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May 22, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
51:26
Episode 537 Scott Adams: Iran, Socialism, Bad Candidates, North Korea, Viewer Questions
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Hey everybody!
Hey Jammypants5!
Come on in here!
Super comfy!
SupercomicFun, Drew Sides, Dan Backslide, Chris Whittle.
It's good to see all of you.
And I know why you're here.
Probably for the coffee.
Possibly with a simultaneous sip.
Let's get right to it.
Let's grab your cup, your mug, your glass, your stein, your tankard, your cellist.
Your thermos, your flask.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the simultaneous sip.
That's good sippin'.
So, I'm going to take some calls at the end of some comments here.
So if you have some questions, you might want to be thinking about them.
I'll take questions on anything today.
Anything at all.
So let's talk about what's new.
So it turns out that North Korea is trying to interfere with American elections.
Here's my question to you.
What country is not interfering with American elections?
Quick, name a country that's not interfering with American elections.
I mean, North Korea clearly is.
They just made some comments about Joe Biden.
Israel obviously is.
They're naming stuff after Trump.
I mean, when Israel starts naming things in Israel after your president, they kind of want that guy to get re-elected, or that woman, depending on the timing.
So, what about Venezuela?
Venezuela is affecting U.S. elections probably more than any other country, and they're not even trying, simply by being Venezuela.
Venezuela just sits there being Venezuela.
That's probably going to have more impact on our elections than Facebook, just by its example.
What about China?
China's definitely interfering with our election.
They might not be trying to do it, but everything about how they act It is having an impact on our elections.
So I'm starting to think maybe we should just get rid of this fiction about other countries interfering with your elections and just embrace the fact that all of our elections are international affairs now.
Now I'm not completely serious, but the point is you can't really turn off the impact from other countries.
Yes, maybe not Slovenia.
As somebody said here, but the big countries.
Let's talk about another big country, Iran.
Oh, let's talk about China first.
So I was watching the, I think he was the Chinese ambassador being interviewed on, I forget which network, and the Chinese ambassador was answering questions about, you know, potential bad actions by China.
And I've never seen a worse ambassador.
How in the world does that guy keep his job?
He was just the worst.
If you ever get a chance to see the Chinese ambassador to the United States on TV, you have to watch it just to watch how bad he is.
Now a question I have is whether all I'm seeing is some kind of a social-cultural difference.
Because the way he answers questions looks exactly like he's lying.
I had my mic intentionally away from my face, but somebody's saying I should move it closer.
So, and specifically, he was asked about Huawei, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, the Chinese telecom company that the U.S. is saying if you install their equipment, they'll spy on all your traffic.
And listening to the Chinese ambassador try to explain that away, it really looked like he was confirming everything about them because his denial was so transparently wrong for Western ears that I wondered what I was even listening to.
And so here's my question.
Was it a cultural difference?
Because if you ask somebody from the United States, hey, is your company putting spy equipment in all of your telecommunications gear?
If you ask somebody from America, they will say, no, that's not happening.
That's a ridiculous rumor.
Here's probably how it got started.
But no, there's no proof to that.
There's no evidence. The inspectors could come in and look at our chips and you could just tell.
So the American would answer it that way.
They would go right at the facts.
The Chinese ambassador simply sort of changed the subject.
And I'm thinking to myself, okay, do you even know what country you're in?
If you're in the United States and somebody says, did you murder that person?
And you say, well, we could talk about murder, but maybe we should talk about the weather.
Why is nobody talking about the weather?
Why does everybody have to talk about the murder?
Why don't we talk about the weather?
If you say that in America, 100% of Americans say, oh, okay, you're guilty.
Obviously, you're guilty. You didn't even answer the question.
You just changed the subject. And here's this Chinese ambassador saying, Who apparently knows nothing about America.
How the hell did he get his job?
And I'm serious. Probably the least qualified-looking person I've ever seen in such a high-profile job.
He acted like he didn't know how Americans work.
