, it's not really that we should be focusing on inequality.
What we should be focusing is on what raises the standard of living for people who need it the most.
Because obviously, like me and you, Rob, like we're not super concerned about raising the standard of living for Jeff Bezos.
Like he's fine.
That's not an issue.
But you do want to raise the standard of living for lower class, middle class, working class people.
So then the question becomes, what does that?
And it's not that everyone's going to start with the exact same equal opportunities or outcomes, obviously, but that's not what's going to help raise the standard of living for anybody.
What's going to do it is everybody working together in some sense, or maybe not, that's not the best way to put it.
Not everyone working together.
What's going to do that is everybody creating the most amount of useful goods, services, products that help everybody.
And that has nothing to do with equality.
Absolutely nothing.
That just has to do with markets and freedom and like human desires to better their own situation.
So in other words, the exact force that's going to lead to raising the standard of living is people wanting the opposite of equality.
People wanting to be doing better than other people and better than they're currently doing, wanting better for their children, wanting better for themselves.
That's what lifts everybody up.
And so it's not just that it's off.
It's actually that it's like the idea of equality is the opposite of what you want.
I just really, I really believe people, free market people should stop using the term equality of opportunity.
It's a bad, misleading term.
Here's just another angle on that.
Equality also doesn't leave any room for like personal choice.
So, for example, like let's say you got a guy who really likes spending most of his evening playing video games.
He works a shitty job, goes home, plays video games.
That's what he wants to do.
Are we going to come in and force him to stop playing video games?
Like, cause that's an aspect of a quality.
Or, like, wait, so if I only want to have one kid, should I be forced to have two?
Should the guy who wants to have five or six be forced to have three?
Like, a lot of life is just personal choice.
It's not about equal, it's about your personal preferences and you having the freedom to pursue your personal preferences.
Yeah, that's a that's a really excellent point.
And it's one of the things that's really contradictory and just infuriating by some of these left-wing types.
So, and by the way, this is, you know, God, I just can't help myself.
But this was what was so annoying about that Joe Jorgensen tweet about Kamala Harris saying that, you know, it's good to have another, you know, female in the race.
And she, you know, she's glad Joe Biden picked her.
It's inspiring.
Right.
It's inspiring.
And for all the little girls out there, they can have a role model or there's not enough.
You could be an evil lady too.
Right, right.
Evil ladies can get ahead.
Like it's a boys club.
So we should just be happy that there's a woman in there.
Unless you're an evil lady, in which case we can get into the boys' club.
Right.
The only way is.
But the idea, right?
This is the thing that's crazy with the left-wing view.
And this does, I guess, infiltrate to some libertarians have this type of view, disappointingly.
So, but the idea that, right, if you're saying there's something unfair or there's something wrong in a system where, let's say, men are making more money than women, and then you go like, well, this is evidence of, you know, patriarchy or sexism or something like that.
But aren't you a leftist reducing success to money, which seems like a very unleftist thing to do?
Like that seems like a very capitalist type of way to measure success.
And I don't mean capitalist in the true sense.
I mean, almost like in the left-wing version of capitalism.
But because somebody's making more money, does that mean they're winning at life?
Or does that mean they're doing better, like in the complete sense of the word than somebody else who makes less money?
I mean, I could tell you, like, I'm, you know, I'm doing pretty well.
I'm like, you know, having really, even despite all this craziness, I've been having like the best year of my career this year.
But if I were, if someone were to offer me 10 times the money I'm making now, but I wouldn't be able to spend any time with my daughter, I would not take that.
And it's not even like a hard decision.
There's no question.
I wouldn't take that.
I value being present in my daughter's life more than I value expendable wealth.
I mean, it might be a different situation if I like couldn't afford to cover the basics, like to support my family.
Then maybe you do whatever you have to do to support them and take care of them.
But the idea that once you reach a certain point, that more money just equates to doing better, that's not true.
And then in the Joe Jorgensen example, the idea that somehow women are doing better or have more role models if more of them are in politics, like why would we define that as the standard for women having role models?
