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May 4, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
53:00
Episode 953 Scott Adams: I Score President Trump's Coronavirus Performance, 4th Branch of Government, Solve Some Hoaxes and More
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Time Text
Hey Carl, come on in.
Do you know what time it is?
It's whiteboard o'clock.
No, it's better than that.
It's double whiteboard time.
Yeah, two whiteboards.
One on each side.
It's going to blow your mind.
Full of tantalizing and provocative ideas that are going to make you think, make you hate, make you cry.
Well, probably won't make you cry.
Might make you do those other things, though.
Let's talk about some stuff that's happened since the last time I saw you.
Well, I went shopping today.
Pretty big news.
Yes, yes, I did. Put on my mask.
Went to the grocery store.
I have not been to anything like a building with a ceiling or anything except my house in quite a while.
And I gotta tell you, I was thinking, you know, I was thinking to myself, How bad is it going to be, shopping at the grocery store?
It's going to be like some kind of dystopian nightmare, water world, end of the world, hellscape kind of situation.
But I had optimistically been saying, in general, that there might be some things that end up better.
After the virus crisis, there might be some things that we say, hey, let's just rethink this from scratch, because we wouldn't ordinarily, but since everything's broken, let's rethink everything.
And let me tell you, I just had the best grocery shopping experience of my life, and I just wanted to continue.
Let me tell you how good this was.
As I approached the front door, There were carts right by the door.
There have never been carts right by the door.
Usually you have to go hike over yonder and get yourself a cart.
But they were right by the door for the first time.
Not only were they by the door, but two very nice employees with masks were sterilizing them as the other customers dropped them off.
So for the first time in my life, I picked up a sterilized, freshly sterilized cart right by the door.
How happy was I? Before I've even walked in the door, I said to myself, I can't go back.
I can't go back to the days of grimy, everybody's touched this cart, I don't know which baby has drooled on it.
I can't go back to that.
But I figure, okay, but sure, there's one thing that's good about it.
But the rest of the shopping experience is going to be tough.
So I got ready.
Now, I know most of you have been shopping already, but, you know, I've been hiding for a few months.
So it's the first time I've been in the store.
So I go in, and I notice, first of all, that everybody has a mask on, including me, as they should.
And I said to myself, will this be the first time I've ever purchased groceries?
That didn't have a thousand people's human spittle on them?
And I thought, I think it is.
This might be my first spittle-free shopping experience of all time.
I don't have, you know, Howie Mandel OCD. I can shake hands.
I'm pretty anxious to wash my hands soon after shaking hands.
But I'm not, you know, I'm not too concerned about germs and whatnot.
I have a healthy regard for them.
But I have to tell you, having now shopped in a store where all the employees and the other customers had masks on, I don't want to go back.
I mean, I really don't want to go back.
I mean, a lot. I mean, I'm not even joking.
If we could always wear a mask in the grocery store, I'd just keep mine in the glove compartment of my car.
I'll wear my damn mask.
As long as you get all those other yahoos to wear a mask, and all of my food will have, you know, only the pesticides on it that I like so much and not the human spittle.
So now I've got this sterilized cart.
I think I'm in heaven.
Didn't even have to walk to get it.
There's no spittle on my food.
Wait, it gets better. This gets better.
They're limiting the size of the crowds.
Right. I didn't even have to fight for anything.
Nobody was in front of me.
Oh, sure, there were some people passing by, but they weren't much in my business.
And then I got to check out.
And they've marked the floor.
I tweeted it, you know, and apparently a number of stores are doing this.
So they marked the floor with squares so you know what square to stand on so that you're six feet away from the next customer in line.
And people were actually using it.
And I thought to myself, oh my god, I'd never have to be crowded again.
I'd never have to have the The six-year-old who pushes the mom's car into the back of my ankle while I'm waiting to pay for the groceries, I'll never have that feeling again of being just sort of pushed and somebody's breathing down my neck and I'm a little tight and I'm all a little squeezed in there.
I'll never have that again.
I can stand six feet away from the nearest person.
I've never been happier.
Wait, it gets better.
It gets better. One of my pet peeves is that they'll always ask me if I want a paper bag or plastic.
I always say plastic because the paper bags, the handles break off.
And I like to be able to, you know, pick up like two in each hand and you can only do that with the plastic ones.
