Feb. 22, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
17:36
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| do do do do bum bum bum bum bum bum bum hey everybody this will be a short and very special whiteboard presentation in which I'm going to put socialism and the debate over socialism in the United States in context probably for the first time you've ever seen it but I'm going to | |
| Now, what inspired me to do this is that I've been watching the so-called debate over socialism, let's say, as expressed by Bernie Sanders and AOC and others, versus the standard Trump-Republican-Conservative view of capitalism. | |
| And it's making me crazy because I'm watching two people, two sides, who think they're in a conversation but are not. | |
| So there's an illusion of a debate. | |
| But it's an illusion because we're not even really talking about the same things. | |
| Somebody says, hey, we took economics too. | |
| All right, here's what I'm watching. So if you've got socialism in this bubble and capitalism on the other, we know that capitalism gives us great stuff like, you know, we associate it anyway with democracy, freedom, high standards of living. | |
| Of course, you can go too far with your capitalism into fascism, but nobody wants that. | |
| Literally, nobody's in favor of that. | |
| Over here on socialism, we worry that historically it's been associated with dictators and economic collapse in Venezuela and genocide and Hitler and everything else. | |
| But in the middle here... | |
| This is where you've got a little bit of capitalism and a little bit of socialism, and that's where I would say that the UK with national health insurance, Canada with national health insurance, and then anything Bernie talks about. | |
| So if Bernie Sanders is talking about it, it's probably some version of socialism. | |
| And here's what I'm noticing. | |
| If you talk to the people who love capitalism and dislike socialism, tell me what's wrong with socialism. | |
| These people will say, socialism's bad because dictators' economic collapse, genocide, and of course a lot of that has to do with a lack of incentive, right? | |
| The big advantage of capitalism is incentive. | |
| If you have a capitalist system, people are incented to work hard. | |
| If you take away their incentive, things devolve fairly quickly into a bad situation. | |
| Not necessarily a dictator, but a bad situation. | |
| But here's the thing. Do the UK and Canada still have incentive? | |
| I think they do. | |
| I think if you grew up in Canada, you know, fact check me on this if there are any Canadians out there. | |
| If you live in Canada, do you feel you have an incentive to go to work? | |
| Well, of course you do. Because if the only thing you have is free healthcare, or let's sweeten the pot. | |
| If all you have is free healthcare, and let's say you've got free college, I'm not suggesting these are good ideas right now. | |
| I'm just talking about the concepts. | |
| If you had those things, would you still have an incentive to go work? | |
| I think you would. | |
| As evidenced by the fact that Canada has a functional economy, as does the UK. So when I see the people over here saying, no, Bernie, you can't have what you want, because we'll turn into this, that's not a sensible argument. | |
| Because we have examples of people who have what Bernie wants us to have, and they're not falling apart. | |
| But here's the problem. | |
| Why is it that the UK and Canada can have those things, and yet we seem to think we can't afford it here? | |
| Here's why. Because we have a huge military. | |
| If the United States did not have an enormous military, could the UK and Canada have what they have? | |
| Probably not. Because if we didn't have a huge military, they would have to have one, or they may have already been conquered or in a war with somebody else. | |
| So because we've put a priority on military spending, I suspect that that allows some of the free riders to give free health care. | |
| So it's not really ever an apples and oranges conversation. | |
| The only reason that they can do what Bernie wants is because we spend so much on the military. | |
| Now, if they were to do what President Trump wants, Let's say the NATO folks. | |
| If they were to substantially increase their spending so that we could at least draw down our spending over time, their economies might suffer a little bit. | |
| Ours might be able to give us some of the things that they enjoy. | |
| Now there's, of course, the issue of whether any of this is better than what we have. | |
| That's a separate issue. But in terms of why they can have these things and we can't, it's probably because of the military. | |
| And our military is so large that we can protect them and they become a little bit of free riders. | |
| Now, I tweeted around a quote of mine from earlier, which is the belief that capitalism can get you what socialism wants faster than socialism can get it. | |