Why do politicians have to be the role model?
Certainly, I don't see why libertarians would look at politicians as role models.
I mean, why can't like your parents and friends and entrepreneurs and whatever?
I mean, there's lots of other examples of role models in the world, and there seems to be no shortage of them, particularly in today's world where like we have the internet and things, and you can know what a million different people are doing.
It just seems like a very, you know, particularly with the stuff about making more money.
Like, that's like the point you made about the guy playing video games.
I mean, and like, I don't know, you know, video games, you know, maybe some people have feelings one way or another about, you know, how fulfilled a life that is, but maybe it's something like really incredible.
I mean, maybe like somebody, I don't know, like there are people who like volunteer to help out less fortunate people in their spare time instead of spending all of that time trying to make more money.
Can anyone honestly say that that is that that is not as important or meaningful or successful of a life?
You know, like a lot of the things that, you know, go into these statistics, like the wage gap or something like that, or, you know, between men and women are the really high end of the high earners, like the people who make, which are mostly men who make like a shit ton of money.
You know, like if you start rattling off the list of the richest people, it's mostly men.
I mean, there's some women in there, but it's mostly men.
I don't know offhand what the percentage of billionaires that are men are, but it's the majority.
But these are people for the most part who just literally work and work and work and are obsessed with just making money.
And it's not clear, to me at least, that that's the best life.
I mean, maybe it is for that person.
I don't know.
But I certainly don't think it's the best life for everybody.
And if like any group of people, like the truth is most men don't want to do that.
Most men don't want to work like an 80-hour work week obsessed with work away from their family, away from their friends, just to make like more money.
Investing in Gold and Crypto00:03:15
A whole lot of people, I'd say the vast majority of people want to make enough money to be comfortable and then want to like enjoy their weekends and hang out with their family and their friends and things like that.
And I think that's, from my perspective, a better life.
I don't know.
Rob Bernstein just wants to eat dominoes and stand at his desk.
Who's going to tell him he can't do that?
That's all I need.
I've made it.
This is it, everybody.
I've done it.
For good.
It's golden.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Anyway, I just, I think we should drop that phrase.
I know a lot of people who you look up to might have used it, but the idea of equality of opportunity is bullshit.
People are never going to have the exact same opportunities.
And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
And it could be a bad thing in some instances, but in many instances, I think it's actually completely good and proper.
And there is no reason to even give the fucking four foot 11 like Asian kid the same opportunities to play basketball that LeBron James has.
We might just look at him and be like, nope, you get the opportunity and you don't.
And that's okay.
You know, it's like, in fact, it's probably preferable.
We don't really need to waste all of our time.
We don't need LeBron James doesn't need to play everybody one-on-one in basketball just so he can beat them.
And then we can go, all right, we did it right.
He deserves the outcome that he's getting.
Black Lives Matter Semantics00:06:13
Which, by the way, I think basketball is back.
I think they're playing basketball again.
I saw a few clips of a game the other day.
Weird.
Weird.
Basketball with no audience is really weird.
All of it with no audience is weird.
I like UFC with no audience.
You get to hear all the smacks, the grunts, the whole thing.
I kind of like it.
I thought it was interesting for an event or two, and I'm over it.
I want the audience.
I want the audience back.
I just, there's something about the energy of just, you know, like fucking a huge audience of people going nuts when someone knocks someone out.
It's almost, it's very weird.
Like it almost feels like this isn't really the title fight.
This is just like, it almost feels like you guys are like, oh, you're like sparring.
Right.
Like there's not, this isn't, you're not in front of a crowd.
You're not doing it.
Like, I almost like after the fights, I'm like, wait, did that really count?
Like, we're really, we got a new champion?
Oh, all right.
I guess so.
All right.
I got a, a question for you off of the equality of opportunity.
So there's something kind of the same with the Black Lives Matter thing.
I think if you asked most people that supported Black Lives Matter, what they're really going for is they feel that Black people shouldn't be oppressed by the cops.