Now it turns out That they only have the plastic ones because the paper bags are kind of less...
I guess they're less good or something.
So every time that I would go into Safeway, I would say, I'd like a plastic bag, please.
What do you think they say when there are two choices and you pick one of them, clearly and without even being asked?
I would like the plastic bags, please.
Well, 75% of the time, this is what would happen.
This is time passing.
What kind of bag would you like?
Plastic or paper? I just said plastic.
But of course, they do this all day long.
And they forget what you said and it runs in with the last 400 people they waited on.
So they do have to ask again.
I totally get that.
But... As the customer, what is better?
Not having to answer it?
Or not having to answer it twice?
Sometimes three times.
Sometimes the banger will come up and I'll have to answer the same question for the third time.
Yep, still a plastic bag.
Just like the last two times I was weighing in on this question.
But now, no paper bags.
Just plastic. Again, one of the biggest annoyances of shopping.
Wiped away. I go out to the parking lot.
I was parked right next to the cart area where you take the carts back because the store wasn't that full.
Just the best shopping experience of all time.
I hope it never goes back.
Anyway, that's not what I came here to talk about.
Let's check your hoax detection equipment.
How many of you fell for the hoax that was going around the internet recently that said that the CDC mysteriously and quietly cut the number of people they estimated dying from coronavirus from the 60-some thousand to 30-some thousand, effectively cutting it in half?
How many believed that hoax that was going around for the last couple of days?
If you believe that one, You sort of need to check your hoax detector.
Here's what you should have known right away.
If that had been real, it turns out it was just people were looking at a page that showed, I don't know, partial data or for less than the entire period, so it wasn't what people thought it was.
But if you believe that the CDC quietly cut the number in half, you would have to ask yourself why none of the major news sources are reporting it.
Because it would be the biggest story in the country immediately.
So if you waited a few hours, you know, the first few hours, you might say to yourself, hey, they haven't covered it yet.
Maybe they're looking into it.
But after about a day has gone by, and neither CNN nor Fox News nor Breitbart nor Hoffman Post nor anybody, if nobody's covered it and it's only on Twitter, it probably didn't happen.
of.
So if you're one of the people who got taken in by that, the test that you should have put on it is that there's no major news source reporting it.
If even one of them reported it, then you'd be on at least reasonable grounds because a major news source was agreeing with you.
That doesn't mean it was true, but at least you'd have a little bit of support.
Alright, I'm going to give a Trump report card on how he's done on this coronavirus business.
Are you ready for this? Are you ready?
Controversy. Provocative.
Hope you can handle it.
I know you can. Alright, let's see how Trump did on...
I tried to break it into sort of logical categories.
And let's see how he did.
How did he do on early awareness?
It was reported that his security briefings, which they say he doesn't read or pay attention to, that they had been warning him for, I don't know, weeks and weeks about this coronavirus.
Is that true?
Probably. Here's the context.
A lot of people get warned, well, the president gets warned about a lot of stuff when it's just sort of an early indication.
That doesn't mean he needs to do something.
His experts were telling him he didn't need to worry.
So, early awareness, I give the president, who is not himself an expert on virology, an A, because he took it seriously at exactly the same time as the top experts in the world.
Fauci, Birx, etc.
So he didn't take it seriously before they did.
That would be bad performance.
Nor did he take it Not take it seriously after they talk to him and talk to him.
So the best you could perform as a non-expert is that you got it as early as the experts got it.
Now should the experts have gotten it much earlier, yes, but they have an excuse too because China may have been concealing some of the information, but even still, maybe the experts could have been a little bit more on the ball You can imagine the experts only get a, I don't know, a C, would you say?
Grade of a C. Because even though China was hiding the information, there should have been enough warning signs, it feels like, that the experts should have seen this a little bit earlier.
But not the president.
Not the politicians.
I wouldn't put anybody else in that category either.
Because if they took the same path as the experts did, that's as good as the politician can do.
And Trump closed travel early.
I think he deserves credit for that.
Now, we're all getting tired of him reminding us of that, but it's also completely fair.
I think it's completely fair.
To say that he took an action that was super unpopular.
And I don't think there were many people in the room who agreed with it when he did it.
So that's an A+. Probably his best grade is that.
And you can't take that away from him.
I'm going to give him some lower grades as we go.