He answered the question in a way so damning and so confirming of Hallway's inappropriateness in our networks that I thought, how does he even stay alive?
I mean, it seems like he'd be sent to one of those concentration camps.
And then he was asked about the Uyghur concentration camps.
At least they're being called that.
And he actually, with a straight face, looked at the interviewer and said, no, those are just job education places.
Everybody can come and go.
Doors are open. We don't even have a lock on the gate.
You can just walk in there and get some training.
And of course we want them to be trained so they can be productive citizens.
Why wouldn't we want them trained?
Why wouldn't they want to be trained?
Now I'm paraphrasing.
He didn't say it that way. But it was one of those jaw-dropping things where I said to myself, and I'm going to be fair here, Western media is so unreliable that it is possible We're not ruling it out.
It's possible that they're actually job training centers.
Now, I don't think that's true.
It seems to me we probably have a pretty good idea what's going on over there.
And it seems to me that they're probably just as bad as it sounds.
They're probably concentration camps.
I imagine that's true because we've seen interviews with family members who've lost family members and obviously they can't go visit them.
So it seems to me like the most obvious lie I've ever seen.
And so this guy goes on American TV again.
Does he even know what country he's in?
Does the ambassador to the United States from China know what country he's in?
Because he looks at us and goes, no, that's just job training places.
And I'm thinking, I think I'm looking at Hitler.
So this Chinese ambassador made me think, instead of thinking, you know, I thought he would have answered the question about the Uyghur concentration camps.
I thought he was going to come up with something better.
You know, at least a lie that sounds a little bit like there's some gray area.
Like maybe he could have said, oh yes, it is, they are detained there, but they've all committed some kind of a crime.
We're trying to rehabilitate them.
And I was going to say, well, that's evil enough.
You know, I wasn't going to think that that was good enough.
That still is a concentration camp.
But I thought they'd put at least some kind of spin on it to make some kind of attempt to To make it sound like there was some reason why maybe the coverage of it was not quite accurate and really it was a good idea.
I thought they would at least take a run at it.
And he looks right at the interviewer and says, no, there's just job training places.
Of course, it's all voluntary.
And I just thought, that guy needs to be, I don't know, executed?
Because what he was talking about was a concentration camp, and he just lied to the world about its existence.
Now, I suppose that part's his job, but really, China, you couldn't come up with a better cover story than that?
It was pretty pathetic. All right, enough about that guy.
I'm just, quite seriously, I don't know how he keeps his job.
He could not have been a worse spokesperson for China.
But I do appreciate that he's so bad at lying that he doesn't leave any question about the facts.
He confirmed every bad thing about China without trying.
I thought it was the worst.
Anyway, I read about...
So, as you all know, President Trump has increased the sanctions on Iran.
I did not realize how effectively he had increased the sanctions on Iran.
Listen to this.
I just found So we're trying to stop anybody from buying Iranian oil.
Now, when you hear that, you say to yourself, yeah, yeah, yeah, we have a bunch of sanctions, but then everybody finds a way to work around them.
So if you're like me, when you heard we were putting more sanctions on Iranian oil sales, didn't you say to yourself, yeah, that'll hurt them 10%?
Didn't you think it was something like that?
Yeah, that'll squeeze them a little bit, maybe 20%.
Turns out that since the sanctions got tightened, zero ships in We actually closed down their tankers that were selling oil to other countries to zero.
I don't know if that'll last, but it certainly tells you that Iran needs to do something and do something quickly because the government is falling apart.
Now, I love, and again, I'm going to say historians will look back at this administration as the model for how to do things, even though in our current moment, anything President Trump does gets tons of criticism because that's the world we live in.
But historians will not have to deal with that, you know, the politics of the time.
They'll be able to look at it in the rearview mirror and just say whether something was good or bad, if it worked or if it didn't.
And I think Trump's policy on Iran is going to be one of those lasting good examples.