And you and I, we agree with that.
Of course.
Even if they kind of went a little bit further with what they were looking for, I think most people, what they're really looking for, if you ask them like, hey, you're supporting this movement, what are you looking for?
Most, most people, we go, oh, yeah, I agree with you.
I think the same thing with the equality of opportunity.
If we ask people, okay, put the phrase to the side, what is it that you're putting forward?
It'd be closer to what your definition is.
So we're kind of in like this strange thing where people are putting bad, putting forward almost like objective language.
I mean, I'm sorry, objectionable language that we're like, hey, what you're putting forward is like, you know, is actually, I guess, encompassing different ideas than what you're looking for.
You know what I mean?
It almost seems like we're playing like a little bit of an autistic game here where we agree with people more than we don't.
We are certainly playing an autistic game here.
There's no question.
Rob, do you not know what this podcast is?
It was almost called Autistic Games.
But yes, no, I think, so you're right about that.
Okay.
But more so, even with more so than Black Lives Matter, because really, truthfully, there's not anything inherently wrong with the statement, Black Lives Matter.
There's other problems that we've talked about a bunch on the show.
But my problem, and you're absolutely right.
Even the people I was arguing with, this is kind of what I said at the beginning.
Even the people I were arguing with were saying like, no, no, no, what equality of opportunity really means is X, Y, and Z.
That has nothing to do with equality of opportunity.
My point is just that we should abandon this phrase because it doesn't, it means something.
Like the words mean something, and that's not what people mean when they are talking about it.
And so the phrase is specifically used to counter equality of outcome.
And my point is that you're using a phrase that already concedes the battle.
You're basically like saying like, oh, no, we do agree that all human beings should start from the exact same place.
But after that, then we think that after that, they end up wherever they end up.
But the problem with that is that we don't believe human beings should start from the exact same place.
Human beings are never going to start from the exact same place in the same way they're never going to end up in the exact same place.
And that's okay.
So my problem with this is that you're using a phrase and you don't mean what the phrase says.
So yes, you're right.
It's an autistic game, but I think it's a useful one.
We're almost, I think we're kind of just calling them out for being salesy where they're trying to appeal to this other crowd.
But I'm saying it's bad sales.
Yeah.
No, no, no, I agree with you.
Yeah.
Like that's, I, I, I, like, you're absolutely right.
But I'm just saying I think this is bad sales.
Yeah, because you're not actually putting forward the argument to try and suggest something otherwise.
You're just trying to appeal to their sensibilities and the sensibility is wrong.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And then they can very easily turn around and hang you by your own sales pitch, which is like, oh, okay.
So you want equality of opportunity.
Well, you know what?
If we don't all have equal health care, you're not going to have too much opportunity.
If we don't all have equal education, you're not going to have too much of an opportunity.
If we don't, you know, like all of these things.
So listen, you could say that if you want a phrase to use, I mean, I'm not against saying equality under the law, but really that's not even getting at what you're trying to get at.
What you're really saying, and what most people who say equality of opportunity, what they really believe, is that people should be free and they should be free to make their own choices and they should be free to try to achieve as much as they can in life and that there shouldn't be any artificial government barriers put in their way.
Don't add any more barriers to people and let them deal with the barriers that life inevitably is going to put in front of all of us.
Equal opportunity to pursue your personal interests without being aggressed upon.
Yeah.
And take the equal opportunity part out.
I still don't like that.
Just let people have their opportunities.
You know, like, don't infringe on people's opportunities.
I think that's fine, but, or don't like, you know, add unnecessary barriers into people's opportunities.
But it's not the idea that it's going to be equal is just not true.
Equality is the fucking enemy of freedom because everything we do.
Within my framework, you're basically, I'm just saying it's a, I'm basically rewording the non-aggression principle that you're going to have some sort of a what?
That's a good way to put it.
Well, that's true too.
That you're either going to have some form of something that's going to protect personal property so that everyone has an equal opportunity to not be aggressed upon.