So this isn't all going to be good news.
But I do agree that you just have to give him the A+. On that.
Closing the travel. Ventilators?
A plus. I'm going to say A plus.
Now you could argue, hey, where were all the ventilators ahead of time?
But I would argue that being prepared means that you don't run out of ventilators.
Did we run out of ventilators?
We did not. Did we have extra ventilators?
In the long run, we did.
So I would say that the president, you know, you could argue that he should have had a warehouse, a bunch of warehouse of ventilators.
But nobody else did.
Were there other countries that had warehouses full of ventilators?
The fact that he got private industry to whip up a bunch of ventilators, in fact, so many of them that we have three times more than we'll need, I've got to say, pretty good.
I'm going to give him an A for ventilators.
Because I don't think it was reasonable that he knew we would need so many ventilators.
That's a hard ask to think that the president knew that.
But we were prepared enough to respond to it.
So I give him an A. And also American industry.
Now there's a real question whether it was ever important.
I mean, there's a real question whether the ventilators are hurting people more than they're helping.
And those are good questions.
But it was identified at one point as being critical.
The president made it happen.
We have triple the ventilators we need.
A+. My biggest complaint with PPE is that we didn't have visibility.
We couldn't tell if we had enough, where we had enough, etc.
I would say that after an initial bad start, it looks like we have enough.
So it looks like whatever the governments were doing, the states were doing most of the buying, the federal government was backstopping it.
I would say that this was a little bit of a Closer to a pass-fail situation.
If you run out of PPE, you failed.
If you didn't run out, well, I think you passed.
So I'm not sure that's a...
I'd give it an A, B, or C, or D, whatever.
It feels like that was pass-fail, and it passed.
In the end, we have enough.
And I think that they did a lot of smart stuff.
And I think that they spared nothing to get it done.
And I think that also I would give him an A for cutting red tape.
It seems to me that there was a tremendous amount of red tape that just got washed off just with the brush of a hand, and it hasn't come back to bite us.
So far, knock on wood, so far there's no damage from any red tape that got cut that we know of.
Now, I would say that you could argue that the PPP payments Didn't have the controls they needed up front, but we quickly are adjusting.
It looks like, you know, there's some clawing back of the money, etc.
And I've told you from the start that when everything is sort of a time of war and it's fog of war and you've never done things before, that the way you should judge everything is how quickly you can correct.
How do you respond to something that didn't work?
And I would always look at that over the first attempt, because the first attempt sometimes is a guess in these murky situations.
Did Trump take expert advice?
Yes. In fact, Trump has taken expert advice so clearly and, I would say, in such a consistent and dedicated manner That it's even becoming a problem.
Because there are some people who wish he were not taking their advice and maybe could loosen things up and go back to work.
But if you have to say, does the leader take the advice of experts?
Yes. If you think that's important, you could argue whether he should or not.
That's a separate argument, don't you think?
But you can't argue that he is and that you can't argue that the That the population of the United States, by an overwhelming majority, wants that to happen.
So most of the country wants it to happen.
He did it. I give him an A. A. Alright, financial relief?
It's harder for me to judge.
I would say again, the smart thing that's happening is I would say...
That Steve Mnuchin is very qualified, as far as I can tell.
If anybody has a counter-argument to that, I'll listen to it.
But every time I see Mnuchin do something, I feel like he's good at this.
Am I wrong? I feel like he's sort of the right guy in the right place at the right time.
So that's great.
But Congress has a big role in this.
It's not all Trump or Mnuchin.
And I think that there were some missteps and it was slow and it's, you know, clunky and didn't get to the right people and stuff.
But a lot of that is just built into how hard it is.
It was just a hard problem with a very short deadline.
So how do you grade somebody who is just part of a lot of people?
You know, Trump isn't Congress, Trump isn't Mnuchin, but Mnuchin works for him.
So what's Trump's grade for a Sort of a messy process.
I'd say the process itself, I'd give a solid B plus to, again using the same standard, which is that it was very messy when it started, but did they adjust?
And it looks like they did. It looked like there were lots and lots of adjustments, and it looks like they're still adjusting and will continue to adjust.
So as long as you see them monitoring and adjusting, That feels like the right stuff, right?
Feels like they've got a system that makes sense.
You don't know how quickly things should have been, you know, would some other president have gotten a different result?