Now, of course, we don't know how it will all turn out, but the way he's setting it up is the cleanest thing I've seen so far.
Here's what it used to be.
The way we used to treat Iran is, If you do things we don't like, which we know you're doing and you're always doing and you keep doing, we're going to do things that you don't like.
So that was the old proposition.
If you do things we don't like in a variety of different ways, we will do things you don't like in a variety of ways.
And what did that get us?
Iran doing a variety of things we don't like, and then we would do a variety of things they don't like.
And nothing really changed.
Trump has clarified this situation.
As I understand it, the proposition is your economy will be completely obliterated, because that's what it means when zero tankers leave your ports.
If you can't get a single oil tanker out of your port, you're looking at the end of your economy.
The alternative is, you saw Iran Maybe put some missiles on ships.
Put a little military risk into the equation.
Muddy it up a little bit.
What was Trump's response to Iran muddying up this very clean situation?
The clean situation was do what we want or we will completely annihilate your economy.
We won't damage it.
We won't take it down 10%.
We won't impede it.
We'll eliminate it. We will eliminate your economy.
That's the Trump proposition.
So they try to add some variables with the military stuff.
What does Trump do? He brings the whole frickin' armada, I mean, not our entire armada, but he brings enough firepower to turn the entire nation of Iran into a burning cinder, a cinder, because they loaded some missiles on ships, apparently. And that he's going further.
And he says that any actions against our interests, I'm not sure if that applies to, say, Israel or not.
Probably that would be not what's on the table.
But the President said very clearly that any military action against our assets would be the complete elimination of Iran.
Iran would cease to exist as a country.
Do you think he means it?
I do. I think he actually completely means that.
When he says obliteration of Iran, we're not talking about the people or the physical country, but rather the leadership.
I'm pretty sure the military that's close to the regime would be completely eliminated.
And I'm pretty sure that the regime itself would be completely eliminated.
So, think of the clarity of the current situation.
The clarity of the situation is that the Iranian people have now three options.
Number one is to go along with whatever peace plan gets revealed.
I think in June they're going to unveil the administration's peace plan.
So option one is to go along with some kind of a peace plan, which is the last thing they want to do, because I'm sure that involves not funding their proxies and really not doing any of the things they're doing.
Probably means some retreating from territory.
It's probably a lot of stuff they don't want to do.
Option two, have their economy completely destroyed.
Completely destroyed. Option three, have their country, in terms of the ruling class of the country, completely destroyed.
Three options.
Complete destruction of your leadership, as in dead, Complete destruction of your economy, as in, we're not just taking it down 10%, you just won't have money.
The economy will just be gone.
Or three, play along with some kind of a peace deal that probably would be good for everybody.
Now, the only way you could ever imagine that Iran would agree to anything Would be with this level of clarity.
Anything short of the level of clarity I just described, and I think it's just as clear to the Iranians, I think that that's our best possible situation.
Now, I see somebody saying, you are not being realistic.
I'm not telling you that the peace plan is going to succeed.
That would be kind of unrealistic.
I am telling you that the clarity of the way in which we're dealing with Iran is unprecedented.
We've never had this kind of clarity.
And clarity goes a long way for this stuff.
The best thing you can do is find some clarity.
And Trump has definitely found it.
So, this is why I think...
That Trump will be seen as the model for how to do this stuff in the future.
Because of the clarity of it.
Completely black and white. Alright, let's talk about something else.
Why is it that we're not seeing as many images from the border?
Have you noticed that? We keep hearing about the immigration problem getting worse and worse and worse and worse.
But I don't see that many pictures anymore.
It seems as though the news, and maybe both sides of the news, are downplaying the border stuff.
Why is that? Now, it could be because it became bipartisan in a sort of weird way.
The border problem started as, you know, the Democrats say, well, it's not that much of a problem.
It's not that much of a problem.
So let it, you know, just let it go the way it is.
And then the Republicans say, it's a big problem.
But now it's obvious that it's a big problem to everybody.