| So socialism, you know, the bad kind, where you've just got rid of your capitalism and you've got a top-down centralized system, that's not going to get you what you want. | |
| Just wanting it isn't going to get you what you want either. | |
| You need to create a lot of money, and you need a lot of ingenuity, and you probably need something that's closer to, I'm going to call it a Mark Cuban way of approaching it, which is to look at it as sort of like an engineer. | |
| And to say, how can you have a capitalist system that can get you as close as possible to inexpensive universal healthcare? | |
| How can you get as close as possible to having some kind of low-cost or free college for people who want it without getting into this left area that you don't want to be? | |
| Of course, nobody wants to be over here in fascism. | |
| So, all I wanted to add to this conversation Is that when the people who are in favor of capitalism and are opposed to this, when I say, can you explain why you're opposed to it? | |
| They can't. Now, they say things, and people will say a lot of different arguments, but there's always something missing. | |
| It's as if the people who are dead set on this side and dead set that this is all bad don't really know why. | |
| Now, it could be that I'm also leaving stuff out, and so I'm going to put it to the public because I have no sense of embarrassment like normal people. | |
| I might be totally wrong about some major elements. | |
| I might be leaving some major thought out of this, but you'll tell me. | |
| I'm sure you'll tell me what I'm leaving out. | |
| The arguments that don't work are that if you give people universal health care and, let's say, free college, you turn into a dictatorship. | |
| What? That doesn't even make sense. | |
| Did Canada turn into a dictatorship? | |
| Did the UK turn into a dictatorship because they have universal health care? | |
| There's no connecting tissue there. | |
| The other argument I hear is it's going to be economic collapse and genocide. | |
| But we have plenty of examples where that's clearly not happening. | |
| So I'm not supporting socialism. | |
| I'm quite solidly a capitalist. | |
| Solidly a capitalist. | |
| Don't want my taxes to go up. | |
| Don't want to be transferring money. | |
| Don't want to be rewarding people for not working. | |
| I don't want any of that. | |
| But I also don't want to hear arguments that don't have any connecting tissue whatsoever. | |
| So if you can't explain to me why there are countries that are thriving with some of these socialist elements within a capitalist framework, if you can't explain it, you need to work harder. | |
| You need to go back and figure out what is my argument. | |
| And let me challenge you right now. | |
| In the comments, in the comments, Tell me what is wrong with socialism. | |
| Slippery slope. In my new book coming up, I talk about the slippery slope being more of a mental problem than a real problem. | |
| That is that we imagine that everything that's heading in some direction will keep going that direction forever. | |
| But in the real world, there are always counter forces. | |
| So anything that goes too far eventually causes a reaction and it stabilizes. | |
| So the slippery slope is not an actual argument. | |
| It's a fear, but it's not a logical argument. | |
| Because just because you don't know what would stop a trend from happening doesn't suggest it will keep happening. | |
| Because there's always a counterforce that pops up. | |
| We defend Canada. | |
| That's true. So that was the argument that I just made. | |
| That because the U.S. has a big military presence, countries that have a little bit of a socialist element to them within the capitalist context have an advantage. | |
| And they don't have to have as big a military. | |
| It's based on force and coercion. | |
| Is it? So the people who are forced and coerced In Canada and England, are they complaining? | |
| We don't have to wonder what happens. | |
| Can't we just look at the countries doing it? | |
| Somebody says, I'm losing confidence in you. | |
| Alright? Then I will ban you forever. | |
| You're blocked. I allow arguments. | |
| I allow facts and I allow any kind of disagreement. | |
| So any kind of disagreement you want to offer, I'm open to it if it comes with a reason. | |
| But what I see here, here's another one that just says you're an idiot. | |
| If the best you can do is insult me personally, Then you're banned forever. | |
| If you have a reason, I'm open to it. | |
| Because, honestly, I think there's something missing in my analysis. | |
| It feels like it, but I'm open to finding out what that is. | |
| Trump as a counterforce. | |
| Well, there are plenty of counterforces. | |
| Alright, so notice in the comments a complete lack of argument Against socialism. | |
| There's an explanation why we don't have it, which has to do with our military protecting everybody else. | |
| But that's not an argument against socialism. | |