You don't know. So I'm going to say that's at least a B, but that's, you know, also involved Congress, etc.
But it's at least a B. Testing, I would give a near-failing grade.
I would say a D, maybe, generously.
A D as in dog.
So this is probably the worst area.
Not only because we don't have much visibility, but...
I'm just annoyed at this part.
I saw Senator John Corden.
He was tweeting how...
The U.S. had done, I don't know, 6.7 million tests.
And that was a lot.
And we tested more than anybody has ever tested.
But if you dig down just a little bit, you know, and you factor in the fact that our population is large compared to most, We really haven't done much testing, and I can't tell you that we have a plan to do more testing, or enough testing. Obviously, there'll be more.
But we don't really have any visibility on it, and I don't think we're close.
And even Bill Gates said, no, we're not even prioritizing things right to be useful.
So I would say testing would be, that's the lowest grade.
I would say the therapeutics and the vaccines, it does look like the federal government is doing...
Oh, one more thing about testing.
The president has said that that was the state's responsibility and helped them know what resources were available for the states to contact, you know, in terms of labs and getting test kits and stuff like that, which I don't think was as helpful as it could have been.
So even though you would say, well, that was more what the states were supposed to do, You can't blame Trump.
He's the federal government.
But I can, because it's an emergency.
So in an emergency, there's no such thing really as job responsibility.
You know, not really.
If the federal government can do something that can't be done by others, and I think that was the case with testing, then they sort of are obliged to do it because emergency, right?
You know, you just are obliged to do it because you can.
So that's a low grade.
I think the therapeutics and the vaccines, I don't know, we'll see.
We haven't seen anything yet, so it's hard to give a grade for that.
But it does look like the federal government is clearing the deck and doing everything it can to make it easy.
So I would say of the things we know they've done, probably A, probably really good.
Psychology, I would say the president does a good job on this, of being optimistic.
And keeping the economy talked up while still being realistic enough, you know, in terms of his actions.
So I think that the president actually hits a really good balance And he's blamed for being too optimistic, and he definitely was in the early days of the coronavirus, so I think he was too optimistic early on, as often is pointed out.
But at the moment, he's hitting a really good note of, yeah, you know, it's tough, every life is important, but we're on the good side of this.
You know, he's just, it's exactly what you need right now.
So I give him an A for managing the economy and our stress, In terms of how we're thinking about it.
I don't think he gets enough credit for that.
I think the federal government did a good job with the guidelines, even if you don't love them.
I love the fact that the federal government said, hey, states, let us take the heat.
We'll do these guidelines.
You can have a little bit of flexibility within it, but we'll take the heat.
So as long as you stay within these, I think that was really, really smart.
So I'm not going to say it was Trump's idea necessarily to have guidelines.
I doubt it was. I hate that this is so nerdy and wonky and it's like a cubicle point.
It's like guy in cubicle kind of a point.
But I think these guidelines were a huge hit in the sense that they really let everybody focus and understand what mattered.
Now you could argue about the details of it, but just the fact that they executed it as well as they did, I think really strong.
I'd give it an A. On messaging, I think the president's been spotty.
You know, his whole disinfectant thing, I thought he could have cleaned that up and he didn't.
I thought a lot of his press conferences could have been shorter.
Now it looks like he's adjusted now and I think he's on the right track.
He probably bragged a little bit too much in some of them when we just wanted to hear what the numbers were.
And I thought that the communication about the Sufficiency of the PPE and all that stuff.
I thought that was terrible. So I would say that the president always hits Home runs, but he had a lot of strikeouts, too.
So he was sort of Babe Ruth on this one.
You know, Babe Ruth, I think, had records for home runs, but also strikeouts, because he would swing for the fence so much.
So those are my grades.
So I would say, overall, the president gets strong grades.
Now, some of you are going to say, but, but, but, but.
You know, should we be going back to work?
And didn't he take it too seriously?
And some of you say, not seriously enough.
Maybe. But he is following the experts.
And if you were just going to grade the President's performance on coronavirus, I'd say quite strong.
Unless you think testing is the key, in which case, quite bad.
All right, but here's a fun point.
I tweeted earlier that Twitter has become the fourth branch of government.
And what I mean by that is that Twitter acts as a check and balance on the other parts of government, and also on the press.