And so under those conditions, it feels like maybe the news doesn't need to cover it so much because we don't know what to do, except we need to do something better.
And so that's our situation.
So I think it's just left the news because the Democrats don't have anything to complain about.
And the Trump administration is...
I'm just looking at all your comments about my microphone.
Let me tell you that I'm not going to change it.
So it is what it is.
If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
So you don't need to tell me anymore.
I saw that Beto is going hard for impeachment.
He's going hard for impeachment.
And I was watching him and I thought, he doesn't even seem close to being a viable candidate.
Doesn't even seem close.
And I'm also going to officially revise my prediction.
Are you ready? So I had a prediction months ago, maybe six months ago, that Harris, Kamala Harris, was the strongest candidate for the Dems, and that she was the most likely to be a risk to Trump.
I have now watched Kamala Harris in action.
I've seen her proposals.
I've watched her interact on camera.
She is one of just about the worst candidates I've ever seen.
How in the world did she even get elected senator?
Am I wrong?
She seems awkward.
She seems uncomfortable in her own skin.
She's got policies that only sound crazy and impractical.
And she has added nothing interesting.
She's boring and terrible at the same time.
And for a long time, I thought she was their best hope.
And so I'm starting to understand why the Democrats are pushing Biden, who on paper seems like the least likely person who could beat Trump.
This is my opinion, He's provocative.
He knows how to use social media.
If you just start with Trump and one by one you pick off all of the qualities that are good about him and you just remove them from Trump, what's left is Biden.
Biden is like the frame that you build a Trump on.
Biden is the boring nothing that he could not be a worse matchup.
And I'm not, I don't think that I'm exaggerating right now when I tell you that it seems to be some kind of a strategy by the press to give Biden less time to talk on television.
Am I wrong? Because it seems to me that Biden would be doing TV interviews just every day.
Like every day, there'd be a sit-down, a one-on-one, because you could get all kinds of attention doing that way, doing that, and Biden is in a campaign.
Why would he not want more attention?
I'll tell you why.
I'm pretty sure that the press has figured out that the more we hear from Biden, the less we like him.
The more he talks, the worse he is.
So I don't think the president has anything that looks like a threat out of the entire field unless there's somebody who emerges who has not yet emerged.
So I would say I would rule out Buttigieg, rule out Beto, rule out Harris.
Biden might get the nomination because somebody's got to get the nomination, but he's certainly not competitive with Trump unless something really big changes between now and then.
So, who's left?
I've already sort of run out of names of people who are serious looking, at least.
And I don't think...
So, I don't know.
We may see somebody who's lower in the pack, at lower than 2% approval, who might rise.
But the slaughter meter is at 140%.
There's a story on Fox News about how their votes have been more independent than people thought.
So here's a little surprise for you.
It turns out that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, both what we assumed would be very At least on small stuff.
When I say small stuff, I mean, the Supreme Court is continually dealing with issues that you and I never hear about.
You know, stuff about Indian, I'm sorry, Native American tribes and stuff like that.
But apparently Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have voted on different sides on several issues.
So they are less predictable than we imagine.
Yeah, I see people asking about Tulsi Gabbard and Yang, Amy Klobuchar.
Klobuchar just doesn't have the personality.
Yang is interesting, but he's a bit of a technician.
In other words, he's got tons of policies and almost all of them sound interesting.
If you were going to have a conversation, you know, sit down and have coffee with one of the candidates, Yang might be the most interesting one.
Maybe Buttigieg. Buttigieg would be pretty interesting.
But if you had to sit down and actually spend some time, if you had to spend an hour with one of the candidates, who would you spend time with?
Well, I could talk all day with Yang.
Like, I mean, I could just talk all day with that guy because he's got all kinds of interesting ideas.
They may be good, they may be bad, but that's just like my ideas.
He has lots of them. And Buttigieg would probably be interesting discussing It'd be funny.
But I can't imagine spending an hour with Beto, can you?