There's going to be some sort of a framework by which you know that your private property is protected.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, look, I'm getting really autistic here, but I don't like equal opportunity to not be aggressed upon because some people are going to be in more likely situations to be aggressed upon.
But the point is that it's wrong to aggress upon people and we want to do whatever we can to stop aggression.
Chinese Virus Political Opportunity00:09:20
So that's really the whole game right there.
So you just come around to being a good, a good radical libertarian.
That's all that really matters.
Okay.
So I wanted to just mention this.
I don't know.
Did you see?
Because this has all of my conspiracy spidey senses tingling.
But did you see it's been reported?
There was a story in the Washington Post, and I think a few other papers picked it up as well, that the Senate Intelligence Committee is now saying, now, two and a half months out from an election, that Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr. may have misled them during the Russia investigation.
Man, does that timing seem to be incidental?
May have misled during the fake investigation.
Yes.
Okay.
Well, what it could mean is felony charges for all three of them if they determine that they did mislead them, because that's the same crime.
It's lying to Congress.
Wasn't that the same thing as what they tried to do during the whole Mueller investigation?
I mean, and it seems very strange that right now they'd be they're basically just floating out the idea.
It's like, oh, hey, maybe we'll try to throw Trump's kid and son-in-law in jail.
Seems very strange that that would be happening right before the election when pretty much this entire investigation has fallen apart, been proven to be unlawful to begin with.
And anyway, I mean, look, I don't have that much more to say about it, but it does just seem like they are really going to pull out all the stops for this election.
It's going to be a fucking show to watch.
Bannon's not involved in the new campaign at all, right?
No, but he's certainly going around, you know, he's certainly like making the case for Trump on, like, he was just going around.
I think he was just on some news show recently.
So they're, you know, he's certainly not officially a part of the campaign.
And I don't even know where exactly his relationship with Trump is.
I know Trump really slammed him when he left the administration, but Bannon is a guy who's still going around trying to campaign for any of the populist right-wingers who he can find, both in Europe and in the United States.
And he's been really active in trying to like, you know, continue the kind of Trumpian Brexit style movements.
And so he's certainly, he's still a thorn in their side and still an influential guy.
And he's, Bannon is, you know, whatever you could say about him, he's good.
Like he's, he's good.
If you've seen him, like, he, he works.
What's his backing?
He's a smart dude.
He was a finance guy for a while.
So I think he's probably got good money.
Yeah.
He's a real, he's a real smart guy.
But yeah, so the Senate Intelligence Committee sent a bipartisan letter to the Justice Department asking federal prosecutors to investigate Steve Bannon.
And they've also indicated that Kushner and Donald Trump Jr.
You know what that sounds like, Tama?
It sounds to me that the Biden kid thing is probably going to make a little bit of a comeback.
So they just want to float something that's similar on the other side to be like, well, that's, you know, it's just investigations because that's what government does because they just like to investigate people.
You know what I mean?
They want to just try and like equalize it.
Well, we're also investigating these two kids.
Right, right.
I haven't even seen this news story yet.
This is the first I'm hearing of it.
Yeah, well, it just kind of came out yesterday.
So we'll see if this like has any legs to it or sticks around.
I think that if like Bannon's strategy, I heard an interview with him the other day and basically what he was saying, which might be a good campaign strategy, I don't know.
But he was really saying that what Trump needs to go after Biden on is the China connection.
Because Biden's kid, even Hunter, right?
Like it was the big story just because of the nature of how the impeachment ended up going.
The big story was his connections with Ukraine.
And that ended up being like, you know, the whole thing.
But then it was almost like a little side story that he also made a whole bunch of money sitting on the board of one of these companies in China.
And Biden, there's like a million clips of Biden talking about how great China is and how we have to have this close relationship with them.
And Trump has always positioned himself as a China hawk.
And it does seem to me that right now, that could be, you know, a pretty big political opportunity to, you know, really, when, you know, a lot of people will reasonably see, you know, a virus that came from China that has kind of destroyed the entire way of life of the West over the last few months.