So in the old days, the press and the government, who often worked together a little too well, could control what you do.
And if it didn't come through the news, and it didn't come from the government, well, how would you know what was happening?
But because Twitter allows everybody to be weaponized, you know, just yesterday, I think, the Tara Reid story, Tara Reid gave some interview or something, the AP published a headline, and within a minute, Tara Reid is reading the headline, gets on Twitter, And tweets that the headline is false.
Would you have known that without Twitter?
You heard it right from the actual source.
Now, there's more to this story, but that's not important to my point.
My point is that Twitter has allowed you to see behind the curtain because there's always somebody who was there.
The news can report one thing, but it takes five minutes to say, but I was there.
I was actually there, and that's not what happened.
So I think Twitter, somewhat accidentally, has evolved to be like a fourth branch of government.
Now, when I said that on Twitter, a lot of people said, hey, you can't say that because we didn't elect them.
They were not elected.
Twitter is not elected.
To which I say, have you heard of the Supreme Court?
They're not elected.
You could say, well, but they're appointed by people who are.
All right. But the point is, you know, we can make the government anything we want.
There's no rule that says every part of it has to be elected.
I would say that Twitter is essentially an extension of the population, the voters.
So the voters were always part of the Constitution.
The voters always had the right of free speech.
So Twitter is just magnifying really the power of the public to be a check and balance on the government.
But let's take that idea and take it to the coronavirus situation.
Here's the problem with our form of government at the moment.
Let's say our three branches of government.
Could the existing three branches of government Get us to a good outcome with the coronavirus.
I would say no.
I think you need a fourth branch of government, let's say Twitter, to get us a good result and here's why.
Because we have the wrong system for this specific problem.
Our system of government is really, really good for a bunch of stuff.
For example, if your country is attacked, your federal government is a really good choice For putting an army together to defend your country.
So federal government, real good on national defense and armies.
But the who decides depends on what the question is.
There are some things that are driven down to the city or the state, some things driven down to the individual, etc.
So the who decides is a big deal.
And this is more important because of the coronavirus story Somebody is going to have to die.
Meaning that no matter what we do in terms of either going back to work soon or not going back to work soon, those two decisions will determine who dies.
Not specifically, but it will determine which group gets the most impact.
So, name any elected official, given our three branches of government, tell me which official within our existing three branches is capable of making a public decision about which of these three groups is going to be the victim in order to get to the other side.
So do we make a decision that's bad for poor people?
Which elected official is going to do that?
I'd say none.
Which elected official is going to say, well, We're going to make some decisions.
It's going to be really bad for unhealthy people.
Nobody can do that.
Our system doesn't let you do that because you can never run for office again.
It's just impossible.
You couldn't do it. So you can't go after old people, unhealthy people, or poor people.
But this coronavirus situation, unfortunately, has put us in a situation where you absolutely have to choose.
You actually have to choose.
Are we going to screw the poor people, screw the unhealthy, screw the old?
And of course, there's lots of overlap, right?
The poor people have more health problems, so they're also unhealthy.
So which politician gets to decide who to screw?
We don't have that system.
And the problem is that leadership doesn't work for the coronavirus because no leader can say, yeah, I'm going to screw the poor people, but you old people and unhealthy people, you win.
It's the poor people who are going to have a problem.
Can't do it.
So what's the opposite of leaderships?
Since leadership can't work, And we have a system with three branches of government and leadership, and it's just the wrong system.
It can't make a decision like this.
So what's the opposite?
I don't know if this is a word, but let's call it a followership.
Maybe things depend on public opinion.
Maybe Twitter is a big part of that, because Twitter is building public opinion.
I'm sure even the...
The protests probably get organized on social media, probably a lot of them on Twitter.
So Twitter and opinion polls become sort of that fourth branch of government which can actually make these decisions.
Because Twitter is sort of forming its own opinion, if you will.
And people are starting to take matters into their own hands, if you will.
Now, What is it that gives any kind of government moral authority?
I would say that any government, no matter what level of government you're talking about, the only thing that gives them moral authority is capability.
If they demonstrate that they're capable, then people will say, ah, okay, you're capable.
I might be able to come up with some complaints about you.
I might not love what you do.
Maybe it's not what I would do, but I do admit that you're very capable of this.
And being capable is what gives you moral authority.
This assumes that your intentions are right as well.