Could you imagine spending an hour, just you, at lunch, and it's just the one candidate on the other side of the table, and you have to spend an hour just making conversation?
Could you make an hour of conversation with Beto?
That would be painful.
Or Klobuchar? Ugh.
I don't know if I could spend time with him.
So anyway, they've got a real charisma gap on that side.
All right. Turns out that four in ten Americans like some form of socialism.
Ah, your hair's on fire.
Four out of ten Americans like some form of socialism.
What does it all mean?
Ah, what does it all mean?
Nothing. Nothing at all.
This whole socialism versus no socialism is the biggest phony...
The whole conversation is phony.
Because it's all about definitions of a word.
It's not about...
It's not about content.
It's about what words mean.
So when people say that...
So when the poll says that 4 out of 10 Americans like some form of socialism, is that they like things the way they are.
Because the way things are is we have some form of socialism.
We've got Social Security and Medicare and stuff like that.
So, should we be surprised that a system that's working pretty well, a 4 out of 10, will like it?
It doesn't mean anything.
It just means they have a different definition of what the word means in others.
Now, when I hear The anti-socialist argue against socialism.
I always, I have the same reaction, which is, I'm sure there's a good argument against socialism.
I'm sure that exists.
Because socialism has never worked.
And capitalism has worked very well.
So I'm sure that somebody can come up with a But I haven't heard it.
And again, let me be very clear.
I think socialism is a big mistake.
But why can't anybody make a convincing argument against it?
What's up with that? Well, part of the reason is socialism isn't one thing.
It's sort of like finding a cure for cancer.
Remember when you were a kid, those of you who were older, you thought, well, I hope science comes up with a cure for cancer.
The reason the science can't come up with a cure for cancer is that cancer isn't one thing.
It's like hundreds or thousands of things that they just put in this label.
So even if you could cure one kind, and we're pretty good at treating specific kinds of cancers now, it doesn't cure cancer because it's just this one little thing.
So socialism is like that.
There are all kinds of different ways you can do it.
So if you say socialism is good or bad, you're not really saying anything.
So whoever is arguing socialism is good is saying nothing.
Whoever says socialism is bad is saying nothing.
It's a conversation between two nothings.
That's why neither side is persuasive, because it's a nothing arguing against nothing.
If you can't define exactly what socialism is, you can't really compare it to anything.
It's a nothing compared to a nothing.
And yet we get all worked up about, oh, this nothing is much better than this other nothing that I haven't defined and could be anything.
So, the best I've heard is when people say, hey, when you consolidate power...
Excuse me. When you consolidate power, you get every bad thing that human beings do when they have too much power.
It sounds reasonable, right?
If you consolidate power, then whoever's the boss of whatever that power structure is has too much power.
And then when people have too much power, you don't have competition and there's corruption.
But, do we see that with Medicare?
Do you see a lot of headlines that say, Medicare has resulted in what?
Aren't people pretty happy with it?
What's the biggest problem with Social Security?
Well, it's hard to pay for, but we seem to have figured it out so far.
So, where is the Social Security corruption that's destroying the country?
If you're going to make an argument against socialism and it's about centralizing power corrupts things, you'd better give me some examples of American centralized power that corrupted.
Did Medicare become corrupt?
Did Social Security become corrupt?
There's a math problem of who pays for it, and if you have enough young people to pay for the old people, then those are real problems.
But they have nothing to do with socialism versus capitalism.
They're simply sort of functional detail problems.
Somebody's saying the VA. Perfect example.
So the Veterans Administration was corrupt because it had sort of a centralized control.
How easily it was fixed.
Well, I don't know if it's been fixed, but at least they could address the subject.
By giving, apparently veterans now have an option of getting private care if they would have waited too long for the Veterans Association, Administration, Veterans Administration.
So when you see so many examples of where you can add a little market pressure to the public option, that's not exactly socialism, is it?