You know, Trump hasn't brought that up in months, the fact that the virus is from China and that maybe they should be held responsible.
We seem to have dropped that entire line of speaking.
He must have his own political motivations for not wanting to be too at war with China right now.
Yeah, perhaps.
And, you know, by the way, it is a complicated issue.
Like, I'm just speaking about what might be politically effective in this moment.
I mean, truthfully speaking, there's, you know, and I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but Rockwell had a great piece on this.
Here's what could potentially happen to him.
I think you're right.
I think opposing China, probably.
It's really marketable and it would be like kind of the building the wall Mexican things.
You got a great scapegoat here.
You're 100% right.
Between now and the election, China might be able to punish us financially so bad that the economy would look so much, so substantially worse that he'd be in an unelectable environment.
Oh my God.
He doesn't want to go.
This is so, all of this is just, oh my God, it's the awful problem of the government, you know, inherently.
So basically what you have right with China is a situation where there were, you know, and this was the part that Lou Rockwell was getting at in his great piece that he wrote a few months ago, where he was basically saying he was like, look, the Chinese people aren't your enemies.
And there were a lot of Chinese people who did the right thing.
I mean, there were like Chinese doctors who were blowing the whistle on the Wuhan, you know, outbreak, and they got silenced.
And I think one of them was thrown in jail.
And like, you know, there's like, it's not the Chinese people, but the Chinese government.
No question.
I mean, you have a right to be pretty pissed off at them.
And there's, I mean, a million reasons for a lot of people to be pissed off at them.
I mean, you could look at their treatment of, you know, the Uyghur Muslims, or you could look at their treatment the Uyghurs.
The Uyghurs?
The Uyghurs.
They're like a group of Muslims called the Uyghurs.
They're like, they're white people who are very influenced by hip-hop.
A lot of them drop mixtapes.
Yeah.
Well, there's this sect of Muslims that are like basically, you know, rounded up and thrown into concentration camps.
I think there's like 3 million of them in concentration camps in China.
And you can look at what China's doing to the people.
And yet we still just do business with them.
Isn't that crazy?
Like, I remember in eighth grade in high school when they talked about like the Holocaust and how the news didn't really report on it and no one had their backs and we're doing the same thing.
I don't know much about the Muslim concentration camp.
Oh, yeah, no, doing doing business with China, doing business with Saudi Arabia.
I mean, we have no problem.
We, you know, whatever.
It's like we'd work with any of these awful regimes.
But the problem with governments, right, is that so you have the Chinese government that you can hate.
And like I was saying, there's a long list of reasons why you can hate them.
But specifically, there is no question that they kind of knew what was going on.
They closed off travel from Wuhan to other parts of China and allowed travel from Wuhan into Europe and into the United States of America.
So there is a, there is a real, and you know, if you look at all of the devastation that was caused by this virus, not, you know, leaving aside that the majority of it was caused by our government's reaction, not the actual virus.
But still, there is, there was damage caused by the virus.
And you have no, you, you could absolutely say, hey, the Chinese government is responsible for this, right?
But here's the problem with government.
Who are you actually holding responsible?
Even if you held the Chinese government responsible.
It's like, well, oh, so the Chinese government owes us money.
It's like, okay, so they'll just rob from their own people more and give it to us.
It's, it's the, the problem with government is not only that they get away with all this evil shit, but then at the end of it, there's no one to even blame.
There's no one to even like, you know, like you can't even really get the bad guys because they're just kind of like, oh, okay.
So I'll just rob somebody else and give you their money or whatever, you know?
So it's very hard to hold anyone accountable because they're above the law by nature.
And then, of course, the other problem that you got, that you were touching on there is with our government, they go, well, the response to this Wuhan virus is we need to spend, you know, $6 trillion or whatever on all of these relief packages and mostly corporate bailouts.
Compassion vs Law and Order00:10:02
And then you're like, okay, well, what did we, what did we just add to the deficit this year?