And my point is that our federal government, and our government in general, is not capable of making a decision about who dies, except in terms of war, but that's a little more clear-cut.
Um, And so, I believe our government is losing moral authority, not because they're bad people, not because they don't try, not because they don't want to have a good outcome, not because they aren't bringing the best minds and the smartest people and the best experts in the world.
They're doing everything right.
I mean, everything that you can imagine they would do.
They're just the wrong tool for the job.
You can't ask your elected government in this democratic republic system, you just can't ask them to be a screwdriver when you need a hammer.
You know, it's just the wrong tool.
But who can you ask?
You can ask the public. You can ask the public, what do you want to do?
And then the public, because we are capable, will actually decide.
Now, it may not look like a vote with a majority or anything like that, but the public is going to start taking things into its own hands.
In other words, there is some point, and you're starting to see the first suggestions of it, there is a point at which the public will simply say, government, I gave you every chance, government, I gave you every chance, and I even allowed you moral authority.
Because in the initial stages, it appeared to us, us the public, that you were capable.
And in fact, the government did many things.
I just gave them high grades on a lot of them that were very capable.
In fact, nothing short of impressive.
Amazing, really. In some aspects, what the governments did, just amazing.
But... They are not capable of making the go-back-to-work decision in a way that allows them to keep their jobs, etc.
So the public is going to need to do that for them.
I've said it before in a weaker form.
Now I'm going to say it in a stronger form.
You, as a citizen of the United States, need to help your leaders.
You need to help your leaders follow you.
Because if you think it's time for the United States to go back to work, and your eyes are wide open, you know that you might die.
You know that somebody in your family might die.
As the president said tonight on his town hall, which I thought he did quite well.
I thought the town hall was a strong performance for the president.
But the president was noting that he knows personally three people.
I think he said three who have died from coronavirus.
And he said he'd lived his whole life and never heard anybody...
You know, who died of the regular flu.
And I've said the same thing.
Like, how can I get to this point in my life?
I don't know anybody who died of the flu.
But I'm hearing of all these people dying of coronavirus.
Even in my life, people, I'm hearing of them dying of it.
So, the president made that point.
I thought it was a good one.
Anyway. The public does get to decide this one.
You need to get to...
The public needs to get to the point where it's driving the car.
We're not quite there.
Because I don't think the public knows that it's gaining moral authority by the, let's say, imperfect actions of its government.
And I think where the governments lose their moral authority is in all these gray areas.
You know, it's sort of a gray area, isn't it?
Whether you can go to the beach or go to the park or go to a drive-in Church service or something?
I mean, you could say those are gray areas, but not really.
I think those have to default toward freedom.
Now that I've said that, let me tell you the worst argument I'm hearing for why we should be allowed to go back and do everything we want.
And that's the argument for freedom.
It's really a bad argument.
Freedom is the worst argument.
I'm saying it this way to get you all worked up before I tell you what I mean.
Yep, everybody was saying that we should go back to work, the government shouldn't stop us, it's our constitutional right, and it's about freedom.
That is the worst argument.
And again, I want to go back to work too, but safely.
I say that because I'm mocking people who say, but safely.
Like there's anybody who doesn't want to go back safely.
Is anybody on the other side?
Have you heard anybody say, I'd like to go back to work, but if we could find an unsafe way to do that, I think I'd choose that.
No! We all want to go back to work.
We all want to do it safely.
Maybe we could just stop saying it.
We don't need to say it anymore.
We've all said it.
Let's get back to work.
Anyway, freedom is the worst argument, and here is my argument.
Why? Because both sides are fighting for freedom.
Who in the world believes that the only people who want the freedom are the people marching?
Do you think that the governor doesn't want freedom?
Really? Do you think that all the people who think, well, maybe we should stay inside for another month, you don't think those people want freedom?
In what world is there only one side that wants freedom?
Can you at least admit That's the wrong frame.
It's not the freedom lovers versus the people who hate freedom.
That's the dumbest thing you could ever think about this.
What it is, is the people who think the best way to get to freedom is to just let us have it, let us go do our thing and suffer the consequences.
That's one version of freedom.
And the other people say, It's going to be a lot better freedom, like a real freedom, if we beat this thing with a little bit of stick-to-itiveness now.
Now, that might be right.
It might be wrong.