Is the Veterans Administration socialism when all the president had to do was say, okay, you veterans, you can also use private stuff and, you know, so now you've got some competition in a sense.
I don't know. Yeah, I'm not saying the Veterans Administration is fixed, but they've at least tried to address some of the problems.
And even if you say that the Veterans Administration is a good example of centralized power going wrong, Don't we have lots of examples of decentralized power going wrong?
Take, for example, social media.
Social media operates in almost an entirely capitalist structure, and it's a big frickin' problem.
So did capitalism make social media work really well?
Businesses are very robust.
They make a lot of money, they employ a lot of people, they develop technology.
So in those ways, all great.
But they also created some real social problems, as in nearly eliminating free speech, effectively.
Even though free speech is about governments, not private companies, the effect of it is pretty darn bad.
So when people argue that capitalism is good and socialism is bad, That's really just two nothings being compared because those are such vague concepts.
You really need to look at the specific.
You need to look at the specific.
Likewise, when we're looking at healthcare, it probably would be a bad idea to have the government making decisions about healthcare.
But would it be socialism if the government simply was one of the customers for healthcare?
Because we could have an option where you could have the government health care and the government would be paying that insurance at the same time that people are using the public competitive market and they could be in the market at the same time.
Would that be socialism?
So here's my statement.
People are trying to win the socialism argument by first of all saying socialism Some other example from Venezuela, etc.
I don't think Venezuela's problem was socialism.
I realize that's an unpopular thing to say here.
Let me ask you if you think that's the case.
I'm no expert on Venezuela.
But I'm watching that situation and it doesn't look to me that the problem was socialism.
It looked like the problem was the leaders.
I've got a dictator problem. Am I wrong about that?
Am I wrong that Venezuela's problem was a dictator?
Now, a dictator chose socialist policies, etc., which ruined everything.
But it wasn't the socialism that ruined it.
It was the dictator.
The dictator made nothing, you know, nothing would have worked with that dictator.
Somebody says, God damn it, Scott.
Venezuela has to be in the state it is because of socialism.
Really? Well, let me ask you this.
Let's say Venezuela had an enlightened leader.
That enlightened leader said, well, we can't go full socialism because it wouldn't work.
But what we will do is make sure all of you have good health care.
Would that be the end of Venezuela?
Do you think Venezuela could not have provided health care to its citizens and just kept everything else the same, you know, capitalists, businesses, etc.?
Of course it could. So when you say to me that socialism ruined Venezuela, that is so dishonest.
It's either uninformed or dishonest, if I'm being blunt.
It's dishonest because there's no such thing as socialism.
There are lots of different things you can do within socialism.
The United States does a number of them, and it has not destroyed the United States.
Venezuela, likewise, could have done some socialist things, and they would still be a fine, vibrant country with a great economy.
They did too many of the wrong things, and they had a dictator and God knows whatever other problems.
But blaming it all on socialism is so simplistic, that's just a talking point from the news.
I've said before that the news assigns you to your opinions, and that we don't have independent opinions.
Everybody here who reflexively says, socialism ruined Venezuela, You have been brainwashed.
That's it. There is no logic to that thought.
It is a completely baseless, irrational statement that socialism ruined Venezuela.
And I don't even know much about Venezuela, but that much is obvious.
Because socialism hasn't ruined most of the European countries who have a little bit of socialism.
I've seen people tentatively say, I actually agree with you on this.
And you see people being a little bit hesitant to say that in public.
Because when you hear me explain it, are you mad that you've been told that socialism destroyed Venezuela?
Is anybody actually mad that they've been told that?
And it's just so obviously not true.
Because socialism isn't a thing.
It's a whole bunch of things.
And if they'd done the right things and a few things, they'd be fine.
Just like the United States.
We did some socialist things.
We didn't go too far.
And we're fine.
So, don't let yourself be fooled by that socialism versus bad socialism.
Bad government killed Venezuela beginning and end of story.
Bad government. Dictator.