What are we going to crack $30 trillion in debt over the next year or something like that?
It's like, well, okay.
Well, then we kind of need to maintain this relationship with China.
I mean, if we're going to spend this much money, they're a pretty big financer of our debt.
Do they still finance a lot of our debt?
I don't know that they stole, do they?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's back.
They did cut back.
I believe they did cut back in terms of how much they were buying, but they're still a large player in buying U.S. debt.
And so it's like, yeah, if you're, when you're going this far into debt, you need all your large players to continue purchasing U.S. debt.
So it's really something when you spend all of this money and then you're like, okay, well, who are you going to borrow money from?
And China's obviously going to be a part of that.
It's, man, this whole system is so fucked.
And like, you get like, so, but regardless of that, just as political talking points, those clips of Joe Biden praising China and Trump having his clips of him being hard on China, I think could be a real political winner for him.
So we'll see if he goes down that road or not.
And the other thing, of course, which, you know, we've been talking about forever, but it's really coming down to the home stretch here is how much can Trump make Biden speak for the next two and a half months?
That's just, to me, that's the biggest thing is that you need, it's almost like, you know, you're in a boxing match and this guy's just trying to cover up and stay in the corner and you need to open him up.
Like Trump's role here is to make Joe Biden throw some punches and expose himself.
And I will say.
They got Joe Jorgensen gagged in the corner.
She can't speak at all.
I mean, she's just a lady.
She wants to speak, but, you know, they bonded her up.
Yeah.
Well, you know, there's that whole, there's that whole let her speak campaign.
But, you know, when I hear Joe and Spike speak, sometimes I'm okay with them not speaking so much.
But, you know, but the thing is that what's really incredible is that we've made it this far.
Like if you're in Biden's camp, you almost got to be psyched that you've made it this far without him having to speak that much.
You're down.
This is it.
This is the home stretch.
We're less than three months away from the election and you're up in the polls for whatever that means.
And, you know, now you're in a situation where it's like, okay, you just got to make it to the bell.
Like you're up in the scorecards, you know, and you got a couple rounds to go, but both of your arms are completely dead.
Like you can't lift an arm.
And it's like, okay, you just got to avoid being hit for these last couple rounds.
And then for Trump, it's like, you know, he's got to go for the kill.
And we will see.
Is a debate going to happen?
And there still hasn't been any talk of a debate happening.
My guess, if I had to guess, and I think it's, I think we have no idea.
Oops.
Excuse me.
Something just fell off my chair.
I'm concerned that the whole chair is going to collapse now.
That would be a great way to end the show.
If you asked me, I think that they will not happen.
And the reason I think they will not happen is just, I mean, again, just speculating, but I go, if I put myself in the situation of being Joe Biden's campaign manager, I go, no chance in hell am I sending this guy out there to debate.
And then, by the way, here's the way you get out of it.
You go, Donald Trump is so evil and he's so lacks compassion.
I refuse to engage in a debate with him.
That would be.
If I'm the campaign, the campaign manager, I go, I'm getting all of our smartest people around the table and we're all going to sit down and talk.
And I go, okay, here's the starting point.
We're not debating Donald Trump.
Now, what's the best reason for that?
Go around.
And it could be some COVID-related thing.
It could be he's such an evil monster.
We don't want to legitimize him, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Whatever you can think of, let's brainstorm and come up with the best idea.
But our starting point is there is no chance in hell that I'm sending this senile old man up there to go collapse into himself.
It's just why would we take that risk?
What's the upside?
What's the upside to the debate?
Almost nothing.
And, you know, the downside is we blow the whole thing.
So that's just why my suspicion is that he won't.
It's possible he will.
It's possible that they will, the Biden campaign will determine that it's more damaging to be seen as ducking Donald Trump or something like that.
So they have to suck it up and try their best.
I just, my guess would be no, because it just doesn't seem like there's a real upside.