I personally am a little bit more aligned with the let's-get-going crowd.
At least the young people.
For God's sakes, let the young people go back to work.
That's just crazy. I don't know what.
I've never heard one argument for why the young people can't go to work.
And I think that has to do with the government being the wrong instrument as well.
Because I don't think the government can discriminate by age or health ability.
So that's another reason the government can't make the decision.
We have to push them for it.
Anyway, the freedom argument is ridiculous because everybody wants freedom.
They're only talking about different ways to get there.
And the other reason it's ridiculous is that you live in a thing called civilization.
Civilization exists almost entirely to rob you of your freedom.
Can you drive your car on any side of the road you want?
No. Can you drive on any side of the road you want without a license?
When you're 10 years old?
With no insurance?
No. Civilization is nothing but...
Winnewing down your rights into this little generic group that won't kill anybody.
That's all we do is take away rights.
You don't have many rights at all.
If you were to consider all the things that a person could do, you can't move into your neighbor's spare bedroom, you can't hit people, you can't say certain things about them.
I mean, if you look at it as a percentage of all the things that could be done, The things that you're free to do is almost vanishingly small.
And I would argue that we're basically okay with that.
Because I don't hear a lot of people saying, Scott, I want my freedom to drive on the other side of the road.
I know it's dangerous.
I know it's dangerous.
But freedom! Freedom!
No. Nobody argues that.
Because it simply just sort of works better if we drive on the correct side of the road and don't run into each other.
This coronavirus thing is temporary by its nature.
Are we going to be so dumb that we'll make permanent changes that we're dumb ones?
Well, maybe a little, but we'll fix it.
Are you concerned that the Democrats are going to take advantage of the crisis and get their universal health care or whatever?
Well, they might, but taking advantage of a crisis is what everybody's doing.
You know, the people who are making money...
I just saw the line at the bicycle shop.
My local bicycle shop, because bicycles are essential.
They're transportation. It's got a line around the corner.
They'll probably have the best year ever, because they're a bicycle shop.
So, you know, some people are doing great.
I don't even know why I brought that up.
Where has Scott been the last 50 years?
Don't know what you're talking about.
So let me give you the better argument for going back to work.
Freedom is an intellectually empty argument.
It is, however, a persuasive emotional argument.
So when I watch the protesters, and I see them, I have to admit, when I see them with their flags and with their rifles, I kind of like it.
I kind of like it. I'm not going to lie.
I love watching these patriots come demonstrate for freedom.
I love that they bring their legal firearms.
I love that the more Trump supporters there are with guns, the lower the level of violence is.
And it works every time.
I'm probably jinxing myself.
But I love the fact that the people who actually know how to use firearms, and they go to the gun range, and they take it seriously, You could pack the protest with those people, and it just gets safer.
Every gun you add just makes it safer, because those are the kinds of people there.
So, do I love those people?
Yeah, I do. I kind of do.
I kind of love those people.
I love their protest.
I love their American flags.
I love their patriotism.
I love their love of freedom.
I love their guns.
I don't mind saying so.
But, that's emotional.
That's a purely emotional reaction, which I think most of you share, right?
Don't you kind of love it when you see them protest?
Even if you think maybe they shouldn't, even if you wish they wore their masks, don't you still just emotionally, don't you kind of love it?
You do. Right, admit it, you do.
But that's emotional. Intellectually, the reason to go back to work Is that there's a crossover point and nobody knows where it is.
Nobody knows the exact right time to go back to work.
I feel like we're there, at least where I live.
Your town may be different.
But in my opinion, the best argument for going back to work is that you have to eventually.
Nobody knows the exact right time.
Let's just try it.
It's time to try it, for sure.
So I don't think you have to make it...
You don't have to say, people die from the bad economy, too.
We know. We know.
We know a bad economy kills you.
We have to go back, but we have to do it safely.
We know. We know.
We know. We get it.
Well, let's just let the people do their thing, right?
Let's take the decision away from the politicians and I'm not suggesting civic disobedience.
I'm saying that the public has a limit to their patients and that that limit will be expressed by, let's say, more and more civil disobedience in terms of the guidelines.
But I think people are still going to be respectful.
Because even people who want to do civil disobedience still have a deep love for their country in most cases.
They're still going to wear their masks because they still love their fellow humans.
Some may, some may not.