That's it. Corruption and whatever things that that dictator allowed.
Somebody's saying define socialism, which is my point exactly.
If you can't define it, you don't have anything to say about it.
All right, I'm going to take some questions.
I'm going to open it up here because I promised I would.
Let's see who looks interesting.
I'm only going to take questions from people who show their face and real name.
Okay? So let's see what Thomas has to say.
Thomas, Thomas, can you hear me?
Thomas, Thomas?
Hello? Do you have a question, Thomas?
No, it's Steve, but anyway, can you hear me?
Yeah. Oh, okay.
Can you hear me? Do you have a question?
Yeah, my question is, well, actually I want to throw out a fact first and It's about healthcare.
And in the 60s, healthcare was 5% of the GDP. Today, it's 18%.
Of course, that adjusts for inflation, you know, in that it's in the GDP. And my question is, isn't that number enough an indication that...
Something is seriously wrong with health care?
No, it's an indication that things are seriously right.
The primary reason, in my opinion, that health care is so much higher as a percentage of GDP than it used to be is we can do so many things.
So we have drugs we didn't used to have, so in the old days you didn't have to spend money on drugs that didn't exist.
We had procedures that you couldn't do, operations that we'd never thought of, you know, scanning devices that didn't exist.
Yeah, going from whatever you said, 5% of GDP to 18% feels to me exactly what a healthy society should look like.
We should be inventing new expensive things that will come down in price over time, but Each time we come up with a new way to keep people healthy, we always would choose a little extra expense to keep these extra people alive or healthy, especially since these extra people could be us.
But that's a good question.
Thank you. Well, I would kind of respond with this.
It seems to me that, well, for example, I think Somewhere I read 97% of the top 100 selling drugs don't cure, they only relieve symptoms.
Things also that kind of concern me include, I'm a little confused about what the FDA requires to approve a drug above the placebo effect, which It seems to me it could be just a single digit because my reading just says it has to be statistically significant.
I'm just wondering if, you know, I mean, I understand your point about technology has improved, but during that same period from the 60s to today, the healthcare industry also had the huge improvement in computer technology.
So I just...
That's right. So working against us is a lack of price transparency.
And I think that the lack of price transparency and the lack of competitive forces throughout the whole healthcare industry is what the administration is actually working on directly.
So that is what they're focusing on.
Yeah, which I support 100%, by the way.
I'm going to move on to another caller.
Just keep things going.
Thanks so much. Let's see.
Let's bring someone else in.
Let's go with...
No, I'm not going with that.
Let's go with Jacob. And when Jacob's on here, we'll see what Jacob has to say.
Jacob? Jacob? Are you there?
Good.
How are you?
Do you have a question?
He said something kind of poignant here.
He said, where is that for the rural areas of our country?
And especially where we live, the rural areas are, there's no work, no money, and they're just falling into darkness and despair.
Along with that comes drugs and crime.
And the strange fact is that the majority of the countries, U.S., Canada, are rural.
There's only a couple cities, right?
And all these people just, they're running out of hope.
Yeah, you're right.
We don't want to forget the rural communities.
The Blight Authority concentrates where there's a very specific problem and this, you know, it's a whole different dynamic once you get out of the city.
We need a lot there.
You know, I had an idea that I want to trot out to your question.
Please do. Suppose, it seems to me that we should be able to develop a kit Such that one or two people working together without a lot of tools could build a small single-story structure that they could live in.
I can't imagine why we can't make, you know, essentially bricks that just fit together with a plan, have a few different designs.
So that you can just very easily run cable, run plumbing, and any person could do it just watching a YouTube video for the work that you need to do that day, and it says, okay, take these pipes that are labeled over there and put them together like you see on the video, and that's all you're doing today.
It seems to me that you can get people to be able to build their own homes.
Now, here's the full idea.
Let's take the Blight Authority, but there's so That is either free or close to free because it's sort of worthless.
Suppose you took these properties, you put it in government control, which is easy to do because, again, it's free or foreclosed or close to free.