| That's just saying that there's a reason they can have it and we can't. | |
| Scott, you need to read more history. | |
| Wrong. Absolutely wrong. | |
| I do not need to read more history. | |
| Because that comment suggests, and again, I won't read your mind, but it strongly suggests that you're going to say socialism devolves into these things. | |
| Nobody's making that argument. | |
| If the UK and Canada devolve into genocide and dictatorships, I'm going to say to you, whoa, you're right. | |
| That universal healthcare turned Canada into some kind of a genocidal dictator situation. | |
| But as long as Canada's doing okay, that argument doesn't work. | |
| Where does universal basic income fall on the graph? | |
| Universal basic income would probably be just to the left of this line. | |
| And the reason it's not further into the line, where you're just paying people for nothing, is that the only people who are going to want this universal basic income, should it ever become a law, are people who are not the kind you want to hire anyway. | |
| They're the people who aren't going to help your workplace. | |
| And you either let them die, Or you find some way to take care of them. | |
| And now many of them would have mental problems and physical problems and real reasons that they can't work. | |
| So I'm not recommending UBI. I'm not recommending socialism. | |
| I'm not recommending universal healthcare or free college. | |
| I'm just talking about the concepts here. | |
| All right. Canada and UK are going bankrupt. | |
| Now that would be a fact. | |
| That could be checked. I don't know. | |
| Somebody says, why aren't the caravans headed to Venezuela? | |
| Because you're arguing this, which is not the conversation. | |
| So anybody who says, socialism is bad because Venezuela? | |
| Venezuela is over here. | |
| Bernie is not suggesting, let's have a dictatorship. | |
| It was the dictatorship and nationalizing the main sources of income that wrecked Venezuela, was it not? | |
| So it was corruption, dictatorship, and nationalizing businesses. | |
| There's nobody recommending any of that stuff. | |
| And if they do, those would be bad ideas. | |
| But if you're arguing Venezuela, you're not in the conversation. | |
| You're not part of the conversation. | |
| Because literally nobody in the United States is suggesting that we become a dictatorship and nationalize our biggest businesses and institute massive corruption. | |
| Nobody suggests that. | |
| All right. The number one argument against socialism is freedom. | |
| Terrible argument. Terrible argument. | |
| Yeah, so the people over here who love capitalism will say, even if you get into this range, you've given up freedom because you're being taxed, you know, maybe involuntarily and you're told you can't have the health care you want and you're being forced to do stuff. | |
| Terrible argument. Because you already live in a country in which you are forced to do all manner of things. | |
| I mean, you have to drive a certain way, you got to get a license for this, a tax for that, you got to get approved for this, you got to get certified for that. | |
| We have very little real freedom. | |
| We have a very restricted freedom already. | |
| We're just used to it. | |
| I pretty much guarantee you that if we had universal health care, for a few years people would complain about how they're forced to have this and they'd rather have something else. | |
| Ten years later, it would just be what we do and we wouldn't even notice. | |
| So the freedom argument is very weak. | |
| Because it imagines that we're already free and we'll be giving something up. | |
| And the truth is, we're not even close to free. | |
| We have some freedoms, but we're not even close to free. | |
| You know, we're restricted in just about every field of human endeavor. | |
| Try parking wherever you want. | |
| See how that works out for you. | |
| There are no more health insurance companies. | |
| Now, you could argue there are dumb ways to do this, and there are smart ways to do it. | |
| And that's a good argument. | |
| They parasite our tech development. | |
| That may be true. Sweden's another example. | |
| Somebody's saying. Somebody says, I don't think you know what socialism is. | |
| Really? I'm going to delete you for saying I don't know what socialism is. | |
| Because that is not a comment. | |
| That's a comment about me. | |
| Driving is very different than freedom of health choice. | |
| Well, duh! I guess that's what makes it an analogy. | |
| In this case, it's an example. | |
| I wouldn't say it's an analogy. | |
| It's an example of our many limited freedoms. | |
| So I wouldn't call it an analogy per se. | |
| Yeah, nobody's arguing that health care is better in Canada. | |
| I would certainly not make that argument. | |
| Alright, that's all I needed to add for today. | |
| I wanted to see what your responses were. |
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