But you get to choose where you go.
You do have that freedom.
So... That's my advice to you.
If you want to persuade, use the freedom argument, but just know it's about emotion.
If you want to be intellectually honest about it, say, nobody knows when to go back.
But let's try it, see how it works.
There's no reason not to send young people back.
Hospitals seem to be in good shape.
Let's just try it. And I would argue that If you're looking at the long arc of history, the people who are arguing that we should definitely go back right now versus four weeks from now, I don't know if you were to look at this from outer space.
That there's really a difference between now and four weeks from now?
There's a big difference in how it feels at the moment.
There's a big difference on our stress level.
And there's, you know, the clear financial difference.
But I think if you're looking at it from, you know, ten years from now, you're going to say, yeah, I think I vaguely remember it was longer than I wanted it to be.
I just don't know this will be the thing that makes a difference.
So, I would go sooner than later.
But if, you know, my state, we're going to lock down until the end of May.
And it's not my choice.
It's not my choice.
But I also don't think in the end that anybody will starve.
You know, we'll make sure of that.
Nobody's going to let anybody starve.
All right. Somebody says, great job, Scott.
What is your preferred strain?
Well, it depends if it's the morning or the afternoon.
Newsom's tweet is totally ratioed.
Did Newsom do something that got him in trouble?
Scott, in that case, why aren't you calling for suspending rent and mortgage payments?
You haven't heard me say that?
Let me say this as clearly as possible.
I don't think anybody should pay rent or mortgage payments during the period of the close-down.
I think it would be almost immoral to pay your rent or to pay your mortgage.
Now, I know there are a million different situations, so there's a big difference between a rich landlord and Who can absorb it?
And, you know, you're renting from one person whose only income is that you pay the rent.
So, yeah, people are going to have to work it out on the individual level.
But, given that it's a gigantic problem with a million variables, if you can push that problem onto the banks, That's where you want to push it.
Because if you push it to the banks, the banks are literally too big to fail.
Meaning that the government has to save the banks.
It just has to. So you can just sort of consult...
You can take 100 million individual problems, which is the people who couldn't pay their rent, couldn't pay their mortgage.
You can take all 100 million of them and batch them into sort of one much bigger problem that moves to the banks and Because you don't pay your landlord, and then the landlord can't pay the landlord his own mortgage, and then the bank doesn't get their money.
But it's easier for the government to bail out the bank if it has to be done.
The banks could also probably survive by just saying, just take three months off for a payment, and we'll go back to where we were like it never happened.
They probably would be okay, because the only thing that they lost was three months of operating income, and their expenses were probably down at the same time.
So, yes, as clearly as I can say it, I'd love to ask an economist for a second opinion, but I would love there to be no rent and no mortgage payments for these periods.
Now maybe you could adjust it for only people who lost their jobs.
That would be fair, right?
I would say that unless you lost your job, You should still pay your rent.
If you still have a salary, you should still pay your rent.
So I'm really only talking about the unemployment.
Or the people got just whacked by it.
Do I have a mortgage?
I do not. Deflation will be a big problem going forward.
Maybe. Could be.
Nephew in Michigan says everyone is out doing normal running around.
Normal in the sense of using stores?
Because even if I wanted to go to a store, most of them are closed.
Renters will never pay back rent, but owners will always have to pay principal.
But they won't always have to necessarily pay it on the same schedule.
It could be pushed out. Ah, yes.
I meant to limit my answer to the unemployed or financially strapped.
I should have said that right off the bat.
Do I normally buy my own groceries?
Today was the first day since the virus.
So I had told myself that on May 1st I was going to personally start making my own decisions about what I'm doing.
If a store were open, I would go to it, but there's not much open, so there's very little that I can do individually that I'm not ever doing.
I'll be as careful as I can.
All right.
Somebody says, 70,000 Americans are dead, Scott.
You're saying that like there's a point to it that is not entirely obvious.
Snickers must think. That's my intruder.
That's her intruder, Mark.
Can you hear it? Snickers is very upset about something.
Do you want to see what it is?
You want to go with me? It might be an intruder.
You might see me get killed on camera.
That's quite a bark. She doesn't do that unless there's something really bad.
Alright, well, if you don't hear from me in the morning, the intruder got me.
I'd better go see what that's about.
And I will see you in the morning.
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