And then you say, for each person who fits a certain profile, they've got to apply for this, they're going to get a free piece of land to build on.
And here's the fun part.
They get a second free piece of land next to it to build an income property.
In other words, they can build a second home, once they've built their own home with their own hands, the second one they can rent or sell.
So that everybody who gets two pieces of land next to each other, because again, the land is almost free because nobody wanted it, they get one they can build on and one that they can turn into an income property that would make the cost of their building much lower.
It seems to me that you could come up with I think we're good to go.
I think we're good to go.
To raise a roof with just two people and pulleys and some platforms.
Certainly you could figure out plumbing that you don't have to be a trained plumber to do.
You could have inspectors who are checking in at each step to make sure that you've sealed things right and you've done it right.
Yeah, so people are telling me that Sears sold these homes before, etc.
But I'm pretty sure you could build a model where you would basically use the pioneering instinct.
You would get people to build their own homes and then they would have a reason to want that home in good shape because it's next to their income property and they could build that next.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and you're right.
It's not just a place to live in the rural areas.
You're right that there is an economic element, absolutely, because you just don't have the jobs or the opportunity, etc.
So I like that idea of having one element, which is your home to live, and the other, which is your income element.
Yeah, and the second place could be your place of business.
So let's say you're doing manicures or hair or something else, you know, while you're building it, maybe you use that as your place of business, etc.
So I think there are models in which people can sort of work their way into better situations, but they have not been developed.
A lot of people are saying Sears tried Kit Homes, which they did.
It's been tried in other countries and didn't work.
Everything that I've seen was a very bad try.
And I always warn people, don't compare the bad try to what a good try could look like.
The airplane didn't work until the airplane worked.
Everything before the Wright Brothers was a disaster.
Then it just got better after that.
So I would say that the idea of a kit home Was poorly done in the past, but does not predict what you could do in the future if you had a better block design.
I don't think we've designed them right yet.
All right. Thank you for the question.
Take care. We'll move on to one more.
Let's do one more question.
Really, there's not a single woman who wants to ask a question.
I was trying to mix it up, but I'm going to go with...
Tom, I think. No, not Tom.
Let's see who we've got here.
Tom, how are you? On the healthcare stuff especially, so I own a small healthcare company myself and we work with almost all entirely private insurers.
I also went to business school.
I did a double degree thing out of UCLA and the National University of Singapore.
I spent a lot of time living overseas.
And I would ask if you or maybe some of the other viewers here have a lot of knowledge about Singapore's healthcare system.
Actually, Michael Malice talks about this in his new book, where it's very much a public-private partnership.
Singapore has aspects that are very socialist in some ways, and obviously some ways even totalitarian, but it's also hyper-capitalist in many ways as well.
So I'm kind of curious if you've looked into that or maybe some of the other guests here.
Yeah, I have not looked into it, but if what you're saying is that it's a hybrid of some kind of government, probably a government safety net, but they make sure there's a lot of competitive elements within the market, that's what you're saying essentially?
Is that the big picture?
Not only that, yes, but also prices for procedures and drugs are clearly posted.
I've used the healthcare system there as a foreigner, as a student, for an urgent situation that I had, and what would have cost probably several thousand dollars cost me about, I think, 70?
Semi-Singapore dollars, too.
And these are for minor things, but also for the big ones, too.
And they have exceptionally low taxes, but also the standard of living is very high, and cost of living is very high as well, though.
So that's something to think about.
But Singapore is my second favorite country in the world.
I think you guys should take a look at it.
I like that idea.
I'm going to take you off now, but thank you for that.
I like the idea...
And follow me, Scott! Okay.
So we always talk about the current healthcare system versus a single payer, and it seems to me the obvious, the most obvious There's probably something where the...
I'm just going to get rid of all the people who say the mic doesn't work.
There's probably something that makes the government And there's still plenty of competition.
So I think that's where it's going to end up.
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