But then if you're Trump, and I put myself in Trump's, you know, campaign manager spot, and I think about what I would be saying there, I'd go, okay, if he won't debate us, that is our narrative.
Like, that's the whole thing is that he's clearly scared to debate.
They know, you know, and point out that they know that this guy is not capable of debate.
If he's not capable of debate, he's not capable of running the country, blah, blah, blah.
But the thing that is pretty crazy, at least as of right now, and you tell me if you think I'm wrong about this, but I'm somebody who follows the news pretty religiously.
And I much more so than the average American.
I mean, I really, I live in this world.
And it's really amazing to me how two and a half months out, it just doesn't feel like we're in a presidential election year.
It's like not, it's getting none of the usual kind of obsessive commenting that it usually gets.
And the crazy thing is that, you know, this year, the election started so early.
Like two years out, you're basically in election season.
And now two and a half months out, it's like barely even feels like there's this election coming up.
And it's almost like I'm sitting here waiting for it to be prime time moment.
And that moment just isn't coming.
And I should almost serve Biden.
The way that they salary cap sports, they should almost salary cap campaign duration time because it is a little bit crazy that you get into office and then two years later, you're done with the job and back to campaigning.
Oh, like it might as well just campaigning a month in.
His whole job has just been campaigning.
I also would love if, I mean, we've seen Trump take, we saw him take Elizabeth Warren down with the, hey, take the DNA test.
It would be great if he managed to take Biden down by, you know, take the cognition test.
And then the video came out and he's just trying to shove the triangle into a circle.
He's playing on the same puzzles my one and a half year old is.
It's just like, no, no, that's a rectangle, Joe Biden.
It doesn't go in the triangle hall.
Well, we'll see.
But it does, it seems to me like it helps Biden that we're almost not in this prime time, you know, kind of mentality or space.
And of course, I mean, part of it is somewhat legitimate, just in the sense that there are like these huge things, these huge developments going on in the country that are like really, you know, Biden's biggest talking point is that Trump lacks the compassion to help people.
And as if all the trillions of dollars we've spent and checks we handed people, it's not enough help because he just lacks compassion to give them all the help they need.
Yeah.
It's the most, you know, it's like compassion is, you know, it's important, but the children.
Well, I disagree.
I think that it is important to have compassion, but compassion can lead you in a lot of different directions.
And the other thing that I really just think is going to be a big factor, and I don't know exactly how this will play out, but I, you know, I don't know.
Like there are still horrific videos from Portland and Seattle coming out almost every day.
I mean, I saw one today of a dude being soccer kicked on the floor by, you know, like some random guy in one of these mobs.
And there's just like the destruction and the violence is continuing.
And it doesn't seem, you know, to be very popular or approved to have some compassion for those people.
But like that, that is a, I got to think that there's a lot of normal Americans.
How's he going to run on the law and order thing if he still doesn't shut that shit down?
Your pitch is, hey, like if you're the outsider, you can go, hey, I'm going to come in and fucking squash this shit, but you were in charge for the months while it was happening.
You didn't squash it.
Yeah, no, that's a good point.
Trump was caught in a tough position where he was going to, it's like if he really had a federal response and fucking squashed all of that shit, they'd call him a Nazi.
And if he, and if he does nothing, they take away, like you just pointed out, his ability to really run on this law and order thing.
Maybe we're going to have a really exciting month out where that's when Trump, like, you know, it's like an epic finale.
He goes into these cities, he squashes it, and he goes, it's law and order.
None of this bullshit moving forward.
He does something crazy with COVID and goes, that's fucking it.
We're not, you know, I'm going to like maybe he's just waiting for an epic finale where then right after the campaign, it goes back to where it is.
But for one month, he pretends like we're changing tone here.
It's possible.
I wouldn't hold my breath.
But maybe.
We'll see.
Anyway, I have a feeling that something is going to happen.
Like it will get to be prime time pretty soon.
There's no way around it.
This is just too big of an election.
So we'll see what happens.
And I can't wait to cover it and talk about it with all of you good people.